Finale

complex. The sun was out, and after three laps, I stripped off my sweatshirt, tying it around my waist. Vee
beelined to a weathered park bench and plunked down, sucking air.
    “That had to be about five miles,” she said.
    I surveyed the trail. Sure . . . give or take four miles.
    “Maybe we should peek in Scott’s windows,” Vee suggested. “It’s Sunday. He might be oversleeping and need a friendly wake-up call.”
    “Scott lives on the third floor. Unless you have a forty-foot ladder stashed in the trunk of the Neon, window peeping is probably out.”
    “We could try something more direct. Like knocking on his door.”
    Just then an orange Plymouth Barracuda, circa 1970, vroomed into the parking lot. It pulled under the carport, and Scott swung out. Like most Nephilim men, Scott has the body of someone
seemingly well acquainted with a weight room. He’s also unusually tall, pushing six feet six. He keeps his hair cropped as short as a prison inmate’s, and he’s
good-looking—in a tough, hardened way. Today he was wearing mesh basketball shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off.
    Vee fanned herself. “Yowza.”
    I stuck my hand in the air, intending to call out to Scott and flag his attention, when the Barracuda’s passenger door opened and Dante emerged.
    “Check it out,” Vee said. “It’s Dante. Do the math. Two of them, and two of us. I knew I’d like running.”
    “I’m feeling the sudden urge to keep running,” I muttered. And not stop until I’d put a lot of ground between me and Dante. I wasn’t in the mood to follow up last
night’s conversation. Likewise, I wasn’t in the mood for Vee to play matchmaker. She was too aggravatingly good at it.
    “Too late. We’ve been made.” Vee whipped her arm over her head like a helicopter propeller.
    Sure enough, Scott and Dante leaned back against the Barracuda, shaking their heads and grinning at us.
    “You stalking me, Grey?” Scott hollered.
    “He’s all yours,” I told Vee. “I’m going to finish running.”
    “What about Dante? He’ll feel like the third wheel,” she said.
    “It’ll be good for him, trust me.”
    “Where’s the fire, Grey?” Scott called out, and to my dismay, he and Dante started jogging over.
    “I’m training,” I shot back. “I’m thinking about . . . trying out for track.”
    “Track doesn’t start until spring,” Vee reminded me.
    Hang it all.
    “Uh-oh, heart rate’s dropping,” I yelled at Scott. And on that note, I took off running in the opposite direction.
    I heard Scott on the trail behind me. A minute later, he snagged the strap of my tank top, tugging on it playfully. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”
    I turned to face him. “What does it look like?”
    “It looks like you and Vee came over to see me under the pretense of running.”
    I gave his shoulder a congratulatory pat. “Good work, ace.”
    “So why are you running away? And why does Vee smell like a perfume factory?”
    I stayed quiet, letting him figure it out.
    “Ah,” he said at last.
    I spread my hands. “My work here is done.”
    “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not sure I’m ready to hang out with Vee all day. She’s pretty . . . intense.”
    Before I could give him the sage advice, “Fake it till you make it,” Dante pulled up beside me.
    “A word with you?” he asked.
    “Oh boy,” I said under my breath.
    “That’s my cue to go,” Scott said, and to my discouragement, he trotted away, leaving me alone with Dante.
    “Can you run and talk at the same time?” I asked Dante, thinking I’d prefer not to have to look him in the eye while he rehashed his thoughts on our jury-rigged relationship.
Plus, it spoke volumes about just how into this conversation I was.
    By way of answer, Dante picked up his pace, jogging beside me.
    “Glad to see you out running,” he said.
    “And why’s that?” I panted, shoving some loose hairs off my sweat-soaked face. “You get a thrill out of seeing me a complete mess?”
    “That, and it’s good training for what I have in store for you.”
    “You have something in store for me? Why do I get the feeling I don’t want to hear more?”
    “You may be Nephilim now, Nora, but you’re at a disadvantage. Unlike naturally conceived Nephilim, you don’t have the advantage of extreme height, and you aren’t as
physically powerful.”
    “I’m a lot stronger than you think,” I argued.
    “Stronger than you
were
. But not as