She had to give him this. He was good at getting right to the point.
She watched him give Ashley a brilliant smile; it lit up his entire face—literally. He was streaming with magic particles, and the effect was dazzling. It made his face—which was handsome enough by witch standards, she supposed—twice as attractive.
Ashley turned red and started pulling at the zippers on her backpack. Any excuse not to look at him.
A glamor.
The bastard was using a glamor. And he was using it to seduce her friends.
She dug her nails into her palms when he looked her way, daring her to interfere. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of the scene he so clearly wanted. He knew what had happened to David. She needed that information. Needed it, so she could seek her revenge.
And gods have mercy on anyone foolish enough to stand in her way.
Including this witch.
“Well,” said Ashley, still looking rattled, “we have the usual dances and clubs and things. The dang weather usually isn't this terrible but this winter has been freakishly cold,” she added, gesturing towards the sky. “Otherwise, we'd be hanging around outside.”
“We were thinking about going to a Sterling Rep meeting, if you're interested,” Sharon chimed in, apparently unhappy with the attention her sister was getting. “It's this great club dedicated to community service and shit. Of course, you probably had something like it at your school.”
Her eyes found Catherine's—who had been silent this whole time—and she gave a guilty little start, as if only just remembering that she was there. Which she probably had. Fucking glamor. At least she had the decency to look apologetic when she said, “Oh, oh, only if you want to go, Catherine.” To the witch, she said, “Catherine doesn't have much school spirit.”
“I gathered.”
“Excuse me,” Catherine said. “I have plenty of spirit.”
“Yeah,” Sharon said, in her light, I'm-just-kidding voice. “The kind that needs to be exorcised.”
Catherine gave her the finger, and it was the first bout of normalcy she'd had all day.
Since when had Sterling Rep become a “great club”? She distinctly remembered Sharon saying she wouldn't be a part of any club that had Chase Hill as a member. Gods, if he used another glamor on her friends, she was going to Change into something with claws and fucking maul him, blood bond or no.
Pain exploded behind her eyeballs. It appeared that the mere act of envisioning causing pain on the witch was enough to trigger the curse. With a groan, she ground her knuckles into her forehead, trying to find the pressure point that would alleviate the headache. She thought the witch might have smiled but if he did, it disappeared too quickly for her to be sure.
“Shit, you okay?” Ashley asked, a worried look coming into her brown eyes.
“Migraines,” Catherine mumbled. “And for your information, Sharon, I do want to go—oh, dammit.”
“You do? Huh. It's in room eight-oh-one, then. Wednesday night.”
Her head. She dug her knuckles into the throbbing spot between her eyebrows. “I know.”
Sharon made an attempt at diplomacy. “That's cool. I'm sure they could use the shaking up.”
“Come on.” Ashley tugged at Sharon's arm. “We better go meet Mike, since he came out all this way to see you—and Finn and Catherine probably want some time alone.”
Perish the thought.
“Nice meeting you. See you at lunch, Catherine!”
“We should all do something before Wednesday,” Sharon called out. “Call me!”
Catherine's smile drooped. She thought she probably looked like she couldn't wait to be rid of them.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
“Thank the gods that unpleasantness is behind us,” the witch said. He was looking off into the distance, in the same direction that her friends had disappeared, with such obvious scorn that she wanted to smack it off his face.
Residual magic was still radiating from his body, blending with his aura, making him look as though he had been forged from light. She wondered if the glamor hadn't yet worn off, to make her think about him in such a way. Just the thought made her angry, though, so maybe not.
“Hey,” she said, in a forceful undertone, “you can't do that.”
He turned towards her unwillingly. “What are you talking about?”
“The glamor.”
“Oh. That.”
What else did he think she was angry about. “Yeah, that. What the hell do you think you're doing? The boyfriend thing, that's bad enough—but now…now you're bewitching my friends.”
“It wasn't powerful. A child could have cast it. They must have wanted to be ensorcelled.”
“Nobody wants that.” She almost screamed it. “Nobody wants to lose control of their body.”
“I wouldn't be too sure about that, shifter mine. I think you'd be surprised.”
Catherine ignored him. “They're not toys. They're humans—so stop playing with them.”
The witch laughed, and it was like the rolling of a black and bottomless tide. “Would you rather I played with you instead?” he asked, keeping his voice velvet-soft. Trying to intimidate her.
It wasn't working.
“Stay away from them.” She didn't take her eyes off his. To do anything less would be submissive. “I mean it. If you touch them—”
That gave her pause. What would she do? What could she do? With the blood magic that bound them, violence—her fallback option—was out. Just the thought was enough to send a frisson of sensation down her spine. Not pain, exactly. A warning.
Remembering the agony that had bloomed through her body after attacking him, she thought it might be best to heed it. But then what?
She was saved from making an unsatisfactory decision and possibly losing face by two girls from music class walking by. Maria Evans and Claire Munro. They eyed her curiously, with a touch of malice.
“She's jealous of you,” said the witch suddenly.
“Tell me about it.” Catherine snorted. “I let her win that music competition and she knows it.”
The witch—Finn—glanced at her, and then at the girls. Both of them had dissolved into whispers. It was unlikely he could make out what they were saying at this distance, but Catherine could. They were speculating about his presence, and whether he was a drug dealer or just a naïve fool.
Because those are the only kinds of men who would ever date me, obviously.
Humans could be so uninspired with their insults. If a woman defined herself solely by the man she was with—and vice versa—the world would be a very shallow and insipid place, indeed.
“No,” the witch said, unexpectedly. “Not them.”
“Who?”
“Your friend.”
“Sharon?”
Her human friend had often expressed some unhappy jealousy over Catherine's build and figure, usually cloaked in self-deprecating humor. Catherine knew she was in better shape than most and modestly attractive by human standards, but her reputation detracted heavily from that. She didn't dwell on it.
Did Sharon?
He's trying to turn you against your friends, Predator hissed, making Catherine shiver.
Was that it? Was that what he was doing?
With effort, Catherine tore her thoughts away from Sharon. The witch—Finn—glanced down at her, as if surprised to find that she was still standing there. “Shouldn't you be getting to class?”
“When are you going to tell me what happened to David?”
His face closed off. “Later.”
Catherine grabbed him by the shoulder, roughly. A look of surprise crossed his face—what, that she could touch him without setting off the curse?—before it settled into one she was more familiar with: one of condescension. “Unhand me.”
“I want a definite time.”
“Play along,” he said. “Then we'll see.”
“You don't know anything, do you?” Catherine made herself a
s tall as she was able. “This is a ruse.”
“You'll never know, will you?” he said cryptically.
“That's a raw deal and you know it.”
“Too bad,” he said lightly. “It's the only one you'll get.”
She swallowed back the insult on her tongue. “Fine,” she said coldly. “But in the future, don't drop bombs without diffusing them first—or they might just blow up in your face.”
The day passed slowly in that fashion.
Finn insisted upon accompanying her to every class, trailing behind like a shadow despite her insistence that nothing eventful was going to take place. He just repeated his earlier argument that they needed to be seen. Together.
She lost count of how many times she was forced to introduce the witch, explaining who he was and why he was there. Her teachers, never pleased with her to begin with, were not happy that she had brought him along on such short notice, and several told her so in front of the class. One even went so far as to threaten to call the principal.
But as introductions wore on, their skeptical frowns disappeared, thawing into bedazzled charm. Catherine was not fooled. She saw the magic around him surging in a suffocating tide. She could smell it. He was using glamors to compel the teachers to like him.
Lunch was worse. Sharon had invited onlookers—or they'd decided to come of their own accord. Everyone had heard about her so-called boyfriend and wanted to get a look at the human foolish enough to date the school's resident Bad Girl.
“God…he looks just as bad as she is…just what we need, another wannabe-bad-ass.”
“Whoever he is, he must be pretty tough if he managed to tame the wild shrew…”
Who that was, Catherine had no idea. If the Shakespeare reference was any indication, it had to be one of the honors students. Or maybe even a teacher, she thought grimly. Adults could be as judgmental as their adolescent counterparts. Maybe even more so.
“God. I didn't even think she was into men.”
Catherine met the eyes of every single gossip monger and shamelessly glared them into silence. At first, it was out of habit—she was reestablishing dominance—but the petty hatred helped to focus the feverish burning of the loathing she felt for the witch.
She didn't have to do much talking to him, thank gods. Sharon spent most of the time engaging the witch, which was fine. Finn did not appear to be enjoying their conversation; he kept trying to steer it back towards Sterling Rep, but Sharon wasn't having it. Even better.
Ashley chimed in periodically, trying to deflect the conversation away from the subject of Sharon and back towards neutral topics. Or even towards Catherine herself. It was sweet, having Sharon's kid sister jump to her defense like that. But Catherine wasn't even remotely interested in the witch and she was pretty sure her body language showed it. She thought—she hoped—that Sharon had picked up on those cues, and that was why she was being so forward.
Ashley gave her a frustrated look that Catherine chose to ignore. She must have seemed like an enabler, or willfully blind. If only she knew. Oh, if only she knew.
Most of the people at the table were there to ask questions about New England, where Finn had said he was from. Questions like did he know such-and-such friend/relative, had he been to such-and-such monument? I hear they have cool paintings there. Questions that made Catherine want to bang her head against the wall. Thankfully, he was able to answer reasonably enough.
More than reasonably. Listening to him describe Boston, Cape Cod, and Essex, she could almost believe that he really had been to those places. And who knew? Maybe he had been. There was no telling where his Council duties had taken him; they wanted to have their fingers in all the pies.
He was trying to lull her into a false sense of confidence with this thin veneer of civility. But she saw right through the façade he had constructed so carefully, to the monster which lay beneath.
Finn turned away from Sharon and their eyes met. Such a dark green, his eyes. They reminded her of the forest, of all the dangers lying dormant behind that verdant cloak of leaves.
He slid a paper at her, and his fingers brushed his arm as he did. Catherine had been scowling at a lingering freshman, warning her away so that she, too, wouldn't become caught in the crossfire of the witch's compulsion glamor, and jumped in surprise at the unwanted contact.
“What's that, Finn?” Sharon asked, making a not-so-playful grab for the white slip. Her grasping hand was fast, but Catherine was faster. She snatched it, and growled, “Piss off, Sharon.”
“It's nothing,” said the witch, too eloquently to be considered defensive. “You were saying—?”
Their voices trailed off into nothingness as she unrolled the slip. She was very good at tuning things out. Had to be, or she would have gone insane otherwise. It had happened to other shifters, in the past. Just one of the reason so many shape-shifters chose not to integrate into society and become glamors, choosing instead to live out their lives in the wild, as a beast.
The slip of paper was filled with rushed, slanting script. The many flourishes and curls hinted at calligraphy lessons, but couldn't disguise the coldness of the note he had written her. If anything, they exacerbated its effect: You're going to have to try harder than that.
She glanced at him sidelong, letting her eyes burn yellow for a fleeting moment. A warning.
He chose not to heed it. Instead he looped his arm around her waist, sliding her along the cafeteria bench, until she was sitting close enough to him that her leg was touching his. “Very good,” he murmured, pitching his voice so that it was at the threshold of her hearing and hers alone, stroking her hip purposefully. She stared straight ahead, not looking at him. “Much better.”
She recalled his proposition to her, the other night. His anger when she refused him. Part of this was sexual, yes—she could smell his arousal, but whether it was because of her or because of the power he perceived himself having over her was anyone's guess—but there was more to it.
He had lost face that night, and now he smelled like an animal about to make a bid for dominance. Humans had no word for the desire to be aggressive and win, to take on the pack and reassert one's self as leader. Animals did, but it was felt and experienced in emotions and smells. The sharp tang of male hormones, a possessive hand splayed on a thigh.
She grimaced.
That was something humans did not understand. That such conquests were not about lust, or even attraction, but about power and humiliation.
Her one consolation was that it was Friday, and there was a whole weekend for the novelty of the witch to wear off. The attention span of the average high school student was about two minutes—coincidentally, the same amount of time it took to spread a salacious rumor. By Monday, Catherine doubted her peers would even remember the witch's name.
She hoped so, anyway. She wasn't sure how much more of this she could endure. She felt—
Hunted, Predator said. Like Prey.
Yes, she thought. That was it. She felt as if she had become Prey.
She's very good at pretending to be human.
There were tells. She twitched a lot, tilting her head towards any sound that startled her, and she maintained eye contact for too long—or too short—an amount of time to fully pass as human. She didn't make a sound when she walked, and carried herself in a half-slouch that made her look as if she were seconds away from pouncing. And then there was the way her arms were corded with veins, betraying the strength that her small body kept closely hidden inside.
She stiffened, and Finn knew that she had felt his gaze and that it was unwelcome.
He didn't really care.
Keeping his hand on her thigh, he turned the conversation back towards Sterling Rep. The more he learned about the organization, the more suspicious he became. Why would a school club require so much stealth and secrecy? And then there was the fact that they held their meetings after dark—Slayers tended to convene at night, because they had roots in the occult.
&nbs
p; And then there was the name itself—Sterling Rep. The weapon of choice for Slayers was silver.
Somewhere, a bell sounded, signifying the end of lunch period. The shifter moved to get up, but he tightened his grip on her, indicating that he wanted her to remain seated while her friends left. He was surprised by the heat of her skin, as though she were lit within by a raging fire.
“It's them,” he said, when they were alone. “I'm sure of it.”
The shifter didn't look at him. “Then you don't need me anymore.”
“Au contraire. You are my key to entrance.”
Now she did look at him, and her face was blazing defiance. “What?”
“You have a reputation—troubled child, bound to slip through the cracks after graduation. Just the type, in their eyes, to turn to drugs or prostitution. Imagine how eager they will be to reform you.” She flinched, and he allowed himself a smile. “They'll be falling over themselves.”
“Those who live in glass houses.”
So she knew a thing or two about him, as well. He let his eyes harden. “I heard the rumors. They are everywhere. People were very quick to warn me away from you. That's not exactly conducive to being a Glamor, is it? You're supposed to deflect attention. Not attract it.”
“They don't know what I am.”
“Are you so sure?”
She was silent.
“I think some have started to wonder.”
She let out a small gasp as the metal seared her skin, and her face twisted, becoming animal with anguish and pain. “Stop it,” she said. “Get out of my head. You don't know me.”
“You're a freak,” he said bluntly. “Even among your own kind, you will never be accepted.”
She raised her hand to slap him, then apparently thought better of it. She brushed her hair out of her face instead. “So are you.”
“Not quite.”
“Only because you live a life of lies,” she said. “I don't hide what I am.”
“Oh no?” Finn tugged her closer. “So it's common knowledge, then, that you—a physically mature shifter—possess no settled form. That you can see and read magic auras. And that sometimes—” he let his voice drop “—you dream things before they really happen.”
Touched with Sight (Shadow Thane) Page 9
