Only now the car wasn’t a car. It was a windowless van. And the excitement had turned dark.
Danger.
Someone—a blonde. No wait, a brunette—was walking past it, oblivious. The door slid open silently. The image disappeared in a disorienting flash.
Heat.
She felt it blasting her. Dangerously hot. She felt like screaming, then realized other people around her were already screaming. Panic. Confusion. She felt something. A rush of satisfaction that definitely wasn’t hers as the heat got exponentially hotter.
Lessons needed to be taught.
“What lessons? Who needs to be taught a lesson?” she asked weakly.
“I think she’s going to toss her cookies,” someone said.
Then the heat was gone. Sucked away by an invisible, cosmic vacuum cleaner. Riley felt herself lurch again and had no idea if it was her physical body or her psychic motion sickness.
All she could see was thick, black darkness.
Wait.
There was something pink glowing in the distance.
No, not pink.
Yellow.
Green.
Orange.
Happy.
Mad.
Oops.
Oh, crap. She was going to throw up. Or pass out. Maybe both.
Sesame chicken.
She was so hungry.
Nick was going to be so pissed.
It was her last thought before the colors disappeared and she was left alone in the dark.
7
11:50 a.m., Friday, October 25
Riley came to on buttery-soft leather with the scent of one of those expensive perfume samples she and Wander used to get at department stores tickling her nostrils. Her mouth was dry. Her head hurt. And she felt like her brain was on the spin cycle.
Slowly, she forced one eye open.
A pair of unnaturally blue eyes peered back at her. “Oh, good! You’re alive,” the person attached to the blue eyes said.
“Are you wearing contacts?” Riley asked on a rasp.
