Refuge (21 page)

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” I
grumbled, still upset about how close I’d come to stripping in
front of him and everyone else.

“Immensely.” He raised his head and looked
around, then rolled off me and to his feet in one easy movement.
Before I had time to move, he reached down and pulled me up to
stand beside him.

All around us, white bodies littered the
floor and stairs while the few karks still moving desperately tried
to evade the powerful jet of water from the fire hose Jordan was
holding. Jordan wore a devilish smile as she swung the hose back on
us for several seconds before going back to taking down anything
with wings.

“Hey!” I sputtered as water ran off me in
rivulets. I pushed wet hair from my face to shoot her a dirty
look.

“Sorry, had to make sure I didn’t miss any of
it,” she said, but her smirk belied her apology. “Hey, it worked,
didn’t it?”

She was right; there wasn’t a single kark
interested in me anymore. I looked around for my hoodie and spotted
a splash of blue beneath a pile of unmoving bodies. Sahir must have
dosed them with his sedative.

“I think that’s enough, Jordan.” Tristan wore
a serious expression as he surveyed the mess in the main hall. He
waited for Jordan to shut off the hose then he started toward us,
followed by Chris and the other warriors. “Are you two okay?” he
asked me and Nikolas. I nodded, and he turned to Sahir who was the
resident creature expert. “Sahir, what could have caused this?”

Sahir removed his mask and shook his head.
“I’ve never seen karks behave this way. They didn’t go after anyone
but Sara.”

“Something on her clothes attracted them.”
Nikolas strode over to the pile of white bodies and yanked my
hoodie out from under them. “Look at this.”

I barely held back a gasp when I saw the
tattered remains of what I had been wearing a few minutes ago. The
karks’ sharp teeth had literally shredded it before Sahir could
knock them out. Coldness spread through me when it hit me what
would have happened if Nikolas hadn’t gotten to me when he did.

Tristan’s face hardened. It was the first
time I had ever seen him this angry. “Have that garment examined. I
want to know exactly what happened here.” He addressed one of the
younger warriors I only knew as Ben. “Get something to put these
things in before they wake up. And we’re going to need the cleanup
crew in here.”

“Yes, sir,” Ben said before rushing to follow
his orders.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Tristan asked me
again. Concern colored his voice after seeing the damage to my
hoodie.

“I’m fine.” Or I would be after a very, very
long hot shower.

Jordan had abandoned her fire hose and walked
over to join us. “Sara, you look like you just won a wet T-shirt
contest,” she announced, causing more than one male head turned my
way.

“What?” I croaked and looked down at the pale
yellow V-neck clinging to me in a way that left absolutely nothing
to the imagination. Heat enflamed my cheeks, and I yanked the wet
material away from my chest.

Nikolas stepped in front of me, and I stared
at his broad back as he blocked me from the others in the room. A
surge of gratitude wiped out my annoyance at him from a few minutes
ago. I would never understand him. One minute he did or said
something that made me want to hit him, and the next he did
something nice like this.

Once I had arranged my T-shirt so it no
longer looked like a second skin, I stepped out from behind him,
hoping my face wasn’t as red as it felt. The first face I saw was
Chris’s, and he quirked one corner of his mouth at me but wisely
kept his thoughts to himself.

“Nikolas, we need to talk when you have a
minute,” Tristan said, and Nikolas nodded tersely. There was an
undercurrent in their communication that I couldn’t read, but it
sounded serious.

“If you don’t need me, I’d like to get
cleaned up,” I said to Tristan, who glanced at Nikolas and told me
to take the rest of the day off. I wasted no time escaping to my
room where I spent half an hour showering kark poop out of my hair
and skin and mourning the loss of my St. Patrick’s hoodie and my
favorite jeans. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror drying my
hair and wondering if Roland could score another hoodie for me. I
hadn’t really been involved in much at high school, but now that I
was no longer there, I found myself holding onto the things that
reminded me of that part of my old life.

I felt immeasurably better once I was clean,
and I was trying to decide how to spend the afternoon when my
stomach growled loudly. It was lunchtime, and I’d barely touched my
breakfast, but I was loath to go down to the dining hall. I was
pretty sure that by now, the whole place knew what had happened and
everyone was asking the same question. Why had the karks attacked
only me?

It was a question I had avoided thinking
about since I left the main hall. If karks did not attack people,
someone had to have done something to send them after me. And if
Nikolas was right and something on my clothing had attracted them,
then how did it get there? Or more importantly, who put it there?
It had to be someone in the hall, or at least someone I’d come into
contact with today. I made a mental list of everyone I had been
near this morning and quickly dismissed it. Nikolas and Chris would
never harm me, and I found it difficult to believe Jordan or Olivia
would either. Besides, the two girls had sat across the table from
me at breakfast and neither of them got close enough to touch me.
There was too much chaos in the main hall to remember who had been
near me. The only people I recalled touching me were Nikolas,
Tristan, Chris, Michael, and Celine.

The last name gave me pause. Celine obviously
disliked me, and we had been in very close contact when I fell on
top of her, which would have given her ample opportunity to mark my
clothes with something that would attract the karks. And she had
taken off right after that. I stared out my window without seeing
anything. Could jealousy really have driven her to try to hurt
me?

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that
thought. Celine jealous of me? Hardly. She was stunningly gorgeous
and could have any man she desired. There was no need for her to do
something so drastic when she could easily have Nikolas if she
wanted him. And if he wanted someone like her then . . . oh, what
did it matter to me anyway?

Snatching up the phone, I dialed Roland’s
number. He should be just now getting home from school and I needed
to hear his voice.

“Hey,” he answered breathlessly like he had
been scrambling for his phone. “Everything okay?”

I carried the phone over to my bed where I
flopped down on my back. “Why do you think something is wrong?”

“Well, because you never call this early and
I haven’t heard from you in two days.”

My free hand slapped my forehead. Crap.
Nikolas’s sudden return threw me off so much yesterday that I’d
forgotten to call Roland. Now I had to tell him about the karks
and
the
lamprey demons all at once. “It’s been kind of nuts here the last
few days. Nikolas came back yesterday.”

“Ah.” It was amazing how one syllable could
hold so much meaning.

“That’s not all.” I filled him in on the
disastrous trip to Boise, deliberately making the whole demon
attack sound a lot less scary than it had been. No need worrying
him when he could do nothing about it. I did include the part where
I blew up the demon.

“Whoa! You weren’t kidding about your power
getting stronger.”

“Yeah, well I could have done without the
shower of blood and guts.”

He brushed off my revulsion in typical male
fashion. “I think it rocks. I’m just surprised Nikolas let you go
off to Boise in the first place. You know, with him being the way
he is.”

“He wasn’t here, and even if he had been, he
doesn’t tell me what to do,” I declared irritably.

Roland chuckled. “Uh-oh. What did he do
now?”

“He didn’t do anything. It’s just been a
crazy few days. First the lamprey demons, then Nikolas shows up and
tells me he is training me, and then – ”

“Hold up. Nikolas is training you?” Roland
burst into laughter.

I scowled at the ceiling. “Remind me again
why I call you.”

“S-sorry. I just can’t help picturing him
trying to teach you how to use one of those swords. Can the Mohiri
re-grow limbs?”

“Oh shut up,” I retorted, but a smile crept
across my face because I was pretty sure Nikolas wasn’t foolhardy
enough to put a sword in my hand.

“Well, at least it’s not boring there.” He
sighed heavily, and it was my turn to ask him what was wrong.

“I hate this. It’s our senior year; we should
be hanging together: you, me, and Pete. School totally sucks
without you.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“No?” Roland groaned. “Do you know how hard
it is to pretend to be sad over your best friend’s death when you
know she is still alive and well?”

I tried to put myself in his shoes and
couldn’t. “That’ll get easier soon. I bet people have already
started to forget about me.”

“You still don’t get how much people noticed
you, do you? People at school talk about you all the time.”

“They do?” That shocked me, considering how
few friends I’d had at St. Patrick’s. Other than Roland and Peter,
I could only think of one other, a boy name Jeffrey who I’d sat
with at lunch every day.

“I told you it’s not the same here. Even
Scott is different since you disappeared. Pete thinks he misses
you.”

“Ha! Now I know you’re messing with me.”

“Seriously, he is not the same guy. He
doesn’t say much anymore, and he’s even nicer to people. I heard he
broke up with Faith two days ago.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. There had
been animosity between me and Scott for years, and it was strange
to think he might be affected by my death. It was more likely that
he had changed because he no longer had the negative emotions my
undine side brought out in him. Maybe not having me around was
actually making him a better person. Wow. Now that was a depressing
thought.

A knock at the door stopped me from delving
further into that line of thinking. “Hold on, Roland, someone’s at
my door.”

I didn’t try to hide my surprise when I
opened the door to find Jordan, cleaned up and holding a plate of
sandwiches and two bottles of water.

“I figured you were avoiding the dining hall
and might be hungry,” she explained, breezing past me to lay the
plate and bottles on my desk.

“I’ll call you back later, Roland,” I told
him, and we said good-bye.

Jordan walked around the room, studying my
photos and drawings. “Nice. Did you draw these?”

“Um, yes.”

“Is that your uncle?”

“Yes.”

“He’s hot for an old guy.” She finished her
little tour and flopped down on my bed as if she’d done it a
hundred times before.

I hadn’t moved from the door. “What do you
want, Jordan?” In my experience, other girls did not visit me to
hang out. They usually went out of their way to avoid me. I
reminded myself it was only human girls who were naturally repulsed
by my undine side, but after years of being shunned, it was hard to
believe otherwise.

She actually looked a little hurt by my
question, and I regretted my curt tone. “Sorry, that came out
wrong. I’m just surprised to see you here.”

“Me too. I don’t usually like many people.
Olivia is nice but she is such a girl, if you know what I mean. I
didn’t care for you either when you first got here, but you’ve
changed my mind.”

I closed the door and went to sit in my desk
chair. “Thanks, I think.”

Jordan sat up and ran her finger along the
outline of one of the birds on my grandmother’s quilt. “This is
nice. Did your mom make it?”

I laughed harshly. “My mother took off when I
was two, and if she had made anything I would have burned it before
I brought it here with me. My grandmother made it.”

“Ouch! Someone has serious mommy issues.”

“If you came here to make fun of me, you know
where the door is.”

“Geez, chill, will you? I get the whole anger
thing. You aren’t the only orphan here with a sad story.” She got
up and came over to grab a sandwich and a bottle of water. “Why
don’t we eat and you can tell me again how there is absolutely
nothing between you and Nikolas Danshov?”

“I told you, there is nothing going on
between us. He’s my trainer and that is all.”

She laid her food and water on my nightstand
and sat on the bed again. “Uh-huh. That’s why he threw himself over
you like a living shield.”

I chuckled. “You really don’t know Nikolas.
That’s what he does – he protects people, and he would have done it
for anyone.”

Jordan let out a burst of laughter. “As much
as I wish Nikolas would want to come running to my rescue – not
that I need any man to rescue me – it will never happen. You didn’t
see his face when he saw you getting attacked. I’ve never seen
anyone
move
that fast.”

“I wish someone would tell Nikolas and
Tristan I don’t need a man to protect me,” I grumbled.

“Males are just wired that way,” Jordan
explained through a mouthful of food. “You’re tough but you have
this whole vulnerable look going on that gets their testosterone in
a twist. Of course, I’m pretty sure it’s more than that with
Nikolas after seeing him downstairs. When you were standing there
all wet and he moved in front of you – the look he gave those other
guys . . . brrrrr. He did everything but pee a circle around you to
mark his territory.”

“That is totally absurd. And thanks for that
disgusting visual by the way.”

She gave me a long searching stare. “You
simply cannot be that clueless. Anyone with eyes can see the sparks
between you two.”