He glanced back at her while he was waiting for the ticket. She had done something with her hair. It was piled up on the back of her head, but then it tumbled down her back in a series of waves and curls, brushing the curve at the back of her waist. The red was lustrous, gleaming like silk, making him want to run his fingers through it.
Odin help me. He took a deep breath, becoming abruptly conscious of the covert attention he was drawing. That he and Charlee were drawing.
He moved back to her side and held out his arm. “Let’s go in.”
She nodded. Her deep black eyes were bordered by long, thick lashes, making them seem larger than ever. “Thank you for this,” she said, her voice low.
Her thanks centered his focus. It made him remember why all three of them, Darwin, Lucas and Ylva, had been so ferociously insistent that he drop everything immediately and sprint for the gym to find her. “I’m glad I’m here,” he told her truthfully.
He led her into the gym, and even though he wasn’t looking directly at her, he could sense the way her hips were moving as she walked, and the elegant curve of her chin and jaw.
Focus! he reminded himself.
* * * * *
Everything went dreamily perfect, until the photographer arrived. Charlee had basked selfishly and without regret in the attention Asher was drawing, almost fiercely proud of the fact that he was with her. She knew he was raising questions she would have to deal with on Monday. His height and his build made him stand out. Also, even though Asher seemed young, no one would ever mistake him for a high-school-aged boy.
Even Elizabeth had sent her a startled, raised-brow look and that one had pleased Charlee more than any of the others. But for now, Charlee was more than happy to let the mystery around Asher go unexplained.
Even Principal York had seemed startled. He had been involved in a conversation with two other supervising teachers, close to their table. He had been perspiring heavily, and the white material of his jacket had darkened and was stained with sweat rings under his arms. When the conversation broke up, he had seen her watching him and gave her a smile. “It’s a warm evening, isn’t it? We have some iced punch out in the caretaker’s office if you’d like something stronger.” Then he peered at her and his jaw had actually dropped. “Good god, Charlee! I mean…dear Lord, I didn’t recognize you. I thought you were one of the parents.”
“Clearly,” Charlee replied. “You wouldn’t push alcohol onto a minor.”
He looked even more horrified. “Now, there’s no need to go and repeat that anywhere. It was an honest mistake.”
“Of course.”
He glanced at Asher and then did another almost comical double-take. Charlee hid her smile, absorbing Principal York’s astonishment with relish.
“This is my friend, Asher Strand,” she told him. “Asher, this is Brian York, the principal of the school.”
York stuck his hand out, and Asher stood up and shook it. York looked up at him, blinking. It really had been too perfectly funny.
Charlee danced whenever Asher asked. The music that had been playing when they first sat down was another current dance hit and Asher had frowned, studying the kids gyrating on the dance floor. The girls looked a little odd, bouncing and jumping with their full skirts twisting around them.
“I’ll ask you to dance when the real dancing starts,” Asher told her.
“I don’t dance,” Charlee said, alarmed, looking out at the full dance floor.
“That’s not dancing,” Asher said flatly.
Twenty minutes later, the music had geared down and the lights lowered on the dance floor, so the mirrored balls hanging above them glittered and shimmered over everything.
There was a collective groan and the dance floor emptied.
Asher picked up Charlee’s hand. “Now let’s dance,” he said.
They were the first onto the floor. It would have been alarming to be the only focus of so many gazes like that, except that all Charlee’s attention snapped inward as Asher swept his arm around her back and pulled her up against him.
He began to move in time with the music and Charlee found herself following his steps automatically, while she dealt with the fact that he was holding her against him.
It didn’t feel odd, and she knew it should have. This was the first time she had been held by anyone like this, boy or man. It should have made her blush or giggle like a girl. Or stumble awkwardly about. But she was…well, she was dancing. Her feet were moving in graceful steps. It didn’t feel odd, it felt natural. His arm around her was natural. The warmth of his hand around hers was right. He even smelled right.
It made her aware of her body in a way she had never before felt. Her hips, brushing lightly against his jacket. How heavy his arm was, against her back. The heat of him, right in front of her.
By the time he took her back to the table, she could feel that she was flushed and was thankful for the low light that hid her reaction. She sat recovering and wondering what she would say if he asked her to dance again.
But the next time the music slowed and Asher stood and held out his hand, she got to her feet and slid her hand into his without even considering it.
Charlee had begun to think of the evening as a smashing victory, until the photographer stepped up to their table and raised his camera.
Alarm crashed through her. “No,” she managed to say before the flash dazzled her. As the light flashed, Asher threw up his arm, shielding his face. She saw it only because she had quickly turned her own face away, hiding her left cheek.
“Damn, I’ll have to do another one,” the dumb kid said, winding the film on.
Asher stood up. “How many have you taken with that roll?”
“What?” The kid had a rash of pimples on his forehead and protruding front teeth. Bucky, Charlee remembered. They called him Bucky, and he was as much of a freak at school as she was. He was also as dumb as a box of rocks, or so she had heard.
“I said, do you remember who you’ve taken a photo of, on that roll?” Asher asked, tapping the camera.
Bucky considered. “Sure,” he said. “I’ve only taken two others.”
“Great. Can I see that?” Asher took the camera from Bucky’s hands and opened up the back.
“Hey! You’ll ruin the film!”
Asher pulled out the roll and grabbed the end of the film and unreeled it from the canister, exposing it. “I’ll buy you another roll of film,” he said, looking steadily at the boy. “So you can retake the other two photos you just took. But you don’t take any photos of Charlee. She objects to it. Do we understand each other?”
“Hey, man, there’s no need to get so mad!” Bucky snatched back his camera as Asher closed the back of it. “Jeez….”
Asher patted Bucky’s shoulder as he pocketed the exposed film. “You need to ask before you take photographs. Not everyone likes it.”
“Sure.” Bucky moved away, glaring at Asher over his shoulder.
Asher sat down again and glanced at her. Charlee gave him a stiff smile. She hadn’t wanted her photo taken because of the scar. She had been caught off-guard and not given time to compose herself, to brace herself for the inevitable. But Asher had thrown up his arm even as she had reacted. He hadn’t wanted his photo taken any more than she had.
She sat quietly, sipping her almost lukewarm pop, reacquainting herself with facts that felt like ancient history.
He’s a superhero, she reminded herself and realized that it had been a very long time, years, since she had thought of Asher’s real identity in any sort of terms at all. The superhero label seemed childish now, but there was nothing else to take its place. They didn’t talk about it. She didn’t know what to call him. She didn’t know what he was, except that he wasn’t normal.
For the first time, she wondered if he was even human.
The fast electronic bebop tune ended, and the lights dropped to their lazy flicker as Peter Frampton started singing “Baby, I love Your Way.” Asher picked up her hand, and she let he
rself be led out onto the dance floor.
She had got over the shock of being in his arms. Sort of. But this time she barely noticed. Her thoughts were keeping her attention fixed firmly upon those things they had never spoken of. The mysteries that surrounded him.
Who is Asher? Really?
“You’ve gone very quiet,” he said. “Are you not having fun anymore?”
“I don’t know what tonight is, but it’s not what I define as fun,” she said truthfully.
“Retribution?” he suggested, his brow lifting. He was watching her with frank interest, waiting for her answer.
She shook her head. “It’s more like turning my back on them. All of them.”
He frowned.
“A symbolic walking away,” she added. “In four weeks’ time, I will literally walk away. I don’t know why adults look back at high school like it was some magical time of their life. Most of the kids I know have hated it. Me, too.”
“I think most adults look back at the lack of responsibility and the freedom from cares and concerns they have now, and think of it as a pleasant time in comparison to current life.”
He hadn’t referred to his own experience. She pushed a little harder. “Is that how you remember high school?”
His gaze was direct. “I don’t think about high school at all,” he said flatly, and she knew it was the truth. But what did it mean?
He brought her around in a big circle, and she saw with distant interest that Chrissy and Daphne and Marcy Graham were watching her with hawk-like interest from their joined tables, where their boyfriends were yukking it up together at one end, ignoring their girls. Chrissy was not smiling.
Charlee hadn’t cared much what Chrissy thought of her. At least that was what Charlee had told herself for the last three years. But right now she really didn’t care. Chrissy and her mean way of making sure the freaks of the school were kept in their place was so trivial in the grand scheme things, Chrissy could have been an ant waving her fist at the express train about to pass her by. Chrissy was nothing.
Magic was real. Superheroes existed. The world was a lot stranger than Chrissy and her snotty friends realized. But Charlee knew. Out of everyone in the gym, she was the one to know.
Know what, exactly?
She looked up at Asher, leaning back a little so that she could see him properly. “I never did thank you for saving Chocolate, did I?”
He looked surprised. Then amused. “Now you’re getting around to it?” His tone was teasing.
“I don’t think I really understood what you did, that day. Not then. I was too young. Now I can see it a little better. Especially the Lords. The risks you took.”
His teasing smile faded. “Don’t mention it.” And she knew he really meant “Do NOT mention it.”
“That’s your life, isn’t it?” Her anger seemed to come from nowhere. “Secrets. All of it is just one secret after another.” Why on earth was she becoming angry? But it was there, writhing in her chest, stealing her breath and making her feel warmer than even dancing with him made her feel.
“Charlee...” he began with a reasonable tone, as if he was going to soothe her down like some upset kid. She glared at him, daring him to try, to once more smooth this out and paper over the lies. His eyes met hers and he didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he drew a breath that made his chest lift. He shook his head. Just a little. “I can’t,” he said flatly. Softly. So softly she barely heard it even over the subdued music.
“Bullshit,” she said hotly. “You just like being a superhero. But you stopped being Superman for me a long time ago. You’re just...you’re just....” She couldn’t finish it because the truth slammed into her, whole and complete. But that was something that couldn’t be said either.
She wrenched herself out of his arms and hurried to the ladies’ room to hide in one of the cubicles and let the heat flushing through her dissipate in the cooler air in there.
She couldn’t love him. It wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. He was so much older than her. She was seventeen, for heaven’s sake. She was supposed to have crushes on boys like Tommy Hancock, and it was true that she and Elizabeth had discovered how cute he was about the same time at the beginning of their senior year. But that wasn’t the same thing at all.
She had looked at Asher and felt her love, like a thick, syrupy layer over her thoughts and feelings. It colored everything. It was simply there.
After ten minutes, she forced herself to step out of the stall and wash her hands at the basin. She wanted to splash water on her face, but that would ruin the carefully applied makeup hiding her scar—well, diminishing it to a fine line, anyway. Instead, she wetted down a paper towel and dabbed it to the back of her neck and her shoulders, letting natural evaporation cool her instead.
The girls standing gossiping in the corners and around the other basins took no notice of her, but she could hear that their talking was slower and more sporadic until she opened the door and stepped out, and then it fired up to machine gun level.
Asher was pacing by the front doors, his tie unravelled and lying on his shirt. “Charlee, for heaven’s sake!” He came striding over to meet her. “Don’t ever run off like that,” he told her. “Especially to the goddamn ladies’ room. I can’t protect you there.”
“Is that what I am?” she asked curiously. “Someone you have to protect at all costs?”
He straightened up, like she had slapped him. Shock skittered over his face.
“Never mind,” she said tiredly. “Forget I said that. It wasn’t fair.”
“Why not?” he asked, his shock gone. Genuine curiosity had replaced it.
She rubbed her arms with her hands. “Could we go?” she asked. “I’ve had enough of getting even, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. I’ll get your wrap.” He turned toward the coat check counter, digging into his pocket for the ticket.
Charlee watched him go, trying to see him the way the rest of the world would see him. A tall man with big shoulders, very pale hair and the blue eyes that seemed to be what women focused upon first. A successful businessman who didn’t seem to have a life outside of his restaurant and occasional visits to the bank that carried his name.
But she couldn’t see him like that. She might not have consciously thought of him as a superhero for a very long time, but the secret was firmly entrenched in her psyche. It colored every dealing she had with him. Every exchange. It had brought them step by step, month by month, to this moment. The secrets in his life had more power than the surface reality.
Asher dropped her wrap around her shoulders and opened the door for her. They stepped out into air that felt delightfully cool in comparison to the crowded gym. Behind them, muted by walls and doors and bodies, Sheryl Crow was crooning that all she wanted to do was have some fun.
That had never been Charlee’s ambition. Getting to college, like Lucas and Darwin kept coaxing her to do, had filled her days and nights for years now.
There were already cabs waiting at the curb, and Asher opened the back door of one for her. She slid onto the seat and Asher gave the driver her address. Silence settled back around them.
Charlee watched the view slide past. So ordinary. So mundane.
If Asher was different, and the few facts that she had confirmed that yes, he was very different from the average person, then how different was he? Were there even more differences hiding behind the shield of secrets? Would she be shocked? Terrified? But she didn’t believe that; the little that Asher let the world and her see of him, the small amount she really knew, told her that he was kind and considerate. He cared. Those weren’t the characteristics of a monster. He wouldn’t change his entire personality once he took off the mask. She had to believe he was essentially the same man, regardless of what hid behind the mask.
If he was very different, or even if he was just a little bit different, wouldn’t that mean the rules the normal world followed didn’t apply to him? Well, yes, she alrea
dy knew that. The image flickered in her mind, barely registering, of his sword and the way it had just appeared and then disappeared. Magic.
She shivered and pulled the wrap even more closely around her. As a coat, it sucked, but it was all she had.
Asher wasn’t normal. She didn’t even know if he was human, although he seemed very human to her. But if he wasn’t normal, then maybe the rules about falling in love with someone like him didn’t apply either.
It’s just a crush, she told herself firmly, as hope swelled in her chest almost painfully. In two weeks, you’ll have forgotten all about this.
But she knew it was more than a crush. Just like Asher, she wasn’t normal. Not anymore. Not since he had come into her life. She had bypassed normal teenage crushes.
The cab slowed and came to a halt at the house before Darwin’s. Close enough.
“Hey,” Asher said as she reached for the door. She felt his hand on her shoulder and looked over it at him.
He wasn’t smiling.
“Thank you for taking me to the prom,” she told him.
“You’re still angry.”
She turned on the seat to face him properly. “No. Not anymore.”
“You’re not happy. Tonight was supposed to make you happy.”
She sighed. “Tonight was perfect,” she told him. “It was better than I dared hope it would be, thanks to you.”
Asher relaxed, and his smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Good. I’m glad.”
He had been worried that he had spoiled it for her. The insight let her smile at him. “I can take it from here,” she said, reaching for the door handle once more. She knew without discussion that he wouldn’t walk her to the door. It was too powerful a symbol.
“Let me.” He reached across her and pulled up the lock, the reason she hadn’t been able to get the door open in the first place.
He had been closer to her when they had been dancing, but that had been in a cavernous gym, among five hundred other people. In the close confines of the backseat of the cab, his closeness was intimate. Private. His scent washed over her, and her nerve endings all shot awake, sizzling. Charlee drew in a breath that seemed to pull into her lungs in a hot, miasmic soup.
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 29
