Shadows of Ourselves (The Charmers Series Book 1)

by Apollo Blake

  “Destiny,” he said. “Do you want to die?”

  “No.” The steadiness of her voice was betrayed by her shaking hand. She shoved it behind her back. “No, sir.”

  Crayton breathed deeply. “Neither do I,” he told her. “So I suggest you find him, quickly. Bring him to me. Because if you don’t. . . .”

  There was a tightening, and the vampire grasped at her throat frantically as he closed off her air supply. She groaned and rasped, back arching as she choked.

  He dropped the hold.

  As she slumped to the floor, he strode from the room without another word. The pain in her neck was order enough.

  Find him. Find my powers. And soon, I will be invulnerable. I will be the storm that shapes the world.

  THREE

  YOU CAN’T HAVE ME

  When I got out of the shower I found that Hunter had left me one of his giant T-shirts lying on the floor. I hadn’t even heard the door open. I grabbed the shirt, which was nearly as long a dressing gown on me, and pulled on my boxers as well. I kicked my dirty clothes into the corner of the bathroom to sort out later.

  My blond hair was darker and longer when wet, and I pushed the tangled, damp strands behind my shoulders. I didn’t have the energy—or the patience—to properly dry them.

  I was too eager to hear what the strange boy outside the door had to say, too wired from our run through the city, to care about something as trivial as messing up his bathroom. When I opened the door steam drifted out into the suite along with me, curling into the air. Hunter stood in front of the massive window, looking out at King Street stretching along below the hotel. Beyond it I could see uptown laid out like a glittering jewel. Sometimes when I looked at Saint John during the day I hated it—every single window and stone, every doorway.

  At night, when it glowed through the dark, it was beautiful. A horn honked in the distance and I tore my eyes from the window.

  Fuck the view. I wanted answers.

  He had them.

  Hunter cut a strong figure against the cityscape, and I observed him in silence for a minute. The outline of him, broad-shouldered and commanding in front of the wash of city lights and the dark winter sky was imposing—intimidating in a way that didn’t make me want to run, but took all of my breath and left heat filling my lungs instead. The room was silent, and I knew he’d heard me come out, but he didn’t turn around. He was hot. Stunning, even. And right now he held about as much charm as a venomous snake.

  Still, I wanted to paint him against the city. I knew there was no way I would ever capture the electric blues and oranges of the lights properly on canvas, though. The world hummed with vibrancy for a second, and I felt my fingers clench around a paintbrush that wasn’t there with a painful longing.

  He was beautiful. And I had no idea how well I could trust him—how well I could trust anyone who shot fire from his hands and, worse, associated with people like Jackson. Penn aside. Maybe.

  I stepped closer to him, deeper into the dark. “You owe me an explanation.”

  “I do.” He turned around and stopped. He looked me up and down, gaze running over my wet hair and bare legs. He’d traded his mug of coffee for a glass of—

  “Is that whiskey?”

  He must have heard something in my voice, because his mouth tugged into a crooked grin. “So you don’t want coffee, but you want whiskey and explanations.”

  “In that order, actually.” I said as he came around the bed and walked into the kitchenette.

  I leaned against the counter while he grabbed a glass. The amber liquid sloshed around as he grabbed the whiskey bottle and twisted off the cap. His eyes met mine as he poured, and I saw something like curiosity in his gaze.

  “You really don’t know what a liesmith is?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, I don’t know what any of your weird slang means.”

  Hunter slid my glass to me and retreated, crossing the room to stare out the window again. I wondered if it was for my benefit, if he thought I was scared of him. He turned slightly to watch as I followed him over, no change in his expression, and I waited for him to speak first.

  When he didn’t, I broke the silence. “Talk.”

  “How much do you know about your power?” he asked.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and stared down into my drink. Shrugged.

  What was there to know?

  “Not much. I know when people are lying; I can feel it. And then I get compelled to point out the truth. It hurts more the longer I hold out.” I looked back at him. “It’s a party trick. Some people, some of my clients, have called it a gift from God or a curse from the devil. My mom says it’s intuition or a mutation or something.” When she’s sober enough to discuss such things.

  “It’s a rare, highly coveted ability among Charmers.” He sounded annoyed now.

  “Oh, is it?”

  “It is.” He took a sip of his whiskey and looked away from me. “It used to be more common, but now it’s almost unheard of. Certain gifts come and go like that, over time. You’re the first I’ve ever met; you shouldn’t be so dismissive of it.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean it” —he stepped closer, his eyes boring into mine unconsciously— “it’s not something you should let go to waste.”

  And now he was, what? My life coach?

  “Huh.” Charmers—he’d said that word earlier, too. About the monsters. Charmer Hounds. “So what about those dogs?”

  Hunter took another drink and ran a hand through his short black hair. His square jaw was lined with dark stubble, eyes rimmed with dark circles and a bit puffy. Not as if he’d been crying, but more like he was exhausted or stressed. When his gaze met mine I felt lust pulse through me, and looked away—back out the window beyond him, at the city starting to settle down outside the window. Nobody should be able to look so hot and so tired at the same time.

  Or maybe I was just abnormally horny. It had been a while.

  Still, flirting with straight boys can be dangerous.

  Especially when they have super powers, probably.

  I downed my whiskey, relished the burn as the liquid slid down my throat. Growing up with a mother like mine, you learned how to take shots like a pro—and at a very early age.

  Hunter raised his eyebrows at me, but answered. “Charmers are what you might call. . .witches, for lack of a better word.”

  “I need more whiskey.”

  “You need to listen,” he said. He set his glass on the nightstand and came around the bed to sit next to me, so close I could feel his body heat. He smelled like sweat, whiskey, and aftershave. “The Hounds are trackers; they follow magikal signatures—the traces Charmers leave behind when we use our powers.”

  “We?”

  “Yes,” he said. “We. You’re a Charmer. Like me. Like those men at the club.”

  “Like Jackson?”

  His eyes flashed, and he looked away. “Jackson is. . .a special case.”

  I shook my head. This was all way too weird. I got off the bed and walked a few feet away, then turned to study his face. “Are you telling me I’m Glinda the Good Witch?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it like that—”

  “Oh my god.”

  Hunter shook his head at me. “Charmers aren’t actually witches, Sky. Witchcraft is a human religion. That’s just the best comparison I have to give you some perspective, though.”

  “So what they hell are they?”

  “We. What are we?” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose you could call us another species of human. We have. . .abilities. Gifts. We have our own communities, hidden within mortal ones, which works since most of us aren’t too different from them. Every Charmer’s abilities are unique, but some are more common than others. Elemental magik is more common—and shadow weaving, like you saw in the club. Liesmiths are incredibly rare. The Hounds are made of a powerful sorcery that utilizes living shadows.”

  The absence of light.

  “C
heerful.” I had to force my voice to remain steady. I wasn’t prone to panic, but I also wasn’t used to being stuck in hotel rooms with strangers who expected me to believe that I was magik.

  “So, you said they could track. . .signatures?” He nodded, so I went on. “Won’t they be able to find us, then? I mean, I know you said you put up those walls or whatever, but that one downstairs followed us directly to the hotel, and—”

  He waved a hand. “I’m too skilled for that. Wards are one of my specialties. They didn’t follow my signature to that club tonight; Temptation is a hot spot for magikal entities around here, so someone probably saw me and alerted Cra—” he cut himself off. “Them. Alerted them to my being there. But even as we ran I was working wards around you.”

  Some of Crayton’s men are upstairs. Penn had said.

  More secrets, but no lies.

  “Which means?” I couldn’t keep the frustration from my voice. This was all so jumbled.

  “That they shouldn’t be able to track us. The path we took will be muddied enough to confuse the Hound and burn away the last few yards of your signature. If it tries to lead those goons back here it should end up just running around the area pointlessly. They track off of signature, not memory. It followed us here by keeping us in its line of sight, not its truest sense. It won’t be able to lead them here, just trust me.”

  “This is all. . .a lot.”

  “You get used to it.”

  Would I? Shadows that came to life. People who could spark fire from their bare hands. And I did believe him—because I’d seen it. I’d lived it. Was living it.

  There was no room for real doubt in my mind after tonight, or if there was it was only for his claim that we were safe here.

  I thought of my childhood; long days spent sitting at our kitchen table with usually angry strangers, staring back and forth between my mother and the clients whose lies I was meant to expose. I thought of my daily reality—every untruth ringing like an alarm in my head, acid in my throat, the nausea and the headaches.

  And if one boy could catch a lie out of thin air, then why couldn’t shadows live? Why couldn’t Charmers?

  I’d seen what he was talking about with my own eyes.

  “Okay. So say all of this is real, say we’re both part of a race of magikal humans—”

  “I would.”

  “—why haven’t I met any before? And why are a bunch of them after you?”

  He looked away at that, rage writing itself across his face for a second before he wiped his expression clean. I’d angered him again, I just didn’t know how, or why. He looked back at me, no trace of the emotion left. “You probably have and just didn’t realize it. Most of us can sense each other, but if your powers are mostly dormant then you wouldn’t be able to sense anybody, and in turn they might not have felt you, either, so they wouldn’t have realized what you were.”

  “But that wouldn’t explain why I can feel lies.”

  “Right,” Hunter said. “But most Charmers have more than one ability. If that’s the only one you can access then your powers might not be fully awakened—or developed. They grow with time, you know. Like puberty.”

  “So I’m a late bloomer.”

  “Or defective,” he confirmed.

  I rolled my eyes. I walked back over to the bed and sat beside him, making the mattress dip under my weight. My arm pressed against his. “And the guys at the club?”

  Hunter looked like he was debating whether to tell me the truth. We were strangers; I wasn’t entitled to know his secrets—but considering he’d gotten me wrapped up in his drama tonight and nearly killed in the process, I figured the least he could do was tell me as much as he could before I had to walk out of here and face a world I didn’t recognize anymore.

  For a second, his gaze went past me, and I thought for sure he was going to change the subject. He pursed his lips, looked back to me, and started to speak.

  “I used to work for their boss—he’s a very powerful Charmer and a very rich man—and I skipped out on him without a warning. He’s paranoid that I’m gunning for him, and he wants me dead. He’s still trying to find me.” His eyes narrowed, forehead creasing. “They’ve been hunting me for a while. I should have been more careful going to Temptation tonight—I should have known someone would tip them off.

  “But the Hounds can’t cross the wards I put up, and the magik is meant to confuse them and throw them off the trail. They won’t be able to lead their makers back to us, and by tomorrow morning your signature will have faded enough that if they come across you again they won’t recognize you, so they won’t bother you. You might not even be able to see them. You won’t have to worry about any of it again. I’m sorry you got involved in the first place.”

  That was not as comforting as I think he meant it to be.

  Fuck, invisible monsters.

  I shook my head at him. “Because the idea of those things being around me wasn’t horrifying enough already. Nope, you had to add invisibility to the package, too. Thank you so much for that mental image, Hunter.”

  I remembered the wavering light I’d seen behind us as we passed through the lobby, the lurking Hound trying to shield itself.

  It was impossible to hold back the shiver that took over me.

  He smirked. “You need to lighten up, you know. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Before today I thought I was some sideshow psychic—now I’m Sabrina the teenage bitch, and I don’t even get a damn talking cat.”

  “Because a talking cat would be good enough compensation.” He chuckled, the sound rough and smooth all at once.

  I looked back at him, face flushed. He looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. I wanted to paint his eyes.

  “What?” I asked.

  Hunter shook his head, eyes never leaving mine. “You’re taking this better than I expected.”

  Oh. Admiration. Or assessment, maybe?

  I actually tossed my head back and laughed, though. I nearly fell off of the bed with the movement, and my empty glass dropped to the carpet. Hunter’s arm whipped out and his long fingers wrapped around my upper arm, securing me. I froze. My laughter faded as I watched the glass roll across the rug.

  He grinned at me—a wide, unabashed beaming that made him look boyish. “When I realized I’d have to explain it to you, I was expecting a breakdown of some kind, or an existential crisis or something.”

  That could be arranged.

  “Don’t get too used to it. As soon as I run out of jokes, I might have that nervous breakdown. Just keep the whiskey on hand.”

  “Noted.”

  He shifted beside me, bringing himself closer, and our sides brushed. Glancing over, I saw that we were close enough that I could make out flecks of lighter hazel in his dark brown eyes. Like burnt syrup and honey swirling together.

  When he spoke his voice was soft and comforting. “You’re not going to break down,” he said in a way that told me exactly what he was going to do next.

  He leaned down and kissed me.

  The minute his lips met mine I gasped against his mouth, more from anticipation than anything else. He was warm against me, and soft, softer than I would have expected from a stranger.

  I didn’t like it.

  Well, no. I liked it. But I didn’t like the feel of it—tender and caring. I didn’t want him to be soft or gentle.

  God knows the last thing I needed was for him to think I was boyfriend material or some shit.

  I wanted him to be rough, if he was going to be anything.

  If I had this it wasn’t going to be about hearts or heads or feelings—just bodies—and if it couldn’t be that, if it wasn’t just his skin on mine and nothing more, I didn’t want it. That involvement was not something I did, and it was awkward to deal with. It was too close to playing with knives, and I’d been cut enough for a fucking lifetime.

  Before this second I’d assumed he was straight, but it was prett
y clear now that whether he liked chicks or not, he also definitely liked me. That, I could work with.

  His hand gripped my arm, while the other came up to cup my face. His thumb smoothed over my cheek, and I batted his hands away.

  Surprised, Hunter’s eyes jolted open and he sat back.

  I missed the warmth of him instantly—I hadn’t realized how cold I’d been until this second, but it was like I could feel the frost through the window, biting at my bare legs and clinging to my wet hair.