Chapter Nine
"Can you handle the truth?" Holiday asked softly, her eyes fil ed with empathy.
Handle it? I just saw a boy turn himself into a unicorn. Can it get any worse?
Seconds after Kylie asked herself that, she got a chil . What if it could get worse? She recal ed Holiday saying there were other types of supernaturals besides vampires and werewolves, which in Kylie's mind had to be the worst kind of supernatural, not that she had expertise in the field or anything, but what if Holiday had only said that to calm her down? Would she have lied?
"Yes, I can handle it," Kylie said, sounding braver than she felt.
But when Holiday opened her mouth to speak, Kylie blurted out, "No." She dropped her face into her hands, then removed them and stared again at the redheaded camp leader. "I don't know if I can handle it."
How could she when it was just too much?
Kylie bit down on her bottom lip so hard it hurt. "I mean, if you are about to tel me something like I'm dead, that I need to start acquiring a taste for blood and I can't even eat sushi, I won't be able to handle it. Or if you're going to tel me that I'm going to start howling at the moon, eating people's cats, and wil spend the rest of my life having to get waxed if I want to wear a bathing suit, then I don't think I can handle it, either. I like cats and I tried waxing once, and that hurt like a son of a gun." She dropped her hand between her legs, remembering. Holiday laughed, but Kylie had been as serious as a heart attack. Waxing had real y hurt and she hadn't let Sara talk her into anything like that since.
"Do you think I can handle it?" Kylie asked, afraid of the answer.
"Honestly, I don't know you very wel yet, but I trust Dr. Day's assessment of you."
Kylie blinked. "What does my shrink have to do with this?"
"Your shrink-as you cal her-is the one who recommended you to us. She recognized your gifts, she's half fairy, you know."
Kylie tried to process that information. "I'm here because of her? That woman is..." Kylie leaned closer, almost as if whispering might make it less of an insult. "She's a few fries short of a Happy Meal." Kylie dropped her hands on the desk. "I wouldn't lie to you. She's a flake."
Holiday frowned. "Unfortunately, al supernaturals come off a bit flaky when viewed from the normal prospective. She spoke very highly of you."
Kylie felt a little guilty then, which she suspected had been the camp leader's intent.
Holiday dropped her palms on top of Kylie's hands. "I won't lie to you, either, Kylie. The truth ... the truth is, we don't know what you are."
Kylie sat up a little straighter, chewing on that bit of information, and Holiday sat quietly as if al owing Kylie the time to adjust. Not that Kylie was adjusting. Oh, hel no. She was working on finding a positive slant to al of this. "Don't you see? That's because I'm not anything. I'm just me. Normal me."
The woman shook her head. "You have gifts, Kylie. Those gifts could have come from various supernatural forms and almost always they are hereditary."
"Hereditary? Neither of my parents are ... supernaturals."
Holiday didn't look convinced. "In rare cases, it could skip a generation. It could be fairy, it could be you are a descendent of one of the gods. It could be-"
"Gods? Gifts? What gifts?"
Holiday cleared her throat, and her eyes met Kylie's with empathy. "You can talk to the dead-sometimes in your sleep. Other times when you're awake."
Warmth spread into the top of Kylie's hands, but cold spread into her heart. "The dead?" Her mind started filtering though images, al of them Soldier Dude, since she couldn't recal anything from her night terrors.
"No, you're wrong. I never talked to them. Never, ever. Not one word. Mom taught me to never talk to strangers, and I've lived by that."
"But you've seen them, right?"
Tears wel ed up in Kylie's eyes again. "Just one. And I'm not sure he's a ghost. Sure, my mom didn't seen him, but my mom ... she's always in her own little world." But then there was her neighbor, the way she had walked right past Soldier Dude and never even glanced at him. Oh damn. Damn.
"It's scary, I know," Holiday said. "I remember when I first started experiencing it."
Kylie pul ed her hands out from under Holiday's grasp. "You ... you have the same ... talent?"
Holiday nodded and looked over to the left.
Kylie gave the room a visual sweep. "But none are here now, right?"
Instantly, Kylie felt it. That cold ... the eerie in-the-bones kind of cold that she'd experienced so often lately.
"They are always here, Kylie. You're just turning your mind off."
"Can I do that?" Kylie asked. "Can I just turn my mind off permanently?"
Holiday hesitated. "Some people can, but this is a gift, Kylie. To not use this gift is a waste."
"A waste? Oh no, I didn't ask for this gift." Her own words echoed inside her head and she realized she'd practical y admitted that this was real. She didn't want it to be real. Didn't want to accept it or believe it. "I'm not sure I have this gift. I mean, I hear about normal people seeing ghosts al the time."
Holiday nodded. "It's true. Some ghosts accumulate enough energy that even a normal has been able to see them."
"Then that's what's happening to me. I'm just dealing with a super-charged ghost. That's it. Because I'm just normal."
"The evidence says different."
Her breath caught. "What evidence?"
Holiday stood up and motioned for Kylie to fol ow. Her knees felt weak when she stood, but she fol owed. Holiday spoke as she walked. "First, there's the fact that you are unreadable."
"Unreadable?" Kylie asked as they walked into a smal office.
"Al supernaturals have the ability to get a sneak peek into other minds. When reading a human, we see a similar pattern with everyone. When reading other supernaturals, we can general y sense what they are. Unless they are purposely blocking us out. Which most don't do as a sort of courtesy to others."
"Is that the eyebrow-twitching thing?" Kylie asked.
"You don't miss much, do you?" Holiday smiled. "And the thing is that people with the gift of ghost whispering are often slow at reading others and are very difficult to read. We're not being rude, but our minds function on a different plane than everyone else's does. With practice, however, we can train ourselves to open up enough so that we aren't coming off as holier than thou. Your pattern, and the fact that you are unreadable tel s me that you are more than human. And then there's this evidence." The camp leader pul ed out a file drawer. She drew a piece of paper out of a file with Kylie's name on it and placed that paper in Kylie's hands.
Kylie looked at the copy of her birth certificate. Nowhere on the document did it say anything about her being supernatural or about her seeing ghosts. She glanced up at Holiday with questions running through her mind.
Holiday must have either read her thoughts, or her expression, because she answered, "You were born at midnight, Kylie."
"So? Why is that supposed to mean something?"
Holiday ran her finger over al the files. "Everyone here was born at midnight."
Kylie's heart thumped a little harder. She watched Holiday's red-painted fingernail move over the file tabs where the names appeared in bold type. None of the names meant anything to Kylie until her gaze found one that did.
Lucas Parker.
Not that he mattered. His name only leapt out at her because it was one of the few familiar things here. Another sweep of icy emotion tiptoed up her spine.
Kylie swung around and her breath caught when she saw him. Not Lucas, but Soldier Dude. And he just stood there, closer than ever before, and stared at her with his cold, dead eyes.
* * *
Less than ten minutes later, Kylie sat at a lunch table.
Alone.
Only her, Holiday, the other camp leader, and the two men, occupied the dining hal .
Every few minutes, Kylie's mind would try to wrap around everything that had happened-everything from the unicorn to her not being human. But her mind wasn't in a wrapping mood.
Deny it. Deny it. The words played like a song in her head.
The sound of the voices in the front of the dining hal brought Kylie's gaze up. Holiday had received a cal from Sky, and because it was almost lunch time anyway, Holiday had told Kylie to just come with her and she'd show her to her cabin after lunch. Holiday's gaze shifted to Kylie. Kylie stared at her phone, pretending she didn't feel uncomfortable, while Holiday and the other camp leader, Sky, stood at the front with the two black suits who had dropped in earlier.
Kylie couldn't hear the conversation, but whatever it was, she could tel it wasn't good. She peered up between her lashes again. Holiday and Sky were frowning. Holiday seemed the most anxious of the two, tapping her foot and twirling her hair in a tight rope. Then one of the men raised his hands in the air and spit out, "I'm not pointing fingers, but I'm tel ing you like it is. Get to the bottom of this and make it stop or I swear, higher-ups are going to shut the camp down."
Shut the camp down? Kylie lowered her gaze and pretended not to hear, but she couldn't stop the hope from building in her chest. Ever since Holiday had left her alone at the table, Kylie had been tempted to cal her parents and beg them to come get her. Ah, but what would she tel them? Hey, Mom, Dad, guess what? You sent me to camp with real freaks, a bunch of bloodsuckers and cat killers. And oh, I'm a freak, too, but they don't know what kind yet.
Kylie's stomach clenched at the thought of how that conversation would turn out. Chances were her mom would yank her out of the camp and commit her to a psycho ward. Not that it would be worse than what she was in now.
Staring at her hands, Kylie remembered what Holiday had said about her gift being hereditary. Did her mom or dad see ghosts? Not her mom, otherwise she wouldn't have brought in the mental doctor the first time Kylie brought up Soldier Dude. And her dad would have told her if he had any special abilities, wouldn't he?
Not that Kylie had accepted that she had any gifts. It was stil highly probable that Holiday was wrong about her being one of them. Maybe Soldier Dude was just a high-powered ghost, like Holiday said could happen. And surely there were normal people who were born at midnight, right?
Nevertheless, the idea of trying to tel her parents any of this seemed absurd. Seemed absurd? Who was she kidding? It was over-the-top completely one hundred percent crazy, and if she hadn't seen Perry change himself into a unicorn, she wouldn't have believed it, either. The conversation up front got a little louder, but not as loud as before, not loud enough for Kylie to distinguish words. So she stared at her phone and pretended to read Sara's last text, but in truth, she'd already read it.
Her friend hadn't told her parents about her missed period, and as soon as Sara's mom left for her lunch appointment, Sara was going to the store to buy a pregnancy test. Some time this afternoon, Sara would know if she was pregnant. Kylie hadn't asked Sara about the father, she hadn't even asked Sara if she would consider an abortion. For some reason, Kylie didn't see Sara doing that. But six months ago, Kylie would have sworn that Sara would never find herself pregnant, either. Kylie let herself worry about Sara for a minute before she shifted back to her own issues. Like how she was going to survive the next two months. And by survive, she didn't mean just mental y. Vampires and werewolves kil ed people.
Only the bad ones, Holiday had explained on the walk over here when Kylie had almost jumped out of her skin anytime someone came close. Was Holiday certain that no bad ones were at the camp? Some of them had looked pretty grim to Kylie. Not that she considered herself an expert at distinguishing bad supernaturals from good ones. But in a way it sort of compared to how Kylie felt about snakes and spiders-there were good ones, and there were bad ones. But for safety's sake, she avoided al of them.
God, Kylie hoped she didn't get stuck rooming with any of them. Surely Holiday wouldn't expect her to sleep in a cabin with someone who ... who might be tempted to kil her while she slept. Then again ... Great, that meant she'd probably be sleeping with one eye open the entire two months. The conversation between the two black-suited guys and the camp leaders came to an end and the two men started to leave. But one of them, the tal er of the two, turned around and looked right at Kylie. And then he did it. He twitched his brows at her. Kylie looked away, but she sensed him standing there in that same spot, stil staring and twitching. She felt her cheeks heat up. The door to the dining hal shut, but then she heard it open again. Kylie looked up and saw the other teens start to filter into the room. As each one entered, Kylie found herself guessing-fairy, witch, werewolf, vampire, or shape-shifter. Were there other kinds of supernaturals? She'd have to ask Holiday about the different types, like what "descended from the gods" meant.
Kylie started trying to put the types she did know into one of two groups: supernaturals who wouldn't consider a human a part of the food chain, and those who did.
Derek walked through that door and Kylie found herself curious about what type of supernatural he was. He stopped a few feet in the room and looked around. The moment his eyes lit on her, she knew he'd found what he'd been looking for. He'd been looking for her. Even not knowing what he was, or exactly what group he belonged to, the thought that he liked her enough to look for her made her feel less lonely. As he moved toward her, a very smal smile appeared in his eyes, and she thought again about how he reminded her of Trey. Was that why she liked him, or at least liked him better than everyone else? Because he did look like Trey a little?
She'd have to be careful, she told herself, not to confuse familiarity for something more.
"Hey," he said as he sat down beside her. When she looked up at him, she realized her shoulder barely came to his mid-forearm. Which meant he was tal er than Trey-probably by a couple of inches.
Kylie nodded and dropped her phone in her purse.
"So...?" he asked.
Kylie met his green eyes with flecks of gold. She knew exactly what that one-word question asked. He wanted to know what she was. She started to answer him, to tel him she didn't know what she was, just her gift, but she suddenly found she wasn't ready to say it aloud. To say it aloud meant she believed it. And she didn't, not yet.
"It's been a crazy morning," she said instead.
"I can imagine," he answered, and she sensed a bit of disappointment in him. He'd wanted her to trust him. Good luck with that, Kylie thought. Between people dying on her-meaning Nana-people divorcing on her-meaning her parents-and people breaking up with her because she wouldn't put out-meaning Trey-her ability to trust anyone had taken a dive off some very high cliff. And it had landed on the bottom of some gul y, a mangled mess, right beside her heart.
Miranda dropped down in the seat on the other side of Derek. "Hey..." She leaned over and looked at Kylie. "We're rooming together. Isn't that cool?"
"Yeah." Kylie quickly tried to figure out exactly what Miranda was. She remembered the toad and for some reason guessed her to be a witch.
"I'm in with you guys, too," someone else said, and sat down on the other side of Kylie.
Kylie turned and found herself staring at her own reflection in Pale Girl's dark shades.
Chil s ran up Kylie's spine. Kylie didn't know if she was a werewolf or a vampire, but something told her she was one of the two. Which basical y meant, she fel into the humans-are-on-the-food-chain group.
The girl lowered her glasses, and Kylie got a look at her eyes for the first time. They were black and slightly slanted, exotic, as if she was part Asian. "My name's Del a ... Del a Tsang."
"Uh ... Kylie Galen," she managed to say, hoping her hesitation didn't come off as fear. But it was fear and Kylie couldn't deny that.
"So Kylie," Del a said, pul ing her glasses down another inch, "do tel . Exactly what are you?"
Was it her imagination that at least a dozen other teens turned and looked toward their table? Did they have super hearing? Kylie's phone buzzed. "Uh, I should ... take this."
She grabbed her phone from her purse, stood up, and went to stand in the corner, away from everyone. Glancing at the screen to see who to throw handfuls of praise to for cal ing at the right moment, Kylie's heart did a tug. She'd expected it to be Sara, maybe her mom or dad. She hadn't expected it to be Trey.