“I didn’t—“
“You did. And then you acted like it was stupid for your mate to be concerned about your well-being.”
“He said—“
“You could have gotten hurt. Or worse. Do you have any idea what that would do to him, Scout? Do you?”
He did. Because Charlie wouldn’t be able to survive it either. He’d understood Liam’s righteous indignation, because he’d felt it, too. Scout had been a part of Charlie’s life since before he had memories. She was as close to him as a sister, if not closer. Scout owned a piece of him, and he her. He’d watched her come close to death a few times too many to be okay with her going out and chasing it down like she was immune.
His hands shook as he poured milk into the two glasses. She couldn’t die. She just couldn’t.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the Batman glass towards her so she wouldn’t see how the milk sloshed around as he held it, but she refused to take it. Instead, she just stared up at him, her lips doing a strange dance as she chewed all the skin off the inside of her lips.
“Charlie?”
“What?”
“You’re ummm….” She grabbed a paper towel and offered it to him. When he took it, she pantomimed wiping the corner of her eyes. Charlie copied the motion, and…
God. Damn. It.
He was crying like a freaking baby, twin rivers rushing down his cheeks. When the hell had that happened? And how could he have not known?
The water in the sink was cold as he splashed it on his face. He repeated the motion until he couldn’t feel his hands or face anymore, and still he leaned over it, watching the continuous cyclone chase itself down the drain.
“How is the new therapist working out?”
Was it possible to drown yourself in a sink? Someone once told him you could drown in a teaspoon of water, so surely he could manage it in a ridiculously deep sink.
“Charlie? Are you okay? Should I call someone? If you’re new guy isn’t working out, I’m sure Judd’s dad—“
“The new therapist is fine.” Charlie lifted himself off his elbows. There weren’t any towels lying around, and he hadn’t quite figured out the drawer system in the massive kitchen, so he used the bottom of his shirt to dry off his face. “Sorry. The past few days have been a little intense.”
Scout was the only one who knew Charlie was so screwed up he had to see a psychologist on a regular basis. He’d started seeing someone after the accident that killed Liam’s brother and left Scout with foot-long scars across her stomach. They’d helped at first, but his therapist wasn’t a Shifter. It was hard talking about the crap he was dealing with without actually talking about the crap he was dealing with. When he’d run across a certified psychologist who was loyal to the new Alphas at the last hustings, Charlie went to Scout and quietly asked if she could pull some strings. Three hours later, he was one the phone with the guy setting up regular sessions.
Even though Scout had gone through her own round of therapy once upon a time, he still felt embarrassed when she brought it up. How big of a loser did he have to be to need the help of a shrink when everyone else around him was able to deal with everything on their own?
Charlie climbed up on the barstool across from Scout. She had her chin propped on her fists, and he mirrored the pose.
“When did we sign up for this?” she asked. This close he could see how red her eyes were and the dark circles underneath she was trying to hide with make-up.
“I’m not sure we did. I think we were drafted.”
Scout let her fists fall onto the table, and her head followed. Her face was buried in her arms, making her words come out all garbled, but he still understood her perfectly when she said, “I want to quit.”
It had been a long time since he’d seen Scout look so defeated. Sure, being Alpha Female wasn’t exactly the life she’d always envisioned for herself, and it was a hell of a lot of work and responsibility for someone so young, but she’d met the challenge with all the grace and strength he knew she was capable of. Even Charlie, who could remember Scout in her awkward and gangly middle school years, started thinking of her as the eternal, invincible Lilith, the living embodiment of the moon. But at that moment there was no denying who she truly was - an over-worked, over-stressed girl in need of a friend.
Well, he might not be much good for anything else, but Charlie could at least do that.
“Talk to me,” he said, reaching out to hold onto her fingers.
“Muffle, muffle, muffle.”
“Head up. Mouth moving. Come on, Scout. You can do it.”
She lifted her head just enough so her chin was resting on the inside of her elbows. “I don’t want to talk.”
Charlie gave her an I’m-not-leaving-until-you-say-something look.
“Fine.” She pulled back, dragging her fingers from his grip so she could push short strands of hair back from her face. “Let’s talk… about Maggie.”
They were in the middle of a murder investigation and she wanted to talk about Maggie? He might have agreed if she wanted to talk about the way she was related to the case, but Charlie could tell by the smug expression on Scout’s face that was definitely not the direction this conversation was going.
“New topic,” Charlie said for no other reason than he really didn’t feel like talking about the Thaumaturgic to anyone, least of all Scout. The girl set him on edge, and while most other people wouldn’t notice, Scout would.
A quirk of lips. “Fine. I think Liam regrets that we’re mates.”
“Scout, that’s stupid. Liam adores you.”
“Maybe. But he doesn’t love me—“
“Of course he does.”
“He’s never said so. And we’ve never had sex.”
Milk surged down Charlie’s windpipe, and the subsequent coughing fit was so violent he knew he’d be able to feel it in his abdominal muscles the next day. “Maggie is very talented,” he wheezed once he was able to get the words out.
Scout leaned back in her chair and crossed her hands over her chest, a self-satisfied smile spread across her face. “Talented, huh? Tell me more.”
He thought about refusing, but worried Scout might bring up her sex life again. It was a well-played move. He would do or say almost anything to not have that conversation.
“She’s doing her independent study in ceramics, but she can do anything. It’s like she doesn’t even have to try.” After spending an hour watching his lump of clay collapse in on itself over and over again, they’d gone back to Rosa Hall. Maggie made him use his ID to open the door and was noticeably surprised when it worked. Since he’d just been through the torture of his first ceramics class, Charlie believed he knew how the whole throwing process worked. Even though he hadn’t been successful, several of his classmates managed to have bowl and vase-shaped objects by the end of class.
What Maggie did wasn’t anything like what he’d seen the previous hour.
After preparing all of her materials, she sat down at the wheel, not even bothering to put an apron on over her bright yellow and red dress. It only took her one try to slap the clay on the center of the wheel, and thirty seconds later, he saw a plate magically appear out of the mud. Two minutes later, she was taking it off the wheel and grabbing the next ball of clay. By the end of the hour she had four dinner plates, four salad plates, and four bowls, and each was the exact same size and thickness of the others in the set.
“She sells dishes online,” he told Scout, “and they’re like the coolest dishes ever. She does this whole superhero thing, and she can imitate any comic book artist’s style. She made this cup with Miles from Ultimate Spider-Man on it, and I swear to you, I thought it was official Marvel licensed merchandise.”
If possible, Scout’s smirk grew even more pronounced. “She paints comic book superheroes?”
“Onto cups. And bowls. Convex items. Or is that concave?”
“Convex,” Scout said, pointing to the outside of her glass of milk. “Concave,�
� she said, pointing to the inside.
“Well, then, she paints on the convex side of cups and the concave side of bowls. It’s amazing.”
Charlie’s earliest memory of Scout was of the day the three of them - Scout, Charlie, and Jase - decided to break into Gramma Hagan’s refrigerator and steal the cake she was supposed to be taking to that night’s pack meeting. They couldn’t have been very old, probably around three or four, and their sneaking abilities were bad at best. They didn’t realize it at the time, but when you’re a kid in a house full of Shifters, someone is always listening to what you’re up to, even if they’re on the other side of the house. But by some miracle, no one was paying careful attention to the trio of mischief-makers that day. Once the three of them managed to get the ginormous cake to the middle of the floor, Scout smiled at her two cohorts, pride over a job well done and giddiness over the feast before them lighting up her entire face.
That same smile spread across her face as she looked across the counter at Charlie.
“What are you up to?”
“What? Me? Nothing.”
“Scout…”
“It’s just…” She shrugged. “I’m happy to see you interested in someone.”
He felt his face heat, which was even more embarrassing than being called out about Maggie. He wasn’t some twelve-year-old boy who was just accused of having a crush on one of the cheerleaders. He was practically an adult, for God’s sake. So what if he was interested in Maggie?
“You came to this conclusion when exactly? Maybe yesterday when I was threatening to kill her?”
“Do you have any idea the number of times I’ve threatened to kill Liam?”
“It’s not the same.” Scout had never thought she might have to kill Liam, whereas there was a time yesterday when he thought he would watch Maggie draw her last breath. “And if that was the criteria for deciding whether or not someone is interested in another person, then Talley may need to worry about Jase’s feelings towards Joshua.”
But Scout wouldn’t be dissuaded. She leaned up on her elbows, the challenge of the Alpha in her eyes. “You look at her.”
“I look at lots people. I’m looking at you right now.”
“No you’re not. You’re looking through me, just like you’ve looked through everyone since Toby died.” A flash of white pain in his chest made him want to lash out at her, but he reined it in, refusing to fall into that rabbit hole of emotion. “But when Maggie is in a room, you can’t look away. It’s like she’s a magnet, one of those cool, super-charged magnets bad guys use to steal the Eiffel Tower or moon or whatever.”
“She’s a Thaumaturgic, an unknown in a situation where lives are on the line. Of course I watch her. It’s my job to protect you and this pack.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Chuck,” Scout said. “Maybe one day we’ll both believe it.”
Chapter 14
For a house big enough to park a jet plane inside, there was absolutely nowhere for Maggie to draw. She supposed she could have stayed in her room, but something about the dark wood and heavy furniture made cabin fever set in at an alarmingly fast pace. She’d grabbed her sketchbook and pencils hoping to find a nice, quiet place to think, but it turned out nice and quiet were foreign concepts at Fenrir Farm. She’d thought she had hit the jackpot when she found Mischa and Imogen quietly watching The Help in the den, but despite the absolute silence and mile of couch separating the girls, Maggie got a strong we-want-some-alone-time vibe from the possibly-maybe-a-couple couple.
After wandering around some more, and getting hit in the head with one of the cardboard tubes Jase and Joshua were using as swords as they chased one another up and down the hallway, Maggie finally found an empty room. Like every other room in the house, it was obviously decorated by someone obsessed with Victorians. The walls were covered in a dark red satin, the carpet was think enough to double as a mattress, and the oversized desk and chairs taking up the majority of the room were carved mahogany. The only concession to modern times was the Chihuly hanging from the middle of the ceiling.
Within minutes she was so absorbed in her own thoughts and the charcoal flying across the paper she didn’t hear the door open.
“Are you supposed to be in here?”
Maggie jerked back, causing the spinny-swively chair to almost topple over backwards. Her shriek would have made a Beatles fangirl proud.
“Jesus,” the newcomer said, his hand covering his ears. “You know most of us have dog-like hearing, right? I think you just busted my eardrums.”
“Sorry.” She tried not to look at the errant streak of black stretching across the page she’d been working on. “I’m Maggie,” she said, forcing her eyes back to the guy who was still standing in the doorway looking at her like she was one of the less interesting exhibits at the zoo. “I’m staying here for a couple of days.”
“Yeah, I know. Even the Omega gets informed when a Thaumaturgic moves into the house.”
“Omega?”
The new guy ignored her question, plowing on as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “So, you guys are supposed to be like Seers, right? Like you have your one special thing you do, but instead of Seeing stuff you can like control it or whatever?”
“I’ve never said I was a—“
“So, what is your thing? Can you shoot fire out of your fingertips or breathe underwater or what?”
Maggie caught herself before explaining how it didn’t exactly work like that. Thaumaturgics couldn’t control their element so much as converse with it.
“Which Hagan are you?” she asked instead. She was pretty sure she hadn’t met this one before, but she knew he had to be one of Charlie’s relatives. She’d met a handful of them and they all had the exact same green eyes.
“Makya. Alpha Pack Omega.”
“Omega. Right. Of course.” Maggie thought over everything she knew about Shifters, and still came up with nothing. “What exactly is an Omega?”
The sigh escaping Makya’s lips said he couldn’t believe she was stupid enough to not know this.
“Omega. Lowest of the low. Servant of the Alpha Pack. See also: whipping boy.”
“Oh,” Maggie said, her face growing warmer and warmer by the second. She wasn’t quite sure what to say, but that didn’t keep her mouth from moving and words spilling out. “I didn’t know. I don’t really know anything about Shifters, other than they exist. I don’t suppose you have a handy brochure or instructional video to get me caught up on all the terminology and everything?”
Makya snorted. “God, don’t let Scout hear you say that. She’s been threatening to make Marie and Michelle write one. She wants to call it There Really is a Monster at the End of this Book.”
“I need something more self-helpy. How about The Secret (to Living with Shifters)?”
“The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Shifters?”
“How to Befriend Seers and Influence Shifters?”
“Shifters are from the Moon, Seers are from the Stars?”
Maggie wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Preaching to the choir here, sister.” Makya said as he unfolded a wand-like device with shredded rags on the end and began dusting the bookshelf on the wall behind her. For the first time, Maggie noticed the bucket of cleaning supplies he’d brought with him. He wasn’t kidding about that whole Omega thing.
Knowing Makya wasn’t one of the powerful, scary Alpha Pack Shifters made it easier for Maggie to relax.
“I’m just afraid I’m going to say or do the wrong thing,” she confessed as he moved down to the next shelf. “Everything here has its place, and there are these rules everyone seems to know but me, and I’m like this idiot child, running around trying not to accidentally stomp on anyone’s toes.”
Makya looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed on Maggie as if he was trying to figure something out.
“Okay, this is what you need to know,” he said with a sigh, turning around to face her. “One, k
eep Scout happy, which is basically impossible, because Scout is only happy when she’s miserable. But she’s the Alpha Female, and Liam, who is the Alpha Male, would move a mountain with a teaspoon if she asked him to, so it’s Scout you have to concentrate on.
“Jase and Talley seem like happy-go-lucky people who do nothing but touch each other all the time, but they’re both hella powerful. Jase can be ruthless and determined when he thinks something is important, and Talley is supposedly the Stella Polaris.”
“Stella Polaris?” Maggie asked, wishing she had a glossary to keep up with all these crazy names the Shifters gave to everything.
Even though Makya wasn’t quite as heart-stopingly gorgeous as Jase and Charlie, there was something about him and the rest of the Hagan men a girl couldn’t help but notice. Maybe it was the clean lines comprising their slender but muscled Shifter bodies. Maggie traced Makya’s biceps with her eyes as he reached up to scratch the back of his head. “Literally, the Stella Polaris is the North Star,” he said, oblivious to her ogling, “but in Talley’s case, it means the most powerful Seer on the planet.”
The words Talley and powerful didn’t seem like they went together, but neither did Jase and ruthless. Maggie wondered if Makya actually knew what he was talking about.
“What about Charlie?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. “What do I need to know about him?”
It took a few minutes for Makya to answer. He tried to play it off like he was too busy messing with the stuff in his cleaning bucket, but Maggie could recognize a stalling technique when she saw it. It only made her more eager to hear what he had to say.
“Charlie is…” Makya sprayed a thin coating of lemon-scented cleaner over the table. “I don’t know. Hard, I guess.” He nodded his head slightly, as if agreeing with himself. “He’s always been more serious than Jase, but after his brother… You know about his brother, right?”
She hadn’t, but once she gave it about half of a second’s thought, she thought she might know where this was going.
Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) Page 12
