Toxic (Denazen #2)(22)

I passed Rosie’s desk and threw myself into the couch near the door. “It’s so not going to end well.”

“Shit!” Kiernan hissed. There was a clanking noise and rustling paper.

“Where are you?”

“I saw it was you calling. I slipped into the only working bathroom on campus,” she groaned.

I chuckled. “College life not all it’s cracked up to be?”

“This campus blows chunks. Back home the professors were way hotter. I haven’t seen one yet that I plan on begging for a little extra credit.” There was more rustling. “I hate to bail, Dez, but I’m gonna be late for class.”

“Yeah, go. No worries.”

“Be careful with Alex, okay? I don’t trust him.”

“That makes two of us.”

I downed the rest of my coffee and said, “You comin’ home right after school? I’m gonna need to get out of here for a while.”

Voices. She must’ve gone out into the hall. “Sorry. Signed up for the paper. We’re meeting after three.”

“The paper?” I laughed. “Must be a guy.”

She snickered. “Hey, like I said. Slim pickins. I gotta jump on it while the jumping is good. We’ll hang tonight. Promise.”

The line went dead.

Sighing, I set the empty mug on the table in front of me as something zoomed past the front doors. For a second, the entire lobby went dark. “Did you see that?”

From her desk, Rosie mumbled something I didn’t quite hear but never took her eyes off the television.

I stood and made my way to the glass doors. Nothing but sunshine and a large, empty parking lot. If I was imagining things this soon, how was it going to be after a week had passed? Confinement and I did not go hand in hand.

Dismissing it, I headed to the common room. Alex was sprawled out on the chaise lounge chewing like a cow—sloppy burger in one hand, TV remote in the other. He was chain-channel-flipping, and I debated grabbing his soda and dumping it over his head. It used to drive me nuts when he did that, and he knew it.

Jade and Kale were at the card table across the room. She was listening intently to whatever he was saying, complete with the occasional hair flip and batting eyes. Every so often she’d bend forward a little and give a good, shoulder-shaking laugh. Please. I invented those moves. Some fifty-cent, out-of-town skank wasn’t going to dethrone me with a few shakes of her obviously padded puppies.

Deep breath. I stepped into the room, shoulders squared and head held high. I was reigning queen here, not her. She wasn’t going to swoop in and toss me without a fight. “So what’d I miss?”

“You were gone awhile.” Kale stood but didn’t come any closer. This was getting ridiculous.

I pulled my sleeve down over my fingers and reached for his hand, but Jade batted my arm away.

“Don’t get too close,” she said to Kale. “You’re toxic to her at the moment. Don’t take any chances.”

Behind me, Alex muted the TV and stopped chewing. Everything went silent.

Toxic? What a stupid, stupid thing to say! Didn’t this idiot realize Kale was extremely literal? “No matter what his skin does, Jade, Kale is not toxic. To anyone. Are we clear?” The ice in my voice could have frozen hell over.

It didn’t seem to faze her, though. She just shrugged and flashed me her sweetest smile. “My bad. You know what I mean.”

“Whoa,” Alex said, turning the volume on the TV back up. “Check this out.”

I sank onto the couch, and Kale followed. Sleeve still pulled across my fingers, I took his hand. He resisted at first but relaxed after a moment when nothing happened. On the screen, the newswoman was standing outside a small Victorian. The print under her name said “Morristown.” One town over from Parkview.

“I’m coming to you live from Stanton Street in Morristown, New York, where we’re just an hour away from the vigil for Layne Phillips.”

The woman’s lips kept moving, but the words were lost. The only thing I heard was the name of the girl. Layne Phillips. The name Brandt had given me.

Jade gasped. “Oh, my God. I remember hearing about this like a month ago. It made national news. Her parents found her in her bed in July, shot between the eyes. Right in the middle of her birthday party.”

At Sumrun in June, Dad told us the first of the second generation of Supremacy kids would turn eighteen in July. Was Layne the first? Is that what Brandt had been trying to tell me? That it’d begun? I didn’t know where he was at the moment—we’d initiated relative radio silence—but he’d obviously heard about her death and somehow connected it to Denazen. That was the only explanation for him giving me her name. “How old was she?”

Jade scrunched up her nose and snorted. “Not like it mattered, but she’d just turned eighteen.”

Bingo! She had to be one of the Supremacy kids.

Alex stuffed the rest of his burger into his mouth. “Total waste—the chick was a hottie.”

Jade’s eyes widened. “You knew her?”

“Not personally or anything.” He turned to me. “She was at that river rave a few years back. You remember her. She was the one with all the tattoos. Had that killer bitch badge. The one that wound around her waist and wrapped around her tits.”