Insidious: (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 1) Page 15

  “Seems like neither of us was built for high society,” I chortled, holding up my heels to declare them the culprit.

  “Seems so.”

  I padded away some of the blood trickling down my foot with the cloth napkin I still had in hand, limping toward the side hallway. “Would you happen to know where the closest bathroom is?”

  “Here, let me help you with that.”

  I barely had time to straighten up when he effortlessly swept me up into his arms. A shrill shriek escaped me as he carried me across the kitchen, setting me down on an empty countertop. He laughed softly, angling me so that my legs dangled over the sides.

  “You really don’t have to do this,” I said, watching him peruse the lower cabinets for rubbing alcohol and a few cotton swabs.

  “Nonsense. As your host, it’s my duty to see to my guests. Not to mention, it buys me some time from having to go back out there,” he laughed, nodding to the swinging door. The boy smiled, and for the first time, the gesture reached his eyes. Soaking the cotton with some alcohol, he knelt down and lightly dabbed it on the blistered skin. I immediately flinched, and he laughingly caught a hold of my foot in case I kicked him.

  “Sorry,” I gasped, feeling blood rushing to my cheeks. It didn’t help that my feet were extremely ticklish.

  “Even if you hit me in the mouth, it’d still be less painful than the party.”

  “Blaine, don’t think I didn’t see you come in here,” announced Sybil. Her curt tone was cut short as she took note of him placing the bandages on my feet. “Oh…hi.”

  My cheeks reddened all the more as I slid off the countertop. “Hi, Mrs. Ryder.”

  “I see you two have met.” Her smile couldn’t get any broader.

  “Not officially,” said the young man, rising to his feet. He extended his hand to me, “I’m Bl—”

  “This is my son, Blaine,” declared Sybil, rushing to our sides.

  “Blaine,” he reiterated, trying to muzzle his laugh.

  “And this is Katrina.”

  “Kat,” I corrected.

  “Gemma’s daughter. The one I was telling you about,” said Sybil.

  Blaine’s eyes widened. “Gemma? As in Gemma Montgomery?”

  “Yeah, that’s my mom.”

  “I would have introduced the two of you sooner, but Blaine spent the last year abroad before going to his summer internship in New York,” added Sybil giddily. She entered into a small spiel before Vanessa’s mother interrupted with some conspiratorial gossip she wished to share with her. “Oh, excuse me. You kids have fun now.”

  “What?” I finally asked after they left, seeing Blaine still gawking at me, awestruck.

  He shook his head. “Nothing… It’s just—you’re not what I was expecting.”

  “What’d you mean?”

  “I’m not really sure. I met your mother last summer before I went away, and she was…ah…”

  “Toffee-nosed?” I suggested.

  He sighed. “That’s a nice way of putting it. Yes. And around these parts, the whole ‘like mother, like daughter’ saying pretty much sums everyone up.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to discredit the proverb.”

  “I’m not.”

  Drunken mirth roared from the other side of the kitchen door, and we both shuddered.

  “I’m pretty sure they could scare hyenas with that laughter,” said Blaine, running another hand through his hair. “And I swear to God, if I have to listen to another one of Mrs. Patterson’s sexcapades, I’m gonna impale myself with the ice sculpture out back.”

  “You have to admit, she’s lived a very spry eighty-nine years,” I chuckled.

  “Has she run out of material yet?”

  “Oh, no. And she gets more explicit with alcohol.”

  “If you’re trying to convince me to go back out there, you’re doing a terrible job.”

  “So it’s safe to say you aren’t happy to be back home?”

  “It wasn’t particularly promising, until about five minutes ago.” He extended his arm out to me. “You wanna get out of here?”

  “My mom would kill me if I left.”

  His brilliant smile never faltered. “That’s not what I asked. What do you want?”

  Blinking, I could only see vague shapes through the tears clouding my vision as I snapped out of the memory. Sybil was long gone, and Mrs. Marin and my mom were already deep in conversation. I didn’t bother excusing myself, sliding out of my seat. Walking as fast as my heels would allow, I darted out of the restaurant, only to find Ava and her posse hanging out by the front entrance.

  I couldn’t leave without having to run into them, and the bathroom was right there as well, so I couldn’t hide out either. And considering that my face was covered in tears, I suspected there was more mascara bleeding beneath my eyes than actually on my lashes. I probably looked like a raccoon or a watered-down clown. I backtracked through the corridor, thankful to find that the balcony overlooking the golf course was empty. My trembling legs barely managed to carry me outside.

  “What do you want?”

  Gripping the wall, I sank to the floor, my back pressed against the closed door to grant me what little privacy I could have in a place like this. I curled into myself, burying my head into my hands, crying harder than I’d allowed myself since the funeral.

  What did I want?

  I wanted to live in the old cramped two-bedroom apartment I grew up in. I wanted my dad to lose his position at the firm. I wanted him to go back working a nine-to-five job, when he didn’t have to write himself reminders to spend time with his family. I wanted to go back to a time before Mom confused having bragging rights over her friends for happiness. I wanted the Adam I used to know, the carefree boy who used to camp out with me in our tree fort all summer long. I wanted to go back to a time before death marred the sweetest kid I ever knew. I wanted to be ten years old again, when love didn’t come with conditions. But more than anything, I wanted to go back to a time before I inadvertently killed the nicest guy I’d met in this godforsaken town. Everything I wanted was what I could never have.

  A strong vibration suddenly rippled up my arm, and I opened my eyes to see bright blue lights pouring out of Reese’s left sleeve. Another rune was glowing, this one a peculiar horn-shaped symbol.

  “Ego sum hic ut accipere vos a haec miseriae.”

  I snapped up to my feet, furiously wiping the tears from my blurred vision. That voice. It was nothing more than a whisper, but I knew it. I recognized that low, silky quality.

  The figure from my dream…

  I looked around, but it was clear that no one was there. I ripped open the balcony door to only find that the hallway, too, was empty.

  Perfect.

  Just what I needed, to be hearing voices.

  Chapter 13

  America’s Suitehearts

  Reese shot me a text later in the evening, promising to contact me if he found anything in his father’s journals that could identify any of my runes or explain what was happening to me. Sadly, my hopes had fallen by the time I woke up the next morning without another word from him.

  A pop quiz in French turned out to be the one bright spot of my day so far, which wasn’t saying much. The rumor mill was in full swing, and now I seriously wished I had Reese’s ability to turn invisible.

  “Stalker alert.”

  I jumped at the sound of Eric’s voice, inattentively unaware he’d even been behind me.

  “What?”

  “9 o’clock.” He nodded to our left where Reese was standing a good ten people ahead of us in the lunch line.

  “He’s not even looking over here,” I pointed out, grabbing an empty tray.

  Eric laughed, seemingly at my ignorance. “Blackburn’s been stealing glances at you all day. If he had laser vision, he would’ve burned a hole through you the moment you stepped through the front door.”

  My heart did a traitorous summersault in my chest. Had he really been looking? Anytime I crossed
paths with him today, his head was always down, either buried in a book or fiddling with his camera. Reese was wearing a black pinstriped blazer with large, intricately embroidered cross symbols on the sleeves that matched the color of the exposed red stitching on the lapels. He turned just the right way that I could read the front of his shirt. “Normal People Scare Me.”

  I did my best to bury my smile as I turned back to Eric. “He’s not so bad.”

  Eric’s eyebrows shot up so high, they disappeared beneath the shag of hair hanging over his forehead. “Please tell me you’re joking. Because if not, I’m gonna have to suspect that either you’ve been replaced by an alien pod person, or you’re just as crazy as Blackburn now.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And what’s with this?” Eric grabbed my free hand, looking at the fingerless gloves in amusement. “You start taking fashion advice from him, too?”

  “No, I’m just cold,” I said, ripping my hand away. That was total bull.

  Carly had already given me crap about my new accessories the moment she saw me in the parking lot this morning, since the only people who ever wore them around here apart from Reese were the handful of stoners who spent most of their days higher than kites. With my sparklingly new—and totally unwanted—sleeve of tattoos, I didn’t have much say in the matter. Even though my long-sleeved shirt covered my arm, the cuffs still didn’t come far enough down to hide the inky designs stamped on my hand. Having spent all day yesterday trying to hide my hand in my pocket wasn’t what you’d call fun. So I stopped by Target on my way to school to pick up a cheap pair of knitted gloves, cutting off the tops of the fingers with the Swiss Army knife I had buried in my glove box.

  To make matters worse, the faculty decided to crank the heat in the building, forcing me to either sweat bullets underneath all the fabric or risk exposing myself. Also, my gym locker was right in the middle of everyone else’s. There was no way nobody wouldn’t notice the tattoos if I got dressed in front of everyone, forcing me to change into my uniform from inside the bathroom stalls yet again. I needed to come up with a different plan. Maybe invest in some good theater-grade make-up.

  “Why is Reese crazy?” I asked.

  “Hello, gas station. Remember?”

  Okay, Eric did have a point. I thought the same thing at the time. “But all you guys said the same things about him long before that. And don’t tell me it’s because he’s a West Ender.”

  “No, I say that because Harry Houdini over there just weirds me out. Trust me, if you grew up having to go to school with him, you’d know what I mean.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  This didn’t do me any favors, because Eric’s expression blanched. “Alright, I’m not one to buy into idle gossip here, but seriously.” He leaned in, lowering his voice. “Is there something going on between you two?”

  Great, someone else who’d jumped on the Kat’s-a-skank bandwagon.

  I just scoffed, snatching up some plastic utensils.

  I still wanted to talk to Reese to ask if he found anything out about my runes, but I couldn’t find an opening. The only class we shared where we sat anywhere near one another was Physics, and we didn’t have that until tomorrow. As for lunch, talking to him was apparently out of the question. Mystic Harbor’s cafeteria had its own system, an intricate operation that mapped out its hierarchy. The most popular students, like Ava Ashford and Becky Sorensen, sat at the table nearest the long window overlooking the fountain in the courtyard below. The other jocks, cheerleaders, and socialites, which included my friends, were positioned at the tables beside them. The farther you were from the Queen Bees, the further your popularity status tanked.

  With the torrential downpour, eating outside on the football field bleachers was out of the question, which explained why Reese resigned himself to actually staying in the cafeteria today. He planted himself down in the last lunch table on the far end of the room. The few mathletes who had been sitting there took one nervous glance at him and quietly slipped out of the bench to the next available table. There obviously wasn’t enough room to accommodate them all comfortably, but that didn’t stop the trio from squishing themselves in as if the table was the last available lifeboat on a sinking ship.

  It had now become impossible to ignore Reese. Every time he was near, I’d feel that flushness creep across my chest before I even saw him in the hallways. And for the very first time, I actually noticed him. Not just him as a person, but the way everyone else reacted to him. Now knowing what he could do, I figured out pretty quickly that he mostly roamed the hallways—invisible, because Reese slipped through the crowds without so much as a blink of an eye from our fellow classmates. However, anytime he entered a classroom or the cafeteria, it was obvious that everybody could see him because they all shrank away from him like he was a highly infectious plague. The only people to ever address Reese were loudmouthed jocks who never missed out on an opportunity to harass him. He never did anything to provoke these attacks, yet name-calling and forceful shoves were plentiful. Hell, my own friends partook in it. Seeing it made me sick, but the fact that I’d been blind to it up until now made me sicker.

  There was one unspoken—but highly regarded—rule in Mystic Harbor, and that was: never challenge the status quo. Mom lived by this tenet like it was her life source. Yet there I was, about to rock the boat so hard, it’d probably capsize. I handed my money to the lunch lady and started making my way around Ava’s table, seeing Carly and Daniel move over to make room for me and my tray. But I kept walking.

  “Kat?” Carly shouted after me. I didn’t stop.

  “This seat taken?”

  Reese took a break from stabbing the slop of ground beef on his tray to look up at me, and immediately froze.

  Chapter 14

  The Devil Within

  Reese’s eyes widened, only to narrow a second later. He looked around me, and I didn’t need to see for myself that others were staring. The natural ruckus of the room had suddenly fallen to a low chorus of whispers.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, clearly suspicious.

  “I’m joining you.” I didn’t wait for an invitation, putting my tray down on the opposite side of the bench from him. “Though I can’t say I really have an appetite. I’m pretty sure this food was prepared as a pretext to a dare.”

  ‘Mystery Meat Monday’ was the unofficially coined term for the funky, uneatable main course slapped onto our plates, a collection of all the leftovers from the previous week.

  I took a better look at the thick chunks amid the pinkish slime. “Uh…when did we last have meatloaf?”

  Reese grimaced, poking at the gunk on his own tray. “Too long to still be edible.” Surrendering, he finally tossed the plastic spork aside and ate a slice of bread instead. “Why are you here?”

  “Looked like you could use some company.”

  He continued to eye me with evident doubt, but didn’t say anything.

  “What are you reading?” I finally asked, trying to fill the awkward silence lingering in the air. Reese propped up the book he had laid out on the table just long enough to flash me the cover. Charles Bukowski’s You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense. “So…how’s your Physics report coming along?”

  “Fine.”

  I tried out a couple more questions, still only getting one word responses. “Don’t talk my ear off, now,” I muttered.

  He didn’t so much as lift his eyes as he flipped to the next page. “I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why are you talking to me—here? There are these things they invented called cell phones. You may have heard of them.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Not to mention, you already have my number. The whole reason I returned your phone to you when I did was to avoid this very situation.”

  Ouch. “You really hate me that much that you can’t stomach sitting with me?”

  “What?” He looked up, confused. “No, I meant this.” His eyes shifted across the room. “I�
�m not particularly fond of being a spectacle, and I really think you underestimate the killing powers I possess when it comes to one’s social status.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Besides, if you were really concerned with not drawing attention, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t dress like that,” I pointed out.

  He relented, closing his book. “Let me ask you, what would your reaction be if you saw someone dressed like me, who spends their days performing random acts of illusions, suddenly vanish out of thin air in the middle of class?”

  “I’d be taken aback, sure, but I’d find it pretty cool.”

  “And what would you do if you saw your everyday jock or cheerleader vanish into thin air right from their desk?”

  “I’d…probably scream and run away,” I admitted.

  “Precisely. Around here, the weirder you appear to be, the less people pay attention when something unexplainable happens.”

  “Do you lose control of your abilities?” I whispered. “Is that gonna happen to me?”

  “To one degree or another, yeah. It’s kind of unavoidable. Light Mages evoke their magic through concentration. The harder you focus on something, the more power you expel. So by simply focusing on your studies, you may accidentally make all your reading materials levitate off your desk. It takes practice and discipline, but even I have a slipup every now and again.”

  “That’s hardly comforting,” I mumbled. “Did you have a chance to look through your dad’s journals?”

  “Came up empty.” Reese finally sighed. “Look, I don’t know if you’re doing this to make a point to those self-righteous assholes you call friends, but you really don’t need to commit social suicide to do so. I don’t need your pity, Princess.”

  “Okay, why do you keep calling me that?”

  “Princess?”

  “Yeah, do you really think I’m that spoiled?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then what is it?”