With my free hand, I check my phone. “It’s almost seven. You want to head out and grab something to eat?”
“The break might do me some good.”
We pack up our laptops and leave the library, make our way to the main cafeteria in the student center. After we pick out sandwiches and grab a booth, I head to the restroom, when I notice someone out of the corner of my eye. As I turn, they pull back behind the window outside, but not so fast that I don’t have a chance to see their face.
Finnegan.
I hurry to the entrance, push out the doors, and find him checking his phone by the building, acting as though he wasn’t spying on us.
Whatever he was doing, now’s a good chance to try and get through to him. Finnegan’s a reasonable guy, and I’ve had a few chats with him over the past few years.
I sidle beside him, greeting him with a friendly smile, and he turns to me. His scars, two distinct lines running vertically across his temple, catch my attention. At one time we’d beentold it was from a bear attack, but now I know the truth—that what caused this wasn’t from our world.
And he’s not his pleasant self. He seems worn down, like how I must’ve looked when I was stressed the hell out about Alexei.
“Sorry, Matteo, I can’t talk to you,” he says, turning away and hurrying down the sidewalk.
“Hey, man. Please. Give me one minute.”
“Nope.”
“Hey, Finnegan,” I say, rushing up beside him. “I don’t know what Preston’s said, but Alexei has some things I think all the Saints would benefit from knowing, and…” I trail off when I notice his arms are fucking shaking. His face and neck flush red as he stops and turns to me, black eyes boring into me.
I freeze.
What the hell?
His jaw tenses. “I’ve gotta go. Leave. Us. Alone!” he shouts, teeth gnashing like he’s considering lunging at me for a bite before he rushes off, leaving me wondering what the ever-loving hell just happened.
18
ALEXEI
Where is he?
I glance around once more and see Matteo heading through the entrance, panic in his expression. I hop up from my seat, and as I approach, I note the sweat beading his forehead.
“Matteo? What’s wrong?”
He hurries past me and slides into the booth, opening his bottle of water and taking a swig. I return to my seat across from him, my head spinning. What the hell could have happened while he was in the restroom?
“I just saw Finnegan,” he explains.
“Did he do something? Did he threaten you?” Even as I say the words, they feel ridiculous. Finnegan’s a friendly guy, but who knows what the Saints might’ve put him up to.
He shakes his head. “Something’s wrong with him. He was shouting at me and—”
“Finnegan? Shouting?”
“Yes, but no. It couldn’t have been him. His eyes turned dark. Black like Farras’s when I saw him at the foot of my bed, and like what you said I looked like when he was inside me. It seemed like there was something in him, like with me.What if once Farras left my body, he found a new host? You think that’s possible? Or…I don’t know, maybe there are other psychos running around taking bodies from people who have been practicing magic.”
“We shouldn’t jump to too many conclusions.”
“Am I supposed to pretend I didn’t just see that something’s in him?”
“That’s not what I meant. That’s a safe assumption, but I don’t know that we can speculate on what that is. It could be anything.”
“You’re right. Sorry, just feels like it’s one wild thing after another.”
