Read Embrace The Night for Free Online Page B

could freshen up and rinse out her mouth. But then he tried to insist that she go back to her room to rest, as if she were a fragile child, and her insistence that she had work to do.
    Didn’t he understand? She needed to do something to get her mind off the attack.
    For some reason, when she and Theo had come into the computer lab, Sage had felt certain she’d find Simon there. She swore she sensed him, maybe smelled his scent…but that was absurd. He had no reason to be there, and if he’d been, he’d had no reason to hide. And she probably just smelled his shirt that she still wore.
    And what made her so psychic all of a sudden? He wasn’t there, she and Theo were—and they’d ended up getting into a rare argument.
    Sage felt a lump in her throat as she turned on the shower. Theo was her best friend. She’d known him and Lou for fifteen years. And if it was odd that she hung around with seventy-seven-year-old twins—even though only one of them looked it—well, so be it. She was, after all, a Corrigan. A Cor-Whore, as they were labeled. Or a Falker…said a certain way, it sounded like a nastier word. But she’d heard worse.
    As the warm blast of water sprayed down on her, washing away her weariness and the ugly thoughts, Sage raised her face and let her hair become saturated, trying to remember how she and Theo had come to argue.
    She’d still been upset from tossing her cookies, still a little shaky and weak-kneed yet more than a little defiant. She had, after all, kept her head during the attack, remembered what Theo had taught her, and inflicted her own damage. That satisfying crunch beneath her palm, just before Simon dragged the man away…that feeling would stay with her a long time.
    When Sage informed Theo of this, she felt him stiffen from where he’d been standing behind her at the computer table.
    “How can you be so nonchalant about it?” he said. His hand brushed the top of her head, lighter than the wings of a butterfly, then fell away. “You were
attacked
.”
    “You call horking in the bushes nonchalant?” Sage retorted, turning to look up at him. “I’m far from nonchalant, Theo,” she said reasonably. “See this?” She raised her hand, which trembled noticeably. “I’ll probably have nightmares. And be nervous about going anywhere by myself for a while—”
    “Damn straight you’re not going anywhere by yourself for a while,” he snapped, folding his arms over his chest. Scarlett writhed on his rippling arm, her catlike golden eye glaring at Sage from the back of Theo’s hand.
    “—but I’m not going to hide away.”
    “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the last five years?” Theo returned. “Cloistering yourself down here, tapping away at the computer?”
    “I’ve not been
hiding
!” Fury blasted through her—righteousness tinged with a bit of shame. Maybe she had. A little. “I’ve been working to help you and Lou and Jade.”
    “Look,” Theo said, stepping back as if to gather his thoughts. He ran a hand through his shiny jet-black hair. “Sage. It’s not your fault you attract attention. I understand why you like to stay out of sight.”
    “So you’re saying it’s my fault I was attacked?” She realized she was nearly shrieking, something that, despite her red hair, she rarely did. “Because I decided to come up from the dungeon?”
    “Sage—”
    “Because I walked somewhere by myself? Because of the color of my hair and eyes and skin?”
    “No, it’s not your fault. But you need to be more
careful
,” he said. “Pay attention to what’s going on around you.” His voice was shaking.
    She opened her mouth to shout something back at him, and realized her fingers were shaking. Tears stung her eyes and her nose was running.
    “Sage,” he said, now hard and clipped as if fighting for control. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. I couldn’t handle it.”
    She looked up at him, recognizing fury in his eyes. At her? He was