by Paul Duffau
This is stupid, he thought as his hands began to shake, but he went through the gates and up the driveway. Mitch stuck to the side of the driveway, keeping himself partially hidden by the shrubs. He absorbed details from the veranda, the high windows, the feeling of emptiness.
She won’t even be here.
The thought rambled through his mind as his heart thumped. His stride faltered, and he almost turned to leave again. He wavered there until an image of Hunter laughing at him tipped him past the moment of paralysis.
He climbed the steps to the front door, trying to be quiet. Another set of deep breaths, but Mitch’s heart collided with ribs, spine, and seemed to end up lodged in his throat. He stopped in front of the first window, peeked in from the edge.
A table lamp burned in the corner of the formal living room, and he saw a shadow on the wall entering from the far doorway. He slipped past the window and was reaching for the doorbell when he caught movement from the corner of his eye.
His jitters disappeared instantly, and all the nerve fibers in his body shifted to high alert.
Not again, he thought. Reversing his strategy of the last two times he’d faced imminent threats, he tried ducking and moving away.
He gained a momentary advantage as the man’s arm fell on open air.
Mitch stepped forward again, swinging his right elbow in a hard arc. It caught the man behind the ear, but his assailant was already moving away from the attack. He slipped his arm under Mitch’s left armpit, seized him, and, continuing the turn, rammed Mitch into the support column on the veranda.
Mitch felt the hard grip of hands around his throat as he met the man’s eerily calm eyes. Mitch, face pinched with anger, lifted his right forearm to knock away the hand. The man shoved his shoulder into Mitch’s, blocking the motion.
In the confusion, he heard her voice.
“Jackson, he’s a friend.”
Mitch saw a hint of surprise, tempered with doubt, but the shoulder came up, and the hand fell from his throat.
She stood at the doorway, taller than he remembered.
McKenzie Graham.
Mitch tried to breathe.
She wore her hair down, and it fell across her shoulders in a bouncy wave, framing her fine-featured face. Her permit showed her with her hair pinned back, the same as when she ran. He hadn’t pictured her in anything but the running clothes, but now she was wearing a brown leather jacket over a T-shirt and jeans.
She fit the fancy house like she belonged.
He realized he didn’t, but it was too late to leave. Mitch ducked his head and tried to talk.
“I, uh . . .” He swallowed. The pressure of her gaze on him made him lift his eyes, and he glanced at her. She just looked at him, waiting.
God, those eyes, honey-brown, were gorgeous.
“You want to come in?”
The man next to him stepped in front of Mitch, blocking him with a broad shoulder.
“I doubt that’s a good idea.”
“You’re supposed to protect me from strangers. My father hasn’t forbidden me from having friends over, right?” the girl said. She spoke past Jackson. “Please come in, Mit—cheal. . . .”
Mitch caught the hesitation, and the sudden swerve from his name. With a practiced reflex, he smoothed his face.
Why lie about my name?
She stepped back into the house and held the heavy oak door open.
Jackson walked in ahead of him, shielding her. “I still don’t think—”
“It will be fine. I asked Michael over to help with some homework. He’s a brainiac.”
Mitch followed the Jackson dude in. Before the man could turn, Mitch lifted his shoulders up and sent a questioning nod at McKenzie. She turned her head a quarter of an inch to the side and back.
Okay, later, he thought. He stepped past her into the living room. She closed the front door with a click of the latch.
He surveyed the room, the abundance of real wood, something dark like mahogany. All the colors were deep and natural, the walls cream colored. It smelled lemony, like someone had polished recently. An arched doorway on the far wall showed a slice of a formal dining room with a mahogany table and cushioned straight-back chairs. A matching arch on the next wall created the surreal illusion of never-ending openings. To his left, French doors enclosed a den.
He thought of his cluttered bedroom and his uncle’s crappy small house.
The damp on his clothes chafed.
“We’ll be in the kitchen,” said McKenzie.
She walked away, toward the back of the house. Mitch shuffled after her. Jackson humphed but stayed put in the front room.
Boots, that’s why she seemed taller. Leather, like the jacket, probably real leather. There were sparkles on the pockets of her jeans.
A jittery feeling grew in his chest. Mitch fumbled in his back pocket to pull her permit out.
The kitchen gleamed. The granite island, flecked with gold, dominated the space. Tile floors, expensive cabinets, a frickin’ refrigerator for wine.
McKenzie shrugged the jacket off as she walked in. Mitch watched the play of her shoulders, petite, as she shed the extra layer.
She smelled nice.
She plopped the jacket next to a backpack and turned to face him.
Unable to speak, he held out the stiff plastic ID.
It took her a second to recognize what he held, then her hand reached to his, and took it. Her fingers brushed his.
“Thanks,” McKenzie said, slipping it into a pocket with a wriggle.
She indicated the doorway they had passed through with a worried jerk of her hand and kept her voice low.
“Do you know anything about math?” she asked. Her voice was noncommittal; not mean-cold, just not friendly. “Jackson is cool, but he’s going to tell my father you were here.”
“I just wanted to, you know, get your license back to you.”
He diverted his attention to avoid her questions. The refrigerator was big enough to swallow a steer and then some. A whirring sound came from it, and then a grinding sound. Ice maker, the mechanical part of his brain categorized. Or the fridge was digesting that steer. Mitch pulled at the neck of his sweatshirt. He should have mailed the thing.
She was busy digging out books from the pack. “Mitchell.”
“Mitch,” he corrected automatically. He gazed at her. She stood, arms folded across her chest, holding a textbook. Upside down.
He spoke. “Why did you lie about me, out there?”
“I told you. Jackson’s going to report everything, that’s part of his job.” Bitterness tinged the words.
“It’s not my name.”
“He’s my bodyguard, ever since . . .”
She’s not listening, thought Mitch. Heat filled his face as reality collided with his imagination. What the hell had he thought was going to happen, she’d be so happy to see him that she’d fall all over him . . . and what?
He locked his face into don’t-give-a-damn mode, but his heart hurt as it banged in his chest. His eyes wandered back to the fridge, took in the reflective sheen of the high-end appliance that cast them in fun-house caricatures.
“I gotta go.”
His shoes cemented themselves to the tile floor, though, making a liar out of him. He could see them right there, disobeying orders. Finally, the left foot squelched and pivoted, and he could move again.
He waited for McKenzie to say something, make him stop.
He struggled to focus on something other than the thin grout lines between tiles and risked a glance at her.
McKenzie held the book tight to her chest, hair in a cascade. The bruise on her arm had faded, but a faint smoky ring remained as testimony to the welts he had seen on her. As he watched, her chest rose softly and fell with a hint of a shudder, but she held her chin up, proud.
He lost control of his face and words fell out of his mouth, quiet like his mother taught him: Quiet, quiet, Mitchell, it’ll be okay.
“Are you o
kay?”
Chapter 14
Three words, and he hit her in the heart.
Mitch slipped past the layers of Kenzie’s carefully constructed protection that made it possible, barely, to function as a caricature of who she was, by always pretending to be someone else: daughter to a fortune for the girls at school, normal to Jules and Jackson, a dutiful member of the Family, submissive daughter. Always something others thought she should be, should be, should be . . .
Mitch didn’t ask who she should be.
Three words.
Are you okay?
Kenzie had locked herself behind doors, each with different locks, marked with red warning letters: Lies! Control! Indifference! Anger! Rather than stopping at each door, he bypassed the fortifications and found the back door, which had a rusty sign loosely attached.
Honesty.
She had forgotten to lock that door, and Mitch had found it.
He stood in her kitchen, sodden but straight and tall, waiting for her answer.
“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. The waver in her voice betrayed her, but she met his gaze. She did not blink. Teardrops would prove her lie.
She saw a softening of his expression and a tilt to his head.
“You don’t look it.”
He kept his voice down, glancing at the doorway to make sure that they were alone enough. She heard sadness in the undercurrents, like unanswered echoes from a lonely place.
She clutched the book tighter to her chest. That’s why it was so hard to breathe. She opened the door to Control.
“I said I’m fine,” Kenzie said. “I made a mistake. You can leave.”
He gave her an appraising squint, the kind she associated with old people when they seemed to know too much.
She turned away from his scrutiny and walked to the counter, heels clicking on the tile floor. She put the book down with a thump. She heard him step closer, but not too close.
“Did they catch the guys that attacked you?”
Her breath caught, and she gave a sharp shake of her head.
Don’t blink, it’ll pass.
The fluttery feeling in her chest moved to her stomach.
For a fleeting instant, she could feel his arms around her, feel her head leaning into the muscle of his chest, then she shoved the image away.
He isn’t Family, he’s—she caught the thought and despised the word even as she changed it—normal.
But the feeling persisted, so right that she could see pictures of the future slipping one at a time into her mind, first kiss, first date, first . . .
“Go away.”
“No.”
Startled, she peered at him. His unguarded expression said he was as surprised as she felt.
She tried locking the door marked Anger.
“What do you mean no?”
Her voice sounded loud to her ears, too loud, crap!
A rustling sound from the other room, Jackson getting up, checking on her.
“Everything okay?” he asked before he reached the door.
“Fine,” Kenzie said, lying. She flipped open her book.
Mitch took the hint and stepped closer to read the pages. With a flick of his wrist, he spun the book so that it was facing the right way.
“Why don’t you get your notes,” he said, louder than he needed to.
Jackson reached the doorway. His expression showed skepticism as his gaze shifted from Mitch to Kenzie. She gave him a hurried half smile and bent over her backpack to pull out a tattered notebook. Mitch had his head down, studying the book with a quizzical eye. As she walked back, he turned a page, then let it fall back.
Jackson turned wordlessly and left them.
“It’s calculus,” she explained, speaking softly, spreading her papers out. “Sorry.”
Mitch bobbed his head. She could see his eyes flitting first to the book, then to her work. In a burst of intense concentration, he squinted at the arcane equations.
She grimaced, imagining what it would be like to get tossed an advanced—
Mitch’s finger stabbed out, touched the page where she had erased the same problem repeatedly.
“You dropped a sign when you did your substitution into the integral.”
She gawked at him, and heat filled her face. She checked the page, and her brows climbed her forehead. The heat ratcheted up two more notches. She saw it now.
He glanced at her, face impassive.
“Math is one of the things I kinda get.” He paused. “And putting things together. I’m good at that, too.”
She continued to stare, and Mitch shuffled from one foot to the other. He took a half step backward.
“You didn’t really need any help, the rest of the problems are right. . . .”
“You figured that out in what, thirty seconds?”
He lifted his hands up and shrugged as a blush tinted his cheeks. He took another backward step and stared at her boots. His hands moved aimlessly, as if to ward off his nerdliness.
“Yeah.”
Kenzie stood staring at him and tried to solve the puzzle of Mitch. It was hard to imagine the boy in front of her as the guy who’d run into a street to rescue someone he didn’t know. Five minutes ago, he’d refused to be driven away. Now he was ready to bolt for the door, all because he could do some math?
The sound of their breathing was the loudest thing in the house.
Which meant Jackson was listening, too.
“Thank you.”
Mitch shrugged. A frown crossed his forehead, and she watched as a stubborn streak showed itself in the way he held his chin, turned his shoulders like he was wrestling with a choice. His gaze darted up to her face, seeking.
“Who are you?” Mitch asked.
Blindsided again, she felt answers blossom in her mind.
She was Kenzie Graham. . .
. . . ordinary teenage girl . . .
. . . but ordinary girls didn’t have uber-rich parents . . .
. . . an ordinary teenage girl . . .
. . . who hid in the bathrooms at school . . .
. . . an ordinary teenage girl . . .
. . . who led a secret life as an enchantress, bound to the Family . . .
. . . anything-but-ordinary teenage girl . . . who wished sometimes she was ordinary, or at least, invisible . . .
She discarded all the answers as too truthful under his stare and, in the void left by her hesitation, shrugged.
“I’m just me.”
Mitch didn’t say anything, and the weight of the question grew.
“My friends call me Kenzie . . .” What friends? “. . . and I do martial arts and run.” That was true, she thought.
“Normal stuff. School. You know.” She added another shrug and evaded his eyes by checking the time. An hour until her father came home.
“I think,” Mitch said, an odd inflection to his voice, “that you’re anything but normal. I know you have secrets, just like the rest of us. You don’t want to tell me, or can’t, doesn’t matter which, but if you’re normal, nothing fits.”
Kenzie stifled a gasp. Mitch saw it and ignored it.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about”—his voice wavered—“I mean, if I can, like, help . . .”
The ruddy color had spread from his cheeks to the tips of his ears and Kenzie could feel a matching heat on her face. The heat grew and warmed her insides, which went rubbery. Almost as though they belonged to someone else, her hands began a slow, intricate movement. The heat ignited and spread into her abdomen. Her fingers turned and made a brushing, come-hither gesture. Her breath moved faster. . . .
Mitch watched her hands, and his breathing matched hers. His enraptured gaze returned to her face.
Startled, Kenzie clenched her hands into tight fists, then splayed her fingers wide. Her whole body quaked as the gathered magic dissipated.
A worried thought followed the shakes: How had she done that? Even in the Glade, where magic flowed to them like sunshine onto flo
wers, she had never drawn that much power. A quivering aliveness permeated her core and left her tingly all over.
Mitch watched her, head pulled back, cautious. “What was that?”
His voice came out hoarse, and he shook his head in a side-to-side motion as though he was recovering from anesthesia and found his senses addled by the experience.
“I don’t know.” She forced the lie out as a taint of her shame spread on her face. She bit down on her lower lip as the aliveness panted and answered, I do. She looked away and drew in a great gulping breath. As she exhaled, she sought her core like Jules had taught. She centered herself before she tried speaking.
Words would not come.
Kenzie could read the suspicion in Mitch. Mouth dry, she turned away and took the two steps to the dishwasher.
“Want something to drink?”
Lame, lame, lame, Kenzie thought, but removed two sparkling glasses from the washer. They sang with a clear song when she set them on the marble. She hazarded a fast glance at Mitch. He stared back with relief overriding his doubts.
“Yeah, thanks.”
She filled the glasses with water from the fridge. The edge of the glass rattled against the dispenser as she carefully filled each one. The routineness of the act let her rein in her thoughts. Glasses filled, she turned and extended the one in her right hand toward Mitch. She held herself steady and placed a smile on her lips as she did.
“Here.”
Mitch stepped forward to retrieve the water. He grasped the bottom of the glass, paused until she let go, and then backed off a couple of steps. Together, they sipped their water, eyes making contact before veering away. Kenzie tried to find something to say that didn’t sound idiotic. Instead, she took another sip.
A rustling sound came from the other room. Jackson appeared in the doorway. He glanced at them, measuring the distance between them with suspicion.
“Hunh, I could use some water, too,” he said, staring at Mitch. “I don’t recall seeing you at All Friends, Michael.” Jackson’s skepticism was clear.
Kenzie saw the defensive shields slide into Mitch’s demeanor as he assessed the bodyguard. He stopped slouching and lifted his shoulders. Kenzie noted that Mitch stood several inches taller than Jackson.