Страница 42 из 85
“What the hell!” I pulled my hand free, furious. “That’s not cool, Blake. What’s next? Trying to stop a moving vehicle by standing in front of it, but whoops, I can’t do that and now I’m dead?”
Blake rolled his eyes. “You should be able to do that. At least, I hope so.”
Disgusted with him, I went back to the candles. Needing to prove myself, I tried again and again. I couldn’t light the fire without touching the candles no matter how hard I tried.
The following morning I had to come up with a good excuse for my mom. It involved something stupid like placing my hand on a lit burner, but she believed me, and I even scored some weak pain pills.
Later that night, Blake explained that he’d never been able to heal anyone. When I asked when and why he’d been presented with the opportunity, he didn’t get a chance to answer. Warmth tingled over my neck and then a few seconds later there was a knock on my door.
I shot up. “Daemon.”
“Woo hoo.” Blake exuded so much false enthusiasm he could’ve been an actor.
Ignoring him, I rushed to the front door. “Hey,” I gasped, feeling hot and dizzy when I saw him. It never failed to amaze me how striking Daemon really was. “Are you helping tonight?”
Daemon’s gaze dropped to my bandaged fingers and nodded. “Yeah. Where’s Bilbo?”
“Blake,” I corrected. “He’s in the living room.”
He shut the door behind him. “About your hand…”
When Daemon had asked me about it in class earlier, I’d avoided answering, because I seriously doubted he would think how it happened was kosher. The last thing any of us needed was for him to kill Blake over my own ineptitude.
“I burned it on the stove last night.” I shrugged, looking down at the tips of his black boots peeking out from his denim jeans.
“That…is…”
I sighed. “Lame?”
“Yeah, really lame, Kat. Maybe you should stay away from the stove for a little while?”
He sidled past me and headed for the living room. I trailed behind, knowing I couldn’t leave him alone with Blake for any amount of time.
Blake gave him a halfhearted wave. “Nice of you to join us again.”
Gri
“Yeah,” Blake said, sounding real genuine.
We got started with moving stuff around for a little while and Daemon didn’t say much, not even a “Wow” or a “Congratulations,” but he watched me. Constantly.
“Moving stuff is just a parlor trick, really.” Blake’s arms were pi
“Wow.” Daemon cocked his head to the side. “You’re just now figuring that out?”
Blake ignored him. “The good news is you can do it on command now, but that doesn’t mean you have control. I hope it does, but we really don’t know.”
Damn. Blake was such a downer sometimes.
“I have an idea. You’re going to need to completely trust me. If I ask you to do something, you can’t fire back with a thousand questions.” He paused while Daemon’s eyes narrowed. “We need to see something amazing.”
Amazing? I was moving stuff without touching it! That’s pretty amazing in my book. But then again, there was the fire hoopla. “I’m doing my best.”
“Your best isn’t good enough.” He exhaled loudly. “Okay. Stay here.”
I glanced at Daemon as Blake disappeared into the foyer. “I have no idea what he’s up to.”
Daemon arched a brow. “I’m guessing it’s going to be something I don’t like.”
Like there was much Blake could do that Daemon would like. What he didn’t know or get was that Blake hadn’t put the moves on me. Not once since he’d tried to hug me that day in the diner. But maybe it was just plain old dislike.
While we waited, I heard drawers opening in the kitchen. There was a clankof silverware. Oh goodie, more glassware to destroy.
Blake returned and stopped in the doorway, one hand behind his back. “You ready?”
“Sure.”
He smiled and then cocked his arm back. Light reflected off the sharp edge of metal. A knife? And then the butcher knifewas flying straight at my chest.
A scream caught in my throat. I threw up my hand, horrified and panicked. The knife stopped in midair. Frozen inches from my chest, pointy end facing toward me. It just stayed there, suspended.
Blake clapped. “I knew it!”
I stared at him as my critical-thinking skills slowly trickled back in. “What the hell, Blake?”
Several things happened all at once. Now that my concentration was broken, the knife fell out of the air, smacking off the floor harmlessly. Blake was still clapping. I let loose several curses that would’ve caused my mom to cry and Daemon, who’d appeared to have been knocked into a stupor by what Blake had done, snapped out of it.
Daemon shot off that couch like a rocket, simultaneously flipping into his true form. A heartbeat later, he had Blake pi
I craned my neck and whispered, “Holy smokes.”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Blake yelled, arms flailing in the light. “You need to check yourself. Katy wasn’t in any danger.”
There was no response from Daemon, not one that Blake could hear, anyway, but I did. Loud and clear. That’s it. I’m going to kill him.
Windows began to shake and walls trembled. The flat-screen on the TV stand rattled. All around, little puffs of plaster filled the air. Daemon’s light flared, swallowing Blake whole, and for a horrible moment, I really thought he had killed Blake.
“Daemon!” I shrieked, darting around the coffee table. “Stop!”
But then there was a crackling sound, like air heated and charged after a lightning strike. Still in his Luxen form, Daemon jerked back and let Blake go. The boy landed on his feet and staggered to the side as he rose.
Daemon hummed and started toward Blake, but I got in the middle. “Okay. You two need to freaking stop.”
Blake ran both his hands down his shirt, straightening it. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You did throw a freaking knife at me,” I shot back. Wrong thing to say, because I heard Daemon promise, I will break him in two. “Stop.”
An arm appeared in the light and fingers brushed along my cheek. The touch was soft as silk and brief, lasting only half of a second and so quick that I doubted Blake even saw it. Then his light flickered out. He stood in his human form, trembling with barely restrained rage, his eyes white and sharp like icicles. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“She wasn’t in any danger! If I thought for a second she couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t have thrown it at her!”
Daemon sidestepped me, his large hand curled into a fist. Human or alien, Daemon could do some real damage. “But there was no way you would’ve known she could do it! Not a hundred percent!”
Turning wide, pleading eyes to me, Blake shook his head. “I swear you were never in any danger, Katy. If I thought you couldn’t stop it, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Daemon cursed again and I moved, blocking him. “Who does that?” Daemon demanded. Heat rolled off his body.
“Actually, Kiefer Sutherland did. In the original Buffy movie,” he explained. When I continued to gape at him, he grimaced. “It was on TV a few nights ago. He threw one at Buffy and she caught it.”
“That was Donald Sutherland—the dad,” Daemon corrected, much to my surprise.
Blake shrugged. “Same difference.”
“I’m not Buffy!” I yelled.
A slow grin pulled at his lips. “You are definitely cuter than Buffy.”
And that wasn’t the right thing to say. Daemon growled low in his throat. “You got a death wish? Because you’re really pushing it tonight, buddy. I’m dead serious. Really pushing it. I can hold you up against that wall until you run out of juice. Can you hold me off forever? No? I didn’t think so.”