“Are you okay?” I ask, smoothing his hair back from his face.

He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “Yeah, I think so.” Things must come flooding back, though, because he sits up in a rush. “Are you all right?” He glances around, then demands, “Is everyone okay? What happened?”

“You got hit in the head with a bone the size of a house and passed out,” Mekhi jokes.

Jaxon looks stunned…and also mortified and furious with himself. “I passed out? In the middle of all that? How could I do that to you guys?”

“Umm, you didn’t do anything. You got hurt,” I answer him. “It happens to the best of us.”

“Not to me. It’s my job to protect you.”

“It’s our job to protect one another,” I tell him, waving an arm to encompass everyone.

He looks like he wants to say more, but finally he just shakes his head like he gives up. Which is probably the smartest move at this point, since he’s dealing with six other paranormals—all of whom are used to holding their own in any given situation.

“It’s not that you aren’t a total badass,” I tell him with the best straight face I can manage. “It’s just that we’re all badasses.”

“Amen to that,” Eden says from where she’s slumped next to Mekhi.

“And it’s a good thing,” Xavier says. “Because we’re going to have to do this whole thing again tomorrow.”

“What? Seriously?” Macy rests her head against her drawn-up knees.

“We didn’t get a bone?” Jaxon groans.

“We didn’t get a bone,” Xavier confirms. “Being under fire from a dragon skeleton changed everything really fast.”

“Shit, I had one. I must have dropped it when I fell.” Or maybe it’s when that first bone almost took me out. I can’t remember. All I know is I had a bone and now I very much do not.

Jaxon looks completely embarrassed as he says, “I’m sorry, guys. We dragged you along on this expedition from hell for nothing.”

“First of all, you didn’t drag us along,” Flint says. “We came willingly. So stop beating yourself up. And secondly…” He reaches into his pocket with a wicked grin and pulls out a delicate-looking bone about the length of a pencil. “Toe bones still count as bones, right?”

“Hell yeah, they do!” Eden tells him with a whoop of delight. “You did it!”

“Umm, I think you mean we did it.” Flint shoves the bone back into his pocket for safekeeping, then reaches down and helps Jaxon to his feet. “And not to sound too much like a giant baby, but can I suggest we get the hell out of here before the next we’re-all-gonna-scream-and-die activity begins?”

Macy giggles and says, “I’m with you on that one. Luckily, I’ve already got”—she pulls out her spell book—“a portal back to school ready and waiting. Before we left, I made sure to do the spell that opens up our dorm room as the other side of the portal, remember? Because honestly, I don’t think I could do that dragon ride again, guys.”

“I could literally kiss you, Macy,” Xavier says, and I can tell my cousin has no idea how to reply…even though she is suddenly all smiles.

87

All the Right Moves

I wake up to Macy dancing around the room with her headphones in. She’s still in her pajamas, and I can see a ton of cuts and bruises on her arms and upper back—thank you, Dragon Boneyard—but she looks happy. Really happy, and I don’t blame her.

Last night was terrifying, and I’m feeling pretty glad to be alive, too, even though we’re both running on fumes after—I glance at the clock—only about four hours of sleep. Maybe that’s why, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, I convince her to switch to her phone speaker and then dance around the room with her.

We’re laughing at each other as we shimmy and shake our hips, but it doesn’t even matter because we’re alive…and because we got the dragon bone.

We. Got. The. Dragon. Bone.

That means we’ve got all four things necessary to get Hudson out of my head. I mean, yeah, we still have the Unkillable Beast to get through, but we’re almost there. Why shouldn’t we celebrate?

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hudson interjects from behind me, sitting up and leaning against the wall on my bed. “Because the Unkillable Beast is going to kill you, perhaps?”

“Hush!” I tell him as I collapse next to him, out of breath as the song ends. Macy plops down on her own bed as well. “Don’t be raining on my parade this morning.”

“Is that what I’m doing?” He looks somber, but there’s an underlying note of something in his voice that has me narrowing my eyes.

“You’re happy,” I accuse.

“Excuse me?” Immediately, the tone is gone, replaced by his normal sardonic one.

“You are,” I tell him as surprise courses through me. “You’re actually happy for once.”

He sniffs but doesn’t say anything else, which means I’m right. The knowledge only makes me grin more widely. A happy Hudson can only be a good thing.

“Xavier held my hand last night,” Macy says, and now she’s smiling up at the ceiling she’s been contemplating so hard for the last couple of minutes.

“What?” I shoot up in bed. “When?”

“When we were walking back from the Boneyard.”

“How did I miss that?” I demand. “I was right there, wasn’t I?”

“You were one of the first to go through the portal, with Flint and Jaxon. Xavier and I were walking together at the back and…” She pauses, a dreamy smile coming over her face. “About halfway back to school, he told me to watch out for something in the tunnels and tugged my hand to pull me away. And then he just never let go.”

“Seriously? That’s great. I mean, if you like him?”

“I do, actually.” She rolls over on her bed and hugs her pillow to her chest. “He gives me butterflies. Not like the ‘oh my gosh, the most popular boy in school is in my room’ butterflies, but real butterflies. Because of who he is, not because of what he is.”

“Oh, Macy, that’s awesome. That’s how I feel about Jaxon, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Like it doesn’t matter that he’s this badass vamp. It only matters that he’s Jaxon.”

“You certainly know how to kill a mood, don’t you?” Hudson snarks from where he’s sitting on top of my dresser. “I think I need a dose of insulin after all that sweetness.”

“Bite me,” I answer with a roll of my eyes in his direction, and Macy grins.

“If you keep saying that, one of these days I’m going to take you up on that offer,” he tells me.

“I’ll worry about that after you actually get some teeth,” I shoot back.

“Wow. Looks like you don’t have that problem,” he tells me, all mock hurt. But there’s a glint of amusement in his eyes that he doesn’t even try to hide. “Maybe I’ll borrow some of yours. Sounds like you’ve got plenty of teeth to go around.”

“Yeah, I do.” I snap said teeth at him. “My gargoyle fangs may not be as badass as yours, but they get the job done. You should probably remember that.”

“I remember everything about you,” he tells me, and there’s something in his voice, and his face, that has me turning toward him, wanting to ask…I don’t know what exactly. But definitely something.

“Okay,” Macy says with a groan that breaks the sudden tension between Hudson and me. “Class starts in half an hour, so it’s definitely a glamour day.”

I smile at her, relaxed and happy for the first time in weeks.

At least until Macy sticks her head around the wall that separates the sink from the rest of the room and says, “Don’t forget we have that assembly today.”

“What assembly?” I ask as I reach for my uniform skirt and a purple tank top.

“The one where we get the bloodstone, silly.” She peeks around the wall that separates the bathroom from the rest of the room. “The vampire king wants to do it with all the pomp and circumstance.”

And just like that, my good mood shatters. And so does Hudson’s, if the very British curses he’s tossing out are any indication…

88

Subconsciously Yours

Several hours later, it’s time for art class, and I can’t help the bounce in my step. I’ve been itching to finish the painting I started when I first got back. I still have no idea where it’s going, but it’s calling to me. And so is the fact that I need a finished product for my midterm grade.

Before I start, I do what I always do. I arrange my tools exactly how I like them, small, fine ones near the front; bigger ones near the back; all the colors of the rainbow right in front of me. And then I start to paint.

At least today I have a picture in my mind of what I want to paint. Before, it was just a desperate drive to get the background colors right. But today…today I have an image. I don’t know where it came from or where I’ve seen it before—or if it’s something from the three and a half months I have no memory of—but wherever it’s from, it’s clear as day. I don’t need answers to the other questions yet. Not when I can simply paint what I see.

And so I do, mixing color after color, shade after shade, until all the variations of blue and gray and black and white combine on the canvas in front of me. I layer the shades carefully, one tiny color distinction after another, until they form a picture so tightly painted that one tone is practically indistinguishable from another. Until trying to get through the painting means unraveling every single shade of every single color.

I work for hours—well after art class is over—until my hands are sore and my shoulders and biceps are on fire. And still I keep going, still I keep painting, layer after layer after layer, until the picture in my head slowly comes to life on the canvas.