No Peace for the Damned

in real life—the thought spun my head. But that wasn’t all. According to Jon, finding Theo in a woman’s bed was as normal as cereal for breakfast.
    Fabulous
.
    I needed a drink.
    For some reason, I couldn’t meet Thirteen’s eyes. Theo was still pulling his shirt over his head when he reentered the kitchen.
    “You sure you don’t want to call the whole group together?” he said. “I’m not too keen on telling this story more than once.” He pulled out the chair to my left, swung it around, and straddled it. From the way he sat, the blood and tears across the back of his shirt were visible only to me.
    “Why don’t you just tell us what happened and I’ll decide which details are appropriate for the rest of the team.”
    My eyebrows shot up.
    Theo spoke through gritted teeth. “Nothing happened, Thirteen, so how about you back the fuck off.”
    Thirteen’s eyes narrowed. I looked back and forth between them.
    After another long minute, Theo said, “Like I said, they tranq’d me with some kind of hallucinogen and took me to the Kelch estate. I assume they dressed me, too, since I was in boxers when I went to bed and in this when I woke.” He pulled his tattered shirt from his chest with two fingers. “The drugs had me seeing things that weren’t there, so I have no idea which one took me. As soon as they knew I was awake, they strapped me on a table and started slicing up my back.”
    A need for vengeance washed over me so fast and so strong that the whole room turned crimson. The men, the walls, the light—everything red. I blinked and the room turned back to normal color.
    Great…something else that never happened before. What was with me these days?
    Theo continued, “After they’d been at it a few minutes, they stopped and one of them started whispering in my ear…inFrench.
Qui est l’annuaire?
‘Who is the calendar?’ It didn’t make sense to me, but there it is.”
    Wait a minute. What?
    “French?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
    He looked over his shoulder at me. “Yeah, pretty sure. I only took a couple of years of it in college, but I think I can recognize it when I hear it. Why?”
    “It’s just that foreign languages—yeah, not my family’s forte. The only foreign language any of us are remotely familiar with is Romanian, and that’s just because Grandmother lived there when she was younger.”
    “So you’re saying that
none
of your family speaks French?” Theo asked, his voice rising. “So, what? Either I was tortured by someone not in your family, or I hallucinated the question.”
    I exchanged a frown with Jon then looked over at Shane. He was just as confused. Finally, I turned to Thirteen. His face was ghost white, his expression more void than I had ever seen. And before I could even get a read on his thoughts, he leaped from his seat and raced out of the house.
    The rest of us just stared at each other. Then all at once, we jumped to our feet and flew out the door after him. We were just in time to inhale the cloud of dust left behind as Thirteen sped up the gravel driveway.
    I went to my car, ready to follow him, when Theo called out, “Mag!” I spun around. All three of them were still on the porch, watching me. What were they waiting for?
    “He’ll be back,” Theo called. The hum of Thirteen’s car was fading. We had to hurry. “He’s done this before,” Theo continued. “He’ll come back when he’s ready. We just have to wait.”
    I listened again and the hum was gone. I couldn’t even tell which direction he’d driven.
Shit!
I glared at Theo and theothers as I stomped back to the house. When I got to the door, I slammed it, leaving the guys on the porch.
    I needed a drink. Damn it, something was up with Thirteen and I hadn’t caught it. And if Theo was right, all I could do was sit here and wait.

I stayed on the love seat by the front window, ignoring all the others and their patient confidence. All assured and accepting. Their “he’s fine” and “he’s done this before”—it was wearing on my last nerve. Wasn’t
anyone
worried about Thirteen?
    No. All they cared about was what information had him acting as he had. They worried about being out of the loop, not whether Thirteen was still alive or not. Bastards.
    Theo’s image wormed past my mood. Sprawled out over my sheets, his broad chest rising as he slept. I was glad he’d gone back to bed, but the need to join him distracted me. I pushed it away, downed another drink and