Someone crashed into me, sending us both toppling into the grass. “Oops, sorry.” I turned to help him up. It was Rowan. Heaccepted my hand, his warm skin sending a tingle up my arm. One of his locks fell across my shoulder.
“What were you looking at?” he asked, flipping his dreadlocks back over his shoulder.
“Saturn,” I replied, pointing out the orb of the biggest planet. “It’s so clear tonight that we can see the stripes of her clouds with the naked eye. And there’s Venus, and Mars. And there’s Virgo – that’s my star sign.”
“You believe in astrology?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. Even if the alignment of the stars could somehow predict your personality, which is pretty damn unscientific, it wouldn’t work because modern astrology doesn’t take precession into account.”
“Precession?”
“Yeah, it’s the wobble of the earth’s axis.”
“The earth wobbles?”
“It does, actually. Kind of the way I’m wobbling now.” I laugh as I steady myself. My head spins from the alcohol and the lack of sleep and these four wonderful, enchanting guys. “It’s caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon on the equatorial bulge. Because of it, the positions of the stars in the sky change incrementally every year. Thousands of years of incremental changes have moved the intersection point of the celestial equator and ecliptic – that’s the path of the sun – by 36 degrees, which means that when a person is born during the recognized period of time for Aquarius, the sun wasn’tactuallyin that constellation when they were born. It’s more likely to be Pisces or Ophiuchus?—”
“I’ve never heard of Ophiuchus before.”
“It’s actually the thirteenth star sign, although not many people use—” I didn’t get a chance to explain because a man darted out of the shadows and blocked our path.
“Hello,” he said, extending a hand out in front of him, palm facing us. His voice was obscured by a black hood, but it was deep and rich, almost singsong. A black coat – not unlike the one I was wearing – flapped around his tall, muscular frame. From the darkness of his hood, the moonlight flickered off two prisms of emerald light, eyes that reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think what.
I didn’t think to be scared. I assumed it was some other neighbor out for a walk, but Rowan’s body stiffened, his soft face tightening. Tension rose in the air around us, but nothing like the sexual heat I’d felt in the secret kitchen passage with Corbin and Flynn.
Rowan was poised for a fight.
His hand tightened around my arm. “Get behind me,” he whispered.
“Huh?”
I heard a shout up ahead as the other guys realized we had a visitor. The grass rustled as they ran back toward us. “Rowan, keep her safe!” Corbin yelled.
“What’s going on?” A flicker of fear licked my throat. My eyes fixed on the man standing in the grass. He kept his hand held in front of him, curling a finger toward himself.
“Good evening, Maeve,” the man said, his crystal eyes blazing. “If you come with me now, I won’t harm your friends.”
A lump of fear rose in my throat. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
The man raised his hand and lifted off the hood. I gasped as I recognized that black hair tinged with gold and the pale, porcelain skin. The narrowed eyes of a predator met my gaze. It was the guy who’d harassed Kelly and I at the Coopersville fair, the one I nicknamed the bellend, who had waved and smiled at me across the fairway as I’d watched my parents burn.
The force of that realization hit me so hard I physically jolted. I thought that guy had just been some random jerk, but the fact that he washere, jumping me in this field, and he knew my name… this wasn’t random.
He was stalking me.
But why?
Who was I apart from a twice-orphaned science geek?
“What do you want from me?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice steady, free of the fear that hurtled through my veins. “Why are you following me?”
“Now, if I told you that, that would take all the fun away.” The guy drew his hand across his face in a weird gesture that managed to appear threatening. “And I can tell you’d be alotof fun, Maeve Moore.”
“That’s not my name,” I lied, my heart thudding in my chest. “Just tell me what you want or let us pass.”
“No can do, I’m afraid.” The guy snapped his fingers. The grass behind him rustled, and two more men rose out of the long grass, as if they were emerging from within the earth itself. Both wore identical long black coats and equally sinister smiles.
How come none of us noticed them lying there before? My heart pounded, and I shrunk closer to Rowan. Which was kind of ridiculous. With his wiry frame and quiet nature, I’d probably be the one protecting him.
