Secret of Betrayal: Book Two of The Destroyer Trilogy (3 page)

“Well, Jen writes the gossip column on the
school blog. She wants to be a reporter.”

Now Milo seems to be getting it. “So you’re
worried she’ll try to follow you around and get stories about you?”

Okay, maybe he isn’t getting it, not completely
anyway. “Jen writing stories about me is the least of my concerns. I’m not
going to give her anything worth writing about…if I can help it.”

“Why then?”

“Because, Freak Boy,” Lance says, reverting to
his not-so-nice nickname for Milo. Milo takes a menacing step forward to make
good on my earlier threat. I don’t stand in his way. Lance sidesteps Milo’s
advance and continues before things get ugly. “As I was saying, Libby’s mom has
been itching to get her claws into Jen for years. She’s a
Concealor
herself, remember? She recognized Jen’s talents a long time ago. She’ll try to
recruit Jen and use her, maybe against Libby, maybe against other people.”

“Hopefully not against me.
With how close Jen and I used to be, her talents will be more effective against
me than anyone else.”

“And Jen can be ruthless when she wants the
truth about something,” Lance adds.

Milo sighs and lets his shoulders slouch.
“Great, just what we need.”

My thought exactly. First Braden, now Jen. This
day is quickly climbing up my sucky
days
list. And
it’s a pretty long list.
One that includes accidentally
killing my father.
The bell blares through the hallway and everyone
starts to scatter. Milo and I have our next class, Perception, together, but
Lance has to make it across campus for his. Not that it will take him more than
a few seconds to do it.

“Hey, what was going on in your Spiritualism
class today?” Lance asks. “I was getting some really weird vibes from you
earlier.”

Milo instantly tenses up at the mention of Lance
being able to sense my emotions. They both swore Guardian Oaths to protect me,
giving them a tangible link to me. But despite the fact that Lance and I are in
no way romantically involved, anymore, he is the only one who can sense more
than whether or not I am in danger. That reality makes Milo insanely jealous.
It doesn’t exactly tickle me pink, either.

When Milo first found out that Lance could sense
more than when I was in danger, he wondered why he couldn’t. Unfortunately, I
knew the answer. When I told Milo that the strength of an Oath depends on a
person’s commitment to protecting that person it didn’t go over well. He
thought I was saying that Lance was more committed to protecting me than he
was. It took me a while to make him realize that wasn’t true.

Lance and I have known each other for longer.
We’ve been through injuries, fights, and deaths together. Our connection as
friends goes back farther than mine with Milo, so he had more understanding to
draw from when he made his Oath. He knows from experience how hard protecting
me can be. When he made his Oath, he knew full well what it might cost him.
Milo loves me without a doubt, but our relationship is new. I have every faith
that eventually Milo will be able to feel what Lance feels.

The fact that Milo can’t feel my emotions right
now, and that Lance keeps flaunting that he can, is driving us both crazy. For
a moment, I think this is just more of the same, but then I remember Braden.
The queasy, nauseating feeling I get every time I think about Lance sifting
through my emotional responses becomes ten times worse and nearly staggers me.
He can’t know about Braden, especially not the conflicted way I feel about him.

I panic, and hurriedly fall back on my earlier
conversation with Milo. “We were working on finding our own spirits. I almost
got it a couple of times,” I say hoping that will explain the occasional
pleasure and ease I felt around Braden, “but for the most part I just got
really frustrated.”

And that should take care of the bulk of my
conversation with Braden, talk which was definitely guilt-ridden and
unpleasant. “Sorry if I distracted you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lance says, “I was only
in history, anyway. No biggie. I was just concerned.”

“Just drop it,” I say.

“Oh, before I forget, Celia texted me earlier …”
He pauses to enjoy Milo’s reaction.

Milo’s grimace is now showing teeth at the
mention of his little sister having anything to do with Lance.
Great.
Lance knows how much Celia’s talking to him irritates
Milo.

“Why?” Milo demands.

Lance throws up his hands in defense. “Sorry,
but this really is about work.”

“Then get on with it,” I say.  

“Fine,” Lance says. “She said the Facebook page
she set up for you got another thousand friend requests over the weekend.
All family members of Ciphers.
There are dozens of posts
asking if you’ve contacted them yet, if they’re okay, can they help you in any
way. It’s pretty awesome that so many people are backing you up.”

“Yeah,” I say slowly. Thousands of friend
requests…all of them waiting impatiently for me to tell them their lost family
members are safe and sound and rescued. The pressure that’s been building
around me doubles. Any second now, my knees are going to buckle, and the weight
of my continued failure is going to flatten me like a cartoon character that
just had a run-in with a steamroller.

“There was even a friend request from someone we
know,” Lance continues. “Evan Lewis.”

“Doesn’t he live a few houses down from you?”

“Yeah.
Remember how his
older brother died in that skiing accident?”

“Sure, over Christmas break last year. The trip
was a birthday present, wasn’t it?”

Lance nods. “Sixteenth birthday to be exact, but
he didn’t die skiing. He didn’t die at all. He’s a Cipher. Evan actually sat
next to me in history today and asked me how things were going. People are
starting to come around.
Some of them, anyway.”

“That’s great, Lance.”

It really is, but the idea of so many people
counting on me is still a bit stifling. Celia keeps trying to get me more
interested in keeping up with what she’s doing online, but I don’t think I want
to get too involved in all that right now. “Milo, will you ask Celia to take
care of the online stuff for the time being?”

“No problem,” he says, “but are you sure you
don’t want to handle it? It would probably mean a lot to the families if you
had more contact with them.”

I know that’s true, but I can’t add that
pressure to what I already have. “I really don’t have time to spend online like
that, and she’s a lot better at social networking than I am.”

“That’s true,” Lance laughs. “Every time I check
out my news feed ninety percent of them are from Celia.”

“I’m sure Celia will be fine with taking care of
the online side,” Milo says.

“Oh yeah, Celia said she’d call you this
afternoon about monitoring Jen’s blog too. She said you asked her to keep you
updated on everything Jen posts. She didn’t say when she was going to call,
though. I can ask her if you want.”

“No thanks,” Milo says tightly, “I think Libby
can handle talking to Celia on her own. Aren’t you going to be late for class,
Lance?”

Lance scoffs, but he really does need to get
going. He’s fast, but he’s not capable of teleporting. “I’ll keep an eye on Jen
when I can, too,” Lance says. “Later.”

Lance dashes off without another word, but the
irritation he left in his wake puddles around us. The next time he and Milo get
in each other’s faces, I am definitely not breaking them up. If Lance is going
to insist on pissing Milo off like this, he deserves whatever Milo lays out.

“I really can’t stand him,” Milo says through
his teeth.

“I’m not too fond of him right now, either,” I
say, flipping my long, chestnut hair over my shoulder to expose the one-inch scar
there. The reminder that Lance tried to kill me the night of my Inquest doesn’t
do much to sate Milo’s anger, but it does remind him that I have absolutely no
romantic feelings left for Lance. At the moment, our tenuous friendship is on
the chopping block as well.

“If he doesn’t stop, I am going to make him,”
Milo says.

“I won’t get in your way.”

The glint in Milo’s eyes is maybe a little too
eager.

“But we need him right now, so please don’t kill
him yet,” I ask.

“Yet,” Milo agrees.

It’s the best I’m going to get from him. “Come
on, we’re late for class.”

Ms. Hernandez scowls at us as we walk to our
seats. Well, I think she’s mostly just scowling at me. She absolutely adores
Milo now. It’s a huge change from last semester when she spent most of her
mental power trying to think up reasons to send him to detention. After our
confrontation with Braden where I announced to the world that Milo used to be a
Cipher, a person with no talents at all, and that I had managed to unlock an
amazing six talents with a second Inquest, Ms. Hernandez has been hounding Milo
to see what he can do. She even came to his house a couple of times over
Christmas break, something which was a little weird in my opinion.

Of course, she wasn’t the only person trying to
talk to Milo. The media storm that assaulted me after my Inquest, but later
lost interest due to unbelief in who I was and the fact that I never did
anything interesting, reappeared at Milo’s front door. They hounded him for
almost two weeks straight. They hounded me, too, but whether most of the world
believes in me or not, they all saw what I did at the theater. A few
threats—not to mention they all remembered how I punched a reporter in the face
after my Inquest—and most of the reporters decided to quit bugging me directly.
Now they only try to follow me everywhere I go. None of them last very long.
I’ve had too much practice getting away from them at this point, plus I know
how to block the Concealment most reporters employ to find their stories.

Milo, on the other hand, actually surprised me
by not shying away from the attention. He gave several interviews, showed
everyone his diktats, and told the entire world that he supported me. I refused
to go on camera with him, but I couldn’t have been more proud. Eventually, the
media started getting in the way of us training without an audience, so Milo
too has become adept at ditching the news crews. If only he was as good at
getting away from his teachers.

I think Ms. Hernandez’s sudden interest is
partly trying to make up for being so awful to Milo before. It really wasn't
his fault he couldn’t do any of the homework she assigned last semester, since
at the time he didn’t actually have any Perception. Her interest is also due to
the fact that, like me, she quickly discovered that Milo’s Perception talent is
incredible. It’s the reason he was able to subconsciously use it very
effectively most of his life. His ability to block his emotions from me without
realizing what he was doing was what made me think he wasn’t talentless in the
first place.

Ms. Hernandez continues to scowl at me through
the entire class, but by the end of the hour she’s grinning at Milo and
complimenting him prodigiously. It’s almost enough to make me jealous. The
slightly
creeped
out expression on Milo’s face—and
the way he keeps trying to get away from her—prevents me from worrying too
much.
Although, it would make me feel better if Ms. Hernandez
was an overweight grandmother rather than an attractive woman in her early
thirties.

The bell ringing interrupts her gushing, and
Milo scrambles to get down the aisle and away from her eager attention. It
makes me laugh that sometimes he still forgets he has all the talents he needs.
If he tapped his Speed right now he would be out of her reach before she could
blink. I have to stifle a chuckle as he nearly trips over someone’s bag in his
hurry. Only my reaching Milo’s side makes our persistent teacher back off. I
throw her a catty smile for good measure and pull Milo into the hallway.

“I almost wish I was still a Cipher after that,”
Milo groans.

“Don’t worry,” I say as I pull myself against
his chest, “I’ll be there to make sure she keeps her interest strictly
academic.”

Milo laughs, a welcome sound, and leans in to
kiss me when a terrified scream rips through the hall.

Chapter 3

Mixed Feelings

We spin around in the direction of the scream
and I find myself staring at Casey Harper curled up on the ground, clutching
her head and screaming. Her friends are kneeling down next to her, but I dash
forward anyway. We’re not friends. I barely even know her, but she sits in
front of me in Spiritualism, and I know she is farther along than anyone else
in the class. If she’s been dabbling around in the spirit world without a
guide, she might be in serious trouble. I drop to my knees beside her,
scattering her friends in an instant.

“Casey,” I say as I shake her shoulder, “are you
all right? What’s wrong? Can you hear me?”

Another wailing shriek bursts out of her before
she suddenly quiets. Her eyes are closed, and her
body limp
.
I recognize the signs of a trance right away and change tactics.
Wrangling
my fledgling Spiritualism, I send my spirit away
from my body. The clash of my intruding spirit against hers sends a jolt
through her body. I keep pushing until I reach her consciousness. Instead of
the focused core that should be there, I find a warbling mass of fear.
Something I don’t immediately recognize has ahold of her and is refusing to let
go.

“Casey,” I whisper through my spirit, “what’s
going on? Are you okay?”

“Libby?” she yelps in surprise.

“Yes, are you okay?”

“Thank goodness you’re here! They want you,” she
says, trembling and struggling viciously against the spiritual bonds I can see holding
onto her. “They’re screaming at me! You have to talk to them! Please, Libby!”