Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #25)(10)

“Thank you.”

“You have the thickest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. Like, are they false?”

Niamh laughed. “Nope!”

“If I was a girl I would want to look like you. Your hair.”

“Oh … you’re laying it on a bit thick, now.” Niamh grinned, but it was an uncomfortable one.

“Yeah, no, sorry. That’s fair. I, uh … I’ll stop.”

I’d been doing well for a second there, too. A part of me suddenly understood why people drank at parties. It wasn’t to have fun. It was to forget how much of an idiot they made of themselves.

Niamh shifted, and then shook her head. “Come on, let’s go find the girls. Lara’s probably getting into trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” I asked, following after her as she stalked into the backyard, which was as crowded as the house.

At least the music was muted out here, and there was fresh air.

“Oh, you know. Just trouble. Teasing boys, mostly.”

We squeezed past four or five groups, then I caught sight of Juliette’s hair through the crowd. Lara was next to her, talking to a group of guys in black-and-white letterman jackets standing in front of a wooden panel fence.

Then one of the letterman guys caught my eye. A letterman guy with dark hair in a deep side part, a freckled nose, and high cheekbones. A letterman guy I knew.

The world fell silent.

It was him.

Will.

Will Will.

My Will.

We stared at each other in dumb shock. It was hard to tell which of us was the deer, and which was the headlight.

He spoke first. Which was excellent, because I wasn’t sure if I should be thrilled or accusatory. “Holy shit, Ollie! What are you doing here?” He looked dumbfounded, but it was a happy kind of dumbfounded. That’s all it took for all my doubts to disappear. Of course he wasn’t ignoring me. This was Will we were talking about.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, before realizing that at least this was supposed to be his state. It was significantly weirder for me to be here than him. “You didn’t say you lived in Collinswood. You said it was something else, starting with M, right? Or L?”

“Napier. I live in Napier. It’s twenty minutes out of Collinswood,” Will said. “I go to school here. Ollie, why aren’t you in California? You’re so ridiculous!”

He was grinning. Beaming, really. A cheekbone-shattering kind of smile. A viral-epidemic kind of smile. Infectious-as-hell. All of the misery from the last couple of weeks, every bit of it, was gone. Like it’d never been there.

“My parents thought they’d move us over to help out with Aunt Linda. She lives here. In Collinswood.”

“You never mentioned that.”

“Didn’t I? Well, she does. So do I now, I guess.”

“Oh my God, Ollie-oop, how awesome is that?” Lara cut in, her voice way too perky to be sincere. Will and I looked at her as one. I’d forgotten she was there until that moment. I’d forgotten anyone other than Will was there. “What are the odds? Will, Ollie was telling us all about his summer this morning.”

Will’s smile dropped, and so did my stomach. He wasn’t out to his parents. God only knew that meant he probably wasn’t out here, either. Or at least, he hadn’t been. Until I’d opened my mouth. I didn’t know these girls from Abraham Lincoln. For all I knew, they’d already made a group chat for half the grade about Will and me. Uh-oh.

One of the letterman guys sidled up beside Will. He was half a foot taller than Will, with deep brown skin and the kind of jawline people write Tumblr posts about. “By the way, Lara,” he said, apparently continuing a conversation that had been underway when I got here, “how come you didn’t sit with me in Biology? I saved you a seat and everything.”

Lara softened. So she could be sweet. “You did? I was so tired this morning, I sleepwalked into class.”

I tuned the conversation out and stole a glance at Will. His mouth hung slightly open, and his stare was fixed on a spot in the distance. “Will, seriously. I had no idea they’d know you. It didn’t even occur to me, I—”

He held up a hand. “It’s cool. Whatever. Just, uh … just keep your voice down, okay?”

“Yeah, of course. So … where have you been, anyway? When I didn’t hear from you, I figured you were … I dunno …”

Will’s face was still blank. “I was busy. Sorry. Anyway, good to see you. I’ll catch you around.”

And he turned his back on me to talk to someone else. Just like that. Something deep inside me snagged, like a loose thread catching. I stared at the back of his head with my mouth hanging open. He did not just do that. I was imagining this right now. I had to be.

Juliette and Niamh had watched the whole thing. Juliette twisted her mouth, shot Will’s back a dirty glare, then led me away by my elbow with Niamh, leaving Lara behind with Matt. “God, he can be a real dick,” Juliette said, as quietly as she could, given the music volume. “Ignore him, please. The basketball guys are all a little funny when they’re around each other.”

“A little funny,” I echoed. Every step we took away from them felt like that thread inside of me was unraveling more and more. Like my soul was unspooling.