Chapter 216
Watching Brandon eat pizza is sort of like watching an Olympic sport. You ask yourself a half dozen times how is one person actually able to do something of his magnitude? Like those guys who can swallow thirty hotdogs in two minutes, or whatever those crazy contests are, Brandon can eat pizza like no one I’ve ever seen before, and that’s saying something because Lucy Burk can really put away some cheese pizza.
“I’m going to win you one of those plushes before this night is over,” he vowed, wiping his hands on a napkin.
“Maybe you should leave them greased up,” I suggested. “Maybe it’ll make you faster.”
He narrowed his eyes at me only momentarily, like it took him a second to tell if I was joking. “You know that no one ever wins anything here, right?” he said for the hundredth time.
“I know,” I nodded. “So… what makes you think you’ll be able to? You’ve already spent, like, forty bucks trying. You could’ve gone next door to that toy store and bought me a whole cart full of plushes by now.” Not that I even wanted them. I was sure that wasn’t the point.
He shook his head, his curls, which he was still growing out, doing a dance in protest. “I’m winning. Brandon Keen is not a loser.”
“Well….” I winked at him, and he glared at me again.
“All right. I think I’m gonna try for that Grumpy Care Bear in the claw machine because of your attitude,” he teased.
“I’m sorry. You’re right.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll try harder.”
“You were doing so well until you talked to your sister.”
“I know.” Cadence had contacted me via the IAC a little bit ago, and I was still having trouble getting over the conversation. We’d talked about nothing—and I still didn’t know where she was—until she asked me to try to start listening to the Vampires’ conversations. I didn’t think it was something I wanted to start dabbling in. After all, I had no idea what kind of damage they could do to me at this point, if they wanted to, and knowing I was in their heads would not only be potentially dangerous, it would be disturbing.
“Listen, Cass, if you don’t want to listen to them, then just don’t do it. Tell Cadence you couldn’t hear anything, or that it didn’t make sense.”
I nodded, but I thought back to what my sister had said. “I’m the only one who can do this, though,” I reminded him. “I do feel like I owe it to the team to at least try.”
“Okay, well, maybe you should try it in a crowded place, where there’s more likely to be a Vampire or two, and where you’ll be in public so you won’t feel so alone.”
“Because a busy train station in Philadelphia wasn’t crowded enough to deter them from trying to hurt me?” I raised an eyebrow and stared at him for a moment.
He gave me a weak smile. “That was before your training. You could take them now if you needed to.”
I thought he was right, but I had no way of knowing. I’d been on zero many hunts, while he’d been on more than he could count. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s not worry about it right now, okay?” he said. Standing, he pushed his chair in and said, “Come on. Let’s go try to get that bear.”
