And being around her is going to cause her to learn more.
But he needed her to get into the school, and infiltrate that insubordinate group of humans.
“You can no longer pretend to be impartial.”
“No.” He couldn't. His feelings about the girl were snarled up in the case. Hopelessly. “Damn it.”
“What are you going to do?” She spoke as though from a reservoir of endless calm.
He gave her a flat look. “Exactly what I came here to do. Seek out that nest of vipers and crush them. Find out who this Shadow Thane is, the one who haunts me in my dreams. And then—” he fished into his pocket for the hotel room key “—I'm going to deal with her.”
“I had the strangest dream last night.”
Lucas was chatting to their Mom as she made his lunch for the day. Or rather, he was chatting at her and she was his captive audience, nodding along in all the right places but secretly in a world of her own. This happened a lot, and Catherine had shaken her head at the typical scene as she walked past them on her way to the front door. But at her younger brother's words, she paused in the foyer, listening.
“About?” her mother said absently.
Catherine could hear the scrape of the knife on the bread, with the precision of a metronome. She knew that her mother had another one of her faculty meetings today; they turned her into a tired and stressed-out zombie. Which made sense, since her meetings consisted of a bunch of underpaid overworked professors sequestered in a cramped room, sipping rancid coffee while trying to figure out how to raise falling test scores and manage nonexistent money.
Her lack of engagement was not lost on Lucas. For a thirteen-year-old boy he could be startlingly perceptive. “Am I bothering you?”
“It's okay,” she said, which was not exactly a 'no.' “I can do this and listen.” There was the sound of a lid being screwed back on. “Tell me about your dream.”
“It was about Catherine,” Lucas said, causing Catherine's back to straighten. Almost unconsciously, she pressed her ear towards the wall to hear them better. “She was sword-fighting with a witch.”
“Sword-fighting,” their mother repeated, with a frown.
“Yeah, it was awesome.”
Catherine clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the gasp that threatened to come out.
Their mother started to make a noncommittal response, but Lucas had already continued, “She was about to hand his ass to him, too, but the broom-banger cheated.”
“Sounds just like your sister. Picking fights in school. I swear that girl is going to be the early death of me—and don't curse,” she added.
“Ass isn't a curse word.”
“I was talking about broom-banger,” Mrs. Pierce said. “But don't say ass, either.”
“That's so lame. Everyone else says it.”
“Well, then, everyone else will sound uneducated and you won't.”
Lucas swiftly changed the subject. “Do you think Catherine could beat a witch?”
Mrs. Pierce's response floated out on the wind. “Catherine can do anything she puts her mind to. Persuading her is the problem.”
The witch had certainly managed to do just that.
As she approached the bus stop, her head still swirling with those thoughts, she saw him. Waiting. Waiting for her.
The witch.
She almost didn't recognize him. He was wearing faded jeans that looked secondhand, and a tight black shirt with some sort of rebellious slogan typical of the average card-carrying member of American disaffected youth. A far cry from the ethereal terror she remembered from the night before. But while the disguise was convincing, it gave one the sense that every detail was calculated. It was like watching an actor play a grungy teenager on TV; he looked too perfect.
Too clean.
Too dangerous.
With most boys, it was obvious that however much they tried to come off as tough and fierce it was all just a well-maintained act. They constantly sought approval—from their peers, from girls, even from the adults they claimed to scorn, albeit in a negatively-reinforced, roundabout sort of way. The witch wasn't trying to impress anyone. The way he held himself was fearless.
He knew he was lethal.
And more alarming still: he was toting the latest editions of her school's Spanish IV and Calculus textbooks. Where had he gotten them on such short notice? She saw, in her head, an unconscious, nameless student lying bruised and bleeding in a dark alley as the witch made off with his bag and his books and his clothes.
Don't be ridiculous. She tried to calm her racing heart. You don't know that's what happened.
Abandoning all pretenses of stealth now, Catherine marched up to the witch, ignoring the voice—Prey, of course—telling her to be careful.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
She had to give him credit for this: he didn't jump, even though there was no way he could have heard her coming. Not in her element, half-hidden by the trees, with her footsteps swallowed up by the soft, fertile earth. “Meeting you,” he said, looking her up and down. “You're late.”
There was a warning tingle at her scalp. “How did you know I took the bus?” she asked slowly.
The witch said nothing, but he lifted an eyebrow pointedly.
“You've been following me.”
“You didn't notice?” he asked, lip curling.
“So you're also a stalker,” she said. “Why don't you take a six-hour lunch break or something?”
The witch leaned back against the bust stop sign, closing his eyes with a relaxed sigh. In his current veneer of laziness, he looked almost feline. Perhaps that's why his familiar is a cat, she thought sourly, put in a dark mood by the memory of the kitten's betrayal.
“Don't be so quick to defy me, shifter mine.”
“I'm not yours.”
“Your blood is,” he said casually.
Catherine stiffened. She still wasn't quite sure what blood magic entailed. Now she was beginning to feel as if she should. But she sure as hell wasn't going to ask him. That would only reveal her fear more fully than she already had. “Go away. Your precious meeting isn't until next week.”
“And?”
“And I don't want to have to even look at you until then.”
He cracked open an eye to regard her. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously level and laced with threat. “It will look suspicious if we are seen attending the meeting together if nobody has seen me around campus before that—let alone with you.”
Catherine said nothing, but she had a sinking feeling she knew where this was headed.
“Sometimes the best way to be incongruous is to be high profile. To make a point of being conspicuous. Which is precisely what you and I are going to do.”
She didn't appreciate being grouped with him, even in words. “How am I supposed to explain you away, exactly? Wave my magic little fairy wand?” His eyes narrowed at that. Good. “I don't know what delusional century you're living in, but in this one we have online records accessible with just. One. Click. You think your textbooks are going to buy you in? Think again.”
He tossed them aside without a thought, making her wonder once more if there was a kid somewhere wondering where his belongings had wandered off to.
“Then tell the humans I'm a visiting cousin from somewhere far, far away.”
“You don't look anything like me,” she said flatly.
Both his eyes opened and he stood up. She watched his eyes drop to her sneakers, slowly climbing. She put her hands on her hips and eyed him back, not sure which pissed her off more: the inspection itself, or the fact that he wasn't even bothering with subtlety.
Both, she decided. He's saying he doesn't see me as an equal and doesn't care if I know.
Apparently finding none of her features capable of redeeming his plan to claim that they were family, the witch relaxed back into his faineant posture from before and said, with noticeable emphasis, “And what do you suggest, shifter min
e?”
Violent thoughts assaulted her brain. Curse him and his stupid blood bond.
“I don't know,” she spoke through gritted teeth. “But the cousin idea isn't going to fly. My friends know all my cousins are under the age of seven.” She paused, adding meanly, “Which might not be a problem, except for the fact that there's also no redheads in my family.”
“Perhaps there was a witch in your woodpile,” he said softly.
“What?” Her voice dropped to a growl. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me.” His lips twisted. “Black beast.”
A slip of legend, half-forgotten, uncurled in the back of her mind. But it was lost to anger and insult, and quickly pushed aside. “You son of a bitch—”
She swiped at him, and the moment her fingers grazed his skin she was on the ground. It was like silver poisoning, only somehow worse, and for a moment her vision went pitch-black.
What …?
The witch raked a hand through his hair, combing it out of his eyes. Seemingly indifferent to her pain, and the attempted attack on his person. “Then how about this? Tell them we're involved.”
David, she thought, and wondered if she was going to throw up.
“No. Forget it. We'll stick with the cousin idea.”
“No. I'm afraid you've quite convinced me. We really do look nothing alike. It won't work.”
“Tough titty, witch. I'm not telling them that you're my—” her heart wrenched. He had to know. Had to know how he was tearing her up inside. And yes, one look at his face said that he did know, and was enjoying it. “No.”
“Even you have to see that this is the perfect solution.”
Catherine closed her eyes and told herself that she would not cry in front of this witch, whom she hated so very, very much.
“You know very well that my real boyfriend was taken several days ago. By Slayers.” She drew in a deep breath and glared at him, cloaking her grief in rage. “As was your girlfriend. Even a pig like you couldn't be so callous.”
“I knew he'd been taken but hadn't realized the nature of your relationship, no. Which is unfortunate, but still rather convenient because from what I gathered nobody else has, either.”
Catherine attacked him.
She knew it was a mistake, even as she lunged, but how dare he be so flippant about David's death.
Agony sparked through her body in blinding intensity as her blood literally boiled. She felt as if she were being slashed into a thousand pieces from the inside, and that those pieces were then thrown into the deepest, fieriest pits of hell, only to be reassembled, still glowing and still alive.
She wasn't sure how long the pain lasted. Seconds, minutes—hours.
Time had ceased to have meaning. All that mattered was the pain, and making it stop.
Eventually, it did, and Catherine's vision cleared at last. Her throat ached and she realized that she must have been screaming. The wind chilled the tears that were streaming down her face and her fingers were running with blood, healing over even as she looked. The nails had cracked. She had clawed right into the cement sidewalk.
The witch looked down at her, his chest heaving, as he breathed in a series of funny, snorting gasps. It took her a moment to realize why. His nose was bleeding, probably broken.
Good.
“I warned you,” he said.
“You didn't do shit.”
“Blood bonds act as a sort of psychic shock collar. If you attempt to harm me, you will receive twice the damage.” He glanced down at her hands. “I bet you regret that.”
“No.” She stumbled to her feet. “It was worth it, wiping that smug look off your face.”
He said something then, so quickly that it sounded like one word. His hands became suffused with blue light. With a dark look at her, the witch touched his fingers to his nose. The bleeding stopped. He did the same thing to her hands and Catherine hissed as the cold touched her skin.
The bluish liquid seeped into her cuts, and where it touched, the blood and pain disappeared. Her nails were still cracked, though even that was fading slowly. At least they no longer hurt.
For now.
She now had some idea of the power he held over her, and it was terrifying.
The loud engine of the bus sounded as it pulled up, breaking the hush that had settled between them. It was a silence that seeped in as quietly and as suddenly as poisonous gas, and it was just as deadly. Two predators, Catherine thought, locked in a battle of wills.
But which one of us will win?
There was no immediate right answer, and that troubled her.
The witch was a dangerous enemy; she needed to know she could destroy him if she had to.
And right now, she wasn't so sure that she could.
Chapter Seven
Unlike the bus that circuited the backwoods and the houses that fringed it, the bus that went to the school was always crowded because it was routed through the busier part of town. This meant that by the time Catherine boarded, there weren't too many empty seats left.
Ordinarily, she didn't appreciate being squashed up next to some random human—it was one of the reasons she was so insistent on using the car—but today it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it meant that she didn't have to sit next to the witch.
His face, as he realized that she'd managed to thwart him again, was priceless.
By the time the bus pulled up to the curb of the school Catherine was already working her way up to the front. She was half-out of the doors even before the bus came to a complete halt. The driver gave her a slightly startled look—she supposed most of his passengers weren't quite so eager to get to their destination.
“Catherine!”
Catherine turned, lips pressed tight. It was Sharon and her little sister, Ashley.
Sharon and Ashley. Fuck. What was she going to tell them?
A tall shadow loomed in her periphery. The witch glanced down at her, his expression carefully blank. It was obvious she would receive no help from that quarter.
Sharon arrived first. She had picked up the pace when she realized that Catherine wasn't alone.
“Well, hello,” she said, looking the witch up and down appreciatively before giving Catherine a saucy wink. “Who's this? Friend of yours?”
“Way to ditch me, you ho,” Ashley panted, each breath coming in an asthmatic wheeze. She had short, curly hair and thick glasses that gave her heart-shaped face an owly look. Catherine had met her through Sharon, when she stopped by the bookstore one day to pick up a book her older sister had put on hold. Catherine had liked her almost instantly. There was something about her—something both fragile and resilient—that made her think of a wolf pup.
“Oh, hello, Catherine and—” her eyes went to the witch, and then away “—Catherine's friend.”
“Hey. This is—um.” It just occurred to her that the witch had never actually told her his name.
“Phineas.” He was smiling as he said it, but the smile did not reach his eyes. “Phineas Riordan. But please, call me Finn.”
“Like in Ovid's Metamorphoses?” Catherine blurted, before she could stop herself. The witch shot her a look that could have boiled lead. She realized her mistake instantly. He was setting the stage for his elaborate lie and she was ruining it. She should know his name if they were…dating.
Luckily, most Californians inflected their speech in such a way that their phrases sounded like questions, anyway.
“Yes,” the witch said, holding that perfect smile in place. “Just like.”
“Are you a new student?” Ashley asked haltingly.
“No,” Catherine said—too quickly. “He's just—”
“Visiting.” Finn turned to look at Ashley and Sharon in turn. “We're dating.”
Fresh salt grated into the wound in her heart. She bared her teeth in a smile. “Surprise.”
Her friends reeled on her. She could see disbelief etched on their faces as they looked from her to Finn.
Back and forth, as if they were watching a tennis match.
“Seriously?” Sharon said. “And it didn't occur to you to tell me?”
“Like I need your permission.”
“You could have asked for my approval.” She pronounced 'asked' as 'axed.'
“I don't need that, either,” Catherine said.
“No, you sure don't.” Sharon laughed. “But I'm giving it to you anyway, you lucky bitch.”
If the situation hadn't been quite so mortifying, Catherine might have been insulted. Shape-shifters were possessive by nature, and jealously guarded their relationships. If there were anything between her and the witch, she would have been provoked by Sharon's speculative gaze.
But she reminded herself that humans couldn't help themselves, especially not young humans, and many in her position would feel a sort of proprietary pride in having their partner regarded with such approval. She forced her face into some semblance of a smile, and her jaw ached.
“I am lucky,” Catherine said. I'm as lucky as a bed of oysters on cioppino night.
“Where did you two meet?” Ashley asked.
Catherine paused, stricken. Because instead of focusing on Ashley's question, she found herself thinking, This is what things could have been like with David. Except—she'd never know that, would she? Because David was dead and this impostor was taking his place.
On the other hand, if she had said Finn was her cousin, she'd have had to watch Sharon flirt with him and know that she was powerless to sufficiently warn her friend away. And some nosy Parker of a teacher might have called her parents to probe about the legitimacy of her new cousin.
Actually, they might do that anyway. Oh, fuck. She straightened. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Yeah,” Sharon echoed, one eyebrow hiked up. “Where did you meet him? More importantly, are there more where he came from?”
Think, fool. Think.
“A bar,” Catherine said quickly. She knew she looked older, and she was wild enough that Sharon would believe it.
“So that makes you—” Sharon arched her eyebrow at the witch.
“Old enough,” he said, neatly side-stepping the question. “What do you do for fun around here?”
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