Obsidian l-1

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “Any suggestions?” Daemon said. “Because the sooner she’s not carrying a trace, the better all of this is going to be.”

  Yeah, because I bet he was looking forward to babysitting me again.

  “Who cares?” Andrew said, rolling his eyes. “We have the Arum issue to worry about. He’s gonna see her no matter where we put her. All of us, right now, are in danger. Any of us near her are in danger. We can’t wait around. We have to find the last Arum.” Dee shook her head. “If we can get the trace off her, then that will buy us time to find him. Getting rid of the trace should be the first priority.”

  “I say we drive her out to the middle of nowhere and leave her ass there,” Andrew muttered.

  “Thanks,” I said, rubbing my temples. “You’re so very helpful with all of this.”

  He smiled at me. “Hey, just offering my suggestions.”

  “Shut up, Andrew,” Daemon said.

  Andrew rolled his eyes.

  “Once we get the trace off her, she’d be safe,” Dee insisted and tucked her hair back, face pinched. “The Arum don’t mess with humans, really. Sarah…she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.” They launched into another discussion about what was more important: locking me up somewhere, which didn’t make sense because my light could be seen through anything, or trying to figure out a way to make the trace fade other than killing me. And I seriously think Andrew believed that was a valid consideration. Asshole.

  “I have an idea,” Adam said. Everyone looked at him. “The light around her is a byproduct of us using our power, right? And our power is concentrated energy. And we get weaker when we use our powers and use more energy.” Mr. Garrison blinked, his eyes sparking with interest. “I think I’m following you.”

  “I’m not,” I muttered.

  “Our powers fade the more we use them, the more energy we exert.” Adam turned to Daemon. “It should work the same with our traces, because the trace is just residual energy we are leaving on someone. We get her to exert her own energy; it should fade what’s around her. Maybe not completely, but get it down to levels that aren’t going to draw every Arum on Earth to us.” That hardly made any sense to me, but Mr. Garrison was nodding. “It should work.”

  Daemon scratched his chest, his expression doubtful. “And how are we going to get her to exert energy.”

  Andrew grinned from across the room. “We could take her out to a field and chase her around in our cars. That sounds fun.”

  “Oh, fuc—”

  Daemon’s laugh cut me off. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Funny, but not a good idea. Humans are fragile.”

  “How about I shove my fragile foot up your ass,” I said, irritated. My head was pounding, and I didn’t find a single one of them funny. I pushed Daemon off the arm of the chair and stood. “I’m getting a drink. Let me know when guys come up with anything that won’t potentially kill me in the process.” Their conversation continued as I hurried from the room. I wasn’t thirsty. I just had to get out of there, away from them. My nerves felt shot. Entering the kitchen, I ran my hands through my hair. Blissful silence eased some of the pounding in my head. I squeezed my eyes shut until small spots danced behind my closed lids.

  “I figured you’d be hiding in the kitchen.”

  I yelped at the sound of Ash’s quiet voice.

  “Sorry,” she said, leaning against the counter. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Not sure if I believed that. “Okay.”

  Up close, Ash was the kind of beautiful that made me wish I could drop twenty pounds and run to the nearest makeup department. She knew it, too. There was a confidence in the tilt of her chin. “This must be a lot for you to handle, learning everything and then facing what you did last night.” I eyed her warily. Even though she wasn’t trying to snap my head off, I wasn’t going to relax. “It’s been different.”

  A faint smile crossed her pouty lips. “What did that TV show say? ‘The truth is out there.’”

  “X-Files,” I told her. “I’ve wanted to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind ever since I found out. Seems like the most realistic of all the alien movies.”

  Another small smile and then she looked up, meeting my eyes. “I’m not going to pretend we’re ever going to be best friends or that I trust you. I don’t. You did dump spaghetti on my head.” I winced at that, but she went on. “And yeah, maybe I was being a bitch, but you don’t understand. They are all I have. I’ll do anything to keep them safe.”

  “I would never do anything to put them in danger.”

  She moved closer, and I fought every instinct to back up. I held my ground. “But you already have. How many times has Daemon intervened on your behalf, run the risk of exposing what we are and what we can do? You being here is putting each of us at risk.” Anger tore through me like a fire. “I’m not doing anything. And last night—”

  “Last night you saved Daemon’s life. Great. Good for you.” She tucked her uber-straight hair behind her ear. “Of course, Daemon’s life wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t led the Arum straight to him. And what you think you have with Daemon, you don’t.” Oh, for the love of babies everywhere. “I don’t think I have anything with Daemon.”

  “You like Daemon, don’t you?”

  Smirking, I grabbed a water bottle off the counter. “Not really.”

  Ash cocked her head to the side. “He likes you.”

  My heart didn’t do a stupid little leap in my chest. “He doesn’t like me. You even said so yourself.”

  “I was wrong.” She folded her slender arms as she studied me intently. “He’s curious about you. You’re different. New. Shiny. Boys — even our kind — like shiny new toys.”

  I took a long drink of the water. “Well, this is one toy he has no intention of playing with.” When he was awake that is. “And really, the Arum…”

  “The Arum will end up killing him.” Her tone didn’t change one bit. It remained flat, emotionless. “Because of you, little human. He will get himself killed protecting you.”

  Chapter 26

  “Honey, are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Mom hovered over the couch, frowning. She’d been at it all day since I’d woken up. “Do you need anything? Some chicken soup. Hugs? Kisses?”

  I laughed. “Mom, I’m fine.”

  “You sure?” she asked, pulling the afghan over my shoulders. “Did something happen at the dance?”

  “No. Nothing happened.” Nothing if I didn’t count the billion text messages Simon had sent me, apologizing for how he’d acted, and the attack of the killer aliens afterward. Nope. Nothing at all. “I’m okay.” I was tired after spending most of Saturday in a house full of arguing aliens. Two of them didn’t trust me. One of them thought I was going to be the death of Daemon. Adam didn’t seem to hate me, but he wasn’t overly friendly. I’d snuck out before the pizza they ordered arrived. Ash had been right. They were a family. All of them, and I didn’t fit.

  When Mom left for work, I snuggled down and tried watching a movie on Syfy, but it turned out to be about an alien invasion. Their aliens weren’t beings of light, but giant insects that ate humans.

  I turned the channel.

  It was pouring outside — so hard I could barely hear anything over it. I knew Daemon would be nearby, especially until they figured out how to get me to exert enough energy to fade the trace. All of their suggestions involved the outdoors and extreme physical exertion, which wasn’t happening today.

  The sound of rain was lulling. After awhile, my eyes were too heavy to keep open. As I was about to doze off, a knock on the door jarred me.

  I threw the afghan off and padded over to the door. Doubting the Arum would knock, I opened the door. Daemon stood there, barely wet even though rain fell in sheets behind him. There were a few darker dots of gray across the shoulders of his long-sleeved shirt. I bet he used super-alien speed. Who needed an umbrella? And why in the hell was he in jogging pants?

  “What’s up
?”

  “Are you going to invite me in?” he asked.

  Pressing my lips together, I stepped aside and let him in. He moved past me, scanning the rooms. “What are you looking for?”

  “Your mom’s not home, right?”

  I shut the door. “Her car’s not outside.”

  His eyes narrowed. “We need to work on fading your trace.”

  “It’s pouring outside.” I moved past him, grabbing the remote to turn the TV off. Daemon beat me to it. The thing switched off before I pressed the button. “Show-off,” I muttered.

  “Been called worse.” He frowned and then laughed. “What are you wearing?”

  I glanced down, cheeks flaming. One thing I wasn’t wearing was a bra. Christ, how could I forget? “Shut up.”

  He laughed again. “What are they? Keebler elves?”

  “No! They’re Santa’s elves. I love these pajama bottoms. My dad got them for me.”

  His smug grin faded a little. “You wear them because they remind you of him?”

  I nodded.

  He didn’t say anything. Instead, he shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “My people believe that when we pass on, our essence is what lights the stars in the universe. Seems stupid to believe in something like that, but when I look at the sky at night I like to think that at least two of the stars out there are my parents. And one is Dawson.”

  “That’s not stupid at all.” I paused, surprised by how touching that belief actually was. Wasn’t it the same as ours, believing our loved ones were in heaven watching over us? “Maybe one of them is my dad.” His eyes met mine then flitted away. “Well, anyway, the elves are sexy.”

  And a serious, deep moment effectively smashed into nothing. “Did you guys come up with another way to fade the trace?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re planning on making me work out, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, that’s one of the ways of doing it.”

  I sat on the couch, quickly growing irritated. “Well, there isn’t much we can do today.”

  “You have a problem going out in the rain?”

  “When it’s almost the end of October and cold, yes I do.” I plucked up the afghan and placed it in my lap. “I’m not going out there and running today.”

  Daemon sighed. “We can’t wait around, Kat. Baruck is still out there and the longer we wait, the more dangerous it is.”

  I knew he had a point, but still, running around in the cold ass rain? “What about Simon? Did you ever tell the others about him?”

  “Andrew is keeping an eye on him. Since he had a game yesterday, it faded most of his trace. It’s very faint now. Which proves that this idea is going to work.”

  I snuck a peek at him. Instead of seeing the stoic expression, I saw the one from yesterday morning. The look in his eyes before he realized he was in bed with me. My body warmed. Stupid, stupid hormones.

  He reached behind him and pulled out the obsidian blade. “This is another reason why I stopped over.”

  The obsidian was shiny, glossy black as he laid it on the coffee table. It wasn’t glowing a mottled red like it had been when near the Arum.

  “I want you to keep this with you, just in case. Put it in your backpack, purse, or whatever you carry.”

  I stared at it a moment. “Seriously?”

  Daemon avoided my eyes. “Yeah, even if we manage to get the trace to fade, keep this on you until we finish off Baruck.”

  “But don’t you need it more than I do? Dee?”

  “Don’t worry about us.”

  Harder said than done. I stared at the obsidian, wondering how in the world I was supposed to stash this thing in my bag. “Do you think Baruck is still here?”

  “He’s still around, yes,” he stated. “The beta quartz throws our presence off, but he knows we’re here. He knows I’m here.”

  “Do you think he’s going to come after you?” For some reason, my stomach got tipsy at that thought.

  “I killed two of his brothers and gave you the means of killing the third.” He was totally at ease discussing the fact that there was a deranged alien out to kill him. He had balls. I liked that about him. “Arum are vengeful creatures, Kitten. He won’t stop until he has me. And he will use you to find me, especially since you came back. They’ve been on Earth long enough to recognize what that can mean. That you would be a weakness to me.”

  “I’m not a weakness. I can handle myself.”

  He didn’t respond, but the intensity in his gaze seared me to the core. My confidence crumbled piece by piece. To him I was a weakness, and maybe even Dee believed that. The rest of the Luxen sure did.

  But I killed an Arum…while his back was to me. Not like I’d been ninja stealth.

  “Enough talking. We have stuff to do now,” he said, glancing around. “I don’t know what we can do in here that will make a damn bit of difference. Maybe jumping jacks?”

  Jumping jacks without a bra was so not going to happen. Ignoring him, I opened up my laptop on the coffee table and checked out my last post. I filmed an “In My Mailbox” after I’d gotten back yesterday, needing the comfort of books and my blog to remind me what “normal” felt like again. It was short since I only had two books. And I looked like crap. What had possessed me to wear pigtails?

  “What are you looking at?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I went to close the lid, but it wouldn’t budge. “Stop using your freaking object thing on my laptop. You’re going to break it.”

  He cocked an amused brow and sat beside me. I still couldn’t close it. And the mouse wouldn’t move. I couldn’t even shut down the damn website. Leaning forward, Daemon tilted his head to the side. “Is that you?”

  “What does it look like?” I hissed.

  A slow smile crept over his face. “You film yourself?”

  I took a deep and slow breath. “You make it sound like I’m doing a live perv show or something.”

  Daemon made a sound in the back of his throat. “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “That was a stupid question. Can I please close it now?”

  “I want to watch it.”

  “No!” The idea of him watching me geek out over the books I’d bought in the last week horrified me. There was no way he’d understand.

  Daemon cast me a sidelong glance. My eyes narrowed as I turned back to the screen. The little arrow moved over the page and clicked on the play button.

  “I hate you and your freaky alien powers,” I muttered.

  A few seconds later, the video started and there I was, in all my book nerd glory, shoving cover after cover in front of my crappy webcam. A few bookmarks showed. And I even worked in a totally cool Diet Pepsi product placement. Thank God I wasn’t singing in this video.

  I sat there, arms folded, and waited for the inevitable slew of smartass comments. Never in my life did I hate Daemon more than at that moment. No one I knew in real life paid attention to my blog. Books were a passion I shared with virtual friends. Not Daemon. It wigged me out knowing he was watching this.

  The video ended. Voice low, he said, “You’re even glowing in the video.”

  Mouth clamped shut, I nodded. And I waited.

  “You really have a thing for books.” When I didn’t respond, he closed the laptop without touching it. “It’s cute.”

  My head whipped around to him. “Cute?”

  “Yeah, it’s cute. Your excitement,” he said, shrugging. “It was cute.”

  I think my jaw hit the carpet.

  “But as cute as you are in pigtails, that’s not going to do anything to fade the trace on you.” He stood and stretched. Of course his shirt had to ride up, drawing my eyes. “We need to get this trace off you.” I was still stunned over the fact he hadn’t made fun of me, rendered speechless by it, shocked to the core. He just earned a few bonus points.

  “The sooner we get the trace off you, the less time we have to spend together.”

  And there went
the points. “You know, if you hate the idea of being around me, why doesn’t one of the others come over here and do this? I actually prefer any of them to you, even Ash.”

  “You’re not their problem.” His eyes locked with mine. “You’re my problem.”

  My laugh was harsh. “I’m not your problem.”

  “But you are,” he reasoned gamely. “If I had managed to convince Dee not to get so close to you, none of this would’ve happened.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. There isn’t much we can do in here that’s going to make a difference, so we might as well count today as a loss and spare each other the pain of breathing the same air.” He shot me a bland look.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. You don’t need to breathe oxygen. My bad.” I shot to my feet, itching for him to be out of my house. “Can’t you just come back when it stops raining?”

  “No.” Daemon leaned against the wall, folding his arms. “I want to get this over with. Worrying over you and the Arum isn’t fun, Kitten. We need to do something about this now. There are things we can do.” My hands curled into fists. “Like what?”

  “Well, the jumping jacks for…an hour or so should do it.” His gaze dropped. Something flickered in his eyes. “You may want to change first.”

  The urge to cover myself was strong, but I resisted. I wasn’t going to cower from him. “I’m not doing jumping jacks for an hour.”

  “Then you could run around the house, up and down the stairs.” He paused, his smug grin turning wicked as his eyes met mine. “We could always have sex. I hear that uses up a lot of energy.”

  My mouth dropped open. Part of me wanted to laugh in his face. There was a part of me offended that he would suggest something so ridiculous, but there was another part that liked the idea. Which was so, so wrong it wasn’t even funny.

  Daemon waited.

  “That will never happen in a million years, buddy.” I took a step forward, raising my pointer finger at him. “Not even if you were the last — wait, I can’t even say last human on the face of this Earth.”