The Darkest Star (Origin 1)

“No,” he replied. “You know nothing about anything, and that makes you so incredibly dangerous.”

I glared at him. “That makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.” He leaned against the bare white wall. “There are things you have no clue about—things that a lot of people have died to keep secret. What’s stopping you from running back to your friends—to the guy you brought with you?”

“What would I tell them?” I threw up my hands, exasperated with him—with everything. “I’m not going to tell anyone about . . . about those Luxen. Just please give me my phone and I will be gone from your life. Forever.”

An odd look flickered across Luc’s face, and then he reached around, pulling something out of his pocket. He opened his hand, and in his palm was my phone. My phone! “Here it is.”

I almost fell over in a rush to snatch my phone, but I held back, staring at him warily. “So, I . . . I can have my phone and leave?”

Luc nodded.

Drawing in a shallow breath, I extended my hand and he dropped the phone in my palm. I started to pull my hand back, but he closed his fingers around mine.

A slight shock of electricity traveled from his hand up my arm as he tugged me forward, into his side. Luc lowered his head to my ear. “You speak a word about what you saw today to anyone, you’ll be endangering innocent people—friends, family, strangers,” he whispered. “I won’t hurt you. Ever. The rest won’t be so lucky.”I was still in shock as I drove home. Part of me couldn’t believe I’d walked out of that club and was in my car, but Luc had given me back my phone and hadn’t stopped me from leaving.

The first thing I did when I got in my car was call James. He was fine and had just been dropped off at his house. Of course, he had a thousand questions, but I made him promise that he wouldn’t tell anyone about the trip to Foretoken.

I knew I’d never see Luc again, but I didn’t want to tempt it by any of us blabbing anything to anyone.

But what had Luc meant about the deal? About him staying away if I stayed away? That made utterly no sense. I didn’t know him. Last night was the first time I’d ever seen him.

“I doesn’t matter,” I said out loud. And it didn’t, because obviously there was something very weird and wrong with Luc, and whatever he’d meant by that was irrelevant.

I just wanted to forget about this weekend, and I would. Heidi had reassured me that she wouldn’t step foot in Foretoken again, and I was convinced that I wouldn’t immediately blab the truth about last night and today to Mom the moment I saw her and she gave me that look.

That Colonel Sylvia Dasher look.

Luckily, I knew Mom was going to be at work and probably wouldn’t be home until late tonight. I had all day to not succumb to that look and confess every dumb thing I’d done in the last twenty-four hours.

I couldn’t remember if Dad had ever mastered that look or not. Mom had always handled the discipline. Then again, I didn’t remember much about my dad anymore and that was sad.

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. This car, an older Lexus, sometimes felt like the only thing I had left of Dad’s. I didn’t look like him. I took after Mom, so when I looked in the mirror I didn’t see him, and with each passing year, it was getting harder to remember what he looked like.

My dad—Sergeant Jason Dasher—had died in the war against the Luxen. His service to our country, to mankind had been posthumously rewarded.

He’d been given the Medal of Honor.

The thing was, when I thought about Dad, it wasn’t just hard to see him, but also to hear him. Before the war, he hadn’t been home often. His job had him all over the States, but now I wished there had been more time, more memories to fall back on. Something more than a car, because when I thought about Dad, I had trouble piecing his face together in my memories and there weren’t any photos. All of that had been left in the house we discarded during the invasion.

But I still had my mom. Not a lot of people could say that after the war, and she was a damn good mom.

So much had been lost, but Columbia was one of those cities that had been lucky. For the most part, it was virtually untouched by the invasion. Only some of the buildings had been damaged, mostly due to random fires that broke out, and I heard that there’d been riots here, but there had been riots everywhere.