barked out a laugh. “You and Kat, man. You’re, like, the only girls on the planet capable of surprising me. I expect sympathy, you give me lip service. It’s kind of nice.”
A bit of a backhanded compliment, sure, but I’d take it. “So, what happened to your mom?”
His fingers tightened on the wheel, a testament to his discomfort. “She visited me a few times, and now that I can drive, I have an open invitation to visit her, but she has a new family now, so...”
Even more heartbreaking. I threw him a bone and changed the subject. “How’d you meet Cole?”
Now his lips curved into a naughty smile. “You familiar with prison rules, Ali-gator?”
Stupid nicknames. They were the equivalent of verbal fungus. You couldn’t ever get rid of them. “Somewhat. According to Kat, there’s only one. Kill now, ask questions later.”
“Actually, there are ten. But the first and most important is this—whenever you’re the new kid, flat-out annihilate the current king, and no one will ever mess with you. Well, when I moved to Cole’s district, he was the current king, so I challenged him in front of everyone. He knocked me out flat, then helped me up. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“Brothers at first punch,” I said, and he nodded.
“Something like that.”
I wondered how many other kids were out there, able to see zombies but uneducated about the truth.
My dad had been able to see zombies, though he hadn’t known what they were. As a boy, he’d watched one murder his mother. Over the years, his fear of them had only grown...and grown...until he’d later turned to alcohol and locked my little sister and me away.
But then, that’s what fear did. That’s the destructive power it wielded, and that’s why I was so determined to resist it, no matter what was going on.
Sometimes, though, my determination wavered—and it usually revolved around one person.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?”
Har har. “Kat’s kidney disease.”
A beat of taut silence. “Waiting for the question.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“You think I haven’t researched? Made appointments just to talk to specialists about her?”
“And there’s nothing?”
“Nothing,” he repeated hollowly.
I peered out the window, silent. Basically, Kat’s death was just a waiting game. A ticking clock that would soon zero out.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said, taking a corner faster than I liked. “Like the current sitch. Anima has had multiple opportunities to come after us like this, but they never have. I mean, the time they had you, Kat and Reeve locked up we wouldn’t have fought to kill, because we would have been afraid they’d hurt you girls in retaliation. So, I have to ask myself. Why now?”
Good question. “Let’s take a look at what we know. They’ve been working on ways to control the zombies, to steer the creatures to attack anyone standing in the way of their research. And they hope to use the zombie toxin to create a serum for eternal life, without consequences, and supposedly save mankind from disease and death, but in the meantime, they don’t mind experimenting on and killing innocent people.”
Frosty thought for a moment. “What if they’ve succeeded?”
“You suspect...what? That they want us out of the picture, so that there will be no one able to stop what they’re doing, because no one will know about it.”
“Exactly.”
Then the situation did not bode well for us. Because Anima would strike again. And soon, while we were injured and weakened.
I could almost hear a countdown in my head. The tick tock, tick tock I could never escape.
My hands curled into fists. Calm. Steady.
No fear, remember?
Frosty stopped in the school parking lot. Asher High. Home of the Tigers. (Go Tigers!) I frowned. There were several other vehicles there, so ours didn’t stand out. But...
“You think Bronx came here?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
Well, okay, then. That was good enough for me.
We entered the building—the doors were unlocked, saving us from committing another crime. We stuck to the shadows as we wandered down the halls. I kept a hand on the inside of my purse, my fingers curled around the hilt of one of my daggers. Just in case. No one jumped out at us and we were able to enter room 213 without incident.
But...dang it! There was no sign of Bronx. I wanted to stomp my foot.
“You contemplating throwing a hissy?” Frosty closed in on the chalkboard. “There’s no need. I was right. He’s been here.”
I looked left, right. Saw nothing. “How do you know?”
Frosty motioned to the chalkboard. “He left me a message.”
I read the words scribbled across it. Love me. Hurt me. At midnight. Party like rock stars.
O-kay. “What does it mean?”
“Take the first word of each sentence. Love hurt. At party. Meaning, Mackenzie Love is hurt and he’s got her...where?”
Crap. How bad were her injuries?
“They’re at...a party-supply warehouse? Doubtful.” He was mumbling now, clearly talking to himself, trying to reason things out. “A place we partied? More likely. But he wouldn’t have picked just any place. He would have... Someplace I’d remember... The last place? Yes, yes, yes. I know where he is!”
My heart drummed with excitement. “Then let’s go.”
* * *
We ended up in a run-down neighborhood about fifteen miles out of Birmingham. After wiping our prints, we ditched the car—maybe someone else would decide to do a little freelance valeting, moving it out of the area entirely—and hiked to the worst house of the lot.
It had peeling paint, broken shutters and cracked windows. Pieces of shingle hung from the side of the roof. The planks of wood on the porch released a death rattle as we walked to the door.
Frosty knocked. A shadow soon crept over the bottom of the door, and I knew someone was looking out the peephole.
“About time,” an unfamiliar voice said. Hinges released a high-pitched whine as the dilapidated entrance swung open. A petite brunette with a patchwork of pink scars on one side of her face moved out of the way, allowing Frosty to
