There was none of the usual impatient snap in his voice, meaning he was really worried. And if Derek was worried, I’d better stay right where I was. I gripped the railing.
“No!” he said. “I mean, yes, hold on, but don’t put any weight on it. It’s rotted through at the base. ”
Great.
Derek looked around, like he was searching for something to use. Then he stripped off his shirt. I tried not to look away. Not that he looked bad without his shirt. The opposite, actually, which is why…Let’s just say friends are really better when they’re fully dressed.
Derek got as close as he dared, then knotted a corner of the T-shirt and tossed it to me. I caught it on the second throw.
“I’m not going to pull you in,” he warned.
A good thing, because with his werewolf strength, he’d probably wrench it from my hands and I’d tumble off the roof backward.
“Pull yourself along-”
He stopped, seeing I was already doing that. I made it onto the flat part, wobbled a step, then felt my knees start to give way. Derek grabbed my arm-the one without stitches, bandages, and a bullet graze-and I lowered myself slowly.
“I-I’m just going to sit for a minute,” I said, my voice shakier than I liked.
Derek sat beside me, his shirt back on. I could feel him watching me, uncertain.
“I-I’ll be okay. Just give me a second. It’s safe to sit here, right?”
“Yeah, the slope’s only about twenty-five degrees, so-” Seeing my expression, he said, “It’s safe. ”
The fog was lifting, and I could see trees stretching into the distance on all sides, a dirt road winding through them to the house.
“There was a ghost,” I said finally.
“Yeah, I figured that. ”
“I-I knew I shouldn’t follow, but-” I paused, not ready for the full explanation, still shaky. “I stopped outside your door, hoping you’d hear me. I guess you did?”
“Kind of. I was dozing. Woke up confused, so it took me a while to get out here. Got a touch of fever. ”
I saw it now, the flushed skin and glittering eyes.
“Are you-?” I began.
“I’m not Changing. Not for a while. I know what that feels like now, and I’ve got a ways to go. Another day, at least. Hopefully longer. ”
“I bet you’ll Change completely this time,” I said.
“Yeah, maybe. ” His tone said he doubted it.
As we sat there, I snuck a look at him. At sixteen, Derek was more than a foot taller than me. Solidly built, too, with broad shoulders and muscles he usually kept hidden under baggy clothes, so he wouldn’t look as intimidating.
Since he’d started Changing, Mother Nature seemed to have cut him some slack. His skin was clearing up. His dark hair didn’t look greasy anymore. It still hung in his face-nothing emo, just like he hadn’t bothered to get it cut in a while. Lately, that would have been the last thing on his mind.
I tried to relax and enjoy the fog-laced view, but Derek fidgeted and squirmed, which was more distracting than if he’d just been his usual self and demanded to know what had happened.
“So there was this ghost,” I said finally. “He said he was a Volo half-demon. Telekinetic, but a stronger type than Dr. Davidoff. Probably the same kind Liz is. He lured me out here, locked the door, then started pelting me with stuff. ”
Derek looked over sharply.
“I banished him. ”
“Good, but you shouldn’t have followed him at all, Chloe. ”
His tone was calm, reasonable, so un-Derek-like that I stared at him, the weird idea that this wasn’t Derek creeping through my head. Before I’d escaped the Edison Group laboratory, I’d met a demi-demon, chained there as a power source. She’d possessed someone but only a ghost. Could Derek be possessed?
“What?” Derek said as I stared.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just…” He rubbed the back of his neck, wincing and rolling his shoulders. “Tired. Feeling off. Really off. Too much…” He struggled for the word. “Being here. Being safe. I’m still adjusting. ”
That made sense. Derek’s werewolf protective streak had been in hyperdrive for days, keeping him awake and on guard. Having someone else to watch out for us now would be weird. Still, not blasting me for blithely following a random ghost onto a roof was so totally not Derek that I knew there was more to it.
When I asked what was bothering him, he muttered that it was nothing. I backed off and was about to explain more about the ghost when he blurted, “It’s Tori. I don’t like her story about how she got away. ”
When the Edison Group had almost captured us last night, they’d nabbed Tori. Yet when they’d refocused their efforts on the biggest threat-Derek-they’d left the young witch with only a single guard. She’d locked him in a binding spell and escaped.
“You think they let her get away?”
“I’m not saying…It’s just…I don’t have any proof. ”
And that’s what was making him uncomfortable, that his misgivings were based on nothing but a gut feeling. The math and science whiz really preferred dealing in facts.
“If you’re thinking she’s been a plant from the start, she hasn’t. ” I lowered my voice. “Don’t tell her I told you this, okay? When she helped me escape, she only wanted to get away from the Edison Group and run back to her dad. So she called him. Instead he sent her mom-the woman we’d just escaped. Tori was hurt, really hurt. In shock even. She couldn’t have faked that. ”
“I didn’t figure she was in on it from that far back. ”
“Just that she cut a deal last night?”
“Yeah. ”
“Would Tori turn us in for the promise of getting her old life back? It’s possible, and we should be careful, but I do buy her story. Unless her mom told them Tori was figuring out how to cast spells-which I doubt-then, as far as they know, she just has random outbursts of power. Her binding spell could have taken out a single guard. I’ve seen her use it. She doesn’t even need to say an incantation. It’s like, if she thinks it, she can do it. ”
“No casting? No practicing?” He shook his head. “Don’t tell Simon that. ”
“Don’t tell Simon what?” said a voice behind us.
We turned to see Simon step out of the doorway.