“I could smell you.”
“Ha, ha. That’s funny. You make me laugh, being so funny.”
She looked at him now, and he was surprised at how haggard her face was and how sad her eyes. “Go to bed,” she repeated.
He looked away self-consciously. “Can’t. Too wound up from this afternoon. You come that close to dying, you don’t want to sleep for a while. The two seem too much alike, I guess.”
She nodded. “You were lucky.”
“Huh. Staying alive is always about luck. You didn’t know that?”
He flashed her a quick grin. “You taught me, remember? Back when we went looking to rescue Logan Tom from that other out-of-control Knight of Whatever-He-Thought-He-Was?”
“That was a long time ago,” she said, looking away again.
“Not so long. Hey, I missed you. Got no one else I can rag on like I can on you. I might have been jealous, too, you know. You choosing to stay with Logan instead of coming with me, I mean. ’Cept I’m not like that.”
She kept her gaze averted. “You don’t need to be jealous of me. There’s no reason for it. Now go to bed.”
“You think we’re getting any closer to where we’re supposed to go?” he asked, ignoring her.
“If I had any idea where it was we were going, I might be able to answer that. Go ask your friend Hawk.”
“Ah, Bird-Man won’t say anything. He’s not over our fight with the demon yet. Something happened to him out there. He won’t say what, but something. You could see it. He was all froze up when we found him. He couldn’t move, even to defend himself. Like he lost his nerve, something I didn’t think he would ever do. He was just standing there, waiting to die.” He paused. “I don’t know about him. Might be he can’t even find his way anymore. He’s got that look, as if everything’s a mystery and nothing he does will make it clearer.”
“Maybe you should try to help him out then. You and the other Ghosts. You’re his family, aren’t you?”
“Naw, he won’t listen to me. Never has. Never will.”
She glanced at him, irritation mirrored on her face. “Better that you go try to change the situation there than continue sitting around here annoying me. Okay?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to—”
“Panther, are you listening to me? Do you understand what I’m saying to you? I’m telling you I want to be alone. Got it?”
He went silent then, staring at her in confusion. His anger surfaced in a hot wave, but he tamped it down quickly. “Sure, I got it.” He gave her a nonchalant salute. “No problem, Kitty Cat. See you later.”
He got up and stalked off, stung by the rebuke. He hadn’t quite gotten to where he couldn’t look back and still see her when the last vestiges of his anger gave way to concern. Something was wrong. He almost turned back, wanting to know what it was and if he could help her deal with it.
But he knew what her response would be, how she would treat him, and he didn’t feel like he wanted to risk that. So he continued on.
He would try again tomorrow, he told himself.
WHEN SUNRISE BROKE and the camp began to stir, Panther went looking for Catalya once more, determined to get to the bottom of things. If there were something wrong, he would find out what it was and what he could do to make it better. He wasn’t entirely sure what motivated his thinking except that it bothered him when she was like this. He knew things had changed since she had first come into the camp and he had called her a Freak. He knew all that was behind him, and that he genuinely cared about her. What he didn’t know was why. It wasn’t as if they were all that much alike or anything. Really, they were about as different as you could get. But there was something between them. Sometimes he ached with knowing it, with wanting to be friends, needing her to realize that he cared and to respond to what he was offering. Maybe it was the admiration he felt for her, a girl with skills like that, with courage and composure and determination.
Any way you looked at it, she made him feel things that no one else did.
He took his time searching for her, not eager to rush this, but intent on doing it all the same. He didn’t like how they had left things last night. He didn’t like how it had made him feel. He hadn’t slept well, thinking about it, and he wasn’t going to spend the whole of the day brooding over the details. He would find her and work out what the problem was and things would go back to being the way they had been.
He walked the length of the caravan and back again and still didn’t find her. She was obviously hiding out somewhere, nursing her anger or frustration or whatever it was that was eating at her. It irritated him that she was making it so hard on him, and his face reflected this as he strode on, increasingly out of sorts. Those who encountered him saw the look on his face and moved quickly out of the way, and he found it hard to get anyone even to talk to him.