Hunted

decorated. “This is beautiful.”

“I know.” Kylie stood and stretched, her tank top hiking up to reveal a tattoo on her hip. “It’s perfect. Matches my curtains, don’t you think?”

“And your tattoo.” Kylie was a petite five-foot-four with a pixie face, grey eyes and brown hair—her natural hair color. Before, she’d dyed it black during her Gothic phase.

“So what took you?” she asked. “I texted you, like, an hour ago.”

I laughed. “What took me? Who do you think I am? Your servant?”

“Clark Kent to my Chloe Sullivan, faithful sidekick and best friend ever.” She grinned when I scrunched up my face. Still grinning, she walked to where I stood beside the dresser, hands going to her hips. “You’re not just the Chosen One, you are Lil Fathaig. That means—”

“Lil the Mighty, I know.”

She made a face. “I hate that you can speak, like, a gazillion languages.”

“Okay. From now on I’ll pretend I don’t know Gaelic.”

“Don’t bother, smarty-pants. Anyway, when I need heavy lifting, you’re the one I text. When you need R&R from Guardian biz and computer research, I’m your girl.”

I made a derisive sound. “You can’t be Chloe. You suck with computers.”

“Nitpicking, and not my fault. My parents gave all the smart genes to my brainiac brother.” She pouted. “It’s so unfair. You can find me any time and any where, while I have to send a stupid text.”

“Texts,” I corrected her. “As in five of them. What is the emergency anyway?”

Kylie frowned. “What are you talking about? I sent you one text message because of this,” she waved at the dresser, “not four.”

“Four more after the first one. My cell phone kept vibrating while I was in the middle of a conference.”

She searched for her phone “That doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“I texted you once.”

She was getting pissed. “Forget it. It’s not important.”

“Is too.” She marched toward the door, her frown fierce. “I’m going to kill the slimy worm.”

Before I could ask her what she meant, Kylie had yanked open her door and stomped to the one down the hall. It had a quantum physics poster and a picture of Albert Einstein. She banged on it with her fist. “Jesse!”

No response.

“Open up or I’ll break it down!”

The door jerked open to reveal her brother, pimpled face red, a mop of curly brown hair falling over his forehead. He wore a T-shirt with the writing Schrodinger’s Cat, Dead and Alive, and a drawing of cat in a cage. Two of his friends appeared behind him and stared at Kylie with wary expressions, video game controllers clenched in their hands.

“Break it down?” Jesse asked. “Physically impossible since you are only five-three and weigh about one —”

“Shut up, you freak,” Kylie snapped. “You took my cell phone again! Where is it?”

“I don’t have it,” her brother protested. Then he saw me and smiled. “Hi, Lil.”

I gave him a tiny wave.

“Don’t talk to her. Just because she’s played a few video games with you doesn’t make her your friend. You can’t pretend to be me and text her.”

His brother shook his head. “I didn’t touch your stupid phone, Kylie. We’ve been in here playing video games all evening.”

“Liar! My phone is missing and you’ve been bugging me for days to ask her to come over.” She thrust her face forward and hissed, “She’s got a boyfriend, you loser.”

Jesse glanced my way one more time, face redder than before, then whispered through clenched teeth, “Ask Mom. She’ll tell you we haven’t left my room for hours. Maybe your witches,” he wiggled his fingers, “took it.”

“Goddesses,” Kylie snapped. “Celtic deities.”

“Get a life.” He slammed his door.

“I have a life,” she shouted through the door. “And it’s not in some online gaming world.”

Feeling bad for Jesse, who’d had a crush on me since the first time Kylie had invited me to their home, I retreated into her room. He was a year younger than her, tall, gangly, and going through the zits stage. The few times we’d played video games, I had had fun, though.

“I swear my parents found him in a crashed spaceship,” Kylie snapped when she re-entered her bedroom. “He’s so weird.”

“I’m sure he just wanted my help with a game. Where do you say you wanted the dresser?” I asked, hoping to distract her, but I shouldn’t have bothered. She continued to search for her phone while muttering under her breath.

“I’m telling on him, the worm.”

“It’s no big deal, you know,” I said, trying to calm her down.

“Is too. He’s always stealing my phone to text his friends. It’s not my fault he lost his.”

I stopped trying to help and studied her room instead. It was done in black and white, from the bed cover to the draperies; the only colors were the wooden floor and colored pillows on her bed. Celtic spirals and knots dominated everything. It was beautiful and so Kylie.

“Okay?” she asked.

I raised my brow, feeling a little guilty for ignoring her rant. “What?”

“I said, let’s move the bed first from this wall to that,” she pointed to the wall adjacent to the window. “Then the dresser to where the bed is. This way, the mirror can reflect the window and give an illusion of more space.”

“Move out of the way,” I warned. I waited until Kylie stood by the door, then moved her bed to the adjacent wall. The books shifted a little but didn’t fall. Next, I put the dresser where the bed had been while Kylie issued orders like a drill sergeant.

“A little to the right…not too much…an inch or two to the left,” she said. “Perfect. Thank you. Look, I found my phone.” It was inside the top drawer of her new dresser. “And it’s dead. I swear if catch him with it again, his DS is mine.” She placed the phone on the dresser, jumped on to her bed, scooted over and patted the area beside her. I moved the pillows behind me then flopped on my back and stared at the ceiling.

“Start talking,” she said.

I frowned. “About what?”

“What the Guardians have been up to…what I’ve missed. Duh. I haven’t seen you in over a week. You promised to keep me in the loop and I look forward to hearing about your escapades.”

“Escapades? We’ve been canceling contracts. Hardly exciting.”

“Not from the way you often tell it, and there was also the meeting with that lightning demon that blocked the light from the Kris Dagger. So start talking and don’t leave anything out,” she warned.

Obviously, I’d shared everything with her. “I’ll start with why Izzy came with me to your place. I was attacked on Saturday and lost months of memories, including those about your new home.”

Kylie sat up, her eyes round. I started with the attack and the more I talked, the more frantic she became— surprise giving way to worry then panic.

“Powerful demons are after you and you waited for nearly a week before telling me?” she screeched.

“Four days,” I corrected her.

“Whatever. And your powers…do you have a headache right now?”

I shrugged. “Just a dull throb. Sleeping this afternoon helped. But, I’ve learned to live with them.”

“Have you taken something for it?”

I cocked my brow. “Something?”

“Headache meds. It doesn’t have to be prescription strength. Just over-the-counter ones.”

I shook my head. “What?”

She rolled her eyes. “You are part human, so maybe, just maybe Ibuprofen or Aleve might take care of your