She was exquisitely conscious of the effort it cost him simply to sit upright and smile. The echoes of his pain throbbed in her temples, the bite of the heth gnawed at her own throat. She could feel the sweat at the smal of his back, the faint tremor in his legs of drugs or exhaustion. He must be half dead with pain and fatigue.
And yet he felt more alive to her than anyone she had ever known.
F o r g o t t e n s e a 91
“We want them to think I was coerced,” she said cool y.
“Not seduced.”
“Too bad.” Another glint from those golden eyes. “I was prepared to be convincing.”
Her pulse fluttered. He was weakened and desperate.
How could he flirt with her now? “You convinced me to drive. That wil have to be enough for you.”
For me.
He grinned, undiscouraged and approving. “That puts me in my place.”
It took al her wil not to smile back.
“I have to get dressed,” she said and escaped into the tiny bathroom with her clothes.
He stood when she came out. He fil ed her room, as tal as Simon and leanly muscled. “Where’s your car?”
His size, his sudden shift, took her aback. “I don’t own a car. But I know the code to the garage.”
“Keys?”
“Hanging up inside.”
“Convenient.”
“It’s meant to be.”
There were no thieves among the nephilim. Their vehicles, gray sedans and blue school vans, were held in common.
He nodded once. “Ready, then?”
A chil chased up her arms. Simon had accused her of endangering the community, of lacking self-knowledge and obedience. What made her think she knew better than the headmaster? Than Zayin?
Justin watched her. Waiting. The black bead gleamed against the burned skin of his throat.
9 2
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
“I’m not sure I can even get you through the gates,” she blurted out.
His gaze remained steady on hers. “I guess we’l find out.”
Her chest hol owed. She poised on the edge of a decision, about to jump.
When she Fel , the moment of choice had passed without effort or reflection. Her act of disobedience had been sheer reflex, a burst of compassion, an impulse born of love.
Why that child, unloved even by the mother who gave her birth? Why that moment, when the girl was almost free of her short, miserable existence? Of al the children Lara had watched and guided over the centuries, what made this one’s pain so intolerable, her life so precious?
Lara didn’t know.
The choice then—her immortality or the child’s soul—
had been no choice at al . But by stopping the girl from taking her own life, Lara had doomed herself to Fal .
She was not that pure anymore. That fearless. She knew now that she could make mistakes. She had learned, in her soul and her fragile flesh, that she could hurt and be hurt.
She had paid for her disobedience by becoming human.
What would the price of disobedience be this time?
And what, she wondered, would it cost her to obey?
She looked at Justin, his lean, stubbled face, his long, amber eyes. The bandage on his head. The lines of pain around his mouth.
She was. Oh, she was. Something other, something more than human. Or maybe something less.
Caged.
She had the right to embrace the security of her own F o r g o t t e n s e a 93
bars. But she could not make that choice for him. There were worse sins than disobedience.
She took a breath. Released it slowly. “I’l take you as far as Newark. There are things you need to know.” Even if tel ing him violated the precepts of safety and the rule of silence.
“But you have to promise to listen.”
8
C l o u d s s c u d d e d a c ro s s t h e pi n pr i c k e d s k y.
The trees rippled and sighed. Lara gathered moonlight in her palms, bending the rising air around them, murmuring a quick glamour under her breath. Any student glancing out the dormitory windows would only see two shadows gliding over the lawn.
Beside her, Justin stalked as silent as the night, dimmed to black and silver by the uncertain light.
“Here,” she whispered.
The garage loomed out of the landscape, built two levels down into the side of a hil roofed with trees and sod. She tapped the door code into the keypad.
The double doors hummed. Light slanted across the drive.
“Kil the lights,” Justin snapped.
“They’re automatic.”
He grabbed her elbow. She felt the jolt of his touch before he dragged her under the opening door. Releasing F o r g o t t e n s e a 95
her arm, he mashed his palm on the controls. The mechanism checked.
Heart pounding, Lara scanned the pegboard hung with keys. A row of six blue school vans occupied the numbered spaces closest to the doors. The other cars—a fleet of gray Ford Taurus sedans—were parked in the row behind and on the lower level.
“Give me the keys to a van,” Justin said.
“What? No.” Didn’t he see the Rockhaven logo painted on the sides? “They’re too identifiable. We’l take a Taurus.”
