“But nothing is free.”
A slow, wicked smile spread over his face. “You know, I think you’ll fit right in around here. You’re learning how to play the game.”
“I was born playing the game.” I snapped, trying to give myself time to think.
Want and need, give and take, life and death.
I wasn’t sure I wanted anymore involvement with this guy than I already had.
So I was right: he wanted—no, needed—something from me. It was both perplexing and unsurprising. Jackson didn’t do anything that wasn’t for his own benefit—I just didn’t understand what help I could possibly be to him, a newly discovered Charmer with a weak grasp on my powers.
And more problems on my plate than I could handle already.
I puzzled over him like he was a string of text I had to decode, carrying facets of his personality like numbers, sorting different actions and traits into categories and arrangements that didn’t spell out the answers no matter how many times I resorted them. Jackson was a walking mystery. Could he be trusted? There was no way to know. But he’d helped us this far, and I had to go out on a limb and hope it hadn’t been for nothing.
“What do you want, Jackson? What do you think I can do for you? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve barely been keeping myself alive the last few days.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re stronger than you know.”
“Oh, God. Is this a pep talk? Are you giving me a football movie speech right now?”
I could only imagine what he saw: tiny boy, flyaway blonde hair, lifeless skin, a mess of tattered black clothes and dead eyes. In the last few days I’d been taken apart and put back together in the wrong order, pieces of me on the verge of snapping in half and falling away, all broken parts and spoiled fuel.
I was like a beater made from junk parts. Sooner or later, they’d turn on me.
“You have to be smart to do magik. Not a genius, I mean, those are rare. But you have to have some small reserve of common sense bouncing around your damn skull, if you’re going to play with fire and rub elbows with gods and monsters. If you make too many bad choices, if you’re not strong enough or clever enough or you don’t know your own limits, it will kill you. That’s what magik is: natural selection, localized.”
“Sounds rough.”
He glared. “It is. Don’t take it lightly, or you’ll lose a hand.”
“How?”
“Spellcraft can backfire, little boy. It changes people, takes chunks out of them, turns their hair grey. You set off too many fireworks and you’re bound to lose some fingers. My cousin Leroy tried to do something too big once, something he should have known better than to try, and now his skin is flamingo pink. He looks like a peppermint. Or a Starburst.”
A peppermint with really good bone structure, if Jackson were anything to go by.
Little boy? Fuck off, buddy.
“So, what? You think I’m smart?”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a Starburst as he spoke, unwrapping the bright pink candy and popping it in his mouth. Bye bye, cousin Leroy. He talked as he chewed, “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
There’s always a point to flattery, a price—even if the compliments are indirect. “What do yo want?”
Silence, for a few minutes. He looked me up and down as he chewed, assessing me. If he found what he was looking for—or didn’t—he gave no indication of it.
And then, “I need you to kill Crayton Abbott.”
Nothing. I waited. Waited some more. But Jackson stayed silent, stayed serious, and the silence got heavier and heavier. “You’re joking.”
It didn’t look like he was joking.
“You’re fucking crazy.”
He spread his arms wide, a helpless gesture. “We’re practically at open war, Sky. You don’t understand what Crayton really is, what he’ll do to me—to this entire community—if he’s allowed to go on the way he is. God knows the Reapers won’t do a damn thing about him, cowards. He’ll be coming for them next if he gets your boyfriends’ powers, believe me.
“He’s more than a madman, he’s a certified lunatic, and he’s gearing up to take control of the entire city.” His blue eyes bored into my silver ones, urging me to understand.
I said, “Hunter is not my boyfriend.”
Ignoring me, he continued, “You have to understand that most Charmer families operate like their own organizations—look out for their each other, keep to themselves. We’re like little tribes, governing ourselves, all operating on the understanding that its imperative our existence remain secret.”
“And Crayton. . . ?”
“Would make himself a tyrant. The more powerful he becomes, the harder he is to oppose. He’s strong already—stronger than both my father and
I—and if he’s allowed to drain Hunter’s gifts he’ll only become worse, only be able to force even more Charmers into complying with his demands.”
I had no idea what to say. I didn’t know why Jackson thought I’d be interested in shoving myself into the middle of this conflict and just going to town like this was some episode of Game of Thrones. War? I was not cut out for war.
I couldn’t even win a bar fight with two of the guys cronies. How could I kill him? Kill anyone? The goal was to escape. Not spill blood.
Get myself out of this entire situation and start picking up the shards of my life, if that was even possible. If there were any left to find when it was all over. I was not a warrior, or a power player like Jackson. I was just a boy carrying around too many memories and too many mistakes.
“Are you forgetting the fact that I got my ass handed to two of his goons just a few hours ago? What makes you think I stand a chance of taking Crayton himself out?”
Or taking anyone out. I mean, fuck—was I really that damaged?
“That’s where Hunter comes in,” Jackson said.
I stood so fast I knocked my chair over. “Hunter coming in is where I go out.”
“If we can enhance your abilities, then, with the bond, you’ll be strong enough together to finish him.”
“That’s a lie,” I spat before he’d finished. “I can feel it.”
And I could—like the sharp, stinging pain of being shot with a pellet gun, or stung by a bee. Jackson waved it away. “Not a lie,” he argued, “just not a certainty. Estimates can be tricky with magik, but you would have a very, very strong chance, Sky. Especially with the bond—and my forces backing you up.”
That much, at least, was the truth.
“The bond.” I turned back to him, even though I wanted to walk out. Running away hadn’t been working out for me that great up until now. Answers first, this time. “It’s supposed to be broken. The Seelie queen agreed to do it herself. Why is it still there?”
“You tell me.” He replied. “What do you feel through it?”
A tough question.
The thing was, I hadn’t had much time to process that it was even still there before I’d been knocked off my ass and right out of consciousness. Before then I must have been deliberately ignoring it in my haste to pretend that the entire ordeal was behind me.
Now I didn’t know if I was ready to tap back into it.
I wasn’t ready. Because Riley was right: I liked him.
Really fucking liked him, the way only an idiot likes someone.
I was a coward, fears too heavy to lift off the ground, breaking my own wings before I could use them because I didn’t trust myself not to fall.
Sometimes you catch a glimpse of yourself in someone else, like their face is a mirror—and you realize that this person, this complete stranger, in some small way, holds a part of you. Shares a piece of your soul. You realize that their loneliness recognizes yours.
That’s when you know you’re in trouble—because they’ve recognized something in you, too, and they’ll try to latch onto it.
We’re lonely out here, floating through space on this little green rock. We want to believe we’r
e not alone so desperately we’re willing to gouge our claws into each other and hold on for dear life, just so we don’t have to be so afraid. The problem is we’re so busy holding onto people we forget we’re drawing blood, squeezing too tight, suffocating their air.
I’d rather take my chances in all that empty space than let someone destroy me from the inside out. I’d always thought I would, until a few days ago.
Now I wasn’t so sure. Now bleeding felt better than I’d thought it might.
Because when Hunter looked at me like he wanted to latch on, take all the air away from me, all I wanted was to snap at him to hurry up and do it, close the distance. If it meant he kept putting his hands on me, pinning me down under the delicious weight of him, burning me everywhere he pressed his lips, then I’d gladly give him every last breath I had left.
It was the seduction of the bottle, of the drugs, of oblivion, times ten. It accomplished exactly what every chemical I’d ever consumed had tried and failed to do. It made everything go away. And it hurt so fucking bad it was the best thing I’d ever felt.
I’d always known I’d end up imploding sooner or later—I just hadn’t thought I’d do it beneath a pair of warm hands, gasping and writhing and begging for more because this form of dying felt more like being born.
Maybe it was the bond. Maybe it was some ancient spell nobody knew how to work right, or a glitch programmed into our brains. It changed nothing.
If I focused on the bond, on what he was feeling, it would be like admitting that our connection was real, that I wasn’t done with it, with him with this world that had beckoned me closer like a blooming flower only to reveal its pollen was toxic.
I was too far in over my head in the Charmer world to ever break the surface again, but with Hunter, I still had a chance to make it to shore. If I let him back in, I might be giving that chance up forever.
I could still save myself. It would be a selfish, awful, wretched thing to do and I would hate myself more than I already did, but that would not stop me.
I could walk out the doors of this club with my best friend and leave this city tonight.
Watch from a safe distance as they all destroyed each other.
I could. I just wasn’t sure I would.
“Sky,” Jackson stood and came around the desk, grabbing me by the shoulders to stop me pacing back and forth. “You might be the only ones who can put an end to this madness. Crayton knows I’ve betrayed him—one of my employees was a mole, they saw the trick I pulled during that fight today, letting you hit me, and they ran to him with it. The entire effort was useless; he still knows I’m willing to go against him, and he’s still planning to kill me. By this time tomorrow he’ll have had enough time to put together his plans, and he’ll slaughter me. It’s what he does. I’ve seen it happen.”
“That’s not on me.” I broke from his grasp and turned away.
“Isn’t it? If you can do something to stop it and you don’t, isn’t it? I saved your life, Sky. You could at least try to save mine.”
So this was what it all came down to.
There was a chill to the air in the room, and I burrowed deeper back in my chair, seeking warmth that didn’t come.
Could I turn away from this knowing that Jackson would end up dead just for trying to help us? To help me? I hadn’t asked for any of this—I’d been pulled into it like quicksand, grain by grain, and every moment spent struggling against it had pulled me down even deeper, until I was finally past my head, too far to heave myself back out.
But I still had a choice in this. Yes, I thought. I could do that. I could let them kill each other.
Or I could be the one doing the killing.
This was going to end me—Hunter, the bond, Crayton, my own annoying draw to everything that had the potential to put me six feet under.
One of them would do me in, sooner or later. And if it wasn’t one of them, it would be something else. Car accident. Rare disease. Old age. And I didn’t want to be the person who had to spend the rest of my life trying to trick myself into believing I didn’t leave someone to die after they’d risked everything to save my life, just so I could sleep at night.
My fear couldn’t rule me anymore.
My eyes went past Jackson, to the white brick wall. The ugly mess of his bookshelves. Closing my eyes, I turned inward, to the bond. I let the emotions rush in.
Feelings and sensations spilled through out connection, stronger than ever. It was even closer to settling now—I could feel that, a lock slowly being pushed into place. So close to clicking into permanency that it felt like, had I wanted to, I could reach out and shove it home myself.
He was angry. And sad. Most of all, there was confusion.
“He doesn’t know what to do,” I said, and heard Jackson breathe out in relief behind me. He was getting what he wanted—at least for now. Something told me he was used to it being that way. “He’s a mess of emotions—not that I’m any better. But the bond is in place, still.” I shook my head and turned back to the young club owner.
He watched me like a kid at a monster truck rally, a mix of delight and nerves on his face—like he loved what he was seeing but was all too aware it had the power to backfire on him. A silent, scared kind of fascination.
“You said we’d need to enhance my abilities? Well let’s get on it. If we’re really doing this—and I still can’t believe I’m even considering this shit—then we need to move as quickly as possible. Hunter has no clue what to do, and he could decide to break the bond at any minute.”
“Where is he? I can send someone to find him, stop him—”
“Only temporarily,” I asserted. “Don’t go thinking we’re going to be some personal magikal task force after this. I’m not the damn community watch. If we can stop his father without getting ourselves killed, then we break the bond right away.”
“I’ll drive you back to the Seelie court myself.”
“Problem is I have no clue where he could be. If he was still at the Seelie court, wouldn’t they have broken the bond already?”
I couldn’t remember his room number at the Delta, only that it was on the third floor, and even if we sent someone else they wouldn’t be able to track his signature through the ward magik. He may not even be there.
We’d just have to move before he could make up his mind.
Hours ago I’d been shocked at the mere idea of his wanting to let the bond settle—now I was the one hoping for more time with it. I was sick of the world constantly flipping upside down on me.
“Then we just have to be as fast as we can, and hope like hell your idiot boyfriend doesn’t do anything stupid before we can kill his daddy.”
“I said he isn’t my boyfriend. And now?”
Jackson grinned. “Now, we call my daddy. We’ll need his clearance, for this. It’s time to form our battle plan.”
TWENTY-FOUR
CATHEDRAL
While Jackson called his father, I slipped out of his office and went down the hall to the bathroom. I closed myself in, feeling the chill of the ugly beige tiles and the electric drone of the flickering overheads seep into me like permafrost. In a few minutes we would go upstairs, I would make sure Riley was okay, and we would set off to do something there was no coming back from. I’d have to put on a brave face and act like I believed we had a chance, like we could do this.
Truth is, I was terrified. No part of me wanted to get myself killed, or go hunting after ways to kill a deranged magik user.
If we didn’t kill Crayton, he would kill us. Jackson would be first. Then me. Or Hunter. Or anyone who got in his way. He’d drained Althea, now he was after his own son. . .Crayton was insane. We were doing this.
I was doing this. It would be my hands that ended his life, imbued with Hunter’s unnatural strength.
And all I wanted to do was puke.
I felt like I was made up of pictures, snapshots of the people around me—Riley’s laugh, Hunter’s stubble brushing my skin, my moth
er humming as she stood over the kitchen sink—but they were constantly changing, flickering like candlelight before dissipating in the cold air, gone forever. They died like the seasons, blowing to the ground and rotting, buried beneath a layer of cold distance. We waste life when we think it will stretch on forever—we throw away the minutes like nothing, like dust and spare change. We’re fucking idiots.
Thinking of what we were about to do, what the risks was, sent me reeling back through memories of so many moments I’d wasted, poured down the drain. I wanted to have them back, but they were too much to carry.
An entire life of wasted time. If I lived through this, I was going to do more than survive.
Shadows of Ourselves Page 26