Hearts At Stake - By Alyxandra Harvey Page 0,30

in it; I’m a Person of Interest. Go me.”

I thought he’d get a chuckle out of it, but his face went so cold I had to stop myself from shivering.

“What?” he asked with deadly calm. “Helios-Ra has targeted you?”

I shook my head enthusiastically. “No, nothing like that, don’t worry. It’s just a profile page. Solange had one too.” His jaw clenched again. Oops. Shouldn’t have mentioned that. God, maybe he was right. I do have a big mouth. I tried a soothing smile. “Really, it’s okay. Anyway, we made photocopies of everything on Sol’s printer. And we had Connor doing his computer geek thing before London dropped in to be her usual sunny self.” I tilted my head. “Your computer’s faster than Solange’s laptop. Think we could find something on the bounty or Helios-Ra? Anything?”

He looked thoughtful. “It beats sitting around here waiting. Connor’s the one with the Internet mojo though, not me.”

I shrugged. “Worth a try.” Anything to fill the time, because otherwise I was going to bounce between worrying about my best friend and wondering when her brother got so freaking hot. Neither of those appealed to me as a sane pastime.

We went up to the attic floor, which had been converted into seven bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a sitting room—all without a single window anywhere. Nicholas’s room was the smallest; there was space only for a bed, a dresser, and his desk. I had to sit on the edge of the bed since there was no other chair. It was only half-made, with a navy blue blanket. The last time I’d been up here there had been pirate sheets and wooden swords.

I looked around curiously. There was an iPod dock and stacks of music magazines and clothes in a pile in the corner. There was also a small photograph on his nightstand. It was of the two of us on my fifteenth birthday. I was laughing, the light glinting off my glasses and the sequins on my scarf, and Nicholas was turned toward me, with serious eyes and a half grin. I touched the frame.

“I’ve never seen this picture,” I said quietly. I kind of wanted to ask him if I could get a copy, but I didn’t want to sound sappy. He looked over his shoulder from where he was booting up his computer.

“It’s . . .” He grabbed it, stuffed it into the top drawer of his desk. “It’s nothing.”

Liar. Still, even though I knew it wasn’t nothing, I didn’t know what it actually meant, either. It was probably no big deal. I shouldn’t read into it. I couldn’t help smiling, though.

“Stop that,” he muttered, not even looking up from the keyboard. I smiled wider. “I mean it.”

“So how do we find and infiltrate the database of a secret society?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

I scooted to the edge of the bed so I could see what he was typing. “Hey, you do have some mojo,” I said approvingly. The screen was a garble of HTML codes. “I can’t even read that.”

“Don’t get too excited,” he warned me. He typed for a bit, waited, typed some more. I watched, got bored, lay back on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. He put music on, choosing some of my favorite bands. He typed some more. I felt my eyes drifting shut despite myself.

“Think your boyfriend would mind the photo?” he finally asked quietly, so quietly I barely heard him.

That woke me up. “What boyfriend?” I sat up. “I have a boyfriend now?”

“Jett or Julius or whatever his name is.”

“Julian?” I blinked, confused. “You’re way out of the loop. Julian dumped me during exams. Well, actually, he didn’t even really dump me. I just found him with his tongue in Jennifer King’s mouth.”

“You don’t sound torn up about it.”

“Please, it was forever ago. I called him names, and then when I got home I realized I didn’t actually care. I didn’t even bother with the requisite breakup hot fudge sundae.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what to do with this Nicholas. It felt like we were about to have a moment. We’d never really had a moment. Okay, we’d had that kiss—make that two kisses. But they weren’t real, were they? The first was in the interest of subterfuge, the second a scientific test of my immunity to pheromones. I swallowed, suddenly nervous. I hadn’t been expecting a moment.

“Got something.”

Which was for the best because I clearly wasn’t going to get one. I tried not to feel disappointed.

“What did