"If so, Lor, we need to bring this up to your grandparents."
"Wait a minute," Glitch said, reading on. "It happened in northern New Mexico. Your grandfather is in prison here." He looked at me, stunned. "He"s been here this whole time."
I awoke to the sound of my own labored breathing as I tried to catch my breath. Fire had consumed my lungs as they begged for air. With dry gasps, I fought to provide it. It was the usual, of course. And yet, the dynamics of the dream were changing. I was beginning to welcome the demon inside. To swallow him with pleasure, his presence both strange and familiar at once. The thought of the demon inside me becoming a welcomed guest disturbed me on several levels.
"You do that a lot," Cameron said, straightening up from his perch on the window seat. I"d forgotten to turn off the lamp on my desk and I could see his shadowy figure clearly. His eyes were hooded with weariness, making him look like he"d just woken up, which was good. Maybe he"d actually slept.
"I know." I placed a hand over my chest and tried to slow my breathing. "I"ve been having nightmares."
"Me too. Mostly about short chicks ordering me around like they own the world."
I couldn"t help but chuckle. "You can"t be talking about me. I hardly ever order you around, and I don"t own even an inch of this world."
He grinned and cast a quick glance toward the bossy short chick who was blinking awake as we spoke.
"Are you awake?" Brooklyn asked me through a yawn.
"No."
"Me neither. Did you get any sleep?"
"No."
"Me neither. I am just so floored by everything," she said, sitting up in her bed. She looked over at Cameron as he sat on the window seat, gazing out the window.
I glanced at the digits glowing atop my nightstand. Three o"clock. In the morning. I didn"t even know three o"clock in the morning existed. I thought it was a myth. Like mermaids and s...o...b..a.l.l.s in h.e.l.l.
"You snore," Cameron said to Brooke without turning around.
"Okay, I may have slept a little, but I don"t snore. And how can you just sit there all night without crashing?" she asked him.
He finally turned to her. "I slept a little too, but I don"t need as much sleep as you do."
"Oh, right. I keep forgetting. Well, I"m okay now. It"s your turn for the bed. I"ll take watch."
With a soft smile, he said, "I"d feel a bit safer with me on point, but thanks."
"Suit yourself."
A thought occurred to me as I sat hallucinating due to lack of oxygen in my dream. "I wonder how Mr. Davis is doing after today. And the creature whose name shall not be spoken aloud."
"No kidding," Brooke said. With everything that had happened, those two must have slipped her mind as well. "What do you suppose he thinks?"
"Do we care?" Cameron asked.
I shrugged. "Sure. Well, about Mr. Davis anyway. But Tabitha did seem pretty freaked out."
"Thank goodness her parents are with the Order," Brooke said. "They"ll know how to help her, what to tell her."
I nodded. "Right. She"s been through a lot."
Brooklyn gaped at me.
"Well, you know, what with Jared making out with her, then trying to kill us all. But what about Mr. Davis? He already suspects Jared."
"Suspects him for what?" Cameron said. "For killing his brother a thousand years ago? Whoever that was would have aged. He can"t possibly know anything."
Crossing my arms over my chest, I scrutinized him with a dubious expression. "You mean besides the fact that both you and Jared have superhuman abilities? He was there, Cameron. He saw what I saw."
"His mind will create a scenario that"ll fit with his interpretation of events. Most likely, we were both on some mind-altering drug that gave us super strength."
I had serious doubts it would be that easy this time, but who was I to argue?
"What is that sound?" Brooke asked, squinting into the darkness outside.
"It"s rain," I said. "And wind. Again." I sat up and placed my back against the headboard. "So, what is going on, Cameron? I mean, really? Too many strange things are happening at once. Like a convergence of bizarre activities."
"I think it"s beginning."
"What?" Brooke asked. "That war thing you guys keep talking about?"
My stomach lurched just thinking about it. I didn"t want a war. Especially not one that relied heavily on my abilities to stop it. Unless I could convince the invading army to stand still long enough for me to get a vision off it, we were toast. Whole wheat. Extra crunchy.
Then again, what good would a vision do us? I was no Joan of Arc, that was for sure. She may have led men into battle, but I was more of a "lead the school choir in a moving rendition of "One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall"" kind of girl.
"If you weren"t stuck guarding me," I said to Cameron, "you could hunt down that new kid, Vincent, and find out what"s going on."
"I don"t believe in that game," he said.
I frowned. "What game?"
"The what-if game. There only is."
"Okay, Mr. Miyagi," Brooke said. She sank back into her blankets. "I still think you should get some rest and let me take point for a while."
The expression on his face turned to one of horror. "And just what would you do if something happened? Moon the enemy?"
"What enemy, exactly?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
I had a feeling he knew precisely what I was asking, but I humored him anyway. "I mean, you and Jared keep watch all the time. For weeks now. Against what? What are we supposed to be on the lookout for?"
"Anything unusual."
"Like, every single thing that has happened this week? Unusual like that?"
After drawing in a deep breath, he said, "Yeah. Pretty much."
"And then what?" I asked, pushing for more intel. "You guys get to go do cool guy stuff while I sit here and be all protected, but from what, exactly? From whom? Don"t think I haven"t noticed how much my hours at the store have dropped. How often my grandparents send Brooke and me to the church to study the doc.u.ments of the Order. Funny how there"s always someone there. Always someone on guard duty. It"s suffocating."
"What"s suffocating," he said, turning to me with purpose, "is when your enemy has you by the throat and squeezes until the blood stops flowing to your brain, until your lungs feel like they are filled with acid because they can"t get oxygen, until your head feels like it"s going to explode." He turned back to the window. "But, yeah, I can see where being protected would be suffocating."
I ground my teeth. "That was uncalled for. I was just trying to make a point."
"Well, then, I suggest you keep trying," he said with a soft grin.
I burrowed under my covers again and glared at him. Brooke did the same.
"Glaring doesn"t really affect me, but you can keep at it if it makes you feel better."
"I"m sorry I woke you up," I said to him as my lids drifted down.
"You didn"t." He looked out into the darkness. "Something else did."
GHOSTLY.
I sneaked down to Jared"s room about an hour later, unable to sleep when I found out something was out there. Cameron could feel it, sense it, as he had for days now. Were they taunting him? Trying to get him to come after them as they had Jared? Either way, the realization was enough to push away all thoughts of sleep.
I tiptoed into the room. Granddad lay in the recliner, snoring, and Mrs. Strom sat in a chair by Jared"s bed. She had hooked up an IV and a monitor, probably borrowed from the hospital.
I sat on the bed next to Jared, stroked his hair, ran my fingers along his full mouth.
"Hey, pix," Grandma said. She"d apparently come in to check on things too.
I tried to bite back the disappointment. "Hey, Grandma." I wondered how much she knew about my paternal grandparents. Did she know my grandmother was tortured? But, wait. What if she did know? What if she took that very thing into consideration when she took on all that was me after my parents disappeared? What if it kept her awake nights, knowing she could suffer the same fate?
She looked over at Granddad. "First time in years I"ve slept without that buzz saw going, and I can"t sleep. Guess I"m used to it."
With a smile, I said, "You must be." I noticed Cameron sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. My constant shadow. "Cameron, you can come in here."
"I"m good. And there"s a fridge in this room." He stood and went to raid it.
Grandma insisted on making him breakfast. I had no idea people actually ate breakfast this early. Since I was up already, I headed for the shower. The wind had died down, but the frigid morning had left a sheet of ice on the window. It sparkled in the moonlight, the night still thick and black. I was tired just thinking about it.
All the events of the last few days were like a weight. I was moving through water instead of air. And my appearance left much to be desired. Was my skin actually paler? My eyes darker? My hair brighter? I looked ghostly. Maybe I was turning into a vampire. No, I couldn"t be that lucky. At least then I"d stand a chance of helping in this war we had yet to check off our to-do list. Maybe it could be rescheduled. A war would be really inconvenient at the moment.
First Jared being attacked. Then the picture thing. Then Isaac Johnson"s whittling skills and dire warning, which, better a warning be dire than realized. But still. Then Jared"s make-out session with a girl at least six inches taller than me, and his attacking us. Then the tragic story of my paternal grandparents, only to find out my grandfather had been alive all this time. Or, well, quite possibly.
This had been one messed-up week.
And so far today, I couldn"t quite get enough air in my lungs. My eyes stung like there was no tomorrow. And I was certain my wisdom teeth were growing in. Surely my cheeks weren"t usually that puffy.
"This humidity is not helping my hair," I said to Brooke as we vied for the mirror.
"It"s funny, my hair looks fantastic."
I gritted my teeth, but she was right. Her hair, thick and black and straight as an honor student, looked amazing.
She eyed me a long moment. "You look like you caught a tropical disease or something. Are you okay?"
"After the last few days, no."
"Oh, right. Good point. So what are you going to do about your grandfather?"
"I have an idea, but you aren"t going to like it."
She pursed her lips. "I love your ideas." When I cast a doubtful gaze at her, she said, "Well, I love some of your ideas. That one that involved ice cream and coffee was amazing."
"True. That was one of my better ones. But this one requires deception. And possibly skipping school."
"Sweet. We can always say you got a vision or something. And we have the sheriff on our side. Oh, my gosh, we can get away with anything now. I love being in this gang."
I chuckled and looked in the mirror. I thought about taunting Mal some more, maybe poking him with a stick, but I didn"t want to risk his wrath. The way my luck had gone, he"d answer this time. I leaned forward to rate the redness level of my eyes on a scale of one to ten, but they weren"t mine. The eyes looking back at me were blue and full of hatred.
Then I heard a voice. "Ready for round two?"
I jolted back and almost fell as Brooke tried to put the blow dryer away. "Did you see that?" I asked, and she glanced around, suddenly wary.
"What? What did you see?"
"In the mirror."
Brooke stood to look into it. "I don"t see anything."
I leaned forward, gazed into the mirror again. Nothing.
"Did you have a vision?" she asked, her voice infused with hope. That girl loved my visions.
"No. I don"t think so."
I couldn"t get out of my room fast enough. I went down to check on Jared. Still asleep. Still angelic. Which, since he was an angel, made sense. I kissed his cheek and promised him that I"d kiss more than that if he"d wake up. And not try to kill everyone when he did.
Cameron had warmed the truck and was waiting for me to finish my make-out session with an unconscious archangel. He clearly did not understand Jared"s allure. After offering my grandparents a solemn good-bye, Brooke and I hurried to the truck and snuggled together as Cameron drove out of the parking lot. That was about the time Glitch decided to stick his head through the sliding gla.s.s window in Cameron"s truck, the one that led to the camper.
"Hi," he said.
His voice wasn"t particularly loud nor was his tone particularly threatening, but for some reason, the surprise struck a chord. I shrieked like a doomed chick in a horror movie. For, like, a minute. In my frazzled state of mind, I went for the door handle but couldn"t quite get a grip. Luckily, Cameron put the truck back into park to wait out my panic attack. If I were really in a horror movie, I"d be so dead.