open, and my mom stepped out, looking worried and worn out.
“He wasn’t out back,” she said, heading down the stairs toward us.
“Well, we have to find him.” I was trying not to panic, but finding it very difficult. “He—he was already upset before he found out everything, and now…” What the hell was this? This massive…hole in my chest. And the hole seemed to be sucking all the air right out from me.
“Gemma, calm down,” Alex said, and I realized I was breathing rather loudly. “We’ll find him, but you need to quit freaking out.”
“Sorry.” I took a deep breath. “So what are we going to do?”
Alex gave me the strangest look as if something horrible had just occurred to him, but it vanished from his face before I got the chance to ask him what it meant.
“Okay, we need to split up,” Alex said, switching into I’m In Charge mode. “Aislin, you go check that way,” he pointed to the left of the main road in front of us, “and I’ll go up the right side, towards where you and I found him the other night,” I nodded, and he told my mom, “You go check out to the right side of the beach and Gemma check the left.”
We all nodded, and headed off to our designated areas. Before I’d even been able to take two steps, though, Alex pulled me back.
“Don’t go too far,” he told me. “After what we were just told—you need to be extremely careful.”
I nodded. “And so do you.”
He nodded too, gave me this weird look, and headed off down the sidewalk. I spun around, and ran up the stairs, feeling the same way I’d felt when I’d been at the top of the rollercoaster tracks waiting for it to fall. But I wasn’t sure if what would be awaiting me at the bottom was happiness.
The beach was packed with a mob of people, but I figured that even with the abundance of bodies roaming around, the odds seemed fairly favorable in spotting a six-foot-four, blonde hair, blue-tipped bang, vampire wandering around. But what if he wasn’t just wandering around? What if he was doing something he would regret? What if he was drinking blood again?
I started to walk faster, the sand making my footsteps heavy as I barreled across the shoreline. Every once in awhile the cold ocean would roll up and hit my ankles. I was trying to keep it together, but the further I went down the sandy beach, the more concerned I became that I wasn’t going to find him.
I decided that it might be a good idea to ask someone if they had seen him. So, as a girl around my age with auburn hair and hazel eyes walked by me, I stopped her.
“Have you seen a guy that’s about six foot four, with blond and blue hair and has a lip ring?” I asked her.
She thought about this and then her expression lit up. “Is he like really good-looking with bright blue eyes, and has these symbols tattooed on his arms?”
I nodded. “Do you know where he is?”
She pointed up the beach, towards a group of rocks that framed the lip of the shore. “Yeah, he went that way.”
“Thanks,” I said, and I took off, sprinting like a mad man for the rocks.
By the time I reached the rocks, I was panting for air. The mobs of people were so far away now that they looked like dots. There was a small narrow path that went between the rocks, and I stepped down it and the beach disappeared out of sight. I gradually made my way down the path, stepping over the sharp rocks as I braced my hand on the cliff’s wall. A few times I lost my balance and slipped, and by the time I made it to the end of the path, the palms of my hands were covered in cuts.
But the cuts were the least of my problems because there was no one at the end of the path, and nowhere else I could go. I tried to listen for voices, but the sound of the ocean was too loud. Shaking my head, I started to turn around, wondering why the girl had told me Laylen had come back here.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
His voice sent me scurrying backwards, and I scraped my back on one of the rock’s jagged edges.
“Easy, Gemma,” Nicholas said, his hands in the pockets of his tan cargo shorts. “Why