The Brightest Night (Origin 3)

“Okay. That is the creepiest—”

A sudden whoosh went through as the entire carport seemed to spin around me.

I stumbled to my feet, pressing my hand to the side of my head. For a second, it was as if I were tilting to the far right, but I was standing straight. I closed my eyes. Wrong move. Horrible, terrible, bad-idea level of wrong move. The entire world seemed to rock.

Grayson was suddenly next to me. “You okay?”

Was I? My heart pounded against my ribs. Swallowing, I took a shallow breath as I stared … at Grayson’s jeans? I was bent at the waist. When did that happen?

“I’m fine.” I blinked, the dizziness gone as quickly as it had hit. At least I thought it was. I straightened, my gaze falling to where Grayson’s hand lay on my shoulder.

Grayson was touching me.

He never touched me.

Well, there was the one time when Luc was shot and my skull had done an up-close-and-personal meet and greet with the roof of an SUV. Grayson had healed me and Luc, which meant he probably had to touch me then to do it. But despite what Luc claimed, I was confident he’d threatened Grayson with grave bodily harm to get him to heal me.

Grayson saw what I was staring at and jerked his hand back as if it were on fire. This close, his eyes were like the sky before a storm. “Are you messing with me?”

I took a step back. I couldn’t believe he even thought to ask that. “Oh yeah. You know, I thought there wasn’t enough going on, so I thought maybe I should pretend to be sick.”

His lip curled. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

Ignoring the comment and wondering how I could’ve ever thought Grayson had a bit of humanity in him, I snatched the quilt off the cement.

“After all, you’re not the center of attention right now.” Grayson’s voice was as poisonous as a viper. “Are you that needy that you have to fake—”

“You are so lucky that stupid Blow Pop is no longer sticking out of your mouth, because I would seriously shove it down your throat.”

Grayson laughed as his lips curled in a mockery of a smile. “Should I be worried now?” he asked, calling back to what Luc had said when we were training. “Or was that a fluke earlier? If I recall correctly, it only took a hundred tries to get you to move the carton.”

It had not taken a hundred tries. More like a couple of dozen.

“Whatever.” His features hardened to stone. “Other than stand there and get other people killed, there’s not much you can do when it really counts, is there?”

Sucking in a sharp breath, I took another step away from him, his words a knife to the chest. I stared at him.

“Shit,” Grayson muttered, looking away. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah, you did.” I tossed the quilt on the couch. Turning from him, I started walking. I didn’t know where I was going. Maybe to the house. Maybe I’d just keep walking. All that mattered was that I got away from Grayson, because there was a good chance that if I stayed there, he would need to be worried.

Because I felt even weirder.

Wrong.

Jittery, like my blood and skin were buzzing. Pins and needles erupted in my toes and traveled rapidly up my legs. This was more than before, and it was the Source. I could feel it throbbing in the center of my chest. A fine sheen of sweat dotted my brow.

Grayson was suddenly in front of me. “Evie…”

“Move,” I muttered, or at least I thought I did.

The air shifted—no, the temperature of my body did. Fire flashed over me, and yet I was cold, freezing, and my eyes …

Something was wrong with them.

Grayson looked as if he were surrounded by a freaking rainbow. A prism of colors surrounded his entire body for a few seconds before he returned to normal, lit by the glow of solar lights.

And yeah, that was not right at all.

My steps were jerky, shaky as I blindly swept an arm to brush the canopy, and the material parted as if a hurricane-force wind had caught it.

I couldn’t tell if I had even touched it, because my skin was … I couldn’t feel my skin.

Heart thundering and pulse skyrocketing, I inhaled, but it was like breathing through a clogged straw. Pressing my hand to my chest, I felt my heart thumping too fast, way too fast. Maybe this wasn’t the Source. Maybe this was a panic attack. I’d never had one before, but Heidi used to get them when she was younger, before I knew her. She described them once to me, and it sounded a lot like this—like all my internal wiring just shorted out and my entire body was out of control.

I made it to the middle of the dark driveway when it hit.