“Oh.” I took the bracelet from his warm fingers. A narrow slip of paper was wrapped around it.
I looked up into Talbot’s glinting emerald eyes.
“That’s for you,” he said. “Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”
“Okay,” I said, and got out of the van.
“Tell April I said hi,” Talbot said before I shut the door.
I shoved the slip of paper in my pocket and trucked toward the bus in the dark, wondering how best to explain my lateness when another person fell in right beside me.
“Dude, took you long enough to get back here,” Chris said. He had half a sub sandwich in his hand, and his pockets jangled with what sounded like coins as he walked.
“Where have you two been?” Principal Conway asked when he saw us approaching. “We were scheduled to leave twenty minutes ago. I was beginning to worry that you weren’t out in one of the vans at all.”
“Sorry, Tom,” Chris said to his dad. “I got all hypoglycemic, so I made our driver pull over so I could get something to eat. I don’t think this volunteer stuff is good for my health.”
“Nice try,” Principal Conway said, and led his son up the steps of the bus. “Next time, answer your phone when I call.”
I stopped on the top step of the bus and looked back at the parking lot. Talbot flashed the lights of his van and then drove away.
“Holy crap!” April slid her silver cuff bracelet onto her wrist. “Number one: I can’t believe Talbot found my bracelet at the club—it’s supposed to be the feature item in my new fall collection, but there’s no way I was going to go back there looking for it. Number two: I cannot believe he’s your driver.
Number three: I can’t believe you guys stopped a freaking mugging together. And number four: The fact that he’s an Ur—”
“Shhh!” I tried to throw my hands over her mouth. We sat alone at the back of the bus, but her voice had risen in volume with each number on her list of things she couldn’t believe. I suddenly wondered if I’d done the right thing by telling her the truth.
April squealed and wriggled away from my hands. “Number four,” she loudly whispered, “the fact that Talbot is a freaking Urbat demon hunter is, like, blowing my mind!” Her voice rose on the last word so it was almost a shout. I pounced on her again, practically knocking her flat on the bus bench, and tried to cover her mouth. She giggled and pushed me off her. “Okay, okay. I’ll try to be quiet. But this is, like, too awesome. You have to let me be all girly about your secret rendezvous with Talbot for a moment.”
“I know,” I whispered. “But if Principal Conway or Gabriel … Pastor Saint Moon, I mean, find out that I went out with Talbot alone, don’t you think they’ll have a problem with that? I don’t want them to find out I was working with him one-on-one—let alone what we were doing.”
April waggled her eyebrows at me.
“It’s not like that …,” I said. “Besides, I don’t want Chris to get into trouble for ditching out.”
“You’re a terrible liar. I can see those splotch marks on your neck.”
I rubbed my neck. “I’m just hot.”
“I’ll bet you are.”
“April, seriously. It’s not like that. Talbot’s just a new friend. You know how I feel about Daniel.” I meant what I said, but my neck still felt all hot and itchy. I pulled a water bottle out of my backpack and took a sip.
“Yeah, but how is Daniel going to feel about this? Any boy is going to have a problem with his girlfriend being all one-on-one with a hot guy—
especially if you’re getting all hot and sweaty. Don’t you think Daniel will be jealous that he’s not the one doing it with you?”
I choked and almost spat water at her.
“I meant doing it as in Daniel wanting to kick bad-guy butt with you … not … you know … not you two ‘getting it on.’ ” She made a weird gesture with her hands that I assumed had something to do with “getting it on.” “Unless, you and Daniel are. You know … Um, you’re not, right? Because I heard—”
I coughed and cleared my throat. “No, Daniel and I aren’t ‘getting it on.’ No matter what anyone says.”
Thanks to my superhearing and all those lovely rumors Lynn Bishop spread last school year, I knew there were plenty of people who thought
Daniel and I were “getting it on.” But we most definitely weren’t. Not that we didn’t think about it or want to—just the sight of Daniel most days made my heart race and my legs ache with anticipation.
It was just that, to me, sex was a big deal.
I mean, it was a running joke at HTA that if my dad substitute taught one of the religion classes, it was no doubt going to be a lesson on chastity.
And let me tell you, having to sit through your dad’s lecturing all of your friends about abstinence—not the funfest you’d think it would be. But even though Dad’s spiels always made me want to bang my head on my desk, I couldn’t help believing the things he was telling us about waiting for marriage. It just seemed to go with the whole package, you know? That if I believed in Jesus, and believed in all those parables he taught, and believed in forgiving people, then what the Bible had to say about sex being sacred and special had to be right, too.
And as much as I wanted it—and I knew Daniel was the one I wanted it with—I also wanted to wait. Even if it was one of the hardest choices I’ve ever had to make.
I’d worried my decision would be a problem for Daniel. We’d lived very different lives during the three years he’d been gone, and he’d, um, gotten it on, so to speak, more than once. But one of the things I loved about Daniel was that he’d completely understood.
“You’re different from those other girls,” Daniel once told me. “We’re different. I love you. And I want things to be right with us.”
But now with all the lying and fighting and secrets that were suddenly happening between Daniel and me—it almost felt like nothing was quite right with us anymore.
“So are you going to tell him?” April asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Tell who what?”
“Are you going to tell Daniel about Talbot and you?”
“I told you, there is no Talbot and me.”
“But there could be,” she crooned.
“Okay, I’m not telling you anything anymore.”
“Oh, come on, you know I’m just teasing. I meant, are you going to tell Daniel about Talbot being your driver? You know he’s going to be all jealous that he was stuck doing inventory at Day’s with Katie Summers instead of being out there fighting side by side with you in the city.”
I might have told April way too much lately, but I still hadn’t told her the reason I’d been avoiding Daniel all day. As far as she knew, Daniel was just as gung ho about training me to become a superhero. She didn’t know how he’d turned his back on me and on the plan that he’d come up with in the first place.
“Yeah. I think I will tell him.”
My body tingled with the hope of a new idea: when Daniel heard how I took that guy down in the alley, he’d realize that I really could take care of myself out there. He’d change his mind about agreeing with Gabriel. When he heard how I helped save that woman, he’d have to believe in me again.
And then maybe he’d finally tell me whatever secret he was keeping from me.
I didn’t have to wait long to see Daniel. He was hanging out in the school parking lot when I got off the bus. He leaned against the seat of his red-
and-black motorcycle, his hands tucked in the pockets of his hoodie.
“Gotta go,” I said to April, and practically skipped over to Daniel through the mostly deserted lot. I was about
