Shadows of Ourselves (The Charmers Series Book 1)

by Apollo Blake

  If I wasn’t too afraid to even step foot on our street, ever again.

  Was she still there, now? Still screaming?

  To shove that out of my head I flipped to a random page and started to put ink on the page, drawing long, smooth lines winding around each other like groves in tree-bark.

  It wasn’t supposed to be anything, just me performing motions. It was a relaxation technique Riley had told me to try out once that I’d stuck with.

  The sensation of the pen scratching the thin paper, the smear of ink beneath my hand when it dipped too close to the page.

  Familiar.

  Safe.

  The door opened, and Hunter popped his head in and looked at me before stepping inside and kicking it shut behind him. His arms were full of junk food, a can of soda stuck out of each pocket. “I brought snacks,” he said.

  “I can see that.”

  I shoved my sketchbook to the side and folded my legs beneath me as he came and sat on the edge of the bed. I felt odd, now, with a bag here. Like this was some prepubescent sleepover. I was hyper-aware of how much space I took up, every inch of my body feeling like an intrusion. It had been different, before, being here, when I knew I wasn’t staying for any length of time. Now I was here until we broke the bond, and that could take days, he’d said. Hunter dropped his bounty—chips, chocolate bars, a bag of barbecue peanuts—on the bed between us, handed me a can of Pepsi, and popped open the tab on his own.

  He looked at me deeply, and I knew that he was about to bring up what had happened back at home. I really didn’t want to talk about the fact that I’d basically just disowned my mother with a guy I barely knew. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I turned away and grabbed a bag of chips.

  “That’s a lie,” he said, “but I get it.”

  I said nothing, and for a minute we sat there in silence. The bag crunched in my fingers.

  I could feel his eyes on me, but I didn’t want to look.

  The pain became too much. “I’m not okay,” I mumbled into my own shoulder.

  There was relief. Barely.

  Out of the edge of my vision I saw him move, and he reached for my sketchbook. “You’re an artist?” I watched as he flipped through the pages. He stopped and ran his hands over a sketch of Riley I’d done from her side, her head turned to the sun. I’d painted her rich umber skin, and slathered a thick line of rose pink across her eyes, a blur of colour like a blindfold, but her cascading hair was nothing but an outline.

  He ran his fingers over her face, brushing the dry paint. “You’re talented.”

  I looked down, opening the bag of Sun Chips. Art, I could talk about. “I want to go professional,” I said. “Get some bigger pieces in a gallery. And do professional illustration—in books and advertising and stuff. I mean, my Mom will probably ruin everything left at the house, but I can get some new materials after I get a place.”

  “We could always go back and get them,” he said.

  I got the feeling that every time he left this hotel room, he was putting himself at risk. Why would he do it just to get some of my shit?

  “No,” I said, unable to look at him anymore. “It’s. . . .”

  I trailed off. It was definitely not fine. It wasn’t worth it, either, though.

  I can always just paint more. Lives are harder to replace.

  I started to run through everything I would have to do in my head, latching onto tasks and planning so I wouldn’t think about her, back there alone, going to pieces. About how much I hated her. About how scared I was to be on my own, without her. For the first few weeks I would have to crash on Riley’s couch—her parents would understand. They were no big fans of my mother. I would have to borrow her laptop to check my email for new clients. I would have to find somewhere to hold appointments, too. But hopefully by the time tourist season rolled around I would have my own small place and the means to make a new sign to put out, and soon after that I’d have enough saved to take off and leave.

  Or, I could always take Jackson’s job, after we broke the bond. If it was worth it.

  There was still something about that guy that unnerved me.

  My nerves must have started to spill through the bond—a feature of it I still wasn’t sure I liked, especially since the fact it was happening more frequently must have meant that it was getting stronger now—because Hunter set the sketchbook aside, and then his strong, hot fingers were wrapping around my cold wrist. I felt his warmth seep into me, and he smiled.

  “Come with me. We need to do something fun.”

  I started to say no, but then stopped. Looked around the room. What else was I going to do?

  If he was trying to be fun, I could probably safely bet that there wouldn’t be monsters trying to bite my head off or anything. And if I sat here I’d keep stewing in everything, my mind coming back to it all no matter how badly I wanted to think of something else. Running around in circles in my own head. I sighed, resigned, and nodded. Grin spreading even wider, Hunter pulled me up. I slid off the bed to follow him.

  ~

  “The pool?” I looked from the ripples of the water reflecting on the walls, back to Hunter. He was grinning at me, one side of his mouth tugging up higher than the other.

  I wasn’t the biggest fan of the water—I almost drowned once, when I was a kid—but I wasn’t really afraid of it anymore. Nostalgia bit at the edges of my brain, reminding me of the sun beating down on my back that day, coughing up water onto the sand, hacking. And, in the distance, Mom calling out as she ran to me from up the beach. I dragged in a deep breath that left no room for the memory and grabbed the black shorts Hunter held out to me.

  “You do that a lot, you know,” he said, and when I looked confused, he elaborated, “Get lost in your head. Stare into space.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re just trying to change the subject so I don’t realize you rooted through my bag to grab these. Snoop.”

  “Your boxers are nice. I like all the smiley faces.”

  “Piss off.”

  He chuckled as I shoved past him to get to the changing rooms that sat down a narrow hall. Inside I changed quickly, rolling my shirt and pants into a ball, shoving my socks into my shoes, and cradling them all in my arms. I didn’t want to be on my own for long, or I would start to think again.

  At the door to the cubicle, I paused. I stared down at the exposed scars on my flesh, considering.

  He’d already seen them. And I never tried to hide them, really.

  Still, for a minute I was just caught looking at them.

  I slammed the door open so hard it hit the wall.

  Outside, the pool room was empty, just me and the water. Guess Hunter was still changing.

  I set my things against one of the walls—though the hotel probably had rules against that—and sat at the edge of the shallow end, dipping my feet into the room temperature chlorine water. Outside it had stopped snowing, and the darkness of the night sky was only broken by the red-gold glow from the streets below, street lamps and traffic lights changing, cars whipping by, lights shining from within the mall next door. Any sound from outside was muffled in here, though—locked away. It was warm, but condensation and frost still dusted the window on the outside, like a hothouse in the dead of winter.

  I heard Hunter’s bare feet padding toward me and looked up to see him walking to the edge of the pool.

  Shirtless, beautiful, no idea how enticing he was as he tossed his bunched clothes against the wall next to mine, uncaring.

  I felt my breath catch in my throat, staring at him, eyes following the curves of his muscles, the trail of dark hair that led beneath the hem of his shorts. I looked away, focusing on the ripples in the water where I kicked my legs so I wouldn’t be thinking about how badly I wanted to hitch down his shorts and leave bite marks on his hipbones.

  Hunter jumped into the pool. I threw my arms up as water rained down on me, drops catching on my hair, hitting my cheeks. The chill startl
ed me out of the haze I was lost in, just a bit. He came up closer to me, smiling like a little kid as his head broke the water, dark eyes pinning mine in place.

  He was such a man child.

  I wondered about him, though—the parts of him I didn’t know. The parts that were responsible for my being here in the first place—well, aside from his hotness and my general lack of control over my own actions.

  We knew very little about each other.

  Fucking good, considering I was planning to hit the road the minute we weren’t chained together by whatever this bond was.

  But also bad, considering our fates and my life might be entirely in his hands.

  He’d said the bond was like a magikal lock, binding us together so that no matter how far we were from each other, its effects would remain in place. Flashes of his emotions, access to his powers.

  There were theories, he said, that it was some kind of ancient breeding device leftover from when the world was young and humans were always at risk of extinction, or that the components of our powers simply complimented each other. With magik, apparently, science and religion and the mystic all swirled together, so it was hard to separate them, to know what was fiction and what was fact.

  He must have felt my curiosity through the bond. “You can ask more questions, you know. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to tell you, though. Like I said, if you can imagine it, it probably exists.”

  I bit my lip, considering. He hadn’t been forthcoming about his past before. God knows I hated talking about mine. I didn’t want to piss him off, and I definitely didn’t need another fight on my hands tonight.

  The world felt fragile, like it was all being held inside a balloon, and I could pop the thin layer of silicone at any moment if I wasn’t careful with my questions.

  Still. Answers. I wanted ‘em.

  “What if my questions were more. . .personal?”

  “Isn’t personal what you wanted a break from?”

  “Personal for you,” I clarified, and his smile faded, “not for me.”

  “You want something for nothing?”

  “That’s kind of my thing.”

  “Well, that sounds tricky.” He said, wading closer to me. He offered me his hand, and I looked at him skeptically. I didn’t feel like getting dunked at the moment. He just raised his eyebrows, so I took it.

  It was warm and strong and slightly callused, and I wanted to know what his skin tasted like, because there was no way my memory could do it justice.

  Slutty hot mess, that’s me.

  There are other ways to lose yourself than substances, which was something my mother had never truly paid attention to.

  Me, I couldn’t not pay attention to it:

  Skin and hair and teeth and lips, body heat and the smell of cologne.

  Escape. The non-lethal kind. The best non-lethal kind.

  He pulled me down into the cold water, up to my chest, and for a second I stared at our entwined hands. His were larger than mine, and rougher—like he was used to working with them.

  I pulled away first, and Hunter drifted backwards, away from me. I watched the way his movement sent ripples over the surface, spreading out. “I can start with some easier stuff,” I bargained, “ease you into it.”

  He sighed, but gave in. “Ask away.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty. How old are you?”

  “Nineteen,” I said, “but I’m the one asking the questions here. Where are your parents?”

  He looked away, gaze darkening. He sank lower into the water, like he was easing away from my words; I’d hit a sore spot. “Out of the picture,” he said in a way that closed the subject.

  “So we have that in common, at least.” Moving on. “What’s with the books?”

  “Books?”

  “The books. Downstairs.”

  He stared at the water. There were still stacks upon stacks of books back in the room, even a few more than had been there the last time, if it was possible. “Oh, those.”

  “Those.” I repeated.

  They’d been stacked on the nightstand and lined up on the counter of the kitchenette and spilling out of a paper bag on the desk. Cracked and worn down their spines, with papers and playing cards tucked among their pages. I’d leafed through a few last night. Mostly they were fiction, genre works, the kind with dragons and androids and spies.

  “In books,” he said, “things make sense. Deaths have meaning and people have destinies and higher powers to guide them. Soulmates find each other, through anything, and you don’t have to worry about what to do next, because there’s always some wise old wizard waiting in the wings to tell you what to do, to point you in the next direction. There’s no worrying or fumbling or indecision—it’s all passion and fate and being chosen, and there’s usually a happily ever after.

  “So that’s why,” he looked away from the bottom of the pool, back to me. “That’s why I love them. Because the happily ever afters in books might be the only ones I ever get. They’re the only place where things make sense.”

  The idea of a prepubescent Hunter curled up in a window seat somewhere, absorbed in a Narnia book, was simply too adorable to consider right now. I shoved it down.

  I didn’t know what to say. Opening up wasn’t in my nature, I wasn’t sure how to react to it.

  “You’re a nerd,” I shook my head. “Unexpected but somehow fitting.”

  He beamed. “You’re a nerd.”

  “And you come up with insults like a five year-old.”

  “You should know, since you’re about as tall as one.”

  Scoffing, I prepared myself to ask the next question. I knew he wouldn’t like it—if he’d wanted to get into this with me, I’d probably know by now, would at least have been given something resembling a real explanation the first time I’d asked after it.

  But I needed to know. I was involved now.

  “Why is Crayton so obsessed with coming after you?”

  And what did you do to make him that way?

  Hunter froze, and for a second I thought he might actually turn and climb out of the pool, tell me that this had all been a bad idea, and that we should head back to the room. I clenched my fists beneath the water, heartbeat spiking in my chest. I didn’t realize until just then how badly I wanted to know. How much it mattered that he answer my question—and truthfully.

  I had to know.

  Why was I risking my life every time I stepped outside just by being connected to him? What had he done to make someone so dangerous this determined to hunt him down?

  There were minions flying at us left right and center, like something out of a sloppy James Bond rip-off, and he expected me not to ask questions?

  Not how I operate.

  Not that Hunter wasn’t dangerous himself—I hadn’t forgotten his fighting the Hounds, shooting fire, the violence on his face as he watched it burn with flames he’d conjured. Another loose end I hoped to tie up.

  If he let me keep playing twenty questions, at least.

  But Hunter didn’t look like he was about to stop the game any time soon, much to my relief. Instead, he gave a weary sigh and tried to answer my question. “Crayton. . .Crayton wasn’t always the man he is now. He used to be good. Normal, really. But he had powers—ones that are never supposed to be used—that were already all too tempting for him. When his wife died, it just made it that much worse. He lost his mind.”

  Hunter sounded. . .well, he sounded as if he’d been there.

  Was this some kind of magikal mafia shit?

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I was asking after the powers or the insanity. Or both. Yes, I decided, definitely both.

  “You have to understand that certain gifts are rare—there are Charmer families who choose who they marry based entirely on what powers their children will inherit, and even then there’s no guarantee. My primary ability, the first I developed, is my advanced physical attributes.” He titled his head.
“So, enhanced senses, healing, strength—but neither of my parents did.” Did. I didn’t even have to ask that one. His tone said it all. They were dead. “I could have inherited it from another ancestor” —like a recessive gene— “or it could have held onto my soul after a past life ended.”

  “I’m ignoring what you just said. Did you just say what I think you said? No, no. I’m hearing things.”

  “Sure.”

  He looked away, nodding, and I suspected he was trying to hide his laughter. I splashed water at his face with my hand.