Opal

Chapter 26

Playing sick on Tuesday, I stayed home and vegetated on the couch. I couldn’t do the school thing. See Lesa and know her best friend was dead and pretend I didn’t know a thing. I just couldn’t do it yet.

Every so often, I saw Carissa’s face. There were two versions: before last night and afterward. When I saw her and her funky glasses in my memories, my chest ached, and when I saw those vastly empty eyes, I wanted to cry all over again.

And I did.

Mom didn’t push it. For one thing, I rarely skipped school. And secondly, I looked like crap. Being sick didn’t take a leap of faith. She spent the better part of the morning coddling me and I soaked it up, needing my mom more than she could ever know.

Later, after she went upstairs to get some sleep, Daemon showed up unexpectedly. Wearing a black cap pulled down low, he came in and closed the door behind him.

“What are you doing here?” It was only one in the afternoon.

He took my hand, pulling me into the living room. “Nice jammies.”

I ignored that. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“You shouldn’t be alone right now.” He twisted his cap around.

“I’m all right.”

Daemon shot me a knowing look. Admittedly, I was happy that he was here, because I did need someone who knew what was really going on. All day I’d been ripped apart, caught by guilt and confusion, tossed around by sorrow I couldn’t really even grasp.

Wordlessly, he led me to the couch and stretched out, tucking me against his side. His heavy arm around my waist had a soothing weight. Keeping our voices low, we talked about normal things—safe things that didn’t slice through him or me.

After a while, I twisted in his arms so that our noses brushed. We didn’t kiss. There wasn’t one shenanigan going on between us. We held each other, though, and that was more intimate than anything else we could’ve done. Daemon’s presence eased me. At some point, we dozed off, our breaths mixing.

My mom had to have come downstairs at some point and seen us together on the couch, just the way we were when I woke: Daemon’s head resting atop mine, my hand balled around his shirt. It was the scent of the coffee that roused me just around five.

Reluctantly, I pulled out of his embrace and smoothed my hands through my hair. Mom stood in the doorway, one leg crossed over her ankle as she leaned against the frame. A steaming cup of coffee was in her hands.

Mom was wearing Lucky Charms pajamas.

Oh, holy Houdini. “Where did you get them?” I asked.

“What?” She took a sip.

“Those…hideous pajamas,” I said.

She shrugged. “I like them.”

“They’re cute,” Daemon said, taking off his hat and running his hand through his messy hair. I elbowed him, and he gave me a cheeky grin. “I’m sorry, Miss Swartz, I didn’t mean to fall asleep with—”

“It’s okay.” She waved him off. “Katy hasn’t been feeling well, and I’m glad you wanted to be here for her, but I hope you don’t get what she has.”

He cast me a sideways look. “I hope you didn’t give me cooties.”

I huffed. If anyone was spreading alien cooties, it was Daemon.

Mom’s cell went off, and she dug it out of her pajama pocket, sloshing coffee onto the floor. Her face lit up, the way it always did when Will called her. My heart dropped as she turned and headed into the kitchen.

“Will,” I whispered, standing before I realized it.

Daemon was right behind me. “You don’t know that for sure.”

“I do. It’s in her eyes—he makes her glow.” I wanted to barf, like, seriously. Suddenly, I saw Mom on the bedroom floor, lifeless, gone like Carissa. Panic blossomed and took root. “I need to tell her why Will got close to her.”

“Tell her what?” He blocked me. “That he was here to get close to you—that he used her? I don’t think that’s going to lessen any blows.”

I opened my mouth, but he had a point.

He placed his hands on my shoulders. “We don’t know if it was him calling or what’s happened to him. Look at Carissa,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Her mutation was unstable. It didn’t take long for it…to do what it did.”

“Then that means it held.” He wasn’t making me feel better about anything right now.

“Or it means it faded off.” He tried again. “We can’t do anything until we know what we’re dealing with.”

I shifted my weight restlessly, watching over his shoulder. Stress built in me like a seven-ton ball that settled on my shoulders. There was so much to deal with.

“One at a time,” Daemon said, as if he read my thoughts. “We’re going to deal with things one at a time. That’s all we can do.”

Nodding, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. My heart still raced. “I’m going to see if it was him.”

He let go and stepped aside, and I hurried to the door.

“I like your pajamas better,” he said, and I turned. Daemon grinned at me, that lopsided one that hinted at laughter.

My jammies weren’t much better than Mom’s. They had, like, a thousand pink and purple polka dots on them. “Shut up,” I said.

Daemon returned to the couch. “I’ll be waiting.”

I went to the kitchen just as Mom was getting off the phone, her features pinched. The weight on my shoulders increased. “What’s wrong?”

She blinked and forced a smile. “Oh, nothing, honey.”

Grabbing a towel, I wiped up the spilled sugar. “Doesn’t look like nothing.” In fact, it looked like a whole lot of something.

Mom grimaced. “It was Will. He’s still out west. He thinks he came down with something traveling. He’s going to stay out there until he feels better.”

I froze. Liar, I wanted to scream.

She dumped her coffee and rinsed out her cup. “I didn’t tell you this, honey, because I didn’t want to drag up bad memories, but Will…well, he was sick once, like your father.”

My mouth dropped open.

Mistaking my surprise, she said, “I know. It seems cosmically unfair, doesn’t it? But Will has been in remission. His cancer was completely curable.”

I had nothing to say. Nothing. Will had told her he’d been sick.

“But of course, I worry.” She placed the cup in the dishwasher, but she didn’t close the door all the way. I shut it out of habit. “Useless to worry over something like that, I know.” She stopped in front of me, placing her hand on my forehead. “You don’t feel warm. Are you feeling better?”

The change in conversation threw me. “Yeah, I feel fine.”

“Good.” Mom smiled then and it wasn’t forced. “Don’t worry about Will, honey. He’ll be fine and back before we know it. Everything will be okay.”

My heart tripped up. “Mom?”

“Yes?”

I came so close to telling her everything, but I froze. Daemon was right. What could I say? I shook my head. “I’m sure…Will’s okay.”

She bent quickly, kissing my cheek. “He’d be happy to know you were concerned.”

A hysterical laugh crept up my throat. I was sure he would be.

…

Later that day, after Mom had left for work, I stood beside the lake, staring at a pile of glittering onyx.

Matthew and Daemon hadn’t said much since we arrived, and even Blake was abnormally quiet. They all knew what had happened last night with Carissa. Daemon had spoken to Blake earlier in the day; the entire conversation had gone down between the two without fists being thrown and I’d missed it. Apparently Blake had never witnessed an unstable hybrid with his own eyes. He’d only heard about them.

But Dawson had.

He’d seen people who’d been brought to him, had been normal Joes before the mutation and then snapped days later. Violent outbursts were common right before they went into self-destruction mode. All of them had been given the serum I’d been given. Without it, according to Blake, the mutation could hold, but it was rare and in most cases, the mutations faded.

Since I arrived at the lake, Dawson had stayed close to my side while Daemon and Matthew handled the onyx carefully.

“I had to do it once,” Dawson said quietly, focused on the overcast sky.

“Do what?”

“Watch a hybrid die like that.” He took a breath, squinting. “The guy just went crazy, and no one could stop him. He took out one of the officers and then there was a flash of light. Sort of like spontaneous combustion, because when the light faded, he was gone. Nothing was left. It happened so fast, he couldn’t have felt a thing.”

I remembered how Carissa was shaking, and I knew she had to feel that. Feeling nauseous, I focused on Daemon. The onyx was in a hole, and he knelt in front of it, talking quietly to Matthew. I was glad the rest of the group wasn’t there.

“Did the people they brought to you know why they were there?” I asked.

“Some did, like they signed up for it. Others were sedated. They didn’t have a clue. I think they were homeless people.”

That was sickening. Unable to stay still, I headed toward the bank of the lake. The water wasn’t frozen over anymore, but it was still and calm. Completely at odds with how I felt inside.

Dawson followed. “Carissa was a good person. She didn’t deserve this. Do we even know why they chose her?”

I shook my head. I’d spent a good part of the day thinking about everything. Even if Carissa had known about the Luxen and had been healed by one, Daedalus was involved. I knew it. But the hows and whys were the mysteries. As was the stone I’d seen around her wrist.

“Did you ever see anything on the hybrids there? Like a weird black stone that looked like it had fire inside it?”

His brows knitted. “None of mine made it except Beth. They didn’t have anything like that on them. I never saw the others.”

Terrible… It was just terrible.

I swallowed thickly, but my throat felt tight. A soft breeze stirred the lake, and a wave rippled from one bank to the next. Like a shock wave…

“Guys?” Daemon called, and we turned. “Are you ready?”

Were we ready to step into the house of pain? Uh, no. But we walked over to them. Daemon stood, holding a circular piece of onyx in his gloved hand.

He turned to Blake. “This is your show.”

Blake took a deep breath and nodded. “I think the first thing to test out is if I do have a tolerance to onyx. If I do, then that gives us a starting point, right? At least then we know that we can build up a tolerance.”

Across from him, Daemon glanced down at the onyx he held and shrugged. Without preamble, he shot forward, placing the onyx against Blake’s cheek.

My jaw hit the ground.

Matthew stepped back. “God.”

Beside me, Dawson laughed under his breath.

But nothing happened for several moments. Finally, Blake knocked the onyx away, his nostrils flaring. “What the hell?”

Disappointed, Daemon tossed the rock in the pile. “Well, apparently you have a tolerance to onyx and here I was hoping you didn’t.”

I clamped my hand over my mouth, stifling a giggle. He was such an asshole, and I loved him.

Blake stared. “What if I didn’t have a tolerance to it? Good God, I kind of wanted to prepare myself for that.”

“I know.” Daemon smirked.

Matthew shook his head. “Okay, back on track, boys. How do you suggest doing this?”

Stalking over to the pile of onyx, Blake picked one up. There was a slight ripple of unease this time, but he held on. “I suggest Daemon goes first. We hold it to the skin until you drop. No longer.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” I muttered.

Daemon took off his gloves and held out his arms. “Bring it.”

There wasn’t a moment of hesitation. Blake stepped forward and pressed that onyx against Daemon’s palm. Immediately, his face contorted and he appeared to try to step back, but the onyx held him in place. A tremor started in his arm and traveled through his body.

Dawson and I both stepped forward. Neither of us could help it. Standing here, watching the pain harshen his beautiful face, was too much. Panic shot through me.

But then Blake pulled back and Daemon dropped to his knees, slamming his hands onto the ground before him. “Crap…”

I rushed forward, touching his shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“He’s fine,” Blake said, placing the onyx on the ground. His right hand shook as our eyes met. “It started to burn. There must be a limit to my tolerance…”

Daemon stood unsteadily, and I followed. “I’m okay.” Then he said to his brother, who was eyeballing Blake like he wanted to toss him through a window, “I’m fine, Dawson.”

“How do we know this will work?” Matthew demanded. “Touching onyx is completely different than being sprayed all over with it.”

“I’ve walked out of those doors before and nothing happened. And it’s not like they’ve sprayed onyx in my face before. This has to be it.”

I remembered how he said everything he touched had been encased in the shiny jewel. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Daemon opened his mouth, but I cut him off with a glare. He wasn’t going to talk me out of this.

Picking up a glove, Blake handled the onyx differently now. He didn’t come to me but to Matthew. The same thing happened with the older Luxen. He was on his knees, gasping for air, and then it was Dawson’s turn.

It took a little longer for him, which made sense. He’d been exposed to the spray like me and had been tortured by the stuff off and on. But after about ten seconds, he went down and his brother massacred the English language.

Then it was my turn.

Squaring my shoulders, I nodded. I was ready for this, wasn’t I? Heck no. Who was I fooling? This was going to hurt.

Blake winced and moved forward, but Daemon stopped him. Using the glove, he took the onyx from him and stood in front of me.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want you to do this.”

The determined set to his jaw infuriated me. “I’m not letting him do it.”

“Then let someone else do it.” There was no way he could be the one who placed the onyx on me. “Please.” Daemon shook his head, and I wanted to punch him. “This isn’t right.”

“It’s either me or no one.”

And then I understood. He was trying to get his way. Taking a breath, I met him head-on. “Do it.”

Surprise flickered in his bottle-green eyes and then anger deepened them. “I hate this,” he said, loudly enough for only me to hear.

“I do, too.” Anxiety climbed up my throat. “Just do it.”

He didn’t look away, but I could tell he wanted to. Whatever pain I knew I was about to feel would be symbiotic. He would feel it—not the physical, but the anguish would travel to him, as if it were his own. It was the same when Daemon was in pain.

I closed my eyes, thinking that would help him. It seemed to, because maybe ten seconds later, I felt the coolness of the onyx against my hand and the roughness of his glove. Nothing happened immediately, but then it did.

A rapidly growing burn traveled across my hand and then shot up my arm. A thousand tiny pricks of pain radiated across my body. I bit down on my lip, stifling my scream. It didn’t take long after that before I hit the ground, gulping in air as I waited for the burn to ease off.

My body shuddered. “All right… Okay… Not too bad.”

“Bull,” Daemon said, hauling me onto my feet. “Kat—”

I tugged free, taking more deep breaths. “Really, I’m okay. We need to keep going.”

Daemon looked like he wanted to toss me over his shoulder and run off like a caveman, but we moved on. Over and over again, each of us touched the onyx, holding on until our body refused to cooperate. None of us increased in time, but we were just getting started.

“It’s like getting hit with a Taser,” Matthew said as he dropped a sheet of plywood over the onyx, then placed two heavy rocks on the board. It was late and all of us were twitchy. Even Blake. “Not that I’ve ever been Tased, but I image that’s how it feels.”

I wondered if there’d be any long-term effects from this. Like messed-up heart rhythms or post-traumatic stress. The one good thing that came out of this was that between the mind-blowing pain and watching other people succumb to it, I really hadn’t been capable of thinking about anything else.

As we finished up and began to limp back to the house, Blake slowed down until he was beside me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I said nothing.

He shoved his hands into his jeans. “I liked Carissa. I wish…”

“If wishes were fishes, we’d all throw nets, right? Isn’t that what they say?” Bitterness sharpened my tone.

“Yeah, that’s what they say.” He paused. “Things are gonna get crazy at school.”

“Why do you care? You’re going to leave as soon as you get Chris. You’ll just be another one of those kids who vanished into thin air.”

He stopped, head cocked to the side. “I would stay if I could. I can’t, though.”

Frowning, I glanced ahead. Daemon had slowed down, no doubt doing his best not to physically put more distance between Blake and me. For a second, I considered asking Blake about the stone. He’d have to know, since he worked for Daedalus—still did. But it was too tricky. Blake claimed to be playing double agent. Key word: claimed.

I wrapped my arms around my waist. Overhead, the branches cracked against one another like a low, steady drum.

“I would stay,” he said again, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I—”

Daemon was there in an instant, prying Blake’s fingers off my shoulder. “Don’t touch her.”

Blake paled as he pulled his hand free and stepped back. “Dude, I wasn’t doing anything. Overprotective much?”

Implanting himself in between us, Daemon said, “I thought we had an understanding. You’re here because we don’t have a choice. You’re still alive because she is better than me. You’re not here to comfort her. Got that?”

Blake’s jaw popped. “Whatever. I’ll see you guys later.”

I watched Blake stalk past Matthew and Dawson. “That was a little overprotective.”

“I don’t like him touching you,” he growled. His eyes started doing that glowing-orb thing. “I don’t like him even being in the same time zone as you. I don’t trust him.”

Rising up, I kissed Daemon’s cheek. “No one trusts him, but you can’t threaten him every five seconds.”

“Yes, I can.”

I laughed and stepped in, wrapping my arms around his waist. Under my cheek, his heart beat steadily. His hands slid down my back as his head bent close to mine. “Do you really want to do more days like this?” he asked. “An endless stretch of days filled with pain?”

It wasn’t on the top of my to-do list. “It serves a pretty good distraction, and I need that right now.”

I expected him to argue, but he didn’t. Instead, he kissed the top of my head. We stood like that for a little while. When we pulled apart, Dawson and Matthew were gone. Moonlight started to peek through the branches. Holding hands, we walked back to our houses, and he went to his to clean up.

My house was dark and silent, and as I stood at the base of the stairs, I struggled to breathe. I couldn’t be afraid of my bedroom. That was just stupid. I placed my hand on the banister and took one step.

Muscles locked up.

It was just a bedroom. I couldn’t sleep on the couch forever, and I couldn’t run in and out of my bedroom as if an Arum were chasing me.

Each step up was a fight when my natural response was to turn and run in the opposite direction, but I continued until I stood in the doorway, my hands clasped under my chin.

Daemon and Dee had cleaned up everything like they said. My bed was made. Clothing put away and all the papers were stacked on my desk. My destroyed laptop was gone. And there was a neat little circular rug over the spot Carissa had stood. It was a muted, soft brown. Daemon knew I wasn’t big on flashy color, not like Dee. Other than that, the room looked normal.

Holding my breath, I forced myself to go in. I moved around, picking up books and placing them back in the order I had them in, keeping my mind blank. Sometime later, I changed into an old shirt and knee-high socks, then I tunneled under the blankets and rolled onto my side.

Beyond my bedroom window, scattered stars broke up the dark blue of the sky. One fell, leaving a short stream of light behind as it crashed to Earth. Curling my fingers around the blanket, I wondered if it were a falling star or something else. All the Luxen were here, weren’t they?

I forced my eyes closed and focused on tomorrow. After school, Daemon and I were heading to Martinsburg in an attempt to find Luc. The group thought we were just getting away for the night. Hopefully after our visit, we’d know a little more about what happened to Carissa.

I slept fitfully that night. It had to be late when I felt Daemon settle in beside me, his arm firmly around my waist. Half asleep, I decided he needed to be more careful. If my mom caught him in my bed again, things would get ugly. But I was content in his arms and settled back against him, lulled to sleep by his warm breath along the back of my neck.

“I love you,” I think I said. It may have been a dream, but his arm tightened and his leg slid around mine. Maybe this was just a dream, because there was a surreal quality to it. Even if it was, it was enough.