Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers)

by Blackwell, Tammy

  Scout snorted oh-so-indelicately. “What does the crazy Shifter traditionalist have against the Thaumaturgic we’ve taken into the protection of the Alpha Pack? Gee. I can’t imagine.”

  Charlie cut his eyes over to where Joshua was… measuring grass? “Hack into the surveillance cameras. Pull footage from Rosa Hall from two nights ago and get every angle of this parking lot from tonight.”

  Joshua, who only took orders from Liam and Scout, and only when he was inclined to do whatever it was anyway, miraculously didn’t give Charlie detailed directions on how to find his way to hell.

  “Can’t,” he said. “This campus is one hundred percent Big Brother free. There isn’t a single camera anywhere on the property.”

  The muscles in Charlie’s jaws knotted. “Are you serious?”

  “Sadly, yes,” Scout said, laying a hand against his back. “We checked into it before I enrolled. At the time, it sounded like a benefit. No cameras meant no super-smart Joshua-wannabes would be able to hack in and get footage of me. We didn’t think about what would happen if we needed to hack in and get some footage of our own.”

  “That,” Charlie said, pointing at the car parked in the spot next to the Humvee, “is a Porsche Boxter. One of those runs about fifty grand. And guess what? Not even close to the most expensive car in this lot. You really expect me to believe there aren’t cameras around here to make sure no one takes off with a car that costs more than most people’s houses?”

  “Chinoe’s low crime rate is one of the major selling points for Sanders College.”

  His growl was the sort that made the bad kind of goose bumps break out from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. The first time Scout heard it, she couldn’t believe such a harsh and terrifying sound could come out of her Charlie. Even now, years later, she was amazed he was capable of something so animalistic.

  But even as part of her instinctively shrank back, her lips threatened to curve up into a smile. She’d gone over a year without hearing that growl, and now she was hearing it for the second time in just over a week. She wasn’t quite sure of what to make of Maggie McCray, but if she was making Charlie growl, then Scout was ready to do whatever it took to keep her around.

  “Joshua,” Charlie ground out, “tell me you’re over there hacking into the Pentagon or White House or some shit like that and getting us some satellite images.”

  “Sorry, man—“

  “You have got to be kidding me!” The crack from his fist hitting the ripped leather was like a gunshot splintering the night.

  “I’ll keep working on it,” Joshua said. He looked to Scout, and she nodded her agreement. Joshua could do a lot with a computer and internet connection - he was basically the MacGyver of cyberspace - but not always without complications. Hacking into those kinds of sites could direct some very unwanted attention their way, but it was worth the risk. Even if it wasn’t all of their lives on the line, Scout believed it was worth it to protect one innocent person. They could handle the fallout from a nosy government, but none of them could deal with knowing they could have done something to save someone’s life and didn’t because they were worried about getting into trouble.

  “So, what do we do now?” Jase asked. “Listen, I know I’m in the minority here, but maybe this going to school thing is a little too risky right now. Why don’t we all just… drop out?”

  “No,” Scout said at the exact same moment Jase’s phone dinged. He was standing at an angle that meant with her super-Shifter sight, Scout could easily read his screen. It was from Talley and only contained one word: “No.”

  Jase scrunched up his eyebrows and squinted into the neon glow coming from across the street. “How did she do that? Can she hear my direct thoughts through our mating bond now?”

  “I doubt it,” Scout said.

  “Then how did she know what I said?”

  “It’s because I’m awesome,” came Talley’s reply from several feet behind Jase.

  At a time when not a whole lot of things were funny, watching Jase jump up and do a 180-degree twist in the air while yelping like a little girl was somewhere beyond the line of hysterical. Scout thought she was going to pull a muscle or pee her pants before she stopped laughing.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jase bellowed. “There is a psycho-killer running around cutting brake lines and slicing uninspired insults into the seats of locked vehicles. You’re supposed to be sitting safely in the freaking restaurant across the street until I come and get you.”

  There was a time when Talley would have attempted to fold in on herself, mutter an apology, and promptly cry at such an outburst from Jase, but that was before they mated. Now, Talley knew Jase loved her, no matter what. It gave her a level of confidence that made Scout proud.

  “One, Maggie was supposed to stay in the safety of the restaurant. Not me. I was there as her protection. Two, I’m just as much a member of the Alpha Pack as you are, so I get to sit in on whatever dangerous middle-of-the-night meetings I want. And three,” she shoved her phone into his face, “Some guys were creeping on us. Liam said it was safe out here, so we left.”

  Of course, Jase wasn’t as easily defused by the mention of the Alpha Male as he should have been. “How do you know it’s safe?” he demanded of Liam.

  Liam, who could have been a complete jerk and told Jase it was none of his damn business, just shrugged. “The perfume is dissipating. I can smell someone coming from a mile away, so it’s not exactly like they could sneak up on us now.”

  Jase turned his irritation back on Talley. “Why didn’t you just walk directly across the road?”

  “Because scaring you was funnier, right up until you got your panties in a wad.” Jase continued to glare, so she pranced over and gave him the sort of kiss people should only share behind closed doors, especially if they’re kissing someone’s brother. “I’m sorry I scared you,” she whispered, which meant everybody but Maggie and Joshua could hear it. “I know you’re just trying to protect me. I’ll try to be more considerate next time.”

  Maggie, who had materialized out of the shadows beside Talley, moved away from the couple as they began yet another completely inappropriate display, and walked over to where Charlie stood.

  “I’m not dropping out of school,” she told him. “I can’t.”

  Charlie never seemed tall to Scout. Since she wasn’t exactly short for a girl and he was an average-sized a guy, there were only a couple of inches separating their height. But Maggie was roughly the size of a ten-year-old. She had to tilt her head almost completely back to look him in the eye, but she still managed to look fierce. It made Scout like her even more.

  “I know,” Charlie said, clenching his hands as if he was thinking about using the ruined passenger’s seat as a punching bag again. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”

  And because she had known him forever, and because she’d spent the majority of her life studying him, she saw it. Charlie was going to find a way to make sure Maggie could stay in school. Not just because he promised, but because it meant something to her. Because Maggie cared, Charlie cared.

  At the next available opportunity, Scout was going to give Maggie the world’s biggest tackle-hug.

  “I can set up surveillance on all the vehicles, but I’m not sure about being able to get onto campus,” Joshua, who was now lying on the ground with his head beneath the Humvee, said. “I can give you one of my dual-recording iPads to put in your studio, and I’ll have the feed sent both to my computers and the control room at The Den. I’ll make sure someone keeps an eye on them.”

  “Someone is going to be watching me all the time?”

  “Someone is going to be watching out for you all the time,” Charlie told her. “And just until we run down these assholes and make sure they can never hurt anyone again.”

  Maggie wrapped her arms around her middle. Even from a distance, Scout could see the way her small frame trembled. “Did someone try to kill us tonight?”


  “Yes.”

  A single tear slipped free of Maggie’s eye, but before could trail down her face, Charlie’s thumb was there to brush it away. Scout waited for a pang of jealousy that never came.

  “She’ll either be his salvation or damnation.”

  Scout agreed with her mate, but unlike Liam, it didn’t worry her. Because either way, the shell Charlie had become since Toby’s death would finally shatter and her friend would join the land of the living once again.

  Chapter 20

  By the time Halloween rolled around, Maggie had stopped thinking about the Alpha Pack as The Alpha Pack. She still felt awkward around Liam, and Scout wasn’t exactly what someone would term as “friendly,” but she was starting to feel like part of the group. It was a new experience for her. In high school, she’d always had a few friends, but when it came to actual groups, she was always on the fringes. Growing up dirt poor is hard enough for anyone, but when you’re too white for the black kids, too black for the white kids, and there aren’t even any other Asian kids around to tell you how you don’t fit in with them either, it becomes something of a trial. Maggie had never felt like she truly belonged anywhere before, so the fact she was starting to feel that way with a bunch of crazy-rich Shifters and Seers was somewhat astonishing.

  Still, with the exception of being a target for a wannabe serial killer, life was pretty nice. Joshua kept track of her every movement off the farm with his unsettlingly advanced tech toys, but as long as she was on the Alpha’s property, she was able to go wherever and do whatever she wanted without someone looking directly over her shoulder thanks to their newly upgraded surveillance system. When she started feeling suffocated, which happened about every other day, she would just take off for a walk outside with her sketchpad and give herself a chance to breathe. The rest of the time, she was surrounded by people who didn’t mind her being around. And when it came to Joshua, Talley, and Layne, who decided she was the best board game player in the whole house, they actually seemed genuinely happy she was there.

  The only time she felt like a prisoner instead of just another member of their pack was during the full moon. Those nights, she was forced to stay in her room while coyotes and wolves took turns patrolling the house. She would spend the entire night sitting by her window, watching the Shifters below and listening to the cries and howls filling the night. Even knowing it was the same people she’d been with every day, the sight and sound terrified her. If someone was to ask her why she stayed awake those nights, she would have spouted off something about worrying one of Mandel’s human thugs would try to attack the house when he knew the Shifters weren’t there to protect them, but that wasn’t true. Mandel hadn’t made a move since the night the Humvee’s brakes were cut, and any idiot who thought he could get past a pack of wolves and coyotes deserved to be torn to shreds.

  No, the real reason Maggie refused to go to bed on full moon nights could be summed up in one word: Charlie. Over the past two months the two of them had formed the kind of friendship that involved a lot of hoping and longing for something more. Well, at least it did on her end. On Charlie’s end, there was mostly a robot, but she made it her goal every day to make him flash a real smile at least once, and as time marched on, she was finding success more and more often. It wasn’t really enough to be called encouragement, but Maggie didn’t let that stop her from hoping and longing.

  Maggie had stayed up on the night of the first full moon because she was being nosy. She’d only ever seen Scout in wolf form, and she was curious about the others. Mischa had swung by her room around midnight and stayed until the early hours of the morning, pointing out who was who while narrating what was going on outside her window as if it were a show on Animal Planet. After she’d seen a glimpse of everyone except the one coyote she wanted to see, she’d asked Mischa where he was and got only, “Charlie is off fighting his demons” as a reply.

  Mischa told her how in their animal forms, Shifters are ruled more by emotion and instinct than human reason, but Maggie could have figured that part out for herself. It was most obvious in Liam and Scout. The two of them were always so controlled and hesitant in their affections towards each other in human form, but the moment they were both on four legs it was another story. They danced around one other, nipping and rubbing their sides together so often it bordered on obsession. They were like the wolf version of Jase and Talley.

  Watching Liam and Scout made Maggie wonder what Charlie was like when the robot exterior fell away. Even if he was fighting demons, Maggie wanted to see it. She wanted to see the passion and the fury she knew was raging beneath his surface. So, every night the full moon hung in the sky, Maggie sat at her window and waited to see the real Charlie Hagan, and every time she was disappointed.

  The latest disappointment had been two nights before Halloween. Maggie was still a little depressed over missing a glimpse of Coyote Charlie yet again. She debated on asking him to come into the yard near her window, but she kept chickening out. Didn’t he deserve one night a month when he didn’t have to be her bodyguard? That was, after all, the only reason the others roamed into the yard. They took turns “guarding the fort”, making sure the house, the Seers, and the single Thaumaturgic inside stayed safe. Just because Maggie didn’t want to go a single night without seeing him didn’t mean he didn’t desperately desire a night without her.

  “Where is your costume?”

  Reid strode through the door of the studio wearing a vinyl nurse’s uniform showing what had to be an unhygienic amount of skin. She and Boyfriend were around more often than not, and while Maggie couldn’t say she enjoyed their company, she was definitely getting used to it. It was that, or go crazy.

  “I’m being festive,” Maggie said, indicating her outfit with a hand. “Purple tights. Orange skirt. Black spider-web top. If that doesn’t say Halloween, I don’t know what does.”

  Reid came into the studio and hopped up onto one of the stools. Or at least, she tried to. Turns out, it’s kind of hard to hop when you’re wearing skin-tight vinyl.

  “Festive isn’t the same as in costume, and you have to be in costume to trick-or-treat. It’s, like, the rules or whatever.”

  Maggie sat her cobalt carbonate on the table and began digging for the brush she wanted to use. “I’m not trick-or-treating.”

  “What do you mean you’re not trick-or-treating?”

  “I mean I’m not dressing in a costume and going around campus to beg professors for candy.” It was some weird Sanders tradition that was supposed to be raising money for juvenile cancer research, but Maggie couldn’t quite figure out how it worked since the only money exchanging hands was the fortune their professors were paying for all the chocolate they would be passing out. “Charlie and I are going to have a nice, quiet evening in the studio.”

  “All you two ever do is have nice, quiet evenings in the studio. I can’t believe you haven’t put a cot in here and just moved in at this point.”

  There were nights when Maggie had seriously considered it. She’d managed to get the Hulk set out in time, and the buyer had been enthusiastically impressed. So much so he’d ordered Captain America, Batman, and Goon sets as Christmas gifts. With all the assignments from her professors, her regular orders, and the vase project, she felt like she was working around the clock and still not staying caught up.

  “Sorry, Reid, but I have to work tonight. You know what they say.”

  “All work and no play makes Maggie a big freaking loser?”

  “No, Maggie has to pass all of her classes or she’s going to get kicked out of college.”

  Reid rolled her eyes, which was made all the more dramatic by the entire stick of kohl surrounding each eye. “Who says that?”

  “The good people down at the scholarship office.” Finally locating her favorite brush, Maggie was ready to get started, with just one exception…

  “So, I guess you and Davin are going to be leaving pretty soon…”

  “Maggie McCray,
are you kicking me out?”

  “No!” Yes. “I just, you know, didn’t want you to be late.”

  “It’s okay,” Reid said, sliding off the stool, an act leaving Maggie in the loop on Reid’s continued position on underwear being an inessential part of a person’s wardrobe. “My feelings aren’t hurt too badly.”

  “I’m sorry, Reid. I’ve just got so much work—“

  “Well, if you wanted to make it up to me, maybe we could hang out some this weekend.”

  “Sure!”

  Please God, let something better pop up on her calendar.

  “Great! I’ll grab a pizza and come to your place on Friday.”

  Maggie tried to stop the sigh escaping her mouth, but it was impossible. “You know you can’t do that. I’ll get in trouble. They’re really hardcore about stuff like that.” Which Reid knew, because Maggie had to tell her at least once a week. She was pretty sure the only reason her old roommate was still talking to her was because Reid thought Maggie could get her an invite into her “exclusive, secret society.” Too bad the Alpha Pack was the sort of thing you had to be born into.

  “You,” Reid said, jabbing her finger into Maggie’s shoulder, “are no fun and a horrible friend.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Save it.” Reid leaned across the table and grabbed one of the granola bars Maggie had brought along as supper. “Oh, chocolate chip. My favorite.” She stuffed the stolen treat into the plastic pumpkin draped over her wrist before turning on her heel and sauntering out of the door without so much as a goodbye.

  “Thank you so much for your assistance,” Maggie said once Reid was out of earshot. She took a deep breath to steady her hands before carefully removing the vase from its resting spot on the shelves. The second one she threw had been even thinner than the first. She wasn’t quite sure how it was holding its shape. If it worked, she really did have a chance at gathering the type of attention she needed to move up in the art world. “I do so appreciate how chivalrous you are. It’s nice to know I can count on you to save me from unwanted awkward conversations.”