I woke up with a sharp breath. It took me a while to get my eyes adjusted and realize where I was. The room was settled under an orange glow, the sun starting to set behind the buzzing buildings on the far side of the window. There were silky, hot sheets tangled around my legs and a throbbing pain spreading on my cheek and in the back of my head.
Images of what had happened started rounding my mind. I could see flashes of Danielle morphing into a werewolf, Viper's bony hands reaching to get me, Amantis' confident words on how Roy would get what he wanted, Sally laying on that bed, her voice scared as she'd asked me to help her. But none of those were burning into my chest like the thought of Jared's body sprawled against the bar.
I stared down at my fingers. There were still some dots of shining powder left—like I'd touched glitter and it stuck there. What had she given him? And where was he now? I remembered Dominic getting him out, but where had they taken him?
I pressed my forehead into my palms, trying to think clearly. Nothing was adding up. How could Danielle possibly guess Jared was close enough with Patricia to follow her into an abandoned building to mingle? Had she seen them at some point? Was she watching him? And it wasn't only that. Glamour would explain how he didn't find the place weird, but why would Jared ditch school to go make out or do whatever with her? I doubted puberty's reckless stage had hit him just now.
Something was up with him, and I was sure Danielle had nothing to do with it.
I flung myself out the bed and headed toward the door, but someone on the other side threw it open before I could. I threw my hands up by instinct. He caught them smoothly, eyes wide as he stared at me with a thoughtful gaze.
"You're up," he said. For a moment, I could've sworn he had a hard time swallowing. "You scared the crap out of me back there."
"I'm all right." That was partly a lie, but how could you feel completely fine in this sort of situations anyway? Movies and books are deceiving, nobody wants to know their life is a train wreck all of a sudden. "We should've left when you said. It's just...there was something about that blade, you know. Like I was drawn to it." I held back on the part where I saw Sally. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud.
"Reaver Blades," he said, pushing us both inside and letting the door close silently behind him. "Keepers were said to fight with them a long time ago. Before they started going into hiding and disappeared completely, they were considered their weapons, able to capture any supernatural being's soul so that they could be sent to the Veil afterwards."
I sat back on the bed where the tangled up sheets were. "I thought Patricia—Danielle said their souls were used to power up the blade."
"Now they are. Keepers were designed to protect humans, but they abided the law. It made no sense to protect something by killing the other side instead. There was balance, so they captured their soul and sent it to the Veil, where they couldn't hurt anyone. It was part of the treaty to avoid the problems I told you about. To keep everyone safe, this part of the world had to be kept a secret."
"You think that's why I was drawn to it? Because of what I am?" I remembered how it felt when Danielle had ran the blade over my cheek, and I reached a hand instinctively to touch it. The pain was still there, but the wound didn't feel as deep as I expected from how much it had hurt.
"Probably," he said, his hand reaching out to drag mine away from my cheek gently. He stood in front of me, my forehead at level with his torso. "How bad is it?"
"The pain is manageable now, but it felt like she'd sliced half of my face off," I admitted. His fingers were warm, his touch soft. "She said it would if I was...."
"I know. That's how the blade works. It detects whose blood is different."
"How did he know, Hunter?" I asked, and he seemed confused for a second. "Roy. How did he know I was a Keeper? How did he even suspect it?"
His voice remained still and calm, but I could see something stirred the blue of his eyes. "I honestly have no idea. Maybe he heard us back at Will's party, when you told me you could see me the way I was without the glamour. Only the Forgotten see through glamours, so perhaps he found it weird that you were so shocked about it."
"The Forgotten?" I asked. I didn't remember him having said that before.
The corner of his mouth rose slightly. "That's what they call the supernatural. Since they were forced into hiding and doomed to be forgotten, well, you can guess where it came from."
"How joyful," I muttered. "And what about you? Didn't you...feel anything when you met me? Gideon said something about my energy. Or even Will. How could he not notice? We've been friends for so long now."
"Keepers are half human, remember? They haven't been around for too long, Liv," he explained. "Everyone thought they had disappeared. Maybe Will detected something, but humans naturally irradiate energy depending on their soul. Without having met a Keeper ever in your life, it's almost impossible to tell." He paused, crouching so that his eyes met mine when he said, "And perhaps Gideon was right. Maybe I never felt anything because I wasn't focusing on that part of you."
"In what part did you focus on, then?"
Instead of answering, he leaned closer. It seemed like words had gotten caught up in his throat, and I noticed my breaths were shorter now inside my chest. Flashbacks from last night went through my mind, of how good it felt to be so close to him and how I wanted it to happen again. His eyes were set on mine, and a moment later, I could feel his soft lips brushing the corner of my mouth.
I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck, get lost in the moment for a while, but I couldn't get far before someone yanked the door open. I recognized his voice from before: Dominic. "Uh, Hunter? We have a bit of a situation going on downstairs." I could've sworn a plate clattered in the background, a curse following close behind. "That human guy? He just punched Caiden in the face and now he's got a knife in his hand."
"Jared." His name felt thick in my mouth, and I didn't wait to hear what Hunter said. I was already halfway down the stairs when I heard the chaos happening on the first floor.
"I swear to God, Owen, I will pulverize his little ass right now!" Caiden yelled as I rounded the last stair and found them standing inside the kitchen. Owen was holding his friend back, both of them staring at the other side of the kitchen.
"You can't do that, remember?" Owen said. His grip tightened on Caiden, who seemed to be struggling more. "He's just a human," he muttered this into his ear, but not as quietly as he expected.
"What did you just say?" Jared growled.
I ran for the kitchen's entrance before things could get out of hand, stumbling inside to find Jared walking toward them with anger flaring out of his eyes and his hand gripping some sort of butcher knife. It looked like a scene dragged out of a horror movie.
I was already throwing myself in front of my best friend when Owen opened his mouth to warn me. Jared rose his arm the way Danielle did, and an overpowering feeling of déjà vu mixed with a weird tingling sensation spread through me. "Jared, stop."
The knife in his hand shook—like an earthquake shot through his arm. Before I could fully understand what happened, the blade crashed against the floor with a rattling sound. His eyes shifted from Caiden's to mine. Sunset's last rays were pouring in from the window behind the sink, bouncing off into them and making it look like they were on fire. It reminded me of Will.
"Liv? What are you—why are you here?" He winced, and I noticed he was staring at my cheek. "Are you hurt?"
His confusion made my throat feel tight. I couldn't lie to him. Not again. "I can explain..."
Jared's eyes went elsewhere, though. Glancing behind me, I saw Hunter standing on the kitchen's entrance next to Owen, who had already loosened his grip around Caiden, and it was like he'd turned Jared's rage back on. "You," he said, staring right at Hunter. "What did you get Olivia into, huh? What did you do to me back there?"
Hunter's eyebrows rose. "I didn't do anything to you."
Jared scoffed at that. "You expect me to believe that, after I woke up to your two little gorillas right there trying to tie me to a bed?"
I looked at Caiden and Owen, who exchanged a guilty look at each other. "You tried to tie him to a bed?"
"I told them to," Hunter said. Dominic waltzed into the kitchen in that moment, glancing around the place as if he didn't want anything to do with the overall situation. "You kept turning and kicking and mumbling incoherencies. I was only trying to keep you from hurting yourself."
"Did he just call me a monkey?" Caiden scowled at Jared, and I noticed Dominic rolling his eyes at his friend.
"Oh my, I do apologize then," Jared said, ignoring Caiden's interruption. "Should I send your alien master a thank-you note for having raised you into such a good Samaritan?"
Hunter stared at him in confusion. "Alien master?"
"Good Samaritan?" Owen asked.
"This isn't Hunter's fault," I explained, looking back at Jared. His nostrils were growing and shrinking, sign that he was clearly frustrated and overwhelmed. I'd never seen him this balked, though—not that I could blame him. "Will told us he'd been looking for you. He couldn't find you and he got worried, so he asked around to see if anyone had seen you. Then Dan told him he saw you walk out with Patricia in the middle of class." I bit my lip for a moment. "Why would you do that? Why with her?"
His gaze remained unshifting, his words shattering my heart just a little bit more. "So now you suddenly care about what I do?"
"Jared," I whispered.
"I cannot believe you. I help you try and figure out what the hell is going on with blondie right there, risk getting kicked out of school for digging into private school records, and all I get is you pushing me out of your life like an unused toy all of a sudden. I didn't even doubt you for a moment. But as soon as the sexy, mysterious guy decides to let you in into whatever he's got going on, suddenly everyone around you stops existing."
Tears stung the back of my eyes. What had I done to him?
"Listen, man," Hunter began.
"No," Jared said. He rose one of his fingers to hush him before staring back at me. "You want to know why I went out with Patricia. Well, it was because I can. I wanted to get away from everything, see if I didn't feel like looking for you even when I knew exactly where you would be." He gave Hunter a quick, dirty glance. "So I did. She told me she knew this place downtown where we could have fun by ourselves for a while. Once we were there, she pulled out a bottle and gave me what I thought was vodka, but it tasted awful, bitter."
I remembered what Gideon gave me, how deceiving the smell had been. Then I thought of the glittery dust on my fingers, and I rubbed them together unconsciously.
"I don't even know what it was," he continued. "But God, I could've sworn her eyes changed color. I must've been hallucinating. The things I saw...." His breaths shortened, eyes darkening as he looked at Hunter one more time. "And now I wake up here, surrounded by all of your alien friends, to find out you dragged my best friend into the middle of this, and you expect me to believe this has nothing to do with you?"
Hunter sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "All right, I've had enough." His eyes burned a deeper blue for a second, and it would've seemed like nothing had changed about him if it weren't for the fact that Jared had taken a step back and choked on a breath. "What you saw back there, that thing, was not your little friend Patricia. That was a Shapeshifter, who, fun fact, wanted to kill you. And if it weren't for your best friend right here, who was willing to risk her own life to save your ass, you would've died. So maybe tune it down with the attitude."
"You face," was all that Jared said. It was enough for me to understand what he'd done.
"This is just great," Caiden complained. "Two weeks with your new little friend right here and suddenly you think it is okay to show humans who you are? It's not like we have suffered the consequences for doing that already."
"Caiden—" Owen began, but his friend shook his head.
"If we're gonna start acting like that, why don't we just call Roy and hand him the Keeper, too? I'm sure he'll be glad to come fetch her and give us in to the Infernal Council."
"Shut your mouth, dude," Dominic said, glaring at him.
Caiden's gaze was set on mine before he switched them to Hunter's. The brown, disheveled strands of hair that fell over his forehead and the dark, flaming blue of his eyes made his resemblance to Roy more noticeable. For a moment, I wondered if they were related somehow.
"You better figure this mess out, Hunter," Caiden said. "I won't let you drag me down that Hell again." He'd been walking toward the kitchen backdoor; his hand lingered over the doorknob when he turned to look at me. "And I'm certainly not her private bodyguard. I owe nothing to Keepers. They're not great at their job, anyway."
He slammed the door behind him, the windows rattling with amount of force he used. Jared looked down before his eyes met mine, his voice hoarse. "So it was true... You really did see a completely different guy."
I nodded, unable to pull out any words from my mouth. "And we're not aliens," said Hunter, arms crossed over his chest. "Don't know where you got that idea from."
"I wish we were." Owen sighed. "Man, what I would give to jump into a spaceship and get the hell out of this fucked up planet once and for all."
"That makes two of us," Jared muttered.
The front door opened before any of us could say anything else. Our heads snapped in the direction of the two sets of footsteps coming into the kitchen in a hurry, and I found Logan's angered face followed by Gideon's, who looked rather amused.
"This place stinks of tension and betrayal," he pointed out, straightening his suit with his hands. "My favorite kind of smell."
"What in the world is happening here?" Logan inquired. When I'd first met him, he sounded kind, but now his voice had lowered into a stern tone. His jaw was clenched, his fists bawled into fists, and his eyes widened the moment they met the three guys staring at him like they hadn't seen a relative of theirs in ages. Despite that, none of them moved.
Hunter looked around with a sigh. "Things got a bit out of hand."
"I think I need some air," Jared announced. He started pushing his way through everyone, and I followed him.
"Jared, wait. If you just let me explain, I can—"
"Please, Olivia," he said, turning around with a hurt look on his face. "Just stay away from me." His words were a kick to my face, this pain worse than the one from the Reaver Blade. "I can't talk. Not now."
Gideon's head peeked out from the kitchen's entrance. "You seem shaken," he observed. "Should I do a spell to calm him down?"
Jared's eyes were close to popping out. "Gideon," I hissed, my cheeks flaring.
"What? Should I give him tea instead? Girls say I make a killer tea."
He grinned, but Jared only grimaced and turned around to open the door. I didn't get a chance to go after him. He slammed it shut on my face.
"Okay, so he doesn't like tea, then," Gideon muttered. "I could've also made coffee.
ﺵ
"All right, this might sting a little," he said, his eyes igniting a brighter green as he pressed his fingers against my cheek. The word little didn't cut it. It felt like someone was stretching the skin and gluing it back together—not nearly as comforting as it looked like in the movies.
Sunset's last sunrays had faded into a dark blue when Logan pushed everyone into the living room. Gideon dragged me to the kitchen instead, insisting he could focus better on healing someone without having the pressure of five other people watching over his shoulder. Hunter had tried to sneak into the kitchen and stay there, but Logan forced him back to the couch with him.
I didn't complain, though. If I had to sit down and listen to Hunter go through the events from the past few days, I'd probably lose my mind. Living through them had already been hard enough, which meant I did not need a vivid reminder that all of it was real.
"There you go," Gideon said. He drew his hand back before leaning back against the counter, staring fascinatedly at me as I touched the newly healed skin. "It will feel tender for a while, but that's because it wasn't an ordinary blade."
I pressed my elbows against the cold marble of the isle where I was sitting at. "It made me see things, Gideon."
"I supposed it had," he said simply, toying with the handkerchief on his suit. "Hunter told me what happened. Reaver Blades can do that."
"The things I saw—what do they mean?"
"That depends. They show people the things they most yearn, sometimes they'll even show them how they will die. But when a Keeper holds it, it really becomes a matter of what the power held in the blade considers right for you to know. It won't show you1 things all the time, though. Only when it's necessary." He shrugged. "Reaver Blades are weird weapons to have, overall. I honestly don't know how that Shapeshifter got a hold of one."
A shiver ran through me, Sally's words still bouncing in my head like a disease. Help me, Olivia. "Can they serve as some sort of walkie talkie? For someone to send you a message?"
He left his handkerchief alone and stared at me, eyes blazing with curiosity. "Hmm. I'm not sure what you mean exactly. At least I've never heard of anything like that. A dead person?"
"No, she's alive." For now. "But she's at the hospital in a coma. Well, sort of in a coma. I'm still not sure."
He adjusted his suit around him. (Did he always wear one?) "So what happened? Did your comatose grandma tell you not to fool around with pretty boys like Hunter? Did she tell you to use protection?"
My cheeks flared. "No. I saw Sally. She was asking me to help her."
"Who's Sally?"
I blinked—of course he didn't know. "Sally. She's one of my classmates. She got attacked last week at the parking lot by Roy. Then at Will's party she got thrown off the balcony and—"
"She got thrown off a balcony?" he said, eyes bulging. "What kind of parties do you teenagers go to now?"
"That's enough, Gideon." I turned around to find Logan leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed. "I'm sure your parties aren't the sanest, either."
"Hard feelings for not ever being invited to one, Logan?" Gideon sighed. "If only you were like us, it'd be easier for you to fit in."
A muscle jumped in Logan's jaw, and I wasn't quite sure of what Gideon meant. If Logan were to be like them? Was he human? "The boys wanted to know if you could do a tracking spell of some sort to find Roy," was all he said.
Gideon cleared his throat. He stepped toward Logan with slow, measured steps. "You see, I definitely can. Problem is, I already tried and nothing came up. He's warded against any tracking spells. I wouldn't find him even if I sold my soul to the Devil. It's a matter of luck. Maybe drop by my club one of these days and see if he shows up, too."
Logan's brows met in a frown. "You already tried to track him down? Why?"
Gideon stopped in front of him, the ghost of a pirate smile curving the sides of his mouth. "If you must know everything, Logan Shepherd, I have my own businesses with Roy. You're not the only ones who want him gone." Logan's eyebrows rose at that, and Gideon he stepped out of the kitchen and headed toward the living room.
I'd never been alone with Logan—much less spoken directly at him—other than the time at my house when Mom forced me into positions where I had to answer a question or when I opened the door and he saw me in those Mickey Mouse shorts, so I didn't actually know what to say. And luckily for me, I didn't have to.
"Warlocks. They're crazy," he said, taking a seat next to me. "How are you holding up?"
"As best as I possibly can," I admitted.
Looking at him closely, there were no traits that looked remotely out of the ordinary, nothing that would indicate he was hiding under a glamour. Maybe he was just a human. Then again, did I expect otherwise? Not everyone I knew from now on was meant to have wings or shape-shift into a psychopathic snake.
"I bet." Logan sighed. "God—Hunter had told me weird things were going on, but I never actually imagined the situation was so serious.... I didn't know you were involved, much less that you're a Watcher—or whatever it's called."
"Keeper," I said, my eye narrowing. Wasn't he supposed to know that?
He shook his head. "Sometimes I feel like the kid just forgets these are the kinds of details you don't forget to mention. I knew it was a bad idea to come back to Chicago."
"You knew it was a bad idea?"
"Well, when we first met—"
I angled the spinning chair to get a good look at him, my eyes wide. "When you first met?"
Logan's face twisted in a confused frown and he let out a nervous laugh. "Didn't Hunter tell you? I mean, with the glamour he wears it's almost impossible to tell because we have the same color of eyes, but since you can see through it...I guess I just thought you'd notice we look nothing like each other."
Everything clicked into place in that moment. Logan's eyes were a deep chestnut color against his pale skin, his nose round like his other features. Hunter's eyes, instead, swirled with an ocean blue that made them look like they were glowing against his dark, olive skin, his nose a bit crooked to the side and his features angular.
Of course they didn't look alike. They weren't related.
"Hunter isn't your nephew."
"No, he's not my nephew." For a split second, I could've sworn he sounded sad as he admitted it, but he brushed it off rather quickly. "We met back at Virginia three years ago when I was working as a cop. He saved my life."
The sound of something shattering came in from the living room—like a vase of some sort—followed by hushed laughter and Hunter's voice. "That was Gideon's fault, I swear."
Logan rolled his eyes. "I'd like to keep my house in one piece, thank you."
"You said he saved you," I pointed out, trying to put two and two together. "How?"
"I was working a case back in the day," he said, his face darkening as if the memory wasn't as pleasant as he thought. "It was a missing girl, a fourteen year old. She didn't show up from school one day. Her parents thought she was at her friend's house or something, but they wouldn't find her anywhere. They checked every single place they could think of and still nobody knew what had happened to her. Abduction was the most compelling theory at first, but nobody called for ransom or tried any sort of blackmail. She came from a small family; they didn't have any enemies. The kid got good grades, she was a sweetheart.... Not a single soul understood how she could be gone all of a sudden."
I felt my heart drop when the image of the Harris boy showed up in my head.
"We started to investigate the local woods nearby, then," Logan continued. "Some school teachers said she liked to walk through them on her way back home, so we thought that perhaps she'd gotten lost and couldn't find her way back. It started to look like the right path since we found her backpack. Her things were still there, all of them, and we used them to try and track her with our search dogs." He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. "I'll never forget that day, you know. Everyone was keeping their hopes up, hoping she'd been able to survive on her own—they said she was a tough kid—and when we found her... God."
I pressed my feet onto the chair's spindle, trying to keep my balance. Logan looked like he was about to vomit. "Logan, you don't have to—"
"There was blood everywhere," he said. His voice had fallen to barely over a whisper. "It was hard to identify the body at first, but eventually we did. The office ruled it as an accidental death—by an animal, they said. The marks on her skin were deep, unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Like something had slashed her with huge claws.... I couldn't even look at her mother in the eyes when I told her. She fell on her knees and just begged for me to look into the case. She said she knew it wasn't an animal that had done this to her daughter.
"And so I looked. I spent months inside my office going over and over the facts and I ended up heading to the woods day after day to find the animal—or whatever it was—that attacked her. One of those days I stayed there for a little too long. It was nighttime already. I was trying to head back, but I kept hearing these noises. Like someone was wailing. Then I saw this thing; it looked like a human, but its body shifted and twisted and then it turned around. Its eyes were glowing a bright yellow. Hell, I could've sworn it told me I wasn't supposed to be there."
Danielle's yellow eyes made a shiver creep through my body. "A Shapeshifter?"
"I'm still not sure. It ran off before I could look at it properly, and I ran too. I didn't get far, though. Something else caught up to me, but this gaunt creature looked nothing like the one I'd seen before. It had no eyes, its skin was scaly, pulled so tight that I could see the outline of its bones, tentacles swayed where its arms should've been, claws for hands, and it just stood there, looking at me." His voice shook, and I noticed him folding his hand into a fist. "I didn't get a chance to reach for my gun. It launched itself at me. I was already accepting the fact that I would be the next body they threw into a bag, but then something happened.
"A weird feeling came over me—like I'd been pulled into a time loop—and when I came to my senses again, I wasn't alone anymore. Imagine my surprise when I realized that a fifteen year old kid took that monster out without much effort."
"Hunter?" I knew the answer, though. The description of time looping gave it away.
Logan shifted on his chair, a half smile curving his lips. "Yes. It took me some time to get adjusted. He was patient, took me through the stories as many times as I needed to understand what happened in the woods that night, and when he told me he had been running for five years and had nowhere else to go to, I took him in. Eventually, I learned that what attacked me was called a Reaper, a Shapeshifter that gets stuck in their morphed state and can't get out. They became insane, developed tentacles that ended in sharp hooks, but it's not like I could include that in the police report."
He looked frustrated—like it hadn't been three years since all of that had happened. But could I blame him? I had spent two weeks in this mess and I already wanted to get a one way ticket to Alaska. At least there I would be able to encounter a moose or a bear instead of a werewolf or a leprechaun during my morning walk. I bet moose aren't known for their history on ripping people's hearts out.
"Did you ever tell the girl's mother about it?" I asked, and he took a moment to reply. The memories seemed to be eating him alive. Perhaps it hadn't been a good idea to ask.
"No.... Hunter said it wouldn't be of any help," he finally said. "And I agreed. The past is better left in the past for some people."
"Talking about me already?" Hunter walked into the kitchen with soundless steps—a skill I still didn't know how he was able to master—stopping before Logan's chair. "There's something you guys should see."
We followed him back to the living room, where Gideon had set up a small cloth in the center of Logan's coffee table with a perfectly-shaped rock circle over it. Inside that circle, glinting under the yellow light coming from the roof and the lamp torchieres scattered all over the room, was the Reaver Blade. Dominic and Owen were seated on the couch in front of it, as if they expected it to start moving at any given second.
"I didn't know you actually meant to sell your soul to the Devil, Gideon," Logan said lightly. "I should've told you I don't appreciate satanic rituals in my house."
Gideon gave him an annoyed look. "You wanted a tracking spell or not?"
"Why the Reaver Blade?" I asked, feeling Hunter's shoulder brushing against mine. I felt like a walking ice cube against his warm skin, worried that if I stood closer to him, I'd melt.
"I tried to do the ritual just now," Gideon explained. "But the only visions I got were of the blade. It flew across the room and killed that blue vase you had over there." We followed the way he was pointing at with his finger, finding a pile of glass on the floor. "I can only see it, which means, it was connected to Roy at some point. If you wish to find him, you'll have to figure out what's hiding inside this thing. And I think Ms. Rhodes has a nice starting point."
Everyone's eyes slowly set on me, and I dug my nails into my palm. Hunter didn't say anything—as I guessed he would—but rather just stared at me like he knew the explanation would come right away. "When I touched it back at the Lotus Tavern, I saw Sally. She was asleep in her hospital bed, but I could hear her. She was asking me for help. Then I heard Roy laughing somewhere and everything disappeared." I worried on my lip when nobody answered. "It was weird. I don't know what it meant."
"I doubt it's meaningless," Dominic said, his blue eyes shining against his dark skin. "If you are a Keeper, the blade wouldn't show you things that aren't important."
"Maybe we should visit the hospital," Hunter offered.
"Visiting hours are over, son," Logan said.
"I can always arrange something." Gideon's hands sparked blue, a smile on his lips, but Logan shook his head before he could offer.
"You'll go tomorrow," he concluded. "After school. I won't let you ditch classes like you suddenly have the world's faith in your hands."
Owen shrugged. "We kinda do." Logan raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrank back into the couch. "But don't worry. We'll head straight to work tomorrow. Won't we, Dom?"
They worked? When Hunter told me about them, I'd been sure they were our age.
"First we need to find Caiden," Dominic pointed out tiredly.
"And I should get home," I said, pressing my back against the wall. "My parents are probably wondering where I am, and I already have to make up some excuse about why I haven't called them yet."
Logan opened his mouth, but Hunter spoke over him, his hand lacing with mine. "I'll walk you out."
The sky had turned a bluish shade of black when we stepped outside, the first star glinting in the north. It was most likely part of the Ursa Major, one of the first constellations to light up the sky every night.
I felt like it had been ages since Jared and I would lie down in his backyard to stare at the stars while he read some of his horror stories to me. He'd tried writing for a while, but his novels would turn out predictable. He ended up ditching them after a while and then he gave poetry a try. I would never forget his poem about how polar bears—
"Liv?" Hunter nudged my arm lightly, and I tore my gaze from the sky to look at him. The porch didn't have any lights on. We were left to talk in the shadows. "Are you all right?"
"Yes." No, not at all. "I was just thinking."
"It's been a lot for you the past few days. I want to make sure you're okay—and I get it if you want your space and all," he said. I noticed then that he was cracking his knuckles, his body tense against mine. "I also understand it if what happened between us bothered you or—"
"Bothered me?" I asked, my voice raising an octave.
"Yeah—I mean, no." He brushed his face with his palm. "I just don't want you to feel pressured or anything. I don't seem to be able to control myself too much when we're alone, and that has never happened to me before. So I do understand if—"
"Let's just take it slow, okay?" I said, giving him a smile. With everything that was going on, it was best to let things unfold naturally. "Don't think about it too much."
"We could do that, yes." His muscles switched to a much more relaxed position, then, his eyes at level with mine. "How are you holding up with the whole Jared thing?"
"It feels like I flushed twelve years of friendship down the toilet like they were a dead fish, but I'll figure something out. I'm gonna talk to him tomorrow—or at least I will try."
His body served as a blanket against the chilled air, and he stepped closer. His eyes shone a brighter blue. They were still as beautiful as the first day I'd seen them. "Everything is going to be okay."
"I keep telling myself that, trying to see how many times I have to say it before I actually believe it."
"We'll sort things out tomorrow, take it one day at a time."
"Sounds about right. I'll see you at school, okay?" I said, pressing a kiss against the side of his mouth. He squeezed my hands lightly before heading back inside and closing the door behind him. My body felt cold again, and I didn't have any intentions of staying there in the shadows.
I set myself to walk across the street when the door opened again. A different voice came up behind me. When I turned around, he was rubbing his hands together. "Olivia, I forgot to ask you something."
The brisk wind blew my hair back. "What's wrong, Gideon?"
"Nothing's wrong," he said simply. "I was just wondering which one of your parents is it."
I frowned. "Which one of my parents is what? What are you talking about?"
He seemed confused by my answer, drawing his hands apart and letting his thumbs hook into his pockets. "Well, which one of them is the Keeper, of course. Your mom? Your dad? Both? I'd like to know if I've ever heard of them."
"Neither of them are Keepers." I tried to keep my voice as steady as I could, but he said it with such certainty that my hands started to shake. I hoped he blamed it on the weather.
"Olivia, you cannot be a Keeper if it isn't by bloodline," he said matter-of-factly, his arms crossed over his chest. "It's not similar to when you are a warlock, a Vulture, a Shapeshifter, or even a Faerie who can be born with a little enhanced DNA without the need of a hereditary connection. Keepers, however, much like Infernos, have always developed through bloodlines since the beginning of times. Unless one of your parents has it, you won't be able to get it."
The air felt thick and cold inside my lungs. "You mean—"
"I mean, sweetheart, that either you're one hell of an odd occurrence, or your parents have been lying to you for the past eighteen years of your life."
Ice replaced the blood running through my veins, and I no longer felt like I would melt if anyone stood too close to me. I felt like I would shatter.