Every other day(17)

Now.

In an instant, I was beside Skylar, and Bethany followed reluctantly on my heels. Skylar shrugged off her hoodie, handed it to Bethany, and spoke in an eerily calm and measured voice. “Put this on and pull up the hood. Then walk, don’t run, toward the cafeteria. When we hit the corner, turn right.”

Something about the younger girl’s unnaturally even keel must have penetrated Bethany’s bitch shields, because she put on Skylar’s worn blue hoodie—which had probably once belonged to one of her older brothers—without batting an eye. The three of us walked toward the end of the hallway, and just as we turned right, I heard the telltale tone of a single woman flirting with a slightly older man.

“They said to call you if any of the cheerleaders showed signs of anemia, and once I saw the ouroboros, well …” The school nurse let her words trail off, and I stopped breathing.

Someone knew.

Maybe not about Bethany specifically, but someone had known to be on the lookout for Heritage High cheerleaders showing signs of chupacabra possession. And if they’d known and hadn’t done a thing to stop it …

Not good.

I didn’t so much as glance back over my shoulder, but as Skylar, Bethany, and I hit the glass doors at the end of the hallway, I saw a reflection of the people rounding the corner to the nurse’s office. In addition to the nurse, there were two men dressed in suits, and a woman with skin a shade darker and infinitely more flawless than my own. She wore her hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she walked with purpose, the staccato click of heels against tile cutting through the air like gunshots.

“You did the right thing by calling us,” the woman said. “We’ll take care of everything now.”

Her voice was soft, but I heard it, heard every word, and in that moment, I knew two things with absolute, unerring certainty: one, the suits on their way to the nurse’s office weren’t from the CDC, and two—whether they knew it yet or not—they weren’t here for a cheerleader.

They were here for the girl with the ouroboros. And as of five minutes ago, that girl was me.





I didn’t say a word until the three of us hit the parking lot, and even then, I only opened my mouth to ask whether either of the others had a car.

“No wheels,” Skylar replied, her expression mournful. “And no driver’s license. Yet. That said, my brother Nathan knows how to hot-wire, and I might have picked up a few tricks along the way.”

“Take it easy, Grand Theft Auto.” Bethany pulled a pair of keys out of her purse. “No one is hot-wiring anything. I have wheels and tinted windows, which means you can help yourself to the backseat, and as long as no one sees you get in or out, I don’t have to deal with the social fallout.”

The redhead didn’t bother waiting for a response—she just pushed a button on her keys and flounced toward the silver BMW that lit up in response. Watching Bethany reverting to type, I thought that maybe cattiness was its own kind of invincibility, as much of a crutch for Bethany as my powers were for me.

Sixteen hours and nine minutes.

Sliding into the passenger seat of the BMW and closing the door behind me, I shut out the constant countdown in my mind and tried to concentrate on the here and now.

Right here, right now, I was infected.

Right here, right now, I was on the run.

Right here, right now … I had no earthly idea what I’d gotten myself into. Without meaning to, I glanced down, and my hands began gravitating toward the bottom of my shirt.

Don’t touch it, I told myself sternly. Don’t think about it. Don’t give in.

Unable to help myself, I pulled the bottom of my shirt upward and the band of my jeans down, rotating my hips forward in the seat to give myself a full view of the ouroboros etched into my skin.

The lines were thick and looked like they’d been poured onto my body as melted gold. Tentatively, I ran my hand over the surface of my skin, expecting the symbol to be raised, but felt nothing other than the muscles in my stomach and the kind of dull heat given off by a day-old sunburn.

My flesh wasn’t red.

The mark didn’t hurt.

But for a split second, maybe less, the hand touching it didn’t feel like mine.

I can do this. I can beat this. Knowing that the parasite was already absorbing my blood and, with it, my thoughts and memories, I cut the mental pep talk off short.

I wouldn’t let myself be scared.

I wouldn’t let the thing inside me know that it was winning.

I wouldn’t think its name.

“Kali?” Skylar said my name and pulled me back down to earth. “Any chance you want to tell me what’s going on?”