“I need to find him. Is he there? Would you be able to pass a message along for me?”
“You know then. I’m a friend of your fathers. I’m sorry, Neith, but he hasn’t been here for a long time. He was here until just after we realizedthat you weren’t coming back. He just disappeared. I have no idea where he’s gone, but he told me to keep an eye on this place and anyone new that comes into town,” Bobby explains.
“I, what? You?” I stutter. Not really comprehending what he’s just said, and what it means.
“Sorry, Neith, I would have told you, but I promised your dad that I wouldn’t. We were there to protect you,” Bobby adds. “I’m sorry, but I need to go. I don’t want them figuring out that I’m talking to you.”
I sigh, “That’s okay. It’s just a bit difficult to wrap my head around. Take my number, and if you need some backup, let me know. Also, if my . . . if Pete gets in contact with you, can you call me? And let him know that I’m trying to get in contact with him?”
“Of course,” Bobby replies.
“Thanks, Bobby,” I say, and quickly reel off my number for him, before he just hangs up.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Griff says. “He’s a human, right?”
“He’s supposed to be, but clearly not if he watched the Choosing and is friends with my dad,” I point out, feeling all kinds of confused.
“It would appear that you’ve had people watching over you for longer than you thought, and not just Pete,” Coen says.
“Yep. To be fair, it kind of makes sense that he’s a supernatural. I have questioned whether he was in the past, but since I couldn’t feel any power signature from him, I thought nothing of it. Of course, I didn’t feel any power signature from Pete either, and since they are friends, it makes sense that whatever Pete does in order to cloak himself, he has also done to Bobby too,” I reply, taking the guys along on a tangent with me.
“We also now know that HID is staking out your hometown, so there is no way that you can go back there,” Reed adds.
“And we still don’t have an idea of how we can get in contact with Pete,” Raiden adds with a frown.
“No, and I have no idea how we’re going to figure that out other than to hope that he finds us,” Ransom says.
“I could kick myself,” I say as something occurs to me, and I realize how stupid I’ve been.
“How?” River asks, looking adorably confused and completely missing the point.
I’m about to say that it doesn’t matter and tell them why I’m going to kick myself, but his question has me pausing, and I get distracted.
“You know what, I’m not sure,” I reply to River.
I do some weird twists in my chair, trying to see if I can kick myself, which he ends up copying, and then I decide that the only way that I’m going to figure out how to kick myself, or if I even can, is if I stand up.
Chapter Thirteen
Neith
Pushing back from the table, I stand up and decide to ignore the guys who all look like they’re trying not to laugh at me.
This is important.
Okay, so maybe it’s not that important, but to my brain right now, it’s at the top of the importance list.
River is fucking awesome because he seems to be the only one who understands where my mind has taken me, because he stands up as well, and starts to try to kick himself, just like I’m trying to.
I have to admit that we both look absolutely ridiculous, and that the guy's laughter is totally justified, but I now have this weird need to see this through and see if I can actually kick myself.
Eventually, I work out that, by bending my knee and holding my leg over the other one, I can sort of kick myself backward, but the only thing I can kickis the shin of my other leg, and I giggle as River tries to do this weird jump thing to see if he can kick himself that way. I figure that’s probably the best that I’m going to get, but before I can sit down, another idea occurs to me, and I try one last thing. Keeping my leg straight, I kick and bring my leg up to my head. The only problem is that I put a bit more force behind it than I should have.
“Ouch,” I grumble, rubbing my forehead where I actually did manage to kick myself in the face.
The guys roar with laughter, including River, and I can’t help joining in when someone snorts and sets everyone off laughing again.
By the time everyone has calmed down, I’m back in my seat, and my sides are hurting from laughing so much. Every time our laughter slowed down, something would happen, or we would look at each other, and we’d just start laughing again.
