I felt his breathe pause for a minute, then his arm wrap around me as I fell back asleep.
When I woke up again, it was dark out. I slipped out from beneath Michael's arms and walked out into the apartment. Everyone was sleeping. I quietly took a pen from out of a mug that was sitting on the kitchen counter and grabbed a napkin. I strained my eyes in the dark to see the words that I was writing.
They’re mostly after me. Please leave all of you. I can’t live with any more death around me.
I didn’t have anything else to say. It wasn’t a very good note, but it was all I wanted to write…leave, please.
I left the note on the kitchen table and quietly opened the front door and slipped out. They would all be furious in the morning when they found out that I had gone. I just hoped that they didn’t try to be heroic and foolish and that for once, they just listened to me and left. It’s not like they could be much help in their condition anyway, so maybe that would be enough to make them realize they should go.
I needed to hide somewhere that no one would find me, not the guys, and not Lineage. I also needed to be somewhere that I could easily get into the charity event, which was also being held at the aquarium. Of course, the answer to that was right in front of my face, the rooftop garden. When the aquarium opened in the morning, I paid for a single-day admission and went inside. I still had my hoodie on and sunglasses; to be honest, I looked like shit, but I also didn’t stand out. I walked the aquarium halls for a few minutes, so it didn’t look like I was making a beeline straight to the rooftop. There weren’t that many people there since it was still early. When I got my chance to slip unnoticed into the stairwell, I did.
The rooftop looked as if they were planning one of those privately rented parties. There were tables set up with big floral centerpieces and stand-alone lamps brought up to increase the lighting. That must mean that the event is going to be in the evening. I still needed to find out when the Lineage charity event was going to be held here. From the murmurs around campus, it sounded like it would be within the next few days, but I wasn’t sure exactly when. Maybe some of the staff at tonight’s party would be talking about it, and it would give me a chance to overhear. I also needed to find something to wear besides these dirty jeans and a hoodie. I was sure that the security at the charity event would be maxed-out, so I had to do everything I could to look the part of an invited guest until I had my chance to expose them.
Shit, I hope I had remembered to grab my phone. I reached in my pocket and pulled it out. The battery was only three-quarters charged, so I switched the settings down and put it on airplane mode. That would avoid any incoming calls and messages that the guys would try to send me once they woke up and realized that I was gone.
I tried not to think about that too much because it hurt.
I had to think about how I was going to survive staying on a rooftop for a couple days and ambushing a dangerous party without getting killed until after I exposed these evil people for who and what they were.
The door from the stairwell opened, and I darted into the greenhouse since it was the only place to really hide. I ducked down onto the ground to hide behind the plants. As soon as I did, I started to think about the last time I was in here, with Michael. I thought about what he said when he was waning in and out of consciousness…that he wanted to make love to me every day. If there was any chance that I actually survived this, I’d like for that to happen too.
I wished I would have told him that before I left.
I wrapped my arms around myself and silently replayed the blissful moment in my head as the service worker outside swept off the rooftop. Since it was winter now, they probably rarely had people coming up to look in the greenhouse, so it was actually the perfect place to hide. If only being in here didn’t make me feel like there was a hollow pit in my stomach.
How was it possible that the feelings I was having toward three guys were causing me so much angst?
18
“Calm down, Michael,” Julian said to me as I flew into a rampage.
“Where is she?!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, ignoring the pain in my ribcage.
Adam had already left the apartment to search around the campus, thinking that maybe Lisette had foolishly taken a walk on her own to clear her head.
“This is my fault,” Julian said as he shook his head. “I shouldn’t have gotten so upset with her. It’s you I should have gotten mad at. None of this was worth her losing her life over.”
“No, you’re wrong, this is entirely HER fault,” I roared. “She knows exactly what she’s doing, and she’s trying to leave all three of us out of it.” I held up the napkin that Lisette had written on and waved it in Julian’s face. “There is no excuse for this! Not after all that we’ve done to try and protect her, not after everything we’ve walked away from in order to save her.”
Julian’s face fell flat. “That sounds an awful lot like you’re speaking for yourself, Michael.”
I picked up the empty whiskey bottle on the counter and launched it at Julian’s head. I was furious at Lisette for doing this, for leaving us behind. For leaving me behind.
But then, the door opened, and Adam walked back into the apartment.
“I can’t find her,” he said with a panic in his voice. “I’ve scoured the whole campus and even snuck onto the Lineage grounds to look for her there. She’s gone.”
I grabbed my leather jacket and shoved my arms through the sleeves; catching the makeshift stitches that she had sewn into my hand on the cuffs and yowling in an angry pain that made me pull a stitch out on purpose, simply because it felt good to be able to hurt something.
“Where are you going?” Julian asked me.
“To try and save Lisette’s ass again,” I growled.
I stormed across the Goldshire campus, straight onto the Lineage grounds, and straight into my mother’s office. A crowd of onlookers started following me before I had even reached the building. One of the security guards tried to approach me and say something about how he “needed to escort me to administration,” but when I bared my teeth at him, he shriveled away like the puny minion that he was.
I found my mother sitting at her claw-footed desk with a look of immediate disappointment on her face as I walked through the door.
“You have to call this hunt off!” I demanded as I walked up to her desk and slammed my hand down in front of her.
The coffee in her mug spun in a dizzying circle at the impact.
“Sit down, Michael,” she said calmly.
“I’m not going to sit down until you call it off,” I said.
“Well, I’m not going to do anything until you sit… down.”
She spaced her last two words out slowly, which is what she always did when she was about to lose her temper. I sat down in the chair at her desk. I knew my mother well enough to know that she wouldn’t budge until she felt like she had some sort of illusion of control over the situation.
“None of this had to be this way, you know,” she said, calmly picking up her coffee mug and taking a sip. “You’ve forced my hand.”
I balked. “Me? You’re blaming me for this?”
“Yes, you. How do you think it looks as Headmistress to have my own son aiding a girl that is plotting against Lineage? Do you really think we could have just let her go? Now? We can’t do that right before the big exchange of power. Even you aren’t that silly.”
I shook my head and dug my heels in. “Just call it off, and I’ll find her and take her out of here. No one will even have to know. It’ll be like she disappeared, you can say she was killed or something. I’ll make sure she’s so far away that no one will ever find her.”
