Текст книги "The Watcher"

Автор книги: Lisa Voisin

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Chapter Six

Tuesday morning before English class, a copy of the Westmont High School Gazette landed on my desk, startling me.

“What’s this?” Michael demanded.

I marveled at how he could still be gorgeous when he was scowling. His lips tightened into a hard line, he pointed to an article at the top of the page. The headline read: Local Girl Makes a Big Splash.

“Oh no!” I read the first few lines, which gave some vague details about my fall into the creek and then expounded on Michael’s prowess in rescuing me. The article made me out to be some kind of loser while he looked like a superhero. “Who wrote it?”

He pointed to the byline. “Elaine.”

Of course! “How did she hear about it?” I asked quietly.

“She wouldn’t say—something about journalistic ethics.”

“There’s irony for you.” Had Elaine overhead Fiona gushing about it somewhere? It was entirely possible. I’d have to watch what I said around Fiona, too.

He sighed, tore the paper in half, and tossed it into the recycling bin. I heard him mutter “Just what I need” before sitting down and ignoring me for the rest of class. As if it was my fault. On Monday he had almost been friendly. Now I was some sort of pariah he couldn’t be seen talking to—never mind helping. Several rows back, Elaine watched our interaction with a smug look on her face.

In class, we were reading Act 1 Scene 2 of Hamlet and Michael was asked to read the lead part. With his slight accent, the lines rolled off his tongue naturally. He was the perfect Hamlet. Judging from the faces of all the girls in class—even Heather’s—I wasn’t the only one affected by the sound of his voice. Hamlet’s grief-stricken first soliloquy—O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt—blazed through the room, melting a few of us in its wake. As he breathed new life into my favorite Shakespearean character, I felt like he was reading the words right to me.

The rest of the week, the teachers doubled everyone’s homework. I was assigned a six-page Gov/Econ report, pages and pages of math problems, and a quiz for Latin. Elaine had a permanent smirk, no doubt pleased by how much her article had humiliated me. Kids I barely knew whispered in the halls and gave each other looks as I walked by. Some of them asked me if the story in the Gazette was true, and a few junior girls asked me about being carried by Michael Fontaine—as if I needed reminding!

In class, Michael kept to himself. By the end of the week, it was like the incident in the forest had never happened. I wanted to ask him if he’d been at the hospital that Saturday, but he was even less approachable than usual. I’d hoped to see him at lunch or catch him alone in the halls, but outside of class he practically disappeared.

***

On the weekend, my brother Bill came up for a short visit. Mom took Saturday off and the three of us went sightseeing around the waterfront and Pike Place Market. My ankle was almost healed, so I could walk normally again. We even had a mini heat wave.

Sunday afternoon, Bill took me to the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History, so we could see an exhibit on ancient Egypt. He and I had been talking about it all summer and he’d promised to go with me. Though I’d first heard of ancient civilizations in grade school, Bill got me a book on Mesopotamia for my fourteenth birthday. I’d thought it was a joke at first, because it had mia—my name—in it. But since then, I’d been fascinated by the prehistoric civilizations, especially around the Mediterranean and Fertile Crescent.

The entrance to the exhibit was designed to resemble the temple at Luxor, with its high columns and hieroglyph-inscribed stone. If I squinted, I could pretend I was actually there. The main room opened up to be much larger than I expected, big enough to accommodate the crowd. The walls surrounding the glass cases were painted faux sandstone, and each case was labeled with the era it came from—Pre-Dynastic and Early Dynastic, and the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. Inside the glass cases were artifacts ranging from bronze and iron weapons to jewelry, hand mirrors, and cosmetics cases. On one side of the exhibit were replicas of paintings from inside a step-shaped pyramid; on the other side were mummies, mummy cases, and tombs. Bill and I saw a few items together, some scarabs and clay pots, but when I took my time reading everything, soaking it all in, Bill wandered off to look at things on his own.

I was inside a full-sized stone replica of the tomb of Kitines, examining an ornately painted mummy case, when Bill sneaked up behind me and grabbed my shoulders.

“Ahh!” I shrieked and stumbled backward into him.

Laughing, he caught me. “Gotcha.”

“Jerk!”

I punched his arm but he dodged it, heading toward the tomb’s exit. “You gotta admit this stuff is pretty creepy.”

“It’s not. It’s cool how advanced they were.”

Outside the tomb was a case of mummified animals that had served as pets in ancient times, mostly cats, but there was also a hawk and a tiny crocodile.

“Still want to be an archaeologist when you grow up?” Bill asked.

“When I grow up? I’m not five!”

“You know what I mean. You’re going to study this stuff next year, right?”

“I hope so.”

I stopped to admire a reproduction of a painting from the tomb of Menna, a man spear fishing in the Nile with his wife and family. The animals and marshes were captured in meticulous albeit stylistic detail, and the caption explained that the painting’s fertile environment symbolized the Egyptian belief in rejuvenation and eternal life.

“Any idea where?” Bill persisted.

“Not yet.” It depended on what Mom and I could afford, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Dad for the money. But I didn’t want to get into that with Bill. Dad had paid for his education. I seriously doubted he’d pay for mine.

Near the end of the exhibit was a section on weaving. The caption outlined the evolution of fabric and Egypt’s history of working with linen and flax. When I saw it, some invisible string tugged at my insides, pulling me there.

“Saw that already,” Bill said behind me. “I’ll meet you outside.”

I nodded, my attention fixed on the display. Beside a case of fabric fragments, heddle jacks, and loom weights was a small replica of a loom that took up to four women to operate. I’d hoped something might click, but I’d seen these things in books before. They were nothing like what had come to me that day in the woods.

After the museum, Bill and I decided to go for coffee in the nearby U District. We found a small bohemian-style café with comfortable-looking chairs and dark wood walls. The place was surprisingly crowded for such a nice day, so I pounced on some red velvet armchairs and saved us a spot while Bill stood in line.

No sooner had Bill brought me a vanilla latté than something caught his attention; he did a double-take and almost spilled his cappuccino. A girl with honey-blond hair walked into the café. With her striking golden eyes and long legs, she belonged on a runway.

She walked up to the counter and ordered herself a mocha. As she did, the lights in the café dimmed and then flared. I turned back to Bill, whose gaze flicked in her direction despite his attempts to keep them focused on his drink.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“The thing with the lights.”

“What thing?” he asked. Usually guys could be pretty annoying when they checked out a girl, but Bill was careful with me around. I could tell he was trying not to look. Having sat in class with Michael for the past two weeks, I could relate.

“Just flickering. It’s nothing.”

Bill changed the subject. “Dad’s seeing someone new.”

I nearly choked on my coffee. “Since this summer?”

“Yeah, before you left. They met through an online dating site.”

“Wow” was all I could think to say. I couldn’t imagine Dad meeting anyone online, but I wasn’t surprised he didn’t tell me, given how little we spoke. “How old is this one?”

“Closer to his age.” Dad’s last girlfriend had been only a few years older than Bill. Talk about awkward. “It’s still new, so don’t tell Mom yet, okay?

“Absolutely not. I’m not going to be the bearer of that news!” I remembered the first time Mom learned that Dad had been with another woman. I’d come home from school to find her crying on the sofa and Dad gone. It happened right after Bill went to Berkeley, so he didn’t know what we went through, how hurt she was. Even if Mom was over it now, she didn’t need to hear about Dad’s affairs.

“Well, he says to say ‘hi.’”

“Oh.” I bristled. I didn’t want to talk about dad or get any messages from him. Things were awkward enough—like he and I weren’t even family anymore. It would have bothered me that he and Bill got along, but Bill got along with everyone. His skills were wasted on computers. He should have joined the UN. Maybe he’d invent an app for world peace.

Avoiding the awkward silence that always followed the subject of Dad, I got up. “Want some water?”

Bill shook his head and I went to the counter to pour myself a glass. When I was there, I noticed the lights flicker again and checked the overhead halogens in case one was burning out. They were fine.

“Looking for something?” It was the pretty girl Bill liked.

“The lights are flickering,” I said, surprised I was telling her.

She smiled at me, putting a lid on her mocha. “Maybe it’s not the lights.”

“What do you mean?”

Still smiling, she shrugged and walked out the door.

When I returned to my chair, Bill asked, “Did you get her name before she left?”

Before I could answer, the lights flashed again and the power went out in the café. The cash register shut off and the espresso machine went down, inciting more than a few grumbles from both the staff and the people in line. Outside, two shadowy black blurs dashed across the street, too fast and too small to be cars.

They were more like dogs.

The skin on my neck tightened into tiny bumps. Could it be those shadows again?

Then there was a bright flash of light and the shadows were gone.

I turned to Bill. “What just happened?”

“A power outage.”

“That bright flash?”

“What flash?” Bill said.

Maybe it’s not the lights. The girl’s comment stuck in my head. If it wasn’t the lights, then what was it? Was I seeing things? Really?

The power returned to the building. If anyone else noticed those black blurs outside, they didn’t react. Surely they weren’t the same dogs, not in the middle of the city. They belonged in the woods. What were they doing here? Had they seen me? Heart galloping, I sank deeper into my seat, trying to hide.

Bill pulled a cloth from his pocket and started cleaning his glasses. With them off, you could see we were related. We had the same nose and high cheekbones, but his eyes were hazel like Dad’s. Mine were green, the same as Mom’s. “You know, you used to see things when you were little,” he said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did! Saw a woman flying across the sky when you were four.”

I couldn’t remember any of it. If I was some kind of freak with an overactive imagination, shouldn’t I be the first to know? “No fair. I was a kid.”

“Swore it was an angel watching over us,” Bill said with a chuckle. “Mom took you in for tests, and not eye tests, either.”

I remembered being taken to a brightly-lit office full of furniture that was as small as me. Mom talked with a gray-haired man while I explored a box full of dolls and toy cars, waiting. Eventually, I sat at a table covered in big sheets of colored paper. The man came over and sat on the carpet beside me and told me he was a special kind of doctor. He handed me the biggest box of crayons I’d ever seen and invited me to draw pictures for him. I don’t think I ever went back.

I contemplated telling Bill about the strange shadows, the flashes of light, the image of the loom—everything. Maybe I was seeing things again. But I changed my mind when he said, “Turns out you were fine. Well, fine enough for a freak.”

“I’m not a freak. Take that back!”

Bill laughed. I kicked him, but not nearly as hard as I wanted to.

“How about you?” he asked. “Any guys on the horizon?”

My thoughts jumped to Michael, the way he’d turned up to help me in the woods and then gave me the brush-off later, acting like a total stranger. Bill might have had some great advice to offer, but we didn’t have that kind of relationship and I wasn’t about to start one with him. “If there are, I can’t see them.”

He shrugged, adjusting his glasses. “Several guys have checked you out since we got here. They think you’re with me, though, so they leave you alone. And from the looks of them, that’s a good thing.”

“Eww! You’re my brother.”

“You let me know if you need me to take care of them for you.”

“Take care of them? You’re a comp-sci geek, Bill, not a mercenary.”

“You’d be surprised what a good hacker can do.”

Bill’s weekend visit ended much sooner than I would’ve liked. For a few brief days, we were a family again, and it wasn’t just Mom and me. After dinner that night, Mom and I drove him to the airport and I found myself missing him before he even left. By the time we said goodbye at the airport gate, both Mom and I were in tears.

***

On Wednesday afternoon, we had the team and club fair, so our afternoon classes were cut. Though it wasn’t mandatory, Mr. Bidwell, head of the Language Club, suggested so strongly that we be there that I half-expected him to take attendance, but he didn’t. When the bell rang, I noticed Michael slip out to the parking lot and drive away in a shiny new white Volkswagen GTI. It was a rainy day, so instead of being outside, all the booths lined the cafeteria. Each club—sports teams, multicultural clubs, and cancer awareness groups, to name a few—had its own table. In the middle of it all was the Environment Club, where Heather was working. She had an extra seat beside her so I sat down, propping my almost-healed foot on a box under the table.

“You’re helping?” Heather asked cheerfully.

“I said I would.”

“Right. I forgot with—you know,” she said and gestured at my ankle.

“Hello, Mia.”

I looked up at Heather’s math tutor smiling at me. A year younger than us, he’d skipped a grade and was at the top of our class.

“Hi,” I said, wishing I could remember his name. The caption on his black T-shirt read This is my clone.

Heather tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hey, Farouk.”

Farouk. That was it. He leaned on the table in front of us and his dark, curly hair fell into his eyes. I remembered him being a lot shorter last year.

Farouk signed one of our petitions for using recyclable containers in the cafeteria, then turned to me. “How’d you hurt your ankle?”

“You didn’t read the gossip column?” Heather asked. I hoped she was joking.

He shook his head.

I didn’t want to relive the drama of it, so I let Heather tell the story. Fortunately, she didn’t play Michael up too much—unlike the article itself.

Farouk picked up a flyer for the city’s recycling program and curled it around his fingers. “Michael Fontaine. I heard he had an accident or something,” he said.

“We heard that too,” Heather chimed in.

“He nearly died,” I said a little too defensively.

“Hmm, a near-death experience?” When I nodded, his face lit up. “I saw that in a movie once. This girl dies and when she comes back, she’s all weird and different.”

“What movie?” I asked.

He put down the mangled flyer. “I don’t remember. It was old. I saw it on TV a few months ago.”

“You don’t believe movies are real, too, do you?” Heather asked, crinkling her nose.

“No,” he said, “but some people who have near-death experiences do change.”

“Change how?” I asked, leaning forward. Catching myself, I pulled back, embarrassed by how much the subject of Michael Fontaine interested me, especially since it was so one-sided.

“Sometimes the person is so different when they come back that other people think they’re possessed.”

“Possessed?” Heather leaned back and crossed her arms. Math genius or not, Farouk’s credibility was at stake if he believed in anything too “out there.” “You mean by a ghost or something?”

Before we could talk further, a crowd of freshmen swarmed our booth and asked us a bunch of questions. Farouk helped us hand out flyers while Heather chatted and I passed around the petition. Who knew we’d be so popular?

I tried to keep my thoughts from wandering, but failed. Was he saying that Michael had been possessed? It was almost too strange to consider. Everyone said he was different now, and there was something about him that was almost otherworldly, something you’d expect from a person who’d cheated death. But possessed? Maybe not.

When the crowd finally thinned out, Farouk was gone but I did see Michael down the hall whispering in Fiona’s ear. A shot of jealousy coursed through my veins. Of course he’d be into her. She was tall, willowy, pretty, and she knew how to get a guy’s attention. But before I could see any more, someone asked me a question about recycling for a second time, distracting me. When I looked again, Michael was gone.

As Fiona visited a few tables, I wondered what she was doing here. Didn’t she have a dentist appointment? Wasn’t that why she couldn’t work the booth? Or did she have something set up with Michael instead? Eventually, she came over.

“Hey, guys,” she said.

“I thought you had a dentist appointment,” I blurted.

“I’m heading out now,” she replied. “Believe me, I’d rather be here.”

“I bet,” I said, my voice dripping sarcasm.

“What’s with you?” Heather asked me. “If you don’t want to be here, I can handle it on my own.”

“I saw you talking to Michael,” I said to Fiona, ignoring Heather.

“What? When?” She did a great job of looking puzzled. Obviously she was up to something.

“Don’t pretend to deny it. I saw him talking to you at your locker not two minutes ago.”

Heather was calm. “Mia, I saw her too. She was alone.”

“Seriously, Mia. What’s gotten into you?” asked Fiona. “I haven’t seen him all day.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

There was nothing else to say, other than “Sorry.” I didn’t get the sense she was lying to me, and yet I was sure I saw him. If she was telling the truth, perhaps I was imagining things. It wasn’t the first time I saw things that nobody else did: shadows, flashes of light, images of a strange primitive place. Maybe something was really wrong with me.

Chapter Seven

About a week or so later, on a perfectly ordinary cloudy day, another new guy arrived at our school. Heather, Fiona, Jesse, and I were hanging around outside before our first class when a loud, vintage-looking motorbike pulled into the school parking lot.

“Who’s that?” Fiona asked, perking up at the sight of its leather-clad rider.

“Is that…?” Jesse sat up, surprisingly animated for first thing in the morning. “Oh my God, it is!”

“You know him, Jess?” Heather asked. Sipping her coffee from a travel mug, she linked her arm through his.

“No, but he’s riding a 1988 Norton Rotary Classic.” When we weren’t impressed, he added, “It’s a collector’s bike. They only made 100 of them. You know how hard they are to get?”

“I think Fiona was asking who, not what,” said Heather.

By the time he parked and dismounted his bike, a few of us had stopped to see who the new guy was: teacher, student, or substitute? When he took off his helmet, I guessed him to be about our age. Everything about this guy exuded sexy, from his long lean body decked out in tight leather riding gear to his almost-shoulder-length brown hair and twinkling brown eyes.

A few sophomore girls stood closest to him in the parking lot and he gave them a perfect smile, flustering them into an eruption of giggles and blushes. Everyone was looking at him and he didn’t seem to care. In fact, he smiled at all of us equally, as though he enjoyed the attention.

As he walked toward our group, Jesse called out to him. “Dude, that’s an awesome ride.”

He scanned each of us, but when his gaze landed on me, the corners of his mouth turned into a half-grin. “Thanks.” His voice was deep and a little gravelly, appealingly so.

“You gotta tell me how you got it.”

He motioned to his leather riding gear and winked. “It came with the outfit.”

He then entered the school, leaving an awestruck Jesse and a practically drooling Fiona in his wake.

His arrival set the school on fire. By mid-day, we all knew his name: Damiel Lucas. Everyone was talking about him.

Damiel was in my English class, and it was intense to watch him and Michael interact, or rather not interact. They never spoke, but Michael’s back went up the second Damiel entered the room, his eyes tightening like fists. But Damiel just gave him a wolfish grin as though it were a game of some sort—one I didn’t understand the rules of but really wanted to.

By the end of the day, practically everyone at school had flocked to Damiel at some point. He was dark and interesting and, unlike Michael, he had no past. Try as they might, no one could dig up any gossip about him. We didn’t even know where he came from, and people seemed to like it that way. He brought a sense of mystery and adventure that was sorely missing to the senior class, not to mention the school itself.

“He’s so hawt,” I heard one girl say to two of her closest friends in the hall.

***

Those same girls, juniors, stood in a cluster outside their classroom before the bell rang the next morning.

“Bet he’s a great kisser,” said one of the girls with a little sigh. The three of them giggled.

“So totally badass,” said another, flipping her pale blond hair. She had porcelain skin and eyes that were almost cobalt blue. I couldn’t help but think she and Damiel would look good together. “Think he’s seeing anyone?”

“Hey, Tricia, get in line!” said the first girl. “He’s mine.”

I walked past them on my way to class. Was I the only girl in school who didn’t swoon at the thought of Damiel? Girls flocked to him. Every day he had a different one on his arm. Blonde, brunette, tall or short, it didn’t matter. He petted and charmed each of them, working one girl into a frenzy before moving on to the next. He had a certain appeal, I guess, but all I could think about was Michael.

I still couldn’t figure out what happened between him and me the day of the hike. I thought we’d connected, that he cared—until he read Elaine’s article. We hadn’t spoken since. Occasionally he would give me a look I didn’t understand. Deep and intense, as though he really knew me. Sometimes I even thought he might come over so we could talk, but then he’d hesitate and walk away.

I hadn’t seen any other strange anomalies lately—no shadowy dogs or flickering lights. But whatever it was that I’d seen nagged at the back of my mind like a chore I’d forgotten to do. I had to know if there was some kind of explanation, and asking Michael wasn’t an option. So, during a free period after lunch on Friday, I decided to do some research. Not knowing where to begin, I tried the school library. But it didn't exactly have books on the subjects of shadowy dogs or flashing lights, and I was hardly going to ask the librarian for help.

I didn’t even know how to describe what I saw. It might have been easier if I could name them, or if there were a pattern to what I was seeing. At first the lights appeared when Michael was carrying me, but it wasn’t consistent. The other day, when I was out with Bill, the lights flickered at the café.

I decided to try the Internet and did a search for “seeing flashing lights,” which actually produced results. I found lots of information on eye problems and detached retinas. All of it was too scary to consider. I vowed if I started seeing the lights again, I would go to the doctor.

I was in the middle of looking up “seeing shadows” when Damiel slid up behind me.

“Homework?” he said.

Startled, I instinctively closed the web page I was looking at.

If he’d seen what I’d been reading, he didn’t let on. His voice was as smooth and rich as black satin. “You’re Mia, aren’t you?”

I nodded, flattered he knew my name.

“I’m Damiel. I don’t think we’ve formally met.” He offered me his hand with an elaborate flourish. I shook it. “What do you normally do for fun around here on a Friday night?”

“Nothing,” I said, then cringed inwardly. With both Heather and Fiona dating, my social life was pretty much non-existent these days. But that wasn’t something he needed to know.

He pulled up a chair beside me and leaned in close. “How about we make our own fun then? Go for a ride?”

I looked down at the keyboard. Having him so close made me hold my breath, a little freaked out. “I don’t know.”

He leaned back but reached his hand out on the desk so it rested hardly an inch from mine. Eyebrows raised, mouth open, he paused dramatically before he spoke, as though making sure he had my attention. “You know, I once heard this myth about the afterlife…”

“The afterlife?” I shifted in my seat and pulled my hand away, not wanting to give him the wrong idea.

“Yeah. You believe in one, don’t you? Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Or do you think when you die it’s all over?”

“I–I don’t know,” I stammered. Many ancient cultures did believe in an afterlife, but I wasn’t sure what I believed. “I wasn’t raised religious or anything.” My mind flashed back to Farouk’s comment about Michael’s near-death experience, the idea of Michael coming back different. What did it mean?

“Well, some cultures used to believe, at the time of death, that instead of being judged on how well you abstained from the pleasures of life…” He leaned in closer. “…you would be judged by how well you enjoyed them.” With a smile that could boil glaciers, he ran a finger up my arm from elbow to shoulder. It left a path that tingled all the way down to my toes.

“Interesting,” I said, surprised by how fast this was going. No one had ever touched me that way before. All the blood rushed from my head, leaving me dizzy and more than a little scared of him. “W–where did you hear this?”

“Read it somewhere.” He shrugged. “In order to honor the gods, they believed you should live your life to the fullest.”

“They did?” I asked, trying to recover from the swooning his touch had brought in me, the way it clouded my thoughts. I was reminded of a show I’d seen on TV about sharks. There’s a way of hypnotizing them called “tonic immobility.” Some sharks use it for mating, where the male would roll the female onto her back and she would be paralyzed in a serotonin-induced euphoric state. On the show, when people learned how to do it to them, the sharks would seek them out so that they could experience this bliss, sinking deep into the water until the human could hold on no longer.

In that moment, I knew exactly how those sharks felt.

“So how about you, Mia?” he asked, a slow, seductive smile forming on his lips. “Do you live your life to the fullest?”

I thought of Michael, how much I’d hoped he’d talk to me, and now here was Damiel offering me pleasures I’d only fantasized about. Despite my feelings for Michael, a voice in my head said Of course not. Show me how! All hotness aside, ten minutes ago he was just another guy at school, and now that he was asking me out I was enthralled by him. How did he do it?

Across the library, Michael was leaning against one of the stacks with his arms crossed, as beautiful and unattainable as ever, his mouth set into a hard line. Why was he watching me now when he seemed to care too little on regular days? Was he judging me for flirting with Damiel when he hardly spoke to me himself?

My mouth dried up and I swallowed hard, not sure what to say next.

“Relax,” Damiel said, startling me. “I won’t do anything unless you want me to.”

I laughed. It was more of a nervous trill that rang out through the quiet library. The librarian at the desk put her finger to her lips in admonishment.

When I looked back to where Michael had been standing, he was gone. I was so flustered I hadn’t seen him leave.

Despite the fact that Damiel seemed interested in me, I wished Michael was the one asking me out. But that would never happen. My attraction for Michael was pathetically one-sided. It took a crisis for him to even come near me and I half wanted to put myself into some kind of crisis to be near him again.

“Tell me something?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

Damiel gave me a suggestive smile that made my face heat up. “Sure.”

“What’s with you and Michael?”

His smile wavered slightly. “Why do you ask?”

“Something about the way the two of you look at each other—”

“That makes you think Hallmark card?”

I stifled a grin. “Not exactly.”

He chuckled, a low throaty sound. “I can’t help it if he acts like he’s in a spaghetti western.”

“A what?” I gave him a puzzled look.

“You know. Clint Eastwood. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?”

“Sure.” A memory of Bill watching old Clint Eastwood movies with Dad when we were kids clutched at my throat. I swallowed. “Which one are you?”

He leaned in to me and said in a low, sexy voice, “Definitely not the ugly.”

I had to agree with him, but his ego didn’t need the boost. I focused on the computer screen, logged myself out, then asked, “So you two know each other?”

“We met last year in the hospital.”

He lifted his booted foot up to his chair and pulled up the leg of his jeans. My attention was drawn immediately to a large serpent tattooed on the back of his calf.

“Did that hurt?” I said, taking a closer look. The serpent was highly detailed, its scales shades of black and gray against his olive skin.

“Wasn’t bad at all compared to this.” He pointed to the six-inch scar that ran from his shin all the way past his knee.

“Oh.” I blushed again when I realized the scar was what he’d meant to show me. His tattoos were none of my business. “How’d you get that?”

“Had an accident this past spring. Michael and I shared a room, became friends even.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged and covered his leg. “He doesn’t want to remember it, so he avoids me.”

“That’s strange.”

“It is what it is.” Leaning in toward me again, he whispered in my ear, “Want to come out tonight?”

I took a deep breath, bracing myself against the onslaught of his charm. “I really can’t.”

He wore an astonished expression, as though surprised I could resist. Considering how many other girls were all over him, I guess he had reason. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a haze around him, as though he were bathed in a faint smoke, but when I blinked and refocused it was gone.