“What does that mean? About surviving.”

“You’ll see.”

EIGHTEEN

VICTORIA SKIPPED SCHOOL. So did Mary Ann, and so did Riley. What kind of students ditched class when it was only their second day at school? And what about supposed rule-follower Mary Ann? She sure was ditching a lot lately.

Were the three of them together? Aden wondered throughout the crapfest of a day. A day that had started with Ozzie threatening to kill him again and worsened when Shannon, coughing and weak, had insisted on coming to school anyway and Aden had practically had to carry him to the building. And then to discover that his friends were gone…

Now he desperately wanted to leave, to head out and look for them, but couldn’t. Not if he wanted to return. A single ditch, and Dan would send him packing. Victoria could fix that for him, of course, but only if she still wanted to hang out with him. After last night—I told you to stay away from me and I meant it, she’d said after spying the male vampire in the window—he couldn’t be sure.

Who had the guy been? Why the sudden change in Victoria? He had no answers. And hadn’t Victoria wanted to protect him from the creatures now in town? Guess that had changed, too.

What made the day even odder was the way everyone waved and smiled at him as if he was their best friend. Guys patted him on the shoulder, girls flashed their pearly whites and giggled as if they were too nervous to talk to him but wanted to be near him all the same. Why?

As if reading his mind, a senior walked by and said, “Way to put Tucker in his place, man,” with a nod of approval.

Ahh. Now he understood (the welcome reception, at least). No one had liked Tucker, but they’d pretended to, simply to keep the tyrant from turning all that evil on them. Now they thought Aden was their savior, that he would destroy Tucker if necessary.

No pressure, he thought dryly.

All through chemistry, geometry, and Spanish he half listened to his teachers, half listened to his companions, who were now awake and no longer drugged into a stupor by the meds—though truth be told, he had been tempted to take them this morning. During that third class, John O’Conner once more appeared beside him, crouching at his desk.

“Why do you always ambush me here?”

“Because I had this class with Chloe. Speaking of, have you talked to Chloe yet?”

Aden spared him only the briefest of glances. He looked so real. Or perhaps because he was so recently dead. Perhaps because he’d had a power of his own when he’d been alive.

Aden nodded at the rightness of the thought. That made sense. He drew vampires and werewolves—and goblins, fairies and witches, apparently—so why not ghosts who’d been “gifted” during life? Or did he draw all ghosts, gifted or not?

Surely not. Thousands of people died every minute of every day. If all ghosts came to him, he would never see anyone or anything else.

He wanted to question John, but they were in class and surrounded. He’d just have to do so stealthily, he decided, so that the teacher and students around him wouldn’t notice.

John babbled about Chloe while Aden considered his options. He couldn’t speak out loud, not even in a whisper. He didn’t know sign language, and even if he did, John might not. He couldn’t leave the classroom; because of his past, he wasn’t allowed to roam the halls during class time. What option did that leave him? A note?

A note! Of course. He lifted his pen and began writing. When you were alive, did you have a—how should he word this?—superpower? He swirled the paper around and slid it toward John.

John continued speaking, oblivious.

Aden tapped the page, keeping his gaze on the teacher.

“What? Oh. You want me to read that?”

He nodded.

A moment passed in silence. Then, “Nah. Not really. I mean, I could sense other people’s emotions, which really freaked me out, but that isn’t a superpower. It was just me being too sensitive. Like a pansy, as my dad would say. That’s why, I, you know, self, uh, medicated.”

An empath. John had been an empath. Aden knew about them only because he’d met another boy with a similar ability in one of the institutions and that boy had studied the ability in an effort to stop feeling so much, so strongly.

“What does my pansy factor have to do with anything?” John asked. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter. I need you to talk to Chloe for me. I want you to tell her what I can’t.”

He could have resisted. He still didn’t know what would happen if he failed, or even if he succeeded. But right now he was John’s only link to the living, and he knew what it was like to want something desperately but be unable to have it. Okay, he wrote.

John sucked in a breath. “Really? You’ll talk to her?”

He gave another nod.

“You swear?”

Another nod.

“Today?”

Nod. What do you want me to tell her?

“If you’re lying…” John balled his fists and slammed them against Aden’s desk. The intensity of his emotion must have given him some solidity, because Aden’s desk rattled. As the students around him jolted, John said, “I’ll follow you. I swear I will. I’ll haunt you until you do it.”

Aden tapped his finger against the question.

John’s anger melted, dejection taking its place. “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I didn’t use her, that I…loved her. I did.”

Aden’s brow creased in confusion.

Shame coasted over the boy’s face. “We didn’t hang with the same people, but I asked her out on a dare. I never expected to like her. But I did. Her emotions are so pure, you know? Not overpowering. Then she overheard my friends teasing me about her. They wanted her to hear. Planned for her to, I think.”

John stared down at his wringing hands. “God, man. Her devastation…I can still feel it. It’s like I soaked it up and it became a part of me. I tried to talk to her, to explain, but she wanted nothing to do with me. I was desperate to forget, to feel nothing, you know, and did something stupid. Now, here I am.” His voice trailed off, perhaps too shaky to work past his throat, and he coughed in renewed embarrassment.

“—Mr. Stone?”

Aden straightened in his seat. The teacher was holding out a piece of chalk. “I’m sorry, what?”

I’ve been listening to him, Eve said, always the one to his rescue. He asked you to conjugate the verb run in Spanish.

“Never mind,” Aden muttered, pushing to his feet. He approached the head of the class with trepidation. “Sí, señor” was the only Spanish he knew.

Good luck, Caleb said. I could tell you the color underwear the blonde to your right is wearing—rojo. That means red, by the way. But that’s all I know.

“I’ll help,” John said, keeping pace beside him.

Thank God. With John telling him what to write, Aden managed to impress the teacher for the first time. He didn’t feel guilty about cheating, either. As he’d listened to John and written what he’d heard, he’d learned.

Halfway back to his seat, the bell rang. Crap. He wasn’t finished talking to John. He quickened his step, swiped up his backpack, then lifted the pad and pen and wrote, Since I’m helping you with Chloe, will you help me? I need a bottle of nail polish.

John barked out a laugh. “Are you kidding me? I didn’t peg you as the type.”

He shook his head as kids filed past him, jaw locked together, cheeks heating. It’s for a girl. Last night after Victoria had left him so abruptly, he’d started to think. She had to paint her fingernails with that metal to protect herself from…he couldn’t recall the name of the liquid in her ring, but she could paint her toenails and she loved color, so…

Still laughing, John asked, “Any particular color?”

Doesn’t matter, he wrote. As long as it’s not black. If you can’t, I’ll—

“Oh, I can. I’ve learned a few tricks these last few months. And I happen to know where Mr. White keeps all the bottles the teachers confiscate from the students.”

Has to be unopened, never used.

“Mr. Stone. The bell rang,” the teacher, Señor Smith, said impatiently. “You need to leave.”

“Never used won’t be a problem,” John said.

Aden crossed the room to the door. John remained beside him until he hit the hallway, then disappeared.

Time to hunt for Chloe. It was now lunch, so she should be in the cafeteria. He’d planned to sneak off campus and into the forest for an hour—searching for Victoria rather than Riley this time—but that would have to wait. He’d given John his word. And he wanted that nail polish.

Something slammed into his shoulder, and his bag went flying. Suddenly Tucker loomed in front of him, scowling, pure menace. Determined. “Watch where you’re going, Crazy.”

He ground his teeth. “Get out of my face, Tucker.” He didn’t need the threat of Tucker now, on top of the threat Ozzie still presented. Not to mention all the creatures newly arrived in town.

“What’ cha gonna do about it, huh? No one’s here to save you this time.”

The world around him faded, another taking its place. This one was an empty alleyway, redbrick walls colored with graffiti. There was a Dumpster and rats ran along the edges. In the background, he could even hear the wail of a police siren. What the hell?

“It’s just you and me now,” the jock said, smug.

Aden saw the way Tucker’s eyes were swirling, the gray laced with sizzling silver. This had to be an illusion, he realized grimly. Tucker had tried before, but it hadn’t worked. This time, Mary Ann wasn’t standing next to him. This time, there was nothing to negate Tucker’s power. Except…

Riley somehow always negated Mary Ann’s negation, allowing Aden’s companions to talk and act even in her presence. Tucker had tried the spider thing when both had been around him, yet had failed. Shouldn’t that mean Tucker simply couldn’t use his ability against Aden, no matter who was or was not with him?