Seconds Before Sunrise (The Timely Death Trilogy) Read Free Page A

it’d be,” I said.
    Jonathon gestured to the bent door I’d practically destroyed. “I can tell.”
    I pushed it back into place, cringing at the sharp noise.
    “You have other things you should fix, too,” he said, pointing to my face.
    I knew what had happened. My ey es were ice blue, not green.
    I rubbed the partial transformation away. “Great,” I muttered. I couldn’t even control myself during the day.
    “Why don’t you go home already?” Jonathon knew my schedule better than most. Homeroom was over and so was my day at school, but I hadn’t gone straight to my car. I was too aggravated to drive.
    “Are they dating?” I asked Jonathon, pointing my thumb over my shoulder. I knew Jessica and Robb hadn’t moved. I could still hear her giggles, and I knew Jonathon was more in tune with gossip than I’d ever be.
    “Would it matter?”
    I glared. “Are they, Jonathon?”
    “No.”
    “Good,” I said. “I’d have to kill him twice if that were the case.”
    Jonathon sighed. “Jessica warned you this might happen,” he said, attempting to be the angel on my shoulder. “You can’t expect a seventeen-year-old girl to be single for long.”
    “Thanks for that,” I snarled, swinging my bag over my shoulder. “I’m going home,” I said, snapping my headphones on before he could speak again. I brushed past him, but his voice telepathically pushed through the tunes.
    Take some of that anger out in training, he said. You only have four months.
    I didn’t respond. Instead, I waved my hand over my shoulder and shut our telepathic line. He couldn’t continue the conversation even if he wanted to. I was done, and I wanted everyone else to be, too.
    …
    The doorbell rang, and I knew it was Camille before I heard her voice.
    “Hello, sir,” Teresa − my guard, Camille, in her human form − said, and my father’s grumble drowned her out. She’d started using the front door ever since I hadn’t bothered to hide my strange comings and goings. I’d be in my room one minute, and then I’d transform to leave. I never used the front door, and my stepfamily was starting to notice.
    “They aren’t here,” my father dismissed Teresa’s concerns. “But they’ll be back soon.”
    “Is Eric—”
    “In his room,” he answered.
    Teresa tapped her foot against the wood floor. “He’s not taking this very well.” She didn’t bother dropping her voice since she knew I was listening.
    “Did you bring him home?”
    “He drove.”
    I turned over, staring at my car keys on my desk. I hadn’t bothered hanging them up. I hadn’t bothered doing much. My room was a mess, and two of the light bulbs were broken. My room, aside from the nightlight beneath my desk, was dark, and I liked it that way.
    “I should’ve figured,” my father sighed. “He hasn’t left his bedroom since he got home.”
    “He saw Jessica today,” she said. The house creaked, and the couch squeaked as someone fell into it. I could practically see what they were doing.
    “I shouldn’t have told him about Jess, Camille,” he said, using her Dark name. Apparently, the confusion with double identities was genetic. My father couldn’t stand using human names any more than I could. “We should’ve kept it from both of them.”
    I knew what he was talking about. My life was destined for a successful battle by killing another, and Jessica was my only weakness. I was in love with her, and she was in love with me, but our relationship − our identities − would kill us both if the Light figured out whom she was and used her against me. She could be absorbed, whatever that meant, and my battle’s outcome would flip. I would lose, and everyone in the Dark would lose their powers. I couldn’t see her, and I hadn’t since Independence Day. Not until I saw her at school.
    “With all due respect, sir,” Camille began, quiet enough that even I, with my heightened hearing, could barely listen. “They found out on their