“Has anyone else seen this?” I asked, nodding toward my stomach and then tugging on the edge of my shirt to cover the incriminating mark as best I could.
“The nurse might have.” Bethany turned to sit cross-legged on her cot. “She didn’t say anything, but I’m a pretty good judge of people, and there was a distinctly sketchy air about her when she agreed not to call our parents. Either I’m really convincing, she’s the worst school nurse ever, or something is up. Worst-case scenario, she called the CDC.”
“The CDC,” I repeated, unable to imagine why the nurse would agree not to call our parents, but feel compelled to dial up the CDC.
“The Centers for Disease Control?” Bethany gave an impatient roll of her eyes. “To whom all contagious and preternatural illnesses must be reported? Ringing any bells?”
Great.
As if dealing with my father, the legions of hell, and a variety of environmental protection agencies on a regular basis wasn’t bad enough.
“Where is the nurse?” I asked. What I really meant was something more along the lines of if I try to leave, will she try to stop me?
“No idea,” Bethany replied. “She bandaged your arm, gave me some orange juice, and lit out of here like the two of us had sprouted horns.” She paused for a brief second. “I’m not going to sprout horns, am I?”
If the situation hadn’t been so incredibly dire, it might have been funny. Who knew how much blood I’d lost from the cut in my arm? It was shallow, but long, and now a bloodsucker was mining me from the inside. There were memories I didn’t want to lose—my mother’s face, my best friend from kindergarten, the first time I’d sprayed a will-o’-the-wisp with liquid nitrogen—and thoughts that I couldn’t risk it getting ahold of. I had bigger things to worry about than Bethany’s fear of growing horns.
“Bethany, you’ll be fine. Just forget this ever happened and go back to life as usual.”
That was the nicest way I could think of to say leave me alone. All things considered, it should have worked. I’d always excelled at being the kind of girl other people left behind.
But Bethany didn’t take the bait. “So, what? You save my life and in exchange, you expect me to abandon you to the geek squad at the CDC, so they can chop you into pieces and stuff you in neatly labeled test tubes? Or maybe I’m supposed to pretend like if we don’t find a way to get that thing out of you, you won’t die, or that I totally won’t care at all if you do?”
Actually, yes. She was the kind of person who referred to her boyfriend’s baby sister as “Little Miss Loose Legs.” Leaving and never giving me another thought was exactly what I expected a girl like Bethany to do.
“Seriously, Kali? I’m shallow, not a sociopath. There’s a difference, and I am not leaving you here alone, so suck it up and deal me in.”
My mouth dropped open in abject shock, and Bethany began speaking very slowly, as if I were a small child or a very dense jock.
“What. Is. The. Plan.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’d offer to call my dad, but he’d just put you in quarantine. And call the CDC. And you’d still die. Whatever your plan is, it has to be better than that.”
I have a plan, and I don’t need your help.
For once, my mouth and brain were in complete and total accord, so I said exactly what I was thinking. Bethany blinked several times, but before she could reply, a familiar blonde head peeked over the edge of the doorframe, and Bethany’s nonsociopathic tendencies flew right out the door.
“Can I help you?” she asked, every inch the ice queen.
Skylar shook her head, sending wisps of blonde hair flying. “No, you can’t help me, but I think I can help you. Both of you.” Skylar paused for a breath, and that was my first clue she was on the verge of a truly epic babble. “I can’t tell you why, and I can’t tell you how I know, but the two of you need to get out of here in the next two minutes and forty-five seconds, or something really, really bad is going to happen to one and/or both of you, and it’s going to make someone with a soul the color and consistency of bubbling tar very, very happy.”
The end of Skylar’s run-on sentence was punctuated by a moment of absolute silence.
Listen to her.
This time, the voice in my head wasn’t mine, and I felt the words in the pit of my stomach, all the way down to the soles of my feet. I wanted to argue or disobey on principle, but even to human eyes, the world looks different in the calm before the storm. Every instinct my hunting habit had taught me said that it was time to take to higher ground.