Текст книги "Oblivion"

Автор книги: Jennifer L. Armentrout

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Текущая страница: 46 (всего у книги 51 страниц)

I stared at him. “Are you insane?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” muttered Andrew.

Struggling not to shake sense into Dawson, I forced my voice even. “Think about this, Dawson. You can’t just waltz into Mount Weather now. Besides the fact that the onyx will take you out again, Luc only took down the cameras and security functions for fifteen minutes. They are back up again. You will get busted the moment you near the gate.”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t say you don’t care,” Dee argued, her eyes filling with tears. “You do care! You have to care about what happens to you. You have to care about us.”

Before he could say something that would traumatize my sister, I jumped in. “You have to care about Beth. If you go back now, if you go back without us being more prepared, you’re not going to help Beth escape. You will be captured, and she’ll still be in danger.”

“You don’t get it,” he seethed. “You can’t understand. You have Katy. She’s safe, upstairs right now, in your bed. You have her. You’ll be able to go right back to her, but me? I don’t even know”—his voice cracked—“if I’ll ever see Beth again.”

I drew back, stiffening. “I know I can’t possibly fully understand all that you’re feeling, but give me some damn credit here. You will see Beth again.”

Dawson opened his mouth, but then snapped his jaw shut. He turned sideways, thrusting his hands through his hair. Desperation crept into the lines of his face.

“We’re not giving up. I told you that. I promised that.” I placed my hand on his shoulder and sidestepped him so I could meet his gaze. “We will find a way to get her out.”

He lifted his chin. The harsh white light faded from his eyes, leaving nothing but pain and sorrow behind. “How? How are we going to get to her now?”

Damn, that was a good question. One I didn’t have an answer for, because even if we got Luc to take security down again, how would we get past the onyx?

“I don’t know,” I said finally, “but we will figure something out. We’re not going to leave her in there. We will figure something out.”

His stare held mine for a long time, and then he nodded. Bone-deep weariness filled the void the anger and panic had left. Dawson settled down after that, but I stayed with him for a while, just keeping an eye on him. Eventually, he went to bed. Andrew stayed even though we had school in a few hours, crashing out on the couch. I was so done with today by the time I climbed the stairs.

Kat was out when I neared the bed, and while I would have loved to rekindle what we’d started, I didn’t have it in me to wake her.

Carefully climbing back into bed next to Kat, I worked one arm under her and pulled her back against my chest without waking her. Still asleep, she wiggled her bottom and settled in against me. She hadn’t pulled my shirt back on, so it was difficult to ignore the fact that she was gloriously, perfectly naked.

Really difficult.

It was hard shutting down, especially after everything, but I forced my eyes closed and I held Kat close. The feeling left behind by Dawson’s words, by the fear of losing her, haunted me even in my sleep.

Chapter 15

Blake was waiting for us Monday morning when we pulled into the parking lot of the school. He was leaning against a truck of few spaces down, and the moment he saw us, he pushed off the side and trotted over as we climbed out.

I groaned. “He is not who I want to see as soon as I get to school.”

“Agreed.” She wrapped her hand around mine. “Just remember we are in public.”

“No fun.”

Blake slowed as he reached us. “We all need to talk.”

I kept walking. “Talking to you is the last thing I want to do.”

“I can understand that.” He caught up to us. “But I seriously didn’t know about the onyx shields in the doors. I had no idea.”

“I believe you.”

Blake’s step faltered. “You punched me.”

“That’s because he wanted to,” Kat explained, and I winked at her. “Look, I don’t trust you,” she continued, “but maybe you didn’t know about the shields. It doesn’t change the fact that we’re not going to be able to get in there.”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he stopped in front of us. “I talked to Luc last night. He didn’t know about the shields either. He’s willing to do it again—take down the cameras and stuff.”

That was good to hear, since we needed to get back there, but that didn’t really help us. I glanced around. We were huddled by the fence circling the track and no one else was around us, but I kept my voice low. “And what good does that do us? We can’t get past those doors.”

“Or if every door is set up like that,” Kat added.

“Well, I was thinking about that,” Blake said, shifting from one foot to the next. “While I was with Daedalus, they used to expose us to this stone each day. Our forks and silverware were encased in it. A lot of stuff was, almost everything we came into contact with. Burned like holy hell to touch, but we didn’t have any other choice. I’ve walked through the doors before and recently. Nothing happened.”

I barked out a dry laugh as I looked away. “And you just now thought this was a good thing to tell us?”

“I didn’t know what it was. None of us did,” he said. “I didn’t think much about it.”

Part of me didn’t know what to believe, but it didn’t take a leap of logic to think that maybe Daedalus had been conditioning Blake. Exposing him and others repeatedly to onyx, in doses, to build up tolerance. But why? Why would they want him to be able to pass through onyx, a weapon that could be used to keep them under control?

“You can’t tell me you never knew about the onyx and what it could do,” Kat challenged.

“I didn’t know that it could incapacitate us.”

Kat pressed her lips into a thin line. “You know, there’s so much we have to just trust you with. That you really are working against Daedalus and not for them. That Beth and Chris are where you’re saying they are, and now, that you didn’t really know about onyx.”

His shoulders tensed. “I know how this looks.”

“I don’t think you do.” Letting go of Kat’s hand, I leaned against the fence. “We have no reason to trust you.”

“And you’ve blackmailed us into helping you,” Kat added.

Blake exhaled roughly. “Okay. I don’t have a glowing history, but I want nothing more than to get my friend away from them. That’s why I’m here.”

“And why are you here right this instant?” My patience was almost gone.

“I think we can get around the onyx,” he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and holding them in front of him. “Now, hear me out. This is going to sound crazy.”

“Oh, goody,” I muttered.

“I think we need to build up a tolerance. If that was what Daedalus was doing, then that makes sense. Hybrids have to go in and out of those doors. If we expose ourselves to it—”

“Are you insane?” As I clasped the back of my neck, I felt like I’d been asking that question a lot lately. “You want us to expose ourselves to onyx?”

“Do you see any other option?” he replied.

“Can we do this later?” Kat asked, watching me. “We’re going to be late.”

“Sure.” He sidestepped me. “After school?”

“Maybe,” she replied. “We’ll talk later.”

He didn’t look too happy with that answer, but he backed off, leaving us by the fence. Kat shook her head as she faced me. “Expose ourselves to onyx?”

I huffed. “He’s insane.”

“Do you think it would work?”

“You’re not…?” I trailed off. Shit. She was seriously considering this.

“I don’t know.” She switched her backpack to the other shoulder as we started toward the school. “I really don’t know. We can’t give up, but what other options do we have?”

“We don’t even know if it will work.”

“But if Blake really is sort of immune to it, then we can test it out on him.”

Huh. I grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

Kat laughed. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? But seriously, if he has a tolerance to it, then we should be able to? It’s something. We’d just need to figure out how to get some.” When I didn’t respond, she asked, “What?”

I squinted as the sun broke free of the clouds. “I think I have the onyx part covered.”

“What do you mean?” She stopped even though the warning bell rang.

“After Will got you and a couple of days after Dawson came back, I returned to the warehouse and stripped most of the onyx from the outside.”

Her jaw hit the ground. “What?”

“Yeah, I don’t know why I did it. Kind of like my big FU to the establishment.” I laughed, kind of embarrassed. “Imagine their faces when they went back and saw it all gone.”

Kat was speechless.

I tweaked her nose.

She smacked my hand away. “You’re insane. You’ve could’ve gotten caught!”

“But I didn’t.”

She smacked me on the arm, this time harder. “You’re crazy.”

“But you love my craziness.” I leaned down, kissing the corner of her lip. “Come on, we’re late. The last thing we need is detention.”

She snorted. “Yeah, like that would be the biggest of our problems.”

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Blake had gotten to Dawson sometime during the day and told him about the whole exposing ourselves to onyx idea, and of course, Dawson was so down for that shit.

Couldn’t really blame him for latching onto the idea, though, because it was giving him something to work toward. It was giving him back hope. I got that. Still didn’t make me happy that Blake had gone to him. I didn’t want that asshole anywhere near my brother. Or anyone in general.

When I told Kat about it on the way home after school, she looked as thrilled as I was about it all. Blake had managed to make sure we did talk about the onyx that night.

Kat sighed. “There go my reviewing and reading plans.”

“Shouldn’t it be reading and then reviewing?” I corrected with a grin.

“Whatever,” she muttered.

I pulled out onto the road as my grin faded. “Why can’t you still do that?”

“If Blake wants to talk tonight, then that’s going to soak up all my time.”

Hearing the pout in her voice, I glanced over at her. “You don’t need to be there, Kitten. We can talk to him without you.”

“Yeah, right.” She laughed. “There’s a good chance someone will kill Blake without me there.”

“And would you really be torn up about that?”

She scrunched up her face. “Well…”

I laughed.

“And the fact that upon his untimely death, there’s a letter delivered to Nancy Husher. So we kind of need him alive.”

“True.” Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, I reached over and caught a strand of her hair. “But we can keep it short. You’ll have a normal Monday evening full of normal suck and not extraterrestrial suckage.”

Looking away, she bit down on her lower lip as she squeezed her fingers together. “That’s really selfish of me.”

“What?” I tugged on her hair gently, not liking the sound of that at all. “It’s not selfish, Kitten. Your whole life can’t revolve around this crap. It won’t.”

Straightening her fingers, she smiled. “You sound so determined.”

“And you know what happens when I get determined.”

“You get your way.” She laughed when I raised my brows. “But what about you? Your life can’t revolve around this crap.”

I pulled my hand away, dropping it to my thigh. “I was born into this. I’m used to it, and besides, it’s all about time management. Say, like time management last night. We did our mission thing—”

“And failed.”

“There’s that, but the rest of last night?” Seeing her in my mind, as she’d been last night, under me, was really distracting when I was driving. “We had the bad—the not-normal. And then we had the good—the normal. Granted, the good was interrupted by the bad, but there was time management there.”

She stretched her legs out. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It is that easy, Kat. You just need to know when to draw the line, when you’ve had enough.” Slowing down, I turned onto the road leading to our houses.

“And if you’ve had enough for today, you have. Nothing to feel guilty about or to worry about.”

There was no response as I pulled into the driveway. Turning off the engine, I looked over at her. “And no one will kill Bill.”

She laughed softly as she unbuckled her seat belt. “Blake. His name is Blake.”

Amused, I grinned at her. “He’s whatever I decide to call him.”

“You’re terrible.” She stretched over and kissed me, but when she pulled away, I wasn’t done. I reached for her, but she evaded me and slipped out of the SUV. “And by the way, I haven’t had enough today. I just needed a kick in the pants. But I do need to be home by seven.”

I was out of the car and beside her before she even shut the door. “You haven’t had enough?”

Her cheeks flushed as she stared up at me. “No, not nearly enough.”

“Good.” Hands on her hips, I tugged her to me. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Kat rose onto the tips of her toes and slid her hands up my chest. I met her halfway. Our lips touched. Our hearts pounded in tandem.

The front door of my house swung open and Dawson yelled, “Hey! I think Dee caught the microwave on fire. Again. And I tried popping some popcorn with my hands and it kind of went wrong. Like really, really wrong.”

I pressed my forehead against hers and growled. “Dammit.”

Kat giggled. “Time management, right?”

“Time management,” I muttered.

Chapter 16

Mostly everyone was down for the whole onyx thing, and even though none of them spoke up as to why they were so willing to allow some of us to repeatedly expose ourselves to a ridiculous amount of pain, I knew better. They knew it was the only way to keep Dawson from running off and getting himself caught.

Or worse.

As I looked around the living room, seeing my friends and Kat, I realized then that even though Matthew and the Thompson siblings shared no blood with me, they really were the true definition of family. My throat constricted. Only this kind of family would continue to be a part of this craziness, risking their freedom and lives.

Look at me; I was actually getting a bit emotional.

“This is so insane,” Dee said. “This is tantamount to self-mutilation.”

Dawson’s head dropped back, and he sighed. “That’s a little extreme.”

“I remember what you looked like when they brought you back down the mountain.” She twisted her hair around her hand, an old nervous habit. “And Katy lost her voice for a while from screaming. Who signs up for that?”

“Crazy people.” I sighed. “Dee, I don’t want you doing this.”

She didn’t look surprised at all. “No offense, Dawson, I love you and want you to see Beth and to hold her, because I wish…” Her voice cracked, but her spine straightened. “But I don’t want to do this.”

Dawson placed a hand on her arm. “It’s okay. I don’t expect you to do this.”

“I want to help.” Her voice was wobbly. “But I can’t…”

“It’s fine.” Dawson smiled as he folded his hand along the back of her neck. “Not all of us need to do this.”

“Then who’s in?” Blake scanned the room. “If we are going to do this, we need to start like yesterday, because I don’t know how long it’ll take to build a tolerance.”

Dawson stood. “It can’t take that long.”

Blake let out a laugh. “I’ve been with Daedalus for years, so there’s no telling at what point I built a tolerance…or if I really have one.”

“We’ve got to test that out then.” Kat grinned.

He frowned. “Wow. Kind of excited about that?”

She nodded, and I sort of wanted to make out with her right there.

Dee twisted around, eyeing Blake. “Can I test it out, too?”

“I’m pretty sure everyone will get a round.” I smiled at Blake. “Anyway, back to the basics. Who’s in?”

Matthew raised his hand. “I want to be in on this. No offense, Andrew, but I prefer to take your place this time.”

Andrew shook his head. “No problem. I can wait with Ash.”

Ash, who was surprisingly quiet, nodded.

“Oh.” Kat folded her arms. “Yeah, I’m in. Don’t start with me. I’m in. Nothing you can say will change that.”

If she thought I wasn’t going to try to convince her otherwise, she was also out of her mind. Plans were made to start after school tomorrow if it didn’t snow, and then to make sure that Kat got to do what she wanted this evening, I ushered her outside and next door.

And of course, I wanted to talk to her.

She walked into the kitchen, placing her book bag on the counter. “Milk?”

“Yes, please, and thank you.”

Kat pursed her lips, but grabbed a glass of milk for me. “Huh.”

I downed the entire glass. “Can we talk about this?”

She hopped up on the counter and opened her bag, pulling out a textbook. “Nope.”

My brows rose. “Kat.”

“Hmm?” She flipped open to a chapter.

Stalking over to her, I placed my hands on either side of her crossed legs. “I can’t watch you get hurt over and over again.”

Ignoring me, she reached into her bag and dug out a highlighter. Okay. I saw how this was going to go, but I wasn’t giving up easily. “Seeing what happened last night and when Will had you handcuffed in that stuff? And I’m supposed to just stand there?” I watched her highlight a sentence. “Are you listening to me?”

Her hand stilled. “I’m listening.”

“Then look at me.”

Thick lashes lifted, revealing steely gray eyes. “I’m looking at you.”

I scowled.

Sighing, she popped the cap back on the highlighter. “Okay. I don’t want to see you in pain.”

What the hell? “Kat—”

“No. Don’t interrupt. I don’t want to see you in pain, and just thinking about you going through what that feels like makes me want to hurl.”

“I can handle it.”

Our eyes locked. “I know you can, but that doesn’t change how horrible it’s going to be to see you go through that,” she said patiently. “But I’m not asking you not to do it.”

Hell.

I saw what she did there.

Pushing off the counter, I pivoted as I dragged my hand through my hair. Kat placed her book aside and hopped off the counter. “I don’t want to argue with you, Daemon, but you can’t say it’s okay for me to watch you go through this and not you.” She came to where I stood and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I know this is coming from a good place, but just because it’s getting ugly, I can’t back out. And you know you’re not going to. It’s only fair.”

Hell.

“I hate your logic.” I placed my hands on hers, though. The idea of seeing her repeatedly in pain made me sick, just like it made her ill, but I…I had to let her make her own decisions. Shit. I hated it. But I couldn’t control her. “And I’m really going to hate this.”

Kat squeezed me.

“The only good thing is that I’m going to hold Buff down and make him kiss onyx over and over again,” I said after a moment.

She choked out a laugh. “You’re sadistic.”

“And you need to study, right?” I asked. “It’s school time management—not Daemon time management, which blows, because we’re alone and it requires more effort for them to interrupt us over here.”

She pulled free. “Yeah, I need to study.”

I stuck out my lower lip. “All right, I’m leaving.”

Kat looped her arm around mine and led me to the front door. “I’ll text when I’m done, and you can come over and tuck me in.”

I was going to do much more than tuck her in, because her momma was working. “’Kay.” I kissed the top of her head. “I’ll be waiting.”

Kat wiggled her fingers bye as I headed back out into the chilly late-afternoon air. As I stepped off the porch, I saw that Matthew’s and Andrew’s cars were gone. Blake had left when I’d escorted Kat to her house. I walked past my car, stopping when I saw an odd glint along the driver’s door. What in the hell? Was that a scratch?

I stalked over to the side and ran my fingers over the thin white line that stretched from the handle to the center of the door. When I realized it was just dust from the salt on the road, I smiled. I was going to need to wash my baby soon.

Wheeling around, I started back to my house. I was halfway there when I felt my heart rate unexpectedly kick up, skyrocketing into what I imagined a heart attack felt like. Tensing, I pivoted on my heel and my gaze flickered up.

The window of Kat’s bedroom lit up with a flash of intense white light tinged in red. There was another flash and another. Shit. Energy burst through me as I raced over to her house. Throwing open the front door, I flew upstairs, reaching her bedroom in a second.

I came to a complete stop, my mouth dropping open as I stared at the catastrophe that was her bedroom. Papers were everywhere. Books lined the floor, some torn apart. Others burned. The mattress was on its side and her desk chair flipped over. Smoke wafted from her—oh no, her new laptop.

Kat stood in the center of the mess, among a pile of clothes, her hair windblown. Blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth. Red splotches, like strawberries, marked her cheeks.

“I can’t leave you alone for two seconds, Kitten.”

She launched herself forward, and I caught her around the waist. Her entire body trembled. “I came up here to study, you know, because I figured I’d get more work done, and I had a glass of orange juice with me.” Her words came out in a jumbled rush. “And Carissa—Carissa was here.”

“How did she get here? I didn’t see her.”

Kat’s eyes were wide with shock as she shook her head. “She’d been here while I was downstairs. She was waiting for me, and I thought she was sick at first, you know, like she didn’t know where she was, because she hasn’t been in school. But she wasn’t sick. Oh my God, she was—”

“Okay. Slow down for me, Kitten.” My gaze flickered over her, landing on the burned spot in the floor. My stomach sank. If Carissa had been here, she wasn’t here anymore. “What happened to Carissa?”

Kat shuddered. “She attacked me. Like legit attacked me.”

Very few things surprised me nowadays, but this did. Carissa was a quiet, shy girl, the exact opposite of their other friend Lesa. A book was the only thing I could picture Carissa attacking. Maybe a bug. But a small bug.

“She didn’t even seem to know who I was. She was like the Terminator, Daemon—the Terminator. And she just kept coming at me. I asked her to stop. I told her I didn’t want to hurt her, but she wouldn’t stop.” Tears filled her eyes, and my stomach sank as I thought about the burned spot on the floor. “She wouldn’t stop.”

“It’s okay.” I folded an arm around her shoulders. “You didn’t have a choice. You were defending—”

“I didn’t kill her.” Kat broke free of my hold and stumbled back a step. She swung, throwing her arm out to the burned spot. “I didn’t kill her, I swear. She– She self-destructed, Daemon. She—oh my God—she imploded like a bomb.” Spinning back toward me, she lifted her hand and wiped at the blood under her lip. “She was mutated—she was a hybrid.”

That absolutely made no sense and raised so many damn questions. “Okay. All right. Let’s get you downstairs.”

Kat stared at me like she didn’t understand what I was saying. Pained, I took her hand and led her out of the room and down the stairs. Once in the living room, I sat beside her on the couch. Cupping her cheeks, I tapped into the Source and took care of the minor injuries.

“I don’t understand what happened,” she said. “She was normal last week. Daemon, you saw her. How did we not know this?”

My jaw tightened. “I think the better question is why did she come after you?”

She drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t know.”

That was an answer that I didn’t even have. How did Carissa end up mutated? It would have to have been one of the Luxen from our colony. There weren’t many around our age, but they didn’t venture out from the colony often. How did this person meet Carissa? And why did she go after Kat? Because maybe someone from the colony hadn’t mutated her. There was another explanation.

I frowned. “She could’ve known a Luxen—known the truth and knew not to tell anyone. I mean, no one inside the colony knows that you’re aware of the truth.”

“But there are no others around our age,” she said.

“None outside the colony, but there are a few who are only a couple years older or younger than us in the colony.”

She looked away, swallowing hard. “You don’t think…”

“That Daedalus took her and forced a Luxen to heal her like with Dawson?” Anger punched through me. “I seriously pray that’s not the case. If so, it’s just…”

“Revolting,” she said hoarsely, shoving her shaking hands between her knees. “She wasn’t there. Not even a flicker of her personality. She was like a zombie, you know? Just freaking crazed. Is that what unstable does?”

Kat was completely healed, at least physically, but I was reluctant to remove my hands. I was afraid she was going to shake to pieces. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to my side.

“God, she…she died. Does that mean…?” Kat swallowed again.

I gently squeezed her. “If it was one of the Luxen here then I’ll hear about it, but we don’t know if the mutation held. Blake has said that sometimes the mutation is unstable, and that sounded pretty damn unstable. The bonding only happens if it’s a stable mutation, I believe.”

“We need to talk to Blake.” She cleared her throat with a shake of her head. Her mouth worked for several seconds. “Oh…oh God, Daemon…that was Carissa. That was Carissa, and that wasn’t right.”

Weight slammed down on my chest as the tears streamed down Kat’s face. I pulled her into my lap and held her. That was the only thing I could do while she sobbed for the loss of her friend. And it was more than just the loss. Kat wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what happened to Carissa. She would have to pretend that she didn’t know anything when people realized that the quiet girl from trig class had disappeared. Guilt would fester. I knew it would. So would the pain, because Carissa’s death was absolutely senseless and beyond cruel, and that wasn’t something you could easily, if ever, come to terms with. You just came to accept it.

All I could do was hold her, and as she cried, I whispered to her in my true language. I told her it would be okay. I told her that I’d be here for her, no matter what. And I told her that one day, she would live without any more of this pain or this fear.

I would make sure of it.

My brain started to turn over all the stuff that needed to be done. Kat’s bedroom needed cleaning up. She needed something to cover the burned spot, because I didn’t want her seeing that every day.

After some time, the tears slowed and Kat lifted her head. Her eyes were rimmed in red, but her voice was steady as she spoke. “She had a bracelet I’d never seen her wear before. The same kind of bracelet that Luc had on.”

That was unexpected. “Are you sure?” When she nodded, I leaned back against the couch, keeping her in my lap. “This is even more suspicious.”

“Yeah.”

“We need to talk to Luc without our unwanted sidekick first.” Unease churned. I didn’t trust that kid. I didn’t trust Blake. I didn’t trust that Carissa met a Luxen, fell in love with the person, was injured, and then healed. “I’ll let the others know what happened. I don’t want you to have to go through telling them what happened.”

She lowered her cheek to my shoulder. “Thank you.”

“And I’ll take care of your bedroom. We’ll get it cleaned up.”

Kat relaxed. “You’re perfect, you know.”

“Sometimes,” I murmured, brushing my chin along her cheek. For once, I didn’t feel anywhere near perfect. “I’m sorry, Kat. I’m sorry about Carissa. She was a good girl and didn’t deserve this.”

“No,” she whispered. “She didn’t.”

“And you didn’t deserve to have to go through that with her.”

Kat didn’t respond, and I reached up, carefully brushing away the tears that gathered under her eyes. Her voice was thick as she spoke. “Can we go to Martinsburg? Mom works on Wednesday. Do you think that’s too soon to talk to Luc on our own?”

“No. I think that works.”

She fell quiet after that, and eventually her breathing evened out. The fight with Carissa and the tears had exhausted her. Lifting her out of my lap, I laid her down on her side. She murmured something unintelligible that weaseled a small grin out of me. Grabbing the quilt off the back of the couch, I draped it over her.

I lingered for a moment and then walked into her kitchen, fishing my phone out of my pocket. I sent Dee a quick message. A minute later she was walking into Kat’s kitchen.

“What is—?”

“Keep it down.” I leaned against the counter. “Kat’s asleep in the living room.”

Dee frowned as she glanced at the wall clock. “Um…”

“Carissa was a hybrid,” I told her, cutting to the point.

She stared at me, her mouth slowly parting. “Come again?”

I gave her a brief rundown of our suspicions. “She came after Kat. Attacked her and then she…she kind of self-imploded.” My shoulders stiffened as Dee jerked back a step. “I’m sorry. I know you were friends with her, but I need you to do me a favor right now.” God, I sounded like a dick, but I needed her to do this for me. “I know you’re not really fond of Kat right now, but can you set that aside just for tonight? I need to go get a damn rug for her bedroom, and then I need to clean it up. I just want you to stay with her and be here in case she wakes up.”

“Yes.” She blinked once and then twice, but didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Of course.”

“Thank you.” Relieved, I folded an arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

Dee hugged me back. “Carissa… She’s really gone?”

I nodded as I stepped back.

She wrapped her hands around her hair and started twisting the length. “Oh my gosh, I don’t…”

“I’m sorry.” Two of the lamest words in history at the moment. I scrubbed my hand through my hair. “I’m going to grab Dawson and have him go with me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Before I left, I went back into the living room. Kat was still asleep, curled on her side. Under her eyes, the skin was puffy, but the red splotches on her cheeks were gone. I knelt at her side, brushing back her hair. I kissed her cheek. “I promise you,” I whispered into her ear. “You won’t have a life like this. I promise.”