and I and left, as if she could sense something bad was about to go down and wanted to avoid being around it when it did.
Smart woman.
I stared at the doorway for awhile, if for no other reason, then to avoid Alex’s gaze that I could feel burning into me. Sparks of static were dancing all over my skin, and I wished I could tell them to stop because they were very distracting.
“So are you going to explain to me what in the heck you and Laylen were doing outside in the middle of the night?” Alex asked. “And where the bite mark came from?”
“I guess that depends on whether you’re going to freak out when I tell you?” I told him, still not looking at him.
“You expect me not to freak out when you’ve got blood all over your shirt and two holes in your neck,” he said incredulously.
I touched the tips of my fingers to the bite on my neck, and then looked at him. “I’m not going to tell you what happened unless you promise you’ll stay calm.” Then as an added bonus I tacked on, “Besides, you owe me.”
He started to walk toward me. “Oh yeah. How do you figure?”
“Because of what happened back at the cabin,” I said, backing away from him because I knew the closer he got to me, the more unclear my mind would be. And I needed my mind to be clear. “When you let your father try to take my mind away.”
He looked pissed and suddenly he was moving toward me at a rapid speed. I backed away until I bumped into the wall. He kept coming at me, slamming to a halt only inches away from me, the tips of his DC sneakers brushing with the tips of mine. He was so close that I could feel the warmth of his breath dusting across my cheeks.
He put his hands on the wall, trapping me between his arms. “I already told you I wasn’t going to let him do it,” he breathed, leaning in. “I knew the necklace would protect you.”
My heart thrummed insanely in my chest, the electricity buzzing passionately from the intensity of his eyes.
What was I supposed to be doing again?
And then I felt the metal of the locket pressing against my neck, and remembered. Vladislav. My mother. The Underworld.
“Okay…I believe you.” Which wasn’t the truth at all, but I was working on something here. “But you have to promise to stay calm while I tell you what happened.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to promise anything.”
“Then I’m not going to tell you anything.” I went to duck under his arm, but he slid it down further so that I would have to limbo really low to get out.
“Fine, I’ll try to stay as calm as I can as long as you’ll stop throwing in my face what happened back at the cabin.” He waited for me to answer, but when I said nothing, he added, “Deal?”
I weighed out my options and came to the conclusion that the best way to get information about The Underworld was to make the deal. Now whether I’d hold true to the deal or not, depended on what happened here. “Fine, it’s a deal.”
We sat down on the purple velvet sofa—the one still remaining upright—and I began searching my mind for an idea of where to begin, and what details I should give him. But before I could figure any of this out, he spoke first.
“So who bit you?” he asked.
Figures he’d start there. “A vampire,” I said, kicking a broken piece of the apothecary table with the tip of my shoe.
“And what’s this vampire’s name?” he asked impatiently.
“Vladislav.”
“Vladislav!” he exclaimed, slamming his hand down onto the arm of the sofa. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”
“So…I take it you know who I’m talking about?”
“Of course I know who he is.” He sank back in the chair, the muscles on his arms flexing tensely as he crossed them. “I also know how big of a problem it’s going to be if he figured out who you are.”
“Does it even matter if he did?” I asked. “I mean, aren’t we pretty sure that the stars power isn’t going to stop the portal from opening anyway. So what does it matter if someone knows I have it in me.”
“We don’t know for sure what the stars power is for,” he said, staring straight ahead at the dark blue wall, looking as though