me, figured it’d be best to rest for a few days, and then I was going to give it a go at using the Ira. I wasn’t going to lie and say I wasn’t afraid of going to The Underworld. I’d been there before and that had been in a vision. Real life was going to be a lot worse because I wouldn’t be invisible. But I had to do it.
There was something else concerning me besides my future endeavor to The Underworld. Laylen’s moods seemed to be getting stranger. One minute he was perfectly fine, and the next minute he was upset over something. If I didn’t know any better, I would be wondering if he was experiencing a prickling sensation on the back of his neck that was releasing an abundance of his emotions. But Laylen had never previously been unemotional, so I knew he couldn’t be suffering from a soul-detaching-Keeper-gift that a certain red-headed Keeper, who had raised me, possessed.
No. Something else had to be up with him.
I was sitting out on the deck that extended out from my bedroom. The sky was a jet black, and the moonlight reflected like an orb against the dark ocean water. The stars were twinkling in their own beautiful way, and the lull of the ocean was having a calming effect over me.
If I hadn’t been sitting out there, I wouldn’t have seen him walk across the sandy beach, heading away from the house to who knows where. The light of the moon hit his blond hair making it look white, but I could tell by his height and the way that he walked that it was Laylen.
“Where is he going,” I mumbled to myself. I stood up and yelled, “Laylen!”
He turned and looked at me, and then…he ran.
“Laylen!” I shouted, causing a rising uproar amongst the neighbor’s dogs. “Where are you going?”
But he already disappeared into the darkness of the night.
“Crap.” I went into my room, slipped on my flip flops, and ran out of the bedroom. I was so mad at myself. I knew something had been wrong with him, but I never said anything, and now he was running away.
I reached the front door and realized I had two options here. One, that I take off on foot, all by myself, in the middle of the night, and roam around a strange town, looking for a vampire who was struggling with some kind of issues. Or I could go wake up Alex, and he could drive us around in the SUV.
Even as I headed back to Alex’s room, I wasn’t sure he would help me. Yeah, Laylen and Alex had been getting along—in fact everyone had been getting along—but I was still skeptical that Alex would jump out of bed and say “yeah, let’s go find him.”
When I got to Alex’s door, I hesitated before knocking. It took him a second to answer, but the door did swing open, and a tired-eyed, shirtless Alex, with some serious bed-head, stood in front of me.
He blinked wearily at me. “What’s up?”
“I just saw Laylen leaving.” My words came out rushed. “Down the beach. And when I called his name, he ran.”
His eyebrows dipped down. “Where was he going?”
“I don’t know....but he’s been acting kind of weird since he…since he bit me.”
“You’ve noticed that, too?”
“Wait, you’ve noticed it?”
He nodded. “Yeah, he’s been acting just like…” he trailed off, looking away from me.
“Like me,” I said, like it was obvious, which it was. There was no use tiptoeing around it.
“Well, I wasn’t going to put it that bluntly, but, yeah, he’s been acting like you.” He gave me a funny look. “Or the old you. I’m not really sure about the current one.”
“Okay.” Let’s get off that subject. “Well, if something is wrong with him, then we need to go find him.”
Alex nodded and walked back into his room. I tried not to stare at him too much as he slipped a black t-shirt over his head. He put his shoes on, grabbed the car keys off the dresser, and then we were heading out the door.
“Okay,” he said, once the engine was running, and we both had our seat belts buckled up. “Which direction did he head in?”
“To the left,” I told him, and he backed the SUV down the driveway. “So where do you think he’s going?” I asked Alex as we drove past the brightly painted beach houses that lined the street.