I ignored him, focused on Vibe. “What are you doing here, Kayleigh?”
Even with my touch working as a buffer between her and the hundreds of teenage emotional roller coasters surrounding us, her voice was weak. If the bar music hadn’t rolled over to a new song just then, I might not have heard her at all.
“I came looking for you.” I waited for Kayleigh to continue, but even that limited and unhelpful sentence seemed to have exhausted her.
Oh well. It wasn’t like I’d been having much fun anyway, between Orca’s absence and Jeremiah’s interrogation.
Not to mention Tessa and her sneak-attack cleavage. God help me.
“Well, you found me,” I yelled back as the music returned to full volume. “Shall we get out of here?”
She nodded and held tightly to my hand as I led her through the crowd to the door.
A— never did find out what was going on.
•—•—•
Once we were outside, the combination of cold air, isolation, and a continued death-grip on my hand helped Vibe recover quickly. Even so, it took ten or so minutes of walking before she fully relaxed.
“Maybe you should wait to try that whole bar scene until—”
“My shielding’s better?” she interrupted, dropping her eyes. “Yeah. I thought I could handle it for long enough to come get you.”
“Next time, just set off a flare or something,” I suggested. “Or find Orca and send her in. That would have totally worked.”
“Gee, I wonder why?” She rolled her eyes.
“So what did you need me for, anyway? Not that I mind leaving the party-a-minute of Paladin, Winter, and Poltergeist.”
“Paladin was at a bar?”
“Drinking water, but yeah. He probably read in his instruction manual that socialization is a vital component of team-building.”
“He’s not that bad, Damian.”
First Wormhole, now Vibe. If Silt started singing Paladin’s praises, I was going to scream.
“Anyway,” she added, the smile falling from her face, “I came to warn you.”
I would have asked her about what… but prior experience had taught me she would just interrupt me, mid-question. Instead, I just arched one eyebrow and waited.
“Patty overheard Caleb and Freddy talking about their group project for History.”
Patty was Kayleigh’s roommate, and one of our class’ two Hydromancers. Don’t think I’ve mentioned her yet. In a class of twenty-four, there are some kids you like, some you hate, and some you just never really run into. She belonged to that last group. Our two water-based Powers practically lived at the school’s indoor pool, and while the image of first-years—or, God willing, second-years—in bikinis had its appeal, the reality was that the Hydros just swam to the floor of the pool’s deep end and stayed there for hours, communing with their native element or some shit like that.
Pretty sure all that water was wrinkling more than just their fingers and toes.
“They’re doing it on you,” Vibe continued. “On Crows, I mean. They were saying it’s in case any of us encounter a Necromancer after we graduate, but—”
“But really, they just want to embarrass me in front of a bigger audience,” I finished with a scowl.
“I think so.” She sighed, using her free hand to tuck a blue strand of hair behind one ear. “Some of them really do hate you. I don’t know why.”
I thought of my dad. “I do. But that doesn’t give them the right—”
“No, it doesn’t. Anyway, I was going to tell you tomorrow, but someone said you’d gone to the party, so I came to warn you.” She paused, and looked up at me with a frown of her own. “Since when do you go to parties?”
“Staring at my dorm room wall every night is going to drive me nuts even faster than my powers. When Jeremiah invited me, I figured…” My voice trailed off. My roommate was in that same History group with Caleb, Freddy, Tessa and Olympia. “That bearded motherfucker.”
It wasn’t until I felt Kayleigh’s grip tighten on my wrist that I realized I’d spun around and was heading back toward the bar. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m going to go teach someone a lesson about fucking with me.”
“You can’t fight him—”
“Yeah, I can.” It was my turn to interrupt. “It would be different if Jeremiah walked around in stone form, but right now, he’s just flesh and blood.” And probably halfway to being drunk. I’d have time for at least one shot before he changed form.
“No… I mean you’ll get kicked out of school!”
That stopped me, for just a moment. “There’s no way they’d expel a Cape just for fighting.”
“You’re not a regular Cape,” Kayleigh reminded me, “and it’s not just first-years that are freaked out by that fact. If you go swinging your dick around like a monkey with something to prove, you’re just going to make it easier for them to have you expelled.”
“That’s such fucking bullsh—” My voice trailed off. “Swinging my dick around like a monkey?”
Even with the dim light of the streetlamps and her naturally golden skin, Kayleigh’s blush was noticeable. “It’s a figure of speech. Why is it that boys always want to run off and make things worse?”
“You’re the Empath,” I reminded her. “You tell me.”
“Well, I can’t hear your emotions, but if you’re anything like the others, I guess it’s some combination of pride, insecurity, and raging testosterone.”
I sighed and tucked my anger away. “Dating must suck for you.”
“You have no idea. Anyway, I sort of figured you’d get pissed off. That’s why I waited to tell you until we were on the far side of campus.”
I glanced around. We’d traveled along one of the campus’ many paths to its west-most extremity, the nearby woods a dark boundary just outside the last streetlamp’s illumination. Mom’s ghost was a pale figure on the periphery, but we were otherwise alone. “I thought I was getting you away from there.”
“You were, at first,” she admitted, “but it’s been five minutes since we even saw anyone else.” She scowled at whatever she saw in
