“And here I thought she was just one of those touchy-feely people. Instead, she was just trying to rummage through my head.”
“Oh, no. Talley definitely is one of those touchy-feely people. Sometimes she’s just hugging you because she likes hugs.”
He hoped she would leave the discussion there, but his hope fizzled as she pulled up her feet and arranged her legs in crisscross-applesauce style, bracing her elbows on her knees. There was no mistaking her I’m-in-this-for-the-long-haul pose.
“And the visions of the future? What are they like? Can she give me tonight’s winning lottery numbers?”
“No, her visions are sporadic and more of the bad-things-are-coming variety than fabulous-wealth-and-riches.” The worst part was, once she Saw something, it would happen. There was no changing that moment, though they’d found they could prepare for the moments after. “As far as I know, they’ve all been about Scout.”
Because he was paying so much attention to her, he saw Maggie’s eyes tighten ever so slightly. “It always comes back to Scout, doesn’t it?”
“She’s the Alpha Female. The first Shifter Alpha Female in over a thousand years. It’s kind of a big deal.”
“So loyal,” Maggie said, and it didn’t sound like a compliment. “What did she ever do to earn your undying faithfulness?”
“She forgave me.”
“For what? Forgetting to bow down when she entered the room?”
“For killing the boy she loved.”
There it was. He laid it out there, and now it was hers to do with what she would. He couldn’t change or forget the past, no matter how much he wanted to. The night his coyote sent Alex’s wolf over the edge of a cliff would forever be burned into his brain, a nightmare he created and could not escape.
It took so long for her to respond he eventually had to draw a breath. She tilted her head and watched as he fought to keep his emotions at bay.
“You didn’t mean to do it,” she finally said. “It was an accident.”
Accident. It’s what everyone had been saying from the beginning, but he knew better. He went out that night enraged Scout had chosen Alex over him. He couldn’t remember the details, but when he was human again, Scout was in a hospital bed and Alex was dead. Liam and Scout had both forgiven him, but he would never forgive himself. He would die with Alex’s blood on his hands.
“You don’t know,” he said. “You weren’t there.”
“But I know you.” Some unnamable emotion shot through him at her declaration, but he quickly buried it. “You wouldn’t hurt someone on purpose unless they deserved it.”
“And you know this how?”
He held his breath as she leaned in close, and then two fingers trailed lightly over the tips of his lashes. “Because sometimes even Robot Charlie can’t keep the truth out of your eyes.”
She hadn’t even touched a place with nerves, but his whole body felt her caress. It was a remembered sensation. His body knew how her small frame fit against his, of the warmth and softness that was her skin. There was no quelling his coyote now. Something about her had spoken to that side of him since the moment he first saw her, and her touch was quickly becoming an addiction to his more primitive side. Last night, when she’d pulled away to go to bed, it’d taken everything Charlie possessed to not to prowl after her. The coyote demanded more touching, and it was only through the discipline Charlie had been subjecting himself to for the past year that he was able to walk away.
“Why it happened doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice rough. Maggie moved away from him, but it wasn’t helping. His teeth ground with the effort of putting the coyote back in its cage. “Some mistakes shouldn’t be forgiven.”
“What a completely horrible thing to believe.”
“The truth is often horrible.”
For some absurd reason, Maggie smiled, a bright, full smile that almost managed to chase away the ghosts now haunting him.
“My grandmother would have loved you,” she said. “She was an eternal optimist, a true believer in goodness and light and all that stuff.” She hopped off the table. “Basically, the exact opposite of you.”
“And she would love me… why?”
Maggie walked down the aisle, looking back and forth beneath the two tables. She stopped near the end and pulled out a large plastic container. “My grandmother loved many, many things. Hot chocolate on cold winter nights. The way dogwood trees bloom in the spring.” She popped off the lid and began peeling back the plastic sheets beneath. “The one thing she loved more than anything else, though, was arguing.” She flashed another smile his way as she grabbed a wire cutter. “She would have had field day with you, Charlie Hagan.”
“I’d like to meet her,” he said, surprised he actually meant it. He could just imagine what Maggie’s grandmother would be like. A little woman with a big smile and lots of attitude.
The pause was small, hardly noticeable, but Charlie caught it, and he knew what it meant. He paused the same way every time someone asked him about Toby.
“Grandmother died last year.” Another pause, this time to blink back the moisture shining in her eyes. Once she had control of her tear ducts again, she took a deep breath and flashed another smile, although this was much more subdued. “Which is why I’m doing this as my final project for the year.”
“This being…?”
She thunked the clay onto the wheel. “It’s a show-and-tell. You’ll have to wait.” He watched as she flitted around the studio, getting everything she needed ready. He’d grown accustomed to seeing her in her brightly colored dresses, which somehow made her outfit of jeans and an old, faded t-shirt seem almost more revealing even though considerably less skin showed. By the time she planted herself on the other side of the wheel he was fighting once again to keep his coyote under control.
It only took seconds for a shape to start to form. Charlie had watched other people throw clay in class. When they sat at the wheel, they used their hands to guide and shape the mud to create a bowl or vase or whatever. Not Maggie. When Maggie’s hands glided over the mud they weren’t doing something so basic as moving the clay to suit her needs. No, Maggie’s hands merely danced along as the clay formed itself. They didn’t guide and shape so much as coax and encourage. It was beautiful to watch.
“I’ve been wondering something about last night.” Charlie’s head jerked up, his cheeks flushing. How long had he been sitting there hypnotized by her hands?
“Last night?” Why, yes. I did enjoy touching you. Can we do it again soon? Like maybe now? “What about?”
She pushed the clay up, adding height. “What happened with Scout? It looked like she couldn’t Change. Her body was trying to, but she couldn’t do it until she was outside. Was it the moon? Because I thought you guys only did that under the full moon, but last night was like a half-moon or something. It seemed to be enough to help Scout, though.”
“Most of us do only Change under the full moon,” he said, making an executive decision to let her in on some lesser-known facts about the Alpha Pack. She was living with them and could learn most of this by paying attention. Anyway, he needed to think about something other than the way those jeans hugged her body. “Scout and Liam are special. Liam can Change anytime he wants, but it’s still the slow, painful process we all go through. Scout on the other hand…”
“Is all, ‘Poof! I’m a wolf.’”
“Exactly.”
“Except she couldn’t last night.”
“No, she couldn’t do it last night,” he said. “She’s completely asleep during her night terrors and has no idea what she’s doing. I’m sure she thought she was in a massive field or thick patch of woods, but she wasn’t, so she didn’t have any energy to tap into.”
A lip started to form at the top of the vase. “Energy? From the moon?”
“From the ground.”
For the first time since she started, Maggie’s eyes left the wheel to meet Charlie’s. “The ground?”
“Yeah, we pull energy from the ground when we Change. It’s all the conservation of energy, E equals MC squared stuff.”
Maggie’s focus went back to the clay as she began slowing the wheel. “Energy from the ground. That’s interesting.”
Charlie didn’t find it so much interesting as deathly boring, but then again, he’d grown up a Shifter. Everything about their world he took for granted was new to Maggie. He could see the way she ate up every morsel in her expressive black eyes.
“Well,” Maggie said, taking a deep breath, “here comes the moment of truth.” She ran a wire cutter under the vase and lifted it off the wheel, her measured breaths the only sound in the room as she crossed over and sat it on the table. “Oh my God.” She spoke in a whisper, as if she thought too much noise would shatter it. “I did it.” Her smile was so joyful when she turned to him that Charlie felt the corners of his mouth tilting up in response. “Come look!”
There was no way he could resist. He was out of his seat and by her side in seconds, borrowing a bit of speed from his coyote.
“Oh, wow,” he said, immediately regretting the way all of his words came out bland and bored anymore. “This is amazing. I swear, I can almost see through it.”
Maggie ran a finger over the lip. “Once it’s fired, painted, glazed, and fired again, you’ll be able to.”
“Really?” Charlie knew just enough from his one week crash-course in the world of ceramics that was a very big deal.
“If the Grolley is as good of a porcelain as I’ve been told, then…” Those expressive eyes traveled over the vase and then back to him. “Yeah, I think it’s going to work.” If possible her smile spread even further across her face. “I’m going to paint the inside with cobalt. Oh, here.” She turned and yanked up her shirt, causing Charlie to clench his hands so tight there was a chance a bone may have snapped in two. “This is the pattern I’m going to use,” she said, referring to the blue rose pattern tattooed on her side.
“I think my mom has some dishes with that on them,” he managed to ground out.
“Yeah, well…” Maggie shrugged. “It’s something that was important to my grandmother.”
“Which makes it important to you.”
“Exactly,” she said, dropping her shirt. If she noticed the way he was growling the words at her, she didn’t show it. “So, the plan is to paint that on the inside. Then, if God loves me as much as Reid thinks he loves her, when you hang a gallery light right over the top, you’ll be able to see the pattern from the outside.”
“So, what you’re telling me is I’m currently looking at what will become ceramics answer to the Mona Lisa?”
Maggie bit her lip and tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowed on the vase. “No…”
“I’m telling you, Maggie. I don’t know—“
“Not this one,” she said, picking it up with considerably less care than when she’d taken it off the wheel. “I’m going to throw another one. A thinner one.”
Charlie’s experience with perfectionism was vast. He was, after all, a member of the Alpha Pack. Perfectionism and control issues where pretty much standard issue. But no one took it to the extreme quite like Maggie.
“Are you insane? That one is so thin I don’t know how it’s not collapsing in on itself as it is. No one can throw thinner than that.”
She placed the Vase of Impossible Thinness on a wire shelf beside some other will-probably-never-make-it-to-kiln pieces.
“I can,” she said, turning back to him.
“How?” It had to be impossible, but then her eyes met his, and he knew. As long it was made out of clay, Maggie could do anything.
“It’s a natural talent,” she said with a smile he couldn’t help but return.
Chapter 18
Charlie spent Sunday morning patrolling the grounds of Fenrir Farm with Layne. Because of his newfound course work, Charlie hadn’t spent much time with his nephew. And even though Layne didn’t seem to mind, Charlie felt a bit guilty about it all the same.
It took an ungodly amount of effort to get Layne awake, dressed, and outside. More than once Charlie considered just leaving him behind, but he knew taking Layne out was important. It wasn’t just the substitute-daddy-and-me time Charlie’s psychiatrist assured him Layne needed. Following Maggie’s advice from yesterday, Joshua had shown up at two in the morning with a mobile x-ray machine. Because he’s Joshua, he knew exactly what to do, and two hours later Charlie’s gut clenched as he looked at a ghostly version of Layne’s face.
“What do you see?” Charlie asked as they stood on the northern edge of the Alpha Pack’s property. When Layne didn’t answer, Charlie reached over and plucked an earbud out of his ear and asked again.
“I don’t know? Like, trees and grass and shit.”
I wouldn’t have to teach him how to protect himself if I went ahead and killed him myself.
“Look closer. How can someone get onto the property here? Is there anything out of place? Has anyone besides us been through here recently?”
Layne’s gaze never left Charlie’s face.
“For the love of God, just look.”
Still staring at his uncle, Layne gave a sigh of overwhelming boredom. “The fence is low enough even a four year old could climb over it, and for reasons I don’t understand, it’s not electric. Anyone who wanted could crawl right on over and slit our throats in the night, but no one has been over recently because the ivy hasn’t been broken or smooshed. Are we done now?”
Okay, so maybe Layne didn’t need Charlie to show him the ropes.
“What about smells? Do you catch anything off?”
A smirk lifted one corner of Layne’s mouth making him look like a carbon copy of his father. Charlie ran his palm over the sudden discomfort in his chest.
“Well, you smell like a loser. It’s called body spray, man. Buy some.”
“New flash, kid. The commercials lie. Reeking isn’t sexy. I would tell you to ask a girl, but since none of them will actually talk to someone as pathetic as you…” Charlie shrugged off the end of his sentence, and Layne responded by flipping him off.
And winner of Parent of the Year goes to… Anyone but Charlie Hagan.
“Maybe this was a bad idea.” He hated to admit defeat, but this was pointless. Layne obviously knew how to keep his eyes open when it actually mattered, and all the two of them were going to accomplish together was pissing each other off. “Come on,” he said, turning back towards the house. “If we hurry, we can get a pizza before I have to take Maggie back to campus this afternoon.”
Five steps later, he realized Layne wasn’t following him. He turned back around to find his nephew standing with his nose practically pressed against a tree. His eyes were closed, and his hands were balled into fists at his side.
“Layne…?”
“There is something here. It’s all messed up, but I know this scent. It’s… it’s…” His eyes snapped open. “Is this a test?”
Charlie shook his head as he walked back to where Layne was standing. He was about a foot away when he too caught the weird chemical smell of a scent blocker.
“It’s old. From last week,” he said. “I found it the day we found Barros’s body. I’ve had Robby look into it, and he says it’s our neighbor. Apparently the guy is a nature photographer who doesn’t understand property lines. He trampled all over the farm trying to get the perfect shot of a red-tailed hawk.”
“But the smell…” Layne took another deep sniff. “It’s familiar. I know this person, and it isn’t the guy next door.” Charlie didn’t say anything as Layne continued to try to place the scent. He stood back, giving him the space he needed. Part of Charlie hoped he actually teased out something to prove Robby wrong. Charlie’s gut didn’t like his cousin’s explanation, and like Layne, he found something familiar beneath the scent-blocking chemicals.
Layne’s eyes once again snapped open, but this time all the disdain and ire normally shining out from their green depths wer
e gone and replaced by a sheen of vulnerability.
“It’s dad,” he said quietly, and then again with more conviction. “It’s dad, Charlie. I can smell dad.”
Damn it. Just… Damn. It.
“Layne, you know it can’t be your dad.”
“I know it’s not actually him. He’s been dead over a year now. I’ve kinda noticed.” Despite his harsh words and the valiant effort he put into appearing apathetic, Layne still looked like a sad, scared little boy. If Charlie didn’t think it would earn him a black eye, he would’ve hugged him. “I’m saying the smell underneath is the same, like how yours is the same as his. But this is different.”
“Different how?” Charlie had never noticed a similarity in his and Toby’s scents, but he’d never been particularly good at sniffing out the subtle nuances of different smells. Layne, it seemed, didn’t have that problem. He’d just been Changing for two years, but signs of being a Dominant were already starting to show. Not surprising since he completed his first Change at eleven, two years earlier than either Charlie or Jase. “Different like another Hagan?”
Layne took another deep breath and released it on a growl. “It’s too faint, and the scent blocker is screwing it up. I can’t tell.”
Charlie scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to think. Robby was convinced the scent originated with their idiot neighbor. If it had been one of the guys from Romania, he would do his own digging around, but Robby was a Hagan. He’d been one of Toby’s closest friend, and Charlie knew for a fact the guy wouldn’t ever put his family or his Alphas in danger. If Robby said the scent didn’t represent a threat, then it didn’t.
Still, Charlie couldn’t shake the feeling something was off.
Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) Page 15