Milayna (13 page)

“I’m fine,” I whispered.

He seems upset, and not just because he had to sit out the fight, if that’s what it was, but because I might be hurt. Because he cares?

“It’s not just me he wants.” I twisted the sleeve of his shirt in my fingers and held it firmly. “You have to be careful. Promise me.”

He let the knuckles on one hand slide down the side of my face, and I tried really hard not to lean into it. I mean, my crush was Jake. Not Chay. I tried so hard to pull away. I did. But my eyes closed, and I leaned into his hand. “I know. I heard.” His voice glided over me like silk. Soft and husky—and so damn sexy. Liquid fire moved through my body.

I heard Muriel’s small chuckle from somewhere in the room. It couldn’t have said, “I told you dark and brooding was your type,” any louder if she’d screamed it. Forcing my eyes open, I cleared my throat. “Lily’s eighteen, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, we all are, except you,” Chay answered. His hand rested lightly on the curve of my shoulder, his thumb rubbing my neck.

“Then why did she change? I mean, I thought we were immune to Azazel when we turned eighteen?” I moved away from Chay and reached into the refrigerator. Pulling out Cokes, I handed them to everyone. Chay’s fingers moved over mine when he took the can from me. His gaze never left mine.

“No, you’re immune because of your higher rank. The others gained some strength when they turned eighteen, and the group as a whole will be stronger when you’re eighteen, but they’ll never be immune.” My dad took a long pull on his Coke. “But any one of us can turn at any time. It’s a personal choice, regardless of age or rank.”

“Oh.”

Crap. There’s so much to learn. This is worse than studying for the SATs.

“Another thing I don’t understand—why don’t our neighbors hear or see what’s going on? I mean, we just had five fat, red goblins running around our yard, squealing and acting like a bunch of brats who OD’d on Red Bull and Fun Dip candy, but no one seems to have noticed.”

“Well, it helps that the lots in this subdivision are an acre each and the perimeter of ours is mostly wooded,” my dad said, easing into a chair. “But the truth is, most people are blind to otherworldly things. What you see and hear as a demi-angel is much different from what their minds are capable of understanding.

“That’s one reason we can keep Ben from being tainted by what we see and do. His mind isn’t ready to accept the situation. But the closer to the age of accountability he gets, the more he’ll understand, and the more he’ll see.

“Demons are around us every day, but people don’t see them. It’s the same when they’re here. We can have all the fury of Hell in our backyard, and the neighbors won’t see it.”

Chay took a drink of his Coke and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We probably will.”

A frown pulled at my dad’s mouth. “True, this is going to get ugly.”

Four weeks, two days until my birthday.

Compared to what was happening in my life, school was even more of a bore than usual. The visions took over. I had them at school, at home, and anywhere I happened to be. If there was a human in danger and I could step in, I had to. I was learning to let the visions have their way. It became easier with each one. Not fun, necessarily, but easier. I’d do what they wanted me to, and then go about my life like normal. Because it was normal. At least for me.

The only bright spot in my school day was Chay. Jake had become a distant memory. Oh, he was still gorgeous and charming, but he wasn’t Chay… who also happened to be gorgeous but was definitely not charming most days. He had his moments, though, and I was beginning to think more and more about him and less and less about Jake. That made me feel off-balance. I knew where I stood when it came to Jake, which was nowhere. He had Heidi, the cheerleader.
Rah-frickin-rah.
I wasn’t in the picture.

But with Chay, I had no idea where I stood. Did he have any feelings for me beyond our duties as DAs? If so, he didn’t make it obvious, but he did flirt subtly—or maybe I read into things because that was what I wanted.
Crap
! Relationship stuff sucked. I wanted to go back to first grade when we just wrote,
‘Do you like me? Circle yes or no.’
on a piece of paper. Things were simpler then.

A large book bag slammed on the tall, black table next to me in chemistry. I didn’t bother looking up. I knew it was him. I could smell his cologne. I could feel his presence. And then, I could hear his mouth.

“You look better today. Not like you usually look.” He slid onto his chair next to me and started pulling his book and supplies out of his backpack.

Was that supposed to be a compliment?

I sighed and turned toward him, drumming my pen on my thigh. “How do I usually look?”

“Tired and crappy. But not today. You took the sleeping pill Jen’s dad left for you?” he asked, sifting through his notes.

“Yes. Wait, how do you know about that?” I gave his shoulder a shove. “Do I have no privacy whatsoever?” My face heated, not from a blush, but from anger. Who did he think he was interfering in my life? Demi-angel business, fine. The rest of my life he needed to stay the hell out of!

He rolled the shoulder I shoved, and one side of his mouth tipped in an amused grin. “We all need to know what’s going on. The pill interfered with your ability to function. You weren’t one hundred percent physically. We had to make sure we were.”

“Well, excuse me for sleeping.”

He looked down at his notes and shrugged. I had no idea what he was thinking. Jake was a shallow pond. You could see right to the bottom. A person could decipher every thought, snide comment, or joke. Not so with Chay. Compared to Jake, Chay was the depth of an ocean. Deep and dark. There was no way to decipher him. At least, I hadn’t found one. I needed a secret decoder ring.

Class started, and Chay and I worked silently on the assigned lab. He added the chemicals, and I wrote down the results. I reached for the lab slip and turned the page in the packet when he said something that threw me even more off-balance than I already was.

“You smell good today.” He tilted his head and watched closely as he poured chemicals into the beaker.

My heart did a little flip right before it tap-danced around my chest.

Why do I care what he thinks?

My hand stilled over the paper I recorded the results of our lab on. “As opposed to what? Do I smell bad most days?”

“No, you always smell good. Apricots.”

“Huh?”

“Your hair. You must use apricot shampoo. I like it.” He glanced at me then. Just a quick look out of the corner of his eye.

“Um, thanks. You smell good too,” I said, cringing when my voice came out strained and weird sounding.

He nodded once in acknowledgement. He didn’t speak, only winked, and one side of his mouth lifted slightly in a grin. He continued with the experiment, leaving me to wonder what the heck just happened.

“Done.” He flipped the book closed. “You should leave.”

“Why?”

“You’re gonna have a vision.”

“How do you do that? How do you know I’m going to have a vision before I know?” I shut my chemistry book harder than I meant to and glared at him.

“Sometimes I have visions of you having visions, not always, but sometimes. Actually, they’re more glimpses than full visions like yours. It’s odd, if you think about it. But there you go. Anyway, like I said, you should leave.”

“No. I can’t have one now.”

He shrugged a shoulder.

My stomach clenched, and I narrowed my eyes at him. I pushed my chair back. The feet screeched across the tiled floor. I walked to the front of the room and asked my chemistry teacher to be excused. With each passing second, my stomach twisted tighter. It felt like the time I got my hair stuck in the fan when I was a kid. It wrapped around the fan blades so tight that I thought it’d pull from my scalp.

“Is your assignment finished?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can wait until the bell rings. It’s only fifteen minutes,” he said, not looking at me. I hated when people didn’t look at me when I was speaking to them.

My stomach squeezed harder, pushing the breath from my lungs, and I wrapped one arm around my middle and held on to the desk for support with the other.

“I really need to go to the bathroom,” I insisted. When I saw he was going to say no, I blurted, “I’m going to puke. I really need to go, and like, right now!” His face scrunched up in a disgusted look, and he nodded for me to leave. I hurried out of the room and down the hall.

I tried to think of somewhere private. I couldn’t have a vision in the middle of the hall while people pushed and shoved their way from class to class. Ducking into the bathroom, I locked myself in a stall. It smelled of urine and stagnant water. Wet toilet paper stuck to the puke-green floor. I stepped around the mess and leaned in the corner of the stall, my arms wrapped around my stomach like they could shield it from the searing pain shooting through it like missiles. My head pounded in time with my racing heart.

My vision started to fade, like someone was dimming the lights. The room turned gray, and then was cloaked in darkness. When all I saw was black, images started scrolling through my mind like credits after a movie.

Lily talking to Jake. Jake laughing. Hobgoblins watching from the rafters in the school’s ceiling, watching between the cracks in the tiles.

“Lily. What about her? Come on, come on,” I whispered.

Chay. Lily. Chay’s angry. Lily laughs and walks by, her finger trailing across his shoulders.

She’s trying to recruit the team one by one.

I flew out of the bathroom and skidded to a stop, my sneakers squeaking across the floor.

“What are you doing here?”

He’s blocking the bathroom door like a bodyguard… or a prison guard.

“Waiting for you. What does it look like?” Chay answered. He stood with his feet spread and his fingers hooked around the belt loops of his jeans. “What’d you see?”

“Lily talking with Jake. They were laughing about something she said. And…”

Lily talking with you.

“And what?” He arched a brow.

“Nothing. That’s all.” I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell him I saw her talking with him, too. It just didn’t feel right. Maybe I didn’t want to hear the answer confirmed. Of course she’d talk to him. The real issue was what the conversation led to.

Would he switch sides? It would be a big win for Azazel if he did.

“I’ll talk with Jake and see what he has to say. She’s gonna try to convert us, you know. That’s her job,” Chay said with a shrug.

“I know.”

But who will she manage to get to switch? That’s what worries me.

We walked toward my locker just as the bell rang. I saw her walking toward me, a sneer on her face. It was becoming a permanent fixture.

“Milayna,” she said and shouldered me hard. I took a few steps backward to steady myself, my eyes never leaving hers. A burst of heat bloomed in my chest, bringing with it a longing for vengeance for her betrayal, but also patience. If she wanted to get a rise out of me, it wasn’t going to happen. Yet. But her time was coming. “Hi, Chay.” She smiled as she walked past him.

I looked at him through my lashes. His face was blank, unreadable. Was he hiding something or keeping his emotions in check in front of Lily? My stomach twisted in response. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I didn’t like it.

“You can’t read minds, but you will develop the ability to feel what people are feeling, their emotions, and even what they might do just before they do it
,” my dad had told me.

But I felt loyalty. Commitment. I didn’t think Chay would switch sides, but how could I know for sure? I didn’t want to be suspicious of him—the emotions filling me bounced off each other like bumper cars. I couldn’t focus, and felt confused and unsure. But I had to trust someone, and I desperately wanted that someone to be Chay.

We walked down the hall to calculus. Banners hung from the ceiling, painted in bright colors, announcing the football game the following night against our biggest rival. We had two high schools in the same school district, one on the south side of town and one on the north. The annual football game was a big deal—whoever won got bragging rights for the year, rubbing the other school’s nose in their victory and flying the victor’s flag for the year, declaring themselves the best in the district. My team, the South Bay Cougars, had lost seven years in a row. It was our year to win.

I stopped at my locker to grab my calculus book. Chay leaned his shoulder against the locker beside mine and watched me.

“What?”

“Just looking.”

“At what?” I glanced around, expecting to see something interesting. Lily, a goblin, a fight, a couple making out—you never knew what you’d see in school. It was like living in a reality television show. “I don’t see anything.”

“That’s because I’m looking at you,” he said slowly. He reached out, touched a curl in my hair, and rubbed it between his fingers. “Your hair’s pretty. I can see why Joe liked it so much.” It tickled when he brushed the curl behind my ear, and I rubbed my shoulder against my ear, giggling.

I’m giggling like a little girl. Get a grip. Geez, you’re losing it.

“You’re ticklish. That’s cute.” He smiled.

Is he flirting with me? ‘Cause it’s so working.

“Where’s Chay?” I tilted my head and touched my fingers to my lips. Chay’s forehead wrinkled and his brows knotted over his eyes. I smiled. “What have you done with the sour-faced, grumbling idiot I’ve come to know?”

He laughed. The sound was like a warm melody washing over me. I wanted to do something that would make him keep laughing. “Yeah, I guess I deserve that.”

I gave him a quick smile before looking down the hall. “I wonder where Muriel is. We always meet and walk to calculus together.”

I sucked in a breath and froze. Muriel and Lily were walking together, laughing and talking. When they walked by my locker, Muriel looked at me and smiled, waving with a wiggle of her fingers.

What is she doing? No, no, no! Okay, wait. She must have a reason for hanging around Lily. A perfectly logical explanation. Like, she’s gathering information! Yeah. That’s it. Because Muriel would never turn. She wouldn’t. Not Muriel.

“Like I said, you don’t know who you can trust.” Chay glanced over his shoulder at Muriel and Lily.

“How can we do our job if we are all wondering if the other has switched sides?” I squeezed the strap of my messenger bag until my fingers ached.

“It makes it difficult.”

“That wasn’t an answer, Chay.”

“That’s because I don’t have one,” he said, looking down at me.

“And you?”

“Me what?”

“Are you trustworthy?” I pulled my bag against my chest.

“You don’t know who you can trust, Milayna. Remember that. Once a demi switches sides, it hurts the entire group.”

I didn’t point out to him that he didn’t answer my question. Or maybe he did. He told me to trust no one. Him included.