Now everyone was staring at me. “What?” I demanded, cheeks flushing.
A slow, wry smile teased Daemon’s lips. “Simmer down, Kitten, before I have to get you a ball of yarn to play with.”
Annoyance flared deep inside me. “Don’t start with me, jerk-face.”
He smirked as he focused on his brother.
Beside him, Dawson looked sort of…amused. Or in pain—one of the two, because he really wasn’t smiling or frowning. But then, without saying a word, he stalked out of the living room, the front door slamming shut behind him.
Daemon glanced at me, and I nodded. Sighing deeply, he followed his brother, because there really was no telling what Dawson would do or where he would go.
The alien Kumbaya fell apart after that. I followed them to the door, my attention fixed on Dee. We so needed to talk. First off, I had to apologize for a lot of things, and then I had to try to explain myself. Forgiveness wasn’t expected, but I needed to try to talk.
I clenched the door knob until my knuckles bleached. “Dee…?”
She stopped on the porch, back straight. She didn’t face me. “I’m not ready.”
And with that, the front door tore free from my hand and swung shut.
Chapter 3
Already treading on thin ice with my mom, I decided not to mention the whole window thing when she called later in the evening, checking in. I was hoping and praying the roads were cleared enough to get someone out here to fix the window before Mom could make her way home.
I hated lying to her, though. All I’d been doing lately was lying to her, and I knew I needed to tell her everything, especially about her supposed boyfriend, Will. But how would this kind of conversation go?
Yeah, that was so not going to happen.
Right before I hung up, she pushed the whole going-to-see-a-doctor-for-my-voice thing again. Telling her it was just a cold worked now, but what was I going to say in a week or two from now? God, I really hoped my voice healed by then, although a part of me knew this might be permanent. Another reminder of…everything.
I had to tell her the truth.
Grabbing a package of instant mac and cheese, I started to pop it in the microwave but then stared down at my hands, frowning. Did they have microwave powers like Dee and Daemon did? I turned over the bowl, shrugging. I was too hungry to risk it.
Heat wasn’t my thing. When Blake was training me to handle the Source and tried to teach me how to create heat—i.e. fire—I’d caught my hands on fire instead of the candle.
As I waited for the mac, I stared out the window over the sink. Dawson had been right earlier. It really was beautiful now that the sun had risen. Snow blanketed the ground and covered the branches. Icicles hung from the elms. Even now, after the sun had set, it was a beautiful white world out there. I kind of wanted to go out and play.
The microwave dinged, and I ate my unhealthy dinner standing, figuring at least I would burn off calories that way. Ever since Daemon had mutated me into this human-alien-hybrid-mutant-freak, my appetite was out of this world. There was almost nothing left in the house.
When I finished, I quickly grabbed my laptop and sat at the kitchen table. My brain had been scattered the last week, and I wanted to look up something before I forgot. Again.
Pulling up Google, I typed in Daedalus and hit enter. Wikipedia served up the first link and since I wasn’t expecting a “Welcome to Daedalus: Secret Government Organization” website, I clicked.
And I got all acquainted with Greek myths.
Daedalus was considered an innovator, creating the labyrinth the Minotaur resided in, among other things. And he was also the daddy of Icarus, the kid who flew too close to the sun on wings fashioned by Daedalus, and then drowned. Icarus got giddy from flying and, knowing the gods, it was probably a form of passive punishment, leading to Icarus losing his wings. That and a punishment for Daedalus, who’d outfitted Icarus with the contraption that gave the boy the godlike ability to fly.
Nice history lesson, but what was the point? Why would the DOD name an organization overseeing human mutation after some dude—?
Then it struck me.
Daedalus created all kinds of things that bettered man, and the whole godlike-abilities angle was kind of like humans who were mutated by the Luxen. It was a leap in logic, but come on, the government
Closing the laptop, I stood and found myself grabbing my jacket and going outside. I really didn’t know why. Who knew if there were more Officers sneaking around? My overactive imagination formed the image of a sniper hiding in the tree and a red dot appearing on my forehead. Nice.
Sighing, I dug out a pair of gloves from the pockets of my jacket and high-stepped it through the mounds of snow. Needing some form of physical exercise to keep my brain from going into overdrive, I started rolling a ball of snow across the front yard. Everything had changed in a matter of months and then again in a matter of seconds. Going from shy, book-nerd Katy to something impossible; someone who had changed on more than a cellular level. I no longer saw the world in black and white and deep down I knew I didn’t operate on basic social norms anymore.
Like thy shalt not kill or whatever.
I hadn’t killed Brian Vaughn, the Officer who had been paid off by Will to turn me over to him instead of the Daedalus as I could be used as leverage to ensure that Daemon mutated him instead of killing him outright, but I had
I’d been totally okay with the idea of killing someone.
For some reason, killing the two evil aliens, the Arum, hadn’t affected me as much as the idea of being totally kosher with killing a human did. Not sure what that said about me, because like Daemon had said once before, a life was a life, but I didn’t know how to process adding the words ‘okay with killing’ to the bio section on my book blog.
My cotton gloves were soaked by the time I finished with the first ball and moved on to rolling the second lump of snow. This whole physical-exertion thing wasn’t doing anything other than causing my cheeks to burn in the frosty, snow-scented air. Fail.
When I was done, my snowman had three sections, but no arms or face. It kind of mirrored how I felt inside. I had most of the body parts but was missing vital pieces to make me real.
I really didn’t know who I was anymore.
Stepping back, I ran the sleeve of my arm over my forehead and let out a ragged breath. Muscles burned and skin ached, but I stood there until the moon peeked out behind thick clouds, sending a slice of silvery light over my incomplete creation.
There’d been a dead body in my bedroom this morning.
I sat down in the middle of my front yard, right in a pile of cold snow. A dead body—another dead body, just like Vaughn’s dead body that had fallen near the driveway, just like Adam’s dead body that had lain in the living room. Another thought I’d tried to ignore wormed its way through my defenses. Adam had died trying to protect me.
Wet, cold air stung my eyes.
If I had been honest with Dee, telling her from the start about what really happened in the clearing that night we fought Baruck and about everything thereafter, she and Adam would have been more cautious about bum-rushing my house. They would’ve known about Blake and how he was like me, capable of fighting back on a souped-up alien level.
