“This is it!” Curly cried, standing on the balls of his feet. “I’m going to do it.”
“OMG are you serious.”
Curly sort of tensed, his face focused on the screen. “I’m doing it now, Hannah. I’m doing it. Aaaaaannnd he slips in the grass, and Derdiyok gets a chance!”
“Amazing, Ein. Totally amazing,” the girl said, covering her mouth. “He fell. He really fell!”
“Yes, he did.” Curly—Ein grinned.
Julia must have been around Chosen way too much, because all she could think was would it be possible for Ein to affect an athlete from a distance? That was a frightening thought.
The red-haired girl—Hannah—shook her head. “Faust is going to be pissed.”
Ein shrugged and held out his right hand. “Just don’t tell him, and half the francs are yours.”
Grinning, Hannah clasped his hand. “Deal.”
And Julia’s heart almost stopped. There, just below Hannah’s thumb, was a starburst, about the size of two half dollars, and the same shape and color as her own.
Holy crap!
CHAPTER SEVEN
She spent all of lunch sitting on what she’d witnessed, replaying it over and over in her mind. She hadn’t seen many starbursts, but the ones she had seen—Mer’s, so big it covered most of her ribcage on her right side, and Carlin’s, a cute angel’s kiss on the bottom of her calf—looked similar: their color was a dark burgundy wine, no matter the Chosen’s skin tone; the edges waved, like an actual starburst, like a starburst sticker that said, “Wow!” inside, stuck on an A-plus test by an enthusiastic teacher. Julia knew what Chosen starbursts looked like, and by the time they reached their adjoining rooms, filed into the kitchen in the girls’ room, and watched Carlin work the cork off a bottle of sparkling juice, Julia was convinced that what she saw was real, and she was close to bursting.
Meredith was in the middle of a story about one of her middle-school boyfriends—“had the craziest looking eyes; they were like, purple, and not fake contacts”—when she stepped a little closer to Julia, paused midsentence, then cried, “Aaaahhh, excitement! You have
got
to be kidding me!”
Well, that was one way of sharing her news.
“Kidding?” Drew asked.
Cayne’s brows arched and Julia said, “I have news. I think this is it. This is the place.”
“You can’t be serious,” Drew exclaimed.
“Well…”
She explained what she’d heard, and what she’d seen. When she finished, Meredith did a booty dance. “Holy crap, we have to know right now!”
Carlin sighed, looking lighter than Julia had ever seen her. “I’m going to Spain,” she announced with a flourish. “As soon as I know this is the place, and Julia is safe, I want to visit my family.”
“I’ll go to the roof,” Mer said, “since it’s still snowing too hard for Cayne to take Julia on a flyby. Wait, is there even a roof? Omigod I can’t believe this is it.”
Cayne shook his head/ “There is a roof. But the pad is built on a platform that connects to the second floor. I saw it.” He glanced at Julia, frowning. “No tiger,” he said regretfully. “Just a top hat.”
“Maybe it was small. I don’t think Monte ever said it was big. It’s totally worth a shot.”
“What if you get caught,” Julia asked.
“If I get caught, I’ll play on their feelings to get myself out of it.” At Cayne’s frown, she said, “If they’re angry, I’ll placate them. That kind of thing. Really easy.”
“We should get Edan,” Carlin said. “He might be able to sense them.”
Julia thought that seemed like a flimsy excuse, but apparently Meredith didn’t sense any ulterior motive. “Great idea.”
*
After a few more minutes of discussion, it was decided. Carlin and Drew were going to hoof it to the hostel. Or, rather, ride the swanky tram that apparently connected everything at the polka dot resort. Julia had missed that detail somehow. As Carlin put it, they were going to, “drag that man-slut” back to the adjoining rooms.
“No more Mr. Playboy,” Meredith agreed. “The hussy came here with us, and he should have to stay with us.”
“Exactly,” Carlin said happily. And Julia decided, for the first time, to be more tolerant of her Edan crush. He was exceptionally attractive—and it wasn’t just his looks. He had the whole sex machine vibe down to an art, and surely most girls would be susceptible if they didn’t know the odd aura and strangely creeptastic vibe lurking underneath his pretty surface.
Meredith was going to sneak onto the roof, which she assured them she was adept at, being able to “always sense when people are nearby.”
For some reason, Meredith’s plans involved Drew, Carlin and Cayne getting new blizzard-wear, so Julia sat beside her friend on one of the beds, popping chocolate covered strawberries into her mouth while the others went to the first-floor ski shop. “I think it’s funny that Cayne didn’t question you. He just went with them to buy a snow suit.” Julia smiled.
“I’m the boss, and I needed some time with my BFF.”
“Ditto,” Julia said, feeling the warm and fuzzies. She twirled a strawberry’s green cap in her fingers, realizing how long it really had been since she and Mer had talked alone. She glanced over at her friend, who today wore a big pink hooded sweatshirt, form-hugging jeans that might have been leggings, and sparkly All-Stars she’d gotten in homage to Julia’s pink ones. Her hair, despite her earlier complaints, was beautiful and shiny, and she’d even managed to come up with eye makeup. “So…Carlin probably wants to look hot for you know who, huh?”
“She’s got it bad for the hussy,” Meredith confirmed.
“She really does.” Julia ran her tongue over her teeth to check for strawberry seeds, trying to decide how to broach her next question. In the end, she just tossed it out there. “So…does Edan give you a weird vibe?”
Meredith shrugged, looking like the cat that ate the canary. “Hmmmm.” She dipped her strawberry into chocolate, chewed it, and licked the chocolate off her lips.
Finally, she twirled a piece of hair and tucked it behind her ear and said, “It’s not him. I mean it’s not, like…his feelings,” she said slowly. “Those are usually in line with how he acts. I do think Jess Stanton might be an old flame of his or something, though, because seeing her made him really nervous.” She put her finger to her mouth. “Shhh. But there is something about him. Sometimes when I’m really near him for a while, I feel kind of…like there’s a dementor in the room.”
“Holy crap, no way! Me, too! Just like a dementor!”
Julia was waving her arms in the air, practically jumping on the bed, when Cayne walked back into the room. He gave her a hilariously skeptical look, set a walkie talkie on one of the glossy wooden tables, and swung a snow suit over his shoulder.
One glimpse of the thing made Julia’s blood warm. On the outside, it would look just like an ordinary black suit: jacket and those overall thingies that Julia was too Southern to identify. But below that…on another hanger… Those things looked like long johns. And Julia thought long johns were very sexy.
Meredith punched her in the arm, and Julia jumped. “Get a room!”
She blushed and pulled her hair over her face, pretending to play with it. It
Cayne shrugged, looking confused. Then he held it up. “Is this right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Julia managed. “Mer?”
“Yep, it’s right.” She pointed toward the bathroom and gave him a ‘get going’ look.
Julia grinned as he walked by, imagining him in his clothes.
“Julia, come out of it.” Mer snapped her fingers, and Julia realized Cayne had slipped into the room next door. “I said, what do you think it means?”
“What what means?”
“You’ve got it bad. Do you even remember what we were talking about?”
“Err…snow suits?”
“Edan,” Mer said with emphasis. “And his whole—” she waved her hands— “dementor gig.”
Julia nodded, forcing the heat out of her cheeks. “I noticed it when I first met him.”
“When was that?”
Julia recounted meeting Edan in the halls after Dizzy and the… But before she could finish her story, Cayne came out, looking like a snow suit model or an Olympian. Possibly both.
He met her eyes, correctly read them, and smiled like a leopard that’d spotted a yummy impala.
“Guys!” Mer lunged off the couch, waving her arms in front of Julia, then jumping up and dashing toward the door. She glanced back at Cayne. “I can feel her feelings and yours are loud and clear! Take a cold shower, Fabio!”
Carlin and Drew returned, and at Meredith’s urging, they fled into the boys’ suite to get changed.
Cayne frowned. “Fabio?”
“Some super cheesy male model.”
Cayne’s frown deepened. “She thinks I’m cheesy.”
Julia laughed. “No, it’s just an expression. You’re nothing like Fabio, which is a good thing.”
Cayne required more reassuring, which just earned him more giggles as the others passed back through the room and then took off.
“All the time you were hard on the outside and sensitive on the inside,” Julia teased.
“I am not. I’m hard everywhere.”
Julia laughed, then gasped when he wiggled his eyebrows.
“What’s happened to you!”
“Too much time around randy teenagers,” he moaned.
“And not enough time around this one,” Julia said slyly.
Cayne reached out and cupped her hand, then brought it to the zipper of his jacket.
Julia made a hissing, sizzle-like sound.
“I think we’re the only people in the room.”
“And we’ve got something to celebrate,” Julia murmured.
So they did. For a while. So long, in fact, that they were still locking lips when Meredith barged in the door looking totally dejected.
“It’s not the place. At least I don’t think it is,” she said. “I didn’t see a tiger anywhere. Just that damned top hat.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
After many years of that traditional foster kid reflex—Don’t Get Your Hopes Up, Dummy—Julia was having a tough time dealing with her disappointment. She had gotten her hopes up.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She gritted her teeth, which only caused her head to throb. But at least she wasn’t crying. She felt like crying. Which was lame. So lame.
She was The One, wasn’t she, she asked herself as she and Mer collapsed on the couch. The One didn’t cry. The One kicked ass. Whose, she wondered warily. Cayne’s? They’d already done away with Samyaza. What was next? A Nephilim genocide? The thought made her throat ache with unshed tears.
She scrambled off the couch so Meredith couldn’t feel her feelings, held up a finger—be right back—and raced into the bathroom, where her hyper-sensitive gag reflex gave her a scare.
But she didn’t get sick. She just sat there with her forehead resting against the toilet’s lid, not even caring if the thing was clean because either she would die of something else or she wouldn’t be allowed to die
.
She shut her eyes and thought back to the compound. Dizzy and her threats.
What else can you do? Besides seeing auras and healing people.
And Meredith telling her:
Nathan was almost as eager to meet you as I was
. She thought about the time they’d been meditating, a special ritual designed to heighten everyone’s abilities. And Julia’s had gone haywire; auras had popped up everywhere, the force of it knocking her flat on her butt. Nathan had thought she’d had a seizure.
At the compound, she’d been able to ‘Float’ to random places. Places other than the ones on the other side of a given wall—something Meredith had said was strange. She’d even gotten close to the prison, where Cayne had been, and which was super off-limits.
And now, apparently, other Chosen’s powers wouldn’t work on her. That poor little boy—Everett?—couldn’t hurt her. Thierry couldn’t float her away.
Dizzy had been able to make her dizzy, so what did that mean?
A knock interrupted her thoughts. Moaning softly, Julia pulled herself up using the marble sink and asked, “Who is it?”
“Me.” Cayne’s voice was strong and quiet.
“Me, too!” Meredith said. “Come out, Julia. Talk about it.”
Julia exhaled. She ran her fingers through her snow-damp hair and blinked at her reflection in the mirror.
Should I be wearing mascara like Mer?
Rubbing her eyes, she turned and opened the door.
Cayne and Meredith were side by side; Cayne’s arms were crossed, while Meredith’s hand was on her hip. When she saw Julia, she stretched out her arms, prompting Cayne to take a cautious step back.
“Come on,” she said, pulling Julia into a casual hug. “Spill.”
Julia shook her head. “It’s okay now. I’m fine.”
Cayne arched a brow, but before they could get any further, the room phone rang, and Meredith bounded to get it. “Yeees,” she answered with flair. “Oh, hi Carlin. Oh no.” There was a pause, during which Cayne stepped closer to Julia/ He held out his hand, and Julia took it.
Across the room, Meredith was saying “Hmmm,” and wearing a skeptical expression. Satisfied she wasn’t listening to them, Julia squeezed Cayne’ hand gently and grabbed his other one, so they were facing each other, holding hands like a couple at the altar.
“I don’t like when you’re this anxious,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
He sniffed. “You don’t fool me. Or any of the others. Well, maybe Drew. He seems easily fooled.”
Julia rolled her eyes. “I’m not that anxious. I’m just tired.”
He shook his head. “I can tell that’s not true.” He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “It doesn’t have to be true. You can be honest with me.”
Julia thought about her headache, but instead of coming clean, she nodded. She would tell him soon—just not now.
“You guyyyyssss!” Mer bounded over, looking like a fifth-grade sleuth who’d just found the big clue. “We’re wanted at the hostel! Snow’s coming down hard again, but the tram is still running. Cayne, it should only take us five minutes or so here to get there, so the danger is like, almost nil.”