Kill Switch (Devil's Night 3)

I couldn’t help it. I followed the line of the beads, feeling his stomach tighten under my fingertips, and his breathing quicken.

Reaching the crucifix I hoped wasn’t there, I pinched it between my fingers, my nerves firing hot under my skin as I instantly recognized the carefully crafted definition of the fingers attached to the cross.

Oh, my God. I let the rosary go like it burned my fingers.

But he grabbed my hand, pressing it back on the beads and his skin.

“Oh, why stop when you were doing so well?” he taunted.

“Damon,” I murmured, trying to pull my hand away.

“Mmm,” he affirmed. “Missed you, kid.”

I tore my hand free, clenching my jaw.

Jesus. In my head, I still saw him how I last saw him. A kid, not much bigger than me, with a lanky body and a shaky voice.

But everything had changed. His hand in mine was bigger than I remember, his voice was deeper, he was taller, and he had a voice now. He wasn’t eleven anymore.

Why did I feel like I was just now realizing that?

And any hope that he’d forgotten about me was now gone, too. He knew exactly who I was.

But before he could say anything else, the door behind me gave way, I fell back, and he caught me, pulling me forward again and into his body. I didn’t have time to push him away before someone grabbed my hand, pulling me off him. I stumbled.

“Winter,” my sister snapped. “What are you doing?”

But she didn’t wait for my response. She hauled me out of the locker room and into the hallway, and the door slammed shut behind us as a trickle of sweat glided down my back. My head was swimming, and I could still feel him near me.

I jogged to keep up with my sister as my heart pounded painfully.

But my body buzzed with warmth, too. I frowned, rubbing my fingertips over

my thumbs and still feeling the beads between them.

Ari was probably the one who stuffed me in the damn locker room in the first place. Or she had her friends do it. How else did she know where I was?

She was probably just pissed when I didn’t make it back out right away and she had to go in there and fetch me. Were she and Damon friendly?

They were in the same grade, but I had no idea if they hung in the same circles. My parents would’ve advised her to stay away from him, but it wasn’t like she would listen unless she wanted to. I had absolutely no idea what he was like anymore or about my sister’s life at this school. The former I couldn’t admit I wanted to inquire about over the years, and the other, I really didn’t care. My sister and I had been struggling through our growing pains for about ten years now, and I wasn’t sure why. There just seemed to be a layer to her I couldn’t crack, and we didn’t have much in common, either. Especially not anymore. She’d gotten used to life as an only child while I was away and obviously liked it.

“God, he’s looking at her,” Claudia, one of Rika’s friends, said across from me as we sat in the lunchroom.

I perked my ears, an earbud still stuck in one as I half-listened to music and half-listened to the conversation. I didn’t want to be rude, and I should’ve been concerned with making friends on my first day, but after the locker room debacle, I needed to recharge for a few minutes.

“Who?” Rika asked.

But no one answered her—at least not verbally. It was times like this when I realized how aware people were of my disability. Answering with nods or body gestures I couldn’t see.

My disability.

I hated that word.

But it was what it was, and people, without meaning any harm, used it to their advantage. They could communicate with their eyes, their hands, their gestures…all in a possible attempt to keep me out of the loop.

Who was looking at who? Someone was looking at me?

“His attention has been on her for longer than seven seconds,” Noah, another of Rika’s friends commented, “and longer than seven seconds is not good.”