“Very funny, skank.” Catherine turned her face away so Sharon wouldn't see the smile playing on her lips.
On the other side of the window, Chase and the shades entered the small coffee house next door. A thought occurred to her, and she was right back to frowning.
“Isn't Mr. Bordello the name of that new teacher?”
“Yeah. Emilio Bordello. He's taking over for Mrs. Garcia while she's on maternity leave.”
Mr. Bordello? She bit her lip. Is that his real name?
Humans were so strange.
“What's he like?” She heard herself asking.
“I have him for AP sociology. He is fine. I think he works out. He's really buff—and young. He won't tell us his age, but I swear he's still in his twenties. Half the girls in our class want to boink him.”
Her tone left little doubt as to which half she belonged to. Catherine had to try hard to keep a straight face.
“Boink?”
“Boink, screw, fuck, do. Whatever.” She made the hand gesture again, suggesting she'd been watching too many re-runs of Clueless. “He's also the faculty adviser for the new club.”
“We have a new one?”
“It was on the morning announcements.”
“Oh.” Not surprising she'd missed that little tidbit of information then, since she usually arrived too late to hear them. Her attendance record bordered on truant.
“What do they do?”
“Who cares what they do? When you see the man in charge, you'll thank me.”
“I doubt it,” said Catherine.
“Yeah,” Sharon said, her face falling. “You're probably right. Chase is probably going to be there.”
That hadn't been what she meant, but it gave her pause. “He's in the club too?”
“Unfortunately. He has the biggest man-crush on Mr. Bordello. I bet it rivals the one he has on you. God, you should have heard him. Bragging about the meeting he was going to on Friday night. It was pathetic.”
“Friday night?”
It came out sounding more panicky than Catherine intended. Chase was coming out of the coffee shop, Styrofoam cup in hand, and was now making a beeline for their store.
“I swear, someone should tell the little jack-off that extracurriculars do not equate to having a social life.”
Something happened during that meeting. Or after it.
Sharon threw down the book she was holding. It hit the desk with a loud thump, and Catherine jumped. Her knee thwacked against the underside of the desk and her startled gasp turned into a hiss of pain. The minor injury was fading even as she became aware of the pain, but her regenerative abilities did nothing for her annoyance.
“I don't know about you,” said Sharon, “but I am dying for a machiatto.”
“The dying part could be arranged if you don't stop throwing shit,” said Catherine, massaging her knee for effect. It was what an ordinary human would do.
“I'm going to get coffee from next door. You want anything? The usual hazelnut latte?”
Catherine's anger hesitated like a wolfhound thrown off the scent. “Sharon.” There was a low note of warning in her voice, which was deeper than one might expect from a girl of her size. “Don't you dare.”
Sharon cheerily disregarded her. She was halfway out the door. Following up on her threat of an early lunch break, Catherine realized.
“Sharon! Sharon! As your supervisor, I order you to get your fat ass back in that chair this instant.”
A mother taking her young son to the library's reading room turned around, searching for the source of the noise, before quickly ushering her child onward. Sharon didn't even flinch.
“You're going to get us both fired, you bitch!”
She had the nerve to wave. Fucking bitch.
Damn it. Chase would be here any minute and she didn't have time to hang up the sign and hunt down Sharon. And she certainly couldn't leave the register unattended. That really would get her fired.
She sighed, cursed. Pretending to be human sucked.
Chapter Two
As Chase Hill sauntered up to the desk, his face was lit up with such smarmy pleasure that Catherine wanted to bash his face in. She didn't like it when people—not just men—looked at her in that way. As if she could be bought, or owned. It wasn't just about sex, either. Not entirely. There are more ways than that to sell your soul.
“Welcome to the Friends of the Library Bookstore,” she said, keeping her voice prim and her eyes cold.
“Catherine,” he said, as if they were long-lost friends. “I didn't know you worked here.”
Liar. There was no way he hadn't seen her through the large double windows. “Do you need help with something?” She asked him. Out the door, perhaps?
“Nah.” He seemed to completely overlook her frigid expression. “I'm just, uh, browsing.”
Great.
Some of the shades had followed him into the building. Through the glass wall she could see the majority of them drifting in the corridor like dogs awaiting the return of a beloved master.
One of the creatures happened to glance in her direction as she looked. Quick, accidental coincidence. Its reaction, however, was not.
The shade went rigid, raising its head. Catherine caught a glimpse of a shadowy mass in profile that might have been a nose. Her breathing halted. It seemed to be—no, she wasn't mistaken—sniffing the air, scenting her.
Drunkenly, it swayed forward and glided closer.
No.
Her hands moved from her lap to the desk as she readied herself to push from the seat. Her nails had sharpened, forming the beginnings of claws. She barely noticed. All her muscles were melting, melding, becoming liquid steel. Her weight shifted from her core to her legs as she prepared to spring and then—
And then what? You can't fight it. Not with Chase in the room. That would be breaking the First Rule, exposing yourself to a human.
Exceptions were made for self-defense, though.
Not for you, a delinquent shape-shifter.
Catherine was painfully aware of her throbbing pulse and how it made her feel like Prey. The only things in the room that had any meaning were the shades and her own frantically beating heart.
Would the Council grant her self-defense?
Probably not. They shamelessly discriminated against her kind. Her fingers dug into the wood hard enough to leave marks. Fuck, she thought. What am I going to do?
From behind the stacks she heard Chase's disembodied voice say, “Did you, uh, watch that science-fiction movie that was on last night?”
If push came to shove, she could knock him unconscious. She had never killed a human, never had to. But death ran in her veins, and at times it was all she could do to contain it.
Catherine let her shields slip a little. Not a lot. Just enough that her aura whipped out and crackled, snapping out at the shade that had challenged her.
Rising to the threat.
I am deadly, said Predator. I'll tear out your heart and eat it, still dripping, while you watch. Fuck with me, and you die.
Like most defense mechanisms, this was merely a well-constructed lie. A bluff. But it worked.
The shade turned away. Losing interest. Saving face.
Catherine relaxed a hair, still tense and waiting just in case it was a feint intended to cause her to let her guard down. It might have been her imagination, since the shades didn't have faces or auras she could read, but she got the impression that the creature was…disappointed.
She would not let herself think about why. Without taking her golden eyes from the creature she said, “I'm not into science-fiction.” My life is science-fiction.
Chase popped back into sight from the corner of the romance section—by far, the largest section in the store.
“What are you into?”
“Life,” she said shortly.
“Oh.” There was a long pause. He looked at her, up and down. “I like your, uh, bracelet,” he offered lamely.
&n
bsp; She ran her fingers over the charms automatically. Her parents had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday; it had all twelve animals from the Chinese zodiac. She had been in the mind of each, at one time or another. Shape-shifters did not often give gifts—they didn't celebrate holidays in the same way humans did, preferring feasts to festivals—so the gesture was touching.
Red veins of annoyance infected her aura as a Predator silently bared her teeth. She did not appreciate Chase speaking of her prized possession so lightly. It conveyed a terrible lack of respect. The proprietary way he regarded her did not help matters. She wanted him to leave.
He ran his grubby fingers over the books—marking his territory, she thought—and finally looked away.
The submissive gesture was at odds with his body language. The desire to dominate warred with an inherent sense of inadequacy.
“I'm not really much of a reader,” he told the table.
The silence stretched on. An expectant air hung over the bookstore as if someone—or something—was waiting for a cue that had yet to be delivered.
Then Chase said, “You're in my biology class.”
Not your class, said Predator.
Two shades were watching. She felt the bite of her sharpened fingernails as they dug into her palms; they had partially morphed back into claws. The way Chase kept distracting her wasn't helping.
She could smell his nervousness: sharp and sour, with the tang of sweat. Not even Predator wanted to eat him; he was redolent of spoiled meat. This wouldn't be the first time someone had tried to make off with one of the more expensive books.
“You're not doing so well in that class, right?”
What business of that was of his?
“If you need some help studying—” he paused, deviously “—you could, uh, ask.”
All the shades were paying very close attention now, waiting for her response. Something crucial hung in the balance here, and Catherine had no idea what it was.
She whirled around, so she was facing the READ poster Myrna had mounted behind the desk. She put two tentative fingers up to her mouth and felt the incisors sharpening, becoming as curved and cruel as sabers. Her eyes were blurry, too, the colors changing spectrum and hue. Shit. She ran her tongue over her teeth.
Slowly, Catherine counted to ten. She focused on the mental image of her human self. It was the only way to reverse the Change. Long brown hair. Hazel eyes. Swarthy skin that hinted at some unknown exotic heritage. An intense expression people usually mistook for anger. Her mind, however, remained uncooperative, buzzing with fear of discovery. The image rippled, distorted by panic. Her breath came in shorter bursts.
Focus, she urged herself. Focus.
Fingers closed around her arm, tight and unrelenting. Her shoulders rose instinctively as she spun around, dislodging the hand even as she put herself out of reach.
Oh no.
She clapped her hands over her face, trying to hide as much of it as she could. The First Rule. She had broken the First Rule. She was going to be sent to the Keep.
Over the wall of her hands, Catherine stared at Chase in horror. He stared back with limpid eyes. Not the eyes of someone who had just seen a monster. Did he not…?
She hardly dared let herself hope.
I must have Changed back in the nick of time. Any later, and he could have—he would have—
Doomed her to a life of persecution and exile with a single act of unpardonable selfishness?
The cool relief froze and hardened into jagged crystals of anger. The Council had spies everywhere. Her entire family could have been prosecuted for her crime. And to keep him silent, to protect herself and her family, Catherine would have had to break the oath she had made to herself so long ago, when she heard the tales of the atrocities committed by her kind: that she would never hunt a human—ever.
All because the little shithead wanted to get lucky.
She drew herself up to her full height. “Don't ever touch me.”
“W-what?” Chase looked bewildered, hurt. He waited, but no apology or explanation was forthcoming. This clearly wasn't how he had expected the situation to go. “I—I was trying to help,” he protested.
“I don't need your damn help.”
He winced at that. She was too angry to care.
“Not now—and not with biology. My grades are absolutely none of your fucking business. None. Understand?”
“I—I'm sorry.” He looked down at his tattered sneakers for a moment. She saw his hands clench. When he lifted his eyes, there was a flush of anger in his sallow cheeks. “What is your problem, anyway?”
“You.”
It was a good thing her human boss was not present.
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because I don't like you,” she said simply.
Chase flinched but after that he stopped trying to talk to her, and Catherine stopped pretending she was busy. What guilt she felt at speaking to him so cruelly was eclipsed by her conviction that he had participated in something terrible, too terrible to put into words.
She picked up one of the books she'd been dotting and began to flip through it. She was just beginning to get into the storyline when she heard a soft gasp, followed immediately by the covert sounds of someone trying very hard to be noticed. But Catherine—she noticed.
She set the book face-down and headed towards the stacks. Her footsteps didn't make a sound as she slouched into a distinctive walk that would look frighteningly predatory to any human observer.
Chase never saw her coming. Not until her shadow fell over him, and he uttered a shrill, girlish shriek of surprise. An angry blush immediately flooded his cheeks.
He snapped the book he was reading shut and glared at her as he got to his feet. “I found something I want.”
His voice was resentful, but Catherine could smell his unease; it flooded off him, the way other animals exuded ink or pheromones in times of distress. She wondered at it, and felt a little sick to her stomach as she realized that he could be holding a book of pornography for all she knew.
She stared at him without saying anything. His face reddened further. “These too,” he added, grabbing an armful of books from the nearest shelf. He didn't even look at the titles, and had grabbed a rather bawdy assortment of harlequin romance novels. All of them featured busty heroines spilling out of their Medieval gowns to be passionately embraced by men who looked like Fabio with a codpiece.
But she only felt the faintest stirrings of amusement, and even that quickly faded. Because she hadn't taken her eyes of the book in Chase's hands since he slammed it shut. A black, misty haze enveloped the covers. Curls of it clung to her fingers as she picked it up and began to leaf through it. The pages were thick as parchment and felt expensive. Why is it glowing like this?
She yanked her hand away with more force than strictly necessary, shaking her wrist. The black particles still clung to her fingers for a moment before dissipating like vapor. They reacted to her the way magic did, almost, but she had never seen magic like this.
Black magic?
Some Otherkind—witches, usually—argued that there was no such thing as black magic outside of philosophy, and that to call magic evil was to subscribe to outmoded, plebeian beliefs.
Others believed that black magic existed, but that it was a completely separate entity from the magic performed by the witches. They believed it was an alchemical transformation wrought in defiance of the natural order, forced, twisted, unpredictable. Lethal.
Catherine had never cared much for the debate. Shape-shifters believed most things having to do with magic were bad. It was a learned fear, and with good reason. Witches abused their abilities, bending their given elements to their will without a care for the effects it had on the surrounding environments and those with the misfortune to be in it.
Looking at this book's dark, distorted aura made Catherine think that such distinctions might be crucial after all. However dangerous witches were, there was something inhe
rently menacing about the way these particles had reacted to her.
“What shelf did you get this from?” she asked slowly.
“How-to.” Chase jerked a thumb at the shelf behind him. “How much is it? Ten? Twenty?”
Probably twice that at least. The book looked old. And Catherine found she didn't want to sell it to him. Just looking at the book made Predator and Prey shift in unease. The two of them were rarely in agreement; when they were, it usually boded trouble.
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