He snatched his hand away. Was that what he looked like?
“Hey, man.” A voice spoke at his shoulder. “You all right?”
Gabriel jerked back. He’d been so close to her.
Hunter stood there, a navy backpack slung over his shoulder.
That white streak interrupted his sandy blond hair and hung across one eye, leaving the other wide and full of scrutiny.
Hunter’s father had been a Guide, too, until he’d been killed by a rock slide. Hunter had come to town to kill the Merricks, in retaliation. He’d thought they were responsible for his father’s death until Becca had convinced him otherwise. For the last three days, they’d shared a kind of awkward truce.
“Yeah,” said Gabriel. “I’m all right.”
Hunter glanced at Layne. “Are you all ”
“Fine,” she said. Then she turned and dashed into the crowd of students.
Hunter stared after her. “What just happened?”
Gabriel didn’t hate this dude the way Chris did, but some sense of brotherly loyalty insisted he feel irritation at his presence. “None of your business, Mom.” He started walking.
Hunter followed him. “All right, then what happened in second period?”
“I slept through English. You?”
“I don’t think that was sleeping.” Hunter gave a pointed look up, at the lights embedded in the ceiling.
Gabriel sighed and kept walking. Could everyone see through him today?
“You know I’m a Fifth,” Hunter pressed. “I can sense all the elements. The others might not have noticed, but I did.”
“Good for you.”
“Does this have something to do with why Becca wants to meet at lunch?”
Gabriel stopped. “She talked to you?”
“She dropped a note on my desk in History. What’s going on?”
“We have a dinner date.”
“We do?”
“Yeah.” Gabriel started walking again. “And you might want to bring your gun.”
CHAPTER 3
Layne sat on her bedspread and watched her best friend paint her nails an unflattering shade of purple. Sunset had come and gone, and darkness cloaked her bedroom window.
She couldn’t stop thinking of that quiz, the way she’d changed Gabriel Merrick’s answers.
God, she could have been caught. What had she been thinking?
As if her life weren’t already held together by a fraying thread.
“Your hands look like they belong on a corpse,” she said.
Kara frowned and waved her hand in the air. “I like it. Are you sure your mom won’t care that I’m using it?”
Layne shrugged and looked out the window. Her dad would be home soon, so she should start dinner before too long. Otherwise, her little brother would be raiding the kitchen for Pop-Tarts and potato chips.
“She won’t even know,” she said.
“You know, this is like, the good stuff. They don’t even carry this at the salon where my mom goes. It’s probably twenty bucks a bottle.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Kara rolled her eyes. “Of course you wouldn’t. I can’t believe you’re related to that woman.”
Layne picked at her own nails, which were short and unpolished. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it, either. Her mom lived in labels, the kind splashed all over fashion magazines. More than once, Layne had seen her with the same bag some celebrity was carrying on the cover of Us Weekly.
Layne couldn’t tell the difference between Gucci and Juicy Couture.
Kara thought this was sacrilege. When they’d first become friends freshman year, Kara would beg to rifle through Layne’s mom’s closet. Layne would sit on the end of her parents’ bed and tolerate it, because a friend was a friend. But Layne finally got Kara to knock it off by saying her mom had found out and was pissed.
A complete lie, of course, but there was only so much staring at fabric that she could tolerate.
Kara wasn’t as smart as Layne, either the only classes they shared were gym and lunch but she was someone to talk to who didn’t call her a lesbian or get in her face about changing test scores.
Spending half her classes with students two years ahead didn’t leave Layne with a whole lot of friendship options.
Since the first day of school, she’d wondered what it would be like to have a guy like Gabriel Merrick talk to her. She’d noticed him right off honestly, what girl wouldn’t? and when Kara told her he had a twin, she’d wondered how fate could create two guys to look like that.
She’d lucked out with that assignment to sit next to him in trig or so she’d thought. He sat behind Taylor Morrissey, who seemed to make it her life’s goal to humiliate Layne every time she saw her. But it also gave Layne a chance to watch Gabriel check Taylor out.
Every. Frigging. Day.
Really, she couldn’t blame him. Some days, Taylor could have worn a bathing suit to school and covered more skin. Layne could barely keep from staring herself.
And it wasn’t like Gabriel’s eyes ever drifted right. Even today, when he’d been looking for a pencil. She hadn’t realized he was actually talking to her until his tone had dissolved into spite.
What are you, deaf?
God, she’d wanted to hit him.
She should have.
Then she’d gotten a look at his test. How could someone get every question wrong?
For an instant, she’d felt strangely validated. He’d been a jerk, and he was going to fail that quiz.
Then she’d remembered the A on his test last week.
And she’d put two and two together.
She was tempted to pass him off as just some stupid jock. But his pencil had snapped, twice. He’d been angry. No, frustrated.
No, embarrassed. You had to care to be embarrassed, right?
After looking at Gabriel’s quiz, where he’d clearly tried to work through each problem, she’d felt a flash of pity.
So she’d started fixing.
“You should take an interest in your mom’s stuff more,” said Kara. “She’s going to disown you.”
“Too late,” said Layne.
Kara glanced up. “What?”
“Nothing.” Layne rolled her eyes. “You want to stay for dinner?”
“One day you’re going to wake up and realize you missed your prime years, you know.”
“My prime years?”
Kara waved a gothic nail her way. “This little ensemble isn’t making the boys drool, you know.”
“I can’t exactly flit around in a camisole and low riders.”
Layne gave a pointed look at Kara, who was wearing a hot-pink camisole and jeans that sat so low they were making Layne blush.
“Oh, for god’s sake, why not? Jesus, Layne, save the turtlenecks for your eighties. Come on, I bet your mom has something in her closet you could wear tomorrow.”
Then Kara was through the bedroom door, and Layne was scrambling after her.
She beat her friend to her parents’ bedroom door and held it shut. “Forget it, Kara.”
“Layne, I’m doing you a favor, really. Someone needs to.”
Layne tightened her grip on the door, feeling her heart start to slam against the inside of her rib cage. “I said, forget it.”
“What is your problem?” Kara tried to wrench her hand off the doorknob. “It’s not like you’ve got leprosy or something.
Show that body off!” She grabbed the hem of Layne’s shirt and started to yank.
“Stop!” Layne screeched. The word came out like an assault.
Kara backed off. “Jesus, Layne . . .”
Then they heard the key in the front door and her father was calling out, “Laynie? I’m beat. What’s the status on dinner?
Layne?”
“Up here!” Her voice sounded strangled. “You’d better go,”
she said to Kara.
Kara tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Look, I’m just trying to be a friend. I didn’t realize you’d go ballistic. I mean, with that brother of yours, you need all the help you can get ”
“Hey.” Layne bristled. “Don’t talk about Simon.”
Kara shrugged. “You know it’s true.” She ducked into Layne’s bedroom to grab her bag. On the way out, she called, “Take my advice. You might be surprised how it works out.”
“Maybe,” said Layne.
But she knew exactly how it would turn out. If she dressed like Kara or Taylor or any of the other girls at school, she’d be even more of an outcast than she was already.
CHAPTER 4
Gabriel felt the end of his rope coming up quick.
His lighter rolled through his knuckles, making that reassuring click each time it changed direction. Fire at his fingertips it would be so easy to draw flame from this tiny silver square, to send it straight at Becca’s father and let him burn.
He just wasn’t entirely sure how that would turn out.
They’d found a free table near the center of the Annapolis Mall food court: Nick sat to Gabriel’s left, Chris to his right, fingers loosely intertwined with Becca’s. Hunter sat at one end of the table, wearing a denim jacket over a light-colored hoodie, the stones he always strung along his wrist hidden from view.
Michael sat at the other end, still sporting the red T-shirt with their last name across the chest that he usually wore on landscaping jobs.
And on the other long side, completely alone, sat Becca’s father.
The Guide.
“Call me Bill,” he’d said.
Yeah, Gabriel had a few ideas of what to call him.
He looked completely nondescript: just an average guy in his late thirties. Sandy brown hair, a goatee, gray eyes that matched Becca’s. He hadn’t changed after work, either. He was still wearing a beige button-down with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, patches on each shoulder reading Department of Natural Re-sources and Wildlife Control Division.
Not exactly the kind of guy you’d expect to find trying to slaughter a bunch of teenagers.
The tension in the air seemed to be forming a barrier around the table. No other patrons had even come close to sitting nearby.
“So, Bill, ” said Becca, her eyes hard, “why don’t you start with the reason behind this one-eighty.”
Her father’s expression didn’t flicker. “One-eighty?”
“You were trying to kill us all last week. Now you want to help?”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you.”
“Funny how you blew up my car ”
“When you weren’t in it.” While his voice was mild, there was a glint of wicked humor in his eye, something not entirely pleasant. “I even offered to replace it.”
Becca leaned in against the table. “You could have killed innocent people,” she hissed.
“Could have. Didn’t.” He looked across the table to meet Gabriel’s eyes. “I didn’t kill anyone, innocent or not. Right?”
Gabriel let the lid of his lighter fall open, flicking the igniter while it rolled.
Nick reached out and snapped it closed before a flame could fully form. He held fast, and Gabriel could almost read his thoughts. Don’t. You’ll start a fight we can’t win.
And that . . . that made Gabriel look away.
He jerked free of his twin, shoved the lighter into his pocket, and scowled.
“Why didn’t you kill us?” said Chris. “Why go to all that trouble with the walk-in freezer, and setting Nick’s leg ”
“Ever go fishing?” said Bill.
“Sure.”
“I only had two of you. In my experience, live bait works better.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” said Becca. Her voice was full of challenge, but her fingers looked like they had a death grip on Chris’s. “Why do you want to help us now? ”