by Jo Holloway
Cara finally grabbed some food and went to sit with the boys. They both looked as happy with how things had gone as she was, and Jory positively glowed.
Every time the topic of Liv had come up over the past month, his uncharacteristically shy smile had confirmed Wes’s suspicions about his feelings. They never asked, but it was obvious. The guy was smitten. After last night, it was game over for him, Cara could tell. He hadn’t said much, but his eyes had barely left Liv all night, and she’d spent a fair amount of time returning his gaze too. It wasn’t surprising. Jory had that effect on a lot of girls, but this was different somehow. Maybe it was knowing Jory so well and seeing his expression change around Liv in subtle ways. It gave a different intensity to her returning glances.
The photo from the gala popped into her mind before she could stop it. She hadn’t been able to resist opening it several times in the last few weeks to gaze at her dress and Rhys’s tuxedo side by side, and that burning look they’d shared. Even though she knew the truth—that the look had been heated anger—she let herself see it the way the gossiping girl in the senior class had described it.
Rhys’s new attitude since Liv’s death and subsequent miraculous recovery had made everything worse for Cara. The blazing, revitalized look in his eyes and his new dedication to settling in at school had made him so much more than the fierce but broken guy she’d first met. She also hadn’t seen him much, and when she did, he was with new friends in his junior class, or old friends like Mak. Then there was Emma. The two of them were together a lot.
She sighed. She did want him to be happy, and Emma was the best. Still, the occasional breakfast when Rhys chose to come sit with them to catch up and to update them on Liv’s progress as she healed, regained strength, and shocked doctors with the speed of her recovery . . . yeah, Cara loved those breakfasts.
“Cares? Did you hear me?”
“What? Sorry.” She tore her gaze from the windows where rain now streaked down the panes and found Jory looking at her with a huge grin. She lifted her glass to her lips to hide the smile that had crept over her face.
“I said you’re just going to have to get over your total obsession with me.”
She spluttered in her milk. Wes snorted and bent forward, his eyes closed as he tried his best not to laugh at her expense. Somehow, Jory’s grin grew.
When she had swallowed and could actually breathe again, she set her glass down and fixed her friend with an incredulous stare. “Excu-use me?”
“Oh, good, you are paying attention now.” He turned to Wes, who hadn’t totally recovered yet. “Honestly, one little rumor about me and her last year and she’s telling me she loves me.”
She threw a bit of roasted potato at him across the table. “As a friend, you idiot.”
Wes had lost it again, and she reached over to smack his shoulder.
“Is this what it’s going to be like with you two from now on?” she asked.
Jory nodded. “Pretty much.”
“Huh. I think I liked it better before.” She eyed them both carefully. What had she gotten herself into?
“Whelp, too bad. You had your chance.” He paused to duck the next potato that flew past his head. He resurfaced, grin still fixed in place. “Now you’re basically one of us guys.”
“Yuck. Pass,” she said, crinkling her nose at both of them before she laughed.
“Seriously, though, I asked when your meeting would be over so we can meet up with Rhys and Liv and help her move in.”
“Oh, yeah. I think it’s an hour.” She checked her watch. “I should go or I’ll be late.”
She dropped off her tray and headed for the doors, spotting Emma going the same way and hurrying to catch up to her.
“Thank you, Cara,” Emma said when Cara reached her.
She looked over in surprise. “Me? What for?”
“Whatever made Rhys happier these last few weeks since he started hanging out with you and your friends sometimes. I’m sure Liv coming back to school is a big part of it. But he said you guys are going to help her with school, and I know he’s glad for the support, for both of them.”
“Well, he’s lucky to have you supporting him too.” She was still working on living up to Emma’s example of grace.
“He’s really different now, but I think it’s in a good way.”
“Oh.”
What else could she say? She understood what would make him so different. Even without everything he’d gone through for Liv, just learning about Pyx and discovering his Pyxsee abilities would have been enough. It had certainly led to a giant shift for her and her life. It must look like a huge change for someone like Emma who’d known him so much longer.
They stepped out of the dining hall into the drizzling rain. Flipping up the hoods on their raincoats cut off any more conversation as they hurried to the athletics building for the team meeting.
A month ago, she and Wes had ventured through similar conditions to the council meeting. They’d followed as Jenyx and Tomyx led the way along what could barely be called a trail to a spot deep in the forest. The great-horned owl had instructed them to leave the clay pyxis on a large flat rock in the small clearing and to return to the school. She’d been hesitant. How were a bunch of animals going to deal with the clay pyxis? But Jenyx had assured her “the guardian” would take care of it. She had no idea what that meant, and he’d refused to explain. She had been too freaked out by the collection of animals around the clearing to argue at the time. Something the size of a giant bear had moved in a dark pool of branches, and she’d retreated. By the time Jenner and Thomas rejoined them at the dorms that night, their fur was soaked through. She’d had to apologize to Delaney for the wet dog smell in their room.
In spite of her determination to learn more about what had happened after they’d left, Jenyx and Tomyx were being secretive again. She had managed to get Jenyx to tell her they’d questioned the Pyx, and to promise to tell her more once the council had confirmed certain facts. For now, she tried to focus on school and cross country and this meeting—planning the Skai run.
THE FIRST SATURDAY after Halloween, she left the dorm for an early dinner. She wore black leggings and her darkest running shoes. As she passed between the forward two dorms, the long, lean form she recognized so easily emerged from the Dougie. Rhys jogged over to walk with her.
“Eating early?” he asked.
“Yep. The team is meeting at six to set up. I’m actually nervous.” She fiddled with the zipper on her coat but gave a small smile. “Excited, too.”
“But you know all the inside information now. Not like going into it as a freshman.”
“True. I envy them. Getting that first shock and wonder of it was . . .” She didn’t know how to describe it. The feeling of being plunged into total darkness, only to see people and things glowing all around her, and of being swept along on the tides of the magic of that night—it was indescribable. “Well, you know. You were there. Hey, why were you there?”
She’d never asked why he’d been at last year’s Skai run when he hadn’t been attending school.
“I snuck into my first one when I was eleven.” He chuckled at the memory. “Dr. Flanagan totally caught me, but she knows our family and let me come after that. I haven’t missed one since. The first one is pretty unbelievable, but there are always new surprises. This year will be different too, helping Liv around the trail.”
“I still can’t believe she’s insisting on doing it.”
Cara was expecting to see her friends at the back of the pack tonight, walking behind all the runners so they could help Liv make her way along the trail of glowing people and plants. She had no doubt she’d find Jory supporting Liv on one side with Rhys on the other. Their newest friend had been making great strides in her first week back at school, but this would be more distance than she’d walked yet. She was recovering from her long period of immobility, gathering new strength by the day while her broken ribs from the CPR that had saved her
life healed slowly. Still, she was insistent on taking part in the Skai run, even after they’d all offered to skip it and go straight to the party at the grotto with her where she could simply sit and enjoy it.
“I told you she was strong. I might have forgotten to mention stubborn.” Rhys smiled, and his eyes sparkled with joy at his sister’s rapid recovery. “Anyway, have fun behind the scenes tonight. I’ll probably see you at the grotto after.”
He split off down a different path, jogging back to his friends and leaving her to go up the stairs alone. She had plenty of butterflies in her stomach to keep her company. There was also a whole team sitting inside. She went in and joined Kaylee, Ethan, and Mike to eat quickly.
Four hours later, the team had set up all the glow-in-the-dark rocks to mark the path for the start of the run, leading to the forest. They’d all donned their special hooded jackets. The old glowing ones had been replaced this year with brand-new fiber optic technology, and they’d spent a joyous twenty minutes testing all the colors and settings. They took their allotment of glowing plants and set out for their stations along the forest path to set them up.
Cara waited in her assigned position for the start of the run, ready to direct students and teachers alike to keep everyone on the trail. Her pulse pounded in her ears, waiting with excitement for the last of the light around the school to cut off. She stood in the semi-dark, trying to shake the eerie feeling of being watched from the woods behind her. When the horn sounded and the world plunged into darkness, she switched on her jacket. She glowed in tiny streaks of soft yellow. The shrieks from surprised first-timers echoed across campus to her position. She would have smiled, but the feeling of eyes on her intensified, and she turned to peer into the darkness behind her instead. The glow from her hood made it harder to see into the inky black.
Nothing. There’s nothing there.
She shook her head and turned back to the path in front of her, waiting for the runners. When she spotted the first person, she breathed a little easier and raised her glowing arms to wave them in the right direction. The sense of someone behind her receded into the shadows of the dark woods, lost for now among the laughter and magic of the night.
THANK YOU FOR READING. I’m humbled that you chose to spend your time with these characters. The trio came a long way in this book. I hope we gave you a few hours of entertainment and a great experience. A whole new mystery and a darker threat await Cara, Wes, and Jory in the Green & Gold series. New friends . . . New enemies . . . We’ve only just begun.
Cara and her friends return in Darkness in Green & Gold, Book Three of the Green & Gold series. Keep reading for a sneak peek.
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Darkness in Green & Gold
Chapter 1
CARA ROLLED OVER WITH a grunt and sat up on the wet earth. She grimaced and rubbed her aching kneecap, smearing mud across her pants from her burning palms. A fern frond brushed the back of her neck from the side of the path and she swatted it away while she tried to ignore the stinging scrapes on her arms.
“Thanks for the warning,” she snapped, looking up. “Both of you.”
A grey and rainy January had filled the air at ground level with the smell of rotten leaves and muddy earth. Evergreen branches blurred together across the dreary winter sky, and she furiously blinked back the tears prickling in her eyes. She was not crying about a stupid fall. Not now. Not with everything else.
The tightness in her chest climbed her throat to her clenched teeth.
Jenner approached with his ears flicking back and forth, and she found herself staring into her dog’s worried eyes. Usually it was hard to stay mad at that look on his furry face, but today the burn on her hands matched the fire in her belly.
Damp began to soak through the seat of her pants and she switched her glare to Wes.
“We’re...sorry?” Wes glanced at Cara’s dog. “We didn’t realize you needed a warning not to trip over your own feet.”
Her friend had stopped a couple steps ahead and turned back when she fell during their run. He’d already extended a hand toward her but dropped it and raised his eyebrows instead after her little outburst.
Between Jenner’s tilted head and the way Wes’s eyebrows had vanished into his shiny black hair, she couldn’t help another groan. Sarcasm coming from Wes—direct, to-the-point, logical Wes—was all wrong. That wasn’t him at all.
“Crap. I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” Cara took a deep breath and forced her tight jaw to relax. This time when Wes reached out, she accepted the hand offered to her and climbed to her feet with a soft thanks.
Jenner circled them, sniffing the air. The familiar green gleam passed across his eyes when the Pyx who lived in her dog spoke from his mind to theirs.
“There is another one of us nearby, though I cannot tell precisely how close.” Jenyx’s voice was clear inside their heads.
“Well that’s helpful.”
Cara brushed her hands across the back of her pants, feeling the wet spots with a frown. Ever since these others had started coming around, she’d been more and more annoyed by his secrets and closely guarded words. If only Jenyx would tell her what he knew, maybe she could figure out what was going on with her.
“Cara...” Wes prompted again at her grumbling.
“Ugh, I know. I can’t turn it off.” She shook out her arms like the motion could rid her of the unnatural aggression. “It’s so annoying.”
“It’s not you. It’s them. Are you okay, though?”
Was she? Learning she was an empath had been hard enough to accept even before these newcomers started making her grumpy all the time. Now she almost never felt okay. But Wes meant physically. She checked her hands. The red rash across the bottoms of her palms caused another flash of anger that she bit back. “I think so.”
Wes gave her a half-hearted smile. “Good.”
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. It’s not your fault. You know it’s just your Pyxsee empathy picking up on one of them.” He scanned the trees.
Jenner had moved off the path, scenting the woods around them, making sure they didn’t have unwanted company too close by. Cara closed her eyes. She breathed in slowly, and then exhaled. The fresher air above the undergrowth helped clear her mind.
There had to be a way to stop the churning feelings that didn’t feel like they belonged to her. At least, she hoped they didn’t. She wanted to believe her friends that her awful moods lately were a product of her ability to pick up on emotions of Pyx nearby.
Of course it was little comfort to think there were such hostile-feeling Pyx in the area. Everything she’d learned from Jenyx in the past two years made her think this wasn’t normal for them. The Pyx who lived in her dog had always made it sound like his kind were peaceful observers in the long history of the world, rarely interfering in the lives or events of the times.
Her eyelids raised and she found Wes still studying her with concern across his dark features. Hundreds of tiny gold flecks in his brown eyes meant he was a Pyxsee too, but they didn’t come close to matching the intensity of her solid gold eyes.
Wes didn’t have to deal with the extra ability she had found herself saddled with. He saw and heard the Pyx like she did, like all normal Pyxsees did—if being a Pyxsee could ever be called normal—but he didn’t feel them. The eye color she’d hated most of her life for ho
w different it made her was coming back to bite her again. She had no idea what normal even was anymore.
“I hope you’re right about it coming from them, but we don’t know that.”
He looked at her sideways without a word. She knew that look, but his silent reassurance wasn’t what she needed. She needed answers.
“No,” she insisted. “We don’t know. We don’t know anything. That’s the point.”
Flames of frustration clawed at her ribs again. This time she was pretty sure the emotions were her own. She shot a dark look at Jenner—not that it had anything to do with her dog.
“Cara, child, I know you feel left out but we will share what information we can when the time is right,” Jenyx said. His usual soft and gentle voice rang with a sharp edge in her mind.
Wes’s jaw twitched as he heard it too.
“The council meeting was three months ago already. How much longer do you need to figure stuff out before you tell us what’s going on?” She couldn’t keep the acid from her tone.
“It is complicated. The situation is not what we expected, and we have yet to discover the meaning of these new Pyx in the area. They have avoided all the usual communications with others. Your reactions to them, current mood included, are worrisome, to say the least.”
“Yeah, or maybe I’m just an angry sixteen-year-old. After all, I’m human first, and only a magical unicorn Pyxsee empath second,” she grumbled. “Or I’m going crazy. Again.”
“Enough.” Wes’s low, quiet voice was gentle but his words were firm. “First of all, only half those things are true. And being different doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I might not share the empathy stuff, so I don’t know what you’re going through, but we all know the real you. And angry isn’t you. This attitude is coming from them and you know it.”