Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

Reed Taylor parked the bike haphazardly in our driveway, grabbed me off of it, and ran me up the steps and into the house. In his haste, he slammed my head against the doorframe. So much for grace. Thank goodness I was still wearing the helmet.

“Well, it’s good to see you’re—what happened?” Seth demanded. He set Lydia on the floor and raced over to us.

“Luna! Can you hear me?” Seth demanded and yanked the helmet off of my head. He ran his fingers over the dried blood on my lips. The look he shot Reed Taylor even chilled me.

“What have you done to her?”

“I didn’t do a thing, man, it was this . . . I don’t even know how to explain it. It was wild.” Reed Taylor laid me down on the couch and knelt down beside me.

“Luna?” he asked quietly. I could feel my eyes rolling in my head, but somehow, I couldn’t make them stop.

“Hurts,” I managed to say, and Seth shot to my side.

“What hurts? Where?”

Reed rolled me onto my side and pulled my shirt up to show the demon’s mark between my shoulder blades.

“Check it, Seth. See how it’s white around the edges? It looks like claw marks. And put your hand here. It’s cold.”

Lydia babbled and gibbered and crawled over to the couch. She pulled herself up to look at me.

“Don’t touch, baby,” Seth said and scooped her against his chest. She struggled against him, wanting to see her Mama Luna.

“What did you bring her here for? She needs a doctor,” Seth said grimly and crossed the room to the telephone.

“No,” I said from the couch.

“She didn’t want a doctor; she wanted to come home,” Reed Taylor said. He ran his fingers lightly over the bloodless wounds. His fingers felt scalding hot.

“Luna, you’re nuts,” Seth said to me. “Seriously, that’s a really nasty wound. What did you do?”

I opened my mouth to answer but heard myself groan instead.

“She said . . . a demon did it,” Reed Taylor said, and Seth stiffened. Reed Taylor was watching him closely. “She just went kind of ballistic in the restaurant, said a demon almost possessed some boy she knew. Owen something-or-other.”

Seth glanced up at Reed Taylor. “She drag you to that fish and chips place? The one with the nets on the table? That has to be so unsanitary.”

Reed Taylor’s lips turned up a bit, but Seth had already grabbed his car keys. Lydia snatched at them. “Seriously, she’s sick and she’s weak. And there are two of us, and we’re bigger. We can totally stuff her into the back of the pinto—”

“You own a pinto?” Reed Taylor scoffed.

“—and get her to the hospital with little mishap. What do you think?”

I shook my head, barely. “Not safe,” I whispered. Here I was protected, at least a little. Sending me out into the Big Outside World with the demon’s mark was akin to sending me out to sea in a tiny little ship. And setting it on fire.

Reed had my back. “Of course it isn’t safe! Don’t you know pintos have the reputation of being ‘the barbecue that seats four’?”

My breath rasped out of my body in such a way that both of them turned to look at me.

“Shut. Up,” I managed.

Reed Taylor closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, they blazed brilliantly.

“I can do it. I can heal her.”

Seth blinked in confusion. “What, you’re a doctor now?”

Reed Taylor’s smile was beautiful. “Nah, I’m not a doctor. In fact, it isn’t even me. But it’s what she needs, and it’ll be better than any doctor can do. Especially on something as ghastly as that. I know how it sounds, but it will work.”

Seth was struggling with himself; I could feel it.

“Hi hi hi hi hi,” Lydia chirped suddenly, waving. The invisible presence was back.

“Get lost,” I told it, annoyed. I didn’t have the patience just now.

“I . . . I’m not sure what’s going on,” Seth said. He breathed in the smell of Lydia’s brown hair. He always did that when he was nervous.

“It’ll be okay,” Reed Taylor told him, and then he kissed my ear. “You’re going to be good, my crazy girl. It’ll just take a minute.”

His eyes flicked up, bored into my brother.

“You,” he said, “are really, really going to hate this.”