Shadows of Ourselves (The Charmers Series Book 1)

by Apollo Blake

  Shadows of Ourselves

  by Apollo Blake

  ***

  For everyone out there with scars,

  no matter how you got them.

  For more from Apollo Blake, including info about new books, go to:

  http://chaotic-array.blogspot.ca/

  Shadows of Ourselves

  Copyright © 2016 by Apollo Blake/Jinx King

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners all wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction.

  All right reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding foreign rights or exclusive publishing rights, please contact the author.

  BEFORE

  A WARNING

  I feel like I should warn you; I’m more of a ticking time bomb than I am a person. And this isn’t a love story.

  I still don’t know if I love him. I know I still don’t love myself.

  I know that I’m a murderer.

  That’s who I am now: a boy pulled beneath a strong tide, into a dark place of magik and death. The pulse of another boy, one made of flames, beating against mine as I curl into him in the darkness.

  The nothing I made out of what was once a person, what once were two people.

  The nothing I made of us.

  The thrill of it—menace and shadows spreading beneath my skin like spilled ink, until I was powerless to pull myself back out—that became like an addiction, magik tearing away tiny fractions of my bleak life one by one until I was left to the harsh light. The pain of it, of every tiny loss, I craved it. It was like death.

  You have to understand that I wasn’t looking to get saved, that I’d done my best to make it look like I didn’t need saving at all.

  I’d done my best to actually not need it.

  Especially not in the electrical surge of magik, or in a boy. The two of us, we were both cold and unfinished, jagged edges and unforgiving steel. Two weapons waiting to be used against each other.

  It was only a matter of time before we fucking destroyed ourselves.

  ONE

  CROSSFIRE

  I’ve been able to feel lies for as long as I can remember.

  The city is full of them. It lives on them. How easy is it for you to look the truth in the eyes while you let something else fall from your lips? How good is your poker face? Not good enough to fool me, I bet.

  Not good enough to fool my mother, either—though she doesn’t have an ability like mine—just eyes in the back of her head and too much time on her hands. “Where are you going?”

  I froze at the sound of her voice. Melissa had been creeping up behind me for as long as I could remember.

  I’d been about to duck out the front door, but I turned around to look at her. She kept most of the lights in the apartment off at all times to lower the power bill, and her pale face was cast in shadows.

  She looked like part of the darkness, standing there with her messy blond strands tied back, her short, pudgy frame draped in an ancient pink silk housecoat. She wasn’t empty handed, of course. She was always rocking some kind of bottle. Her eyes, the same brown as mine, were dark and beady now. It gave me the hunch this wasn’t her first beverage tonight. Well, that and nineteen years of firsthand experience with her drinking habits.

  In one hand she held a glass of orange juice, and in the other she clutched a bottle of vodka. Drunk mom couture.

  Melissa Davenport. My mother—she was nothing if not predictable.

  “Trying for a head start at oblivion again, huh?” I asked. She didn’t reply, just raised an eyebrow and waited.

  I was pretty sure Melissa wouldn’t try to stop me from going out—not that she really could at this point—but I was never sure with her. She swung from joy to depression like an anvil on a rope; constantly going back and forth, always ready to fall and crush me. I didn’t want to start a fight. I had no energy for it tonight, and I’d taken too long to crawl out of bed already, sleeping half the day away.

  If I was late the deal might fall through. And I needed this deal. The one I’d gone out of my way to hide from her.

  I definitely couldn’t tell my mother where I was really going.

  I was short like Mom was. I’d inherited her light golden hair, her pallor and walnut eyes. I got my wiry frame from her, too—she’d been a stick once upon a time, even if it didn’t show now. I was tiny and angular and I had an attitude, and so all of her eternally intoxicated friends told me I was her spitting image.

  I must have gotten my brains from my father.

  Melissa wasn’t a good mother, but she liked to be able to pretend she was. So if I told her Riley’s cousin was sneaking us into the nightclub where she worked because her boss wanted to meet us, Mom would try to keep me home. Even though I was nineteen—a legal adult. I was only really her son when it was good for her ego. Or when she could take away what I wanted.

  It didn’t help matters that she hated my best friend: Riley was one of the few people who saw through the fronts Melissa put up, and she called her out on it without hesitation.

  So I lied, even though it hurt. Literally. “I’m going out east with Riley. We’re gonna buy new art stuff. There’s a sale on watercolours.”

  “Oh.” She lost interest immediately.

  I had to ball my fists not to wince from the pain that danced across my forehead and strained my muscles. I’d had plenty of practise ignoring the pain of a lie over the years, but even the smallest tick of pain and my mother would know that I was lying to her.

  I saw the way her eyes dimmed, the way she glanced at her cup, just for a second. Mom didn’t give a rat’s ass about my paintings. “Fine,” she conceded. “Don’t be too late.”

  “Not that you’ll notice if I am,” I mumbled as I ducked out the front door.

  She shouted something at my back as the door fell shut, but her words were muffled by steel and distance and the excitement I felt every time I let that door close behind me and realized that I was free. I was out. I could do whatever I wanted.

  I jogged down the stairway and out onto the street, inhaling the damp air. The throbbing pain at my temples wasn’t enough to stop a smile from spreading across my face, though.

  Picture this: a boy standing on the corner of a sidewalk still damp from rain, under the open expanse of a rippling evening sky.

  Picture this: the power brimming through his veins.

  Most people can’t. They can’t wrap their heads around my ability, they tell themselves it’s a party trick, a clever deception. But it isn’t. It’s as real as the air I breathe.

  Lies hurt. Like a sharp slap you haven’t been expecting.

  It was always a shock to my system. I’d spent my entire life trying to get used to the feeling of an untruth ringing in my ears, singing my from the inside of my head to be let out, and I still hadn’t managed it.

  I turned my face to the sky and told my truth. “I’m going to a nightclub to meet with the owner about a job.”

  Relief.

  The minute I unveiled the lie, the pain flooded from my body. My shoulders slumped, and I breathed a bit easier.

  Sometimes I would creep off to be alone somewhere—the park or Tin Can Beach or this tiny alley a block down that was so tight even I had to stand sideways to fit—and I would just tell myself lies out loud for hours, and let the
pain build for so long it was unbearable. The goal was to hold out as long as I could, to push myself to my limit, my breaking point, and then go past that. It was part self-flagellation, part training. Pain resistance. It worked best if I just repeated one lie, over and over—and made it easier to unravel them all in the end without it turning into a bunch of verbal knots and guesswork. By the time I finally ended it, I was always dripping sweat and weeping and, obviously, I hated myself. But for some reason I couldn’t stop. I wanted to push myself. I’d always done it.

  Hurting just to see how far I could go—that had to be one of my stranger hobbies.

  Even though I couldn’t truly tell them, couldn’t hold onto them, so much of my life was built on a foundation of lies. Exposing them and cashing in on them and pretending that they weren’t built into every fibre of my being. It felt good to let this one go.

  I stood on the sidewalk for a moment and stared up at the violet and cherry sky that was sliced apart by the wires running between the telephone poles. The flash of headlights reflected across the stop sign on the corner, the gleam of the traffic lights hanging overhead flashing in the dirty puddle at the curb. The streetlights flickered on.

  It smelled like cigarette smoke and mold out here, and it was starting to rain—a light, cold drizzle that came in little bursts. The November chill seeped into my bones, and when I exhaled my breath formed a cloud in the cold air.

  Horsfield street was nice, but our building wasn’t—all cracked bricks and thin, warped windows.

  Stepping outside of the door always felt like being spat out by a monster, as if I’d been granted a reprieve from a lifelong prison sentence.

  I pulled the collar of my leather jacket lower, brushed my hair over my shoulder. Mom was constantly telling me to cut it, that boys shouldn’t have long hair—boys should do this, boys should do that, and honestly, who gives a fuck?—but I couldn’t bring myself to cut it. It felt more natural like this.

  Take a deep breath, Sky. Stop fucking stalling, Sky. I rolled my shoulders back. Stomping my feet as I went, I left the lie behind me on the concrete.

  ~

  Temptation. The desire to act—usually in a way you know you shouldn’t. It was a good name for a club, though not much about Union Street felt tempting. Not at the moment. Not ever, truly.

  It was a long, ugly strip of cracked pavement stomped with gum stains and strewn with cigarette butts. Weeds grew from the splits in the pavement stones, which were now dusted with salt to melt the patches of ice here and there, and every few feet there was a bar or a pub crawling with ugly old men, their teeth stained deep brown or gone altogether.

  It was where people with broken dreams and harsh lives came to drink themselves into stupors after a long day of work or wandering.

  At least it had stopped raining.

  The club was down near the corner, across from a shabby little restaurant that I knew from experience had some of the best hangover food in the city, and an empty commercial space that had, at one point, been a specialty bike shop.

  There was no line out front. Just my best friend, leaning against the black marble facade of the building.

  Riley was as easy to spot as ever. Her waist-length black hair was dyed deep violet and she wore a pair of black hipster glasses. Tonight she had on a fitted peacoat, but beneath it I could see skintight leather pants, and she had a black and silver choker clasped around her neck that matched her flint-toned eyes.

  As a final touch, she’d sprinkled silver body glitter over the dark brown skin of her cheeks.

  Yup, everything seemed about right with this picture.

  Riley flounced over to me as I walked up, cigarette stubs crunching under my combat boots where they scuffed the pavement. “About time!” She grabbed my arm and dragged me over to where she’d been standing. “Penn just texted, she’ll be out in like two minutes. Where were you?”

  “Fighting with Mom,” I said, neglecting to mention that I’d woken up exactly twenty minutes ago.

  Riley frowned. “Of course. You know I’m going to punch Melissa in the face one of these days, right? I just won’t be strong enough to stop myself.”

  “I might beat you to it.”

  She chuckled. “You wouldn’t just punch her, you’d smash a bottle over her head.”

  “White trash through and through, that’s me.”

  “At least you own it,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “But really, are you okay?”

  Hearing the note of sincerity in her voice, I looked away. God, I hated it when people tried to get me to display emotion. “I’m more than okay,” I said, gesturing at myself. “I’m a model.”

  “Yeah, a model example of a headcase.”

  Glad she’d let it go, I bit back a grin and glanced up at the exterior of the club again. I didn’t need her concern, or, if I did, I at least didn’t want to talk about it. I’d been through much worse with Mom than a petty interrogation like the one tonight. The burn marks on my inner arms flared up in remembered pain in response to my line of thought, and I forced the sensation away. Tonight was supposed to be fun—or, if not fun, then lucrative. I wondered what kind of guy this potential client was as I looked over his place.

  It was a trashy palace made of black marble and tinted glass—it definitely stood out on the shabby mess that was Union. So why had I never noticed it before?

  The door, rusted black steel, was set into a little alcove next to us, and was tightly shut. A small neon sign flashing bright blue above the entrance proclaimed the place to be Temptation in cursive letters.

  If it was new, it wasn’t having a great opening season.

  “Why is there no line?”

  Riley shrugged. “It’s really exclusive, apparently. Kind of a word-of-mouth only place. Plus, it’s only early. It might not even be open yet.”

  Huh. Most clubs around here opened at four or five and ran until two in the morning, but it was nearly seven in the evening, now. Why did it seem like such a ghost town?

  I hadn’t even heard of the place until a few days ago, when Riley had started gushing about her cousin Penn’s cool new job. And then, just days after that she’d been telling me about how the guy who owned the place—Jackson, his name was—wanted to meet me, how he had a proposition for me.

  He’d heard about my. . .talent. If you could call it that.

  About him, I knew this much: his name, and that he was ridiculously wealthy. He was my way out.

  If the job was worth it. And honestly, at that price—for someone as poor as me, there wasn’t much that wouldn’t be worth it.

  “What does Penn even do here?” I asked, looking up and down the street.

  A couple older men stood outside the pub a few doors down, cherry-tipped cigarettes clutched in shaking hands.

  Beside me, Riley was fixated on her phone. “Apparently his dad bought him the club just so he’d have a place to party. Penn is Jackson’s assistant, but she wouldn’t tell me anything, just that he’s hot and rich. And—this is where it gets weird—he doesn’t have any social media accounts at all. No Instagram, no Twitter. How do you live like that?”

  “Seriously?” I said. “This is the guy who wants to meet me? Is he one of those spoiled brats from Rothesay Netherwood?” The private school kids were notorious snobs.

  She shook her head. “Older, I think. College aged.”

  Hmmm. If Riley hadn’t been able to turn up much, then the guy truly was a privacy freak. She was planning a career in journalism, read fat nonfiction books for fun (scary) and possessed one of the fastest minds I’d ever encountered. Riley’s level of intelligence was downright frightening—if she couldn’t dig up any dirt on this Jackson guy, it meant there wasn’t any to find. It was kind of troubling.

  What did he have to hide? Everyone was keeping some kind of secret, if you looked close enough. It was just a matter of asking the right questions, poking at the right places, and sooner or later all of their secrets would spill out like coins. I wanted to k
now what his were.

  I couldn’t imagine having a parent rich enough to buy me a nightclub. Mom didn’t have enough to buy me a pack of gum, let alone a building.

  Part of me doubted she would, even if she did.

  The wind blew my hair out of my face and I shivered my way back into reality. Beside me, Riley remained engrossed in her phone, nails clicking against the screen. I was considering going up the street to bum one of the old men for a smoke (gross, nervous habit) when the heavy steal door was shoved open from the inside with a metallic groan of protest, and Penn poked her head out.