Eyes still on me, he tipped his desk forward even further. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I checked out your blog.”
Oh. Dear. Baby. Jesus. How did he find it? Wait. More importantly was the fact that he
“In your dreams, Kitten.” He smirked. “Oh wait, I’m already starring in those, aren’t I?”
I rolled my eyes. “Nightmares, Daemon. Nightmares.”
He smiled, his eyes twinkling, and I almost smiled back, but luckily the teacher started calling roll, forcing an end to, well, whatever was going on between us. I turned around in my seat, letting out a slow breath.
Daemon laughed softly.
When the bell rang, signaling the end of class, I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. I did so without looking back to see what Daemon was doing. Math was going to suck butt more than it normally did if he sat behind me in class every day.
Out in the hallway, Lesa and her friend fell in step with me. “You’re new here,” said the brunette. Observant.
Lesa rolled her dark eyes. “That’s not obvious, Carissa.”
Carissa ignored her friend, pushing her square-framed glasses up her nose as she deftly stepped out of the way of another stupid kid barreling through the crowded hall. “How do you know Daemon Black so well?” Considering the first kids to talk to me were doing so because I’d been talking to Daemon, I wasn’t thrilled. “I moved in next to them in the middle of July.”
“Ah, I’m jealous.” Lesa pursed her lips. “Half the population at this school would love to trade places with you.”
I’d gladly change positions with them.
“By the way, my name is Carissa and that’s Lesa if you hadn’t figured it out yet. We’ve lived here our whole lives.” Carissa waited.
“My name is Katy Swartz, from Florida.” Oddly, they didn’t have thick accents like I’d been expecting.
“You came here, to West Virginia, from Florida?” Lesa’s eyes went wide. “Are you insane?”
I smiled. “My mom is.”
“What happened to your arm?” Carissa asked as they followed me up the crowded stairs.
There were so many people in the stairwell I didn’t want to announce what happened, but Lesa apparently knew. “She was mugged in town, remember?” She nudged Carissa with a curvy hip. “The same night Sarah Butler died.”
“Oh yeah,” Carissa said, frowning. “They’re holding a memorial for her tomorrow during the pep rally. So sad.”
Unsure of how to respond, I nodded.
Lesa smiled as we reached the second floor. I had English at the end of the hall that I was pretty sure I shared with Dee. “Well, it’s nice meeting you. We don’t get a lot of new people here.”
“Nope,” Carissa agreed. “No new kids since the triplets arrived here when we were freshmen.”
“You mean Ash and her brothers?” I asked, confused
“And the Blacks,” Lesa answered. “All six of them showed up within days of each other. Had the entire school going crazy.”
“Wait.” I stopped in the middle of the hall, earning a few nasty looks from people I knocked off course. “What do you mean all six of them? And all of them came here at the same time?”
“Pretty much,” Carissa said, fixing her glasses. “And Lesa isn’t kidding. It was crazy for months afterward. Can you blame us, though?”
Lesa stopped by a classroom door, brow wrinkling. “Oh, you didn’t know there’d been three of the Blacks?”
Feeling even more confused, I shook my head. “No. There’s Daemon and Dee, right?”
The warning bell rang, and both Lesa and Carissa glanced into the classroom filling up. It was Lesa who explained. “They were triplets, too. Dee and there were two brothers, Daemon and Dawson. They were completely identical, like the two Thompson boys. Couldn’t tell them apart if your life depended on it.” I stared at them, rooted to the floor.
Carissa smiled sadly. “It’s really sad. The one brother — Dawson — he disappeared a year ago. Everyone pretty much believes he’s dead.”
Chapter 12
I didn’t have much time to ask Dee about this other brother in English AP because I was late getting to class. And I was still too hurt to broach the topic with her. I couldn’t believe they had another brother and never once mentioned him. Or mention their parents, their significant others, or what they do when they take off for a day or two.
And he’d disappeared? Died? My heart ached for them even though they obviously hadn’t told me everything. I knew what it was like to lose someone. On top of all of that, there was something just flat-out odd about the fact that two different families with triplets moved to the same small town in a matter of days, but Dee had said the Thompsons were friends of the family. Maybe it was planned.
After class, Dee was waylaid by Ash and a golden-haired boy who looked as though he could be a model. It took no stretch of the imagination to figure out that was one of her brothers. And when they’d left her, all Dee said was to meet together at lunch before we had to rush off to our next classes.
Bio was my next class, and Lesa was in that one. She sat at the table in front of me, smiling. “How’s your first day going?”
“Good. Normal.” Normal with the exception of everything I’d learned. “Yours?”
“Boring and long already,” she replied. “I can’t wait for this school year to be over. I’m ready to get the hell out of Dodge, move to a normal town.”
“A normal town?” I laughed.
Lesa leaned back, placing her arms on my table. “This town is the epicenter of weirdness. Some of the people here, well, they don’t act right.”
A three-fingered hillbilly danced in my head, but somehow I doubted that was what she meant. “Dee said some of the people around here weren’t friendly.”
She snickered. “She’d say that.”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “I don’t mean that as a bad thing, but some of the kids here and the folks in town aren’t friendly toward her and the others like her.”
“Others like her,” I said slowly. “I’m not sure what that means.”
“Me either.” Lesa shrugged. “Like I said, people are weird around here. The town is weird. People are always claiming to see men in black running around — like black suits, not the actors. I think they’re government. I’ve actually seen them myself. Then there’s the other things people claim to see.” I remembered the guy at the grocery store. “Like what?”
Grinning, Lesa glanced toward the front of the room. The teacher hadn’t arrived yet. She scooted even closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Okay, this is going to sound insane and let’s get one thing straight. I don’t believe any of this crap, okay?” This sounded juicy. “Okay.”
Her dark eyes twinkled. “People around here have claimed that they’ve seen these forms of light up near Seneca Rocks. Like these… people-shaped things of light. Some believe they’re ghosts or aliens.”
“Aliens?” I busted out laughing, drawing a few stares. “I’m sorry, but seriously?”
“Seriously,” she repeated, grinning. “I don’t believe it, but we actually get traffic around here from people looking for evidence. I kid you not. We’re like Point Pleasant around here.”
“Uh, you’re going to have to fill me in on that.”
