Chameleon (Supernaturals) (5 page)

That made me snap out of it. I gasped, horrified by my actions. “I’m sorry! I—I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You’re right. I’m really not feeling well. I—I think I should go home.”

I spun around to bolt for the nurse’s office, praying he’d just let me go and not question my momentary lapse in sanity. No such luck.

Russ grabbed hold of my wrist, sending more of that warm energy through me. I needed to get out of there before I jumped him right here in the hallway and crossed a lot more than just a friendship boundary.

“Dani.”

He was going to call me on it. He was really going to make us have this conversation right here in the middle of school.

“Russ, please.” I tugged my arm but he didn’t release me. “I just need to get home.”

“Okay. I’ll take you.”

Oh, right. So he could grill me the second we were alone in his car? “That’s okay. I have to go to the nurse anyway. She’ll call my mom. You’d better get to class. Mrs. Dillinger hates it when you’re late.”

He must have sensed my panic since he let me go. “Fine. But I’ll come by and check on you later.”

An hour before the dance
I sat in my kitchen wearing an antique dress my mom found in the Historical Society storage that was from the early nineteen hundreds. It was nothing like what the other girls would be wearing tonight—old fashioned and covered with lace. But it made me feel like a princess and I was surprisingly bummed that I wasn’t going to get the chance to wear it.

It was obvious now that I wouldn’t be going on my date. I’d come home hoping to rest it off but so far I only felt worse. This was the strangest illness I’d ever had. I didn’t feel sick other than being tired, but I was also completely restless again. That hollow feeling was back and I felt so empty inside that it hurt.

I picked up the phone for the third time, wondering how I was going to break the news to Conor, and was very thankful for the knock at the door that let me put off the phone call a few minutes longer.

I stopped a foot from the front door wondering if I was losing my mind because I swear I could
feel
Russ on the other side of it, and I kid you not just knowing he was there was making me feel better. Forget my parents’ flu theory. This was a mental illness. Clearly I was crazy.

Realizing that I was so hopelessly, psychotically addicted to Russ didn’t put me in the best mood. I contemplated going back to bed, but Russ didn’t wait for me to answer the door before he barged in.

“What do you want?” I grumbled.

Russ held up a DVD and a can of chicken noodle soup. “I came to nurse you back to health.” He grinned from ear to ear until he noticed what I was wearing. Then he scowled. “I can’t believe you think you’re really going to the dance tonight.”

The overprotective bit was really getting on my nerves. “Actually, I’m not.”

“Good.”

“Thanks for the sympathy.”

Russ shrugged with an arrogance that only he could pull off. “Kind of hard to be sympathetic about you not going on a date with Conor.”

“What’s your problem?”

“
My
problem?” Russ yelled with so much force that it startled me. “What the hell is
your
problem? Why would you go out with Conor Fairchild?”

“Why not?”

Russ was having trouble putting his disgust into words, but it showed on his face easily enough. “Because! Conor is—is—he’s a geek! A sniveling little momma’s boy!”

I couldn’t believe he’d just said that. “He’s sweet,” I said indigently. “And smart, and funny.”

“He’s not good enough for you.”

“Who crowned you my big brother?”

“You can do so much better than him Dani.”

“Can I?” I asked. “I’m sixteen years old and this was the first time I’ve ever been asked out. By anyone. Ever.”

Russ flinched and I was mad enough that I enjoyed seeing it. “Not all of us are as good-looking and charming as you,” I said, being brutal. “Not all of us have the luxury of being so stuck up.”

“Dani, stop.”

“No, you stop! I don’t even know why you care!”

“Of course I care!”

I couldn’t help but hope that my instincts were right. Russ was sure acting like a jealous boyfriend right now. I couldn’t have imagined the signals last night.

“If you’re so concerned about it then tell me, Russ, who exactly, if not Conor, should I be dating?”

Russ glared at me but he kept his mouth shut.

“That’s what I thought.” I picked up the can of soup and thrust it back at him. “Take your Campbell’s and go home.”

I couldn’t believe it, but Russ actually started to leave.

“Coward,” I muttered when he stalked out the door.

Russ turned around and barged right back inside to glare at me some more. He stood there for a minute and after releasing a long breath said, “I can’t do this anymore.”

He grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me out of the house with him. I wanted to pull away but it felt too good to be touching him so instead I let him pull me out to his car. “Where are we going?” I asked, so confused and curious that my anger was completely gone.

Russ, however, was still pissed and didn’t say a single word as he drove me back to Brad Halloway’s house.

I had absolutely no clue what he was up to and he didn’t explain. He simply dragged me back to the pool and shouted something in some weird foreign language as he flung his hands out.

I watched in disbelief as the Jell-O in the pool vanished and pristine crystal blue water took its place like it’d never seen a single granule of gelatin.

When Russ finally turned to face me he pointed at himself with a grim expression. “Warlock. Not coward.”

I stumbled backward more shocked than I’d ever been in my life. I looked at Russ, then back at the pool, then back at Russ again and that was it—my knees buckled and the lights went out.

. . . . .

I opened my eyes to find I was lying on the pool deck while Russ was snapping his fingers in my face. When he saw that I was conscious again he said, “I imagined a lot of different reactions to me finally telling you the truth, but passing out wasn’t one of them. Way to be unpredictable.”

The smile left Russ’s face when I pulled myself up and scrambled away from him. “Okay, look, you don’t have to freak out,” he said quickly.

“That wasn’t possible!” I pointed at the pool that was still filled with plain old water. I felt bile rise in my throat. “That’s not possible!” I yelled again. “Magic isn’t real!”

“Dani, calm down.” Russ slowly reached out to take my hand.

“Stay back!” I gasped and stepped further away from his touch. I could see that my panicking was hurting Russ but I couldn’t help it. I mean the guy just transformed a pool full of red Jell-O back into water! “What are you? Are you even
human
?”

That question, or my cringing away from him, was too much for Russ. His voice shook and he didn’t even bother to try and cover it up. “I’m still the same guy you’ve known your entire life.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“No,” he whispered. He kept his eyes fixed on the pool, unable to look at me at all. “I’m not human. Not technically. I’m a supernatural being. A warlock.”

When I didn’t respond, Russ finally met my eyes. “Nothing’s changed,” he promised. There was desperation in his voice. “Five minutes ago you were my best friend. You can still be my best friend. I’m the same person. You
know
me.”

“Except I don’t know you, do I!” I screamed. “You’re…you’re…. How could you keep this from me our whole lives?”

“We’re not supposed to tell humans about our existence because humans can’t handle the truth. They say maybe one in a thousand humans can accept us. Even my own mother couldn’t deal with it. After I was born, my dad finally told her the truth about himself and she freaked. That’s the reason she split. They’d been married for six years, and when she learned the truth she just up and left. I was three years old. We never saw her again. Dani, I was terrified that if I told you I would lose you too.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a coward.” My heart wasn’t in the taunt. I was just going through the motions. I turned away from him, took a few steps further away and then sat down in the grass—forgetting entirely about the lace dress I was wearing.

“Say something,” Russ begged.

“I don’t know what to say.”

Not human. Russ—my Russ—wasn’t
human
. It was so insane I couldn’t even process it. I had no idea what I was supposed to think or how I was supposed to feel. I was numb.

Russ was now standing above me. “Are you okay?” he asked as he dropped to sit.

“No,” I admitted. “I’m not okay. I’m very, very not okay.”

Russ’s face crumpled and after another minute of silence he sat back and pulled his knees up to his chest. I’d never seen him vulnerable before. It made him look like he was twelve years old again. Somewhere deep inside me I wanted to reach out to him and comfort him. I didn’t like seeing him this way, and I especially didn’t like knowing that I was the reason he was so unsure of himself right now.

He ran his hand through his hair and I half expected him to start ripping it out. “What can I do?” he asked. “How can I help you with this?”

That was a really good question, but it was one I wasn’t ready to think about. “You can’t. I don’t know what I’m feeling right now.”

“Okay, so you need a little time. I can give you that.”

Time? What I needed was a nice, long nap. Or better yet, I needed something normal. Something completely mundane and human. And not at all freaky-magical-nonhuman-best-friend-ish.

“I have to go.” I got to my feet, shaking, but steady enough. “I—I—” And then it hit me—exactly what I needed. “I’ve got a date in half an hour.”

I spent that half an hour staring at myself in my vanity after putting on the necklace Russ gave me. The whole thing was weird, but what could I do? Russ was the most important person in my life. Like I was just going to abandon him? I knew I couldn’t live without him, and I couldn’t even help thinking that he and I could have a lot of fun with magic.

But when I started thinking about things like all the freaky ways we could torture deputy McHale, it only made me mad at myself. I should have been having a harder time accepting this. Russ said maybe one in a thousand people could accept it. But it’s not like I could deny it. I mean, I saw with my own eyes what he did.

The thing that had me the most upset was just that he’d kept it from me for so long. Here I thought I knew everything about him and yet he could still drop a bomb that big? Totally uncool, by the way, for him to do that to me an hour before my first date. When I was ready to speak to him again I’d be sure to let him know that.

By the time Conor picked me up and my mom had enough pictures to fill an entire scrapbook, I’d pushed my emotions deep enough so that I was ready to have fun and blow off some steam in a completely Russ-free environment.

. . . . .

A couple of hours into the evening I said, “Thank you for bringing me tonight, Conor. I really needed this.”

I’ve never been a big fan of dances, but I was having a surprisingly okay time.

Considering.

The decorations committee had really gone all out, making the school gym almost unrecognizable with its tacky Under The Sea theme. It was easy to get caught up in the event and forget all the stress I’d been dealing with. Even the restlessness that had been plaguing me seemed minimal so far.

“It’s my pleasure,” Conor told me as he led us over to the punch. “Honestly, if I’d had any idea you were single all this time I would have asked you out sooner.”

“Well, I’m glad it finally came up.”

“And I’m just happy you’re mom finally let us out of the house. Russ was right about her and her camera.”

I rolled my eyes. “I think she has my entire life documented in volumes separated out by months. It’s the historian in her.”

“I also have to admit I’m relieved.” Conor handed me a glass of punch. “When I came to get you I half expected Russ to show up and knock my front teeth out or something.”