“I promise.”

She gave me a look I didn’t need clarified.

“That’s a promise I can keep,” I said, answering her silent question. “See you in class Wednesday?”

She nodded, looking like she wanted to say something more, but she leaned back, already resolved to moving on from us to soothe Ty’s delicate sensibilities.

“Hey, Em,” I called out right before dropping. “He hurts you, I’ll kill him. Maybe those should be the first words out of your mouth when you open what’s left of your door.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she said, looking away before I jumped. Like she couldn’t stand by helpless while I fell.

I got it, though. I’d never been one to be able to stand by and watch someone else crash to the ground without a net in place.

CHAPTER TEN

I’d had two tireless days and two sleepless nights by the time I stepped into class Wednesday afternoon. I’d waited to run into her on campus yesterday, expected I’d at least catch a glimpse of her, and hoped for a call letting me know she was all right.

I received none. Three strikes—I’m out.

I could have teleported into her room last night, but that seemed like cheating. I couldn’t carry on a one sided relationship by using supernatural gifts that she wasn’t aware of. Of course I could have knocked on her door at anytime to check on her too, and I almost did a hundred different times, but some egging thing that felt a lot like instinct told me showing up unannounced at her door could make things worse. I’d never gone against my instincts yet, and for my acquiescence, they’d rewarded me by saving my butt on at least a semi-annual basis for a couple centuries.

Maybe she needed time, maybe she was crazy busy catching up from her day of playing hooky, or maybe she didn’t feel like there was any need to check in with me, but whatever it was, if my gut was telling me to lay low, that’s just what I was going to do.

It was the single most difficult thing for me to follow through on.

Diving into my front and center seat in Psych, it felt like I was breaking through the finish line at the end of a marathon. I’d obeyed my internal compass, did my time, and now it was time to reap the reward of seeing Emma.

My stomach did a twist when I realized she might pull a repeat of Monday’s no-show. If that was the case, guts be damned, I was going find her and harass her until I got my Emma fix.

Professor Camp was already a few snide comments into his lecture when the auditorium door screeched open. I didn’t need to look to know it was her—I felt her an instant before the door opened, and while I probably didn’t have to look to see if Ty was leeched to her side, I did.

They were sliding into the last two seats of the back row when I turned in my seat to steal a glimpse. Emma was dressed like she was ready for winter in Montana instead of a cloudless Indian summer day in California. If that wasn’t cause enough for concern, her face was a tomb. It wasn’t just expressionless, it was dead. Like an emotion would never play over it again.

Sagging a meat-hook arm around her shoulders, Ty’s eyes shifted my way. His face was so lined with smugness it might get stuck that way. Well, stuck that way more than it was most of the time, at least.

I knew he was waiting for me to be the first to look away, but I didn’t want it on my permanent record that I’d been the first to tap out to Ty Steel in anything. I returned his stare, holding it long enough several of the other students took notice.

The attention increasing, Ty flipped me his favorite finger as his stare left mine to settle over Emma. Giving her a head to toe, he managed to convey ownership, supremacy, and downright creepiness with one once over.

Emma stayed zombie-fied, ignorant of the guy molesting her with his eyes next to her and the guy down in front staring at her like she was everything he wanted and could never have. The poor girl didn’t deserve either stare.

I turned forward in my seat to relieve her of one.

Class was hell. A solid fifty minutes of gibberish of which I didn’t process a lick.

Every student in class would have a strong opinions that I had a serious tick after today’s class. I tried to keep my head forward, eyes locked on some arbitrary point, but as soon as I’d find it, they’d head off target and boomerang to the back corner of the room.

My eye seizures were bad, but Emma’s state of stone nothingness was far worse. I was half convinced Ty had arrived with a mannequin look alike until I detected her pencil moving across that ratty spiral notebook she loved so much.

She never once looked my way.

“All right, everyone. Time to wake up now that class is almost over,” Camp hollered, clapping his hands like a cymbal monkey. “As there are no classes this Friday, I want to remind everyone that the big second date for the Love Project is scheduled for this weekend. I don’t care what day or time you choose, but as last week was guy’s pick, this week it’s girl’s choice. Choose well, ladies, but make sure you make him pay.”

The soprano grade laughter was drowned out by the baritone wave of groaning.

“Have a groovy long weekend. Work easy and play hard,” he continued on, but the roar of laptops snapping shut and backpacks zipping close muffled his closing comments.

Shouldering my bag, I took quite possibly the thousandth glance towards the back of the room, not sure what I was going to say or do. Just knowing I had to say or do something.

Turns out, I wouldn’t be able to do anything because the formerly occupied seats in the back corner were empty.

He was clever, I had to give him that, but that was about all I would give him. However, his grand scheme of arriving late and skipping out early would only keep me away from Emma for so long. About another ten minutes, I figured, or however long it took me to walk across campus to her dorm where I was banking on the theory that Ty hadn’t moved her to some undisclosed location.

I didn’t put it past him to do just that.

I jogged my way across campus, not able to shake the feeling that I’d find myself knocking on the door of an empty dorm room. Shuffling through a stream of bodies bounding down the stairs off to their next classes, I took the stairs by twos as I headed to the third floor.

Halfway down the hall and I had my answer. I didn’t need to knock on the door to know it wouldn’t open.

But I did anyways.

No answer. Big surprise. Like the good stalker in love I was, I’d memorized her schedule days ago, so I knew she didn’t have another class after Psych and volleyball practice didn’t start for another couple hours, which led to one conclusion.

Ty was making sure he kept her away from me or, I guess the truer way of putting it, is he was trying to keep me away from her. I didn’t want to admit that, after a half-day of Patrick dodging, Ty had unsettled me, but he had.

If keeping the girl I had it bad for just out of my reach when I’d waited forty-eight hours wasn’t enough, seeing the shadow of nothing on Emma’s face had been more than enough to unhinge me. I couldn’t imagine anything less than the death of a close member could twist the joy that had been Emma on Monday afternoon to the shell of herself she was today.

Whatever it was though, I was going to find out. Ty and his covert ops couldn’t foil me. I’d uncovered rogue Inheritors halfway around the world—I could find a beautiful woman on the Stanford campus.

Maybe I couldn’t. My confidence, along with my sanity, had hit empty late last night after a second night of sitting in the shadows outside her dorm, watching, hoping, and praying she’d pass by. She never had.

After a second night of staking out, I was expecting campus security or even the police to pay me a visit and possibly slap me with a warning or a restraining order to stay away. Of course, I would have heeded neither, but no one seemed to pay me any attention, like I was invisible or unworthy of their attention. Or maybe pathetic, lovesick guys hanging outside the dorm halls of the girls they loved was a regular thing here at Stanford.

Cutting the Mustang’s engine in the black saturated night, I knew I couldn’t stand by as an inactive party another night. I was knocking on that door until someone answered—I’d teleport in if I grew really desperate, although that was a last resort.

Ever notice how desperate men tend to go with their last resort as Plan A? I was hoping I’d gained enough mental fortitude and sheer willpower over generations of walking the earth to at least save teleporting for Plan B.

It was easy enough getting in the building, despite the outside doors locking after dark. Everyone was either on their way to get drunk or already there, so no one noticed or cared who dodged inside when the door opened.

I don’t know how I ended up in front of her door so quickly, but I knew I hadn’t used teleportation only because I’d ended up outside her door. I would have put myself dead center in her room if I’d employed any supernatural powers, no question about it.

My heart was in my throat; I finally got what people meant when they said that, and it wasn’t a figurative use of the expression. I was certain if I reached a finger past my tongue, I’d find a beating organ blocking my esophagus.

I rapped on the door, but in the silence it echoed through the empty hall like I was pounding on it.

Soft footsteps padded towards the door, and my senses were on such high alert I could sense the air being disturbed as a form cut through it. I was so focused on these minute details, I didn’t process that the person twisting the doorknob open was not the one I’d come searching for.

Opening the door a sliver width and a half, Julia’s nuclear green eye popped through the space. I took an involuntary step back, which was rude I knew, but it was better than lunging back like I’d wanted to do when that unsettling eye latched onto me.

“You,” she said, heaving the door open the rest of the way.

Typical Julia greeting: succinct, sharp, and psychotic.

“Me,” I answered back cryptically.

She nodded once, like I’d just given her an answer to a silent question.

“Is that a good or bad thing?” I asked, not even about to guess what she was thinking.

“Depends,” she answered, lifting a shoulder as she turned and headed towards the back of the room.

Taking her not slamming the door on my face as an invitation to come in, I took a few steps inside, but since this was a dorm room we were talking about, I was already halfway inside when Julia’s head got lost behind a mini-fridge. “You want a sparkling water?” she asked, already pitching one my way.

“Eh, sure,” I said, snatching the green bottle somersaulting through the air. “Thanks?”

Tilting the bottle she was holding at me in acknowledgement, she took a chug.

“And here I thought I was the goth,” she said, surveying me toe to head before taking another swig. “You look like you’ve been dead for the past hundred years.”

I came close to spewing the sip of water I’d just taken. Despite knowing Julia was attempting to be amusing, the trueness of her statement wasn’t lost on me. Knowing her, I could tell her every last nitty gritty detail of my world and she’d shrug an unimpressed shoulder and get back to sacrificing small animals or brewing vex potions or whatever else she did on a Friday night.