“How did you guys find me?”
“Your aura isn’t exactly subtle,” he said as his truck roared to life.
“My aura?”
He cracked a grin. “It’s like a freaking bonfire, way brighter than that paltry excuse for a campfire you guys started.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” I said, defensive, “you know, if the forest burns down because of it.”
I so very much wished I could know more. Could see more. In desperation, I steeled myself for anything, then reached over and grabbed his wrist.
He frowned at me. “I’m nephilim, shortstop. You can’t get anything off me unless I want you to. Or I’m so stunned, I can’t think straight. Sorry, but you just don’t do that to me.”
I thought about being offended but couldn’t quite manage it.
He pulled around to the back of the house, and I cringed. His truck wasn’t exactly quiet. I jumped down after he turned it off and headed inside, only to be brought up short.
“In the bizarre instance that my grandparents didn’t hear that beast of yours, we can’t go up the fire escape. They’ll hear.”
“Maybe they should,” he said, walking up behind me. He eyed me as though I were a naughty schoolgirl who deserved to be punished.
“Oh, please.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Like you’ve never drunk a beer.”
With a shrug, he hauled me over his shoulder. I squeaked in protest.
“I’ve had a few beers. They don’t do anything for me.”
“This is so uncomfortable,” I said as he climbed the fire escape as quiet as a church mouse. “I have got to learn how you guys do that.”
“Do what?”
“And what do you mean, they don’t do anything for you? You don’t like the way they make you feel?” I wasn’t going to admit it, but I was right there with him. Tipsy, buzzed, drunk—whatever the colloquialism, it sucked. If the world would quit spinning, I would get off and wait for the next one to come by.
He slid open the window and sat me on the sill. “No, I mean they do nothing for me. I don’t feel any different. I don’t think I can get inebriated like you.”
Brooke’s voice burst into the quiet like a freight train barreling through town at midnight. “You’re inebriated?” she screeched.
I scrambled inside, stumbling over a chair leg, and slammed my hand over her mouth. A single lamp lit the room, casting more shadows than light, but I could see the shock in her huge eyes.
She mumbled through my hand. “You’ve been drinking?”
“Sh-h-h.”
“Alcohol?”
Shushing her with an index finger across my lips, I said, “Only a little.”
She broke free of my grip. “Lorelei Elizabeth McAlister.”
Great. Time to be judged again. “What are you doing here anyway?” I peeled off my jacket as Cameron climbed in and closed the window against the crisp night air.
“Cameron called me.”
I glared at the traitor before sinking onto my bed. Completely unaffected, he turned to stare into the darkness.
Brooke sat beside me. “Why would you go to that party, Lor? What could you possibly have had to gain?”
“I don’t know.” Leaning against the headboard, I clutched a pillow to my chest. How could I tell her that I just wanted to know what it felt like to be normal? That I just wanted to belong? And that I was super curious why Tabitha had invited me in the first place.
I couldn’t miss the hurt that flashed across her face before she reined it in. “Did you think that going to a party without me would earn you brownie points with the cool kids?”
“What? No. Why would you even say that?”
“Why would you even go to that moronic party? Especially with everything that’s going on?”
“No,” I said, suddenly annoyed. “In lieu of everything that’s going on. Don’t you just want to forget it? To pretend that there’s nothing wrong with us?”
She leaned back, clearly offended. “Wrong with us?”
“Oh, my god, Brooke, look at us. The only normal one in our bunch is Glitch, and that’s debatable on his best day. We have an angelic being, a nephilim, a girl who was possessed and has a cracked aura to prove it—”
“Don’t dis my crack.”
“And then there’s me. Whoopty-freaking-do. Oh, yes, the world will surely be saved now. And by whom? By us. The misfits of Torrance County. We are supposed to stop a war between good and evil? When we can barely make it to school on time, we are destined to safeguard humanity?”
She put a hand on my knee, her face knowing. Sympathetic. “You mean you.”
I stilled. Questioned her with my eyes.
“You mean you are supposed to stop a war.”
I swallowed hard with the reminder. “I just don’t want it anymore. I don’t want the prophecy, the visions, any of it.”
“But why?” She grew animated, her movements exaggerated. “Your visions were so cool. You could’ve changed people’s lives with them, Lor. You could’ve helped people.”
I wanted to scoff at her. To rant and rave about how wrong she was.
She bit her bottom lip in thought, and I could see the wheels spinning. “We just need to practice more. That’s it. I’m sure you’ll get them back.”
My next statement was little more than a whisper, but I couldn’t keep going on like this. It wasn’t fair to her. To either of us. Gathering my courage, I said, “I never lost them.”