“Dammit,” he cursed noisily, and now I was the one glancing around apprehensively.
“Laylen,” I whispered. “You need to be a little quieter or someone’s going to hear us.”
He ran his fingers through his blond hair, and I was sensing that a meltdown was about to take place. “Who cares. I’m already screwed anyway.”
“Why are you screwed? Because you staked Vladislav? I thought you said you just had to lay low for awhile and it would pass over,” I said.
He looked at me gravely. “Gemma, I didn’t just stake Vladislav. I staked Vladislav, one of the oldest vampires.”
“So is that worse than staking a young vampire?” I asked.
He stared at me, not answering, and I suddenly grasped that he was in more trouble than he first let on.
“Laylen, you shouldn’t have let me go with you.” I told him, guilt choking up inside me.
“It was your choice, Gemma,” he said. “You should be able to choose what you want to do.”
“Well, I think I picked the wrong one.” I swallowed hard. “I’m really sor…” I stopped as a spark of electricity coiled up my spine. “Ah crap.”
“What’s the matter?” Laylen asked, his eyebrows dipping down.
Before I could tell him what was up, or try to find a place for us to hide, Laylen’s gaze darted over my shoulder, and I knew without even looking that we were so busted.
“So funny thing,” Alex’s voice came up from right behind me. “I was up in my room, and I just happened to look out the window. And boy was I surprised to find you two standing down here, in the middle of the night, for God knows what reason.”
I caught Laylen’s eye, and I tried to communicate to him telepathically what we should do. Of course, I didn’t have telepathic abilities and neither did Laylen so guess how well that went.
I shook my head, and decided to face the inevitable. I took a deep breath, and covering the bite on my neck with my hand, I turned to face Alex. I wasn’t too worried about what he was going to say to me. He could chew me out all he wanted—I was used to it. I just felt guilty because I knew Alex was going to put most of it on Laylen.
Alex’s eyes were all over me as if he could sense something was wrong. “What’s the matter with your neck?”
The lighting was scarce, so I was hoping that it was dark enough that he couldn’t see the blood dried up on my skin. “I have a kink in it.”
He gave me a yeah-right look. “You have a kink in it?”
I shrugged. “It happens.”
He shook his head, irritated. “So why are you two standing out here?”
I had no idea what to tell him and the way he was staring at me was making my brain all hazy.
“How about we go inside, and then we’ll tell you,” Laylen said restlessly.
Alex glanced back and forth between Laylen and me, looking a little lost. “Okay….Let's go inside, then.”
So apparently Alex had woken up Adessa when he’d seen Laylen and me standing outside in the dark. He had to wake her up or he wouldn’t have been able to walk out the front door without getting blasted by Adessa’s charms.
I still had my hand on my neck, trying to keep my bite mark hidden, as we stepped into the living room. But as the light hit me, I realized that there was blood all over Laylen’s black thermal shirt that I still had on, and there was no way to cover it up.
“What the hell is all over your shirt?” Alex asked as soon as he caught sight of me in the light. He came up and took a closer look at the thermal shirt I had on. “Is that blood?” Before I could answer, he picked up the hem of the shirt. “And why do you have Laylen’s shirt on?”
I yanked the hem of the shirt out of his grasp. “I have his shirt on because it was cold outside.”
He gave me a disbelieving look. “It’s like seventy degrees out there, Gemma.”
“Well, I get cold easily,” I said as casually as I could, which strangely enough sounded casual.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “So where’d the blood come from?”
“It came from—” Before I could finish coming up with a lie, he reached over and lifted my hand away from my neck.
He let out a sequence of too-inappropriate-to-repeat-words and then lunged for Laylen. Laylen, taken off-guard, stumbled back as Alex slammed into him, and both of them went crashing into the wall, causing the wall to crack.
Laylen quickly regained his footing, and he shoved Alex hard. But Alex barely budged.
“You bit her,” Alex said, coming at Laylen again. “Are you freaking crazy?”
“That’s not what happen—” I said, but was cut off as Laylen rammed into Alex, making them both fly backward and onto the apothecary table, which instantly buckled beneath their weight. It didn’t even faze either one of them as they rolled around on the tiled floor, crashing into the shelves and sofas, while they threw punches at each other.
I’d just decided that I might need to go get some help—because let’s face it I am not strong enough to stop a fight between a Keeper and a vampire—when Aislin and Adessa appeared in the doorway. Adessa was wearing a long navy blue robe decorated with bright pink flowers, and Aislin was dressed in a plaid pajama set.
“What in the world is going on?” Aislin screeched, her bright green eyes wide.
Laylen and Alex didn’t even so much as acknowledge she was there, still throwing swings at one another.