Stacey.
Where r u?
R u skipping, u ho?
A minute later: Your locker misses u. Guess u sick with the herp?
Oh my God. I laughed out loud, grinning as I thumbed through her texts.
Our bio sub is still hot. U r missing this.
Bio is lonely.
My boobs miss u. How weird is that?
That was notably weird and yet not surprising.
If I get my cell taken from me, it’s ur fault.
Holy shit, Layla, where r u?!?
Air punched out of my lungs as I read the next text and the several following them.
U have no idea who just walked into bio!!!
Roth is here!
Holy canola oil, why aren’t u here to witness this?
Ok. He says he had mono. Srlsy? Do people still get mono? And who in the duck was he kissing?
A second later: Duck? I didn’t mean duck. That’s SO not what I meant, autocorrect.
Another text had come in about fifteen minutes after the last one.
He asked where u were. I told him u joined a cult. I laughed. He didn’t.
Finally, the last text was to call her if I wasn’t dead.
“What in the Hell?” I tossed my cell onto the bed, mouth hanging open.
Anger blasted through me like a door being kicked open and I welcomed it because it was so much better than the damn hurt and the confusion and that...that lost feeling.
Roth was back in school? That...that was unacceptable. He had no reason to be there. None whatsoever even though he easily passed for an eighteen-year-old. It wasn’t as if school seriously interested him or like he’d get a lot of Lilin hunting done there.
What if he wasn’t there for the Lilin? Hadn’t he asked about Eva?
The moment that question entered my thoughts, a curse burst out of me and I spun, leaving my bedroom. I had no idea where I was going, but I had to go somewhere. Maybe hit something.
Hitting something sounded good.
Because him being there was just unkind.
I reached the lower level, stalking past the library and I would’ve kept on going to God knows where in my polka-dot pajamas when I heard his name.
My little feet stopped on a dime and I turned, inclining my head toward the cracked-open door.
“What about Roth?” That was Dez.
“Needless to say, we cannot fully trust him,” Abbot responded, and I could practically see him in my head, sitting behind the desk, rolling a cigar between his fingers. “We need to keep an eye on him.”
“Done,” replied Nicolai.
There was a pause and then Abbot said, “We also need to keep an eye on Layla.”
I snapped my mouth shut as my hands curled in. Keep an eye on me?
His voice had dropped low and then picked back up. “You know what we could be dealing with. All of you. We have to be careful because if it’s what I suspect, we have to de—”
A rush of icy wind blew down the hall, stirring my damp hair and sending it flying around my face. Sucking in a startled breath, I spun as a loud crack reverberated through the compound. The boom echoed like thunder, rattling the pictures of angels.
Directly across from me, the large picture-frame windows in the atrium cracked right down the middle. I took a step back as the glass splintered and then exploded.
Shrieking, I whipped around and covered my head before I was pelted with glass. Tiny shards bounced off me harmlessly, clanging off the floor like wind chimes.
“Holy crap,” I whispered, jumping as the library door slammed off the wall and Wardens poured out in the hall.
Abbot was first. “What the Hell happened out here?”
“I don’t know.” I straightened and turned. Three large panes of windows had been obliterated. “Wow.”
“Are you okay?” Dez asked, coming to my side. Not too close, but enough that I could see that his pupils had dilated.
I glanced down. In my bare feet, walking would prove tricky. Glass covered the floor, twinkling like little diamonds in the foyer light. “Yeah. Not even a scratch.”
Nicolai and Geoff approached the blown-out windows. Being our resident security expert, Geoff looked disturbed as he leaned out the window and with good reason. “These windows are reinforced glass. It would take damn near a rocket to break them and nothing or no one is down there. None of the motion detectors have gone off or any of the charms.”
“Or in here.” Nicolai turned around, frowning. “There’s no bricks or anything.”
Abbot turned to me and the taut line his jaw formed told me he was not happy. My gaze dipped to his hands. In one he held a small vial of milky-white liquid. “What happened in here, Layla?” he asked before I could question what he held.
“I don’t know. I was walking down the hall and the windows—they just cracked and then exploded.” I shook my head and pieces of glass wiggled free from my hair, clinking off the hardwood floors. Great. It would take forever to get all the glass out. I carefully stepped to the side.
Abbot arched a brow. “So you did nothing?”
My head jerked up. “Of course not! I didn’t do anything.”
“Then how did the windows get broken if there’s nothing here that could have done it?”
I forgot about the glass as I stared up at Abbot. Cold air rushed in through the windows, but that wasn’t the cause of the sudden chill skidding down my spine. “I don’t know, but I’m telling the truth. I didn’t do anything.”
Geoff faced us, crossing his arms. The dimple in his chin was all but gone. “Layla, there’s nothing in here that would’ve broken the windows.”
“It wasn’t me, though.” My gaze darted among the men. None of them, not even Dez or Nicolai, wore expressions that said they believed me. “Why would I break out the windows?”
Abbot
