Neither (The Noctalis Chronicles 3)

“What kind of things?”

“Someone I need to find,” I said.

“Who?”

“I don't know. I just have a name, and what they look like.”

“Will you tell me? Maybe I could help you.”

“I'm not in danger, Jamie. You are.”

“How can I know that if you won't tell me? For all I know you're involved with the mob.” That made me giggle. The things he came up with.

“I'm immortal, Jamie. Anything the mob has can't hurt me. Not even bullets.”

“What if they have garlic?”

“I have no idea who came up with that one, but it's not true. I could roll naked in a field of garlic and be perfectly fine.”

He blushed. “Is it weird I kind of like that image?”

I was not intimately acquainted with blood and how it moved in the human body, especially when it went to certain places. If I was, I would have blushed, too.

He changed the subject.

“Okay. I want to help you, Brooke. If you'll let me.”

“Even if I want your blood right now?”

He nodded. “I want to show you something else.” He got up and started walking in the opposite direction of his truck. Without him saying anything, I knew we were going toward the little pond located on the other side of the trees. It was an inlet that flowed to the ocean, so the water was only half fresh. He still held branches out of my way, which I thought was sweet.

“You still don't believe me about the blood thing, do you?” I said as we walked down to the edge of the pond.

Jamie leaned down, squatting to pick up a rock. “I just... It sounds so insane.” He selected a flat rock and tossed it at the still water where it skipped three times before sinking to the bottom of the pond. Judging by the sound, the pond was only about fifteen feet deep in the middle.

“I used to skip rocks on the lake when I was little,” I said, picking up my own rock.

“We have a pond in back of our house and when my dad would get drunk I used to go out there and do that. If I could skip a rock more than twice, I would stay out and do another. If I skipped it less, I had to go back inside. I got really good at skipping rocks,” he said, looking at me.

“I never met my dad. My mom kind of slept around, so he could have been anybody.” My rock skipped five times. Not bad.

“That sucks,” he said, tossing another. His skipped five. Point for the human.

“Yeah.”

“You're the only person I've ever told that to,” he said, tugging on his ear.

I almost smiled. How was it this boy I'd just met was sharing things like this with me? “Really?”

He grabbed another rock. “Yeah. The guys on the basketball team don't really get it. They've all got normal parents. My friend, Tex, has both of her parents. They're jerks, but at least they're normal, too. My friend Ava's mom is dying of cancer, so she gets it.”

I'd never heard him talk about his friends before.

“Ava?” I asked.

“Yeah, we've been friends forever. I'm not interested in her that way. In case you were wondering.” I was wondering about that, but what I was most concerned with was how many girls there could be in Sussex with the name Ava.

My bet was not that many.

“What's she like? Ava.” I had to play it cool. He couldn't know I was fishing. I just kept skipping rocks as if I didn't care.

“She's been my best friend since sixth grade. She was the only person who was nice to me, so we just started hanging out. People used to call us beauty and the beast.”

“Which one were you?”

“Seeing as how I was a shrimp with acne and bad teeth, I'm sure you can figure it out.” It was impossible to think of the boy standing next to me as anything less than wildly attractive.

“Look at you now.”

“Not so beastly anymore.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yeah, she's one of those girls who's pretty but doesn't know it. Dark hair, green eyes. Not my type, though.”

I found it funny that he kept trying to reassure me that he wasn't interested in her. Dark hair, green eyes. It was her. I didn't really believe in fate or luck or anything like that, but I wasn't sure what the chances were that I would end up meeting the best friend of the girl I came to find. I should just stop being shocked.

“What is your type?”

He grinned at me, and if I had a beating heart, it would have skipped a beat. “Brunettes with car trouble.”

“I just happen to know a girl like that. But she has wings and she likes blood.”

He shook his head. “It's gonna take me a really long time to accept that. I think I'm going to need to sleep on it.”

“That's okay. I've got time. Immortal, remember?”

He thought about that for a second, tossing another rock. “So if I stabbed you right now, you wouldn't die?”

“You couldn't stab me. My skin is too tough. I know; I've tested it.” I held my hand out and he took it in both of his, brushing his finger across my skin. I wanted him so much.

“It doesn't feel like regular skin.”

“I know. Not the same temperature, either.”

His fingers traced circles on my hand. It felt so small in both of his. He pressed it between his two large hands and it disappeared. Funny how I could crush his hands with one of mine, but his were so much bigger.

He didn't want to let go of my hand. “You don't look dangerous. Well, not in that way.”

I took my hand back. “Just because I don't have fangs, doesn't mean I'm not a bloodsucker.”

Twelve

Ava

What the hell? First Kamir and Rasha drop the bomb on us that Kamir is Di's father's brother (say that five times fast) and then they throw a sister at us that we never knew existed, and she has a bind with Di, but not one that we can break or use as leverage. Hello, Thing Five. Or was she Thing Four? Who the hell can keep track anymore?

Despite the fact that Helena can't give us an easy way out, she. Is. Awesome.

When she first came out from behind a giant stone I thought I was going to throw up. She didn't look scary. In fact, she looked like a goddess, with her crazy long white-gold hair. I expected another Cal experience and already started thinking about how we were going to escape, but then she opened her mouth and told us about Di. Without us even having to ask.

When she finishes her story, we're all silent, mulling it over. So. Much. Information.

“Soo, yeah. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.” I hope I am not the only one who thought there had to be a catch.