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I stand up. It’s time to go to class, and I know how hard that will be for Kate.
Mr. Brian keeps glancing at Kate. Or am I imagining it? Is he looking at me too? My pen scratches across the paper, but I’m hardly paying attention to the words I’m writing – my eyes keep darting toward the teacher. I have this unmistakable sense that he’s up to something. There it is again – he glances in Kate’s direction. Did his eyes narrow a little? He continues talking in his normal voice and doesn’t let on that anything is amiss, but I know in my bones that I can’t trust him. My heart is pounding, and I keep feeling his icy stare piercing me. When I look at Kate, I can tell she feels the same. She’s sitting hunched in her chair, clutching her pen, but she can’t bring herself to move it across the paper. She’s not okay. Is she experiencing that pain again? It takes all my will power to stay in my seat and not go to her. There’s nothing I can do for her right now. We need to do our best to maintain the façade.
“How are you feeling?” I ask Kate after class.
She hesitates and then shakes her head. “I honestly don’t know. I felt the pain again, but not as bad, and it didn’t last long. It really scares me. What’s causing it?” She looks at me with round eyes in a pale face.
I wish I could answer that. “I don’t know. But I’ll do everything in my power to help you,” I promise.
“I’m sure it has something to do with my gift. If only I could control it. Maybe finding out what my mother knew about Mr. Brian will bring me a step closer.”
“I could ask Noah for help,” I suggest as I shoulder my school bag. “He helped me break into Mr. Brian’s house once before.” I don’t feel good about asking him for another favor, especially one that could get him into trouble. But I don’t know what else to do. Kate and I have been racking our brains for days about how to get to the bottom of Mr. Brian’s secret. And we keep coming back to the idea of searching his house.
“I don’t know,” says Kate. “We don’t even know what to look for.”
“Yeah, I realize that, but…” We’re back at square one with no idea of how to proceed. “We have to do something,” I say, and Kate nods distractedly. I check the time and sigh. “We need to hurry, or we’ll be late for class. If the Fabricis find out I’ve been skipping class or showing up late, they’ll force me to do extra training.” I look at Kate again. “If we plan it carefully and wait for the right moment, I don’t see what could go wrong,” I promise, hoping I sound more confident than I feel.
The next few days pass slowly. My training sessions are still tough. I haven’t been able merge with Yoru and stand up to Alfredo in my fiery form. I only have two tactics – launching the occasional attack and keeping clear of his key spirit. And that’s not easy, because it keeps trying to poison me with its saliva. But I feel like I’m making some progress and that it’s not a total waste of time. In the end, any kind of training is helpful because I want to get stronger and learn to defend myself better.
On those brief occasions when I have some time to myself, I keep reaching for my phone, hoping to hear from Ayden. But he almost never replies to my messages, and this causes a stabbing pain in my heart. Kate and I are making no progress with our plans regarding Mr. Brian, which is entirely due to the fact that I have no time. I’m either in school, or I have to head straight back the Fabrici house, where I’m bombarded with training sessions that don’t help me at all in terms of coping with my gift. But that seems to be their intention. They want to curb my progress so that they can keep me under their thumbs as long as possible. That’s why they haven’t made anyone available to me who has knowledge of my gift and could give me more specialized coaching. When I feign innocence and ask Alfredo about it, he just says that fighting is the best way to learn, and my gift just needs to be teased out often enough. At some point, I’ll understand what I need to do.
Meanwhile, he’s succeeded in making me see the threads twice by poisoning me and pushing me to the point of exhaustion. But it didn’t help.
I push open the main entrance door to the school and head to my classroom. We have chemistry first, which I’m not looking forward to. Kate is already waiting by the lockers for me. She’s become thinner and paler recently, I realize when I see her. Her problems weigh heavily on her, but we can’t do much about them.
During class, when I’m not absorbed in my own ruminations, I glance furtively at Kate, who’s sitting motionless in her seat, staring straight ahead. She’s really not doing well. We urgently need to find out if her memory loss is caused by the visions.
“We could try the hunters’ library,” I suggest after class as we walk through the corridors. “Or I could sneak into the Fabricis’ library and take a look there.”
But Kate shakes her head. “Don’t do that. If they catch you, they’ll go out of their way to make your life miserable.”
“There’s not a whole lot more they could do to me, except maybe put me on a diet of bread and water,” I say quietly.
Kate stops abruptly and stares straight ahead, looking stunned. Baffled, I look back at her and then slowly turn to see what she’s looking at. My heart starts racing, and a feeling of unbridled joy floods through me.
Ayden’s back. But he’s not alone. At his side is an excited and beaming Claire. She’s hanging off Ayden’s arm, talking to him non-stop as he looks down at her attentively. But suddenly, something in his expression changes. It’s as if he’s sensed something. Is it maybe the same tingling sensation that I have right now, running from the back of my neck all the way down my spine?
He raises his head and looks around – and sees me. He stops for a moment, and we just look at each other. Neither of us moves, although my heart is hammering loudly in my chest.
“Ayden?” Claire says, looking up at him with a frown. “Aren’t you going to show me around the school? I can’t wait to see everything.”
But she gets no reply. Without a word, he brushes her off and strides toward me. When he reaches me, he hesitates for a moment, then he puts his hands on my cheeks, so tenderly – it feels exactly the way I remember it – and bends down to kiss me. I instantly feel butterflies in my stomach, an electric vibration in the air. I press myself against him, open my lips, and our kiss becomes more intense. I forget everything around me, even forget where I am. Right now, all that matters is that Ayden’s back, that he’s with me, and that I can feel him. Oh boy, can I feel him!
We slowly draw apart, not taking our eyes off each other.
“Hey,” he says with a wicked smirk that’s so damn sexy. “I’m back.”
“You could have told me,” I reply in a mock-serious tone. “I’ve hoping for a message from you all this time.”
“Sorry,” he whispers, and starts kissing my face, my temples, my cheeks, my chin. “I really missed you too.”
“Sorry to interrupt.” Claire’s standing beside us with her arms folded. “I’m happy for you guys, but maybe you can postpone your reunion until later? Your father said you were supposed to show me my room and then give me a tour of the school.” Her voice is as sweet as sugar, and so is the charming look she shoots Ayden from under her long lashes.
“Sorry, Claire. I haven’t seen my girlfriend in ages, and I want to spend some time with her first. I’ll get one of the other hunters to show you around and take you to your room. We can catch up later.”
It’s almost imperceptible, but I swear I see something cold flash in her eyes momentarily – a flicker of overt anger. But it disappears so quickly that I can’t be sure.
“Okay, if you say so. See you later. I’ll go wait in the common room that you showed me just now.”
