Oblivion

“Not really.”

“You’re pla

“Yeah, that’s one of the ways of doing it.”

She plopped down on the couch. “Well, there isn’t much we can do today.”

I arched a brow. “You have a problem going out in the rain?”

“When it’s almost the end of October and cold, yes, I do.” She picked up a checkered afghan and placed it in her lap. “I’m not going out there and ru

I sighed. “We can’t wait around, Kat. Baruck is still out there, and the longer we wait, the more dangerous it is.”

“What about Simon? Did you ever tell the others about him?”

I’d actually forgotten about him until Saturday evening. “Andrew is keeping an eye on him. Since he had a game yesterday, it faded most of his trace. It’s very faint now. Which proves that this idea is going to work.”

She fiddled with a ragged edge on the quilt, peeking up at me. Reaching into the pocket, I pulled out the obsidian blade. “This is another reason why I stopped over.” I placed it on the coffee table. “I want you to keep this with you, just in case. Put it in your backpack, purse, or whatever you carry.”

Kat stared at it a moment and then lifted her gaze. “Seriously?”

I focused on the blade. Matthew would flip his shit if he knew I was giving it to her. “Yeah, even if we manage to get the trace to fade, keep this on you until we finish off Baruck.”

“But don’t you need it more than I do? Dee?”

“Don’t worry about us.”

A moment passed. “Do you think Baruck is still here?”

“He’s still around, yes.” No point in lying to her. “The beta quartz throws off our presence, but he knows we’re here. He knows I’m here.”

“Do you think he’s going to come after you?”

Her question caught me off guard. “I killed two of his brothers and gave you the means of killing the third. Arum are vengeful creatures, Kitten. He won’t stop until he has me. And he will use you to find me, especially since you came back. They’ve been on Earth long enough to recognize what that can mean. That you would be a weakness to me.”

Her nose did that cute wrinkling thing whenever she was perturbed. “I’m not a weakness. I can handle myself.”

Damn straight she could.

Kat glanced up at me, and I realized I was staring at her like a freak. I glanced around the room. “Enough talking. We have stuff to do now. I don’t know what we can do in here that will make a damn bit of difference. Maybe jumping jacks?”

Her response to that was to open her laptop. Nice. Good to see she didn’t even attempt to pretend to listen to me. Her nose did the wrinkle thing again and she gave a little sigh as she eyed something on her screen.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.” She went to close the lid, but I wasn’t having that. I kept it open. She glared up at me. “Stop using your freaking object thing on my laptop. You’re going to break it.”

Amused, I walked around the coffee table and sat beside her. On the screen was a girl…with pigtails. “Is that you?”

“What does it look like?” she grumbled.

A slow smile crept over my face. I’d seen these things before on her blog, but I couldn’t let her know that. Nothing like adding cyberstalking to what seemed like real-life stalking. “You film yourself?”

Kat took a deep breath, and it took every ounce of my self-control to not check out her chest when she did that. “You make it sound like I’m doing a live perv show or something.”

I choked on my breath. “Is that what you’re doing?”

“That was a stupid question. Can I please close it now?”

“I want to watch it.”

“No!” Horror filled her voice. You’d think there was an Arum in the room.

I cast her a sidelong glance, and her eyes narrowed as she turned back to the screen. The little arrow moved over the page and clicked on the play button.

“I hate you and your freaky alien powers,” she muttered.

A few seconds later, the video started and there Kat was, showing off books, talking in an excited way I’d only heard her do a few times. While the video played, she sat beside me, her jaw locked down and her face the color of blood. It was obvious she filmed the video either last night or this morning. It ended with her smiling broadly at the camera.

Dammit.

She was such a…freaking nerd—a hot freaking nerd.

“You’re even glowing in the video,” I said, and my voice sounded rough to my own ears.

Kat nodded.

“You really have a thing for books.” I closed the lid on the laptop. “It’s cute.”

Her head whipped toward mine so fast I worried she’d strain a muscle. “Cute?”

“Yeah, it’s cute. Your excitement,” I said, shrugging. “It was cute. But as cute as you are in pigtails, that’s not going to do anything to fade the trace on you.” I needed to focus. Standing, I stretched my arms above my head. When I glanced down at her, she was eyeing the section of skin that was exposed when my shirt rode up. “We need to get this trace off you.”

She was still staring at my stomach.

I lowered my arms. “The sooner we get the trace off you, the less time we have to spend together.”

And that got her attention. Her eyes snapped to mine. “You know, if you hate the idea of being around me, why doesn’t one of the others come over here and do this? I actually prefer any of them to you, even Ash.”

“You’re not their problem. You’re my problem.”

Her laugh was harsh. “I’m not your problem.”

“But you are,” I said, and that was the truth. Probably could say it a little nicer, but oh well. “If I had managed to convince Dee not to get so close to you, none of this would’ve happened.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. There isn’t much we can do in here that’s going to make a difference, so we might as well count today as a loss and spare each other the pain of breathing the same air.”

I shot her a bland look.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. You don’t need to breathe oxygen. My bad.” She shot to her feet, knocking the poor quilt to the floor. “Can’t you just come back when it stops raining?”

“No.” I moved back and leaned against the wall, folding my arms. “I want to get this over with. Worrying over you and the Arum isn’t fun, Kitten. We need to do something about this now. There are things we can try.”

Kat was two seconds from losing it, and I loved it. Her hands curled into tiny fists. “Like what?”

“Well, the jumping jacks…an hour or so should do it.” I was only half serious when I made the suggestion, but then my gaze dropped over the front of her shirt. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to see her jump around. “You may want to change first.”

Please say no. Please say no to changing.

She took a deep breath. “I’m not doing jumping jacks for an hour.”

And that was a damn shame. Crimson stained the tips of her cheeks. A sure sign she was angry. I couldn’t help myself, so I pushed at her again. “You could run around the house, up and down the stairs.” I met her eyes and gri

Her mouth dropped open. “That will never happen in a million years, buddy.” She took a step forward, raising her pointer finger at me. “Not even if you were the last— Wait, I can’t even say last human on the face of this Earth.”

“Kitten,” I murmured, sort of offended.

“Not even if you were the last thing that looked like a human on the face of this Earth. Got that? Capiche?”

I tilted my head to the side and smiled. She was really on a roll now. Eyes bright and face flushed. Part of me hated to admit it, but she was amazing when she was like this. Absolutely amazing.

“I’m not even attracted to you. Not even a little bit. You’re—”

I was in her face before she had a chance to blink. “I’m what?”

“Ignorant,” she said, taking a step back.

“And?” I matched her steps, compelled. Compelled by what? I didn’t know. I came over to work the trace off of her and instead we were arguing with each other after a moment of nice conversation.