Page 60 of Push and Shove (The Ghost Bird 6)

“We should make her eggs and like pancakes or something,” Gabriel said. He tugged out a carton of eggs and opened it up. There were only two left.

“Are you cooking?” Victor asked him. “Luke usually makes the pancakes. Or Erica.”

“Let’s go to Kota’s,” Gabriel said.

“No,” Victor said. “He’s got that tail watching the house still.”

“All night? Goddamn nosy bastards.” Gabriel shoved the carton back into the door and snatched up three bottles of Frappuccino. “Coffee and toast for us. I can fix the shit out of toast.”

“We could go out for breakfast,” Victor said.

“Not right now,” Gabriel said. “Maybe for lunch. We’re supposed to be lazy. Pajamas until noon and all that. Maybe we’ll order pizza early.”

There was only half a loaf of bread left, but Gabriel started heating some up in the toaster. Victor snagged me around the waist and then lifted me until I was sitting on the counter. He hopped up, sitting next to me. He popped open one of the Frappuccino bottles and handed it to me.

“How was dancing?” Victor asked.

“Awesome,” Gabriel said before I could respond. “You should have gone with us. Although Nathan was trying to kiss the shit out of her right in front of my face.”

Victor and I both popped our mouths open at the same time. Our eyes connected, his a fiery curiosity. “Is he serious?” he asked.

“Of course I’m serious,” Gabriel said. “He makes a big fucking deal about not kissing her in the car when she’s the one that started it, and then he up and starts kissing on her the moment Luke and I were out of sight. I think he’s been adamant about it from the beginning because he’s been hoping to snag her first.”

“You kissed Gabriel and Nathan last night?” Victor asked, with the strangest smile on his lips.

I nodded slowly, unsure how to deny it or even if I should. My heart pounded inside my rib cage. My finger lifted, hovering just over my lips.

Why did he look so happy with this?

Victor’s eyes lowered. He touched my collarbone and then traced up to my neck. “Is this your handiwork, Gabe?” Victor asked.

I clamped my hands down over my neck. The makeup! I didn’t know how the bruises looked by now, but they wouldn’t have disappeared overnight.

Gabriel looked up from buttering some toast for a moment. “Maybe a couple. North did the rest.”

Victor paused in his inspection. His fingers idled over my neck. “Did you talk to North?” Victor asked.

“Haven’t seen him since yesterday. He only dropped her off.” Gabriel licked his fingers clean of crumbs. He passed the plate to me. “Eat this.”

Victor released me and raked a few fingers through his wavy hair, pulling it back from his face. “We should probably talk to him.”

Did he not realize what the marks were? Did he already know they were bites? I thought if he did, he would have asked. And why did we have to talk to North? Was this important? Was it about the Academy rule? My heart was pounding way too hard right now when the rest of me was so dead tired. I didn’t have the strength to formulate the questions I needed to ask.

“No shit.” Gabriel stuffed two more pieces of bread into the toaster and stood back to wait. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the counter. “And if anyone was worried about her reputation at school before, she’s in for it a lot if he’s going to make her look like that. She’s lucky I found out.”

“This is bad,” I said quietly. I needed to do something. The Academy was going to find out, and then North would get into trouble. And then the others ... I hadn’t even thought of school yet.

“No, sweetie,” Victor said. He tugged at my hand and then kissed the back of the knuckles. “We just need to be careful.”

How? I didn’t even know what I was doing. But first thing I knew I needed to do was keep the secret as secure as possible. “I should cover them up before Marie or Danielle walk in,” I said.

“Good idea,” Gabriel said. “Or Kota. He’d kill us.”

“Or Mr. Blackbourne. Or Silas,” said Victor.

Gabriel grunted. “Are they kissing her, too? Who the hell isn’t kissing her? What the fuck are we doing here? Passing her around?”

“It’s not like that,” Victor said.

“Sure feels like it,” Gabriel said. He turned those crystal eyes at me. “Trouble, go cover your neck really quick and then come back and eat.”

This sounded more like he needed to say something to Victor. The tension hung in the air like the smell of toast around us.

I hopped off the counter and ran all the way up the stairs to my bedroom. Maybe I should have said something, or insisted on staying, but my heart couldn’t take trying to figure out what all this meant. I was willing to step back and let the boys figure this part out.

Maybe Gabriel and Victor would be able to piece together what had been going on, and then tell me what I needed to do. I cared about them. All of them. In an effort to stay with them, to feel a part of something when I’d been lost, something changed in me and I felt it echoing in each one of them when I was with them.

At first, I’d thought it was that family feeling that Kota was stressing would happen. I let it happen, doing whatever they told me to do. I trusted them to know.

Now with Nathan and everything else going on, trying to figure out kissing and boys was terrifying. I wanted someone else to figure it all out for me.

Coward.

Still, my heart was breaking. I was terrified they’d figure out I was doing this all wrong and we’d have to go back to what we were before. Holding hands. Hugs. I wanted those, but I was on the cusp of something better. Something my insides had been craving and I didn’t know until one of them had pressed his lips to my skin.

I waved off the thoughts. The moment I was upstairs and out of view, I wanted to hurry and get back downstairs with them.

This was how bad off I was: too terrified to talk to them and too scared to not be with them.

I stood in my bedroom for a moment, trying to recall where Gabriel had left the makeup last night. When I finally focused, I realized he’d left it in the bathroom.

I crossed the hall, and found the door locked to the bathroom.

I paused, listening. The air was still. The shower wasn’t running. If she was in there, she would have heard me.

I knocked gently. “Marie?”

Silence. Eerie.

I knocked again, louder. “Marie?”

Still nothing.

I returned to my room, found my phone in my bed and went back to the hallway. I paused, gazing at the button that would allow me to look through the cameras of the house. I didn’t want to snoop. Maybe the lock was snapped by accident. I just didn’t want to break in if she was doing something and ignoring me.

From my past experience, I didn’t trust silence.

After the loading screen faded away, I studied the image. Odd because there was someone inside, but she was lying on the floor, unmoving. I saw legs and hips only, and they were so still. The camera didn’t extend that far.

Horrors filled my mind. She was dead. She was dying. We were too late.

I raced for my bedroom door, finding the pushpin.

But when I got back to the bathroom door and aimed the pin for the knob to unlock it, I realized this knob didn’t have that little hole; it was a solid knob. There wasn’t a way to unlock it from the outside.

“Gabriel!” I cried out. My voice broke midway through. I swallowed, calling as loud as I could. “Victor! Gabriel!”

A thundering of footsteps erupted through the previously quiet house. I wasn’t waiting for them, though. I twisted the handle, shoving my body into the door several times. The door rattled, but never budged.

The boys materialized in the hallway. They stopped for a split second to watch my struggles.

“Sweetie? What’s wrong?” Victor asked, moving forward to tug me away from the door.

; My shoulder ached and I clutched it. “Marie,” I breathed out. “She’s on the floor. She’s not moving.”

Victor pulled me further down the hall. His hand moved up to my shoulder, starting to massage it, but I cringed at his touch. It was too much so I floated my hand protectively over it.

Gabriel took my place at the door. With lips skewed, and eyebrows hunched together, he rattled the doorknob, and then shoved his shoulder into the wood. The door cracked a little, but wasn’t giving up yet.

Gabriel stepped back, lifted a foot and karate-kicked close to the door knob. There was a loud clank of metal on metal scraping together and then another crack of wood and the door flew open, smashing against the wall.

The three of us stepped forward, gazing inside. My mind had hoped that whatever I had seen had been a mirage; that perhaps the cameras had been lying.

They had been, or at least not told the whole truth. There was someone on the floor, but it was Danielle, not Marie.