The girl in the mirror twisted her head to one side as I ran my hands over the surface of the glass. “You can’t come in, my child, no more than I can come out—the curse has seen to that. But if you could use your power…”
I moved on to examining the mirror’s frame, searching for the hidden wires. When that revealed nothing, I slipped my fingers behind the frame and ran my hand along the wall. Nothing. I crawled under the dressing table and thumped the wood with my fist. “Where did those sneaky little assholes put the power source?”
“Power source?” The girl’s melodic voice hit my ears at the same moment as I slammed my head off the underside of the dressing table. Blood pounded against my temples.
“I am not talking to you, bitch.” I threw the girl my filthiest look as I heaved the heavy wooden unit away from the wall. The girl pressed her hand against her chest in a show of hurt but there was a smirk hovering at the corner of her lips and a sly glint in her clear blue eyes. “Yeah, laugh it up, lady. I’m not the one playing ghosts in the mirror for a living.”
“No, you’re not doing anything for a living, are you? Does that haunt you at night, Isabelle? When all your greatest fears come out to haunt you? You’re not a soldier anymore, not an operant—not anything. Nobody needs you. Nobody wants you, not even your own father. That’s what the darkness whispers to you, isn’t it? The blackness would swallow you whole if you let it.” For a moment, I was frozen, my body paralyzed by her biting words. Power returned to my limbs in a torrent of fury, but I wouldn’t let it master me. Whatever game Blackwood’s bastards were playing with me, whoever was feeding this actress with poison, they couldn’t use it to turn me into their puppet. I was master of my own actions.
I took my time, shoving the dresser slowly back into place before I sat down on the bed and began flicking through the magazines. The girl continued to prattle in the mirror but I refused to be drawn in, pretending to examine the fashion articles in detail. Nicole would have laughed her ass off if she could have seen me—the closest I had ever come to couture was a dangerous obsession with velour leisure wear in Junior High.
The girl in the mirror grew increasingly shrill, flickering from one side of the frame to the other as she rambled on. “Teddy and Mac, the names you called out when you were in fear—are they already in your heart? I sense your lust for them, the way your gaze lingers on their bodies. You heart calls for them. It feels the bond.”
I snorted and flicked to the next page. “Oh, wow. You guys sure have some seriously delusional tendencies. Next, you’re going to be telling me I have it bad for Bolloxy Blackwood and Jonathan the Jerk. Oh, yeah, baby, I want you all so much, take me. I need you bad.”
“It wouldn’t be your first time, Operant O’ Neill, would it?” The girl’s words hissed across the room. “Do you miss those cold nights in the desert? Wrapped in the arms of men who loved you.” My heart was a rock, crashing against my ribs as I turned to stare at the mirror. Her smile was beautiful and cruel, all at once. “Oh, yes, little Belle, my people hear all the whispers. Your father may have hidden you from the gods, but nobody can hide from the fae—nobody can hide from the shadows.”
There wasn’t enough air in the room. I threw myself off the bed and went to fling the windows open, but she was already there, in the reflective glass of the windowpane. I backed away from her image, not taking my eyes off her until my back bumped into the wall. I fumbled for the handle and twisted it, staring down at my own sweaty palms only to find the girls face staring up at me from the brass door handle. “What the hell?”
I struggled to keep my head as I scanned the room, watching the girl’s image appear and disappear on every reflective surface. I drew breath in through my teeth and crushed my arms against my waist. “Bravo, Blackwood. Nice work. That’s pretty unsettling technology. Is that what you’re using your science knowledge for, Mac? To try and get inside my head? Nicely done—you’ve got me rattled. Are you guys watching me on your big screen in the den? Having a laugh at your prisoner?”
The girl’s image had settled back inside the dressing table mirror. I marched across the room and thrust my face in front of the glass. “You all want a good look at me?” I raised my middle finger to my lips, kissed it, and flashed it at the mirror. “There you go, shitheads.”
“You really have no idea?” I turned away from the mirror and the girl’s voice, refusing to be played for another second by Blackwood’s video feed. Her voice followed me. “You think I’m some sort of trick the boys are playing on you? You can’t sense anything here. Your sister knew, though. She heard our music, didn’t she? She was almost lost to you that day, by the stream. We didn’t call to her, but she tried to come with us anyway.” My blood ran cold. Like a hound with the scent of blood, the girl flickered across the window pane, dancing in the corner of my vision. “Blackwood Forest isn’t like anywhere else you’ve ever been. There are things hiding in the woods, you know that. This isn’t a silly parlor trick. They don’t even know I’m here.”
“Stop.” I pulled my cell out of my pocket, stabbing in frustration at the network settings. “It’s not going to work, Blackwood. Tell your actress or your computer program—whatever the redhead is—to give it a rest. I’m done.”
“Look inside your silver compact.” My fingers stiffened on the phone screen. The girl repeated herself. “The silver compact your mother gave to you. It’s inside your jacket pocket like it always is. Open it. They haven’t laid a finger on it to tamper with it—or are you too frightened to check?”
It was a cheap, elementary school trick, but it woke my overinflated sense of pride and I snatched the compact from my pocket and grasped it in my fist. The silver surface was scratched and the engraved ring of flowers was almost worn out in places, but to me, it was beautiful. I wasn’t the kind of girl who gave much of a crap about girly stuff—well, except for my weird obsession with eyelash extensions, but only Chesca knew about that and she was sworn to secrecy on pain of death—but I never went anywhere without my mother’s silver compact. It was an heirloom, passed down from my mother’s mother, and her mother before. Mom gave it to me on my first day at the Academy and I’d kept it with me every day since.
I snapped the compact open and the girl’s face smiled up at me.“Boo!”
“What the—” I flung the mirror onto the bed and crushed my hands against my mouth. The girl lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers at me from inside the small circular mirror. I shook my head. “How are they doing this?” I narrowed my eyes at the ceiling. “It’s a projection. They’re projecting the image onto the compact—”
“Enough poppycock!” The girl in the mirror threw her hands into the air. “Honestly, I could have gotten the sweet, sensitive sister, or even the clever, self-serving one—at least she wants to be saved, but no! No, I get the sister with a brick wall for a mind.” She crossed her arms and glared at my face. “All right, child. You’ve had quite enough time to flap about with your mumbo-jumbo, now, you need to accept what’s in front of you.”
I snorted in disbelief. “What, that you’re the ghost of Blackwood Manor or something?”
“Not a ghost.” The girl pulled her fine eyebrows together and pursed her lips. “I’m very much alive, thank you very much.”
I raised my palm. “Right, sorry, my mistake. You’re not a ghost, you’re a woman who’s stuck in the mirror.” I rolled my eyes—why was I talking to a goddamn reflection? I’d finally lost my mind.
The girl clapped her hands together and beamed at me. “Yes, that’s precisely it. This might be easier than I feared. Now that you understand about my people, it will be easy to explain how the curse has affected the Shifters.”
“The Shifters? Like, shapeshifters?” I started to grin and looked around the room. “Right. I see. Joke’s on me, guys. You’re werewolves, there’s a woman trapped in the glass—all we need now is a nest of Vampires and a coven of Witches, right?”
Before the girl had a chance to answer, the wai
ling of an alarm filled the room. The girl’s image whirled from the compact to the dressing table mirror and then to the window pane before vanishing altogether.
I sprinted across the floor and pressed my palms against the glass, staring out into the forest behind the house just in time to see Blackwood and Jonathan bolting from the door below, shedding their clothes as they ran. Blackwood twisted his neck and found me instantly, his eyes meeting mine for one second before he disappeared beneath the cover of the trees. Jonathan paused at the edge of the lawn and stared down into a small water feature. His shoulders stiffened and, for a moment, I thought that he would turn and look into my window too. Instead, he shed the lasts traces of his clothing and transformed into a large white wolf.
Chapter Seven
“I’m gonna need you to open this door, Izzy.” Teddy’s voice was controlled, but I could sense his frustration building as he rattled the door handle again. I pushed the dressing table tighter against the door with my hip and wrapped my fingers around my Beretta. He knocked again, louder this time. “Izzy, we’ve got to get to the den, okay? We should have warned you about the security sirens but we weren’t expecting a breach tonight. Not before sundown.”
Security sirens. Yeah, that was the scariest thing happening in Blackwood Manor. Sure.
I backed away from the door with my gun held high.
“Izzy?” The rapping on the window pane startled me so badly that I almost released a round into the air. Mac’s face peered through the glass. Curse Blackwood and his stupid guest bedroom—who put a damn bedroom on the ground floor of a mansion? The bastard was too mean to use one of the upstairs rooms, probably.
I leveled my gun at the window. “Get away from me, Mac.”
“Izzy, I’m sorry, I know all the alarms and the panic must seem creepy, but we really need to get you somewhere secure. There are intruders in the forest. You need to come with us to the den where you’ll be safe.” Mac’s expression was so pleading that I had to drag my stare away from his deep brown eyes and focus on the floor. He tapped on the glass again. “Please, Izzy. We don’t want to have to force our way in, but it’s for your own—shit.” Mac stared over his shoulder and let out a high-pitched whistle before he disappeared from view.
A huge force smashed against the bedroom door and in a single heart-stopping lurch, Teddy crashed through the door and knocked the solid dressing table out of his path. I pointed my gun straight at his chest and pressed my back against the wall. “I know what you are, all of you, and I’m not going anywhere with you. What could there possibly be in the forest that’s worse than werewolves?”
Teddy covered the space between us before I had squeezed the trigger and tossed me over his shoulder as if I weighed nothing. His reply hit my ears at the same time as my face hit his chest, but we were halfway down the stairs to the den before my brain registered his words. “You haven’t met the vampires.”
The heavy door slammed behind us the moment we entered the den and Mac started pressing panels on the wall and speaking into a computer. If the sirens were still blaring, you couldn’t hear them inside the den. You couldn’t hear anything at all.
I didn’t move from the position Teddy had dropped me in for a full minute. My blood rushed through my veins like a freight train as I examined everything around me. The room was one huge open-plan space, with a kitchen in one corner, a gym in another, a home cinema and game station in another and in the final corner was the absolutely enormous bed that Teddy had thrown me onto.
I shuffled back against the wall on my butt and stared at the two men with a comforter bunched around my waist. Teddy sat on a chair about ten feet away from the bed and Mac stood with his back against the door and his head hanging low. I felt an unwelcome stab of affection in my gut as I studied the way his shoulders seemed to hold the weight of the world. My gaze flicked to Teddy who was resting his elbows on his knees and staring straight at me. He was so huge that the chair looked comically small. Despite my reluctance, my body recalled the thrill of feeling weightless in his arms, and for a second, I imagined what it would be like to kneel down in front of him and let him lift me into those big arms. To feel his hands in my hair.
Hands.
My lips parted as I stared at Teddy’s hands. My head jerked to the left. Mac’s hands were perfect too. I bolted off the bed and grabbed hold of Mac’s arm, lifting his hand to my face. No claws, no fur, just perfect flesh and skin. Mac’s eyes widened as I ran my fingers over his hands and up the inside of his wrist. Our eyes met and the intimacy of the moment hit me like waves on a moonlit beach. I dropped his hands and took a step backward, hoping the dim light hid the color of my cheeks.
I sat back down on the bed and folded my arms. “Your hands—they’re perfect.”
A slow grin spread over Teddy’s lips. “Most ladies say everything about me is perfect.”
I dug my nails into my palms and gave him my most unimpressed glare. I wasn’t going to be distracted from the fact that I had seen Jonathan shifted into a wolf by Teddy’s sexy eyes. Well, not much. “Is it because of the moon? When the moon is out, you become a person or a wolf? That’s how werewolves work, right? The moon controls you?”
Mac sighed and flopped down onto the end of the bed. “What do you know?”
“I saw Jonathan turn into a white wolf.” Teddy and Mac exchanged a glance, but before either of them could try and bullshit me, I kept speaking. “And I met Faye, the girl trapped in the glass.”
“Faye and Jonathan, I should have guessed.” Mac dragged one hand through his messy dark waves and muttered under his breath. “Great. Great job, guys.”
“Is that why your claws are gone? Because of the moon?” I asked again.
Mac tilted his head to look at Teddy and the big man shrugged his shoulders. “You’re the Beta—it’s your call, man. She already knows what we are.”
I watched the two men closely, trying to figure out the dynamic between them and finding myself begrudgingly charmed by the subtle mutual respect. Mac got off the bed and pulled over another chair to sit beside Teddy, facing me. He rested his hands on his knees. “We’re wolf shifters, werewolves—you’re right.”
Even though I knew what I had seen, even though I knew it was true, something about hearing the words made me feel like I was trapped in a dream. Mac gave me an intense stare. “There are lots of supernatural beings, not just shifters. The girl in the mirror is fae—one of the fair folk, a fairy. She can’t give you her name, because to the fae that’s equivalent to giving you part of her soul, so she calls herself by the name of her people.”
“And vampires?” I pointed a finger at Teddy. “You said there were vampires.”
Mac glared at Teddy with his hands spread and the big man gave the scientist a sheepish grimace. “I said it under my breath after I had to drag her from her room kicking and whining. Slip of the tongue.”
“Hey, I wasn’t whining. I had valid concerns. You guys might be all cool with being turned into wolves and vampires and mirror people, but I’m not. I do not roll with the weird shit.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder and flashed my best ‘don’t fuck with me’ glare.
Teddy nodded slowly. “I hear what you’re saying, Izzy—no kinky shit, missionary style only. I’m cool with that. Old school.”
I wanted to tell him to get screwed, I really did, but when his lips curved into a slow smile and he flashed those white teeth at me, it was all I could do to string a sentence together. “Oh, don’t worry, my sexual preferences fall into the category of information you won’t ever need, Teddy bear.”
“Vampires. You were asking about vampires,” Mac blurted out before Teddy could respond to my rebuff.
I pulled my knees up against my chest. “And are there?”
Mac dropped his chin. “There are vampires, Izzy. And selkies, and sirens, and mermaids, and witches, and a hundred other things besides—all descended from the gods and demi-gods.”
“The gods?” I lifted one eyebrow.
I let my head fall back against the wall. “Creatures descended from gods.”
Mac winced and screwed up his face. “Creature is a bit harsh. We’re people; we just have more of a supernatural edge than the humans who descended from a dormant bloodline.”
“I’m sorry—a what now?” I flattened the comforter with my palms.
“All humans are descended from the original gods. Some of the gods still chose to live among us so for their bloodlines the supernatural gifts they inherited remains strong. But most of the gods have either retreated underground or disappeared entirely, so the genetic gifts they bestow upon their descendants remain so weak they are undetectable. Those people are your regular humans.”
“So everyone is a werewolf or a vampire at heart, but their supernatural side is dormant because their god is asleep or dead?” I knew was making my ugly face again, my top lip curled back over my teeth, but it was beyond my control.
Mac laughed and my chest gave a little leap. He had a really great laugh. “You think we’re total crackpots, don’t you?”
“It’s a hard sell, Mac. Ancient gods, shifters, witches—come on.” I lifted one eyebrow.
Mac grinned. “Hey, I didn’t want to tell you any of this. You’re the one who was spying on Xander and Jon from the window.”
“I was not spying on them! I have absolutely no interest in seeing that arrogant prick streaking through the woods, thank you very much.” The memory of Alexander Blackwood’s bare shoulders flashed across my mind and I glanced at the door. “Shouldn’t they be back now? Was it really vampires in the forest? If it’s only Blackwood and Jonathan—”
Beauty's Beasts: An Urban Fantasy Fairy Tale (Poison Courts Book 1) Page 5
