Dark Kiss

“I just thought … after the other night …” She frowned. “You’re not interested in him anymore, are you?”

I gritted my teeth. “Oh, I’m interested, all right.”

I was interested in getting to the bottom of what had happened to me and how I could fix it as soon as possible. And Stephen Keyes damn well better have some answers.

chapter 6

I’d burned all day with the need to get back to Crave and confront Stephen, but now that I was here I’d started to doubt myself. I guess I’d focused on my plan—weak though it was—as a way to keep from thinking too much about what had happened with Bishop and Kraven.

I wasn’t convinced that I was some sort of soul-devouring monster now. No way. I was still me, nothing had changed that. But something was wrong. Really wrong. And I had to fix it.

“Are you even sure the jerk is here?” Carly scanned the floor looking for him.

“He told me he’s here every night lately, even weekdays. He’s taking a break from school right now, that’s why he’s back in town.”

“Doesn’t he live near you?”

“Two doors down.”

“We could have gone there to check.”

“I already checked. His parents don’t even know he’s in the city.” I’d called his house after school. I’d had a feeling he wouldn’t be there, but his mother’s reply that “he’s at school” was enough to convince me that if I couldn’t find him at Crave, I might not be able to find him at all. Besides, I didn’t want to chance being alone with him. I wanted to confront him in a public place.

“Okay, so where is he?” Carly asked. “Let’s do this.”

She thought my feelings were hurt and I wanted to lash out, and as my best friend, she was ready to back me up.

Just like with my mother, I hadn’t breathed a word to her about what was really going on. I wasn’t sure what was stopping me, exactly. Carly, of all people, would probably believe there were angels and demons roaming the city.

But still I didn’t speak up. She liked to protect me from people who might pick on me. Well, I’d like to protect her from people who might do worse than throw out a few insults. Cruel names might hurt feelings, but sharp golden daggers could kill.

I did wish very hard that I could stop thinking about Bishop. He was constantly on my mind now. If he hadn’t shown up today, I had little doubt that Kraven would have killed me.

It was an incredibly sobering thought. I owed my gratitude to Bishop for saving my life, and yet he’d threatened it himself just the night before.

“I need to talk to Stephen on my own,” I said. “You should stay here and wait for me.”

She eyed me. “Oh, I get it. So I’m just your chauffeur, huh? I don’t get a chance to tell him off, too?”

“Believe me, I don’t think that. Although, I won’t say that you having a car isn’t a nice perk.” I couldn’t help but grin at her mock outrage. “This is just something I need to handle myself. Less embarrassing that way.”

She considered this. “So what if he’s all schmoozy? All, ‘I really want to kiss your delectable lips again’? You’re just going to ignore it?”

“That isn’t going to happen.” Even if Stephen was one hundred percent innocent, his reaction to me after the kiss spoke volumes. I mean, he’d called me kid. No, I had more important things to deal with than falling for some self-involved college guy right now, no matter how cute I’d always found him.

It was funny how completely this had doused my crush on him. Like a bucket of water thrown on a lit match.

Also, my immediate and overpowering attraction to Bishop—and the fact that I couldn’t get him off my mind—had shown me that my little crush on Stephen had been just that. Little.

“You were really into him. What, are you interested in somebody else now?” she asked.

There was a catch in her voice that made me direct my attention away from scanning the dark club to her again. “What?”

She cleared her throat. “Jordan saw you talking to Colin in the hall this morning. She said you were standing really close.”

I winced. Damn Jordan. My personal nemesis and a total gossip. “It was nothing.”

Her eyebrows went up and she finally raised her gaze from the ground to meet mine. I saw relief there. “Really?”

It wasn’t nothing, but getting into details about him asking me out and then me wanting to kiss him probably wouldn’t earn me any brownie points as a loyal best friend.

“I know Colin’s totally off-limits,” I confirmed instead. “I promise, there’s no way I’d be interested in him like that. But why are you worried that I’ve been talking to him?”

“I’m done with him. But …” She rubbed her temples. “My brain is going to explode just thinking about this.”

“Let’s hope not.”

“I don’t want to be with him anymore, but I don’t want him to be with anyone else. Does that make some kind of bizarre, psycho ex-girlfriend kind of sense?”

“Sure it does.”

She laughed before sobering. “No, it doesn’t. I know that. He’s just the first guy who … you know, the first one to really like me.”

My heart felt heavy for her. I had to be really careful how I acted around Colin from now on. I didn’t want to give him—or Carly—the wrong impression. “Sorry this sucks so much for you. And you need to open your eyes when it comes to other guys. Paul is crazy about you, but you’ve never even looked in his direction. If you want to start dating again, you should give him a chance.”

She frowned. “Paul? Paul McKee?”

“The one and only.” He was a friend who always ate lunch with us. A pal, really. But I’d have to be blind not to see the very nonpal way he gazed across the table at Carly on a daily basis. Of course, she never noticed, because she was usually gazing somewhere else.

I scanned the nightclub. It wasn’t nearly as busy as it had been on Friday. On school nights it became a restaurant that only looked like a club—like a school cafeteria, but better decorated, with cooler lighting and a sound track. The dance floor was deserted and the place shut down at eleven o’clock instead of 1:00 a.m. A quick inhale brought forth the scent of chicken wings, fries and onion rings. Not healthy, but definitely delicious.

Something else smelled fantastic in here, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.

Souls, a little voice inside me said. You can smell the souls of all the people near you.

The thought nauseated me. Hopefully nobody would get as close to me as Colin had earlier today. That seemed to be what set me off.

“There’s lover boy now,” Carly said, snapping me out of my daze. “You’re right, he is here every night.”

Sure enough, looking every bit as gorgeous as ever in black pants and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, Stephen walked along the side of the empty dance floor toward the spiral staircase leading to the upstairs lounge.

“Okay, I can do this,” I said aloud, trying to summon some inner strength.

“Are you going to talk to him?” Carly asked. “Or just punch him in the nose?”

An excellent question.

He’d done something to me—he’d even warned me about it first. He’d given me this hunger I couldn’t get rid of, this craving that now haunted me every moment I was awake and the chill that stayed with me from morning till night.