ReVamped by Lucienne Diver Page B

and demand to know what he thought he was doing, but he had back-up in the form of a redheaded jock in gray sweats and a wife-beater T-shirt. Resigned, I let Rick keep the flaming skull on my T-shirt twisted up in his fist.
    “What the hell, dirtwad? This is the ladies’ room ,” I said. Luckily, pissed fit both my cover and my mood.
    “You put my guys in the hospital,” Rick growled. “Nat is eating through a straw .”
    “Dude, my guy isn’t eating at all, so you can back the hell up.”
    I’d never seen Rick like this. If he was acting, he was doing a helluva job at it, but I thought this was something more. There was something off, like the crazy violence last night at Red Rock. It had even gotten to me. I’d broken somebody’s jaw . Only I hadn’t felt angry, just … energized. I didn’t even know if the jerky jock had really deserved it or if it was some kind of drug or spell that was speaking through his fists.
    Rick pulled me toward him and slammed me back against the door again. I heard a manly yelp from outside and knew that Hunky Cop had tried to push his way in during the millisecond my body wasn’t blocking the door.
    “Police!” he yelled. “I’m coming in.”
    “The police, man!” the redheaded sweat-child said, as if Rick couldn’t hear for himself.
    “No worries,” Rick answered.
    He grabbed me to him again with one hand and flung the door open with the other, pushing me into the shocked cop with enough force that I’d have fallen if he hadn’t caught me. Rick and Red made a break for it while the cop’s arms were full and his balance was off, bolting down the hall and dodging a gurney in their way. They were gone in a flash.
    Hunky Cop twitched like he was priming to run after them, but I grabbed his arms and hugged him, as if I were a shaken little girl in need of reassurance. I didn’t know what Rick had been about, but there was no need to expose us both to the cops … for now.
    Hunky held me for another second, until I pretended to stop shivering, then gripped my forearms gently and eased me far enough away to see my face.
    “Who were those guys?”
    “A couple of jocks,” I said. “Ticked off that I’d hurt their friends. I told you it was me.”
    He looked stunned. “Do you know their names?”
    I shook my head. “I’m new here. Outside of the goths, I don’t really know anyone.”
    “So you fought for a girl you’ve just met?” he asked suspiciously.
    “Wouldn’t you?”
    He didn’t have an answer for that. He brought me back to his partner, and they questioned us for another twenty minutes or so, but in the end, with only my account of things and no one to cry foul or press charges, there wasn’t much they could do. Oh, there’d been beer bottles and whatnot all over the site, but it was too late to check our blood alcohol levels, and unless they fingerprinted us, which in any case would only prove we’d handled the bottles, not that we’d drunk out of them, they were out of luck. But they’d be watching. That was clear enough.
    By the time the questioning wound down, I was eying Hunky Cop’s neck like a junkie with the midnight munchies. It was his own fault, really. The coffee he’d had right in front of me probably qualified as cruel and unusual punishment. If he’d been drinking mochachinos, he would have gone down. My willpower only stretched so far.
    And, of course, I had to decline even the sodas they offered us because of my blood-only diet. But I probably looked totally tough to the others, like “I don’t want nothin’ from you, Copper.”
    Finally, Bella moaned, “ Now can we see Bram?”
    The cops took pity on us. “You go with them,” Crinkly said to his partner. “I want to talk to the girl a second.”
    He meant me. I’d faced down worse, though, than a cop in a no-Macy’s town. I wasn’t worried.
    Bella, Lily, and Ulric all looked at me to be sure I was okay with that, and I nodded them on.
    “Go,” I added. “I’ll be