Revival (The Variant Series, Book 1) (3 page)

“What the crap?” Alex mumbled.

They were still a good 150 yards from shore and there was
no way
he’d crossed the entire pier and made it to the boardwalk in less than ten seconds. So where had he disappeared to?

“What the what?” Cassie arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow in confusion. “Alex, what is it?”

“That guy from the store—”

“The hot one?” Cassie chimed.

“Yeah.” Alex wandered to the railing and peered over the edge. Surely he didn’t dive off the pier… The tide was too low. It would be suicide.

A seagull gazed dolefully up at her, but there was no sign of Mr. Military Jacket. He’d vanished.

“He was standing right there a second ago, I swear!”

Cassie glanced around. “Well he’s gone now. Shame, too. He’s exactly the sort of distraction you need this afternoon.”

— 3 —

B
abysitting.

Declan O’Connell had been reduced to
babysitting
.

This was so humiliating. He was going to have to have a talk with Grayson when he got home. Surely his punishment for last month’s misunderstanding should be nearing an end.

It wasn’t his fault they needed a new roof in the atrium. That had been entirely Nathaniel’s doing. Declan had merely supplied a little motivation. It was the Golden Boy that did the glass breaking.

So how was it that the Golden Boy kept picking up all the choice jobs, while Declan was stuck trailing around after high schoolers?

He leaned heavily against the brick wall of the alley and watched as his target disappeared into a restaurant across the street, only to reappear a few moments later on the wraparound patio, trailing after a hostess. They settled in at a table overlooking the water.

At least with this vantage point he wouldn’t have to follow them into the restaurant.

She’d spotted him twice already. Not that he was particularly trying to hide from her at this point. It made things easier when the target didn’t know he was there, sure, but there wasn’t any hard and fast rule about it.

Declan had been shadowing the pair for nearly an hour before he’d realized that something was off.

Usually, his job involved protecting innocent humans from the monsters that walked amongst them unnoticed. From the things that went bump in the night. Things a whole lot like him, just without the charm … or a functioning moral compass.

Judging from the haze of static electricity that followed the girl around like a rain cloud, however, there was something very different about this mark.

Playing a hunch, he’d broken his cover and followed the two girls into a clothing shop. Ten minutes later the store’s registers were toast and his suspicions had been confirmed.

He wondered if the girl knew what she was.

Better yet, he wondered if Grayson had known when he’d given Declan the assignment and just hadn’t said anything.

“I want you to keep an eye on the girl, Declan
.”

“No other specifics?”

“Just keep her away from bookstores, if you can.”

Bookstores.

Thanks, Grayson. That helps.

Apparently whoever said, “no harm ever came from reading a book” hadn’t met this girl.

Grayson’s orders were usually pretty detailed. The fact that these weren’t could mean a couple of things. Either Grayson didn’t
know
the specifics of the danger the girl was facing, or he
did
, but for whatever reason, he felt Declan didn’t need to know.

It was the second possibility that worried him.

He didn’t think that Grayson would ever intentionally send him out on an assignment at a disadvantage—but if Grayson felt like he couldn’t trust Declan with the details, then Declan wanted to know why.

The cell phone tucked in his jacket pocket began to vibrate. He fished it out and checked the screen.

The caller ID read “GRAYSON.”

Declan narrowed his eyes at the shuddering phone. Weird. Grayson never called anyone while they were in the field. He knew better.

Returning his gaze to the restaurant patio, Declan answered the call. “Miss me already?”

“I want an update on the girl.”

Declan considered telling him what he’d learned about her, and then thought the better of it. That could wait. “She’s spending the day shopping with a friend.”

“Shopping?”

“Clothes shopping. No bookstores in sight. Not so far, anyway.”

“Hmm.”

“You going to tell me why this girl is so special you’re calling me for updates? My next check-in’s not for another two hours.”

“Just do your job, Declan. Keep her safe.”

The line went dead.

If Declan had been suspicious before, now he was outright convinced that something was up.

What was so important about this girl?

*   *   *

“You need to work on being a bitch.”

“I… what?” Alex nearly choked on her latte. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re too nice!” Cassie punctuated the sentence by slamming her styrofoam cup onto the counter.

They’d spent another two hours after their lunch at The Mainsail shopping before Alex could convince Cassie that it was time for another break. She was praying that the caffeine fix wouldn’t leave Cassie too wired to consider making their way to the beach.

Alex wasn’t sure she was up for another round of shopping at the hands of the fashionista she claimed as her best friend. She was fairly certain that neither her tired feet nor her aunt’s borrowed MasterCard would survive the massacre intact.

For the moment, anyway, Cassie seemed content to sit there in the window of Bayside Brews watching the tourists wander the boardwalk. She had her digital camera sitting on the counter in front of her and was occasionally snapping off pictures of the men who passed by wearing ridiculous Hawaiian shirts.

Alex wasn’t sure what her friend planned on doing with all those images and, to be honest, she was a little scared to ask.

Like Alex’s Aunt Cil, Cassie was constantly creating. But while her aunt preferred to stick with more traditional mediums, such as oil painting and working with ceramics, Cassie’s creations tended to be of a much more
modern
bent.

Alex rarely got their meaning.

Physical works of art like those created by her aunt and her best friend didn’t
move
her by their beauty, so much as
perplex
her by their overly subjective nature.

Now
words
, on the other hand… Those she understood.

The countless stacks of books piled high in every corner of her bedroom attested to that, as did the half a dozen leather-bound journals she’d filled to the brim with her thoughts and stories.

Plot, characterization, metaphor. Those she understood. Half-naked sculptures of a man sporting a giant cube where his head ought to be? Um. Not so much.

“Niceness—
especially
for someone in your position—is no good,” continued Cassie. “It turns you into a doormat.”

“When did being nice become a bad thing?” asked Alex.

“The second Connor and Jessica ripped out your heart and danced a jig on it, that’s when. Back in the shop, you should have been tearing Connor a new one, not giving serious consideration to
talking
to the jerk.”

“But I—”

“And don’t even try to tell me you weren’t considering it, because I saw the look in your eye, Lex. You were about two seconds away from hearing him out. That’s the only time in my life I’ve ever been grateful to see Jessica Huffman walk into a room,” Cassie shook her head. “After the whole computer lab thing you completely lost your backbone! Not that you had much of one to begin with.”

“Hey!”

“I’m only telling you this because you’re my friend and I love you. And because I know that somewhere, deep down, there’s an Alex that has some
moxie
just waiting to break through.”

Alex swirled the coffee around in the bottom of her cup. Suddenly it wasn’t all that appetizing.

“Oh, honey,” said Cassie, snatching up her camera. “Who let you out of the house in
that
?”

It wasn’t what Cassie had said that bothered her, exactly. It was the fact that she might have a point.

Sticking up for herself had never really been Alex’s strong suit. Generally, she avoided conflict like the plague. Before the computer lab incident, that had never really been an issue. But now…

Well, these days, conflict seemed to be all she was capable of attracting.

“Speaking of the she-devil.” Cassie directed a withering glare out the window. “There goes Jessica and her merry band of bootlickers. God-forbid any of them let an original thought enter their pretty little heads. The world as we know it would probably unravel.”

“Jessica’s world would, anyway.”

Emily, Marcie, and Veronica—Jessica’s perpetual, sycophantic shadows—trailed obediently behind their leader as they bypassed the coffee shop in favor of the frozen yogurt place next door.

As she passed by the window, Veronica caught sight of Alex sitting at the counter. Biting her bottom lip, Vee averted her gaze and hastened to catch up with her friends.

Alex sighed.

Talk about not having a backbone
.

Before the computer lab incident, Vee and Alex had been on pretty good terms. Jessica’s crowd and Alex’s had never been all that close, but the line’s separating the two cliques had been just blurry enough to allow for a relative peace between the groups. Alex and Vee had even been lab partners in chem class the previous semester.

But after Jessica’s plans to steal herself a boyfriend resulted in a demolished computer lab and Alex’s exile from Bay View High’s social scene, Vee had stopped speaking to her entirely.

“Hey!” said Cassie. “What the heck is wrong with this thing?”

The camera in Cassie’s hands was zooming in and out, apparently of its own volition. She set it down on the counter.

“Alex?” Cassie was eyeing the camera as though she expected it to blow at any moment.

“It’s not me,” said Alex. “I’m not doing anything this time.”

The camera zoomed in on something across the street, snapped off a picture, zoomed out and then returned to the standby setting.  Cassie picked it up gingerly, as though she were afraid that it might still shock her.

“Okay,” Cassie mumbled as she inspected the view screen. “That’s kinda creepy.”

“What is?”

Cassie handed her the camera. 

Standing in the center of the frame, leaning against the railing that lined the walkway, was Mr. Military Jacket. He was staring directly into the camera, a self-assured smile on his face… and he was
waving
.

Alex looked quickly out the window in the direction the picture had been taken. He was gone. Again. When she glanced back at the camera, the image had disappeared.

With one last beep, the camera turned itself off.

Alex glanced nervously out the window.

“Excuse me, miss?”

A heavy hand came to rest on her shoulder and Alex nearly jumped out of her skin. As she whipped around, she heard the barista’s startled cry and the crackling sound of electricity arcing from a nearby socket. She didn’t need to look to know that the espresso machine was toast.

People really needed to stop sneaking up on her like this.

The owner of the hand turned toward the commotion behind the counter and Alex let out a slow breath of relief.

It wasn’t the guy in the military jacket. Just a middle-aged man with shoulder length salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was dressed in dark jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and a brown vest. His thin, wire-rimmed glasses gave him the unassuming appearance of a college professor.

Somewhere behind her, the espresso machine ground to a halt with one final ratcheting death rattle. Alex cringed. That machine had probably cost more than her Jeep. The barista behind the counter unleashed a string of curses far more colorful than the ones the clothing-store clerk had employed.

The man smiled politely. “I believe you dropped this,” he said.

Alex registered his Scottish accent with distraction and stared at his outstretched hand. He was holding her wallet between two fingers. She was positive that her wallet was still safe inside her satchel in an interior zippered compartment, where she always kept it.

Alex took the wallet from him and flipped it open. The mugshot she’d had taken at the local DMV almost a year earlier stared back at her. The wallet was hers alright. “Thank you. I didn’t even realize I’d dropped it…”

In fact, she was almost certain she hadn’t.

She unlatched the cover flap of her satchel and unbuttoned the tab that held the main compartment closed. The interior pocket was still zipped tight. She opened it.

Empty.

How had it fallen out?

“No trouble,” said the man. “Saw it over there by the door. Lucky you were still here.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Lucky.”

She returned the wallet to where it belonged and spun back around, intent on thanking him again.

The sitting area was empty. Alex’s gaze swept across the coffee shop and then out the window to the now deserted, sun-drenched boardwalk.

“Where did he…?” Cassie trailed off. “Okay, that’s it. I need some vitamin D if I’m going to be expected to deal with all this weirdness. It’s time for the beach.”

*   *   *

Vitamin D did the trick.

Alex spent the next three-and-a-half hours on a deserted strip of beach, listening to the sound of waves crashing against the shore and working on her tan lines.

No weird guys who were there one second and gone the next, no fried electronics, just a few hours by the shore with her best friend.

This
was what she’d been hoping for when she agreed to a day at the boardwalk with Cassie.

She brushed a few errant grains of sand from her feet and slipped them back into her socks.

“You’ve got to be the only person on the planet who wears jeans and Chuck Taylor’s for a day at the beach,” said Cassie.