“Cass?” Jamie said again, leaning toward me. “What are you thinking about?”
“Sorry. I was just wondering... do you think there are different degrees of death?”
I pulled my eyes away from Margie’s picture to look at him and saw by his expression that he wasn’t completely shocked at the question, as if he’d pondered it himself before. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he made a joke. “You mean like ‘only mostly dead’?”
I giggled, recognizing the line from The Princess Bride, one of my favorite movies. Elliott quotes it all the time, but only recently have I noticed Jamie is also familiar with the movie. “Something like that,” I nodded. “Do you think... if someone had only been dead for a few seconds, your blue light could suck them back in?”
“Why do you ask?” He shifted on the couch again, and I regretted making him feel uncomforta
Even if I had intended to tell him no, Brandon was behind me when I pushed through the door, so I really didn’t have much of a choice but to let him in. I could try to explain that I had a lot to do now that Jamie had agreed to talk to Hannah for me, but something told me my boyfriend wouldn’t be deterred.“Listen, I’m really sorry about the way I acted before,” he began, following me through the living room to the kitchen like I wasn’t completely ignoring him. “I wasn’t being very fair to you. Clearly, you’re very concerned about the situation in Europe, and I haven’t given it the attention it deserves.”I pulled the fridge open while he was talking, grabbed a bottle of Dr. Pepper, and then turned and looked at him about the time he finished his statement. Those words had not originated in my boyfriend’s head. “Who have you been talking to? Tara? Not Lucy; you didn’t say, ‘OMG.&r
I started with reaching out to Mika Novak, hoping I could figure out where she was and if she’d been changed into a Vampire or if she was literally just missing like a normal human being. But I couldn’t find her anywhere, which was really strange. I double-checked the date on the article I’d read about Havel looking for her and saw that it was dated about a week ago. So she’d been missing for less than two weeks. If she’d been changed into a Vampire, I should’ve been able to find her easily enough as she would’ve likely gone through the entire Resurrection process by now. It can take longer for some people, depending upon how the Vampire that is changing them goes about it, but for the most part, it’s pretty quick. Sometimes it happens within a few hours. She didn’t seem to be a Vampire, though. I put out some feelers in the Vampire community to see if anyone knew anything about her, but I couldn’t locate her name in any of
“We surely did miss you last night at the arcade,” Heather said as we walked back to the apartments together after training. “That there was a heckofa lotta fun.”I had had no idea the other Hybrid went with my friends—our friends—to the arcade. It didn’t bother me, though. Why should it? Just because she was a beautiful blonde who had spent some quality time with my boyfriend locked in a portal, there was no reason for it to bother me that she’d also been at a get-together with him the night before.“I’m sure it was,” I said, forcing a smile. “I was busy getting some data together,” I said, hoping to sound nonchalant, even though I didn’t feel that way about what she was saying or what I was half-heartedly explaining to her. I didn’t really want to go into detail about what was happening in Europe right now because I wanted to talk to the committee about it first. It didn’t
If Heather noticed me choking, she didn’t say anything. We were in the lobby now. I called the elevator with my IAC, a little disappointed that my friend Juan Diego wasn’t hanging out in the lobby so I could practice my horrible Spanish, but it was just as well. I needed to get to Brandon’s apartment. He’d asked me a few minutes ago if I was headed that way, and when I’d said yes, I imagined he’d gone ahead and started lunch.Heather hummed along to the Muzak in the elevator, some deranged version of “Stairway to Heaven” that was barely recognizable. We didn’t talk anymore, and when I got to my floor, I smiled and waved so as not to interrupt her jamming out to the chorus and bounded off to Brandon’s apartment. Despite my recent disposition, I was excited to see him. I knocked on the door with a little extra bounce in my step.He pulled the door open with a smile. “Hello, beautiful,” he said in his
Brandon wasn’t buying it, that I was okay with the pizza, but he let it go. For now. “So are you coming to Lucy’s tonight?”“I’m presenting at the leadership meeting tonight, remember?” Now I was a little perturbed. I’d mentioned it. A lot.“I know, I mean after that. She doesn’t invite us to her place very often, so it would be cool if you can come. When you’re done.”“That seems like such a parent thing to say,” I muttered as he gathered up his trash and headed toward the kitchen. He heard me, obviously, and stopped, turning to look at me with a scrutinizing expression. I felt the need to defend myself. “Why do you care if I go to my friend’s house because she doesn’t invite me very often? I go there a lot. We were there the other night.”“I know you go often. The rest of us don’t, that’s all.” He was shaking his head at me
Standing in front of the entire leadership team at the front of the room where Aaron and Cadence normally sat was more than a little intimidating for me. Even though Elliott was right in front of me, and Jamie was to my side, I still felt nervous. Hannah and Aurora looked friendly enough, as if they were glad that I was there to talk about my findings. Christian’s expression was a mix between loathing and boredom I’d rather not dissect.I had all of my facts straight. I’d gathered all of the numbers. I knew exactly what we were up against—or at least I thought I did. And yet, standing there in front of them with my stack of papers, I felt like a middle school girl presenting at the science fair.Words were coming out of my mouth, though. Numbers. Cases I’d discovered. I mentioned Havel’s poor wife and the newspaper. I told them about some others that were gone. I mentioned that I’d used Christian’s methods to verify all o
Elliott laughed. He actually laughed at me. I could feel rage boiling up inside of me. This is not at all what I was expecting from him. He asked, “Then why would we go running over to him?”Infuriated, I spat out, “Because it’s our job! How are we supposed to keep people safe from this monster if we’re all the way over here, and he’s in the forests of Hungary building his army?” His remark was meant to be funny—but it wasn’t. it was stupid. He was stupid. They were all stupid.A blast from Hannah’s calming emotional winds hit me, but they didn’t help too much. She was probably just trying to spare the furniture. “All right, Cass,” she said in her soothing clinical voice. “Give me your notes, and I’ll look them over.” She beckoned for my stack of paper with her hand. Part of me wanted to throw them at her; yet another part wanted to say “never mind, take my stuff&rdquo
“Cassidy Elizabeth,” Elliott continued, pointing his finger at me in an accusatory fashion. “So help me, if you do anything of that sort, I swear I’ll fly over there and track you down myself, and when I do, it will not be pretty!” I scoffed at him, like he was going to hurt me. But still, there was a look in his eyes that let me know he meant business. “The last thing I wanna do is call your sister during the one vacation she’s taken since she started, the first one Aaron has taken in centuries, to tell them that our campus runaway is on the lam again. Don’t you dare!”My outrage morphed into defiance for a second as I wanted to yell at him that he wasn’t the boss of me. But I knew I wasn’t going over there by myself. “I told you, I’m not!” I shouted back at him, crossing my arms.“Good. You’d better not!”“You’re not my dad, Elliott!” I could