“I heard it told you that you were next. We can protect you at Wolford.”
I shook my head emphatically. “No, you can’t. Safety there is an illusion. That’s where the harvester will search for me. It won’t know to look for me here.”
I knew I was being reckless. Going through my first transformation alone brought with it the possibility of death. But I’d been studying the ancient texts, and I thought I might have found a loophole. I’d experienced what another Shifter had felt while transforming. All I had to do was mimic the emotion, follow the path he’d taken.
Daniel hesitated for a moment, and I felt a spark of hope that he might relent, but then he shattered it with his next words. “I’m sorry, Hayden, but the elders sent me to bring you back. It’s my duty.”
Not willing to give up easily, striving to buy myself some time, I folded my arms across my chest and jutted out my chin. “I know all about duty and responsibility. When I took this job, I gave my word that I would work here through winter break. This is the last weekend. You see how crowded it is in there. It’s only going to get worse by tomorrow. I can’t just leave. It’s not fair to my employer; it’s not fair to the other workers.”
I knew that they probably could get by without me, but it was an excuse to buy me more time until I figured out my next move. I wasn’t ready to go back to Wolford. And I certainly had no desire to be escorted back as though I’d done something wrong.
As though he understood exactly what I was thinking, he shrugged carelessly. “Through Saturday night, right? Most classes start back on Monday, so people will be heading away on Sunday. Why don’t we talk about it when your shift ends?”
He sounded so irritatingly reasonable. I wanted him to leave and to leave me. I’d never flirted with a guy, had never tried to twist him around my little finger. But even if I had, Daniel didn’t strike me as the easily manipulated type. “Okay, where do you want to meet?”
“I’ll just wait for you inside.”
“The shop doesn’t close until nine. That’s a long time to wait.”
“It’s all warm and cozy inside,” he said. “I’ll be okay for a few hours.”
“Fine,” I ground out.
I spun on my heel and stormed back into the building, annoyed that, with the snow, I couldn’t actually tromp in order to make a statement. As I angrily removed my jacket and boots, I began mentally considering Plan B. And of course, thoughts of how best to evade Daniel made me think about him. My actions came to an abrupt halt.
Why didn’t his emotions reach me? Was it because he had none? Was he a psychopath? Sociopath? Devoid of feelings?
I’d never met a Shifter whose emotions didn’t come flying at me. I was a magnet for whatever they were feeling. So why not with Daniel?
The inability to access his emotions should have been comforting, but instead it was scary. It wasn’t natural. So what was wrong with him?
Or had a change happened within me? As my full moon approached, was I losing my empathic abilities? They’d seemed stronger than ever a couple of weeks ago. So why did they seem absent now?
It was all so weird. But I didn’t really have time to ponder all the ramifications or possibilities. I had to get back to work. I stopped by the storage room and grabbed a plastic bag filled with paper cups and lids.
When I got back to the counter, Lisa gave me a confused stare. “Took you long enough. What’d you do? Get lost?”
I almost responded, No, got found. But I just said, “Took a quick break.”
After arranging the cups on the shelf for easy access, I returned to my place at the counter. In the middle of the shop was a huge stone fireplace that was open on all four sides. Sitting areas had been arranged around it. I spotted Daniel lounging in a big stuffed chair, conveniently turned so I was once again in his line of sight.
“Hot guy was gone while you were,” Lisa whispered. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Turns out I do know him.”
“How could you forget a hottie like that? What’s his name?”
“Daniel.”
“Deets. I need deets.”
I must have had a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look because she rolled her eyes. “Details. I need details. I swear that sometimes I think you were raised in a cave.”
Almost.
“I’ll explain everything later,” I told her, knowing that I wouldn’t.
I started taking orders, but the entire time, I felt Daniel’s gaze on me. How could he sit so still, so patiently? And yet there was an undercurrent about him, as though he was amazingly alert, completely aware of everything going on around him, could strike within a heartbeat.
Shifters had an animal quality about them. When you can transform into a wolf, the attributes of a wolf are never far from you. You have that whole pack mentality. The alpha, the dominant, the submissive. It’s a natural order for us. We mate for life. We hang around in groups. But sitting there, Daniel gave the impression of being a loner.
It made me want to connect with him, because I’d always felt like a loner among my own kind. Shifters weren’t comfortable around someone who knew what they were feeling. It was only with humans that I felt as if I belonged—but even then I knew that I really didn’t. They’d never accept a being who could shift. I had no place where I truly belonged. I straddled two worlds: the one that brought me peace and the one marked with danger that was my destiny.
But Daniel belonged in the world of the Shifters. Did he just give the appearance of being a loner when he was around Statics? He didn’t appear uncomfortable. He looked totally relaxed. Yet he was also alone.
I knew so little about him, and I couldn’t deny that I was fascinated by him. But I recognized that my fascination was a dangerous thing.
“When he went after you, he left his hot chocolate at the counter and it got tossed,” Lisa said, holding up a mug. “I made him a new one. Do you want to take it to him?”
Okay, her matchmaking attempts were starting to get a bit annoying. I knew she meant well, but how many ways could I say that I wasn’t interested in Daniel? “No. If he wants it, he can come get it.”
“You really don’t like him. What’d he do?”
“He came here.”
“Okay, that makes no sense. He’s hot and he’s nice. His coming here is an awesome thing.”
“Take him the chocolate,” I snapped—something I’d never done here in Athena. I’d experienced others’ anger, had never been comfortable with it, so had worked really hard to keep myself as even-keeled around people as I could.
Lisa’s eyes widened, but then she shrugged and went around the counter and over to Daniel. He smiled at her. She sat on the coffee table near him, and I wondered if he’d made her knees go weak. It irritated me that she could be swayed by his charm. The thought brought me up short. Was I feeling jealous because she was taking such an interest in him?
Actually, her interest in him could be a good thing. Maybe she could distract him. But as his gaze shifted back over to me, I realized he was not going to be easily sidetracked.
“Hey, can I get some service over here?”
I snapped my attention to a guy who was terribly sunburned. People were always underestimating what the sun could do in winter. They thought they could burn only if it was hot outside. “Sorry,” I told him. “What’ll you have?”
Darkness had fallen long before we started to close up. Spike came out of his office and flicked the lights to signal it was time for people to leave. He was a contradiction. With his shaved head and tattoos on his neck and arms, he just didn’t look like the type of person who would make a living from hot beverages.
When everyone was gone except Daniel, Spike went over to him. “Sorry, bud, we’re closing up.”
“I’m waiting for Hayden,” Daniel said.
Spike glanced back at me, and I knew that if I shook my head, Spike would escort Daniel out. Or he’d try. I had a feeling that despite Spike’s massive size
, Daniel could whip his butt. So I nodded.
“Way to go, girlfriend,” Lisa said, knocking her hip against mine.
I felt my cheeks grow warm with embarrassment, so I turned my attention to wiping down the counter. I was acutely aware of Daniel striding over.
“So tell me what I can do to get you out of here quicker,” he said.
I had no desire to leave with him, but I also wasn’t a huge fan of cleaning up. The lesser of two evils. I tossed him a damp rag. “Wipe down all the tables and put the chairs on top of them.”
With Daniel’s help, we finished with our closing procedures in record time. Sooner than I would have liked, I was bundled up and stepping out the back door with everyone else.
“Don’t forget it’s Thrilling Thursday. Catch you later at Out of Bounds,” Lisa said with a wink and a grin before she led the others away.
“Thrilling Thursday?” Daniel asked with a dark eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, Lisa has a name for every night of the week. Manic Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Wicked Wednesday. You get the idea.”
“Sorry I missed Wicked Wednesday.”
It was difficult to stay annoyed with a guy who could flash a grin like Daniel could, but I resisted returning the smile, and even managed to narrow my eyes. “So how long have you been here?”
“Arrived this morning. Tell me about Out of Bounds.”
“Not much to tell. It’s a club. ‘Out of bounds’ is a ski term that refers to areas where it’s illegal to ski…. Well, it’s supposed to be a place for rebels.”
“And you’re a rebel?”
“I have my moments,” I said, slightly insulted that he’d question me. After all, I’d run away, hadn’t I?
“I noticed a burger place—conveniently named the Burger Place, by the way—at the end of the street,” Daniel said as we walked around the building, back toward the main part of the village. “I could use some meat.”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
He jerked his head around, and his green gaze homed in on me as if he thought I was joking. Or suspected me of lying.
“I’ve eaten there before, though,” I told him. “They have a grilled cheese sandwich, so we’re good.”
As we stepped onto the boardwalk that lined the street, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and said, “I’ve never heard of a Shifter being a vegetarian.”
“Well, I’m not your ordinary Shifter.”
“So I’ve been told.”
I rolled my eyes, wondering exactly what the other Dark Guardians had said about me and my abilities. “I’d rather be normal.”
I couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of my voice. Maybe that was the reason that he didn’t talk as we walked along the street. Or maybe he was trying to figure me out as much as I was trying to discern why a wall existed between his emotions and mine.
The elders were able to block their emotions from me, but they were the elders. They could do all sorts of stuff. They’d tried to teach me to block the emotions coming at me, but I’d had absolutely no success at it. I wondered if they’d given Daniel a crash course in holding back his emotions that he’d actually managed to master. Sometimes at school a teacher could explain a concept multiple times and I couldn’t grasp what she was trying to teach, but the student sitting next to me could lean over and explain it—and it suddenly made perfect sense. I wondered if this might be the case here as well. Maybe he could explain blocking feelings in terms that I could more easily embrace. If Daniel could block his emotions, could I do it—but in reverse? He was keeping his emotions in. Could I do whatever he was doing to keep emotions out?
“So what do you know about me?” I asked.
We were sitting across from each other in a corner booth. I’d decided to go with a garden salad instead of a grilled cheese. He’d ordered a double-meat cheeseburger and onion rings. Hardening of the arteries wasn’t a concern for us. When we shifted, our bodies naturally healed all ailments, including all the pitfalls of eating unhealthy foods.
“I know you have a gift,” he said.
I stabbed a crouton. “It’s not a gift.”
Taking a bite from his burger, he studied me for a moment. He swallowed, then said, “Yeah, I can see how it wouldn’t be.”
I didn’t want to like him, but his empathy was another new experience for me. He sounded as though he truly understood what burden I carried. Naturally no one at the boarding school knew that I was an empath because I couldn’t tap into their emotions so it had seemed pointless to explain what I couldn’t demonstrate for them. They were all Statics. I certainly wasn’t explaining Shifters to them. That would have brought other complications. So at school I was blessedly normal.
“It’s the reason I sought out a place where there were only Statics. Their emotions don’t reach me. All I have to deal with is how I feel.” He didn’t say anything so I leaned forward. “Your emotions aren’t reaching me either. How do you do it? How do you close them off? Did the elders teach you how to keep everything boxed in?”
“No, they didn’t teach me anything, and as far as I know, I’m not doing anything to close off my emotions.”
Incredulous, I stared at him. “But I don’t get a sense of what’s going through you. Your emotions don’t touch me—at all. I’ve never been around a Shifter whose emotions don’t touch me.”
“So you don’t know what I’m thinking?”
I shook my head. This was so difficult to explain. “I don’t tap into people’s thoughts. I can only sense the emotions: fear, anger, embarrassment, acceptance, lust—”
“Lust?” he interrupted me. “That must be awkward. So if some guy has the hots for some babe or she has the hots for—”
“I don’t know who they’re lusting after,” I cut in. Thank God for that, but if they were in the throes of passion…it could be unbearable and such an invasion of privacy. “Because again, I don’t know their thoughts. It’s like a…how do I explain this? A ball of energy. No, a water balloon. It slams into me and drenches me, so I experience it as though it’s part of me. All the physical reactions that a body has when we’re afraid or anxious or in love…my body responds as though the emotion were mine. If several Shifters are in the area, then I can be hit with different emotions jumbling around inside me. Unless someone is having a really intense emotional burst—then maybe the lesser emotions will be drowned out. If you couple that with my own emotions, it’s incredibly overwhelming and confusing. But I don’t feel that when I’m someplace that’s inhabited with only full humans.”
He either didn’t know how to respond to my lengthy discourse on what it was to be me or he was thinking about it, trying to make sense of it. I studied him for a minute. His story was that he’d come to us from another group of Shifters, but I didn’t know if anyone had checked it out. I thought about how easily I’d convinced Spike and the others that I was a college student on winter break—just looking for a temporary job. Perhaps Daniel wasn’t a Shifter after all. Like Brittany. Her father was human, her mother a Shifter, so I supposed she was part Shifter, but her human side dominated. She didn’t have the ability to shift, and her emotions never touched me. Was Daniel a mixture of Shifter and human? Or was he maybe a full human who had lied to infiltrate our clan? But then the question would be why? And he had managed to find me so he had mean tracking skills. I couldn’t help but be impressed.
Last summer, when I’d been at Wolford for a couple of weeks, I’d overheard other girls talking and giggling as they whispered about guys, comparing their wolfish attributes, but I’d never understood their interest. Until now. For the first time in my life, I was curious about another Shifter’s fur.
Our individual wolf coats are one of a kind, although it usually matches our hair to some extent. Like my sandy blond hair meant that I would be a light-colored wolf. Daniel with his black hair would have black fur. But there are still differences. Would it have a bluish tint? Would it be like a black hole? Like a night sky?
But I couldn’t recall hearing anyone talk about what he looked like in wolf form. And I hadn’t seen him that night in the clearing. How convenient. And if I thought about it too much: suspicious. I furrowed my brow. “But I get nothing coming from you. And I don’t recall anyone ever describing you in wolf form. Are you a Static?”
He laughed, a deep rich sound. “No. Don’t you think the elders, the other Shifters, would sense if I was?”
He had a point. Shifters could sense other Shifters, but only after our initial transformation. Everything changed when we were touched by our designated full moon. I didn’t want to contemplate all that awaited me—even the possibility of death.
“Yeah, I guess,” I muttered, wanting an easy explanation. “But if you’re a Shifter, why are your emotions cut off?”
“I don’t think they are.” He dipped an onion ring into the ketchup and proceeded to eat it as if I wasn’t dealing with an incomprehensible situation here. How could he be so unaffected? It irritated me that he wasn’t willing to help me solve this puzzle.
“Why aren’t they slamming into me?” I persisted.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you doing something to hold them back?”
“If I am, it’s subconscious. Or maybe it’s because we’re not at Wolford. Have you ever sensed Shifters’ emotions when you weren’t at Wolford?”
“Yes.” I’d lived with my parents in Tarrant, before they’d died. Humans and Shifters resided there, although the humans weren’t aware of our abilities. The small town was near the national forest that we considered our true home. As a child, I’d felt Shifters’ emotions—even when we were on vacation. My parents tried to take me places where there would be mostly humans, but Shifter families enjoy Disney World as much as humans do. I’d gotten lucky with Athena.
Daniel distracted me from my thoughts when he set his elbow on the table and bent his arm until his fingers touched strands of my hair. I’d released my hair from its clip before leaving work. Now it hung loose past my shoulders. “So you don’t know what I’m feeling right now?” he asked.
Dark Guardian #4: Shadow of the Moon Page 3