Bloodspell (16 page)

After a particularly punishing midterm following a predawn study session, she'd caught up with Angie and Charla at the cafeteria, where she had immediately zoned out, eating a salad and letting Charla's chatter resonate in the background. She was exhausted. On top of everything, they'd had their first dusting of snow, and it had grown unexpectedly cold in the space of a few days, so all in all, not really a perfect day.

Suddenly, Charla jumped up and Victoria's eyes snapped open.

"Oh, no! Gotta run, catch you girls later. Don't forget the ski trip, okay, Tori?"

Ski trip
?
Victoria blinked seeing a bleary vision of Charla moving away.

Charla was always running late for something, but rather than being annoying, it was part of what made her Charla. Angie and Victoria shared a look and rolled their eyes at the same time. As they both came back to reality, the moment of camaraderie dissolved and they stared at each other in uncomfortable silence.

Angie went back to writing in her notebook, and Victoria continued eating. She didn't mind the silence. Truth was, she was starting to like Angie. Victoria liked her natural quietness and the way Angie hadn't treated her, Victoria, like she was a freak when she had discovered what she was. Not that Angie would, given what
she
was, but just that she hadn't. Still, that didn't make them best friends, but it was enough for them to be civil.

Victoria finished her salad as Angie doodled absently on a page from her binder, and what had started out as an awkward silence changed into a fairly relaxed one as they sat, each preoccupied with her own thoughts.

"You can ask me if you want to, Tori," Angie said, without looking up. Victoria swallowed and took a sip of her Diet Pepsi.

"Why did you say what you did about him?"

"Because that's what I saw." Angie leaned forward, real anxiety in her face. "He's dangerous, Tori." She hesitated as if she wanted to say more but clamped her lips shut, doodling fiercely.

Victoria sighed. She looked at Angie and quickly squashed the wave of guilt she felt before she did a quick flash of Angie's mind. In the milliseconds it took, Victoria confirmed exactly what Angie had said down to the smallest detail. She really was straightforward; everything was just there in simple black and white. No more, no less. As she relaxed, Angie looked up at her with a quizzical expression.

"What?" Victoria asked guiltily.

"Nothing. Your black lines got really dark for a second. It was weird."

Victoria flushed. "I think I'm getting a migraine. On top of midterms, I'm studying for the PSAT. My brain is going to explode."

"So use magic."

Victoria choked and almost spat a mouthful of Pepsi all over the table. "What?" she spluttered.

"I would, that's all. See, it's pretty simple to me. If you have a talent that makes you do something better, you'd use it, wouldn't you? Well, you should ... use your talent, I mean."

"Why don't you use
your
talent?" Victoria shot back, suddenly disoriented at the conversation's turn. Angie gave her a measured look before leaning forward.

"I don't think it's the same thing, but okay, I'll play. Look around you. What do you see?"

Victoria glanced around the crowed cafeteria. It looked the same as it did every other day—the jocks in one corner, the blondes at the table next to them, the nerds in another corner. It was like every other high school cafeteria.

"I see kids eating." She looked at Angie. "What's your point?"

"Know what I see?" she asked, gesturing with an open palm toward the other tables. Victoria frowned, deducing what Angie was going to say even before she said it, and started shaking her head.

"I see you understand already," Angie said. "We're not exactly the only
different
people at Windsor."

"What do you mean, different?"

An exasperated look. "Did you think we were the only ones? Not all of these students are human. Hang on a sec." Victoria watched in incredulous surprise as Angie stared around the crowded cafeteria, and unfocused her eyes, invoking her special Sight. She pointed to three tables over from where they were sitting. "Over there I see a fairy eating with a team of football players, and over by the drinks, a werewolf."

Victoria glanced at the boy getting a soda. She recognized him as a quiet, slight boy from her calculus class.

"Matthew?" And then a thought occurred to her. "Hold up a second, did you just say you saw a
fairy
eating with
football
players?" Angie nodded, turning to her as they both collapsed into shared mirth.

"You're making it up!" Victoria giggled.

"I'm not kidding. He's a fairy as shimmery as they come with wings and everything. Cute, if you like sparkles." Angie's unexpected drollness took Victoria by surprise but she grinned back.

She remained unconvinced as she stared at the burly linebacker, but Angie had known she was a witch when no one had. It stood to reason that if she, Victoria existed then other ... things did as well. Brigid's journal entries of fey and werewolves and vampires filled her thoughts. She reassessed Angie's unruffled expression.

She leaned toward Angie, her smile fading. "You're
not
kidding? Are you?"

"I wish. They're everywhere. Some have glamours and look like you and me. Others don't, they're invisible to the human eye."

"Are they everywhere you look?"

"Pretty much. I don't know what it is but supernatural things love it here in Canville. Maybe it's the woods. They're everywhere. Things that belong in books like goblins, and shape-shifters, and trolls with fur and scales, thorns and curled horns." Angie shivered as if the mere memory of them terrified her. "You wouldn't believe some of the things I've seen." Her eyes clouded. "Sometimes they hurt each other. Badly."

"I'm sorry," Victoria said, at a loss for words. Angie would have to be a spectacular actress to look
that
afraid of something just in her head.

Angie went quiet for a minute. "I used to wish I was blind. I wanted to cut my own eyes out," she whispered. "I think I even tried one time. But what can you do? You are who you are, right? So I'm careful. And I only have one rule."

"What's that?"

"Never, ever let them see me looking."

Angie shrugged at the horrified expression Victoria knew she must have on her face. "Don't worry, they're not that bad," she said, and then paused, reconsidering her words. "Most of them, anyway. They tend to stick with their own kind, like what you'd usually see, the jocks and the Mathletes and the—what do you call them again? Oh right, the Stepfords."

The thought of where Christian would fit in flashed through Victoria's mind. Her question was tentative, but she wanted to know. "Angie? When you said that Christian wasn't human, what did you mean? What, exactly,
is
he?"

Before Angie could answer, someone stopping at their table interrupted their quiet conversation. It was the boy who'd been over by the drinks. Victoria saw Angie blanch.

"Hey Tori, you heading to class?" Wolfboy's voice was guttural despite his slight appearance. Victoria glanced at Angie who'd gone perfectly still. Her fear, though veiled, was real.

"Hey Matt. Sure," Victoria said. "I'll catch you later, Angie."

As she gathered her things, Victoria hesitated. Maybe there was a way she could see as Angie did. Without looking at Matthew, she pushed her senses out toward him as unobtrusively as possible, the reverse of what she'd done with Christian. Holding her breath, Victoria peeled past Matthew's human glamour and slid into his mind.

It felt ... raw, and distinctly not human. The amulet flared against her skin. She pushed deeper and then recoiled in immediate horror as the truth of what he was flashed into her consciousness in terrifying, gruesome, graphic detail. She stepped back, her eyes snapping to Angie's. Angie glared at her and Victoria remembered what she'd said about being careful.

"You ready?" Wolfboy asked. Victoria let the glamour slip back into place. She tried to focus on his boyish face and ignore the fact that he was a ferocious beast who could tear anyone limb from limb in seconds.

"R ... ready?"

"For the test?" Matt raised thin blond eyebrows questioningly but all Victoria saw was the memory of callused ridges of hairy flesh above a flattened, elongated snout, and orange-hued lightless eyes. She fought back a shudder.

"As ready as I can be." For a second, Victoria wasn't sure whether she was talking about the midterm or something else entirely.

She felt Angie's eyes on them the entire way out of the building.

THE AFTERNOON HAD turned into a dark, cold evening by the time Victoria finished her final midterm for Calculus, and she pulled her jacket tighter as she walked down the library steps to the parking lot. Charla had called earlier asking her to meet up for dinner, but she was far too tired. Her brain was still spinning with a nauseating combination of derivatives, limits and quotients, and fairies, werewolves and witches. She just wanted to get back to her apartment, eat some takeout, and go to bed.

She unlocked and started her car with a single unspoken command to warm the engine and get the heat going, and almost jumped out of her skin when she saw Christian leaning against the hood of his silver car parked opposite hers. Her heart hammered to life.

"Impressive," he said. Victoria stared at him silently. Everything else in her head disappeared but him. There was so much she wanted to say, to apologize for. She knew that she had hurt him by kissing Gabe and no matter what had happened between them or what she'd seen in his thoughts, he hadn't deserved it.

"Christian ..." she began.

"Have dinner with me, Tori," he said. His face was haunted, his eyes shadowed but inviting. Victoria knew that she couldn't refuse him, and even as tired as she was and despite everything she'd learned from Angie, she only wanted to be near him again. So she nodded and relocked her car.

The ride to Christian's house was silent, and other than the soft background noise, the only sound in the car was their breathing. He looked tired, his angular face made even sharper by the shadows under his eyes, but still her pulse raced at his closeness. She felt her breath stop when he quietly slid his hand into hers as they pulled into his curving driveway.

They walked into the foyer of the house and Victoria bit back a gasp. It was as magnificent on the inside as it had appeared from the outside. Warm, rich mahogany floors led into a large entrance hall with two sweeping curved staircases winged out on either side. Beautiful cathedral ceilings opened up to a prism-like sky light in the foyer.

Christian, still silent, pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. It wasn't at all what she'd expected. Her heart drummed a familiar tune in her chest, a tune that every logical part of her fought futilely against. She didn't want him to be this way—she preferred him arrogant or hateful, not soft and contrite as he was now. It made it too difficult to be indifferent and to not give in to her bewildering feelings for him.

He moved, pressing his cool cheek against her hair. "Christian, I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean—"

"It's forgotten. I was the cause, I see that now."

"But you didn't deserve—"

He pressed his thumb over her lips quieting her, and brushed it back and forth, his face strained and unreadable, but warm. "Why don't we start over?" he said. "I'm Christian."

"Tori," she whispered.

"Enchanté, Tori." He kissed her on both cheeks in the French custom and Victoria felt as if her knees were melting.

She hesitated, still wary, but didn't move until Christian took her hand and led her toward the back of the house where there was a large, comfortable den. As they sat down, a tiny Asian man appeared, carrying a tray of food along with a bottle of red wine, which he placed on the coffee table. He left as silently as he had come in.

Victoria hadn't realized how ravenous she was and she inhaled the simple meal. She noticed that Christian didn't eat. He only sipped a bit of the wine while she ate, and when she looked inquiringly at him, he assured her that he had eaten earlier. When she was full, she sat back into the cushions and curled her feet beneath her.

"Tori," Christian began, his voice husky, "I have tried to escape this thing between us, to push you out of my mind, but I can't. The truth is that you haunt my dreams and my every waking moment."

"Is that so bad?" she said, echoing his words at the bar.

"Yes." He sighed. "I brought you here to talk to you, Tori. You should stay away from me. It's for your own good. What you saw before inside my mind was real—I
am
bound by a covenant to stay away from you."

"I don't understand. I thought—"

"In my world, for us to be together has terrible consequences. There are laws in place that forbid it."

"What laws? What
world
?"

"The laws of my world." He stared at her, understanding her confusion; she didn't know what he was. "And it's not fair to you because you don't know ... what ..." He looked away as if the words were choking him.

"What?" she said. "Christian, please just tell me."

"What I am," he finished. "It's better if you see. I won't block you Tori, but please promise me one thing."

"Anything," she said, as he raised a palm for her to listen.

"Promise me that you will give me a chance to explain." Victoria stared at him, startled by what sounded like fear in his voice.

"Okay?" he said. She nodded. His smile was strained as he clasped her hands.

Victoria cleared her mind and took a deep breath, her clammy fingers grasping his tightly. She reached forward tentatively and entered his mind, his walls gone. What she found was, Christian, his sensitivity, his sharp intelligence, his bare uncluttered feelings for her. She wanted to bask in them, bask in the feelings she now understood as mirroring her own.

Keep going,
please.
You must know it all,
he thought to her.
You must see me.