B00AO57VOY EBOK (18 page)

“I would like to resume my
lecture
today
, if you don’t mind, Miss Blaylock,” Ms. Cantrell said,
coldly. 

“Yes, Ms. Cantrell.”  

I slid out of my seat slowly
and gathered my things, my eyes locked with Nathan’s.  I could see how
uncomfortable he was with the idea of letting me out of his sight, but there
wasn’t anything he could do unless he wanted to get up and storm out.  I gave
him a weakly reassuring smile, and then walked slowly to the door.

The second the door closed
behind me, my nerves went into meltdown mode.  My eyes darted left and right at
a nausea-inducing speed as I made my way slowly toward the library.  The hall
was eerily empty and way too quiet.  My footsteps echoed around me, making me
think someone was following me.  I was so busy looking over my shoulder for my
invisible stalker that I nearly ran into the library door.

“Get a grip, Ember,” I
scolded myself, shaking my head in disgust.  “You’re going to give yourself a
heart attack and then where will you be?”

I smiled in relief when I
pushed open the door and saw who was waiting for me.  Kim turned away from the
librarian’s desk, where she was waving her hands and talking a mile a minute,
and smiled at me before giving me a conspiratorial wink.

“All right, Kimberly,” Mrs.
Fletcher said, confused, staring down at a piece of paper in her hands. 
“Headmaster Grayson didn’t say anything about your group meeting in the library
conference room today, but this all seems in order.  I wasn’t even aware we had
a Paranormal Studies Club.”

I had to suppress a snort of
laughter at that.  Kim always did have a warped sense of humor.

“We’re just getting it
kicked off,” Kim said, smiling winningly at her. 

“I assume you all will
behave according to library rules,” Mrs. Fletcher said, her chubby face not
pulling off the warning look she gave us over the tops of her square spectacles
the way Ms. Cantrell’s bony visage would have.  It was like watching one of
Santa’s elves trying to glare at someone.  Yeah, really scary stuff.

“Oh, yes, ma’am!” Kim said,
looping her arm through mine and beginning to tow me backwards toward the room
in question.  “We’ll be so quiet you’ll forget we’re even here.”

“Because we won’t be
,
”
she added to me in a whisper as we turned and fled to the privacy of the
conference room.

“What are we doing, Kim?” I
asked, sounding as grumpy as I felt, when she closed the door behind us.

“Naptime!”  Blake’s voice
coming from behind me made me jump again.  I had jumped so much in the last
four hours that I was beginning to feel like a jack-in-the-box.

“Don’t
do
that,” I
cried without thinking.  I wasn’t surprised when Kim slapped her hand over my
mouth with a hiss.

“Shut
up
,” she
whispered.  I took a deep breath and nodded and she removed her hand.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Em,”
Blake added, winking.  “As soon as Nate joins us, we’re outta here.”

“Why didn’t you just wait to
snatch me until the bell rang?” I asked moodily as I rubbed my forehead in a
futile effort to stop the pounding there that was in perfect rhythm with my
pulse.

“We were going to, but you
were dozing off in class,” Blake said, shuddering.  “I don’t even want to
think
about the kind of torture the Dragon Lady could come up with for someone
who fell asleep in the middle of one of her lectures.  I guess we probably just
saved you from hanging by your fingertips from the basement ceiling while you
recited the entirety of the Iliad or something—from memory.  A thank you is in
order, I believe.”

“Thanks.”  I rolled my eyes
at him.  Had he really just called
me
dramatic?  “Wait.  How do you know
I was dozing off?  You have Mr. Vargas this period.  His class is all the way
on the other side of the building.”

“I can see you when I focus
on you.  That’s something I’ve been doing a lot lately,” he explained.  Seeing
my ‘What the hell?!’ look, he shrugged.  “It’s called remote viewing.  How do
you think we found you yesterday?  It’s a pretty handy gift to have when you’re
friends with a danger magnet like you.”

I grimaced at that and he
chuckled.  Giving him a stern look for picking on me when I was too tired to really
defend myself, Kim put her arm around my shoulders and led me to a comfortable
chair in the corner of the room to wait for Nathan. 

I wanted to ask how they
were going to cover our asses with the bogus Paranormal Studies Club, but I was
too tired to really care.  All I could think about was finding something to eat
that I could inhale between yawns to fight the hunger pains making it feel like
there was something gnawing at my insides—that, and my nice, soft pillow. 
Somehow, I didn’t think my afternoon classes would be on the agenda.  I wanted
to cringe when I thought about what my repeated absences were doing to my GPA.

Sitting down was obviously a
bad idea, though, because I immediately felt myself dozing off again.  I was
right at the threshold of sleep where you feel like your body has started to
float away when I sensed that Nathan had arrived.  It took more energy than I
thought I had left to make myself open my eyes.  I felt like I deserved a pat
on the back when I finally managed it, only to find all three of them smiling
at me.

“Was I snoring?”  Blushing,
I reached up to make sure I hadn’t started drooling or something.

“You look dead on your feet,
Em,” Blake said, looking kind of worried.

“We should get her home,”
Nathan murmured.  “Kim, are you doing the honors?  I’ll catch a ride with
Blake.”

“Huh?” I mumbled, confused. 
Why would he be riding with Blake when his car was in the student lot?

“We’re teleporting, Em,” Kim
explained with a patient smile.  “We’ll come back for the cars later.  Right
now, we’re just trying to get you home so you can lie down before you fall
down. This is the quickest way. 

“Now, take a deep breath and
don’t throw up on me,” she said sternly, coming over to pull me out of the
chair.  “It kind of sucks the first time, so brace yourself.”

I figured out what that
warning was all about a second later.  I’d only teleported once before, by
accident, but the feeling that I was being shoved through a straw wasn’t one
I’d forgotten.  The insane whirl of color that accompanied that feeling was
enough to make my stomach start to heave.  About the best thing I could say
about the experience was that it woke me up a little. 

“It’s a bit uncomfortable at
first, but you’ll get used to it,” Kim said, sympathetically, when I clutched
her arm to keep myself from falling over when we reappeared in Nathan’s living
room.  I clapped a hand over my mouth to hopefully hold back the nausea that
was making my stomach feel like I was on a ship on rough seas, and Kim backed
up before asking, “You still want something to eat?”

“Smartass,” I managed to rasp
out after a second.  “I don’t think I’m ever going to want anything to eat
again, thanks.”

Without warning, my feet
flew out from under me and a little scream slipped past my lips before I realized
Nathan was holding me.  I glared up at him, but he just kissed the tip of my
nose and turned toward the bedroom. 

The house still felt like a
deep freeze, and I tried to burrow closer to Nathan as I started shivering. 
That chill once would have bugged me, but I suddenly found it reassuring.  My
army of unseen protectors hadn’t abandoned me.  I could go to sleep without
worrying that Bastian was going to show up and slit my throat in my sleep. 

Just knowing that had my
eyes closing.  I tried to open them again, but the muscles that controlled the
action rebelled.  I didn’t even fight them.  I was too tired.

I woke up a little when
Nathan gently laid me in the middle of the bed and pulled the covers over me,
adding another blanket to help warm me up when I continued to shiver.  It took
me a second to process the fact that he wasn’t planning on staying with me, and
when I finally understood I panicked.  I reached out and grabbed his shirt,
curling my fist in the material and holding on for dear life.

Don’t think I don’t know
just how pathetic I had become.  Me, the poster child for the independent young
woman, afraid to sleep alone.  As far as I was concerned, that was the very
bottom of the pathetic
barrel
.  I was instantly disgusted with myself
and made myself loosen my grip.

“We’re not going to leave
you, baby,” Nathan said soothingly, sitting down on the edge of the bed and
caressing my cheek.  “We’re just going in the other room so we can talk without
disturbing you.  I promise we’ll be right here when you wake up.  You won’t be
alone for even a second.”

Forcing my panic down so I
wouldn’t look like such a baby, I let go of his shirt and balled my hand into a
fist, tucking it under the pillow so he couldn’t see that my fingernails were
nearly drawing blood.  He must have noticed, because he continued to sit there,
murmuring to me in that calming, seductive way of his until my eyes closed
again.

I would love to say it was
the best sleep I’d ever had, but that was so far from the truth that it wasn’t
even in the same galaxy.  In fact, I would say it won the Worst Nap of a
Lifetime award.  It was like the second my mind quit fighting to stay awake,
the nightmare that was waiting for me pounced. 

I was running down the hall
of the abandoned west wing of Oakhurst Academy, tripping over the hem of a
ridiculous dress that kept getting tangled around my feet.  I glanced down and
saw that I was in a low-cut white gown and that what the dress was actually
getting tangled around was the heels of the stilettos I was wearing. 

Desperately, I kicked them
off and kept running, holding the skirt of my gown up so that I wouldn’t trip
on it and break my neck.  There was something there, something I had to find. 
My life depended on it.  My life and the life of someone I loved.  The terror I
felt at the very thought of losing him told me who that someone was.

Unlike the last time I had
been there, every door was open and bright moonlight was filtering in through
the high windows, making everything look even more sinister as it illuminated
rooms filled with old desks and other things that had been stored there to get
them out of the way. 

I saw a flickering golden
light coming from one of the rooms at the end of the hall and raced toward it
without even the slightest hesitation.  I knew what that light was, but I
didn’t care.  I had to get to Nathan.  And if I had to walk through fire to do
it, so be it.

I stopped in the doorway and
a scream froze in my throat.  Nathan was kneeling in the center of the room and
Bastian was standing over him swinging a massive sword like a baseball player
taking practice swings.  Some part of my brain tried to make sense of the scene
playing out before me, but it wasn’t working out.  Nathan was more than a match
for Bastian, I had seen that firsthand.  Why was he just sitting there, waiting
to die?

I tried to cry out his name,
but my voice was locked in my throat along with my screams.  The low sound of Bastian’s
laughter, the pure triumph I heard in it, was the most terrifying thing I had
ever heard. 

And in the middle of the
room, I was burning.  I could see my hair lifting in the flames.  I froze, too
petrified to move, and stared.  I watched as those strands of hair caught
fire.  I couldn’t turn away as they turned as black and crispy as the skin on
my arms, my chest, my face.  I just stood there, trying not to gag, and watched
myself burn.

I snapped out of it,
remembering what I was really there for, when my mark started burning
fiercely.  I reached up to rub it as I ran into the room.  I screamed Nathan’s
name just as the sword came down on the back of his neck.  I fell to my knees,
sobbing, as his head rolled toward me and stopped a few feet away.  His eyes
were open, those beautiful hazel eyes I had loved so much, and I felt my heart
shatter into microscopic fragments that no one would ever be able to put back
together as I watched the light go out of them.

I didn’t look away from
Nathan’s glazed eyes until a shadow fell over me.  Slowly, I looked up to see Bastian
standing over me, smiling victoriously.  It was more than I could stand.  All
my pain coalesced into a burning flame of hate that was hotter than any fire
could have ever been.  I could feel the heat of it spreading through me and
welcomed that heat with open arms. 

The last thing I saw was
fire, the last thing I felt was vengeance, and the last sound I heard was my
own inhuman scream as the world exploded around me in a burst of radiant golden
light.

A sharp pain in my cheek
finally tore me out of my nightmare, and I opened my eyes to see Kim standing
over me, her hand raised to slap me again if the first one didn’t do the job. 
The second my eyes opened, she started to cry and grabbed me up in a
bone-crushing hug.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.  “I
didn’t know what else to do.  You wouldn’t wake up and you just kept screaming
and screaming…”

I patted her on the back
consolingly while she cried, my eyes finding and holding Nathan’s.  The part of
me that was still stuck in the nightmare waited for them to glaze over, but
they stayed bright and shining on mine.

Don’t think about it!  Don’t
think about it!  
I told myself, trying to dispel the horrible dream even as
it started an instant replay in my head.  For some reason, I didn’t think it
was a dream at all.  It felt like a warning.  It had been too vivid, too…real. 
It was like I had seen the not-too-distant future.  My future.

I had just had a front row
seat to the high definition version of my own death.

At least there was no
mystery to solve, no date to guess at and dread.  There was only one reason I
would have been running down the deserted corridors of Oakhurst Academy in a
formal gown.  The Black and White Ball was an OA tradition.  It signaled the
end of Senior Goof Week.  And if my nightmare came true, it signaled the end of
something much more important.