by ERIN BEDFORD
I almost didn’t recognize him. He looked so normal—well, as normal as Chess could be as a hot runway model human. The cat ears were gone, and his pale pink hair was now a soft white that my fingers itched to be tangled in. He wore a dark button-down shirt with the top few buttons open to display the pale white skin below. He still had on an array of metal studded belts, but his tail was noticeably absent.
“Katherine? Who is your friend?” Brandi’s voice pulled me away from Chess’ emerald eyes that were alight with amusement.
“Uh. Um.” I glanced at Brandi and then back to Chess, who graced me with a full, fangless grin. “He’s um, my…”
Chess wrapped his arm around my waist and jerked me flush against his side. He slid his clawless finger under my chin and tipped my face up to his, and in my speechless daze; I barely registered the feather-like brush of his lips across mine.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m Kat’s beau.”
I licked my lips at his words knowing I should protest, but I was too shocked to do much else but let him do what he willed.
“Oh? Her boyfriend? Really?” The incredulous tone of her voice snapped me out of my haze.
My eyes narrowed at the disbelieving raise of her brows, and I forced back a snarl. “Yes. My boyfriend.”
Chess wasn’t my anything, but I sure as hell wasn’t letting that bitch know. She would dig her claws into him before I could say Wonderland. I wrapped my arms around Chess’ waist and gave him a squeeze.
“Well hurry up and finish here. There is more work to do.” She huffed and marched out of the aisle.
With the boss lady gone, I glanced up to ask Chess what the hell he was doing here but halted. His mouth was tight, and his eyes were slightly pinched. I moved back and looked him over more closely. His eyes, while as vibrant as ever in color, were filled with a bit of haze as if he weren’t really there. His chest moved up and down in a rampant effort. I leaned away from him further and noticed a crimson wetness had shown up from where I had been pressed against him. His shirt stuck to him, and there was a slight stain of red on my own yellow shirt.
“Chess! You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine, love.” He pulled away from me and propped himself against one of the bookshelves, his image flickered back and forth between Fae and human form.
The pained sound of his voice did nothing to reassure me he was telling the truth. I stuck my head into the aisle checking for Brandi or any of my other coworkers. The library was pretty dead this time of day with school not out yet and parents still at work. I could probably get him to the bathroom undetected. With the way he was flickering, I didn’t want to give some unsuspecting kiddie a scare.
“Come on.” I grabbed Chess by the arm and dragged him out of the shelves and around the computers before ducking into the family bathroom.
Snapping the door shut behind me, I locked it and turned to Chess. He was resting against the sink, his fingers digging into the sides of the porcelain.
“What the fuck, Chess?” I stalked up behind him, trying to assess the damage from outside his clothes. “You get summoned to court for some unknown reason and come back bleeding?”
I pulled a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and lifted the side of his shirt to press them against his skin.
“You shouldn’t bother, love.” He grunted when I applied more pressure. “I’ll heal on my own.”
“That aside, you shouldn’t be walking around when you are this hurt.” I glared at him. “And since when could you use a glamour?”
“Why, because I’m a half-breed?” The venom in his voice knocked the complaint right out of me.
“No?” My voice became softer and less accusing than before. “I just assumed you’d have used it before now. I mean, if you were High Fae you would have.”
“Like they are so great.” He scoffed and then groaned as if the sound caused him pain. “I’ll have you know, my mother was High Fae.”
Curious now that he was actually opening up to me, I pressed more, “And your father?”
“Can’t you guess?” He smirked at me with a grimace and then dropped his glamour to show his gorgeous pink mane in place of the pale blonde tresses. My eyes widened at the purpling bruise on his neck.
“Holy fuck.” I stepped closer, putting one hand up to touch the bruise. He flinched, and I halted. “It’s okay, Chess. I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to see.”
He let out a pained chuckle and let me push his hair away from his throat to see the ring of purple blemishes around his neck. Being as careful as possible, I moved his collar aside. More bruises trailed down under his shirt.
I started to unbutton his shirt. I needed to see what else they had done to him. How much pain was he in?
“Woah, kitten.” He brushed my hands away with a flirty grin. “If you wanted me out of my clothes, all you had to do was ask.”
“Let me see, Chess.”
His grin faltered. “What does it matter? I’m fine. The fiasco with your friend just opened them back up is all. They were almost done healing already.”
“They?” I didn’t ask this time. I grabbed the edges of his shirt and pulled. Buttons popped from the shirt and onto the floor, exposing his pale skin. I’d have liked to linger on the hard planes of his chest, but the dark array of bruises and small crisscross cuts that decorated his side drew my eyes.
“It’s not bad at all. See?” He gestured to the area as he tried to hide a grimace on his face.
“Not bad at all?” I gaped at him. “Chess, you look like you’ve been in a fight with Teeth and lost!”
“Nonsense. Teeth wouldn’t give me the time a day, let alone long enough to get in a fight with.” He lifted up the edges of his shirt and frowned at the missing buttons. “You know, I really liked this shirt.”
A growl left my throat. “Who did this to you?”
Not looking up from his shirt, he shrugged in a very feline way. “Oh, you know, the usual. An enraged spouse of some Fae or another upset that their loved one found their way into my loving claws.”
I frowned. He was trying to deter me from the real culprit, but I didn’t know him well enough to push the right buttons to get him to spill the beans. He, on the other hand, obviously knew what to do to rile me up.
“Never mind about me.” He finally looked up from his shirt and locked his eyes on me. “You should be worrying about the mishap that almost happened out there.”
“Everything is so hard now. I used to know this stuff. How to control it. It was unheard of for me to have something like that happen to me. So why can’t I figure this out?” I bit my lip, frustration filling me.
He tapped me under the chin. “That’s because your Fae body knew what to do. Your human body is still new to all this. You’ll have to learn everything all over again, but this time without being able to ease into it like most Fae children do.”
I poked my lip out in a pout. “How am I supposed to do that? Mop said only someone with powers like mine could help me.”
“I will.”
My ears perked up at that. “You could really help me? But you don’t have the same abilities as me, do you?”
“Not all of them. But the basics would be enough to get you started. At least help keep you from creating a global incident.” His tail slid out and wrapped itself around my waist. “And there is so much I want to teach you, my sweet Kat. Every one of them just as magical.”
I tried not to grin at the corniness of his words, but there was something about him that always made me want to smile or rip off his clothes. While the latter had potential, he was right: my almost blowing up on Brandi was more important at the moment than the bruises that would fade. If only the ache in my heart that said something wasn’t right would fade with it.
Chapter 5
School of Magic
AFTER WORK I found myself standing in the backyard of my grandmother’s house with Chess ready to take on the r
ole of teacher.
“Glamours are the basic level magic that many High Fae children master before their first five years. You remember this, correct?” His eyes trailed over me.
Even in my baggiest shirt and most unflattering sweatpants, I still felt like his eyes were undressing me. Too bad my insides didn’t find that a bad thing. Reeling back my hormones, I focused on what he asked me.
“Yeah.” I shuffled from one foot to the other, recalling what I knew of glamours. I remembered being able to use it in my previous life, but Alice and Chess were the only ones I’d seen use one as a human.
“Well? Don’t keep teacher waiting,” Chess drawled, which ended up sounding more like a purr.
I crossed my arms over my chest and leveled him with an unamused glare. “There are three kinds of glamours.”
“Right you are, and what are they?” He held up three fingers.
I threw my hands up in the air with a sigh, giving into his silly game. “Well, there’s a visual glamour.”
Chess smirked at my unenthused answer. “And that is?”
The fucker was enjoying this.
“A visual glamour only makes you look like whatever you are changing into.” Before he could jump in and ask another asinine question, I continued, “Say you are really fat and want to appear thinner, it doesn’t mean you are thinner. Someone that tries to hug you is going to freak out when they get stopped by your big invisible belly.”
He gave me a disapproving look at my analogy but then curled his lips into a teasing grin. “So, what if you wanted to look and feel thinner? Not that you need it.” He took a step closer to me and placed his hands on the swell of my hips. “Curves like yours keep men up at night.”
I snorted at his attempt to flirt and pushed him away, holding up two fingers. “Second kind. Physical glamour. The ability to not only look but feel like what you are trying to pretend to be.”
“And what’s left? You can look and feel like anyone. Why would you need to go a step further?” He leaned into me, unconvincingly sniffing me as a hint and not for his own perverse pleasure.
“Because Fae have a great sense of smell, which makes it harder to lie to them, so you would need to not only change your appearance but change your scent too.” I tapped my chin as I thought about it. “It’s actually something that is really difficult to do and takes a lot of magic and control to accomplish, but if a Fae happens to be able to do it, they could fool even the most powerful Fae into believing they were someone else.”
As the words left my mouth, I realized something. I’d been trying to figure out how Alice had been able to trick Dorian into believing she was me. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that she could have done a full glamour because it was so unheard of that it wasn’t even something that was considered anymore. It was the only logical reason that Dorian could have been tricked, and if it was true, I owed Dorian a huge apology. But why did I see Alice when he saw me? It didn’t make any sense, unless Alice was better at controlling her glamour than she thought.
If Alice really had that kind of power, she was as much of a threat as the Shadow man, if not more. And if the Shadow man got ahold of Alice? We were all in trouble.
“What are you thinking about in that pretty little head of yours?” Chess asked with a hint of concern.
My gaze jerked up to him. I took a startled step back at how close his face was to mine. The green in his eyes gleamed with curiosity.
“Uh, nothing,” I muttered, but it didn’t sound convincing even to me.
He frowned at my lie but didn’t question it. Instead, he strolled away from me and into the lines of vegetables in the garden. My gaze wandered after him, watching the way his pants clung to his behind. Thankfully, he had left the glamour off since we were at the house. I didn’t expect any company anytime soon, and if anyone did choose to stop by, I hoped being in the backyard would give us enough warning to be prepared.
When he was done doing his little catwalk and made his way back over to me, the frown was gone from his face and in its place, his usual flirty smile. I was beginning to think that smile wasn’t meant to seduce but to hide his real feelings. It made me wonder what else he concealed behind that smile.
“So, you know what a glamour is. Now to put it into effect.” He flipped his braided hair over his shoulder, a movement I started to dissect to have some kind of secret meaning as well.
“Okay?” I let the question hang in the air.
Instead of answering, he reached around and pulled my hair out of my messy bun, and when he brushed my hair out with his fingers, I resisted the urge to purr. He lifted one of the pale strands up to his nose, his eyes watching my face.
“Okay.” I cleared my throat, angling my head to pull my hair from his grip. “So you want me to glamour my hair?”
Straightening up, he gave a nonchalant shrug. “Unless you would like to keep explaining your appearance to your friends and family.”
“Well, my hair isn’t so hard to explain. Lots of people color their hair nowadays, and no one really cares. What I really need to glamour are my eyes. Telling Brandi that I got colored contacts is one thing, but I don’t want to have to constantly defend it to my mother, which I’m sure will happen when I eventually can’t avoid her any longer.”
“If you insist. Now focus,” he demanded.
My brow creased, but I closed my eyes and tried to focus on changing the color of my irises. I felt a bit silly closing my eyes. Before, I didn’t even need to think about my magic to make what I wanted happen, but as every bad martial artist movie taught me, nothing gets you focused like losing one of your senses. All I was missing was a training montage and Chess singing a fatherly ballad about letting me find my way. Though, the thought of calling Chess daddy in any sense was a little too on the kinky side for my tastes.
Taking a deep breath, I reached for the magic inside me, coaxing it up to do my will. It fluttered around; slow and languid at first before creeping up to greet me. I felt it fill me up like a pressure under my skin.
Next, I tried to imagine what my eyes looked like before: a deep forest green with a bit of gold around the middle, almost more hazel than green. With the image in my mind, I pushed my magic, willing my eyes to be that color again. My eyes tingled, and then the magic became dormant once more.
Peeking an eye open, I chanced a look at Chess, who cocked his head.
“Well? Did I do it?” I strained my eyelids open so he could see.
A deep frown filled his face as he assessed the change I couldn’t see. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly? Either I did, or I didn’t.” I gave an impatient huff.
“Well, you changed them all right, but unless your eyes were a muddy kind of vomit color, I think you need more practice.” He tapped his chin in thought before stepping up to me. “I have an idea.”
I hesitated at his close proximity and went to take a step back but was stopped by his hand on my wrist.
“Wait. Hear me out before you start getting suspicious. I’m not going to bite you.” He gave me a cheeky grin. “Well, at least not right now.”
“Like that makes it any better,” I grumbled, but let him draw me closer.
“I think what your problem is, is imagination.” He placed both of his hands on my face, bringing me eye to eye with him. “We should have started with this to begin with, rather than making you rely on your shotty human memory.”
“Hey!” I pulled back but didn’t get far with my face trapped between his claws. “My memory is fine.”
He gave an indelicate snort. “So I see.”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you want me to do, all masterful one?”
A dark heated look filled his eyes. I swallowed hard, an apology on my lips, but he shrugged.
“You are going to make your eyes look like mine.”
My shoulders slumped with relief that he wasn’t going to make a big de
al about my attitude.
“No offense,” I said. “But I don’t exactly think having cat eyes will help my little situation.”
He gave me a pointed look, and I clammed up any further protests.
“The point is that you will have something in front of you to visualize and not rely on your own mind to create it. This is just step one. Once you can copy my eyes, you can go back to working on your normal color. All right?”
My lips curled down. I didn’t really like his plan, but I shrugged in acceptance anyway.
“So what I want you to do is focus on my eyes.” His pupils locked on mine.
“But don’t I need to wake my magic first?” I tried to pull back to look at him properly.
“No. Don’t even think about your magic. Just watch here.” He pulled my face closer to him until our noses brushed against each other.
I glanced down to his mouth, so close to mine, and my tongue dipped out to wet my suddenly dry lips. As much as I liked to berate Chess for his lecherous ways, I remembered what it was like to be at the mercy of those lips. The way he kissed me made me feel like he wasn’t just trying to taste me, but devour me. As if he couldn’t get enough. And his hands could do the most wicked things. He didn’t even have to touch the usual places that got me going with most guys. His hands on my skin were enough.
“Focus, Kat.” His voice came out a rough growl as if he too was affected by our closeness. “Focus on my eyes. On the color. The emerald green that sparkles in the sun at the right angle. The little details. The different shades that make up the color as a whole.” The soothing sound of his voice in correspondence to looking deep into his eyes made the rest of the world melt away until it was just him. “Do you see the way the pupil dilates as the clouds pass over the sun?”
I hummed in my throat a response. I felt like a snake trapped in a charmer’s song. Except this charmer’s body was far more lethal and his voice more tempting than any flute could provide.
“You want to have eyes like these. Of course you do. It is only normal to want what others have,” he whispered the words like the little devil on my shoulder telling me it was all right to want the naughty things. In fact, he would help me get them. “Tell me, my little kitty Kat. Tell me you want them.”
