He raised his eyebrows. “You’ll try?”

I suddenly felt very aware that I was about to hear something bad. Very, very bad. ‘Fine. I won’t freak out until you’re finished.” But after that, all bets were off.

He held the needle just above my ribcage. I flinched—I absolutely, one-hundred percent, hate needles. With all their sharpness and being pointy—their sole purpose was to stab you.

“I’m not even sure where to begin with all of this,” he muttered and let a hiccup of silence go by. “Do you remember that story I told you about. The one about the fallen star.”

“Yeah…I remember.”

“Hold still,” he said as he tipped the needle down and vigilantly guided it through my skin.

It stung. Bad. My eyes snapped shut, and I clutched on to the edge of the couch.

“Breathe,” Alex reminded me.

My eyes flew open, and I sucked in a breath of air.

“You good?” he asked after a second or two had ticked by.

“Yeah, I think so.” But my voice trembled.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah…but can you get this over with quickly. Please.”

He nodded, and then weaved the needle into my skin again. “So where was I?”

“You were talking about the fallen sta—" I gasped as he pressed the needle into my skin for the third time.

“Oh yeah, the fallen star—all of what has happened has to do with that.”

“How?”

“You remember the story, right? Twenty years ago a star fell from the sky.”

I nodded. “But that doesn’t mean I believe it.”

He paused, the needle a mere sliver of air away from piercing into my skin. “You promised me you’d keep an open mind, remember. And you need to believe in the fallen star story otherwise the rest of this is going to sound like a lie.”

“But you are a liar, right?” I asked, knowing I was treading on thin water here. He was the one holding the needle, after all. But still, it needed to be said.

“Liar’s such a strong word. I prefer to think of it as me omitting some of the details.”

I rolled my eyes. Whatever.

This time when he snaked the needle through my skin, he placed his free hand on my stomach. My bare stomach. All of my focus centered on how his fingers were touching my bare skin. The warmth. The buzzing. It even numbed out the pain a little.

“Gemma?”  His voice pulled me back to him.

I blinked dazedly. “Huh?”

He stared down at me, his forehead creased. “Did you hear what I said?”

As much as I hated to do it, I shook my head because I hadn’t heard a single word he’d said. “Umm…No.”

“I asked if you remembered when I mentioned the secret group that hid the star.”

I nodded, still somewhat distracted by his warm hand touching my stomach. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, the secret group is called Custodis of Vita.”

There was so much electricity. “The awhata?”

“The Custodis of Vita,” he repeated, sounding irritated.

That’s it. It was too hard to focus with his hand touching me like that. I reached down and lifted it off of me.

He gave me a strange look, glanced at his hand, then back at me.

“What is that like Latin or something?” I asked, hoping to distract him away from what I’d just done.

“Yeah…it means Keepers of Life. But for short we call ourselves The Keepers.”

“Keepers of life.” I raised my eyebrows. “It sounds like a cult.”

A soft laugh escaped his lips. “It’s not, though. We actually protect the world from dangerous things”

“We?” I studied his expression; so serious and, at least as much as I could tell, so not the expression belonging to someone who was lying. However, Alex was an excellent liar. “So you’re saying that you belong to this Keepers group?”

He nodded. “And Aislin. And…” His voice got quieter. “Marco and Sophia.”

I lay there, motionless, letting his words sink in. “So what you’re trying to tell me is that Marco and Sophia, the people who’ve raised me since I was one, belong to some secret group who protect the world from evil?” It sounded way too fictiony. All saving the world from evil and demons and vampires. Yeah, I know, he hadn’t actually mentioned vampires but…God, what if there were actual vampires?  “No. There’s no way. You’re lying. You have to be lying.”

He had to be.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that in the last five minutes, which is really frustrating since this is one of the few times I’ve ever told the truth.” He seemed so angry it was hard not to believe him. Besides, something else had just occurred to me.  Something that might backup part of what he was saying. That time I’d caught Sophia and Alex having that strange conversation in the foyer. If what he was saying was true, it would explain how they knew each other. My stomach felt all twisty. What if what he was saying was true? “Is that why you and Sophia were talking the other day? Did it have something to do with all of this?”

He gave a slow nod.  “That night we were discussing….something.”

I felt a sharp tug as the needle snagged my skin. I let out a whimper and my hand instinctively flew down toward the pain. Luckily, Alex caught my fingers before they touched the stitches.

“Whatever you do, don’t touch it,” he warned.

I drew my hand back and cradled it against my chest. “So, if you’re telling me the truth—which I’m still not one-hundred percent certain you are—then why hasn’t anyone mentioned any of this to me before?”

He hesitated, looking stressed. “I don’t even know how to begin to explain the rest of this to you.” He let out a frustrated sigh as the needle slipped through my skin. “Okay, so that star I was telling you about held a lot of power. That’s why we—the Keepers went and got it in the first place. If it fell into the wrong hands then…”

Silence grasped the air.

"Then what?” I wish he’d just spit it out.

He shook his head. “Nothing.” He paused, seeming torn about something. “Okay, let me try this again. There are these people who have the ability to see into the future. Kind of like Psychics, but we call them Foreseers. But anyway, one of these Foreseers made this prediction—or a prophecy I guess you could call it—that this fallen star would prevent the end of the world from happening.” He picked up the scissors and trimmed the end of the string off. “You’re into astronomy, right? So I’m sure you’ve heard of December 21, 2012?”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. End of the world. WTF.

“Gemma?”

“Um…yeah…Dec. 21, 2012? Aren’t the planets supposed to align or something?”

He nodded. “At the exact same moment the winter solstice takes place.” He tossed the scissors back into the box and pulled out a roll of tape and gauze. “When I say ‘end of the world’, what I mean is there’s this portal that’s supposed to only be able to be open up at the very exact moment the planets align.”

“A portal,” I repeated with skepticism. I mean, I’d heard some theories on what some people believed was going happen on December 21, 2012. And a couple of them had discussed the possibility of the world ending. But a portal? Really?

He cocked an eyebrow. “You still seem like you don’t believe me.” He positioned the gauze over the stitches and secured it with two strips of tape. Then he set the roll of tape back into first aid kit and snapped the lid shut. “I’m all done now, so you can sit up if you want.  Just be careful, though. And don’t move to fast or you might rip them open.”

I tugged the edge of my shirt down and slowly sat up. My side felt all strange and tight, and the skin burned.

Alex set the kit down on a nearby table and dropped down on the couch beside me, his knee brushing against mine and making my muscles tense as electricity coiled up my thigh.

“So what is that?” I asked abruptly. “That electricity thing that I feel whenever I’m around you?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

I eyed him over suspiciously. I could never be sure whether he was lying or not. “You have no idea what it is?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I’ve never felt anything like it until you came along.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I muttered. “Until the first time I was by you.”

He looked surprised. “Really?”

“Yes really. Why do you look so surprised? You just said the same thing?”

“Because it’s different with you.” Before I could yammer out a bunch of questions about that, he shifted the direction of the conversation. “But anyway, back to the portal. See, if it opens up, it will let out a ton of Death Walkers. So I’m sure you can image how the end of the world is supposed to happen.”

I stared down at my hand, remembering the bluish-purple color. “By ice.”

“Exactly.”

“So how come I started freezing to death, and my fingers turned all funky and blue, but you seemed completely unbothered.”

“Eventually mine would have turned out the same way,” he explained. “Your reaction to the Death Walkers chill is just a little worse than mine.”

“Why?”  I asked. “I mean, is there something weird about me?”

“I’m getting to that.” He fiddled with a loose string hanging off of one of the throw pillows. “There’s this guy named Demetrius, who is the leader of all the Death Walkers, and he wants this portal to open up.  And basically, this fallen star is the only thing that has enough power to keep the portal from opening, so you can imagine how important it is to keep the star away from him.”

“Do you still have it?” I was confused by how weird it sounded. I mean, this was crazy. It had to be some twisted, freaky dream I’d been sucked into or something. Or maybe I’d had a meltdown and created my own personal fantasy world inside my head. There was no way this could be real, right? But if that were true, then why did it feel like there was more truth in his story than anything I’d ever been told?

A funny look flickered across his face. “Yeah, we still have it.” He kept his eyes on me for an instant longer, before forcing them away. “We kept it hidden so Demetrius couldn’t find it and destroy it.  For the first few years, we had a Shifter transfer the star’s energy into different objects to keep its location a secret.” He stopped. “Do I need to slow down? You look lost.”

“Kind of lost. Kind of overwhelmed,” I admitted. “But you can go on.”

“Okay, but just so you know the next part is going to be very hard for you to hear. And you need to make sure to stay as calm as you can.”

I swallowed hard, my stomach churning. “I’ll try.”

He took a deep breath and surprised me when he reached over and took my hand. “An accident happened three years after we found the star. Theron, the Shifter I told you about, was attacked by Demetrius while in possession of the object that was holding the star’s energy in it. He ended up panicking and accidently shifted the power into something it should have never gone into.” He gave a long pause. “It went into a woman.”