Betrayal by Amy Meredith Page B

him before he leaves. You two go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.’
    ‘I’ll order for you,’ Luke called after her. ‘I know what you like.’
    ‘Aww, what a good boyfriend,’ Eve heard Jess say to Luke.
    Luke was her boyfriend! Sometimes that was still a little hard to believe. But they’d had their first fight and their first make-up. That made them a real couple.
     
    It was hard to miss Alanna. Luke was willing to bet that every guy who walked into Ola’s noticed her right off. It’s not that she was prettier than Eve, definitely not. But there was something about her. It was as if Alanna expected to be looked at, so you looked. Today she had her long hair swept up on top of her head. With her hair up – and her shirt conveniently cut to fall off one shoulder – it was really easy to see her tattoo of roses and thorns.
    Jess elbowed him. ‘I’m here, which pretty much means Eve’s here, so I don’t think you should be staring at Alanna like that. Because if Eve was here, you wouldn’t be.’
    ‘I wasn’t staring,’ Luke protested. ‘I was just noticing that she was here. As in, “We’re meeting Alanna – and, oh, look, there she is”.’ He started towards the booth in the back where Alanna was sitting.
    ‘Don’t notice so hard,’ Jess muttered, following close behind him.
    Alanna hadn’t seen them yet. She was tapping her teaspoon against the table top, frowning a little. Luke wondered what she was thinking about. The demon attack that the Order had predicted, probably. She’d be relieved to hear that Eve had already taken the demon down. Eve and Jess, he reminded himself. He wanted to make sure Alanna knew that Jess had held her own.
    ‘Hey, Alanna,’ Luke called as they approached. The frown disappeared, and Alanna gave them a big smile. Well, maybe it was directed a little more at him than Jess.
    ‘It’s great to see you. Sit down, sit down!’ Alanna urged. ‘I ordered us one of those massive sundaes they have here. It’s enough for about eight people, but I couldn’t resist.’
    Jess sat down next to Alanna. Luke knew that she was making sure Eve would be next to Luke. Which was fine by him. No place he’d rather be.
    ‘Where’s Eve?’ Alanna asked. She brushed her fingers lightly across one of the roses of her tattoo.
    ‘She’ll be right here,’ Jess said quickly, before Luke could answer. ‘She just needed to run back to school for a minute.’
    ‘Well, you two fill me in on what’s been happening,’ Alanna said. ‘I can’t wait. So, you realized the barrier had been put up, and then what?’
    ‘Like I told you, Eve used her power to take it down,’ Luke replied. ‘She was really upset that the Order had trapped her in town.’
    ‘The barrier almost killed her!’ Jess jumped in, eyes bright with anger on behalf of her friend. ‘They really should have told her about it.’
    Alanna held up both hands in mock surrender. ‘I agree. I told Callum that. But, basically, I’m powerless at the Order. I’m still just a trainee,’ she told them. ‘So, go on. Eve took down the barrier, and then you found the dead animals all around the town border, right, Luke?’
    ‘Yeah, and while he was doing that, Eve and I killed the demon,’ Jess put in, a triumphant gleam in her eye.
    Alanna’s brow wrinkled. ‘What? What demon?’
    ‘A gigantic smelly one made of slime, or mud, or something,’ Jess told her. ‘Huge mouth, lots of teeth?’
    ‘Is that the one the Order has in the database?’ Luke asked.
    Alanna shrugged. ‘It doesn’t ring a bell. I can look it up once I get back to the Order.’ She narrowed her eyes and studied Jess. ‘You killed it?’
    ‘I took out its limbs with kung fu, and Eve zapped it into a puddle of goo,’ Jess said. ‘No thanks to you guys and your invisible fence around the town.’
    ‘Yeah. In fact, since I found the dead animals inside the boundary, it means the Order put up the force field after the demon had already showed