“But where have you had days like that?” Kami asked. Her hands were full, but she figured she could remember the interview. “Where do you hail from?”
“San Francisco,” he answered after a reluctant pause, as if it was privileged information.
Her papers collected, Kami retreated to her side of the lift, cradling them against her chest, though she had to admit the chances of him mugging her for her decapitated-squirrel pictures were not high.
The lift creaked to a halt.
The boy cursed.
“It’s fine,” Kami told him. “Sometimes you just have to press the button a few times.”
“Great,” he muttered.
He moved toward her, and Kami’s heart slammed against her ribs. She stared up at him. He stabbed the button of the lift, then leaned away. His expression had not changed, but she was certain he’d noticed her reaction.
This was no way to conduct an interview. Kami tried to smile charmingly. “So, tell me,” she said, reviewing her interview questions in her head and choosing one at random. “What are your three greatest fears?”
He hesitated, and she thought he was going to refuse to tell her, as if he did have some secret fear.
The next instant he answered in a bored drawl, and his uncertainty had obviously existed only in her mind. “Number three: large, unfriendly dogs. Number two: small, inquisitive people. Number one: being trapped in this elevator. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“The people have a right to information,” Kami told him.
“Well, I’m not in the mood,” he said. “Leave me alone.”
Kami looked around the confines of the lift. The other Lynburn was already taking up more than half of the available space. “Yeah,” she said under her breath. “That should be no problem.” She was deeply thankful when the lift actually moved.
They leaned back against their respective sides of the lift, hugging the walls, and Kami mentally placed herself elsewhere.
So, what’s going on with you? she asked Jared. At exactly the same time, he asked her the same question.
Amusement rolled through them both. Kami found herself smiling. She saw the delinquent smile too, mouth a subtle curve. His face went grim again as he noticed her watching. He probably thought her smile meant she was flirting with him. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “You’re not my type.”
He looked away from her. “Back at you.”
I’m not doing much, said Jared, warm in her mind, the amusement lingering. Just stuck in an elevator with this creepy Asian girl giving me a death glare.
Kami’s whole body recoiled. She was just staring at him, her vision blurry around the edges with panic. When the lift doors opened, she pushed herself off the wall because this wasn’t possible, because she was leaving the library and going home and never laying eyes on this guy ever again, not if she could help it.
His hand shot out and slammed down on a button. The doors closed and he slammed another hand on the lift wall, close to her head. The clang reverberated in her ears. He was standing next to her suddenly, much too close, bowed down so she was looking directly into those cold eyes. “Kami.”
Kami wasn’t shaking. The world was shaking her, the world was shaking apart and about to fall to pieces. Nothing made sense anymore. “Jared?” she whispered. Her voice was changed like everything else, sounding as if it did not belong to her. She lifted a hand, seeing her fingers tremble in the space between them, up to touch his face.
Jared grabbed her wrist.
They stood absolutely still for a moment, looking at each other. Kami didn’t dare move. She could feel her pulse pounding against his palm. He was real. He was here, and she was scared.
He let go of her and stepped back.
They were on opposite sides of the lift again, just like before, except now he was watching her. The cold lights had swallowed up his eyes: they were pale and awful, the kind of eyes you might fear watching you in the darkness when you walked home alone. His feelings hit her, not like having someone reaching out but like someone throwing something at her. She had never felt anything like this before in her life. It was like being enveloped by a storm with no calm center, with no calm anywhere to be found. Kami felt blinded by it, by Jared’s fury and panic and, above all, his black terror.
The link between them had become an onslaught. Kami could not just tell
what Jared was thinking, she could feel it. She could not escape, could not untangle the strands of herself from him. She tried to visualize walls in her head, shields that she could hide behind, feeling both exposed and lost.
“Stop it,” she said, her voice catching.
“You stop it!” he whispered back.