Oblivion

“Hey, man,” he said, looking at everything but me in the hallway as I passed him.

I was worried about Kat, but I also wasn’t thrilled with what was obviously going down in Dee’s bedroom. She was my sister. It was required that I not be okay with that. “You heading home, Adam?”

He stared at my sneakers. “Yeah. Uh, I think Andrew is, um, going to—”

“I really don’t need an explanation.” I folded my arms and didn’t beat around the bush. “What are you doing with my sister?”

“What am I doing?” Adam stopped, lifting his hand to his chest and rubbing his palm along the wrinkled front of his shirt. “I’m being with her.”

I felt the Source ripple across my skin and tint my vision diamond white. “You want to clarify that, bud?”

Adam had the common sense to just ignore that. “You know I really care about her, right?” His voice dropped low. “I’m not just messing with her. I would never do that, and that has nothing to do with the fact that you’d kill me if I was.”

“I would,” I agreed.

He shook his head, lowering his hand to his side. “I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t hurt her. I…I really care about Dee.”

There was no mistaking the seriousness in his tone. He wasn’t playing me. Truth was, Adam wasn’t like that—like Andrew…or like me.

Correction. Like how I used to be, emphasis on the past tense, and boy, was that one hell of a wake-up call. I nodded and started back down the hall.

Adam stopped me. “I mean it, Daemon, you can trust me with her…with her heart.”

Looking over my shoulder, I met his steady gaze. “I know.”

He stood there for a moment, nodded, and then headed out. I almost made it to my bedroom before Dee’s door creaked open and she stuck her head out. I sighed, preparing for a major rant about staying out of her life.

“Hey,” she called out.

Stepping back from my door, I faced her, surprised to find her smiling instead of glaring at me. “Hey?”

She walked out into the hall, the hem of her dress swinging around her knees as she clasped her hands behind her back. “You love me.”

“Uh.” I glanced around the otherwise empty hall. “Yeah.”

Tilting her head to the side, several curls snuck loose from the knot. “You were making sure Adam cared about me.”

I arched a brow.

“You’re a good brother,” she said.

“Yeah…” I winked. “Older brother.”

Dee laughed as she walked up to me. Stretching up on the tip of her toes, she pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Thank you.”

I started to ask for what, but I figured it out. Slowly. I shook my head at her and then went into my room. I wasn’t entirely surprised when Dee followed me in. “Do you know why you’re also an awesome older brother?” she asked.

Moving toward the bed, I waved my hand. The towel from the morning shower flew off the bed, straight toward the open door leading to the bathroom. “Because I’m awesome in general.”

“Nope.” She hopped up so she was sitting on the edge of the desk. “You haven’t yelled at me about the party Friday night.”

I sat on the bed, eyeing her as I kicked off my shoes. “It would’ve been nice to have a heads-up about it.”

“Actually, I mentioned it yesterday, but you were watching something on TV, so you weren’t paying attention to me.” She flashed a bright smile while I frowned at her. “But you’re not going to make a big deal about it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you would’ve already if you were.” She swung her legs like a five-year-old. “I just…want to do something different, and we’ve never done anything like that before. Dawson would’ve loved…” She trailed off, lowering her chin.

She didn’t need to finish her statement, because I already knew what she was going to say. Dawson would’ve been all over the idea of having a house party. Because Dawson pretty much loved everything while I was the exact opposite.

“Anyway,” she said, exhaling deeply. “I just want to do something fun. All of us could use that.”

I leaned back. Wait a second. Wasn’t Kat’s birthday coming up? Yes. It was. I’d overheard her saying her birth date when she was taken to the hospital after the Arum attack. Damn, I hoped she was feeling better by then. Would suck to spend your birthday sick. Then again, I didn’t think humans stayed sick that long. I started to tell Dee that Kat wasn’t feeling well, but realized if I did, Dee would go right over there and it seemed like Kat wanted to be alone.

Please just leave me alone.

Damn, I wanted to check on her. It was killing me not to, but her coming down with a bug or flu wasn’t a national crisis. I needed to chill. Plus, she had said she was fine.

After I resisted the urge to point out that the party might be a bad idea, Dee eventually disappeared back into her room, working on her English assignment. I ate the rest of the leftover pizza and then spent the next several hours trying to entertain myself.

There wasn’t a damn thing on the TV. No Paranormal Hunters marathon or anything. The internet bores me. Dee had finished up whatever she was working on and had gone over to Adam’s house, because apparently they needed to hang out more than once in a day. They were probably sucking face again—God, I wished I hadn’t even had that thought, because now I sort of wanted to barf up the pizza I ate—and picking up a book required waaay too much effort.

And books made me think of Kat and her middle finger.

She didn’t want me? Yeah, and people in hell didn’t want ice water. God, what a stupid-ass saying. People in hell were dead. They didn’t drink water, iced or not.

Flipping onto my back, I groaned. Night had fallen, so instead of turning on the lamp like a good, normal human, I lifted my hand. White light with a reddish tinge radiated from my open palm and lit up the ceiling. Night-lights? Ha. Who needed one?

My gaze followed a thin crack, starting at one corner of the ceiling and spreading to the middle, webbing out into a million tiny crevices. The foundation of the house was most definitely damaged.

As was my brain right now.

I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this restless. Well, that was a lie. The night and morning before I’d learned that Dawson had died, it was like this. Equally tired and hyper, I was keyed up and too damn lazy to do anything. An itching deep under the skin, a stirring to take on my true form and do…what?

“Jesus,” I muttered, letting the light fade out around my palm.

Sitting up, I swung my legs off the bed and stood, stretching out cramped and tight muscles. Sleep so wasn’t happening anytime soon. I could always do some patrols. Yay.

Man, I was about as exciting as a game of golf.

A year ago, I would’ve called up Ash. She was always good with easing a serious case of boredom. Or Dawson, and I would have…

I derailed that train of thought before it could completely form.

I wouldn’t be calling Ash, and there was no Dawson.

Leaving the bedroom, I hurried downstairs and out the front door. Brisk November wind slammed into me as I stopped in the driveway.

Not going to look. Not going to look. Not going to look.

Twisting around, I looked up at the house beside mine, to the bedroom on the second floor. Lights were off. Wonder what Kat would do if I woke her up and said we had to work off the trace? And I wasn’t thinking about the ru

Body said yes please, common sense said no.

Kat would punch me in the face.

Hmm. Maybe then I could ask her to kiss it and make it better.

I’d taken a step toward her house before I stopped myself. Kat hadn’t been feeling well earlier. Humans were so ridiculously fragile. They could die tripping over a damn chair leg. Car accidents could kill them. Colds turned into pneumonia and killed people.