Jamie had a question mark hanging over his head, but he didn’t argue. We could all see through Elliott’s IAC that Sam was cornered. He was in a room full of distressed mirrors, the kind that make you look like something else. I thought it was ironic in an Alanis Morissette sort of way. Sam didn’t look like himself at all—and he would die the same sort of creature he’d spent centuries destroying.
“Whatcha gonna do with me?” Sam was shouting at Elliott just before the mirror behind him exploded into a thousand shards of glass. He ducked and covered his face, but it was too late. Elliott had his Glock pointed right at the old man’s head.
“I don’t know,” Elliott replied. He was aware that Meagan was on her way, I could tell by the way his eyes were shifting toward the hallway, like he was waiting for her. But he continued to taunt Sam. “Maybe I’ll keep you in a cage in my apartment where I can to
I was relieved Alex wasn’t here. I needed to thank him for taking out the guy who’d tried to kill my sister, but now probably wasn’t the best time. I had to sort out the way I was feeling about him. I was certain it was just fascination with an historical character, but if it was bothering Brandon, it was a problem.Ashley came in a few minutes before Jamie finished, and Cadence was polite, but I saw her roll her eyes. I guess the two of them still aren’t getting along. Jamie’s girlfriend waited with her arm wrapped around me, and when the doctor took a step back and nodded his head, only a few moments after he began, she started to applaud. “I’m dating a superhero,” she said with a wink, and I couldn’t help but giggle.“Just one more thing,” Jamie said. He took a lock of my sister’s hair, one right next to the bald spot she had on the side of her head, and pulled it over slightly so it was coverin
We all agreed that Holland needed to be taken out. How we were going to do that exactly was another question.“Let’s sleep on it, take Sunday off, and get together Monday morning to see what the situation is,” Aaron proposed.“Wait a minute—you’re going to take the day off?” Elliott asked. “Who are you? Did someone take over your brain again?”“I didn’t say I was going to take the day off.” He slid off of the gurney and stepped over to help Cadence sit up. She was clearly exhausted, as was I. “But I might.”Elliott couldn’t control his laughter. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”“All right. I guess I’ll head back to my prison now,” I said, trying not to sound like a baby and failing. Brandon put his arm around my shoulders as my sister made it to her feet.“At least you don’t have to go to training
Most people probably have a pretty good idea how their life is going to go. At sixteen, there may be more than one path ahead, several options to choose from, but most kids my age are thinking about finishing high school and then going on to college or a trade school, getting a job, getting married, living the life. Some more ambitious people might be thinking about making it big in one industry or another. I have friends at Shenandoah High who still dream of being rock stars. That’s cool—I wish them well. But chances are, they will eventually succumb to the reality of a 9:00 to 5:00 job where the most exciting day of the week is Taco Tuesday. It’s not a bad way to live, mind you. It’s predictable—unless fate has some messed up screwball to throw you and something tragic happens. That will probably never be the case for most people.It seems like it’s a daily occurrence for me.I know, I know. Whiney Teenage Girl, Party of One. I&rsq
Before we’d wiped out most of the violent cells, my sister had been actively recruiting anyone capable of Transforming. That fell off, and when Lucy started her program on July 1, only five other new recruits began with her. There were a couple leftovers from the March cycle who hadn’t finished for whatever reason, but not enough to keep all three trainers busy. So Aurora and Shane were handling all of the training, only bringing Meagan in when they needed a different point of view.Sometimes I went with Lucy to training just because I was bored. My mom still made me practice math every day, but not having homework helped. I was finally ungrounded from seeing Brandon at the end of May—my grounding was stretched a bit longer because of my “fresh mouth”—but sticking around the apartment wasn’t an option. Five seconds in the same room with Liz Findley and I was ready to levitate her right on out the door.“You know, you real
“Are you really coming over for lunch?” Lucy asked. “That would be great.”“Yeah, why not?” I replied. She’d pressed floor five with her IAC, but I hadn’t hit the button for four yet. I pulled out my phone to text my mom that I’d be home a little later than previously planned. She did not have an IAC. “Do you even have food?”The doors opened and we popped out into the hallway. “Yeah, of course I do. I just order it online, and it shows up in my refrigerator and cabinets.”I looked at her like she was crazy. “What are you talking about?”“Yeah, it’s a new service the grocery downstairs added a few weeks ago. It’s pretty cool. You should tell your mom.”“The only time my mom ever leaves campus is to go to the store,” I replied, following Lucy into her apartment. It was always tidy, which didn’t fit with the Lucy I knew
I did check my phone again before I got off the elevator, and my mom was right. The message hadn’t sent. I was irritated because there was no reason why it shouldn’t have, but I assumed Brandon was correct, and the signal hadn’t gotten through on the elevator. Rather than trying again automatically, it waited for me to try to send it again, a flaw in the default settings for my particular not-so-smartphone. I fixed it so that any time I sent a message that didn’t initially go through, my phone would keep trying until it went.That didn’t fix the problem with my mom.She was literally standing a foot inside of the door with her arms crossed as I opened it. She had to move aside to keep from getting hit with it. “I’m sorry,” I said, hoping my voice sounded more apologetic than I actually felt. “It didn’t go through.” I flashed my phone in front of her face, but she didn’t care to look at it.&
The next morning, I was allowed to accompany Lucy to training because my sister spoke to my mother on my behalf and said it was good for the other new recruits to have me there. It seemed ironic that I’d been fighting tooth and nail to get out of practice only for practice to be the one place I was allowed to go. I was also allowed to go to the gym in the evenings so long as either Cadence, Aurora, or Ashley, the “grown up” Hunters, were with me, but that was it. No going to my friends’ apartments. No hanging out with Brandon. It was the stupidest thing ever—except for the fact that it gave me an opportunity.Lucy and I were walking back into the apartment building when I noticed Juan across the way again, and I decided it was now or never. “I need to talk to Juan Diego,” I said to Lucy who had been relatively quiet, likely matching my somber mood. “Just go along with it, okay?”She scrunched her forehead up at me l
Over the next few days, I slowly started moving my stuff up to the fifth floor. I stowed it in the closet in the bedroom so that no one would open the front door and see a pile of miscellaneous items sitting there and assume that someone was squatting—although that was what was about to happen, if I could figure out how to get permission from my parents to not be home when they wouldn’t let me go basically anywhere else. I knew at some point I’d have to involve my sister, but I hadn’t gotten that far yet. When I did, I’d need to be vague. I also needed help from someone else, and since I wasn’t allowed to go to Brandon’s apartment anymore, catching that person would be hard.So I blew off training one morning, even though that’s where my mom thought I was, and went to meet Elliott at the donut shop. All I had to do was mention food, and he was there. I just prayed Aurora would have no reason to talk to my mom for the next few da