“Boyfriend’s little sister’s in the room,” Skylar reminded her. “If you could avoid talking about biting people, I’d really appreciate it.”
Bethany rolled her eyes. “There.” She brought us down an extra set of steps and gestured to a thick, metal door. “If you can crack the code, be my guest.”
Skylar nodded and bit her bottom lip, but before she could place her hands on the door, I reached out and stopped her.
“Let me try something first.”
Skylar may have been a little bit psychic, but I’d spent the morning rifling through Dr. Davis’s desk. I’d almost forgotten that his cell phone hadn’t been the only thing I’d taken away from my little recon trip.
I’d also memorized the passwords taped to the bottom of his desk.
I don’t know what I expected to see in Paul Davis’s home lab, but what I saw was … nothing.
The walls were made of chrome. The floors were tile. The sound of my footsteps echoed through the room, and I could see the colors in my clothes reflected in the walls—blurry, indecipherable shapes.
Skylar and Bethany stepped into the room behind me. Besides the three of us, the only things in this entire room were a computer monitor built into the wall and stacks and stacks of hard drives, lining the floor like Legos.
“Got any more passwords?” Bethany said, gesturing to the computer.
“Got a keyboard?” I returned.
It took us five minutes to find it—hidden beneath a panel in the wall. I ran through every password I’d seen taped to Dr. Davis’s desk and came up empty.
In unison, Bethany and I turned toward Skylar.
“I got nothing,” she said.
I resisted the urge to send my fist into the shiny chrome walls. If I let myself hit something, let myself want to …
I could feel the need rising inside of me, except this time, it wasn’t hunt-lust. It was an ache, an emptiness.
Blood.
The thought was overwhelming, all-consuming, and suddenly, I could smell the scents of the room so clearly.
I could smell Bethany—Skylar—
I could smell their blood.
“What?” Bethany said defensively. “Do I have something on my face?”
I tore my eyes away from her neck, but I could still hear the beating of her heart.
Thirsty. Thirsty. Thirsty.
Suddenly, Zev’s warning about needing to feed when I hunted seemed a lot more reasonable. In retrospect, pushing my healing ability to the limit and then locking myself in a small room with two walking bags of blood probably wasn’t my finest idea ever.
Stop it, I thought firmly. They’re my friends.
The word might not have meant anything to the mindless, senseless parasite inside of me, but it meant something to me.
“What are you doing?” Bethany asked.
I’m trying not to tear out your jugular, I thought in response. When I told you I didn’t know what I was, it’s possible that I was not being 100 percent honest.
Then I realized that Bethany hadn’t addressed her acerbic comment to me. She was talking to Skylar, who was down on all fours, investigating the hard drives.
“I’m looking for a USB port,” she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Move your foot.”
Bethany didn’t move. “Why are you looking for a USB port?”
“Because I thought it might annoy you,” Skylar answered, the picture of innocence. “And also because Darryl gave me this.”
She held up a USB drive.
“Darryl?” Bethany repeated, utterly lost. “Who’s Darryl?”
“Big guy? Sits with me at lunch?” Skylar continued running her hands over the various drives, looking for a port. “Sound familiar?”
“Mute?” Bethany said finally. “You’re crawling all over the floor because of something you got from Mute?”
If the popular crowd called Darryl “Mute,” I really didn’t want to know what they called the rest of us.
“Darryl does talk,” Skylar said. “If you listen. And FYI, I have a really strong feeling that he’s going to be the next Bill Gates, so you might want to be a little nicer to him.”
“I have a really strong feeling,” Bethany deadpanned, “that if you don’t tell me what’s on that USB drive, I will end you.”
“Aha!” Skylar brandished the hard drive like she was getting ready to embark on a three-gun salute. Without answering Bethany’s question, she plugged it in, and the blank screen on the monitor gave way to a matrix of letters and numbers, rotating through the screen in multiple directions.
“Darryl likes codes,” Skylar explained. “A few weeks ago, I asked him what someone might hypothetically need to break into a supercomputer. He hypothetically made me this.”