My laughter ended with a quickness as I looked over at her. “You’ve kissed him before?”
“That’s none of your business.” Her cheeks flushed.
Oh man, a huge part of me wanted to point out that she yelled at me for assuming I was hooking up with Ash after kissing her when she, in fact, just admitted to doing what she accused me of. It took an act of God to make me not go there. “I don’t like him.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“I don’t need to know him to see that there’s something…off about him.” The car roared to life. “I don’t think you should be hanging out with him.”
“Oh, this is rich, Daemon. Whatever.”
I glanced over at her again, catching her shivering. “Are you cold? Where’s your jacket?”
“I don’t like jackets.”
“Did they do something terrible and unforgivable to you, too?” I turned up the heat. Warm air blasted out of the vents.
“I find them…cumbersome.” She sighed loudly. It was rather impressive. “What was so freaking imperative that you had to go stalker mode and find me?”
“I wasn’t stalking you.”
“Oh, you weren’t? Did you use your alien GPS system to find me?”
“Well, yeah, sort of.” I was so not about to tell her Dee had told me where she was.
“Argh! This is so wrong.” For a second, I thought she was going to hit me again. “So what’s the deal?”
I waited until I hit the highway. “Matthew has called a meeting of the minds, and you should be there. It has to do with the DOD. Something’s happened.”
“What?” she whispered. “What’s happened?”
My hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t know, but I’m…”
“You’re what?”
“We haven’t heard from the DOD since before Halloween. That’s not normal, especially with all the energy we put out while fighting Baruck. Something’s up and I…I don’t think it’s good, Kitten.”
When the Thompsons arrived a few minutes after we got back to my house, Andrew looked at Kat sitting in the chair and rolled his eyes. “Anyone have a clue why she’s here?”
Kat sighed. Andrew knew Matthew had texted Kat needed to be here. He was just trying to make her feel uncomfortable.
“She needs to be here.” Matthew closed the door behind him and walked into the center of the room. Dee waved at him in between shoving fistfuls of popcorn into her mouth. “I want to keep this little get-together short.”
“The DOD knows about her, right? We’re all in trouble?” Ash asked, running her hand over purple tights.
Kat paled. “Do they, Mr. Garrison?”
“As far as I know, they don’t know about you,” he said. “The Elders called a meeting tonight because of the increase in DOD presence here. It appears something has caught the DOD’s attention.”
Adam stared at a buttery piece of popcorn. “Well, what did they see? No one’s done anything wrong.”
Dee set the bag of popcorn aside. “What’s the deal?”
Matthew’s gaze circled the room. “One of their satellites picked up the light show from Halloween weekend, and they’ve been out to the field, using some sort of machine that picks up on residual energy.”
I scoffed. So now we knew they were aware of what went down, but that was nothing in comparison. “The only thing they’re going to find is a burned patch of ground.”
“They know we can manipulate light for self-defense, so from what I’ve gathered, that’s not what caught their attention.” Matthew looked at me, frowning. “It’s the fact that the energy was so strong it disrupted a satellite’s signal and they weren’t able to snap any pictures of the event. Nothing like that has ever happened before.”
I schooled my expression blank. “I guess I’m just that awesome.”
Adam laughed under his breath. “You’re so powerful you’re disrupting signals now?”
“Disrupted only the signal?” Matthew barked a short laugh. “It destroyed the satellite—a satellite designed to track high-frequency light and energy. It zeroed in on Petersburg, and the event destroyed the satellite.”
“Like I said, I’m that awesome.” I smiled despite the tension creeping into my muscles.
“Wow,” Andrew murmured. Respect gleamed in his eyes. “That’s pretty awesome.”
“As awesome as that is, the DOD is very curious. The Elders believe they will be here a while, monitoring things. That they’ve been here.” Matthew paused and glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s imperative that everyone is on their best behavior.”
“What do the other Luxen have to say about this?” Dee asked.
“They aren’t too concerned at this point. And they have no reason to be,” Matthew said.