It’s dark by the time I feel calm enough to handle going back to the apartment. I don’t want to give anyone a reason to ask me questions, least of all Ruby. I want to pretend like this is just a regular day. I want to hang onto normal, or at least try to find it again.
And forget I blasted four guys away from me with whatever the hell that’d been.
My hands start shaking.
In a parking space on the street outside my building, I close my eyes and clench my fingers on the steering wheel. I can handle this. I’ll just go upstairs, tell Ruby I’m not hungry, hope she lets that excuse fly for a second time this week, and get into my room as fast as I can.
No problem.
Exhaling sharply, I release the steering wheel and push open the door.
Amar is waiting on the steps of my building.
I freeze. For a moment, it’s all I can do not to scream.
“Cait.” He pushes to his feet and starts toward me.
I retreat fast. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you stalking me?”
He pauses. “You never showed at Bianca’s today.”
I don’t know what to say. I feel ragged and frayed like the threads in that hospital girl’s Protection. “I never said I was coming.”
“You need help in this, Cait.”
“No, what I need is to be left alone! I need everyone to just leave me the hell alone! What the fuck is it to you how I handle this, huh? You just can’t keep out of other people’s business?”
Amar doesn’t move for a moment. His jaw muscles jump. “Fine.”
He turns to go.
My feet move before I register the impulse. “Wait, no. Amar, I’m sorry. Please.”
He stops. I shiver hard and hug my arms to myself. I can’t take this out on him. I don’t even know why I am, except maybe it’s because he’s safer than anything else in this crazy, apparently demonic world. But, God help me, that’s not a good reason. That’s not any kind of reason. That’s just cruel.
And I can’t drive away the only person with answers.
I wet my lips, trying to calm down. Answers, he might have, but right now, I sort of don’t want them. I don’t think I’ll be able to handle any more revelations, any more information about how much of a freak I’ve become. I just want it all to stop. I’m going to shatter if this madness doesn’t stop.
But I want him here too.
“Thank you,” I make myself continue. “Thank you for checking on me. I just—”
He glances back. My stomach flip-flops for no good reason.
“I’m sorry.” I choke out the words again.
He looks up and down the street quickly, almost like he’s checking for something, and then he comes back toward me. “What is it? What happened?”
It’s hard to breathe. “Bad day.”
He pauses. His attention flicks around the neighborhood again.
And then his hand takes mine.
My breathing stops. His palm is hard. Strong. Warm, but not like he’s nervous. His dark eyes don’t leave mine, and I can’t tell what I’m seeing in them. They’re just so deep, I could drown.
“Come with me,” he says quietly.
He turns, and my feet hurry to follow. My mind is stalled in that moment, though, reeling from the instant his fingers first touched mine.
We cross the grass, come to the corner of the house. The streetlight illuminates the yard, but the glow ends in a sharp line of shadow when it reaches the wall’s edge.
Amar looks back to me. “Deep breath. Don’t let go of my hand. Concentrate on staying with me.”
My brow furrows. His rises in response.
I nod quickly. I draw in a lungful of air.
He steps forward into the shadow, bringing me with him.
The air goes cold. Sharply frigid like a blast from a freezer for all of an instant, and then it becomes cool. Mist-like. Darkness blurs in front of my eyes like rushing fog on a moonless night. And then it’s over.
I stagger onto a grassy slope. We’re on a hill at the edge of a dark forest, and a swath of silver-touched grass is spread out ahead of us beneath the bright moon. In the distance, lights glisten. The city. We’re miles from town.
“You all right?” Amar asks.
I tug my focus to him. “What—” I swallow hard. “What was that?”
“Shadow-crossing. It’s one of the ways we get around.”
My head moves in a nod, as if those words were anything approaching normal. His mouth tightens.
“Over here.” He doesn’t let go of my hand when he starts toward the tree line.
I follow. A park bench comes into view amid the shadows, tucked away beneath a massive oak tree. I can see the dull line of a sidewalk behind it, the concrete weaving a serpentine path through the woods, and I realize we must be in Glacy Park, the nature preserve outside town.
He sits down on the bench, and I join him, but then his hand leaves mine. I battle back a surge of disappointment.
“So what happened today?” he asks me.
I tuck my hands away inside my sleeves and bundle my arms tightly against my stomach. I don’t know where to begin, so I don’t. “It’s nothing.”
He’s silent.
The words come anyway, grudgingly. “Some guys today. Friends of that boy that I… It’s not important.”
“Did they hurt you?”
I can hear an edge in his voice, cold and sharp as a knife.
