“So.” Heidi plopped down in the seat next to me, cradling a stack of Eastern Europe maps. We all were in the library during English, collecting research books for our next paper. I had no idea why she had maps. I was confident that her paper was on Alexander Hamilton. “Did Luc help you with whatever you needed last night?”
Zoe looked up from the thick tome, raising an eyebrow. “Come again?”
I shot Heidi a look, but she ignored me. I sighed. “Remember me telling you about the guy named Luc?”
“Yeah, the guy who busted up in your house and melted a shotgun.” Zoe slowly closed the book, keeping her pointer finger between the pages. “You were with him last night?”
“No,” I whispered, leaning forward. “I asked for his number, because I needed help with something that required his . . . talents.”
Zoe’s brows lifted. “My brain just took that in several different directions.”
“Mine too.” Heidi giggled, smoothing her hands over her maps.
“God. No.” I glanced over as April shuffled past our table. She stopped a few feet away. I lowered my voice even more. “I wanted to get into my mom’s office and the door was locked. He can help with that.”
Zoe stared at me a moment and then moved a curl out of her face. “Okay. I have several questions. Did you invite him over to your house?”
“No. I didn’t text him.” I turned to Heidi. “But someone told him I asked for his number.”
Heidi shrugged. “Wasn’t me.”
“I know,” I deadpanned. “And why do you have maps of Eastern Europe?”
Glancing down at her pile, she sighed. “I’ve always wanted to travel to Europe.”
“But you’re supposed to be working on a paper about Alexander Hamilton,” I pointed out.
Zoe snapped her fingers, drawing my attention back to her. “Focus. Why do you want to get into her office?”
“It’s a kind of convoluted story.”
“Does it have to do with what happened Monday night?”
Heidi’s forehead wrinkled. “What happened Monday night?”
I quickly told her about how I thought someone had been in the house and had gone into my mother’s office. “So, I thought maybe Luc could help me get into the office.”
“You thought someone was in your house?” Heidi whispered, her eyes going wide.
“We didn’t see anyone and the doors were locked,” Zoe added, and then lifted her hands when I frowned at her. “Not that I don’t believe you. There was just no sign of anyone being there.”
Heidi sat back. “That’s really creepy, especially with everything that’s going on with Colleen and Amanda.”
“Yeah, it is.” I breathed in the scent of musty books and stale air. “When Mom came home, she never mentioned anything being weird about the office, but . . .” I hated what I was going to say. “But I don’t know if she would if she noticed something, you know? I don’t think I . . . I really know her. Like, I do, because she’s my mom. Duh. But obviously, at the same time, I don’t. I know that doesn’t sound like it makes sense.”
Zoe was quiet, her gaze serious. “What do you think she’s lying to you about?”
“I don’t know. I mean, someone was definitely in the house, and the whole thing with her and Dad knowing Luc. I just think . . . I think there’s more.” It was hard to explain without spilling all the secrets, and I wanted to tell them, but instinct told me that they were something I seriously needed to keep to myself. “Anyway, Luc didn’t come over last night, but—”
Someone shushed us.
Zoe lifted her head, pinning a dark look onto some unfortunate soul somewhere behind me. “But what?”
I curled my fingers around the edge of my book. “I think Luc knows something about Mom and my dad.” And about me, whispered a weird voice in the back of my head. Shivering, I ignored it. “He pretty much insinuated that he did and that he would tell me.”
Well, I guessed that was what he meant in his very obnoxiously mysterious way of his.
I thought Zoe looked surprised, but her expression smoothed out so quickly, it had to be my imagination. “What could he possibly know?”
“I don’t know.” I looked between the girls. “But I’m going to find out.”
* * *
I ran into James as I walked to my car after school. “What are you up to?” he asked. “I’m starving, so I thought I’d do you a sweet favor and let you accompany me on my excursion to find the juiciest and thickest hamburger this fine town has to offer.”
I laughed as I pulled out my sunglasses, I slid them on. “I’d love to, but I have something I have to do. Maybe tomorrow? Or Saturday? I heard Coop canceled his party.”
“I heard the same. He’s doing it next weekend instead. Guess he wasn’t . . . in the mood after what happened.”
Dead and missing classmates kind of dampened the whole party vibe.
“I also heard you have plans today after school,” he said as we stopped by my car. “You’re going to that club.”
Dammit. “Which one of them blabbed?”
He folded his arms. “I’ll never tell.”
I’d told both of them I’d been planning to go to the club, and now I was regretting it. “If you knew what I was doing, then why did you ask me to do something?”
“Thought I could possibly woo you with hamburgers instead.” He stepped aside as I moved toward the driver’s-side door. “Do you think it’s smart to go back there?”
No. I didn’t think it was smart at all.
“I mean, you know I don’t have anything against the Luxen, but there were a ton there unregistered. Then there’s what happened to Colleen, and Amanda is still missing. . . .” He cleared his throat. “And that Grayson dude freaked me out.”
If he thought Grayson was freaky, which he really was, it’s a good thing he hadn’t met Luc.
“And when that blue-haired dude took me home, I thought you were being kidnapped or something.”
My lips pursed. Luc had tried to kidnap me, which made the fact that I was going back to the club willingly seem even more idiotic. “Aw, are you worried about little old me?” I teased, punching him lightly on the arm. “I’ll be fine.”
“Uh-huh. Fine. I’ll go eat juicy grilled hamburgers all by myself.” James started to turn and then stopped. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” I opened up the car door.
He seemed to consider what he was about to say. “Are you, like . . . getting involved with someone there?”
“What?” I tossed my bag onto the front seat and then turned back around to face him. “Like, am I interested in someone? Luc?”
James nodded.
I laughed, but it sounded weird to my own ears. “You haven’t had a chance to meet him, but if you did, you would know how ridiculous that question is.”
That was partly true. How could I be into Luc? I wasn’t, but . . . I was. And while I should be worried about going to that club, I wasn’t, and I couldn’t even explain why. It made no sense, especially when I’d promised my mom I wouldn’t go back there, made Heidi swore she wouldn’t, and I hadn’t even wanted to go there in the first place. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was this weird sense of—of what? Safety? Familiarity?
There was a good chance I was losing my mind.
He raised a brow. “He’s a . . . He’s a Luxen, right?” When I nodded, he looked away and then refocused on me. “Just be careful, Evie. Colleen was at that club when she went missing, and now Amanda is gone? It feels like, I don’t know, they are the beginning of something.”
Walking up to the red doors of Foretoken, I felt like I was seconds away from stealing something pricey at a ritzy department store. Like I was about to shove a car payment’s worth of perfume under my shirt.
Not that I knew what it felt like to do that, but I imagined a shoplifter felt the same mix of anxiety and excitement I was currently drowning in.
A huge part of me couldn’t believe I was actually doing this. I hadn’t told Luc I would last night. For all I knew, he might not even be here.
Knowing that, I was still here.
Drawing in a shallow breath, I lifted my hand, but before I could touch the red doors, one of them inched open. Gasping, I took a step back. I’d expected to see Clyde. That wasn’t who I got an eyeful of.
Luc stood just inside the entryway to Foretoken.
He wasn’t completely dressed.
As in, he was shirtless.
And there was a whole lot of naked chest in front of me—naked chest and stomach.
My brain sort of shorted out on me. I didn’t even know where to look. I shouldn’t look at all, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to look and I wanted my camera in my hand, to take a photo of those . . . angles.
His jeans were zipped but unbuttoned, and they hung indecently low—like, so low, they had to be held up by alien superpowers. He had those muscles on either side of his hips, the kind that formed indents. I didn’t even know what they were called, but boy, oh boy, did he ever have them. There was a faint dusting of hair that disappeared below the jeans.
A flush of warmth hit my cheeks as I dragged my gaze up, over his abs—he had abs for days, each one cut and defined. His chest was sculpted, and as he lifted an arm, clapping his hand over the doorframe above him, I watched, sort of dazed, as the muscles along his ribs moved and flexed in interesting ways.
Luc was . . . holy crap, he was ripped.
I’d figured he was in shape based on the few, brief times I’d accidentally touched his stomach or chest, but thinking about what he had was nothing compared to what he actually had.
This wasn’t real.
That was what I kept telling myself as my gaze flickered south again, to that interesting trail of hair. His body wasn’t real. It was just a mask the Luxen wore. Luc really looked like a human-shaped jellyfish. This . . . very beautiful body wasn’t real.
Thinking that didn’t help.
At all.
Because his body looked totally touchable and real.
“Do you want me to take one of those creepy, self-indulgent selfies of my stomach and send it to you?” Luc asked. “Then you can check me out whenever you want, even when I’m not around.”
Oh my God.
Heat filled my cheeks as my gaze snapped to his face. He’d obviously just gotten out of the shower. Damp hair teased his forehead and temples. No contacts today. Eyes back to that weirdly beautiful purple. “I wasn’t checking you out.”
“Really? Because you were staring so hard, it felt like an actual touch. Not a bad touch. You know, not the kind with the dolls and years of therapy.”
Oh my God . . .
“A good touch. The welcomed kind that puts you in therapy for a whole different reason,” he added as he moved aside, holding the door open. I noticed then he was barefoot. “But we can pretend like you weren’t checking me out.”
“I wasn’t,” I seethed, refusing to look at him at all.
Luc stepped around me. “Whatever makes it easier for you to sleep at night, because checking out someone you think is an alien? Oh, the horror.”
I blew out a long, steady breath. “You are an alien.”
Luc widened his eyes at me. “You know nothing, Evelyn Dasher.”
“Did you just quote Game of the Thrones?”
“Maybe,” he murmured.
“And why aren’t you wearing a shirt? Did you forget how to put one on?”
“Putting on clothes is haaard.”
“Apparently buttoning your pants is too,” I muttered, flushing again.
He laughed as he opened the second door. “Why are you wearing a shirt?”
Slipping past Luc, I shot a glare at him as we walked into the dimly lit, quiet club floor. “Are you seriously asking that question?”
He raised a shoulder as he brushed past me. “I thought it was as valid as your question.” He looked over his shoulder as he walked ahead of me. “You know. As valid as asking any other stupid question.”
My eyes narrowed on his back—his really nice back. He had these muscles all up and down his spine. I stopped by the dance floor, briefly closing my eyes. What was I doing? “This was a mistake.”
He turned to me, and I sort of wished he didn’t, because the struggle was real when it came to focusing north of his shoulders. Not that that was any easier. “Why would you think that?”
“Why?” I barked out a short, harsh laugh. “You’re being an ass.”
“Because I acknowledged that you were so obviously checking me out and you reacted like I accused you of drinking the blood of babies on the Sabbath?”
My nose wrinkled and my gaze dipped. I had no idea what his skin felt like, but I imagined it was like silk stretched over steel. Dammit. I needed to stop—
He stepped in, and my back straightened. “Let’s start over. Completely. You’ll pretend that the mere idea of being attracted to me doesn’t freak you out, and I’ll pretend that you’re not thinking about how I’d feel under your fingers. Hmm? Sound like a plan?”
My jaw hit the floor as the heat splashed down my throat. I stepped forward, pointing a finger at him. “I am not thinking that.”
His grin spread. “Stubborn and a terrible liar. I guess some things never change.”
“You haven’t known me long enough to know that I’m a crap liar.”
Turning away, he ran a hand over one of the tables. “I know you just as well as you know yourself.”
“Whatever.” Irritation flared. “You know what I know? I know that you like to say crap that makes no sense just to hear yourself talk.”
Luc chuckled in a deep, would’ve-been-nice kind of way if it had been coming from anyone else. “Hell, you do know me.”
“I have to agree,” came a voice from me. I turned, spying Kent. I had no idea where he’d come from, but he was carrying a bottle of water. “That sounds exactly like the Luc I know.”
“You’re not supposed to agree with her.” Luc reached the bar area. “Bro code, dude. Bro code.”
Kent winked as he walked past me. “She came alone.”
I’d just picked my jaw off the floor to have it fall again. “You were checking me out to see if I came alone?”
“Of course we did,” Luc said. “We’re not stupid.”
I gaped at him. “You told me to come here. Why would you think I brought someone with me?”
“Because you did last time,” he explained. “And I have a feeling you don’t even quite know why you did come.”
I snapped my mouth shut.
Luc started walking again. “So we were just making sure there weren’t any surprises.”
Kent moved closer to me. “I don’t think we’ve formally met. You’re Evie. I’m Kent. I like long walks in dark cemeteries and I want to have a pet llama before I die.”
I blinked. “A llama?”
“He’s a bit obsessed with llamas,” Luc chimed in.
“Hell yeah. Who wouldn’t be? I mean, they’re like God got confused, you know? He already made horses and sheep, and decided, let’s mix that together, and voilà—you get a llama,” Kent explained. “Freaking ah-mazing. Have you ever met a llama?”
“No,” I murmured.
“That’s a shame. Anyway, we’ll be taking this.” Before I could react, he’d slipped my backpack off my arm. He smiled when I spun toward him. “Only until you’re ready to leave.”
“Are you serious?” I demanded. “What do you think I’m hiding in there? A bomb?”
“We can never be too careful,” Luc called from the hall. “And you did threaten to call the police once.”
I whipped back around, finding him waiting for us. “I told you I wouldn’t have actually done that! And I thought we were starting over and pretending to actually like each other.”
“We’re selectively pretending certain things didn’t happen.”
“God,” I groaned as disappointment trickled into my veins. It was obvious he didn’t trust me completely, and I didn’t know why that bothered me, but it did. Which was stupid, because it wasn’t like I trusted him either. “I thought we . . .” I thought we were past all that. Man, that was such a stupid thought, I couldn’t even begin to explain.
His gaze sharpened. “We what?”
I drew in a deep breath. “I do not like you.”
Luc bowed in my direction, sending a shock of hair over his forehead.
“Don’t be mad at him. You can never be too safe nowadays. I mean, have you seen the news? Just the other day, a known Luxen community center in Denver was bombed.”
I hadn’t heard that.
“Someone walked right in, put a backpack down, walked out, and blew up a bunch of innocent people, including humans. So, we’re careful.” Kent hitched my bag over his shoulder. “But I won’t let your bag out of my sight.” He brought it around to his chest and hugged it close. “It’ll be my new best friend.”
My gaze flickered over him and his Mohawk. The hair had to be standing up a good seven inches. “Okay.”
“I thought we could chat upstairs, where it’s more comfortable,” Luc intervened. “You coming?”
This was how I figured most horror films started out, but in for a penny, in for a pound . . .
So I sighed my annoyance and trekked after Luc. He held the door to the stairwell open for me. I walked through and started up the stairs.
Luc easily caught up with me, and Kent was right behind him. Trying to shake the nervousness, I trailed my hand along the railing.
Miraculously, they were quiet as we rounded the second floor. Luc kept walking, continuing up several flights of stairs, and I vaguely wondered if it would kill them to have an elevator.
Not even out of breath while I was seconds from dying, Luc opened the door to the sixth floor. This hallway looked like the one on the second except it was wider and had fewer doors.
“I’m gonna make myself scarce with your bag.” Kent walked past us, whistling what sounded like a Christmas song under his breath, and opened one of the doors down the hall. “You two kids, behave yourselves! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
My eyes widened. As Kent disappeared into a room down the hall, Luc said, “Kent is . . . Well, he’s different, but he kind of grows on you.”
“Yeah.” Legs burning, I forced one foot in front of the other until Luc stopped outside a windowless wooden door. My heart flip-flopped in my chest. “How’s Chas?”
“Better. He’ll be back to hundred percent by tomorrow.”
“He’s lucky,” I said, and Luc looked over at me. “I mean, if he were human—”
“He wouldn’t have survived the attack,” he finished for me. “And if he wore a Disabler, he wouldn’t have been able to heal himself.”
I worried my bottom lip, looking down. “Is this . . . your room?”
“More like my apartment.”
His apartment. Right. Not like he had just a bedroom in his parents’ house. For all I knew, he had been hatched from an egg somewhere.
Luc lifted an arm, brushing his hair from his face. My gaze followed the movement of all the skin and muscles. He dropped his arm as he faced me.
Our gazes connected, and I found I couldn’t look away. There was something entrancing about his stare, and for a long moment neither of us spoke. A weird edginess surfaced, the same I felt when I’d been here on Saturday, and it seeped into the hall and settled over my skin like smoke. It was like being near an electric storm. I half expected the overhead lights to dim or explode.
He lowered his gaze, breaking the connection. His voice was low. “I’m glad you came.”
I blinked. “You are?”
A moment passed. Dark, impossibly thick lashes lifted. Amethyst eyes latched on to my eyes once more. “Yeah. I didn’t think you would.”
I crossed my arms and shifted my weight from one foot to the next. “Would you blame me if I hadn’t?”
“No.” A wry grin formed.
Warmth hit my cheeks. “You were right earlier. I’m not even sure why I’m here.”
The grin spread as he turned, pressing his finger against a pad. Fingerprint read and processed, the lock unclicked. High tech right there. “I know why.”
My stomach tumbled a little. “Why?”
Luc opened the door. “Because I’m going to tell you a story.”