In a blink, he had another syringe loaded and flying at me. I experienced another sharp sting. Warmth rushed through me, and yet the flames began to wane...finally vanished.
He loaded a third. “This is a sedative.”
I felt a third sting, and whatever the sedative was, it worked quickly. Darkness fell over me, and my knees collapsed. I knew nothing more.
*
My head pounded as I blinked open my eyes. I lay on...my bed? No, the mattress beneath me was too narrow to be mine. Gingerly I sat up. Dizziness struck me, and I moaned.
“Hey, Ali-gator.”
Cole’s voice. I breathed deep in an effort to clear my head, saw the haunting beauty of his face. I hated to look away, but curiosity got to me. We...were in a small bedroom I didn’t recognize, with log walls and planked floors.
“You’re in a secluded home Ankh owns. It’s twenty miles from my house,” he said, “but they aren’t highway miles, so it takes me forty minutes to get here.”
I’d been banished.
My expression must have fallen to reflect my dismay, even though I knew this was for the best, because he added, “You’re too dangerous to be around others right now, sweetheart.”
Acid eroded my throat, and I choked. “I know, and I probably should have been sent here weeks ago. But, um, how long will I be allowed to stay?”
“As long as it takes.”
To heal...or to die, whichever came first. “Cole...”
“You have to quit your job, I’m sorry. Your grandmother is going to call your boss. And when school starts back up, she plans on speaking to the principal about allowing us to set up a computer so that you can remotely attend your classes. If they won’t let you, you’ll have to quit the district for a home school program.”
“Cole,” I said, trying again. What did I want to say to him? I wasn’t sure.
He shook his head, dark hair falling and hanging in his eyes. “I took your journal,” he continued. “I’ll go through every page, every passage. Emma told me the key to saving you is in there.”
“When did you talk to her?”
“This morning. She came to see me, and I think I freaked out my dad. He wanted to know why I was talking to air.”
I smiled.
Cole pushed out a breath. “Better.”
“What?”
He cupped my cheek. I reached up, wrapped my fingers around his wrists. “I hate that you’ve been hurt by all of this, I needed to see you smile.”
No wonder I was drawn to this boy. “How can you still like me after everything I’ve done?”
His thumb brushed away a tear that had seeped from the corner of my eye. “It isn’t that I like you, Ali, it’s that I can’t stop liking you. And I don’t want to stop. Besides, you were trying to end a zombie. That’s admirable.”
“You saw her?”
“I did. Her shield slipped for just a second when Gavin and I stepped in front of your grandmother. She was so angry her eyes glowed bright red. When I met her gaze I think it scared her, because she raced back into you.”
“We haven’t seen the end of her.” I could still feel her, a presence in the back of my mind. A heartbeat I had failed to stop.
“We’ll find a way to beat her,” he said, and I nodded despite my fears.
Emma had said the same.
Nana had said the same.
Heck, I had said the same.
Now...I wasn’t so sure.
“You know,” Cole said, “my mom once told me a boy would know he’d become a man when he stopped putting himself first. She said a girl would come along and I wouldn’t be able to get her out of my mind. She said this girl would frustrate me, confuse me and challenge me, but she would also make me do whatever was necessary to be a better man—the man she needed. With you, I want to be better. I want to be what you need. Tell me what you need.”
I need...you, I thought.
Mackenzie had told me she hoped Cole would meet a girl he couldn’t live without. In that moment, I was pretty certain I was that girl. And it was odd to me. So much had happened. So much had yet to happen. But this...thing between us hadn’t changed.