The Healing Power of Sugar: The Ghost Bird Series: #9 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) by C. L. Stone

snort.
    Silas laughed in his big, booming tone. “Shit. Too cute.”
    “What, you don’t think I can do it?” Nathan asked, shifting me higher on his shoulder as he started walking again.
    It wasn’t worth getting between them, so I just accepted that I was going to be carried. I wondered about Silas egging Nathan on. Did he do it a lot?
    Nathan moved quickly while Silas trailing behind—I could see him smirking, even though I was upside-down.
    I kept expecting the edge of the Taylor Compound to come up soon, but remembered any previous time I’d been here, I’d been in a car, so hadn’t noticed how long the drive was.
    Nathan didn’t seem to have any trouble carrying me until we turned a bend and then he kept trying to adjust me. I almost fell off once, and Silas swooped in to catch me, before Nathan turned away. “I’ve got her,” he said.
    “Don’t drop her,” Silas said with a chuckle. “You need me to do it?”
    “She’s just unbalanced,” Nathan said with a grunt. “I keep thinking she’s going to slip off.”
    “Uh huh,” Silas said, sarcasm in his voice.
    Nathan mumbled something that I didn’t catch, but as they continued to walk, Silas stayed right behind Nathan.
    All I could see was the gravel and the lower parts of trees and the boys’ legs. It was easier just to relax and lay limp.
    “Almost there,” Silas said. “I think it’s coming up…”
    “I thought there was a tree,” Nathan said. “Isn’t there a white oak before…” He stopped abruptly, rocking forward.
    I felt something, too, a strange prickling feeling through my body.
    “Shit,” Nathan said, and shuffled me more as he arranged an arm over my thighs. With one hand, he reached back quickly for his pocket, pulled out his phone and brought it around out of my sight. “Yeah?” he said.
    “What the hell are you doing? What’s wrong with Sang?” North’s voice still was deep, even through the cell phone.
    Nathan stopped and then put me down onto my feet. I stayed standing, but not without a wave of colors flashing over my eyes and as the blood rushed out of my head, making me dizzy. I held onto Nathan for a bit of support until my head stopped spinning.
    “Did you just shock me?” Nathan asked and then turned his head. The breeze flattened his reddish hair as he gazed at the trees. “You didn’t tell me you had cameras out here.”
    Silas stepped around Nathan, taking my hand and leading me on, chuckling. “Sounds familiar.”
    I sighed, feeling a little funny after having been carried upside down for so long. I combed my fingers through my hair. “He shouldn’t be spying on us like that.”
    “Are you going to shock him again?”
    I shrugged, but then paused to let Nathan catch up to us.
    Nathan mumbled complaints into the phone. After a while, he shook his head. “Fine,” he said, shoulders relaxing, defeated. He hung up on North and pointed the phone at me. “I could have carried you all the way to the house.”
    “Why is he watching?” I asked.
    “He’s keeping an eye on the cameras for Luke; Kota said he didn’t see him anywhere. He spotted us coming up.” He stuffed the phone into his back pocket. “When he realized you weren’t actually hurt, he got after me for…I think he said wearing myself out during an emergency.”
    I felt a little put out since I’d wanted to text North about spying on us, but now I realized I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on in that fight. He was probably right. We didn’t know if this was an emergency and we had been goofing off. “Let’s just find Luke,” I said.
    Nathan and Silas nodded, their blue and brown eyes now serious and trained ahead at the road.
    The Taylor Compound was quiet as we approached. Silas and Nathan skirted the perimeter to the left, closer to the trailer. I moved behind them, studying the house. It looked quiet. A couple of lights seemed to be on, but it was hard to tell since it was still daytime.
    The boys stopped right