The White Games

16) Chapter Sixteen

#7 Misha Castiel – Day Four - 9:43 AM

I sit up with a groan, my head throbbing like a rusty nail has just been driven through it. Pale, flickering sunlight filters through the window to my right, masking me in its gentle glow. Outside the open blinds, I can see the empty streets of suburbia.

"Almost forgot where I was," I grumble, sitting up slowly and carefully. The cuts and scrapes left from the vase have been cleaned up, courtesy of Tori. The living room is mostly bare; besides for the small coffee table that has been returned to its standing position and the mantle place that holds the shards of broken vase, there's absolutely nothing in the small room. "God, my head hurts like hell."

"You're awake."

I whip my head around and see Tori stepping down the staircase. Her chocolate brown hair is wet and shiny, spread behind her back as she gazes at me with her gray eyes. There's a strong scent of cinnamon around her. She pauses at the edge of my couch, as if waiting for my response.

I blink in surprise. "Did you wash your hair?"

She grunts and rolls her eyes as she crosses her arms. "Who cares if I did?"

"I...I don't know." It's still early in the morning, so I'm groggy. I don't know what's going on. But I find it odd that she washed her hair. I didn't think she cared enough to do that. When I first met her, she looked like a supermodel that got sucked into a tornado and spat out in the middle of the forest. Now she just looks like...a supermodel.

"You look ridiculous when you just sit there with your mouth open," Tori says as she crosses the room and enters the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards.

I snap my mouth shut and glare after her. "You took me by surprise. My head still hurts from that stupid vase."

She doesn't turn around or even respond to me as she continues her search through the cupboards. I take that as a sign that I'm right, and stand up and stretch. The carpet beneath my feet is still stained with mud from our prior clash with Oreo. Stupid girl. I hope she ran into a tree and hurt her head as much as she hurt mine.

"You see the dead?" Tori asks, closing the cupboards and backing out of the room with a bottle. I eye it warily as she pops the cork.

"Is that more alcohol?" I ask. As much as I like Tori, I don't think I can deal with her drunkenness again. Or rather, I don't want her to have and deal with it.

She shakes her head, plopping herself down on the couch and resting her feet on the table. "It's grape juice." She takes a long swig of it, and I breathe silent relief.

"You said something about the dead."

She barely even looks up from her drink. "Check your thingamajig, or whatever the hell Mr. White calls those damn things."

I cautiously turn on my datapad on, wondering just what I'm about to see. Mr. White has been everything but predictable. Sometimes I'm truly terrified of what he might show me. But there's nothing. Just the same old faces on the rankings. Nothing's changed, because it's not noon yet.

"I don't see anything," I tell Tori as I gaze at Chris' smug face sitting at the #1 position.

"Scroll down, stupid."

Feeling a minor twinge of indignation, I slide the screen downwards and finally see what it is that Tori wanted me to see. I noticed there are more Challengers who've have their faces crossed out. Three more to be exact. Bree, Killian, and Fausto. That last one throws me for a loop, because Fausto looks almost exactly like me.