by H G Lynch
** Poppy **
After agreeing to a date with Anson, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I’d been to dozens of schools, met dozens of boys, all loners or misfits. It was my job. Usually I felt nothing, maybe a shred of guilt or sympathy, for the boys I preyed on. With Anson, it was different. He was different. He was smart, funny, and charming. He had more depth than all the other boys put together, and he made me feel…Well, he made me feel.
Flirting and dates were part of my act, drawing the target close before striking and completing my task, but the date with Anson wasn’t just a ruse. I wanted it. I wanted a real date with this handsome, charming boy, and I knew that it was forbidden.
Still, I allowed myself to think of him, late at night while lying in my bed. I had tried not to truly like him, knowing I’d have to betray him soon, but it hadn’t worked. When I was with him, I forgot why I was there, what my job was, and what I was. He made me laugh, and every smile I wore around him was genuine. With his strikingly dark red hair that framed his cobalt blue eyes and that brilliant smile, he haunted my mind long after we’d parted ways in the street.
Staring out the window of my newest bedroom, in the house Lyle was renting for our stay there, I watched the stars peeking out from the velvet blanket of the dark sky. The blue was just a shade or two darker than Anson’s eyes. The moon was full, staring blankly back at me from where it hovered so many miles above the ground. It was late, and I had school the next day, so I should have been sleeping, but I couldn’t. I just kept thinking about my date with Anson, planned out for the coming Wednesday. We were going to go to the cinema. I couldn’t wait.
On Monday morning, I hauled myself out of bed groggily, still not used to being on a diurnal schedule again. With the bright daylight streaming through the window, I wanted to pull the curtains closed and go back to bed. It was only half past six in the morning, and I knew I could get to school on foot in less than ten minutes if it weren’t for the stupid regulations against it. Outside of the Academy, we weren’t allowed to practise magic or use our superhuman abilities, in case of getting caught by the human public. So it took me half an hour to walk to school at an irritatingly slow human pace, and I had to have Leo redo my Protections every morning before I left, because without them, I’d burn in the hot summer sun.
Wincing as I slunk around the edge of my neat little room with the plain lilac walls, keeping out of the reach of the strongest of the sunlight pouring in the window, I carefully yanked the blinds down, instantly cutting off the light’s access to my room. I could withstand sunlight through glass for short periods of time without my Protections, but it was uncomfortable for me. I’d rather avoid adding extra discomfort to my morning. It was bad enough getting up at sunrise instead of sunset.
In the sudden darkness, I looked around the room, my eyes adjusting quickly to allow me to see everything as clearly as if it were full of the stinging sunlight. It was a simple room, as I always had for these trips, with only a bed, an oak wardrobe and matching dresser. I didn’t have many clothes in either of the latter, and I wasn’t allowed to have personal items outside of the Academy, so it all looked very uninhabited, aside from the rumpled duvet on the bed.
Once I was dressed, I leapt down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Lyle and Leo were sipping coffee and discussing some gruesome accident that was being reported in the newspaper. I listened to them as I slid to the fridge and rummaged around for a bottle of Coke and a bag of blood.
The Academy had an arrangement with blood banks all over the country. They supplied us with what blood they could, and we didn’t bite people, which would lead to them going to the hospital and having blood transfusions, meaning they’d be using the blood anyway. It was easier all around if we just got the blood in little plastic bags from the blood banks.
Lyle had opened the blinds in the kitchen, so I had to shield my sensitive eyes against the light as I took a seat at the breakfast bar with my blood and Coke. I pulled the little stopper out of the sloshy plastic bag and sucked out the red liquid inside. Lyle paused in his discussion with Leo to give me a disapproving look. It annoyed me that he acted as if he really was my brother, when he was really my partner. He was twenty, so he thought he was better than me just because he was older. In a way, I supposed, he was like a brother, in that sometimes we got along and sometimes we didn’t. It didn’t matter if we had a big fight—which we did a lot—because he still had to look after me and make sure I didn’t blow my cover until the right time.
“You could use a glass,” he said loftily, as if drinking from the bag were a disgraceful thing to do.
In the early morning light, his black curls shone with hues of blue and indigo like the feathers of a raven, and his stony expression just looked brooding on his beautiful face. Even I had to admit he was good-looking, in a very dramatic way. And he knew it, too. He often used it to his advantage in the field, easily snagging suitable female candidates with just a single smile.
Honestly, my looks were part of why I’d been chosen for the position, too. Being small and pretty meant I appeared innocent, so I drew just enough attention to lure my targets, but not enough to cause a mess if I abruptly left the school. The guys in charge of our program, Oryn, Kell, and Lucas, knew what they were doing. Project Transfer was fairly new, but if anyone else had been put in charge of it, I think it would have failed after the first few attempts. So far, we were on year three of the project, and we’d only had one failure.
Nathan. I winced at the thought of him. No, Nathan wasn’t a failure. Kell didn’t give him enough time to adjust. I’d been telling myself that for months because I didn’t want to believe I had been wrong about him.
Thinking about Nathan hurt too much, so I focussed on the present and levelled a glare at Lyle, who was still staring at me with just a touch of disgust in the shape of his mouth. “I could. But I could also use a person just as easily,” I remarked with a smile that wasn’t really a smile.
Lyle just shook his head at me in a kind of condescending despair, his dark curls bouncing on his shoulders. Leo, though, chuckled and got up to take a glass from one of the cupboards before sliding across the marble countertop to me. I rolled my eyes and poured some of the blood into the glass. It looked sort of like tomato juice but redder.
I twisted off the cap of the Coke bottle, which gave a hiss as the pent up gases sought escape from the plastic container, and poured some of the dark, fizzy liquid into the half-full glass of blood. Picking up the glass, I sloshed it about a bit to mix the two liquids, and then took a gulp of it. I’d discovered this technique on my own, soon after I was Turned, and found it to be delightful. The fizzy sweetness of the Coke almost disguised the slightly metallic taste of the blood.
Leo watched me with his head resting on his fist while I poured the rest of the blood into the Coke bottle and put the cap back on. I shook it, and you couldn’t tell there was anything in the bottle but fizzy drink. It was genius really, I thought. I could go around school drinking this and nobody would be any the wiser about the actual contents. Since I’d only been Turned a year and a half ago, when I was sixteen, I needed more blood than Lyle and the others, so the ability to drink it whenever and wherever I needed it was particularly handy.
Cutting Lyle off mid-sentence, completely ignoring the fact that he’d been talking to him, Leo said, “It’s a wonder you don’t get caught, Poppet.” He wrinkled his nose at my bottle, and Lyle shot him a dark look that he didn’t see because he was looking at me. Lyle didn’t like to be ignored, but Leo was the only person who got away with it because we needed Leo, and he was a friend.
Leonard Stone was just a year older than me, and held one of a few precious positions at the Academy—He was a Juniper—a warlock or witch who accompanied Recruiters like Lyle and me to our assigned locations. Junipers were rare and very special because not many witches or warlocks liked to work with our kind. They preferred to stay out of our battles,
but a handful owed their lives to us, so they worked for the Academy. It was a Juniper’s job to use their magic to give us Protections from sunlight and disguise our scents to seem human so our enemies couldn’t find us.
A Juniper also had to set up wards around wherever we were staying. If anything unwanted came too close to the house, the Juniper could feel it and warn us in time.
Leo wasn’t just a sort of magical guard dog, though. He was a good friend, probably my best friend. He, too, was annoyingly attractive, but in a less dramatic way than Lyle. Leo had wavy blonde hair, sparkly green eyes, and a mischievous smile. He was pretty, rather than handsome. He even had dimples. What I liked about him so much, though, was that was just so easy-going all the time, even in the worst of situations. It didn’t matter how tense it was or what kind of danger we were in, he always found something to laugh about. We were just friends, but I loved him, the way you love someone when they completely understand you.
I grinned at him and shook my bottle of Coke/blood near his face. He jerked back as if it might explode all over him, making a face at me. “Humans can’t smell the blood, idiot. You can only smell it because of your Charm,” I said.
All Junipers were given spelled Charms to wear on their person that gave them a little of our power—heightened senses, increased speed, and strength—just enough to make them better at their jobs. The Charm could be anything, from a keychain to a badge to a ring. Something they could keep on them at all times without drawing attention to it.
Leo’s Charm was a little red stone he kept on a chain around his neck, always tucked into his shirt. I’d asked him once why he’d chosen the stone to be his Charm, and he’d shrugged and said, “Because it holds my past, so it was only fitting that it should also hold my future.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I didn’t want to ask him. The one thing I’d learned not to push Leo on was his past. He wouldn’t tell me how he’d ended up working for the Academy as a Juniper. All I knew was that his parents were dead, and the cold look that transformed his face whenever he talked about it had discouraged me from trying to find out.
“Can we please focus here, Leo? I was saying this accident looks a lot like murder. It looks like something the Wolves would do. What if they’ve picked up our scents, huh? Then we’re screwed,” Lyle snapped, slapping the newspaper down on the countertop.
Leo rolled his eyes, still facing me so Lyle wouldn’t see, then turned to eye the paper with disinterest. I leaned over his shoulder to see what Lyle was talking about.
On the front page, the headline was splurged in bold letters: HIKER BRUTALLY MAULED BY WILD ANIMAL. In smaller font, underneath, it read: A local man, Boris Jackson, was found dead in Oldman Woods at eleven o’clock last night. It is believed that Jackson was hiking when he was attacked and viciously killed by a wild animal. The coroner has yet to identify the type of animal involved in the attack.
There was a whole column on it, but I wasn’t interested in that. My eyes were on the photo splashed below the headline, showing a section of the woods cordoned off with yellow police tape. I recognised it as the small clearing where the party had been held the other night. I shuddered. If Lyle was right, and it was the Wolves’ doing, they’d been this close to us, to Lyle and me, and even Oryn. It was a sobering thought, that while I’d been partying with Anson and Alistair, there could have been Wolves slinking through the trees around us. What if there hadn’t been so many people there? Would the Wolves have attacked? And, most importantly, would they have hurt Anson?
Lately, I liked Mondays, not as much as Tuesdays, but I no longer held a grudge against them. On Mondays, I had English and Art with Anson, and it didn’t matter that we couldn’t talk much in English without Mr Adams overhearing because just sitting next to him made me happy. The small, stuffy classroom smelled of coffee, sweat, pencil shavings, and several different kinds of overwhelming colognes and perfumes.
Unlike the rest of the boys in the class, Anson didn’t stink of cheap cologne or excessive amounts of testosterone. He had a clean, tangy scent that reminded me of winter, and I could almost imagine the taste of his skin. Not that I thought about that. Not much anyway. I shouldn’t have thought about it because it was ridiculous to want such things, to want a human boy. Sure, he wouldn’t be human for much longer, but that thought just made me sad. It made my chest constrict in a way that was almost painful. I didn’t want to Turn Anson, but I was going to have to.
Sitting next to him, I wanted to touch him so badly it was making my fingers tingly. He had his sleeves rolled up again, showing his lean, muscled forearms. Unsurprisingly, he was quite pale, but it suited him. Fine, golden hairs dusted his arms, and his slim wrists led to slim hands. Elegant hands, the hands of an artist. Under the sleeves of his white shirt, muscled biceps strained against the fabric just enough that you could tell he worked out. His jaw curved in a gentle line, and his nose was dotted with faint freckles. Red hair fell on either side of his forehead to frame his pretty eyes. He was handsome enough to be one of us as it was.
As if sensing my staring, Anson looked at me sideways, and I hastily dropped my gaze. My cheeks felt unusually hot. The words blurred on the page in front of me as Anson shifted in his seat, and his hand briefly brushed mine. The touch of his skin on mine made my hand warm and tingly, and I wanted him to do it again. But he pulled his hand back and returned to scribbling words on his essay.
I spent the rest of English, and the whole of Art, finding reasons to touch Anson. A microscopic piece of lint on his shoulder, a smudge of pencil on his chin, etcetera. Every time I touched him, warmth blossomed through my fingers. I knew I was treading on very thin ice. I couldn’t let myself fall for him, not after Nathan, not when I liked him so much the way he was; human.
The thing I wanted most was the thing I couldn’t have because it would surely shatter the ice beneath my feet and send me plunging into dark and frigid waters. The thing I wanted most was so simple, but I yearned for it with everything inside me: A single kiss.
Before I knew it, it was Wednesday, and there were only two more days before school let out for the summer, and, nerve-wrackingly, I had a date with Anson. I spent an inordinately long time in front of the full-length mirror in my room, trying on different outfits. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t a real date, it was just another phase in my task, but it felt like a real date. Anson thought it was a real date. I wanted it to be a real date.
My butterflies had butterflies, and I kept getting the bizarre urge to squeal. What would be best, an outfit that drew attention to my small curves, or something understated? We were just going to the cinema after all, and we’d be in the dark most of the time, but I had to wear something that would send Anson the right message. Something that would draw him to me more, but not say ‘I want to have sex with you’ because that was slutty, and I just knew that would put Anson off.
In the end, I went with a plain red t-shirt and hipster jeans, because the top was understated without being dull, and the jeans hugged my hips in just the right way that would hopefully make Anson drool, without giving off slutty vibes. I left my hair down.
For a long while, I pondered over whether or not to wear make-up and eventually decided to wear a touch of red eyeliner and dark mascara, just to bring out my eyes. When I was ready to go, I slunk down the stairs and into the kitchen for a glass of blood before I left. Leo was sitting at the countertop with a book propped open in his hands. His feet were up on the countertop, crossed at the ankles, and I clucked my tongue disapprovingly at him.
“You know Lyle will have a fit if he sees you with your feet on the furniture,” I said, popping open a bag of AB positive from the fridge and tipping it to my mouth.
Leo flipped his page and made a vague dismissive hand motion in my direction. He didn’t as much as glance up as he said, “Lyle can bite me.”
I snorted, nearly choking on the blood I was drinking. A trickle of it ran down my chin, and I wiped it with th
e back of my hand. My coughing fit distracted Leo enough to look up from his book, and his eyes widened, taking in my outfit while I grabbed a paper towel from the rack by the toaster so I could clean off my chin properly. God, if I showed up to meet Anson with blood on my face, I’d die of embarrassment—not really of course. Only a wooden stake or prolonged exposure to sunlight could kill me, but you get the point.
Leo whistled, a low sound of appreciation, his eyebrows rising into his artfully messy blonde hair. “Someone’s going to be hoping to get lucky tonight. Are you sure you’re not treating this one a little special? You seem to be getting, you know, a bit attached.”
Nervously, I swallowed another gulp of blood, turning away to dump the empty bag in the bin to delay having to answer him. He was right, of course. I was getting attached. I was treating Anson as if he was special because he was special. He was brilliant.
I couldn’t tell Leo that because I knew what he’d say. He’d say that maybe I wasn’t ready to be back in the field after what had happened with Nathan. I refused to believe that was true. I’d fought so hard to be put back in the field for the final trip of the season, and I had to prove I could still do this. I just had to emotionally distance myself from Anson, no matter how much I might want to do the opposite.
I chose my words carefully. “This one’s a special case. He’s a little more…complicated than the others, a little more difficult. I have to play this one carefully, or he’ll lose interest. I mean, I still don’t know if he’s even suitable really. He has the detention record, but he’s not the rough bad boy I thought he was going to be. He might just be a messed up kid with authority problems, and we don’t need someone who can’t follow orders.” Most of that was a complete lie. Only the first part was true, but I already knew Anson was suitable for what we had planned. He wasn’t a messed up kid at all, he was just different. He had detentions because he didn’t take crap from the other guys, and he let creative impulse guide him like intuition.