Agendas

It was oddly comfortable to be around Jake. A few hours after my mother had left for work, he came over, climbed up into the tree like before, and tapped on the window. When I impatiently explained to him that I was working on a calculus assignment that I didn’t even understand, he thought he would take it upon himself to tutor me. Apparently, like Chase, Jake was good at math stuff. Actually, he was better. Jake said that he was the one Chase went to when he didn’t understand something. Maybe that was why Chase was so good, though—he asked for help when he needed it. I was more stubborn.

We both sat on my bed, leaning back against the headboard, as Jake worked on an equation and explained every little step he did. I was lost. I stared blankly at the paper and textbook in his lap. It was like trying to read Russian. Suddenly, I yawned widely. I hadn’t meant to. It just slipped out.

Jake looked at me sharply. “Are you listening at all?”

I straightened up. “Yes!” I said defensively. “Of course I’m listening.” He continued to look at me skeptically. I smiled sweetly. Then he shook his head and circled a number on the paper. “Oh,” I said. “Yes. I thought the answer would be something like that.”

He laughed, tore the paper in half, and gave me the half with the worked-out equation. “Study that. Figure it out. You know, there’s this other class called Pre-Calculus. You take it in preparation for Calculus. Maybe you should try it.”

The thought of taking another math class made me yawn again. “I took it. And I got a B, a solid B, so leave me alone. Ugh. What do you do during the day? Shouldn’t you be somewhere, like...work?”

I uncrossed my legs and stretched them out in front of me. I was still in my pajamas—pants with cows all over and a black tank top—because I was incredibly lazy. I’d never admit it, but I kind of liked when Jake came over. It was just that I was so bored, having nothing but my school assignments, my dad, and Olivia to keep me entertained. It was nice to have someone interesting around that wouldn’t scold me or tell me to study.

In response to my question, Jake looked at me like I was crazy. “Work?” he said with a scoff. “What for? I don’t need to buy food, and the coven owns the woods so it’s not like we’re paying rent every month. Miles handles any financial business that deals with us, I don’t know anything about it.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. That’d be like never going to school. I could barely tolerate a week of hanging around the house. “Don’t you get bored?”

“No.”

He seemed tense. The corner of my mouth twitched slightly in a smirk that I suppressed. I sat up straight at looked at him seriously, which obviously made him uncomfortable. He had a secret. It was a personal secret, apparently, judging from the way his open demeanor suddenly seemed to freeze over. It was weird to think of Jake having a secret. He didn’t seem like a very complicated person with things to hide.

I jabbed a finger between his ribs, causing him to grunt and put a hand over his ribcage protectively. “C’mon, what?” I asked sweetly, ignoring his glare. “What’s the big deal? Are you like an undercover agent for the FBI, hmm?”

Jake grinned. “Yeah, that’s what I am. Does that turn you on?”

Rolling my eyes, I slumped back against the headboard and twirled a pencil in my fingers. “You know, that’s a basic question—‘what do you do?’ I like to hang out with Chelsea and Eliza. Sometimes we go to the mall and shop. Or we’ll go to someone’s house and bake a bunch of junk food to eat all by ourselves. Or we talk. Sometimes we just like to talk. I call them my coven because I trust them as if we were connected by blood. You know, like a witch coven.”

He laughed dryly. “You and Miles are connected by blood. Do you two have sleepovers no one else knows about?” He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. I slapped his chest and stared at him in disgust. “Come on, Kara. What do you want from me? I’m not a chick.”

“I know that. But, seriously, I’m bored of this Calculus stuff. I want to talk about something else.”

“Well, if you want to get your mind off of math, I can think of a few things we can do to accomplish that.”

It was like his brain was programmed to do two things: flirt and sleep. Well, maybe three, but I definitely would never be experiencing that third one with him. I shoved my Calculus notes off of my lap and slid down into a laying position, my arms crossed over my chest. After talking about Chelsea and Eliza, I suddenly missed them intensely, even though I’d just seen them a couple of days before. My weekend had been spent at Covelli Convenience in a baggy, unflattering uniform t-shirt. Sure, Raul and Celso were really cool, but they weren’t girls. I couldn’t talk to them the way I could talk to my girlfriends.

Jake slumped down on the bed next to me and looked at the ceiling. “You really can’t tell me I’m not open enough. You’re closed pretty tight, if you ask me. Clam.”

“Clam?” I scoffed, turning on my side to face him and bending my arm to prop my head up on my palm. “I’m the one trying to initiate conversation here. You aren’t responding appropriately.” My ears remained alert for the sound of anyone coming down the hallway. If my dad or Olivia walked in and saw me lying next to a boy, in my pajamas, while I was grounded, after being suspended, and with my homework unfinished, I would be in deep shit. I’d be grounded for the rest of the century—literally.

He shrugged, still staring up at the ceiling rather than at me. “You seem to have some commitment issues,” he said, to which I responded with a short, humorless laugh. “Well, really. The only guy you give the time of day is Chase, and that’s a dead end.” When I opened my mouth to object, he quickly said, “Think about it. I hit on you all the time and it bounces right off of you. And that one guy, the one from the pancake thing, the witch boy. He was practically begging for your attention, but you blew him off. It’s simple. You don’t want someone who wants you. You want someone you can’t have, because it means you’ll never have to commit to him.”

“I don’t want Chase.”

“Of course, that’s a perfect explanation for why you were making out with him in the woods a couple of days ago.”

My eyes narrowed, my expression frozen. After a few seconds, I dropped flat onto my back, my lips curling into a frown. “He told you?” I asked, feeling hurt. What if he had only kissed me so he could tell his little vampire friends about it? And really, why did I care so much? It was hormones. It wasn’t like I liked him. He probably didn’t even like me. He probably just said it to catch me off guard.

To my surprise, Jake said, “No. I was coming back after grabbing a bite to eat and I saw you guys.”

I quietly released the tense breath I’d been holding. Then I wasn’t just someone he made out with to brag about. That meant I had more thinking to do. Thankfully, I had until Thursday when I returned to school to do this thinking. Then it seemed inevitable that we’d have to discuss what we were doing. Did that make things easier or harder?

“Chase was told not to pursue a relationship with you other than that of friends or allies. There’s trouble for him if he does, and you aren’t helping him by letting him kiss you.”

Impatient, I gritted my teeth and asked, “If that’s the case, then why are you allowed to pursue me?”

He smiled. It was a mischievous, playful face. “Because I was turned, not born, and I don’t have parents who have explicitly told me not to. The only one I have to answer to is Miles, and not only does he allow it, he encourages it. You’re very important to the coven, and he would like for the coven to be important to you.”

For several moments, I stared at him in unblinking surprise. Politics. That’s what these vampires were all about. Sure, maybe some of them had branching agendas, but they were all connected to the same political tree. Maybe Jake was slightly interested in me, but he wouldn’t be if it didn’t benefit the coven as a whole. And this interest would not benefit the coven if I wasn’t the daughter of an influential judge on the Court of Supernatural Justice. If not for her, I would have graduated from Rosser without ever having noticed Chase Benton. I would have run out of the woods that night without ever crossing the vampires’ minds again.

“Is that what Kendra meant when she told Chase to talk to his parents?” I asked, recalling the intense conversation I’d seen them having in the hallway the week before. “He told her to talk to you, and she said he was crazy. Did Kendra mean—”

“Kendra doesn’t like you,” said Jake flatly. “But she’s Chase’s friend. She wanted Chase to talk to his parents to convince them to give him formal permission to be with you before he got into trouble. Chase probably figured that the main reason she wanted him to do that is because it would be beneficial, politically, if you sincerely cared for someone in the coven. He’s not into the political agenda, though, and he won’t fuel it. I’m interested in all that, and I’m definitely curious about you. That’s why he told Kendra to talk to me. But Kendra doesn’t think I stand a chance with you.”

I scoffed. “She’s right about something,” I muttered. “If you’re trying to get closer to me, why would you tell me to my face that I’m most useful as a political asset?”

Unbothered, he said, “Because that’s how I’ll be most useful to you, too. Well, next to other things.” His grin was suggestive, and I was aware of the vampire charm he was using. I socked his arm to make him stop. “Fine, I’ll wait for you,” he said, sounding playfully disappointed. “Just stop pining over Chase. He’s not going to do anything with you except maybe kiss you. Is that enough?”

My heart began to ache rather suddenly, and I felt my smile fade away. No, no, no. Those were the wrong feelings. I sat up slowly. “Jake, I have to get to this work. I’m going back to school in a few days.”

For several seconds, he seemed to study my face. Then he sat up and walked to the window. He slipped out wordlessly. After a few minutes, I stood up and went to close and lock the window, pulling the curtains shut.

There was something wrong with my reaction to Jake’s words. I had to be misinterpreting my body’s signals. I’d felt this way before. It hadn’t ended well. Numbly, I reached for my pillow. I had a scream to muffle.