Page 8 of Caelum

I had no idea what she meant but I was getting used to that.

As we stepped toward the front door, it opened and a man appeared. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and covered in drawings. I stared at him, wondering what the drawings were. Were they permanent? I gaped at the image of a skull covered in flowers with a snake protruding from the eye sockets and wondered why he’d want that on his body.

When he caught me looking, he smirked. “They’re called tattoos.” Then he cut Merinda a glance. “You weren’t kidding.”

She grumbled, “When do I kid around? She belongs on the Mayflower. She doesn’t know what anything is or what anything means.”

That had the man frowning. “Is she slow?”

“No, just backward,” Merinda retorted with another grumble. “But she’s smart and advanced. She helped me sing.”

I had?

My eyes widened because that was news to me.

“How many did you knock out?”

“A couple of hundred.”

“Three hundred and sixty-four to be precise,” I told them both softly.

The man whistled. “New record for you, Merry.”

“Hardly. She helped. A lot.” Merinda shook her head, and something shifted in her voice again. “A lot, Damon.”

His eyes darkened with something I couldn’t discern. “That’s unusual.”

“She’s seventeen.”

Damon grunted, but whatever had darkened his eyes lessened, and with it, my chest stopped feeling like it was seizing up. Had he been angry with me? What had that look been in his eyes? I’d borne the brunt of rage before, but it had never been like that. His eyes had…

No. They couldn’t have glowed red beneath the dark brown, could they?

“We’re a few years late,” he commented, breaking my train of thought and making me blink as I saw his eyes were normal again.

“Yeah. But she has good control. No one knew. Everyone I spoke to had no idea what she is.”

“Fuck, really?”

“Really.” Merry’s tone turned grim as though that were a bad thing when it was the only reason I was still breathing. “We can’t dump her in the first year. She’s too advanced. Second or third year would be best for PT, with her picking up the slack from the other classes with tutoring. No regular classes until she’s up to speed. I’ll help out. She might be a Lorelei with that voice of hers. I’m the closest to her age with a similar power level so that would help her.”

Damon’s brows rose as he leaned against the door. I couldn’t help but notice the play of his muscles under the white shirt he wore, and his legs were thick like tree trunks in the smart pants that covered his lower body. With his muscles, the drawings, and the spiky hair on his head, he was like no other male I’d ever seen in my life.

His words were droll, however, when he teased, “You’re willing to help someone other than yourself? How novel, Merry.”

Merry squinted at him, then she raised her hand, lowered her index, ring, and pinkie to leave her middle finger standing. I stared at it, wondering why Damon snorted at the sight. When he shot me another look, and read my confusion, he shook his head. “She’s an innocent.”

“They’re going to eat you alive, kiddo,” Merry noted again. She’d already given me that warning four times so far this past hour.

It was growing wearisome.

“I don’t think I’d be very tasty,” was all I said.

In a world where people could eat things like those fries I’d had, I doubted anyone would eat someone as boring as me. Alive or not.

Even though it was evidently a threat, I knew I was in no danger, so I wasn’t sure why she kept saying it. But it wasn’t like I could do anything anyway.

Merinda had called the New Order a cult and had explained what that meant. What a cult truly was. Caelum, with its promise of truth, couldn’t be as dangerous as what I considered ‘home,’ could it?

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