Dylan pushed through the revolving door, then we were out in the balmy San Diego air. I turned to him.
“Thank—” I began to say, but he gently put his hand on my neck, bent down, and kissed me, smothering my words.
“I’m here for you,” he said intently, looking into my eyes.
And I couldn’t speak.
56
I RESTED MY head drowsily against a soft pillow, feeling the muffled roar of the jet’s engines. In just a few short hours, so much had come together: Fang had figured out that the Doomsday Group’s headquarters were in Paris—one of my favorite cities. We’d called on our benevolent sponsor, Nino Pierpont, who just happened to be one of the ric
hest men in the world, and now we were in one of his many private jets, heading to Europe. My flock could fly fast but not as fast as a jet. Besides, few of Fang’s gang could fly, even though Star could run really fast.
I’d picked a seat in a corner, grabbed a blanket and pillow, and curled up, exhausted, only half listening to the murmur of voices in the background. The flock and Fang’s gang were—right now, at least—tentatively getting along. But that definitely wouldn’t last—Gazzy had suggested a game of poker.
“Yeah, and so Max and Dylan are supposed to, like, go to Germany and have kids together,” I heard Gazzy say.
My eyes popped open and I bolted upright.
“What?” Fang said, his voice icy.
“Gazzy!” I yelled.
Wide blue eyes looked at me in surprise, then back at Fang’s stoic face. “Oh. Was I not supposed to say anything?” Gazzy asked.
“What is he talking about?” Fang demanded, glaring at me, then Dylan.
“Nothing. Just some crazy stuff that Dr. Hans came up with, in some hallucination,” I said, squinting at Gazzy.
“Go off and have kids?” Fang demanded. I saw Maya watching him, her eyes studying his face.
“Yeah,” said Dylan casually, fanning the flames.
“Oh, please,” I said. “I can’t even keep a goldfish alive.”
“You and Dylan?” Fang said with an expression I’d never seen before. “Having kids?”
Fang’s face never gives anything away. I’d seen him scared, furious, amused, impatient, and it all kind of looks the same. But this was different. I’d never seen him look this upset. Call me selfish, but it was kind of a relief that he could still get so upset over me, you know?
“Don’t look at me—it was Hans’s idea,” I protested.
Dylan looked cool as a sea breeze. He stretched out his arms, then loudly cracked his knuckles. The butthead.
Fang almost had smoke coming out of his ears.
“You didn’t think to mention this to me?” he asked me coldly.
My eyes narrowed, and when I spoke, the temperature inside the plane dropped several degrees. “When was I supposed to tell you?” I asked, deceptively calm. “When you told me not to look for you? When you told me not to contact you? When you told me to forget about you?”
There haven’t been many times when I’ve rendered Fang speechless, so they’re extra sweet when they happen. I enjoyed this one a lot. I mean, a lot.
Fang ran his hand through his somewhat shorter black hair and looked like he wanted to punch a hole in something.
I took a split-second to look around and realized that everyone was sitting silently, their eyes big, watching us as if we were a mongoose and a cobra.
And you know what? I hated that Fang and I were acting this way, hated that they had seen us fighting.
“I told you she was bad news,” Maya said, breaking the silence. And that was when the cow pies really hit the fan.