Why Are You My Remedy? [Book 1]

49

"He's not."

Luka turns. Frowns at the voice. "What are you doing here?"

"Wow. What a greeting, Couffaine. Be careful not to pull a muscle thanking me for saving your ass."

"You lied to all of us."

"You're welcome."

"You sedated my ten-year-old sister!"

"You're still welcome."

"Hey, Nino." I acknowledge him.

"My clothes look good on you." He steps a bit closer, smiles.

I roll my eyes. Luka examines my outfit for the first time.

"I didn't have anything else to wear," I explain.

Luka nods a little slowly. Looks at Nino. "Did you have a message to deliver?"

"Yeah. I'm supposed to show you where you'll be staying."

"What do you mean?"

Nino grins. "You and Juleka are going to be my new roommates."

Luka swears under his breath.

"Sorry, dude, but we don't have enough rooms for you and Hot Hands over here to have your own private space." He winks at me. "No offense."

"I have to leave right now?"

"Yeah, dude. I want to go to sleep soon. I don't have all day to wait around for your lazy ass."

"Lazy-?"

I hurry to interrupt before Luka has a chance to fight back. "What do you mean, you want to go to sleep? What time is it?"

"It's almost ten at night," Nino tells me. "It's hard to tell underground, but we all try to be aware of the clocks. We have monitors in the hallways,and most of us try to wear watches. Losing track of night and day can screw us up pretty quickly. And now is not the time to be getting toocomfortable."

"How do you know Agreste isn't dead?" I ask, nervous.

"We just saw him on camera," Nino says. "He and his men are patrolling this area pretty heavily. I managed to hear some of their conversation.Turns out Agreste got shot."

I suck in my breath, try to silence my heartbeats.

"That's why we got lucky last night-apparently the soldiers got called back to base because they thought Agreste was dead. There was a shift inpower for a minute. No one knew what to do. What orders to follow. But then it turned out he wasn't dead. Just wounded pretty bad. His arm was allpatched up and in a sling," Nino adds.

Luka finds his voice before I do. "How safe is this place from attack?"

Nino laughs. "Safe as hell. I don't even know how they managed to get as close as they did. But they'll never be able to find our exact location.And even if they do, they'll never be able to break in. Our security is just about impenetrable. Plus we have cameras everywhere. We can see whatthey're doing before they even plan it.

"It doesn't really matter, though," he goes on. "Because they're looking for a fight, and so are we. We're not afraid of an attack. Besides, theyhave no idea what we're capable of. And we've been training for this shit forever."

"Do you-" I pause. Flush. "Can you-I mean, do you have a . . . gift, too?"

Nino smiles. And disappears.

He's really gone.

I stand up. Try to touch the space he was just standing in.

He reappears just in time to jump out of reach. "HEY- whoa, careful-just because I'm invisible doesn't mean I can't feel anything-"