He shook his head. “That I didn’t.”
I rested my arms on the console and leaned forward even more, trying to get a better look at his face, so I could watch his expression when I asked the next question.
“He didn’t…I mean he didn’t mark…you, did he?” I felt horrible for asking it, but we needed to know.
He just stared at me, unblinking, not saying a word.
“Sorry, but I had to ask,” I muttered.
He kept staring at me with this serious look in his eyes. “Do you think I have the mark?”
“I don’t…a…I don’t know.” I sounded like a babbling idiot. “I don’t know what to think anymore, not with everything that’s happened.” I tried to make eye contact with Laylen so I could signal to him to help me out with this, but he was focused on the road.
“So what do you want me to do?” Alex cocked an eyebrow at me. “Strip off all my clothes and prove to you that I don’t have the Mark of Malefiscus anywhere?”
“No,” I said, and then I turned my head away and bit down on my bottom lip, hoping he couldn’t feel my increasing body temperature.
“Okay, then, I guess you’ll just have to believe me.” There was a hint of laughter in his voice.
Believe him. Was that possible? A week ago I’d have said there was absolutely no way I could believe him. But, I don’t know, things change. The idea of believing him didn’t seem as absurd as it once did.
“Well, what are we going to do now?” Laylen asked suddenly.
“We’re going to keep driving east.” Alex dropped open the glove box. “We’ll make a plan when we meet up with Aislin.”
“A plan to go to The Underworld and save my mother, right?” I said.
“If we can get the Ira back, then yes.” He started digging though the glove box and I slipped the Ira ball out of my pocket and placed it on top of the console in a Ta-da! way. He glanced over his shoulder and his eyes widened. “Where the heck did you get that?”
“I swiped it from Nicholas’s house before I left,” I said proudly.
“Nice job.” Laylen flashed me a smile through the rearview mirror.
“Impressive,” Alex added, looking very much impressed. He picked up the Ira, lifted up the lid to the middle console, and dropped the Ira down inside. Then he returned his attention back to rummaging around in the glove box.
“What are you looking for?” I asked, flopping back against the seat.
“For this.” He pulled out a first aid kit. “Your wrists need to be cleaned up. What happened to you by the way?”
I glanced down at my semi-mutilated wrist. “Nicholas chained me up to the wall and every time I jerked at the chain the metal cuffs cut into my skin.”
Alex’s jaw tightened. He hopped over the console and into the backseat, opened up the first aid kit, and took out a roll of gauze and a bottle of peroxide.
He held out his hand. “Here, let me see one of your wrists.”
I gave him my left one first because it looked like it’d taken the worse of it. I sat there, letting him dabbed my skin with a cotton ball soaked with peroxide, and tried hard not to wince. But then the sparks tickled at my skin, and it numbed some of the pain away.
Even dressed in his worn out clothes, Alex was still as gorgeous as ever. I thought about Stephan being his father. Maybe that had contributed to why Alex was such a jerk most of the time and why he was the way he was. I thought about the younger Alex I saw and how he was so much different—so much more caring. Could it be possible that that Alex still existed?
After Alex finished cleaning my left wrist with peroxide, he asked for my other wrist. He dotted the cotton ball on my cuts, but when he was done, he didn’t wrap my wrists with gauze like I thought he would. In fact, what he did next shocked the heck out of me. He raised my wrist to his mouth, so there was only a sliver of air between his lips and my skin. Then he blew softly on my wound, causing my heart to flutter and the electricity to shimmer. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. He switched to the other wrist, doing the same thing, and I tried not to gasp. When he released my wrist, I opened my eyes, and found him watching me with the most intense expression on his face.
There was something different that happened between us then. I don’t know how to describe it. The prickle was there, on the back of my neck, but I couldn’t quite place my finger on what feeling was trying to emerge. I didn’t move away when he leaned toward me, even though I knew he was going to kiss me. In fact, I was more than willing to let him kiss me. I wanted him to. But then the car came to a brake-slamming stop that sent me flying forward, but Alex caught hold of me before I made it too far.
“Sorry,” Laylen apologized. “I thought I saw a deer in the road.”
I glanced around outside, but all I could see was the sage brush covering the flat land. There was nowhere for a deer to hide.
“Do you need me to drive so you can get some rest?” Alex asked.
Laylen shook his head. “No, I’m good.”
He sped up the car again, and Alex bandaged each of my wrists with gauze. I didn’t pay attention to him much, though. I was too distracted by Laylen and how strange he has been acting. Ever since he bit me, he has been acting a little off. He hadn’t done anything major, like run the streets biting people, but I was still worried that something was wrong. But I didn’t want to bring it up to Alex because I figured he would be unsympathetic. But I’ll make sure to keep an eye on him.
Just in case.
Chapter 30
We drove for days. Yes, days. We drove all the way to the other side of the country, to the beautiful, but very humid, state of Maryland. The air was so heavy and moisturized there, it was like being in a sauna.
Not too far off from the little beach house we were hiding out in was the ocean. From the room I was staying in, I could sit out on the deck and watch the ocean’s waves crash against the sandy shore. It was a fascinating thing to watch for someone who had never seen the ocean.
The house belonged to a friend of Adessa’s, which was a good thing because that meant Stephan didn’t know where it was, nor Nicholas. When we arrived, we informed Aislin and she transported here. She had also put up some location charms, which were supposed to help make tracking us down more difficult. But at this point, I was prepared for the fact that at any given moment someone could turn up. It was only a waiting game. The question wasn’t if someone was going to show up, but when someone would. And who? The list was long.
It was our second night here. We had all been resting from the insanity of the last few days we had. Alex was still recovering from being in the City of Crystal, and I was drained dry from all the bouncing in and out of visions. Everyone, including me, figured it’d be best to rest for a few days, and then I was going to give it a go at using the Ira. I wasn’t going to lie and say I wasn’t afraid of going to The Underworld. I’d been there before and that had been in a vision. Real life was going to be a lot worse because I wouldn’t be invisible. But I had to do it.
There was something else concerning me besides my future endeavor to The Underworld. Laylen’s moods seemed to be getting stranger. One minute he was perfectly fine, and the next minute he was upset over something. If I didn’t know any better, I would be wondering if he was experiencing a prickling sensation on the back of his neck that was releasing an abundance of his emotions. But Laylen had never previously been unemotional, so I knew he couldn’t be suffering from a soul-detaching-Keeper-gift that a certain red-headed Keeper, who had raised me, possessed.
No. Something else had to be up with him.
I was sitting out on the deck that extended out from my bedroom. The sky was a jet black, and the moonlight reflected like an orb against the dark ocean water. The stars were twinkling in their own beautiful way, and the lull of the ocean was having a calming effect over me.
If I hadn’t been sitting out there, I wouldn’t have seen him walk across the sandy beach, heading away from the house to who knows where. The light of the moon hit his blond hair making it look white, but I could tell by his height and the way that he walked that it was Laylen.
“Where is he going,” I mumbled to myself. I stood up and yelled, “Laylen!”
He turned and looked at me, and then…he ran.
“Laylen!” I shouted, causing a rising uproar amongst the neighbor’s dogs. “Where are you going?”
But he already disappeared into the darkness of the night.
“Crap.” I went into my room, slipped on my flip flops, and ran out of the bedroom. I was so mad at myself. I knew something had been wrong with him, but I never said anything, and now he was running away.
I reached the front door and realized I had two options here. One, that I take off on foot, all by myself, in the middle of the night, and roam around a strange town, looking for a vampire who was struggling with some kind of issues. Or I could go wake up Alex, and he could drive us around in the SUV.
Even as I headed back to Alex’s room, I wasn’t sure he would help me. Yeah, Laylen and Alex had been getting along—in fact everyone had been getting along—but I was still skeptical that Alex would jump out of bed and say “yeah, let’s go find him.”
When I got to Alex’s door, I hesitated before knocking. It took him a second to answer, but the door did swing open, and a tired-eyed, shirtless Alex, with some serious bed-head, stood in front of me.
He blinked wearily at me. “What’s up?”
“I just saw Laylen leaving.” My words came out rushed. “Down the beach. And when I called his name, he ran.”
His eyebrows dipped down. “Where was he going?”
“I don’t know....but he’s been acting kind of weird since he…since he bit me.”
“You’ve noticed that, too?”
“Wait, you’ve noticed it?”
He nodded. “Yeah, he’s been acting just like…” he trailed off, looking away from me.