“What? Oh yeah.” She grins at me as she runs a hand through her short pink pixie cut. “I did it a few weeks ago when I was missing you. Kind of an homage, you know?”
Of course it’s an homage, because she still thinks hot pink is my favorite color… “It looks fabulous,” I tell her. Because it does. And because she’s pretty much the greatest cousin and friend a girl could ever wish for.
“So what class do you have next?” she asks, tugging me across the foyer toward the staircase. “Because I think you should blow it off and come hang in the room with me.”
“Don’t you have a class now, too?”
“Yes, but it’s just a review for the midterm on Friday.” She waves a hand in the air. “I can skip it to hang with my favorite cousin.”
“Yeah, but your favorite cousin has art right now, and I don’t think I should skip it. I need to find out if there’s something I can do to make up for everything I missed.” I eye her ruefully. “I am not prepared to repeat my senior year.”
“If you ask me, you shouldn’t have to make up anything. I mean, hello. Saving the world should get you straight A’s, like, forever.”
I laugh, because it’s impossible not to when Macy is on a roll. And she is very definitely on a roll right now. “I wouldn’t exactly call it saving the world.”
“You got rid of Hudson, didn’t you? It’s close enough.”
My stomach tightens. That’s the thing. I don’t know if I got rid of Hudson or not. I don’t know if he’s dead or off plotting his next act of world domination or trapped somewhere in between the two. And until I do know, I feel really shady letting anyone think I did something that might have helped “save the world.”
For all I know, I made everything worse.
“I have no idea where Hudson is right now,” I confess eventually.
Her gaze widens, but she catches herself and plasters a smile back on her face. “He’s not here, and that’s good enough for me.” She hugs me again, a little less enthusiastically this time. “So what do you say? Cherry Garcia in the room?”
I glance at the new phone Jaxon gave me, note that I only have about fifteen minutes to make it to art at this point. And I do want to go, despite how tempting it is to crash in our room and have Macy fill me in on everything that’s happened.
“How about we compromise?” I say, shoving my phone back into my pocket. “I go to art, you go to your last class, and we meet back in the room at five for ice cream?”
She quirks one brow at me. “You’re going to show up, right? You’re not going to blow me off for the resident vampire in chief?”
I burst out laughing all over again, because of course I do. How can I not when Macy is at her ridiculous best? “I’m going to tell Jaxon you called him that.”
“Go ahead.” She rolls her eyes. “Just make sure you do it after Cherry Garcia. I have so much to catch you up on! Plus, I want to hear all about what it’s like to be a gargoyle!”
I sigh. “Yeah, me too.”
“Oh, right. Dad told me you were having memory issues.” Her face falls, but her frown lasts only a few seconds before she shrugs it off. “Fine, you can tell me all about what it was like to be reunited with your mate.” Her eyes take on a dreamy cast. “You’re so lucky to have found Jaxon so young. Most of us have to wait much longer.”
Mate. The word goes off like a gong inside me, reverberating into every corner of my being. I haven’t actually thought about it since I’ve been back. But now that Macy has brought it up, I have about a million questions surrounding it. I mean, I know Jaxon is my mate, but it’s always been a really abstract thing. I’d just learned the term before I became a gargoyle and hadn’t really had time to think about it before I ended up frozen in stone.
Because the idea of being so far behind the curve makes me uncomfortable, I decide to ignore the word—and my feelings about it—until I actually have time to talk to Macy and Jaxon. Or at least time to run to the library and look it up myself.
“I’ve got to go,” I tell Macy, and this time, I’m the one to hug her. “I’m going to be late for art as it is.”
“Okay, fine.” Her answering hug is as enthusiastic as always. “But I will be in the room—with ice cream—at exactly four fifty-nine. I expect you to be there.”
“Scout’s honor.” I hold my hand up in what I think is a close facsimile of the three-fingered pledge.