Refuge(59)

Once I had arranged my T-shirt so it no longer looked like a second skin, I stepped out from behind him, hoping my face wasn’t as red as it felt. The first face I saw was Chris’s, and he quirked one corner of his mouth at me but wisely kept his thoughts to himself.

“Nikolas, we need to talk when you have a minute,” Tristan said, and Nikolas nodded tersely. There was an undercurrent in their communication that I couldn’t read, but it sounded serious.

“If you don’t need me, I’d like to get cleaned up,” I said to Tristan, who glanced at Nikolas and told me to take the rest of the day off. I wasted no time escaping to my room where I spent half an hour showering kark poop out of my hair and skin and mourning the loss of my St. Patrick’s hoodie and my favorite jeans. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror drying my hair and wondering if Roland could score another hoodie for me. I hadn’t really been involved in much at high school, but now that I was no longer there, I found myself holding onto the things that reminded me of that part of my old life.

I felt immeasurably better once I was clean, and I was trying to decide how to spend the afternoon when my stomach growled loudly. It was lunchtime, and I’d barely touched my breakfast, but I was loath to go down to the dining hall. I was pretty sure that by now, the whole place knew what had happened and everyone was asking the same question. Why had the karks attacked only me?

It was a question I had avoided thinking about since I left the main hall. If karks did not attack people, someone had to have done something to send them after me. And if Nikolas was right and something on my clothing had attracted them, then how did it get there? Or more importantly, who put it there? It had to be someone in the hall, or at least someone I’d come into contact with today. I made a mental list of everyone I had been near this morning and quickly dismissed it. Nikolas and Chris would never harm me, and I found it difficult to believe Jordan or Olivia would either. Besides, the two girls had sat across the table from me at breakfast and neither of them got close enough to touch me. There was too much chaos in the main hall to remember who had been near me. The only people I recalled touching me were Nikolas, Tristan, Chris, Michael, and Celine.

The last name gave me pause. Celine obviously disliked me, and we had been in very close contact when I fell on top of her, which would have given her ample opportunity to mark my clothes with something that would attract the karks. And she had taken off right after that. I stared out my window without seeing anything. Could jealousy really have driven her to try to hurt me?

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that thought. Celine jealous of me? Hardly. She was stunningly gorgeous and could have any man she desired. There was no need for her to do something so drastic when she could easily have Nikolas if she wanted him. And if he wanted someone like her then . . . oh, what did it matter to me anyway?

Snatching up the phone, I dialed Roland’s number. He should be just now getting home from school and I needed to hear his voice.

“Hey,” he answered breathlessly like he had been scrambling for his phone. “Everything okay?”

I carried the phone over to my bed where I flopped down on my back. “Why do you think something is wrong?”

“Well, because you never call this early and I haven’t heard from you in two days.”

My free hand slapped my forehead. Crap. Nikolas’s sudden return threw me off so much yesterday that I’d forgotten to call Roland. Now I had to tell him about the karks and the lamprey demons all at once. “It’s been kind of nuts here the last few days. Nikolas came back yesterday.”

“Ah.” It was amazing how one syllable could hold so much meaning.

“That’s not all.” I filled him in on the disastrous trip to Boise, deliberately making the whole demon attack sound a lot less scary than it had been. No need worrying him when he could do nothing about it. I did include the part where I blew up the demon.

“Whoa! You weren’t kidding about your power getting stronger.”

“Yeah, well I could have done without the shower of blood and guts.”

He brushed off my revulsion in typical male fashion. “I think it rocks. I’m just surprised Nikolas let you go off to Boise in the first place. You know, with him being the way he is.”

“He wasn’t here, and even if he had been, he doesn’t tell me what to do,” I declared irritably.

Roland chuckled. “Uh-oh. What did he do now?”

“He didn’t do anything. It’s just been a crazy few days. First the lamprey demons, then Nikolas shows up and tells me he is training me, and then – ”