Chapter 335
After a quick lunch of tuna salad sandwiches and chips, we headed across campus. Tara was actually in her apartment, and she said she’d call Dax over before we arrived. Brandon was in the gym but promised he’d come over later. I think he was trying to give me some time with Luce without being in the way, which I appreciated, even though he wouldn’t have been in the way, and I would rather have had him with me. At least he was always in my head.
Tara flung the door open before I could even knock, a huge smile on her face. “Oh, my gosh! It’s so nice to meet you!” she exclaimed, zipping over to Lucy and wrapping her arms around her like they were old friends. Then, I heard her whisper quietly into Lucy’s ear, “I am so very sorry about your dad. He must’ve loved you very much to sacrifice himself for you. What an amazing person he must’ve been.”
Lucy didn’t say anything in return, but I could tell immediately that she liked Tara. They stood there like that for a long moment, with their arms around each other, before Tara finally let her go. “Well, come on in,” she said, gesturing with her arm toward the living room. “It’s a little messy.”
“It’s great,” Lucy said, taking in the space. Tara’s apartment is the same as everyone else’s in the trainee apartment building. It has a small living room with an attached kitchen, and in the back there’s one bedroom and a bath. That’s basically it. They don’t even have their own laundry facilities. Since Tara had been given the double dose of Transformation serum to save her life after Bonnie attacked her, she would definitely be staying on our team. So she’d be moved over to our apartment building once she finished her training, but she still had a long way to go. She hadn’t been a very good Hunter before the incident; now, she was better. She was faster and stronger, but she still needed to work on her aim. And she’s a little clumsy.
“Have a seat,” Tara said, gesturing at the couch in the corner. There’s a loveseat across from it, and I sat there, letting Tara take a seat on the couch a cushion away from Lucy. “How was your trip?”
“Good,” Lucy nodded. “I’ve never been in a plane that small before.”
“It was a GV,” I said, mostly to Tara. We have way smaller planes. But Lucy meant she’d never been on anything other than an airliner.
“I haven’t been up in any of them yet,” Tara sighed.
“Really?” Lucy gawked at her. I guess she was under the impression we all just flew around all over the place all the time.
“Nope. The only observational hunts I’ve been on have been within driving distance.”
“Someday,” I assured her. I hadn’t been on a plane, other than flying back from Philadelphia and to and from Shenandoah a few times, except for the Australian trip. I had a feeling I might be going back there someday, though.
Before we could say much else, there was a knock on the door. Dax opened it slowly. He stuck his head in first, like he thought he might be interrupting some important girly talk. “Hey,” he said, looking at each of us in turn. “How’s it going?”
“This is my boyfriend, Dax,” Tara said, gushing. She stood and walked over to the tall, gangly blond, giving him a quick hug before she led him to Lucy.
“It’s nice to meet you in person.” Lucy shook his hand. I remembered she’d seen him on a FaceTime call or two.
“You, too. I’m really sorry about your dad.” He shook her hand and had a seat in an old recliner. I swear that thing might’ve been here when my grandparents ran this joint.
“Thanks.” Lucy settled back into the couch, like maybe she wanted it to swallow her up.
We all looked at each other awkwardly for a few seconds before Tara launched into a story about something that had happened in training that morning. I had missed, obviously, and it was too bad, too, since Addy, one of the girls who thinks she’s too cool for us, had fallen on her face doing the obstacle course. “It was really bad, too,” Tara laughed. “I mean, she face planted. We all just stared at her for a long time, like, ‘Are you gonna get up or what?’ and then Roar went over and helped her, and Addy just started crying, like she couldn’t handle it or whatever.”
Roar was the nickname we’d given Aurora, our trainer. “I bet she was embarrassed.” I could only imagine tall, goddess like Addy falling on her face. I wondered if Tara had it recorded but decided she would’ve told me if she did. I don’t usually like to make fun of other people, but Addy had been so rude to me in the past, I kinda felt like maybe this was karma.
“She had a skid mark on her face the rest of the day,” Tara said, still laughing.
Lucy giggled, but I could tell she was still having trouble deciding whether or not she was allowed to be happy.
“So what do you think of this place so far?” Dax asked. He hadn’t been here all that long himself. “Have you seen everything?”
“No, not yet. Just what I saw driving in and the apartment buildings. But it’s really cool.” I did see a sparkle in Lucy’s eyes with that answer. “Do you live in this building, too?”
“Yeah, a couple of floors up,” Dax replied with a nod. “It’s not bad, but I am looking forward to moving over to the other building.”
“It’s definitely got bigger apartments,” Tara nodded.
I thought about how small our apartment suddenly felt now that Lucy would be living there, but I kept a smile on my face.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like moving away from your family to a place like this—I mean without any parents.” Lucy looked at me, indicating that she still felt supervised. “Was it hard?”
Dax and Tara exchanged glances, and Tara decided to go first. “Well, my mom died when I was a little girl, and I never knew my dad. So it was just me and my grandma. She loves the little town she lives in, though, in Montana. So even though I felt kinda bad leaving her, she’s happy for me. We talk all the time. She couldn’t Transform—my ability comes from my dad’s line, apparently. Anyway, it took some getting used to, but I am so glad I decided to come in.”
Lucy listened to the whole response, but I saw a kindred-ing of spirits happen when Tara mentioned her mom dying. Lucy was definitely starting to identify with Tara, which was great because I wanted them both to have more friends, especially since I’m held captive for about twenty hours a day.
“For me, it was kind of sudden,” Dax said, and Lucy nodded. She knew about the Vampire he’d seen in the forest in California where he used to be a park ranger, how he’d saved a girl from being attacked. “But I lived with roommates before I came here, so I was already used to not having my parents watching every single thing that I did.” He looked at me then, and I narrowed my eyes, which made him laugh. Dax wasn’t being mean; he was being sympathetic, so I didn’t throw anything at him. If it had been Brandon, I might’ve assumed he was trying to rib me.
“Well, I’ve been dreaming of coming here for as long as I’ve known about it. What? A year and a half?” Lucy looked at me, and I nodded in confirmation. Close enough. “But I never dreamt it would be now. I always figured I’d finish high school first.”
“When’s your birthday?” Dax asked. “Won’t you be seventeen soon?”
“Yeah, it’s in April. But I don’t know if I’ll go ahead and Transform then or wait until after I finish high school.”
“May as well do it,” Tara said with a shrug. “You’re here. Why not have the perks that go with it?”
Lucy agreed, but she was holding something back. I wasn’t sure what it was. I hadn’t heard her mention waiting before.
“Where’s Brandon?” Dax asked. “He’s not answering his IAC.”
“I think he’s in the shower at the gym,” I replied. Most of us kept our IACs off in the shower, not that we always had visuals, but you never wanted to accidentally turn those on in the wrong situation. “He should be over soon.”
“Are you going to show Lucy the rest of campus? Introduce her to your other man?” Tara winked at me, and once again I found myself narrowing my eyes.
“What?” Lucy asked, looking from Tara to me and then back again.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly. “Tara and Dax seem to think it’s funny to tease me about Alex, that’s all. They both know it’s not like that.”
“We only do it behind Brandon’s back, though. Wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. Besides, it’s not like Alex will be around much longer anyway if Christian’s plan works,” Dax explained.
I inhaled sharply through my nose. I didn’t like to think about that. The only reason Alex had come along with the other Guardians from Roatan for one last fight was because he was hoping that the serum Christian, our tech guy, and the doctor from Roatan, Dr. Levi Morrow, had developed that would turn Guardians back into humans so they could die a natural death would work on him, too. Technically, since Alex had come through the Blue Moon Portal, it should mean he could never die. But the Portal might not have been aware of all the rule breaking going on lately.
The whole thing reminded me that I needed to check in on Hines, Holland’s quacky doctor. He, too, was working on a formula that he hoped would make Guardians human again—he wanted to change them all and then kill them. I hadn’t checked on either Vampire for a few days, I’d been so preoccupied. I’d barely had enough time to turn off the signals Holland was using to block our Vampire trackers so that Christian could get the locations he needed, though he was super good about making sure I remembered or else he’d bug the crap out of me until I did it. I didn’t linger enough to see what was happening with the weirdos. I needed to do that. But not now.
