The fact that they locked us in the office is troubling, but it isn’t as if I’m trapped here. I’m a werewolf. I snap it easily. I’ll probably regret that, but I really need to find Kate.
I’m heading outside when I spot Holly making her way toward her room. I call a “Hey,” but like me, Holly is one of those people who hear a hail and presume it’s for someone else. By the time I call her name, she’s at her room. She sees me, and I motion her inside, where we can speak in private.
“Do you know where Kate is?” I ask. “She went looking for you.”
I bite back a growl of frustration. Before I can comment, Holly says, “Paige isn’t coming until tomorrow,” and explains what Kate heard.
“Do you know where Allan is?” I ask. “Sure, outside with some other sorcerers.”
I pause. “Who’s all outside? Mostly spellcasters?”
She frowns as she thinks. “Actually, yes. Spellcasters and a few minor races.”
“Any necromancers?”
“One, I think. I heard most are still sleeping. Partied hard enough to raise the dead, I guess. Let’s just hope they didn’t really raise any.”
I manage a small smile at the quip, but I’m considering what she’s said.
The spellcasters and minor races are hanging out, killing time. The necromancers are all exhausted, like the counselor.
“Can you do me a favor?” I ask. “Find Allan and stick together. Maybe stay in your room.” I raise my hands against her protest. “I know that sounds like an odd request, but whatever’s going on here, I believe it mostly affects the half-demons. I’m still working it out. We can talk once I find Kate.”
Before I can go, she taps my arm. “About Kate. She might be distracted, and just . . . go easy on her. Elijah broke it off. Yes, I know it wasn’t a real relationship, but he was weird about it, made her feel like he was actually dumping her. She really didn’t need that, especially after what happened with her last boyfriend.”
I pause. “Brandon? No, he was definitely on the receiving end of that breakup. Believe me. I’ve been dealing with him ever since, blowing up my phone trying to get back with her.”
She stares at me. “What?” I say.
“You’re still talking to him?”
“Why not? It didn’t have anything to do with me. He’s taking it really hard. Kate can be . . . tempestuous.” I smile. “I’d say she gets it from our dad, but it comes from both parents, really.”
Holly’s staring as if I’ve just sprouted hair and fangs, and I almost reach up to be sure I haven’t.
“Tempes—?” She bites the word off. “Are you actually siding with the asshole who screwed around on your sister?”
“What?” I’m sure I’ve misheard. Or she’s misunderstood something Kate said. “By screwed around, are you implying he had sex with another girl?”
“No, I’m implying they built a bookshelf together. Yes, he had sex with another girl because Kate wasn’t ready. Then he told her what he did, thinking that’d make her see the error of her ways. And when she didn’t give him another chance? He told everyone about it, and now she’s dealing with
crap from him and from your local cast of Mean Girls.” Now I’m the one staring. “Who told you this?”
“Who do you think told me? You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed. You guys go to the same school.”
“I . . . ”
“She’s your sister, Logan. Your twin sister. Did you even ask why they broke up? Maybe find out before you decide to play Cupid getting them back together.”
“I didn’t—”
She lifts her hands. “Never mind. This isn’t the time. Now you know, so when you see Kate, try showing a little compassion. I know you didn’t like her with Elijah, but he still hurt her. And she did absolutely nothing to deserve it.” She shakes her head. “Go, Logan. Your sister needs you.”
I’m trying very hard not to think of what Holly just told me. She’s right—we have more pressing concerns right now. But I keep thinking of Brandon texting me and pestering me at school, and me brushing him off politely, giving no sign that I had an issue with him, perhaps even showing enough consideration to suggest that I sympathized with his plight.
His plight.
His failure to harangue my sister into having sex with him. Harangue?
I almost laugh at the word. He did more than pester and plead, which would be bad enough. He screwed around with someone else and then told Kate.
See, other girls will have sex with me. Better get on this now, ’cause I am in demand.
I clench my fists and struggle against the urge to put one through the wall. A little voice whines that Kate should have told me, and now I feel sick
for hanging out with him, but that’s not my fault because I didn’t know what happened.
Bullshit.
I knew Kate was upset. I saw her sinking into what we called her “blue” moods. Not depression, but depressive states, retreating to her room when Mom and Dad weren’t around, because they’d notice.
I’d been there, though. I noticed. It was my responsibility to go to her and say, “What’s wrong?”
I knew she was upset over the breakup, but deep inside, I rolled my eyes and called her dramatic. Just Kate being Kate.
I can say I didn’t know about Brandon, but Nick hinted at it yesterday. I remember his shock on hearing I was in contact with Brandon. I might not have had a chance to pursue it with him, but I could have pursued it with her.
Hey, Kate. Nick seems to know something about Brandon I don’t. Can we talk about that?
Nope, instead, I was busy worrying about my roommate stomping off. A total stranger who didn’t even want my help. It made me feel good to be concerned for him. Virtue signaling. See what a nice guy I am? How considerate? Not the sort of brother who rolls his eyes at his sister’s pain and dismisses it as teenage-girl drama.
I bend at my bedroom door. Kate’s trail is there. I focus on that. It leads me upstairs and down the hall toward the office.
I remember those light footsteps. That careful rap on a door.
Not someone timidly approaching the counselors; Kate staging a break- in. Unable to find me, she’d taken matters into her own hands.
Off on an adventure by herself.
Giving up on me. While this is a small thing, it symbolizes so much more. Logan isn’t there for me. He’s been hanging out with my ex, not even asking why I broke it off. He’s been hanging out with the girls who are
bullying me.
She’d hate that word: bullying. But that’s what it was, and I can say I didn’t know, but I remember catching the odd snarky remark and dismissing it as jealousy. When she refused to join the popular clique at school, they took offense and twisted that into contempt. From “Who does she think she is?” to “Don’t you think she’s kinda weird?”
I thought it’d been a few backbiting comments, just typical stuff that Kate would ignore as she always did.
How much worse had it gotten?
Hint: she shut down her social media accounts.
Faint movement sounds inside the office. Footfalls hurrying to the door. I turn the knob and push, and Kate lets out a soft gasp, her mouth opening with, “I was looking for Tric—” Then she sees it’s me and grins, and it’s the grin I know so well, the grin I don’t get nearly as much these days.
I slide into the office and let the door close. Then I catch her up in a hug so sudden and fierce that she yelps before covering her reaction with a chuckle.
“Nice to see you, too, Lo.”
“Elijah is an asshole,” I say as I back up.
There’s a flicker of consternation that I know. Or maybe because I know and thought she would need that hug. She makes a face, such a Kate face. It’s a Mom face, too, throwing off concern, not wanting to be seen as the type of person who needs it.
She shrugs. “I’m not sure about asshole, but he’s something, that’s for sure.”
“He’s—”
I start to tell her that he’s Logan Jonsen’s half-brother. But this isn’t the time. It’s also not the time to say I know about Brandon, and I’m going to kick his ass. Well, not literally kick his ass. I’d like to—both his and Elijah’s
—but Kate wouldn’t want that, and I’m not sure once I started kicking that I’d stop. I’ll tear a verbal strip off them, instead. Not as satisfying, but safer.
“Forget about Elijah,” I say.
“I have,” she says. “For now, at least. I was just coming to find you.” “I know. I heard about Paige.”
“And it seems that’s the least of our worries.” Kate holds up my cell phone and shows a text she sent Paige, undelivered. My gaze shoots to the signal-strength indicators. There aren’t any.
“They’re blocking the signal,” I say. “I’m not surprised. That’s Draconian, but if they really want us offline this week, they need to do that. Someone’s bound to have smuggled in a cell-ready device.”
“It’s not a blocker,” she says. “They’ve removed the SIM card.” She walks over and picks up a printer paper carton. Inside is a jumble of cell phones. “They removed all the SIM cards and dumped the phones in here.”
Okay, this is different. This is worse. “We need to find those SIM cards,” I say.
“Agreed, and I was doing that, before . . .” She tugs me to the far wall and motions for me to crouch and inhale. It takes a moment. Then I detect the unmistakable odor of blood.
Kate’s already heading for the door. I follow. She checks the hall. It’s still silent, so we creep to the next door. Kate tries the handle. Then she snaps it and pushes open the door.
Inside is a dorm room like ours except this one is brightly lit from that windowed ceiling. Despite the light, though, someone is still in bed, and Kate draws back, as if to retreat. Then she inhales and audibly swallows. I know why. I tap her hip, saying I’ll go first, but of course she ignores me. She slips forward. I step into the room and shut the door behind me.
Kate continues to the bed. Despite the stifling heat, the covers are pulled up to the sleeper’s face. Kate stops, her nose wrinkling as she rubs it, banishing a smell.
She stands there, looking down, and I know she’s fighting the urge to check for vital signs. There’s no need. She realizes that from the smell. Not
the blood—that only signifies injury. It’s the other smell, that one from a corpse left in a sweltering hot room.
Kate draws back the comforter. It’s a female counselor, one I remember seeing at the counselors’ dining table yesterday. She’d sat near the end, focused on her meal, quiet as I spoke to the others. I’d presumed it was my presence making her uncomfortable. Perhaps not.
As Kate pulls off the comforter, the smell of decomp rises, freed from the sheets. Kate exhales, as if expunging it from her nose.
The bloodied top sheet sticks to the young woman’s body. Kate peels it back as I pad forward to see no signs of injury. There’s blood on the counselor’s T-shirt, but when Kate discreetly tugs that up, the young woman’s torso is nearly clean. I’m reminded of Mason’s fast-healing wound, but the real answer is the blood drying under from her nose. That’s the only sign of injury.
Like Mason yesterday when he’d been attacked in the forest. Dead, his only injury a bleeding nose.
Just like Mason.
Except, no one was here to revive her.