The Cloak and Dagger (Preview)

2 -

Mac burst out laughing. "Oh my God. I am so sorry, Jamie. It was that bad?"

"Oh, yeah." Jamie made a sour face and shuddered for effect while he grabbed an extra waffle off a plate on the counter. "It was horrible."

I glared at the two of them, an embarrassed flush filling my cheeks.

Just because I'd had one terrible date my freshman year of college, Jamie and Mac thought that gave them the right to bring it up whenever there was an idiot that needed to be compared to someone.

In retrospect, Lucas Ore hadn't been that bad - he just had an unbelievably dull personality. The real shock came halfway through dinner when he started clipping his fingernails and dropping the leftovers into his empty water glass.

I'd left without a second thought, and Jamie and Mac never let me forget it.

"That's what you get for agreeing to a blind date," I said to Jamie smugly. "It's your own fault."

Jamie shrugged. "Well, he was cute. What was I supposed to do, just turn him down? Don't judge a book by its cover, the saying goes."

"Jamie, you'd go out with half the city's men just because they were cute," Mac pointed out.

Jamie shrugged again, sipping at his coffee. "Minor weakness."

Jamie was a sucker for a guy with good looks and a nice body - among other things - but he was also completely aware of that and perfectly fine with it. Just like he didn't give a damn when his family had disowned him for coming out - he was who he was, and that was that. It was one of the things I envied about Jamie the most - his self confidence was amazing.

I wasn't going to say I didn't have self confidence, but it could've been a little better.

Mac, Jamie and I spent the rest of the morning crowded together in the tiny living room, watching the cooking channel and chatting about the things that had been going on in our lives lately.

Mac's classes at NYU were going fine, but she had a dick of a professor that had a habit of assigning twenty page research papers every two weeks. Jamie was blowing through his classes like they were nothing, of course, and he was on the Dean's List.

There really weren't that many interesting things going on in our lives at the moment. We were college students and the only excitement we ever saw was...well, nothing.

Eventually Mac had to leave for a late shift at a grocery store a few blocks over, apologizing profusely about having to go, leaving me behind with Jamie and a marathon of sappy Lifetime movies and Chinese take-out.

None of us said anything aloud, but we both knew well enough that Jamie only stayed behind because I didn't want to be alone. And I really did not want to be alone.

I had no idea just what it was that attacked me in that alleyway, but the thought that whatever it was returning, showing up in my bedroom late at night to finish what it'd started, was slowly creeping into my mind. With thoughts like those moving in, the last thing I wanted was to be alone.

Jamie and I had just hunkered down with Ben and Jerry's finest to watch Titanic when there was a series of loud knocks on the door. I screamed.

"Jesus Christ, Holly!" Jamie yelped, grappling for the TV remote. "Calm down!"

He jumped up from the couch and headed for the door while I tried to stop hyperventilating.

This was only a few hours after the "assault" and already I was having panic attacks? How bad was this going to get?

"Goodness, Holly," Mom said as she strode into the apartment, grocery bags over her arms. "You just about shattered my eardrums."

"Sorry, Mom," I muttered, rubbing at my eyes. "You scared me."