“I’ll try not to set the room on fire,” I promised, and walked out of the room. But as the door clicked behind me, I paused. Going back to my silent, empty room with only the television for company sounded depressing. I could stay in Wes’s room, but the human didn’t want me there, and besides, I wasn’t sure I could face Riley again. My dragon was still writhing and coiling beneath my skin, frustrated at being contained. If I went back in there, I might really break my promise about not setting things on fire.

Spinning around, I crossed the carpet to the door right beside Wes’s. Garret’s room. Putting my ear to the wood, I listened for movement, voices from the television, anything to tell me he was awake, but there was only silence. I hesitated a moment, then tapped softly on the wood.

“Garret? Are you in there?”

Nothing happened. No footsteps shuffled toward me, no movement, sound, or voice came from the other side. The door stayed firmly closed. I hovered in the frame a moment, debating whether or not I should try again, louder this time. But if he was asleep, or worse, ignoring me on purpose, I really didn’t want to disturb him.

Finally, I turned around and padded back to my door, feeling restless, lonely and slightly depressed. My room was quiet, and though the city twinkled and bustled outside the window, never still, the silence on this side of the glass made me feel very alone. I showered, turned up the television for noise and spent a good ten minutes figuring out how to order room service from the kitchen downstairs. When the food came I scarfed down the slightly overcooked burger in less than a minute, not having realized how ravenous I was until the first bite.

I guess gun battles and car chases work up quite the appetite. Not to mention nearly being shot to death.

My stomach turned, and my appetite vanished as quickly as it had come. Shivering, I left the fries to harden on the tray and crawled beneath the covers of the huge bed, pulling the quilt over my face. Curling into myself, I listened to the babble of the television filling the suffocating quiet, wishing I could just turn off my brain for a few hours. Garret, Dante and Riley all crowded my mind, each pulling at different emotions until I was a tangled knot of feeling inside. I finally drifted off, but kept jerking awake throughout the night as their faces, and the face of the man I’d killed, continued to chase me through my dreams.

Riley

Riley

“You’ve gone mad for the girl, haven’t you?” Wes remarked.

I glared at him from across the room. He sat on the bed with his computer in his lap, finishing off his bottle of soda. Lowering his arm, he raised a shaggy eyebrow at my expression.