Shadows of Ourselves (The Charmers Series Book 1)

by Apollo Blake

  Life sucks hard, and sometimes you just need to fuck someone.

  I wanted him. I wanted him touching me.

  He pulled me close, into his steady arms, and watched me get lost in the heat of his gaze moving over my body, making everything go away. It wasn’t good, and it wasn’t safe. It wasn’t right. But it was something.

  And right now, something was starting to feel not like enough, but more.

  EIGHTEEN

  DEVOUR EACH OTHER

  Hunter:

  This couldn’t be undone. This boy couldn’t be forgotten.

  His skin and his lips, and his throat, under my teeth right where I wanted it. Moaning and twisting and throwing his head back like he was going to fall to pieces if I kept going, or die if I tried to stop.

  I couldn’t not want an eternity of this, and we were going to fucking devour each other.

  NINETEEN

  INCUBUS IN CHARGE

  The fact that Hunter was brave enough to wake me up the next morning might have been impressive, if I wasn’t resisting the urge to kill him. He pulled me, still grumbling, from the bed, and we dressed mostly in silence—which was good, considering it was too early for my brain to register sound. I felt like I’d been hit with a brick wall, all the energy zapped from me.

  It might have been the adventure of the day before, the emotional stress of the fight with my mother, or the late night spent doing things with Hunter that definitely did not count as sleeping, but whatever the culprit was, I’d tossed and turned.

  No more nightmares on steroids, though. That counted for something.

  I had no idea when we’d finally fallen apart, but I’d stayed up even after Hunter passed into dreaming, staring at his sleeping face beside me, into the corners of the room, into the uncertainty of our future. Trying to memorize the lines around his eyes because any moment could be one of the last times I saw them, and soon this would end with dust kicking up behind me and a world of danger and talent swallowing him up over my shoulder like a ghost.

  People’s faces are different when they’re sleeping—less guarded, and unfiltered. I wanted to reach for my sketchbook and draw him, closed eyes and parted lips, but I’d been too lazy to move.

  And, I guess, too wired to sleep. This morning felt like a loss already.

  And Hunter kept finding little reasons to touch me as we got ready, fingers skimming my knuckles, shoulder nudging mine. At one point his lips grazed my forehead as he passed me to get into the bathroom, and I almost came undone right there, almost fell to the floor in little ribbons.

  I said nothing, and I didn’t touch him back, but silently I relished every single touch. There was something so tempting about the idea of crawling into the bed and going back to sleep

  The coming days would decide everything. We were running out of time to break the bond—I could feel it, feel his worry through the damn thing, growing stronger and more potent with every passing second.

  The idea that maybe I wasn’t the only one in over my head? Horrifying.

  Force your eyes open and grow the fuck up, Sky.

  We couldn’t afford to waste our time today.

  He dragged me from the hotel into the pinkish glow of morning, and I watched the sun rising, pale orange in the early November sky. The bare trees were coated in tiny crystals of ice, turning them into something out of a fairy tale, and it was all very pretty, and I was still too tired. The cold air bit at my hands and I dragged them up inside of my coat sleeves to keep them warm.

  “Where are we going?” I asked grouchily. “Not that I’m not happy to be along on the field trip,” I added, so he wouldn’t get any ideas about locking me up again.

  Motherfucker.

  He smiled—not the snarky smirk he flashed most of the time, or the cocky, crooked grin he showed whenever he was about to say something that would make my ears go red (another impressive feat, since not much phased me)—but an actual smile, warm and genuine. “To see about saving our limited freedom,” he said, and refused to elaborate.

  On the way up King Street we ducked into Tim Hortens and he bought me a coffee (black, ten billion ounces of sugar) which made things a bit more bearable. I took a sip and felt the warmth spread through my chest.

  “Gonna rot your teeth,” he said, sipping his peppermint tea.

  “I give exactly zero fucks, today or any other.” I added another sugar, just to annoy him. Because I’m mature, like that.

  Outside, the blast of fresh air made my grip on the hot drink tighten.

  It must have rained sometime last night, since most of the snow from the day before was gone, but it was still bitingly cold out, and I knew our next snowfall wasn’t a long way off at all.

  Fucking winter.

  “So,” I said as we walked. “You think you might have found a way to break the bond?”

  “I’ve got a few different ideas.” Hunter took a sip of his drink and shrugged. “I just don’t know if I’m willing to test them. It would take a very large blast of power, from an unusual source, to break this thing. It’s old, complicated magik. There’s someone I want to talk to first, in case there’s an easier way than some of the others I’ve thought of.”

  “Another Charmer?”

  “Something like that,” he said, and looked away.

  AKA nothing like that.

  It was startling that the idea of visiting some dangerous paranormal being didn’t phase me much right now.

  It wasn’t so much like the world had changed as it was like part of it had stepped out from behind a curtain I hadn’t noticed to fill an empty space. I’d always felt like there was something I wasn’t seeing, something obvious I was overlooking or lacking, that I had to work around, only I hadn’t really noticed it. Now it felt like there was this tool I hadn’t known I needed, a resource I required to live but didn’t realize I was going without for the longest time.

  That was magik. The intensity of this relief kind of scared me.

  I noticed his dark expression and looked for a change of subject. My eyes dragged down, and I frowned at his T-shirt. I pointed at the red and white rings between his jacket zipper.

  “Is that a Captain America shirt?” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “Are you a closet geek?”

  “It’s laundry day,” he explained. “Why? Are you?”

  I waved that off and downed half my coffee. “You might have to buy me another one of these. Or eight. But no, our friend Kent is the comic nerd. He works at Orbit—the game store?”

  Hunter’s eyes widened. “Is he that chubby kid with red hair?”

  The red hair: Riley’s doing.

  Watching her bleach it for him had been the funniest ordeal I’d ever lived through.

  “Kid? Don’t let him hear you calling him that,” I laughed. “But yeah, sounds like our resident asexual game coder.”

  We crossed over into King Square, pigeons darting into the air out of our path as we walked. The air smelled of salt and drying seaweed from the waterfront.

  Hunter shook his head. “I popped my head in once and we got in an argument about the pros and cons of the earlier Tomb Raider games for nearly an hour—and I’m not even into that sort of stuff!”

  I laughed, grinning wildly. That was Kent. He could get an argument out of a grandfather clock if he wanted to. And he would want to.

  We passed through the park, leaving the towering trees and massive green bandstand behind, fountain beneath it shut down, dead and silent for the winter season. Traffic was low today, especially for a Tuesday morning, and we didn’t have to wait at the corner to cross the street. Hunter led me down the block, around the corner, and onto union street.

  I pulled to a halt, frowning at him. He really did want me to hit him, honest to God. “Temptation?”

  Why the fuck would anyone think coming back here was a good idea?

  Never return to the scene of the crime, and all that shit. They were probably watching this place, waiting for him.

  “Am I the only
one who watches crime shows?”

  He frowned. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Hunter, why are you deliberately trying to kill me?”

  “God, you’re such a drama queen. Look, it’s a risk.” Did he feel my doubt through the bond? “But it’s worth it. Jackson. . .knows things, has abilities and talents things other people don’t. He’s—he has access to knowledge a lot of us can only dream of. Literally.”

  “You turn being cryptic into an art form.”

  He smirked. “It just takes too long to explain everything. Just trust me; he can help us.” I felt a flicker of hesitation through the bond, brittle and weak. “It’s just a matter of whether or not he wants to.”

  This is going to make me go grey at a young age.

  I wondered if he was planning to use my gift as a bargaining chip. I didn’t care, I would go along with it if it came to that, use it for whatever Jackson wanted.

  There wasn’t a very high limit on what I was willing to do to sort this shit out and get away from it as fast as I could.

  When we reached the club door, the neon light above it was dull and dead, the stoop littered with cigarette butts, stomped wads of gum, and what looked like the singed remains of a roach. I wasn’t big on pot, since I’d left high school; it dulled the gift, but made me more anxious than anything. Today I’d kill to be stoned out of my mind. Then I would be able to get through this day without murdering somebody or breaking apart.

  If I was lucky, a dragon would swoop down and carry me away.

  “Just don’t take me to the lost continent of Atlantis for lunch later, or something. There’s only so much a bitch can take in a single week.”

  “Christ.”

  Hunter stopped just in the entryway, glancing over his shoulder. Not a soul in sight, mortal or otherwise.

  Reaching out, he flipped his hand, digits twitching as if to snap his fingers. The lock clicked, door popping open instantly, and he grabbed the edge, keeping it from falling shut. He opened it wider and I slipped underneath his arm, into the dark. Temptation was pitch black, the tiny hallway with the stairs leading up to the main floor empty of both the bouncer and anybody else. Hunter shut the door behind us as he stepped inside, his chest brushing my back. I stepped away. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust.

  Without the flashing strobes and spotlights, the music pumping through the concrete and glass, or the sea of bodies crowding the glass dance floor, the place looked sad.

  All the sleek furniture and glass and steel architecture in the world couldn’t disguise the hollow, empty happiness of a bar with nobody in it. There was no one drowning their sorrows now, though. The place was empty, aside from two employees standing around trying to wake up while they cleaned up for the night. They must have just closed a couple hours ago. The places in Saint John closed at around two am, but I knew that Jackson probably had ways around that. What was he? Hunter wouldn’t say he was a Charmer, but he hadn’t called him anything else, either.

  He’s different. That was for sure, though.

  I should have made it a point to get it out of him before now, but there’d been so much else to focus on. That’s the problem with putting things off until they’re already upon you: you always end up unprepared and wishing you’d done your homework beforehand, when you have nothing to show.

  But that didn’t stop you from looking the other way as soon as some new problem came along, trying to ignore it. Well, it didn’t if you were me.

  Procrastination is in my DNA.

  “Where’s Jackson?” Hunter called to the two at the bar, and one of the employees actually screeched and dropped dish towel she’d been holding.

  She looked like a pissed off cat, and it was pretty clear from the way she was glaring, she knew Hunter.

  And hated him. I kind of got that.

  “You!” she snapped, all drama. She had crystalline blue eyes, rocking the whole ice princess look. “God damnit!”

  “Hey there,” Hunter said, clearly amused.

  She was a white girl with dreads, so I probably would have hated her anyway, but the outright hostility on her face made it easier. “You’re supposed to stop doing that!” she hissed.

  The idea that Hunter broke into this place on the regular actually managed to put a grin on my face.

  Of course, Cultural Appropriation over there had to ruin that, too. She came around the bar, and her gaze flicked over to me. She didn’t look impressed. “What do you want?”

  I raised my brows. “What did we just ask?”

  She opened her mouth, probably to tell me to fuck off, but the sound of my name from across the room cut her off.

  “Sky!” Penn’s voice was a hoarse croak.

  I whipped around in time to see a catch a blur of black hair, brown skin, and cherry red running shoes racing towards me. Penn. She wrapped me in her arms. The hug caught me off-guard—tight, warm, and so genuine it hurt. Literally.

  “Can’t breathe.”

  “Oh,” she mumbled. “Right. Yeah. Sorry.”

  She dropped me and stepped back, and I didn’t bother to hide the relief in my eyes. I needed somebody familiar right now, and that was Penn.

  We’d never been incredibly close; it was amazing enough that Riley had somehow managed to break through my barriers, but the chances of her cousin getting in too were practically nonexistent. For her part, Penn hadn’t ever seemed too interested in getting to know me, either. She was friendly enough, and she made it clear she liked me, wanted the best for me, but she was older, and she had her own things going on most of the time.

  Now I realized just how much I’d been worried about her on Saturday night, when I’d last seen her through the smoke rising above the dying Hound, her panicked eyes as she’d led Riley away.

  And Riley? God.

  If I didn’t see my best friend again soon, if I didn’t see with my own eyes that she was unharmed, I might go berserk. But there was no way Penn would be at work if Riley was hurt.

  It was all I could do to wipe the emotion off my face and shoot her a nonplussed grin that, for her part, she seemed to buy. “Don’t go getting all emotional on me,” I told her. “I’ll have to fire you.”

  Penn huffed and tapped me on the arm, before moving onto Hunter. “Thank you, for getting him out of here, the other night. Protecting him.”

  Hunter’s gaze moved over me. “It’s wouldn’t say protecting. . .babysitting, maybe. Wrangling, like tackling a wild animal and trying to keep it from biting you.”

  I glared. He’d tackled me, alright.

  “Sounds like him,” Penn confirmed. Then, to me, “Riley’s been worried.”

  “What did you tell her?” How much did Riley know about this world her cousin, and now her best friend, had become tangled up in?

  I wondered if either of us would ever get untangled.

  I also wondered if they’d let me order a drink this early.

  “Enough. But I was vague. She just knows that there are some people who aren’t exactly normal. And that you’re one of them. I don’t want to drag her into all of this any more than she’s already forced me to.” She shot me a pointed look at that, like she was counting on me to keep my mouth shut, and I glanced away.

  The more I thought about it, the more this life didn’t seem like something I could run from. Magik already felt like a part of who I was, or at least, I knew I wanted it to be.

  I couldn’t reply to that, because if I did I wouldn’t lie.

  I kept some secrets from Riley. The true extent of Mom’s drinking was one of them, although I think she guessed. The depth of my depression was another. The existence of the Charmer world would not be. Couldn’t be, I mean, hell, this was Riley we were talking about: Penn and I could be multiplied by ten and put together and still not have the brainpower to keep something like this from her.

  Even if I wasn’t planning on entertaining this world, even if I decided to avoid it for the rest of my life, do my best to ignore its
existence, I would tell Riley about it.

  She needed to know. To understand. In order to protect herself.

  She had as much of a right to answers as any of us. Penn could protect her from a lot of things, but the truth wasn’t one of them.

  Hunter must have felt my swirling mix of nerves, irritation, and indecision, because he shot me a concerned glance and took over the conversation. “We have some problems,” he told Penn. “Big ones. And we need Jackson’s help solving them. It.”