“We’ll get time,” Luc cut in. “I’ll make sure of it, Peaches.”

My lips thinned. “Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll be in touch,” he insisted. “I promise, but I need you to go.” His hand tightened around mine. A heartbeat passed and then he tugged me to him, chest to chest. He dipped his head and his breath moved against my temple. The contact startled me. “Do this for me. Go home.” His lips brushed my skin. “Please.”

Unsettled and thrown off, because I had a suspicion he didn’t say please a lot, I did what he asked when he let go.

I left.

19

I woke early Sunday morning, jerking straight up in bed, gasping for air. My hand flew to my throat. It hurt. The skin, the fragile bones. Like someone had their hands around my neck, squeezing. . . .

I’d been dreaming.

That much I knew, because moments ago, I’d been back inside that club with those Luxen, but Luc hadn’t been there. Instead it had been a man who looked like Sean and he’d been choking me.

“God,” I whispered, willing my heart to slow down. “It was just a nightmare.”

But there were tiny bumps all over the bare skin of my arms, and my throat hurt. I lowered my hand, and my gaze trekked around the dark room. The comforter was at the foot of my bed, kicked off in my sleep. Everything was quiet, and I could make out the still shadows of my dresser and desk. The clock on the nightstand read only twenty minutes after three.

Way too early to be awake.

I pushed it out of my face. I shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that I was having nightmares after . . . well, everything. Who’d blame me? Especially considering I didn’t really think for one second that the Luxen who Luc had fought had been responsible for what had happened to Colleen and Amanda. It wouldn’t make any sense, since they were trying to get out of this city without drawing attention.

I pressed my lips together as my stomach knotted. What if there was also a very ticked-off Luxen sibling out there now, seeking revenge? On top of everything else? And wouldn’t that be my fault? If I’d stayed in Luc’s room—

“Stop,” I said. “Just stop.”

This was the last thing I needed to be stressing over if I wanted to fall back to sleep. I reached for the blanket piled at the end of the bed but stopped when a sharp pain skated along my stomach.

“Ouch.” Frowning, I straightened and placed a hand on my stomach. I jerked. The area was tender.

Carefully, I leaned over and turned on the bedside lamp. Buttery light filled the room as I sat back. I wrapped my fingers around the hem of my sleep shirt and pulled it up.

“Holy crap,” I said, and gasped.

Three long, jagged welts cut into my skin, right above my navel, like a cat . . . or a demon had gotten ahold of me. They weren’t open scratches and they didn’t look like they’d bled at all, but there were definitely three marks.

What in the world?

I looked around my room again, like it held the answers or something. Then I poked at the welts. Wincing at the spike of pain, I pulled my hand away. I let go of my shirt and walked into the bathroom. From there, I did a full-body scan. There were no other scratches, but there was a bruise on my right hip, probably from when Luc had tackled me.

The scratches had to have happened during that. But how? I didn’t know, but that was the only thing that made sense unless I’d done it to myself while sleeping. The nightmare was pretty vivid, so Lord only knows what I could’ve done.

I grabbed the bottle of peroxide out from underneath the sink and with a couple of dabs with a cotton ball, I determined that I’d done my due diligence when it came to not developing a flesh-eating bacteria.

I turned off the light, hurried back to bed, and all but dived under the covers. I closed my eyes, squeezed them tight, and tried not to think about Luc, the club, or anything, but it was a long time before I fell back to sleep.

* * *

My mood plummeted as I walked into the cafeteria on Monday and saw that the only options for lunch were pizza and salad. Both looked like they’d been sitting out over the weekend.

“What kind of fresh hell is this?” I muttered.

James laughed as he brushed past me. “Want half of my sandwich?”

“Yes.” I followed after him like a lost puppy, practically snapping at his heels. “Please and thank you.”

Finding Heidi already at our table, I sat down next to her and dropped my bag onto the floor while James grabbed the seat across from me.

He opened his bag and pulled out the ziplocked piece of peanut butter heaven. “I should make you work for this,” he said.

“That would be incredibly mean and opportunistic,” I told him, extending my hands. I wiggled my fingers. “Yummy. Yummy in my tummy.”

“Do you know what that song actually meant?” Heidi said, peeling the lid back on her Lunchable. I hadn’t seen anyone else eat them since middle school, but Heidi loved them. “The whole yummy-in-the-tummy part?”

James pulled apart the sandwich. “Probably something dirty.”

“It is.” Heidi picked up a cracker, placed her ham on it, and then topped it off with a slice of cheddar. “Just think about something that involves being with a dude that could end up being yummy in the tummy.”

“What? Ew.” I wrinkled my nose. “That’s gross.”

“It’s true. Look it up.” She offered me a cheese-and-ham-cracker stack.

“Thank you.” I placed it next to my sandwich. “Look at me, piecing together an amazing lunch from parts of my friends’ lunches.”

“You really need to start bringing your own.” Zoe dropped into the seat beside me. She had a salad, because of course she did. “Or try eating something green.”

My lip curled.

“So, you guys hear that Coop’s party is back on for Friday night?” James took a swig of his water. “You guys are going, right?”

Heidi continued to build her cracker delights while I tried not to think about how weird it was to have such a normal conversation. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, so you go and get an older girlfriend, and now you’re too cool for us and our childish high school parties,” teased James.

“Pretty much,” she replied.

I laughed. “At least you’re honest about it.”

“Speaking of being honest—” Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “What in the hell?”

I followed her gaze as James twisted in his seat, spying April and a handful of students. April was marching—legit marching—across the cafeteria, her blond ponytail swinging in a way that made me want to cut my hair. She was holding some kind of poster in her hands and had a handful of minions with her.

“I have a really bad feeling about this,” Zoe said, sighing.

My gaze flew to the table of Luxen, and I tensed. Connor, the dark-haired Luxen who’d been at the club when I went back to get my phone, was the first to notice April. His mouth moved and the rest of the Luxen looked up.

Heidi craned her neck to see over the table behind us as April grabbed a free chair and pulled it across the floor, creating a horrible screeching sound. She planted the chair in the middle of the cafeteria and then stepped up on it with the aid of one of the guy minions.

She held her hands up in the air and flipped her poster over. My mouth dropped open.

In the center of the poster was the typical alien face, the one with the pointy chin and big black eyes. The face was even colored green. Over it was the circle-backslash symbol.

“Holy crap,” muttered James.

A second later her minions lifted their signs. They were all the same.

“Are you kidding me?” I said, lowering my sandwich.

“I wish.” Zoe pressed her lips together

“Listen up, everyone!” April shouted, and it was like a switch was thrown. The cafeteria quieted, because, hello, there was a girl standing on a chair holding a “Just say no to aliens” sign. “We have the right to be safe in our schools and in our homes, and we don’t have that safety. But Colleen wasn’t safe here—not from them! Neither was Amanda!”

My gaze shot to the Luxen table, and I saw that Connor was still but his face was devoid of emotion.