“Well, hello there, sunshine,” Elliott said, talking to my sister.
Resting back into his chair, Cadence asked, “How’s it going?” I could tell by her tone she was questioning his countenance as much as I was.
“It’s going. It’s going.” He tossed his leather jacket on the back of the chair, making Cadence’s hair blow out around her. He was definitely faster now. I could tell already. “You will never guess who I ran into downstairs.”
I wondered if Elliott would still be this happy if he knew who I’d just run into on a plane. “Who?” Cadence asked.
Elliott waved at Brandon and I but didn’t say anything directly to us as he headed into the kitchen, still talking to Cadence. She followed. “Your beloved,” I heard him say as he rounded the corner. “And it was weird, but he was back to himself for a few moments. It was strange.”
My eavesdropping was interrupted when Brandon blew out a loud breath and ran his hands down the length of his face. I reached up and straightened the hair he’d displaced a few minutes ago, no longer thinking about my sister and Aaron. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m confused,” Brandon admitted. “Dad’s been acting kinda weird the last week or so. I’m not sure why. He’s not home nearly as much as he was before, and he always has that goofy grin on his face.” He shrugged. “Probably not my business.”
“That is weird,” I admitted. “I guess he doesn’t know about Sam.”
“Nope.” He shook his head slowly, still in disbelief about the whole thing. I could relate. “I bet your sister will tell him.”
“Rather her than me.” I glimpsed my algebra book on my lap and checked the time on my laptop. I needed to get back to studying. The rest of this stuff could wait until later.
The scent of orange chicken filled the apartment, and my stomach grumbled. That would also have to wait. I heard a beeping noise, and then my sister and Elliott headed back toward his bedroom. “What number were we on?” I asked.
Brandon turned to face me, clearly lost for a second before he remembered the math. “Oh, uh, the fourth one.” He reached for his laptop, and I did the same, hoping we’d be able to jump back in even with my sister and his dad chatting in the other room. I was sure Brandon was just as distracted as I was, especially since he really wanted to go to Lexington with the team. I hadn’t let myself dwell on the fact that Aaron was forbidding any Guardians from going. It just seemed so ridiculous.
We worked for another fifteen or twenty minutes before I heard the sound of my sister’s boots headed our direction. Even on the carpet, she has a distinct rhythm when she walks. I guess my parents named her aptly.
“Cass, get those numbers to Elliot as soon as you can, okay?” she asked with a smile that seemed slightly forced.
“Will do,” I replied, not questioning why she wanted me to tell him and not her, but I supposed that meant she was taking him with her after all. I could tell by Brandon’s expression he had assumed the same thing, and he must have decided that meant he could go, too.
Cadence waved and headed out the door, leaving me confused but able to push it off for now. I needed to figure out an easier route to solving inequivalent fractions with negative numbers than the long algorithm I had been using, but Brandon’s method wasn’t making any sense to me, and we were running out of time before I’d have to return to my parent-imposed prison.
Once Cadence was out the door, I could tell Brandon was restless. I couldn’t blame him. This was too easy for him, and it had to be annoying having to sit there and wait for it all to click in my mind. Setting my book aside, I asked, “Do you want to go talk to your dad? See if he knows what’s going on with the hunt and if Cadence told him about Sam?”
Brandon stirred for a moment, and I could see him debating whether or not I was asking even though I wanted him to say no, but then he said, “Sure,” and headed out of the room.
I turned my attention back to my screen, but I couldn’t concentrate anymore. I sort of wished I could just go ahead and take the test and get it over with. If there was a hunt tonight, it would be super hard for me to go to sleep, even if I wasn’t on it, and having to take a test the next day on no sleep wouldn’t be easy. I decided to go ahead and look at the next problem on my own and had just about figured it out when I heard them both going into the kitchen. Elliott was saying something about having the opportunity to end Sam for good, and Brandon was asking if his dad had any idea why Hines would want him.
I hadn’t gotten a chance to spend too many brain cells working on that one yet, but I had an idea or two. Either Holland was under the impression Laura and Sam had spent enough time here that they could help exploit our defenses or it had something to do with vengeance. Both options seemed a little silly to me, though. Things were way different at headquarters since we’d brought in the Roatan Guardians. They literally took turns patrolling the perimeter of our campus, despite the fact that we had intermittent information about where the Vampires were thanks to my interrupting Holland’s signal to the trackers. And while I was sure that Resurrecting had probably made Sam something other than the frail old man he’d been when I’d seen them loading him into the back of a transport vehicle to take him to prison, I doubted he was anything to worry about. Same with Laura; I’d never met her when she was a Hunter, but she seemed too stupid to bother with. Granted, she’d help put together the scheme that had gotten Elliott killed, but of her eight marks that night, she’d only gotten one. And obviously it hadn’t stuck.