Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) (10 page)

He nodded and dipped a spoon into the pot.
“It’s kind of a rule with us dogs. Belly rubs equal instant
friendship.” He held out the spoon to me. “And friends don’t let
friends not eat their own food.”

“It had a hair in it. I’ll just eat
tomorrow.” He shook his head and beckoned me to come with his
finger. I smiled at the ground on my way to him. I took the spoon
and tasted the meal I’d made. “Not bad.”

“Remi’s a jerk,” he said. “I wanted to say
something, but … I just met you. I thought that would be weird.” He
smirked, and my lips mimicked his after a moment. “I know what we
could do to avoid that weirdness if it happened again. We need to
seal our friendship. Make it official.” He raised one eyebrow and
curled his fingers like they were claws. “I have to give you a
belly rub. It’s the only way.”

“Uh … I’m not a dog.”

“You gave me one, I give you one.” He
stepped closer, and I ran from him like I’d done last night. He
chased me through the kitchen, around the island and back again. He
laughed, an enchanting sound, as I dodged his hands and ducked
under his arms. Amidst his deep chuckle was another, softer sound.
I didn’t realize it was coming from me until Sophia popped into the
kitchen with her hands glued to her cheeks.

“Oh, sweetie. You have the laugh of a
thousand angels. Sweet and beautiful,” she said. Nathan chuckled,
then stopped with a cough, like it had taken him a moment to
realize she was serious.

Nathan smiled at me from across the island.
I smiled back at my new friend. I didn’t know why he wanted to be,
but I was happy he was. I thought I would live my life – however
short it turned out to be – without one. And without laughing too.
I liked laughing, so I did it again when Nathan poked his tongue
out at me.

Sophia blew me yet another kiss and motioned
us to follow her back into the dining room.

I ran to the stove to refill my bowl first.
I’d thought Nathan had followed Sophia out until he popped up next
to me and patted my stomach twice. “Got you,” he said,
chuckling.

I laughed and steadied the bowl, stopping it
from plummeting into the soup. His hand was strangely warm; it
reminded me of bathwater when it’s perfect. Comfortably hot, not
scolding. I felt the imprint of his hand long after he’d moved it.
Other than the heat, nothing came from his touch. I guessed he
wasn’t on the magical wavelength granting me access to thoughts or
the other random information in the air.

“Then it’s official,” I said. “We’re
friends.”

“Looks like it.”

My friend and I went back into the dining
room. Sophia was alone at the table. Emma and Paul’s bowls were
mostly empty. Remi’s full.

“They were in a hurry to get upstairs. They
said they had long days,” Sophia said.

Long days probably meant they were getting
dressed to go out. If she could be lied to, she must not be able to
hear their thoughts without touching them either.

“So … I’m waiting, dear,” she said, tilting
her chin up at me. “I usually make my children admit that I am
never wrong. With you, I’ll accept a simple thank you.”

I sighed. “
Okay
… thank you, Sophia,”
I said.

“And I should expect you at every meal from
now on?”

“Yep, from now on,” Nathan answered for
me.

Sophia apologized for Remi several times as
we finished dinner. After, she put Nathan on dish duty, to be done
by hand like she preferred it, and went to bed. A door slammed on
the first floor where her room must be.

I volunteered to help Nathan with the
dishes. He washed and I rinsed and stacked.

“I don’t think it’s you,” he said, breaking
a trance a floating bubble had raptured me in. “Remi … she’s rude
because she hates herself and everything about being a panther. I
tried to tell her what you said, about forming her own opinion, but
she flipped me off.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing for her and
people like us, miserable people.

“Don’t worry about it … uh.” He cleared his
throat. “Which name do want me to call you?” I hunched my
shoulders. “Pick one. Which do you like the most?”

I sighed and admitted to myself that I’d
like the sound of Christine in his voice. “Leah is what the nuns
named me at school. My real name is Christine,” I said.

“Cool. So why do you want to be human,
Christine?” he asked, handing me another soapy dish. I hunched my
shoulders again. The answer was too complicated. “Are you going
back to school soon?”

“No. Never.”

He felt around in the water and pulled out
the stopper when he didn’t find another dish. I shivered. A
familiar feeling rushed over my skin, like someone was watching me.
The hairs on my arm stood. I looked behind me, expecting to see
Sophia. Maybe she was watching us from her room, magically.

“Did it suck?” he asked, pulling me back
into the kitchen. “School with humans?”

“Yeah. My parents really set me up with that
one.” He um-hummed and shook his wet hands in my face. I laughed
again. It was as surprising as it was before. “I didn’t fit in at
all.”

“No friends?” I shook my head. “Boyfriends?”
I shook harder. “That’s … good then. You didn’t break the treaty.
I’ve technically made contact with a few humans. My parents, the
mailman, and I helped the cable guy install a satellite if that
counts.”

I wiped the counter tops as he threw a bag
of popcorn in the microwave. I finally worked up the nerve to ask,
“So … no friends and girlfriends?”

He laughed. “Nope. So I’m not at risk of…”
He slid his thumb across his neck and stuck his tongue out. I
shivered. I didn’t know the No Contact clause was
that
serious. Beheading serious.

“You mentioned having human parents a few
times. How is that possible?” I asked as we headed into the second
phase of our night – popcorn and TV.

“I think they brought the wrong kid home
from the hospital, and I think they’ve always known it.”

We plopped down on the same sofa, the bowl
of popcorn between us.

“Why?” I asked.

“I thought they were my parents until I
suddenly had a tail. After that, stuff made sense. Like how they
didn’t want to be called Mom and Dad. I’ve always called them John
and Theresa. For a solid year, I didn’t call them anything at all.
They didn’t notice. So I don’t think of myself as having parents or
family. I’m just … sort of floating around on my own.”

“Me too,” I said.

He held his fist in front of my face. I
stared at it, and he chuckled. “You’re supposed to do it back.” I
made a fist and held it in the open space between us. He shook his
head, laughing harder, and bumped his fist against mine. I rolled
my eyes at myself. I’d seen the gesture, I should’ve figured that
out. He didn’t make me feel weird about it, though. “So what did
you do all day if you didn’t have friends?” he asked.

“Hide,” I said, too fast to soften,
darkening the mood in the living room.

After a long minute, he sighed and said,
“Yeah … me too, I guess. John and Theresa are really quiet people.
They like a silent house, so I sat in my room all day in front of
the TV and tried to make as little noise as possible. Or I’d go
outside and play by myself. We didn’t have kids on my street until
I was too old to play with the ones who moved in. Theresa
homeschooled me, but we didn’t talk much outside of that. John and
I didn’t talk at all.”

He paused, stuffing his mouth with too much
popcorn to talk through. Maybe so he didn’t have to talk about his
family anymore. I understood why he hadn’t had friends or
girlfriends now. He hadn’t had anyone around. We didn’t have the
same problem. If he’d gone to St. Matthew, he’d probably be the
most popular boy there. He was handsome and funny. He’d probably
date Sienna or one of her birds.

“When I left,” he said, his tone harsher
than before. “They were both home. I just walked right out of the
front door. I haven’t been reported missing, and that was eleven
months ago.”

I imagined little Nathan in his room, a
stunning and lonely green-eyed boy, and my heart throbbed. I knew
what that felt like. I knew how loud silence could be. I imagined
the moment he left his home unnoticed, only to end up more alone
and eventually captured by a hunter.

“I’m really sorry you had to live like
that,” I said, pouting and overwhelmed by how much I’d meant
that.

He surprised me by throwing a handful of
popcorn at me.

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m happier now.”
His smile helped me to hold back the pity he didn’t want. He turned
on the television. I rolled my eyes when he dropped the remote when
that awful yearbook picture flashed across the screen. “You know …
that’s exactly the face I’d make if
I
were pretending to be
human. You’re good. You don’t look like you’re hiding anything at
all.”

He laughed. It took me a moment to decode
the sarcasm and get the joke, but when I did, I smiled and threw a
handful of popcorn at his head. Imitating him to generate a normal
reaction to teasing. It was way less stressful than plotting his
death; I didn’t have to hate myself after.

“Suspicion surrounding the disappearance of
Leah Grant continues to grow,” said Ken, the reporter I’d seen
yesterday. “Tonight, all eyes are on St. Catalina. Is this elite
orphanage a home for the helpless or the privileged?”

“What?” I said, sitting up on the sofa.
Nathan turned up the volume.

“During the dark times, many families
brought their children to safe havens while they prepared for the
worst,” Ken said. The screen changed to a picture of my old home,
and Nathan whistled like he was impressed with it.

“This place was reportedly the safest, in
the area with the least amount of deaths, but what orphanage do you
know of with twenty-three registered student organizations, state
of the art science labs, and homecoming dances?” Ken asked. “It
operates like a preparatory academy, sending ninety-eight percent
of its graduates to college. They don’t even like to be referred to
as an orphanage.”

“That true?” Nathan asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess. Never
really thought about it.” And I hadn’t, until now. I had a lot of
shirts with the St. Catalina crest on it, and nowhere on it did it
say orphanage. It said
boarding school
.

“Get this,” Ken continued in a smug tone.
“They even have a cheer squad that roots for the championship
lacrosse team from the equally exclusive male orphanage next door.”
Nathan laughed. I guessed all orphanages didn’t have that. “Sources
tell us that some residents even have private rooms. Leah Grant was
one of them. We have also received reports that the school turned
away several families during the war. Our sources tell us that both
St. Catalina and St. Matthew only accepted children of the highest
caliber. Children of deceased celebrities, politicians, and wealthy
businessmen and women. With this sort of exclusivity, one is left
to wonder if Leah was a target. Possibly for ransom.”

I groaned. That was sort of true. I
was
rich and Sophia had come for money. For me, too, but she
needed help to save my roommates.

“School officials are denying claims of
being selective, stating that they didn’t know the identities of
the children until more than eight years after the death of
Fredrick Dreco,” Ken said. “And as of this time, we have not
received any reports of illicit substances found on campus, but
stories are beginning to change, with some seeing a woman, some
seeing just light, and
some
saying the gates are usually
unlocked so boyfriends can sneak in after hours. This leads us to
explore options beyond the original assumption, the most probable
being that Leah Grant’s
human
kidnapper will be requesting
money soon.”

Nathan chuckled. “Sophia’s a kidnapper armed
with freshly baked muffins. We’re all going to die.” He faked a
horrified scream, threw his hand over his forehead, and fell to the
floor.

I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.

Watching the coverage of my disappearance
with Nathan was fun. Ken even found a machine that could produce
Sophia’s light. The world now thought a money hungry human, or
possibly a serial killer with visual effects, was behind it. I was
glad I was less crazy now and could see how funny this was. We
debated on whether Ken’s hair was real or not, having a wonderful
time, until he mentioned Lydia Shaw.

Nathan shuddered hard.

“She’s so scary,” I said. “I don’t even know
what it is about her.”

“Uh … could it be that she’s freaking Lydia
Shaw!?”

“I know that, but she’s human. I’ve been
afraid of her for years, but when I think about it, that makes no
sense. If I wanted to, I could go to my room in a second. Faster
than that, really. Or my school. I could go back to my dorm room
right now if I wanted to. Why would I be afraid of a human?”

His eyebrows pulled together, and he stared
at me without blinking. “You’ve totally never met one of them,” he
said. “Lydia Shaw and her agents are
way
more than human.
Hunters too.”

I turned to face him completely, my feet on
the sofa, my jaw in my lap. “What do you mean?” I whispered.

“They have powers, a lot of them. We are
not
stronger than them. They don’t need spells or potions or
candles, so they’re way faster than you. And they don’t need
strength like me. And it doesn’t matter that I can run fast,
either.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I’ve seen it, been a victim to it. That’s
how they detain us. They’re stronger and faster and … just better.
Most of them aren’t that mean, though.”

“Most?”

“I’ve only been caught twice. First by this
brother-sister pair. They actually let me go when no one came for
me, and the second guy let Sophia buy us. But all of them aren’t so
understanding. There are the ones who pin some sort of crime on you
and turn you in to an agent, maybe even Lydia Shaw or someone high
up like that. And then there are the bad ones. The ones who …” He
shivered, and his handsome face sank. “Let’s talk about something
else. This is supposed to be fun.”