Infamous

CHAPTER 5

Nick launched himself at the man and latched on to him with everything he had. Grunting, the man tried to flip him off his back, then he slammed Nick against the wall, trapping Nick between his steroid enhanced form and the brick. Ted used his body to slam Nick there repeatedly. Nick tightened his hold around the Ted’s neck, trying to find the carotid and cut off his blood flow there like Bubba had shown him.

You don’t gotta be strong, Nick. A little bit of pressure in the right place and you can own anyone.

Still, the man did everything he could to get Nick off him.

“That’s right. Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” Nick said arrogantly. “You might know karate, boy, but I know gorilla, and I’m a level-forty champion in it. Let’s hear it for Diddy Kong! Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew!” He mimicked the sound of a gorilla as he held on for dear life.

Her eyes filled with an equal mixture of humor and horror, Nekoda kept one hand over her mouth while Wren burst out laughing so hard he had to set his dishpan down before he dropped it.

“Oh my God, Nick! Nick! What are you doing? You don’t even know that man.” His mother came running over to them. “Get off that man’s back. Now!”

Nick hesitated. “Not sure that’s a good idea, Mama. He might kill me if I do.”

“You damn straight, punk! I’m gonna kick your—”

“You ain’t kicking nothing here, boy.”

The man finally stopped trying to buck him off his back as Dev or Remi or one of the quads grabbed Ted by his shirt front and held him still in one beefy paw of a hand. “Slide down, Nick. I’ve got it from here.”

It wasn’t until Nick’s feet were back on the ground and he saw the bow-and-arrow tattoo on Dev’s biceps that he knew which quad had saved him. “Thanks, Dev.”

“No problem. Now let me take out the trash and I’ll be right back to help clean up the mess he made.”

Nick gulped as he met his mother’s furious glower. Dude, don’t leave me. Cherise Gautier might be a tiny little slip of a woman, but she scared the snot out of him. Especially when she eyed him like she could go through him, like she was doing right this very second.

His butt was already doused in gas. She was about to throw it into the fire pit and roast marshmallows over his carcass.

“Mama, I can explain.”

“No. I don’t think you can. I know you can’t.” She let out a sound of supreme exasperation. “You don’t fight, Nick. Not for any reason. You know this. How many times do I have to tell you before you learn to listen? Huh? I raised you better. You’re not an animal to just grab someone and start pounding on them for no reason. What were you thinking? I’ll tell you what you were thinking. Nothing. Nothing at all. And I expect better from you than that. You’re at an age now where they’ll send you to jail for fighting. Do you understand me, boy? Jail. Prison. Just like your daddy.”

She leaned in to whisper harshly. Except her idea of whispering was loud and clear, even over the music playing. “And at my job, no less. Are you trying to get me fired again? You are, aren’t you? You’re not going to be happy until we’re living on the street, eating out of Dumpsters and I have to prostitute myself to feed you. You are grounded until you graduate. You hear me? You’re never getting a car or a license. Ever. You’re too hotheaded for one. You have no business driving a car when you can’t even sit and do your homework without flipping out and attacking an innocent stranger! What? Someone’s going to cut you off in traffic or blow their horn at you. Are you going to drag them out of their car and beat them on the street for it? Are you? You’re just like your father. Violent to your core. You don’t know how to stop yourself. You take everything too far and you overreact without thinking it through or taking a minute to consider the consequences. You’re going to get yourself killed one day because you can’t see past one second of what’s going on.”

With every word she spat at him, and she kept going, and going … and going, he felt like he was being slapped and stomped. Like he was the lowest scum-sucking parasite ever born.

Dev let out a sharp whistle behind her.

Jumping in startled alarm, she turned around to see him.

“Cherise, settle down. You’re giving the poor kid a concussion with that verbal beating. It’s all okay.”

She glared harshly at Nick. “No, Dev, it’s not. He knows better. And—”

“Cherise,” Dev said again, cutting her off. “I was on my way over here to do something a lot more extreme than what he did to that jerk.”

She scowled. “How do you mean?”

“Nick was protecting me,” Wren said in a tone so soft it was barely audible.

Dev nodded. “That dick was insulting Wren and Kody, and when he went for Wren’s back and attacked him, Nick stopped it. Besides, Nick wasn’t beating on him, Cherise.” Dev started laughing. Hard. Which really didn’t help Nick’s deflated ego in the least. “Your boy was hanging on for dear life—like a scared kitten on a wild bronco.”

Oh yeah, just emasculate me on the floor, Dev. Thanks.

Dev kept on laughing. “Damn, to have had that one on camera. We could have made some serious money. It was hilarious.… ‘I know gorilla.’ Priceless, Nick. Just priceless.” Dev laughed until he was coughing from it.

Nick wanted to crawl under something. The only thing that kept him from feeling any worse was that Kody had seen him fight for real and knew he normally did a little better than this. Jumping on someone’s back was only used when he went up against someone who outweighed him by a couple of hundred pounds.

And that was just in the man’s arm weight.

“Thank you, Nick,” Wren said, inclining his head to him. Wren’s pet monkey, Marvin, stuck his head out of Wren’s apron pocket where he must have been sleeping and chattered at Nick as if in approval.

Dev clapped him on the shoulder so hard, Nick stumbled. “You got some serious stones on you, boy. You grow some more, and fill out, and we’ll hire you for bouncing.” Dev kept snickering. “Gorilla,” he muttered again as he wandered back toward the door. “I gotta tell Aimee that one.”

Now that they were alone, except for Kody, who slid back into the booth in an attempt to be invisible, his mom swallowed.

“I’m sorry, baby.”

But Nick was still too raw to listen. She had verbally slapped him—again—in front of everyone, and he was tired of being publicly humiliated for doing a good deed. “No, Ma. You’re not. You do this to me all the time. You make up your mind without bothering to find out any of the facts. You always assume I’m in the wrong, no matter what it is. When I was accused of stealing, you wouldn’t even listen to me tell you what had happened. And even when I forced you to hear it, you called me a liar in front of the man and the cops. You refused to stand up for me. You looked at me then, like you did just now—like I’m your worst disappointment and you’re sorry you kept me. Like I’m nothing. I was just a baby, Ma, and you let them take me all the way to the police station in a squad car. You said it would be good for me to see what happens to criminals—that maybe I’d think twice before I stole something else. I was a scared little kid, Mama. Most of all, I was innocent. I don’t mean to be rude or disrespectful, but I’m a real good kid. All I think about, morning, noon, and night, is taking care of you. Of not letting you down like everyone else has done. I do exactly what you tell me to. I keep my grades up and I work thirty hours a week before and after school. No matter how tired I am or what time it is, I walk you home every time you have to work at night. And I think I’ve earned a little benefit of the doubt from you once in a while. But it don’t matter how much I do that’s right. In your eyes, when it counts most, I’m always wrong.”

Tears choked him, but he wasn’t about to let them show. He was stronger than that. “You know all those fights I’ve gotten into at school, Mama? The ones you have repeatedly reamed me out over? They weren’t for me. I ain’t never had a fight because someone insulted me. I’m tough. I can take it. God, I’m so used to it that it flows over me like water over a duck. What I was defending in those fights was your reputation when they insulted you.”

He could handle the cruelty from his classmates. The brutality from the demons sent to kill him. He could take his teachers and principal thinking he was the worst sort of scum-trash.

What he couldn’t stand was how quick his mother misjudged him when he went out of his way to do things to please her.

He locked his jaw, trying to keep the tears from falling. That was all he needed.

Cry in front of his girl like he was some kind of baby who couldn’t handle his emotions.

Nick shook his head. “I don’t know what else to do to prove to you that I ain’t Adarian Malachai. To make you see the real me and not this misconceived notion you have of a pain in your butt, sent here to shame and humiliate you. I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that you have no confidence in your ability to raise a decent person or the fact that you expect me to turn psycho for no reason. It’s not my fault Adarian’s my father. I didn’t pick him, and I’m sorry that I’ll never be anything but your personal disappointment.” His heart pounding, he turned around and headed for the door.

“Where are you going, Nick?” his mom called after him.

“According to you and everybody else, Mama,” he snarled, “I’m going straight to hell, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Nick stopped as he reached the table Wren was currently cleaning. He pulled out a small handful of bills and set them down with the others that had been left in the empty bread basket.

Wren frowned at him. “What’s that for?”

Nick jerked his chin toward the booth where the man had been sitting. “You work too hard not to get what you’re entitled to. Since I cost you the tip, it’s only fair I make it up to you.” And with that, he left.

Putting his hands in his pockets, Nick headed down Royal, toward Bubba’s. He’d go home in a few minutes. But right now, he wanted to be with someone who didn’t accuse him of things when he didn’t deserve it. For all of his faults, Bubba had always trusted him and treated him like a man, and not some brain or genetically defective kid.

“Nick?”

He paused as he heard Kody’s voice. Part of him wanted to ignore her, but it wasn’t her fault his mom had laid into him in front of her. So he stood there with his head hung low, wishing he was anywhere else in the world than right here. Right now.

Yeah, one day he might have infinite powers capable of destroying the entire universe. But today, he was just another loser mandork, embarrassed to the core of his being.

Kody moved to stand directly in front of him. Bending her knees, she came up to capture his lips with hers. Nick closed his eyes and inhaled the sweetest scent he’d ever known.

She cupped his face as she kissed him, and he forgot all about his anger and hurt. After a few seconds, she wrapped her arms around him and held him close as she buried her face against his neck—something that sent chills all over him and made his blood race.

He held her against him and pressed his cheek against the top of her head. “Thank you, Kody.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Yes, she did. She cared. And that meant more to him than anything else.

Clearing his throat, he draped his arm around her shoulders and started back down the street toward Bubba’s.

“Your mother loves you, Nick.”

“I know. But she doesn’t trust me.”

“She worries about you.”

“I worry about me, too, but I don’t go around accusing me of … stuff I know not to do. I don’t understand why she can’t see me.” He clenched his teeth. “I don’t get it. I just don’t. You know, she actually asked me back when I played football why I wasn’t friends with Stone Blakemore. ‘He’s such a nice boy, Nicky,’” he mocked in a falsetto. “‘You can see all the good breeding in him. He’s such a gentleman. You could learn a lot hanging out with him and his friends.’” He curled his lip. “Stone, Kody. Stone. The boy who carries his only two brain cells in his jock strap, and who isn’t happy unless he’s picking on someone or mocking them.” The boy who called Kody a whore every time he saw Nick.

“Your mom always sees the good in people.”

But not in me.

And that was what always kicked him hardest. Stone, the idiot bully, was perfect. He, the ever dutiful son, was defective.…

The injustice stung so deep that it left a bleeding wound inside his soul. What would he have to do to make his mother realize that he wasn’t …

What?

A demon?

Something born to destroy everything?

A tool for evil?

Capable of murder?

His stomach churned even more as he realized that he was exactly all of that. And more. You’re destined to destroy everyone you love.

Maybe his mother saw more than he thought she did.

“Is she right, Kody?” he asked, needing to know the truth about himself. “Am I really going to flip out one day and become my father?”

She pulled him to a stop. “We all have choices, Nick. Even if it’s nothing more than the choice between lesser evils. No one can take away your free will. Not even the gods. It’s the one gift that can never be returned, stolen, or revoked. We can blame others for our bad decisions. We can say that we had no choice. But it’s always a lie. No one puts your hand on the gun but you. Only you can decide if you pick it up or leave it alone.”

“What about silkspeech?”

“That’s the power of influence, Nick. It’s not mind control. If the person is strong in their convictions, they can’t be controlled. You cannot compel a pacifist to murder.”

He wasn’t sure he believed that. “You don’t think that with the right motivation, you can make someone do anything?”

“What I think is if someone held a gun to your head and threatened to kill you, your mother would do anything they asked to keep you safe. But that is her freewill decision that she, alone, makes. You see what I’m saying? She could choose to let you die. We know she won’t, of course she won’t, but that’s because of the decisions she makes every day to put your life above hers. You can motivate someone to action, but in the end, they are the one who makes the ultimate and last decision to either do or do not.”

His little Yoda sage made sense.

She reached up to cup his cheek in her hand. “I don’t know if you’ll turn evil. Only you can decide which side of this fight you’re going to support. But I believe in you. I do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. And I definitely wouldn’t be protecting you. All of us have darkness inside us, and at times it possesses and seduces us in ways we never thought possible. Gives us promises that if we give in to it, it’ll make things better. I’ve not always done the right thing for the right reason, either. And I’m ashamed of some things I’ve done. We all are. Mistakes don’t have to define us. They’re how we learn and grow. They show us who and what we don’t want to be. It’s why they’re mistakes. And you, my love, are such a stubborn, stubborn boy, I can only imagine how much more obstinate you’ll be as a full grown man. I honestly can’t imagine you doing anything you don’t want to. So, no, I don’t believe for a second that you’ll simply snap a wheel and turn evil. And I can’t imagine you ever being like your father. No matter what.”

He took her hand into his and kissed her knuckles. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Kody.”

“Remember that the next time Jill or Casey talks to you.”

He smiled at her. “I always do.”

She gave him a quick hug, then let him go so that they could check in with Mark.

Nick opened the door to The Triple B and let Kody enter the store first. The moment they were inside, he paused as he heard Bubba and Mark arguing on the other side of the curtain.

“Get your hands—”

“Did I not tell—”

“You don’t know—”

“I know. You’re—”

“Stop. Just stop. You—”

“Me, stop You’re—”

There was an attractive lady on the other side of the glass cabinet, leaning against it with one hand propped against her cheek, looking oddly bored and amused all at the same time. An impressive feat really. With dark auburn hair that was cut in a chic style, and an elegant navy blazer, she straightened up and smiled as she caught sight of them. “Hi, y’all,” she said in a thick Tennessee drawl that was identical to Bubba’s and Mark’s. “How y’all doing?”

Contrary to misinformation and bad Hollywood attempts—some from people who ought to know better—not all Southern accents were the same. You could easily peg where someone came from by the sound of their accent and the words they used. And nowhere outside of New York City was it more obvious what ward or district you originated from, how educated your parents were, and how much money they had, than here in New Orleans. Even the name of the city itself was pronounced completely different depending on what street you grew up on.

Literally.

Nick’s Cajun accent wasn’t nearly as thick as his mother’s, unless he wanted it to be. And the Cajun version of French was all their own. While they could understand the French and the French could usually understand them, the Cajun way of pronouncing things and altering French grammar could send purists into fits.

Menyara’s Creole accent was as thick as his mother’s jar of refrigerated roux, and he loved the sound of it.

He wasn’t quite as pleased with his own. No matter how hard he tried to hide his accent, it always came out in certain words like “praline,” “etouffee,” “pecan,” and any time he lost his temper. You could easily tell how mad he was by how Cajun he sounded. And if he started spewing all Cajun words, duck.

“Can I help y’all with something?”

Nick smiled as he approached her. “You must be Bubba’s mama, Dr. Burdette. It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am. I’m Nick Gautier and this is Kody Kennedy.”

At the mention of his name, her demeanor changed completely. She went ramrod stiff and arched an irritated brow at him. “Nicholas Gautier, as I live and breathe. Now there’s a name I know well. Explain to me, boy, why you want to go and shoot me in my head when you don’t even know me. What’d I ever do to you?”

Nick sputtered as he tried to come up with an explanation for how he’d shot through her portrait that Bubba kept hung on his wall. “I-I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I swear it.”

She started laughing, then chucked him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m just joshing with you, Nick. Calm down, son. I don’t want to have to put down newspapers ’cause you wet the floor in a panic like my old hunting dog used to do every time Michael blew something up in the house. He had that poor old thing a nervous wreck until the day the Lord took her. I am absolutely not offended … much, that you blew my head off. But that’s all right, I was raised in the middle of four brothers, and with Michael for a son, I’m used to having to dodge bullets. Literally, most days.”

Without pausing or breaking a sweat, she went right into another segue. “Did he ever tell you about the time he was supposed to be napping and instead, he climbed up on his daddy’s gun cabinet, trying to get to the AC vent—whatever he was going to do up there, I don’t even want to know—I never asked. Anyway, poor boy slipped, hit the lock somehow, and popped it off. Next thing you know, his daddy’s 410, of all things, falls out and misfires. I was out in the yard with a friend, oblivious to my son’s stupidity, until a bullet whizzed right between us and shattered my birdhouse. By the time I got in the living room, Michael was trying to hide the gun behind the couch. Like I wouldn’t notice the busted cabinet hanging open and the gun missing out of its slot. Not to mention it was longer than the couch. Point being, don’t think anything about it, Nick. I am not offended,” she repeated.

Whoever said Southerners talked slow had never been around one raised in a big family. Here he’d always thought Bubba talked fast, but he had nothing on his mother.

“Hey, Michael!” she called out, finally interrupting Mark and Bubba’s fight. “You got visitors out here to see you. Stop arguing with your girlfriend and come on now.” Laughing, she winked at Nick. “The way them two carry on, I keep waiting to get a wedding invitation for them to take their nuptials. I ain’t never seen anything like it in my life, and especially not between two straight men. At least not to where it didn’t end up in a fist fight after a couple of minutes.”

“Michael is Bubba?” He felt stupid for asking, but …

His mother screwed her face up. “Oh, I hate that name he uses. Do I look like I’d name my son Bubba?” The way she said the name it sounded like the ultimate insult. “That I would gaze down upon my precious bundle that I had succored for months inside my own body and given all my devotion to and say, ‘Dear Lord, thank you for this wonderful gift. Let me call him Bubba, so that he can grow up and be mocked before he even opens his mouth.’ Did he ever tell you how he got that dang nickname?”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t even know it was a nickname. I thought his nickname was Cheese.”

“Oh, and don’t even get me started on that topic. Cheese? Really, Michael? For that I sent you to the best private school in town.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Nah, they named him Bubba when he was in tenth grade and had gone up to Ohio State for a summer football camp program. Those snotty brats started calling my baby Bubba because of his accent that they constantly mocked him over. And instead of stomping them into the ground like he should have, he started using Bubba as a joke.”

“Mama,” Bubba said as he came out of the back. “I can’t beat up everyone in the world for being stupid. Have you seen how many of them are out there? I work retail. Trust me. The world’s eat up with it. And aren’t you the one who’s always saying, ‘you can’t fix stupid, son, so don’t try?’ Besides, I got better things to do with my time than fight every idiot I come into contact with.”

She snorted. “Please. It wouldn’t be much of a fight. Have you looked at yourself, boy?

Nick gaped at her words. He couldn’t believe she’d encourage Bubba to fight when all he did was get dogged out by his mother for even thinking about fighting.

The universe had a sick sense of humor.

Dr. Burdette shook her head, then met Nick’s gaze. “I don’t know where he gets his gargantuan size from. My entire side of the family is mutantly short. Heck, I’m taller than two of my brothers. They are truly concentrated evil which is why they’re meaner than all get out. And while his daddy is average, his daddy is average. Genes make no sense to me.”

Bubba snorted. “You know, Mama, I don’t find that comforting given the fact that you’re one of the top pediatric surgeons in the country, and have written several defining works on genetic links to diseases.” He glanced at Nick and Kody. “It’s kind of like the time she baked me cookies when I was a kid, and then came up to my room to offer them to me while I was getting dressed for Halloween.”

“Oh Lord, not that again,” his mother said under her breath.

Nick was so confused. “What’s wrong with cookies?” His mom tried to bake, but it was not her forte. They were always burnt on the outside and still raw dough on the inside.

Bubba snorted. “Nick, I’m telling you this for your own good. If a woman, even your own mother, comes up and offers you cookies while she’s wearing a black apron with a skull and crossbones on it … decline. Just saying.”

His mother laughed. “It was during Halloween. Good grief. Who knew I’d scar you for life by offering you a snickerdoodle? I can just hear that conversation with your therapist now. ‘Oh, Doctor, it was so awful. There I sat as a little innocent child, playing my video games on my little baby tummy, when all of a sudden, my mean, awful mama, who’d just come off a thirty-six-hour shift at the hospital, who had driven two and a half hours to get home so that she could finish sewing up my Gene Simmons costume for trick-or-treating after my daddy had accidentally sewed the sleeve shut, and bake me some mummy dogs and snickerdoodles, offered me one.’” She held the back of her hand to her forehead. “‘Oh the humanity, Doctor. Oh the humanity I have seen. You just don’t know my pain. You. Just. Don’t. Know.’”

She gave Kody and Nick a droll stare. “I’ll bet if you tried to give him a snickerdoodle today, he’d scream like a girl and run for cover.” She paused and narrowed her eyes. Then a wide smile broke across her face. “I know what I’m making for dinner.” She grinned at Bubba. “You got any cinnamon in your kitchen, Bugaboo? Or is it all half-empty cereal boxes and Snickers like normal?”

“I got a loaf of bread and some peanut butter, too.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to insult you.” Her voice shook with laughter and sarcasm.

Nick laughed. “I like your mama, Bubba. She’s a lot of fun.”

“That’s ’cause she’s not busting your chops. As my dad would say, she’s like a head injury. Only funny when it happens to somebody else.”

He wouldn’t argue that. No one was immune from the blistering tongue of maternal criticism. But Nick wanted to return to something Bubba’s mom had mentioned that he hadn’t known about Bubba. Something he just couldn’t wrap his mind around. “Did you really play football?”

Bubba shrugged nonchalantly. “For a little while.”

“Little while, my pink patootie.” His mama turned her attention back to Nick and Kody. “Let me tell you about my baby boy, Nick. He was a first-string linebacker. One of the best you ever saw. When he wasn’t blowing stuff up around the house conducting bizarre experiments,” she glanced sideways at Bubba, “like the time he tried to launch the TV into space for the aliens to see—”

“Mama, I was four years old, let it go already. Dang … Do something stupid around your mama, one time, when you’re four years old and you never live it down.”

She ignored his interruption. “… He had a football in his hands and was leaving everybody in his wake. No one could catch him. The people who knew better than to mock him used to call him Battleground Bulldozer Burdette or Trip B for short. He had a full-blown football and academic scholarship to MIT, where he was one of their most valued players all four years he was there. He had offers to go pro and I don’t mean one or two teams. He was the number-one draft pick and was promised everything you can imagine if he’d sign. He could have played for any NFL team, anywhere.”

Nick was completely stunned. He’d had no idea. Bubba never really talked about his past, and the fact that he was a football star.…

That absolutely shamed Nick’s Peewee Bowl Championship wins he was so proud of. “Why didn’t you go pro?”

A deep sadness creased Bubba’s brow. “I had a lot of reasons that made sense to me back then.” He swallowed hard. “It doesn’t matter anyway.… I’d have probably had a massive injury on the field that would have cut my career short. As they say, all good things come to an end. Now, moving out of the past ’cause there ain’t no reason to be there, let’s talk about this cybernut on the loose at your school. You guys got a major problem.”

“Yeah, we know.”

“No, Nick, you don’t.” He crooked his finger for him to follow into the back of the shop.

Nick headed in and as soon as he saw the monitor where Mark was working, he froze. There were all kinds of photos on the site about his classmates. Some pretty graphic. Some gross. And some were just wrong. “What the…”

Mark let out a long breath. “If this weren’t cruel, I’d be impressed by the skill level. Someone spent a lot of time and they’ve done some incredible PI work on a whole lot of people.”

“But what concerns us most is this link.” Bubba took the mouse from Mark’s hand and clicked on the word “Sources.” “They’ve named everyone who gave them information on someone else.”

Nick ground his teeth as he read over the list and saw his own name listed as an informer. “They’re absolutely lying. I never told anyone anything about Spencer. Nothing. Not even my mama.” In that moment, he wanted to find the site owner and back over them with his poor driving skills. “What’s under ‘Cyblog’?”

Mark clicked on it. “The social ramblings of a jealous lunatic—keeping in mind that the man who is making this accusation against the site owner sleeps in duck urine and rather than go to a bar to troll for dates, spends his nights in the gator-infested swamp searching for zombies with Bubba. Believe me, I know crazy when I see it.”

Shaking his head, Nick didn’t comment on that as he read the rantings against his classmates. Mark moved his hand so that Nick could take possession of the mouse.

There was a photo of some of the cheerleaders, including Casey, from the haunted house his school was sponsoring. Under the photo—These are some of the nauseating fleas I have to stomach in class. Couldn’t you just puke? Look at them, the only thing smaller than their IQs is their skirts. Vo-mit.

Nick let out a low whistle. “I’m not sure I want to know what’s under the ‘Classmates’ link.”

Mark crossed his arms over his chest. “No, you probably don’t. It’s basically pages they’ve set up with doctored photos of your classmates in sexually explicit acts, or naked.”

Nick decided to take his word for it. Until Madaug perfected his eye bleach formula, he didn’t need to see something that would disgust him. “And you can’t find anything on the person who did this?”

“Nada, buddy. Nil. Nothing.”

This was so bad.

Bubba put a comforting hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep working on it. We’re going to find out who’s responsible.”

“Thanks, Bubba.” Sickened by the kind of callous individual who could do this to someone who’d never harmed him or her, Nick faced Kody. “I’m going home before I get into any more trouble, and wait for my mom to get off work.”

“Okay. Call me if you need anything.”

Most people would hear that and think she meant for him to use a phone. But he had several ways to contact her that didn’t require anything more than his thoughts

He kissed her on the cheek before he left out the back door of the building. If ever his powers would work correctly for him, now would be the time.

Unfortunately, the only thing he could see about the future was his coming restriction that would hang over his head until graduation.

At least it didn’t take long to make it home. He went inside and locked the door, then cursed as he remembered he’d left his backpack at Sanctuary. He wouldn’t be able to finish his homework until late tonight.

You could go get it.

Yeah, and chance another severe tongue-lashing from the mothership? No, thank you.

Grumbling at his own stupidity, he went to his room. He kicked off his shoes, then threw himself across his bed and reached for the radio. He needed some loud, make-the-neighbors-hate-my-guts music to improve his dismal outlook.

But as he reached for the controls, a chill went down his spine.

Unsure of what it meant, he scanned the room and …

Every protection sign he had on his walls—signs that were never visible to the naked eye unless something inhuman was trying to get to him—was lit up like Christmas in the Quarter. His walls literally glowed bloodred …

Crap! He was under attack.