“You’re just saying all that to make me feel better,” she says, but I can tell that a smidge of hope is already creeping into her voice.
I glance over my shoulder, spotting Logan and Gage talking to a group of guys near the fire pit.
“Okay,” I turn back to my bestie, “I have to tell you something or I’m going to burst. I just need someone in my corner, like an ear to bend, you know? But you’re going to have to promise me you’re not going to tell anyone, not Drake, not Gage, not Logan—and especially not Chloe.”
Good grief, if this knowledge got into Chloe’s hands, well, I’m pretty sure that would throw a monkey wrench in my mother’s plans, and quite possibly my future—and worse yet, my children’s future. And let’s face it, everyone’s future would go to hell in a Chloe-shaped handbasket if she found out.
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Brielle winks as she says it.
In three quick breaths, I tell her everything.
And with my very next breath, I regret it all.
I finish with—“I promise you, everything I said is true. Like I said, I’m light driving. I’m here from the future.”
Brielle gasps with delight, her eyes widening to the size of Drake’s ego. “No way! Are you, like, serious? Oh my goodness, Skyla!” She bounces on the bench as her distress evaporates just like that. “This is insane! I have to go find Drake and tell him the good news!”
“No, wait—” But it’s too late. She darted off in a pink blur racing toward the house.
“Well, that was stupid,” I mutter to myself. “Way to stay inconspicuous, Messenger.”
This won’t change things, will it? No, it can’t.
It’s impossible.
I could run through the house naked and screaming, and nothing would change in the future—with the exception of my boobs being plastered on twelve different porn sites for the next fifty years. But still.
Oh heck. I’d better do some damage control. I just told the girl who can’t keep a secret, the secret of a lifetime, more or less. I push myself up from the bench, intent on finding Logan before Brielle can spread time travel rumors through the entire junior class, but as I turn, I walk straight into what feels like a brick wall disguised as a person.
I look up into the most handsome, blessed-by-God features I’ve ever had the misfortune to find attractive. My stomach bisects with heat, a physical reaction that no amount of temporal displacement can diminish. It turns out, it’s not a person at all—it’s one red-hot sexy Sector who possesses enough prowess to please all of the women in this century and every other that has ever been recorded. Case in point, the slut parade from an era long gone by.
“Ms. Messenger,” Marshall growls, looking down at me with those fiery eyes that seem to glow from within. His lips curl into a smile that’s equal parts predatory and inviting. Those golden locks, those lethally sharp cheekbones, and the body built for speedbeneath the sheets. “I knew if I sent enough breadcrumbs, the little bird would eventually find her way to my cage.”
The world seems to freeze around us, the party fades to nothing but background noise as his eyes burn through every defense I’ve ever built. I’ve walked straight into his web, and the predatory satisfaction gleaming in those fiery eyes tells me that escape was never an option.
16
Skyla
The ghostly piano music has downshifted to something that sounds more appropriate for a funeral than a party, each note drifting from the mansion’s French doors and mixing with the raucous laughter echoing all around Marshall’s mega-mansion.
The fountain at the center of his elaborate garden gurgles and splashes like it’s trying to compete with the noise, sending crystalline droplets dancing in the moonlight while party guests weave around us.
The scent of night-blooming jasmine mingles with Marshall’s intoxicating cologne and the lingering, rather toxic perfume that trails off those seventeenth-century hussies who seem to be having the time of their afterlives, flirting with West High’s finest boy toys. Including Gage and Logan.
I hope Chloe walks in and sees Gage surrounded by dead women who actually have a chance. Don’t judge. I come by my vindictive streak naturally—Chloe and I have been training each other in the art of spite since high school.
Nevertheless, I’m standing near the marble fountain when Marshall materializes beside me, forming from a shadow likesomething out of a dark fantasy. Even irate, he’s criminally gorgeous—the kind of handsome that should come with a warning label and probably safe words.
His jaw is set in that way that means trouble, and his eyes hold that magnetic pull that could make a nun reconsider her vows. Behind us, I can hear Ellis trying to convince a courtesan that his fake ID is totally legitimate—as if she cares—while Drake appears to be getting relationship advice from what looks like a ghost in a powdered wig.
Marshall towers over me with a frown. “What was your mother saying to you that day on the shoreline? She looked terse.” He squints my way as if trying to read my thoughts. And the ultra-annoying part? I’m not sure how or why, but he so can.
“So you know I’m light driving.” A thought comes to me, and my eyes widen. “Wait, you really don’t know what my mother is up to?” Typically, when my mother points a celestial gun at my feet and tells me to dance, the heavenlies are long since apprised of her wicked ways. I’m not surprised that Marshall saw my mother speaking to me that day, let alone looking terse—mostly because he was present at the bonfire. Technically, that day is still today—I think—just somewhere far, far away as far as the calendar goes. But what does surprise me is the fact he’s in the dark.
His eyes narrow onto mine, and he suddenly looks rather terse himself. “I see everything.”
“Well, clearly you don’tknoweverything.” I gird myself because them be fighting words.
