she’d said, her voice ringing with skepticism. “Come on, Quinn.”

And Quinn had been worried she’d alienate the only friend she had, so she’d recanted her story.

Becca never brought it up again.

Admittedly, it was rarely that bad back in those days. Her mom had been normal enough, coming to Quinn’s school events on occasion, mingling with other parents like she didn’t come home and knock back a bottle of Jack Daniel’s every other night.

Then their lives had started a downward spiral.

Or continued down it, depending on your perspective.

A knock sounded on the bathroom door, and Quinn jumped.

Tyler spoke from the other side. “You okay in there?”

“I’m a girl. Takes a while.” But Quinn hurriedly started pulling her hair into a messy knot at the back of her head. She untied the towel wrapped around her body and threw it over the shower rod.

“I’m not trying to rush you,” he said. “Just checking.”

Quinn glanced at her folded clothes waiting by the sink: the old dance sweats she usually slept in, plus a flimsy T-shirt that would leave a few inches of midriff bare.

She glanced at her na**d body in the mirror. The other dance girls were full of angles. Graceful angles, but angles nonetheless: a hip bone here, a sharp edge of shoulder there, a jawline practically cut from marble.

Quinn’s body was all sloping lines and curves.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She had a new worry: keeping Tyler interested so she had a place to sleep.

He’d been quiet in the truck, but it was an anxious sort of quiet. A nervous tension had clung to the vehicle, worrying her that any minute he’d pull over and demand that she get out.

“You’re like them,” she’d whispered finally, terrified that he’d snap and demand that she keep his secret.

“Like them?” he’d said flatly.

She’d had to lick her lips. “A full Elemental.”

But he hadn’t snapped. He’d just nodded.

That same tension was hanging around his apartment now.

What would he do, now that she knew? It seemed like enough of a reason to put her out. Quinn pulled on the T-shirt and a pair of lace panties, then slapped a coy smile on her face and strolled out the door.

It sounded like all the air left Tyler’s lungs at once. Quinn kept walking, picked up a copy of Maxim magazine on her way to the couch, then sprawled suggestively against the cushions.

She flipped open to the middle and didn’t look at him.

She could practically hear his brain cells reorganizing to head south.

But then her sweatpants hit her in the chest, landing on the magazine. “Put some pants on,” he said.

She glanced at him. “You don’t really want me to.”

He came and sat in the chair in front of her. He kept his eyes level with hers. “If I hadn’t just watched your mom lose her shit, you’re right. I wouldn’t want you to. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I’m not going to play. Put some pants on.”

She pouted. “Make me.”

He sighed. “Fine. The hell with it. Sit around half naked.”

She pushed the magazine and the pants to the side and crawled into the chair with him, straddling his lap like she’d done the night before.

Tonight, however, his jaw was set, and he didn’t make a move to touch her.

But when she leaned in, pressing her chest against his, he caught her waist, holding her at a slight distance.

“What do you think?” he said. “That if you don’t sleep with me, I’m going to put you out on the street?”

Well, that was honest. Anger flared, and Quinn started to climb off his lap.

Tyler’s hands tightened on her waist. She struggled, but he held fast. “Why is it that you get to screw with me, but when I call you on it, you get all indignant?”

Honestly, because arguing was easier than thinking.

“Let me go,” she said.

“No way. Not until you tell me what’s rolling around in that head of yours.”

She met his eyes and made her expression hard. “Let me go or I’ll tell Nick and his brothers what you can do.”

Well, that broke his control. His face turned furious and he shoved her onto the couch roughly, leaving her there and storm-ing into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened with a creak, and he slammed it shut hard enough to make the contents rattle.

“You don’t know what the f**k you’re talking about,” he snapped, using an opener to jerk the cap off a bottle of beer.

“Don’t you get it? This isn’t a game.”

“Yeah, I get it,” she fired back. “You’re all gung ho for someone to kill my friends, when you’re guilty of the same thing.”

“I’m not guilty of anything!” he yelled. “I never hurt anyone with this! They did.”

Quinn sucked back into the couch, holding her breath. His anger was frightening, reminding her of that first night behind the 7-Eleven, when he’d burned her arm and demanded answers.

He wasn’t done yelling. “I risk myself for you, and you’re going to turn it around and threaten me? Are you f**king kidding me? Do you understand that the Guide could be watching?

That what I did was enough to earn a bullet to the head?” He took a long drink and slammed his beer onto the counter. “God damn it.”

Quinn wished she could make herself invisible. She hugged her knees to her chest and wished she’d put the pants on. She felt too exposed. Too vulnerable.