Shadows of Ourselves (The Charmers Series Book 1)

by Apollo Blake

  What I was really worried about was Melissa. Hunter seeing her, let alone meeting her, was kind of a horrifying idea.

  I wanted to keep these two worlds separate. Not the worlds of mortal me and magik me, but the worlds of the Sky who sleeps with Hunter and walks through magik worlds and the Sky who lives in a slum, whose mother is an abusive bitch he can’t make himself stop caring about, stop trying to please in the stupidest ways. So many parts of me that I hated were tangled up in this place, this woman, this fucked up family. Runaway dads and strange gifts and cigarette burns and empty bottles. The only good part of me there was to find here were my paintings, my stained brushes and the stacks of canvases I’d scrimped and saved for, but we weren’t here so I could give the guy an art tour.

  “You okay?” he asked from behind me. Had he felt a spike in my emotions?

  “Fine,” I said. “Keep it down; I’m hoping my mom is asleep.”

  “You want to avoid her?”

  “Generally always.” I mumbled.

  “I get that.”

  The memory of the feeling of his fingertips on the burn scar marking my back, the darkness in his voice as he asked what it was, sent a flush creeping up my neck. We fell silent, and I walked faster.

  My anxiety peaked as we reached the top of the stairs. The hallway was quiet and empty, and there was nothing to hear on the other side of our apartment door—no footsteps or music playing. Where was she? If I could just see her, I wouldn’t be so afraid I was about to look up and find her crawling on the ceiling like something out of the Exorcist, a lethal animal about to lunge. And then, just like that, I was sliding my key home and opening the door as soundlessly as I could.

  Mom was standing right inside the door with a Toaster Strudel in one hand and a coffee mug in the other.

  “Mom! Jesus!” I stumbled back, hand on my chest. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  I opened the door wider, hoping that if she saw we had company she might cut her outburst short, but seeing Hunter seemed to irritate her even more, after the quick flash of surprise faded. Her brows pulled down in the middle and she jabbed a finger into my chest.

  Shit.

  “Two days! Two days since I last heard from you, running out of here with no explanation! Where the hell do you get off, falling off the face of the earth with some boy? You’ve missed two appointments now! You’re losing us good money! Who do you think you are? Do you have any idea—”

  “Oh, don’t worry Mom, I’m totally safe. I know you must have been worried—”

  “Don’t you fucking talk to me like that,” she snapped. “You’re not a five year old, you don’t need me holding your hand.”

  As if she was the hand holding type.

  As if she was the type who’d installed even a modicum of true responsibility in me.

  I couldn’t help the quick flash of fear that went through me when she stepped forward. It was the senseless terror of the little boy that still lived inside of me, an instinct programmed through living in a house where you could never be sure if someone’s hand was going to tuck your hair behind your ear or slap you on the face.

  Leftover nightmares. I hoped Hunter hadn’t sensed it through the bond.

  Of course she was angry about the money—I shouldn’t be surprised. Melissa didn’t worry about me; she worried about her income and her booze budget.

  This was the way it always was. It was who she’d always been.

  It shouldn’t have stung as much as it did by now, but it did, and I hated myself for it.

  I looked past her, shoved my way into the apartment. “Losing myself good money, you mean? This” —I gestured at myself— “has been a one-man operation for a long time now. Or did you forget that while you were throwing up in the kitchen sink again?”

  She recoiled like I’d slapped her, cheeks going red. It felt good.

  I didn’t speak to her like this, normally. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid anymore (I wasn’t too afraid, I mean) but that it was so much easier to shrink away and fold myself into silence.

  It was so much easier to keep my head down, most of the time.

  But with Hunter here something lit up inside me, some refusal to let her talk to me like this in front of him. It would be one thing if we were alone, but he was here. A practical stranger. She didn’t get to turn me into the unloved loner kid who he had to pity.

  I didn’t want him pitying me, and I didn’t want her acting as if it was a bigger deal that I’d missed an appointment or two than it was that I hadn’t been home in days without a single word.

  I could have been dead. I could be lying in a fucking ditch somewhere.

  It was just so. . .so typical. So her.

  A violent anger was burning up in me, outrage I couldn’t quell. It was spurred on by Hunter’s presence—the fact that a practical stranger was witnessing my humiliation firsthand—and, I realized with dawning horror, feeling everything I was feeling. My eyes shot back to Hunter’s over my mother’s shoulder and I found him standing slack-jawed in the doorway, staring at me with glazed eyes, like he was in some sort of shocked daze. He must be feeling the intense draw that I’d felt in front of the Chinese joint, as if my emotions were more palpable than his own.

  And my emotions? Kind of a fucking mess right about now.

  Flustered, I turned away and strode into my room. I wanted to get this over with and get out. Mom had other ideas, and she followed me. I didn’t bother changing, I just started to toss random stuff from the closet into my duffel.

  Mom stood in the doorway, watching me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I didn’t look at her. “Why do you think I’m packing my shit? I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving?”

  I zipped the bag and slung it over my shoulder, taking a deep breath to try and gather myself before I turned to face her. There was no point looking in the direction of my paintings. I wouldn’t be able to take them with me, and looking at them stacked against the plain white wall like sad little orphans watching me leave would make this that much worse. I couldn’t tell Melissa where I was going—not that I really wanted to. “I think I should spend some time somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere else?” she said, blinking. She gawked at me. Like I’d sprouted feathers and started belting hymns. “Sky,” she chuckled suddenly, “you ain’t going out. It’s time to say goodnight to your friend. We can talk about how long you’re grounded in the morning.”

  Grounded, as if she kept track of my comings and goings. As if I wasn’t nineteen.

  As if she hadn’t been too drunk to impose any form of actual grounding on me since, like, ever. Hard to keep your kid in the house when you’re always out getting trashed.

  She turned away—like the discussion was already over, just because she wanted it to be, because she thought that she deserved a say in anything.

  Because what I wanted, who I was, didn’t matter. She didn’t know me, or what was going on in my life. And I realized now, with a startling coldness, that I didn’t want her to. I didn’t want to know her. I didn’t want anything to do with this woman who might as well have been a stranger, even with her blood running in my veins.

  I felt the burns on my arms (two on my left bicep, three on my right forearm, one on my lower back, all adding up to six spots I kept covered because they hurt us both to look at) flare up as if they were fresh and still burning.

  Scar tissue set alight with renewed fury.

  That’s what they don’t tell you about abuse victims, all those TV shows and sad movies, depression blogs on Tumblr: They show you the sadness and the loneliness and the fear, but they never show you the anger.

  The rage.

  They never show you how much some of us just want to hurt the world, set it on fire and warm our hands as we watch it burn to nothing and all that’s left standing is us, alone and victorious.

  I’ll show you my anger, though. That’s the thing
.

  I’ll show you fire and rage and I’ll cut open my veins to let the poison I’ve turned on myself ravage someone else’s system for once, watch it burn through them like corrosive acid.

  “I’m leaving.” I said, and my voice was surprisingly even.

  I felt like a lake that had frozen over, a cold, deadly silence filling me. I stood, staring at her back. Just waiting, watching. Mom froze in the doorway, turned back to me. She was rolling her eyes.

  “Sky. You. Are. Not. Going. Anywhere.”

  “I am, though.” I looked her dead in the eye. “I’m moving out.” She dropped the strudel.

  Poor Melissa. She looked like the cat that had just seen the canary.

  “It was going to happen eventually anyway, when I went to Toronto with Riley.”

  “Toronto?” she looked totally lost. “What’s in Toronto?”

  I had been talking about moving to Toronto for my art for almost two years. I took one long last look at my mother, but I wasn’t contemplating a thing—I’d already made my decision.

  “Goodbye, Mom.” I walked around her, Hunter’s pale face coming into view. He’d heard—and felt—everything, of course. So he knew how close I felt to just shattering into pieces right now.

  Inhaling once, I tried to memorize the smell of stale booze and exasperation and the exact air freshener we used, lemon and mint.

  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to preserve these memories or let them rot like roadkill and wash away in the rain.

  Melissa spoke up, making me pause. “Sky, stop fucking around. Now.”

  There was a tinge of alarm in her voice.

  “Are you listening to yourself? Seriously, I’m leaving. You’re talking about grounding me—I’m nineteen, Melissa. I’m a legal adult, and I’m leaving. I’m done with this.”

  Done with you.

  Thoughts came fast and blurry, hazy snapshots I would only half-remember later, I knew. Mom latched onto me with fingers like talons. My jeans were instantly soaked from where she dropped her mug—it was plastic, so it didn’t shatter, but I heard it crack when it hit the hardwood floor.

  The air instantly reeked of alcohol.

  “Sky,” she said, fast, like the air was too thin for her lungs to hold onto.

  I yanked my arm away, but she grabbed it again, trying to tug on me. I was stronger, and when she spoke this time her words were loud, blurring together in some strange cocktail of anger and disbelief. “You aren’t going anywhere, you fucking hear me?! If you walk out that door you aren’t coming back!”

  That’s one of my biggest wishes, though. You know that. You have to know that much.

  I closed my eyes and didn’t look back at her, because I knew that if I did—if I looked at her lying there in a puddle of water, the same way I’d found her lying in her own puke or spilled beer too many times to count, I would be helpless to do anything except clean her up and let her lean on me while I walked her to her bed and tucked her in for the night—as if I was the parent here.

  I yanked my arm free from her grip, and she whimpered. The sound nearly killed me.

  Nearly made me kill her.

  I fucking hated her.

  I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough to carry you out of this place with me.

  But a part of myself that wasn’t in the process of dying with the rest of me, it was furious. How dare she? How dare she sit there and cry and whimper as if I’m hurting her, as if she hasn’t killed me a million times.

  Power surged inside of me—not mine, but something else, something strong and awful. Something so ugly and primal it had to be entirely mortal. I felt my muscles tighten with the strain.

  If Hunter hadn’t stopped me from turning around, hadn’t called my name and pulled me back into reality, I think I really might have hurt Melissa Davenport just then in a way I could never come back from.

  My darkest secret is that even now I sometimes wish he hadn’t.

  Hunter came unfroze. He walked smoothly over to me, took me by the hand, and led me out of the apartment without another word. When I tried to shake out of his grip it tightened to the point that I winced in pain. How did my bones feel to him, trapped beneath his fingers? Breakable? Or like delicate strands of iron and gold, too strong to ever crack? I couldn’t be sure, myself. He closed the door behind us and just as I thought I might make it out of there without any more damage, she started to scream.

  My name. And curses. And then just a long, furious screech that repeated itself.

  Her body hit the door on the other side, again and again. I thought the door might break down.

  I felt like my legs might not hold me, and then I would either fall, or fly away.

  “Are you okay?” Hunter asked softly.

  His voice was pitched so low I could hardly hear it. Just her fists hitting the metal door, and her blubbering.

  “Sky?”

  “I never—” I swallowed, “can we—”

  Why is it so hard to talk? Why are there tears in my throat?

  I froze in place, and Hunter’s fingers dug into my arm harder, drawing a tiny gasp from me. Would I find the imprints of his fingernails there later? Crescent moons pressed into my flesh to go with the tiny suns that had been burned there under the hands of the woman screaming behind us?

  So many marks, so many scars. Sometimes they felt like all I was and all I would ever be; a collection of marks and cuts and bruises that weren’t healing right, that never would.

  I jolted awake and, coming unstuck, bolted down the stairs so fast I slid down the last five. My hip slammed against the railing at an awkward angle and I grunted in pain, but didn’t stop. The power inside of me died and shattered and spilled out of my body as I burst out the door of the apartment building, feet skidding on the sidewalk, and then jogged down the street in the direction of the Beatty and King Street. In the distance the lights of King Square and the harsh glow of the closest street lamp blurred as tears stung my eyes, which I tried to convince myself was from the cold.

  Ice and salt and cracks in pavement, limp yellow weeds partially buried under snow or kissed by frost. Puddles of freezing, muddy water flooding deep potholes. The dark, unforgiving sky.

  This was the world, and I had just come loose in it.

  “Sky! Sky! Slow down!” Hunter’s concern hit me like a blow to the stomach through to bond, and I couldn’t look at him. If I saw the alarm in his eyes it would send me into a full-on panic attack.

  Someone had to have their shit together right now. Someone had to treat me like the confused mess I was and take the lead, because if not. . . .

  This felt a lot like ending. Am I ending?

  Not thinking about it. Not, because I can’t.

  “Just get me out of here,” I begged. “Just get me the fuck out of here.”

  SEVENTEEN

  PERFECT DISTRACTION

  The city market was closed, so Hunter led me down King Street, into Brunswick Square, and through the connection to the Delta. We didn’t speak as we walked, retracing our steps from Saturday night, when we’d first met. And I was glad, because I wouldn’t have been able to think of anything to say if he’d tried. When we got off the elevator he slid the keycard into my hand and said he would be right back, so I was left alone to let myself into the room and soak in the silent darkness.

  Numb—from the cold, from the argument, from everything—I blew hot air into my palms, and went into the bathroom to dig through my duffel bag for a change of clothes. I switched into a baggy old Mickey Mouse T-shirt and grey harem paints. Comfort clothes. When I couldn’t find a brush, I ran my fingers through my tousled hair and left it at that. Not exactly couture, but it would do. In the mirror, my pale skin looked dead, leeched of life. My dark eyes were flat as copper pennies. Black circles stood out beneath them. My head pounded. Back in the room I tossed my bag onto the foot of the bed and filled a mug with water from the tap.

  The city water was disgusting.

  I wanted Hunter to come back. Fo
r the sun to explode. Anything, to give me a distraction.

  I sat on the bed and pulled my sketchbook and a pen out of the bag before leaning against the headboard and propping it open. I’d left all my already full sketchbooks at the house along with my paintings. I would have to go and get them back sometime. If Mom didn’t toss them out. Or burn them.