9

If I had a nickel for every time I almost died, I would have been driving to school in a Ferrari and flying off to Bora-Bora on the weekends. One of these days, I’d cut it too close to dawn or run into a monster that was too strong. With the way I lived, the things I hunted, death was only a matter of time.

One more brush with oblivion shouldn’t have bothered me.

I shouldn’t have been dwelling on the fact that the parasite that had saved my life was killing me now.

But I was.

Our standoff with Puff the Man-Eating, Fire-Breathing Creature of Doom had lasted minutes, but the police—not to mention a Preternatural Control team—had shown up before we could make ourselves scarce, and the resulting inquisition had been dragging on for over an hour. If Bethany and I had been adults, if the kids working at Skate Haven had been adults, then maybe we wouldn’t have had to answer the same questions sixteen times apiece.

But we weren’t adults.

We were teenagers who claimed to have had a run-in with some subspecies of dragon that could disappear into ice like a kelpie into water. And, oh yeah, it breathed fire and ate people, and its scales were the color of ice.

“So let me get this straight,” the policewoman interviewing me said for maybe the fiftieth time. “It was some kind of … ice dragon.”

I may as well have been telling her it belched gumdrops and had a weakness for Saturday morning cartoons. Forget the fact that there was obvious damage to the rink—not to mention the remains of the boy who’d actually placed the 911 call in the first place. It didn’t matter that our stories were consistent both with the damage and with one another’s accounts of what had gone down. Dragons stayed away from cities. They didn’t just hang out at local hot spots. And they didn’t have any kind of affinity for ice.

So obviously, the teenagers were lying. Or on drugs. Or both.

This is why you don’t call the police. Or Preternatural Control. No matter what. Ever.

If I’d doubted the rule—and I was fairly sure I never had—I certainly never would again. My skin itched just talking to the authorities, and it was all I could do to meet my interrogator’s eyes, when what I really wanted to do was to get out of there, stat.

The police department had more than a few open cases with my name on them—figuratively, and I had no desire to make that literal. The chances that anyone would think to connect a witness in a horrific dragon mauling with the vigilante responsible for dozens of area beastie slayings was slim. It wasn’t like my usual MO involved laser light shows, but still—the sooner I got out of there, the better.

“Ice dragon,” I said, repeating the police officer’s incredulous words.

For some reason, my voice sounded very far away: slow and gummy and like I wasn’t quite speaking English. As I turned this thought over in my head, I noticed that my interrogator’s face was looking less like a face and more like a sea of unrelated features, each blurring into the next.

Weird.

I blinked, and when that did me no good, I reached out for the railing to steady myself.

“Miss, are you feeling all right?” the officer asked.

Her voice sounded even farther away than mine.

“I’m fine,” I said—or at least, that’s what I think I said. The details are, to this day, a little unclear. “Just give me a minute.”

“Ohmigosh!”

It took me a few seconds to realize that the exclamation in question had come from Skylar, who, up until that point, had wisely stayed out of the fray. I’d entertained the notion that she’d had the common sense to go home and leave Bethany and me to sort this out on our own.

Apparently not.

“You look, like, so pale. Did you forget to eat lunch? Please tell me you didn’t forget to eat lunch!” Skylar shook her head morosely, laying on the teenage ingénue vibe so thick that I doubted that anyone—let alone Officer So What You’re Telling Me Is—would buy it.

I wasn’t suffering from low blood sugar.

I was—I was—it took me a minute to put the sensation into words.

Dying.

“She’s hypoglycemic,” Skylar said, rattling off the word like she’d cut her teeth working in emergency rooms. “Are you guys done here? Because it’s almost six o’clock, and if we don’t get some food in her soon, her blood sugar is going to get dangerously low.”

The police officer blinked. Or maybe I did. Either way, words were exchanged and Skylar’s effervescence must have won the day, because a few minutes after she’d appeared on the scene, Bethany and I were free to go.

“In retrospect,” Skylar said, once we’d made it out the front door, “I’m not sure ice-skating was a good idea.”

“You think?” Bethany snorted. “Maybe if you were actually psychic, you could tell us why, in the name of all that is good and holy in this world, your little instincts led us here.”

I felt foggy and disconnected. I could barely keep up with the back and forth between the two of them, but the moment the question was out of Bethany’s mouth, a second Preternatural Control team shuffled by us, a dark-haired woman leading the way.

Click. Click. Click.

The sound of heels against concrete penetrated the fog in my brain, and I froze. For a moment, I thought that the woman in heels—the one from the school, the one coming toward us now—was here for me, but she brushed past us on her way into the rink.

She never even turned around.

Click. Click. Click.

Even after she was gone, I could still hear the sound of her heels echoing through the recesses of my brain.

Who is she? Why is she here? So tired …

My thoughts were a jumbled mess. I could barely move. And as Bethany and Skylar practically poured me into the backseat of the BMW, I thought about what had just happened—everything that had happened—and I managed to stave off the dizziness and nausea coursing through my entire body just long enough to spare a few words for the BMW’s belly-dancing owner.

“I can’t believe you did that,” I told Bethany, my words slurred and packing next to no heat. “You should have run.”

“I was providing a distraction so you could run,” Bethany retorted. “And that dragon was, I might add, totally distracted.”

I tried to tell Bethany exactly what I thought of her “distraction,” but somewhere between my brain and my mouth, the words got lost, and they came out in a jumble.

Bethany turned to Skylar. “What’s wrong with her?”

For once, Skylar was silent, and her silence was answer enough.

“She’s only been infected for four hours,” Bethany said, her voice going dry. “She should be fine.”

I closed my eyes, and somewhere inside of me, something shifted. I shouldn’t have been able to lure the beast from Bethany’s body to mine. I shouldn’t have developed an ouroboros the moment I’d been bitten. And I certainly shouldn’t have been hearing voices.

You—Promise—Fine.

I smelled wet grass, rain, honeysuckle. I saw the outline of a body, solid and sleek. I heard a voice shouting at me from a distance, but couldn’t make out a single word.

This time, I didn’t fight to hold on to consciousness—couldn’t—and my last thought as I drifted into oblivion was that the woman in the heels reminded me of someone.

And that could not possibly be good.

I woke up staring into eyes the exact shade of my comforter at home: faded turquoise, so light that I felt like if I stared at them long enough, I’d be able to see straight through. It took a moment before the rest of the features fell into place: blond hair, suntanned skin, cheekbones sharp enough to draw blood.

Elliot.

His name came to me a second before the rest of my senses returned. I bolted straight up, realized I was in some kind of bed, and began scrambling backward on my hands and heels.

“Hey, hey—” He looked like he wanted to reach for me, but he must have had some sense of self-preservation, because he kept his hands right where they were. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. You passed out, and Skylar and Beth brought you here.”

It was weird to hear Bethany referred to as Beth—almost as weird as it was to wake up alone in a room with her boyfriend.

“Define ‘here,’ ” I said sharply. Or, at least, I meant to say it sharply. Despite my best efforts, the words came out little and vulnerable instead.

“We’re at my brother Vaughn’s house,” Elliot told me. “Skylar called me when Bethany went off the rails.”

I decided I did not want to know what Bethany “going off the rails” entailed.

“She was really worried about you,” Elliot continued. “We all were.”

I felt like I’d fallen into some kind of parallel universe. For years, I’d spent every other night fighting to the death with nightmares made flesh. I came home broken and bleeding, with bones poking through my skin, and no one had ever noticed. No one had ever worried. Even when I was little, before the changes started, I could remember bumps and bruises, waking up in a cold sweat, vicious bouts of the flu—and no one had ever sat next to my bed, waiting for me to wake up.

No one had cared.

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling my knees instinctively to my chest, like shielding my body from Elliot’s view might keep him from recognizing my words as a lie.

“You’re not fine.” His response was immediate. “You’ve been bitten by a chupacabra. You’re anemic, your blood pressure fell through the floor, and the only reason you’re not in a hospital right now is that Vaughn said you were sleeping, not unconscious. We figured you could use the rest.”

I didn’t know which part of what he said was the most surprising: the fact that Skylar and Bethany had told him about the chupacabra, or his proclamation that I could “use some rest.”

In the past twenty-four hours, I’d taken out a pack of hellhounds, offered myself up to a bloodsucker to save the life of a girl I barely knew, came this close to having my head torn off by a genetic impossibility of a dragon—and they thought I needed some rest?

“What time is it?” I asked, disturbed by the fact that I didn’t know. “And where’s everyone else?”

Bethany didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who willingly left her boyfriend alone with a member of the opposite sex. I didn’t know whether to be flattered that she trusted me or offended that she clearly didn’t think I was a threat.

“Skylar and Vaughn went to get some painkillers. Beth’s father called, and she had to go. She said to tell you that if you die while she’s gone, she’ll take it personally.”

It was funny—all I’d wanted since I’d woken up in the nurse’s office was to get Bethany out of the picture, but the fact that she’d just left me there didn’t feel like a relief.

“Anything else she said to tell me?” I asked, trying not to sound betrayed or offended or, God forbid, hurt.

Elliot smiled—it was a lopsided expression on his otherwise symmetrical face: wry and rueful and just a tiny bit sardonic. “She said to tell you that she was going to pump her father for information about chupacabras. She’s not holding her breath that he’ll have any answers, but given that he’s one of the foremost experts in the world, she’ll probably do you more good there than here. And she also said to tell you …” Elliot trailed off, and I couldn’t push down the impulse to look him straight in those gentle, turquoise eyes.

“What?”

“She said her best memory isn’t standing on top of some cheerleading pyramid.” Elliot leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “She said it was hide-and-seek, when she was nine.”

For some reason, my throat tightened when Elliot said those words, and I swallowed, hard. That was playing dirty, and Bethany had to have known it. I’d saved her because I couldn’t just stand by and let her die. Not because I wanted to know her, not because I wanted anything in return.

All I wanted was to go home, go to bed, and wake up cured in the morning.

As a matter of reflex, my eyes were drawn to a clock on the wall. It was a quarter past eight.

Ten hours and forty-five minutes.

“How’s my patient?” A new voice—deep and baritone, so gentle that I instinctively wanted to trust its owner—snapped me from my reverie.

“She’s awake,” Elliot said needlessly. “I should go. Come on, Skye.”

The second I heard Skylar’s name, my eyes sought her out. She was standing next to a man easily three times her size, but within seconds, it was clear who was calling the shots around here, and it wasn’t Elliot or the man with the soothing voice.

“Don’t be ridiculous, El. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

Elliot narrowed his eyes at his sister, but she just stared back and grinned. “I’m not telling you what to do,” she volunteered helpfully, “I’m just telling you what you’re going to do. There’s a difference.”

“Skylar,” Elliot said with the thinning patience of an older sibling much abused. “You are not psychic.”

Skylar sighed. “Elliot,” she informed me, “is a skeptic.” From her tone of voice, you would have thought it was a dirty word.

“Elliot,” the boy in question repeated, his tone mimicking hers exactly, “has common sense. If you run around sticking your nose into things that are none of your business, you’re going to get yourself hurt. You’re not psychic, you’re not superwoman, and if Mom and Dad had any idea you skipped school and almost got yourself eaten—”

Skylar finished his sentence for him. “They’d tell me, very sternly, not to do it again.”

“You want to help me out here?” Elliot asked, exasperated. At first, I thought he was talking to me, but then the man standing beside Skylar answered.

“We both know Skylar’s spoiled rotten and doesn’t follow directions worth a damn,” he said, his tone mild, though he did raise one eyebrow at Skylar in a way that actually made her fidget. “Right now, I’m more concerned about her friend.”

“Kali,” Skylar supplied.

The man—who I could only assume was another one of Skylar’s many brothers—smiled, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hello, Kali,” he said, his voice gentle as he came to sit on the side of the bed. “I’m Vaughn, unfortunate older brother to Tweedledee and Tweedledum here. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” I replied, but Vaughn gave me the same raised-eyebrow look he’d given Skylar, and I found myself looking down and away.

Vaughn lifted a hand to the side of my face, and I flinched, but his hold was gentle as he angled my eyes back toward his. “You’re not fine, Kali. There’s an ouroboros on your stomach, and your body’s working overtime, trying to replace the blood you’ve already lost.”

I knew without Vaughn having to tell me so that trying was the operative word. I felt better than I had since I’d been bitten, but that didn’t change anything. The creature inside me was still sucking me dry. At this rate, I might not make it to sunrise.

Some plan, I thought.

I waited for the voice in my head to gloat.

Nothing.

“I can’t feel it,” I said out loud, thankful that I’d managed not to refer to my would-be killer as a him. “Before, there was a … presence.”

I couldn’t describe it any better than that, not without making all three Haydens think I’d really gone off my metaphorical rocker.

“Based on your height and weight, it should take approximately four days for your condition to run its course.” Vaughn’s tone never changed, but there was no gentling news like that. “Are you sure you were bitten this afternoon?”

“I’m sure.” It wasn’t like smearing my blood on Bethany’s back and luring her death sentence to jump ship was the kind of thing I’d forget.

Bethany. Chupacabra.

An expletive exited my mouth.

“Got something you’d like to share with the class?” Skylar asked, unperturbed.

I opened my mouth and then shut it again, unsure how much Skylar had told Elliot, let alone Vaughn.

“Everything,” Skylar said, and for the first time, I realized that she had a habit of doing that—responding to things I hadn’t said out loud.

“Skye?” Vaughn’s voice was even and calm, and it occurred to me that her whole family was probably used to this—or as used to Skylar as any person could get.

“Kali?” Skylar deftly passed Vaughn’s question on to me, and this time, I answered, despite the instinct screaming at me, from somewhere in my memory, that people like me kept secrets for a reason.

“I can’t believe you three let Bethany walk out of here,” I said. “Skylar told you about the woman at the school, didn’t she? And her suit-wearing henchmen?”

Elliot rolled his eyes heavenward. “Skylar,” he said crisply, “exaggerates.”

“Does Bethany exaggerate, too?” I shot back.

“Bethany can take care of herself,” Elliot said. “And her dad isn’t exactly the kind of guy you say no to.”

The expression on my face must have betrayed what I thought about that, because Elliot’s voice took on a defensive tone.

“If there were some shady characters at the high school, and if they were looking for a cheerleader who’d been bitten—trust me, they won’t get within a mile of Beth’s house. Her dad does some of his work at home, and the place is under surveillance, twenty-four seven.”

“Shady characters?” Skylar repeated incredulously. “What are you, eighty?”

“Skylar,” Vaughn said softly, and to my surprise, Skylar shut her mouth. A moment later, I could understand why she’d done it, because Vaughn turned his gaze back to me, and I realized that he was the type of person who never had to raise his voice, never had to so much as narrow his eyes.

“You need to call your parents,” he said, and I got the feeling that it wasn’t a suggestion. “For whatever reason, you seem to be having an unusual reaction to your condition. We don’t know how fast it’s going to progress, and I’m out of my league when it comes to treatment.”

I met Vaughn’s eyes. We both knew that the problem wasn’t that he was out of his league. The problem was that there was no treatment. No cure. There was nothing that Vaughn—or any medical professional—could do. If I’d been fully human, I would have been a dead girl walking, and as far as Skylar’s brother knew, that’s exactly what I was.

You think I’m dying. I didn’t say the words out loud, but I didn’t have to. I could tell just by looking at Vaughn that he knew—and that he wasn’t going to back off until I called home.

“I’ll call my dad,” I said, “but I’m not going to tell him, not yet. Not over the phone.”

I hoped Vaughn wouldn’t press the issue, and he didn’t. Instead, he just handed me the phone. After a pregnant pause, I dialed our home number, banking on the fact that my father rarely left work before nine. I got the answering machine and hung up.

“He’s still at work,” I said, handing the phone to Vaughn, who turned around and pressed it right back into my palm.

“Try his cell.”

I narrowed my eyes, and Skylar snorted. “Try having five of them,” she told me. “I can’t tie my shoes without someone telling me I’m doing it wrong.”

Sensing that I wasn’t going to win this one, I dialed my father’s cell number. I wasn’t at all surprised when it went to voice mail, too.

“Hi,” I said, feeling nine kinds of awkward leaving a message, when the two of us spoke so rarely face-to-face. “It’s Kali. I’m calling because I got a little sick today, and my friend’s older brother thought I should call you. I guess he’s a doctor or something.”

I paused, wondering why I was doing this. My dad probably wouldn’t even listen to his messages.

“Anyway, I’ll be home soon.”

Another pause, another reminder that this was the most I’d said to my father in months.

“Bye.”

I hung up the phone and handed it back to Vaughn. “He wasn’t there,” I explained needlessly. “I left a message.”

I half expected Vaughn to hand the phone back and suggest I call my mother, but he didn’t. Maybe Skylar wasn’t the only person in her family with good instincts.

“Elliot can drive you home,” he said instead. “He’ll stay with you until your dad gets there.”

Elliot looked like he was on the verge of replying, but Vaughn silenced him with another one of those looks. Before I knew what was happening, Skylar’s brothers were helping me to Elliot’s car, even though I could have walked on my own just fine.

Elliot opened the passenger door for me, a gesture completely at odds with the tight set of his lips and the dagger eyes he was shooting at Vaughn. I climbed in and managed to thank Vaughn for his help. As Elliot rounded to his side of the car, Skylar poked her head in my side and pressed a folded white square of paper into my hand.

“It’s this thing,” she said, which was, quite frankly, less than illuminating. “I can’t get it out of my head. I think it might be important.”

“Thanks, Skylar.” I realized as I said the words that it wasn’t just the paper I was thanking her for. It was introducing herself to me at the pep rally that morning and sitting with me at lunch and coming back for me after the drama with the dragon.

I wasn’t used to being the kind of person that other people came back for.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Skylar said. “I know I will.” She tapped her forefinger against her temple and winked.

She thinks I’ll live through the night.

The thought was strangely comforting, and as the door closed between us, leaving me alone with Elliot, I tightened my grip on the paper in my hand. Maybe Skylar was psychic, and maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she just had really good instincts and a thousand-watt smile.

“She’s not psychic,” Elliot told me tersely. “There’s no such thing as psychics, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t encourage her.”

“I’m not.”

Elliot didn’t look like he believed me, but he managed a weak smile that did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that he probably didn’t want to be stuck on Kali babysitting duty until my father got home.

I could hardly blame him. Hanging out with a good-as-dead girl probably wasn’t anyone’s idea of a stellar time.

Nine hours and fifty-nine minutes.

This day was never going to end.