Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) (13 page)

Joshua grabbed a handful of cookies off the counter. “I’m going to go work on the heat signature app some more. It needs a few tweaks, and then I’ll be able to equip all of your phones.”

“We’re going, too,” Jase said, also grabbing a handful of cookies. “
Someone
signed me up for a class at eight in the freaking morning.” He shot a glare Scout’s way. Scout widened her eyes in an attempt to seem innocent. “What? It wasn’t me. It was Talley.”

Talley patted Scout’s shoulder as she made her way to the door. “Nice try, Your Majesty. But I think he was sitting there when you said, ‘Oh, look. An interpersonal communications class at the butt crack of dawn. Jase will absolutely hate that,’ and then erupted into evil laughter as you hit the enroll button.”

“Hmmm… That does sound vaguely familiar.”

Jase expressed his feelings on the matter by flipping her off. Scout responded with the grace and maturity one came to expect from the Alpha Female and stuck out her tongue.

“I’m going, too,” Liam said, sliding his phone into his back pocket.

“Going?” All signs of amusement melted off Scout’s face. “Going where?”

Liam ran a hand over the back of his head. “The gym. I need to decompress.”

“But you’re coming back?”

There was a long pause where Charlie had to look away from the angst-ridden scene before he died of discomfort.

“Yeah.”

“Tonight?”

“I’ll just be a few hours.” Liam bent down and placed a kiss on the top of Scout’s head. “Will you be in your room when I get back?” he muttered in her ear so softly no one else should have been able to hear it. Unfortunately, Charlie possessed the same super-hearing as all Shifters and heard every word just as clearly as if Liam was whispering in his own ear.

The two shared a few more tender moments before Liam left through the backdoor, saving Charlie from attempting to disappear to save himself from having to watch two of his best friends making out. Once he was out the door, Scout’s entire body seemed to curl in on itself.

“You okay there, Scout?”

“Peachy.”

Charlie might have considered believing her if she wasn’t swiping tears out of the corner of her eyes as she said it. Since he was already up and moving towards the cabinets, he wandered over to where she was sitting and tapped her nose twice. “Yep,” he said. “It’s growing.”

Scout clapped her hands together in front of her chest and batted her eyelashes. “Gee, Jiminy. Do you reckon one day I might be a
real
Alpha? One who can make her own decisions and everything?”

“Depends. Are you going to quit turning into a jackass on occasion?”

“Wait a minute. I wasn’t the one—“

“What Liam did was have the good graces not to mention in front of half the Alpha Pack how we have operating procedures. Operating procedures you helped draft and approve. Operating procedures you and Talley completely ignored today,” Charlie said as he dug through the cabinet until he found glasses boasting the faces of Batman and Superman.

“I didn’t—“

“You did. And then you acted like it was stupid for your mate to be concerned about your well-being.”

“He said—“

“You could have gotten hurt. Or worse. Do you have any idea what that would do to him, Scout? Do you?”

He did. Because Charlie wouldn’t be able to survive it either. He’d understood Liam’s righteous indignation, because he’d felt it, too. Scout had been a part of Charlie’s life since before he had memories. She was as close to him as a sister, if not closer. Scout owned a piece of him, and he her. He’d watched her come close to death a few times too many to be okay with her going out and chasing it down like she was immune.

His hands shook as he poured milk into the two glasses. She couldn’t die. She just couldn’t.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the Batman glass towards her so she wouldn’t see how the milk sloshed around as he held it, but she refused to take it. Instead, she just stared up at him, her lips doing a strange dance as she chewed all the skin off the inside of her lips.

“Charlie?”

“What?”

“You’re ummm….” She grabbed a paper towel and offered it to him. When he took it, she pantomimed wiping the corner of her eyes. Charlie copied the motion, and…

God. Damn. It.

He was crying like a freaking baby, twin rivers rushing down his cheeks. When the hell had that happened? And how could he have not known?

The water in the sink was cold as he splashed it on his face. He repeated the motion until he couldn’t feel his hands or face anymore, and still he leaned over it, watching the continuous cyclone chase itself down the drain.

“How is the new therapist working out?”

Was it possible to drown yourself in a sink? Someone once told him you could drown in a teaspoon of water, so surely he could manage it in a ridiculously deep sink.

“Charlie? Are you okay? Should I call someone? If you’re new guy isn’t working out, I’m sure Judd’s dad—“

“The new therapist is fine.” Charlie lifted himself off his elbows. There weren’t any towels lying around, and he hadn’t quite figured out the drawer system in the massive kitchen, so he used the bottom of his shirt to dry off his face. “Sorry. The past few days have been a little intense.”

Scout was the only one who knew Charlie was so screwed up he had to see a psychologist on a regular basis. He’d started seeing someone after the accident that killed Liam’s brother and left Scout with foot-long scars across her stomach. They’d helped at first, but his therapist wasn’t a Shifter. It was hard talking about the crap he was dealing with without actually talking about the crap he was dealing with. When he’d run across a certified psychologist who was loyal to the new Alphas at the last hustings, Charlie went to Scout and quietly asked if she could pull some strings. Three hours later, he was one the phone with the guy setting up regular sessions.

Even though Scout had gone through her own round of therapy once upon a time, he still felt embarrassed when she brought it up. How big of a loser did he have to be to need the help of a shrink when everyone else around him was able to deal with everything on their own?

Charlie climbed up on the barstool across from Scout. She had her chin propped on her fists, and he mirrored the pose.

“When did we sign up for this?” she asked. This close he could see how red her eyes were and the dark circles underneath she was trying to hide with make-up.

“I’m not sure we did. I think we were drafted.”

Scout let her fists fall onto the table, and her head followed. Her face was buried in her arms, making her words come out all garbled, but he still understood her perfectly when she said, “I want to quit.”

It had been a long time since he’d seen Scout look so defeated. Sure, being Alpha Female wasn’t exactly the life she’d always envisioned for herself, and it was a hell of a lot of work and responsibility for someone so young, but she’d met the challenge with all the grace and strength he knew she was capable of. Even Charlie, who could remember Scout in her awkward and gangly middle school years, started thinking of her as the eternal, invincible Lilith, the living embodiment of the moon. But at that moment there was no denying who she truly was - an over-worked, over-stressed girl in need of a friend.

Well, he might not be much good for anything else, but Charlie could at least do that.

“Talk to me,” he said, reaching out to hold onto her fingers.

“
Muffle, muffle, muffle.”

“Head up. Mouth moving. Come on, Scout. You can do it.”

She lifted her head just enough so her chin was resting on the inside of her elbows. “I don’t want to talk.”

Charlie gave her an I’m-not-leaving-until-you-say-something look.

“Fine.” She pulled back, dragging her fingers from his grip so she could push short strands of hair back from her face. “Let’s talk… about Maggie.”

They were in the middle of a murder investigation and she wanted to talk about Maggie? He might have agreed if she wanted to talk about the way she was related to the case, but Charlie could tell by the smug expression on Scout’s face that was definitely not the direction this conversation was going.

“New topic,” Charlie said for no other reason than he really didn’t feel like talking about the Thaumaturgic to anyone, least of all Scout. The girl set him on edge, and while most other people wouldn’t notice, Scout would.

A quirk of lips. “Fine. I think Liam regrets that we’re mates.”

“Scout, that’s stupid. Liam adores you.”

“Maybe. But he doesn’t love me—“

“Of course he does.”

“He’s never said so. And we’ve never had sex.”

Milk surged down Charlie’s windpipe, and the subsequent coughing fit was so violent he knew he’d be able to feel it in his abdominal muscles the next day. “Maggie is very talented,” he wheezed once he was able to get the words out.

Scout leaned back in her chair and crossed her hands over her chest, a self-satisfied smile spread across her face. “Talented, huh? Tell me more.”

He thought about refusing, but worried Scout might bring up her sex life again. It was a well-played move. He would do or say almost anything to not have that conversation.

“She’s doing her independent study in ceramics, but she can do anything. It’s like she doesn’t even have to try.” After spending an hour watching his lump of clay collapse in on itself over and over again, they’d gone back to Rosa Hall. Maggie made him use his ID to open the door and was noticeably surprised when it worked. Since he’d just been through the torture of his first ceramics class, Charlie believed he knew how the whole throwing process worked. Even though he hadn’t been successful, several of his classmates managed to have bowl and vase-shaped objects by the end of class.

What Maggie did wasn’t anything like what he’d seen the previous hour.

After preparing all of her materials, she sat down at the wheel, not even bothering to put an apron on over her bright yellow and red dress. It only took her one try to slap the clay on the center of the wheel, and thirty seconds later, he saw a plate magically appear out of the mud. Two minutes later, she was taking it off the wheel and grabbing the next ball of clay. By the end of the hour she had four dinner plates, four salad plates, and four bowls, and each was the exact same size and thickness of the others in the set.

“She sells dishes online,” he told Scout, “and they’re like the coolest dishes ever. She does this whole superhero thing, and she can imitate any comic book artist’s style. She made this cup with Miles from
Ultimate Spider-Man
on it, and I swear to you, I thought it was official Marvel licensed merchandise.”

If possible, Scout’s smirk grew even more pronounced. “She paints comic book superheroes?”

“Onto cups. And bowls. Convex items. Or is that concave?”

“Convex,” Scout said, pointing to the outside of her glass of milk. “Concave,” she said, pointing to the inside.

“Well, then, she paints on the convex side of cups and the concave side of bowls. It’s amazing.”

Charlie’s earliest memory of Scout was of the day the three of them - Scout, Charlie, and Jase - decided to break into Gramma Hagan’s refrigerator and steal the cake she was supposed to be taking to that night’s pack meeting. They couldn’t have been very old, probably around three or four, and their sneaking abilities were bad at best. They didn’t realize it at the time, but when you’re a kid in a house full of Shifters, someone is always listening to what you’re up to, even if they’re on the other side of the house. But by some miracle, no one was paying careful attention to the trio of mischief-makers that day. Once the three of them managed to get the ginormous cake to the middle of the floor, Scout smiled at her two cohorts, pride over a job well done and giddiness over the feast before them lighting up her entire face.

That same smile spread across her face as she looked across the counter at Charlie.

“What are you up to?”

“What? Me? Nothing.”

“Scout…”

“It’s just…” She shrugged. “I’m happy to see you interested in someone.”

He felt his face heat, which was even more embarrassing than being called out about Maggie. He wasn’t some twelve-year-old boy who was just accused of having a crush on one of the cheerleaders. He was practically an adult, for God’s sake. So what if he was interested in Maggie?

“You came to this conclusion when exactly? Maybe yesterday when I was threatening to kill her?”

“Do you have any idea the number of times I’ve threatened to kill Liam?”

“It’s not the same.” Scout had never thought she might have to kill Liam, whereas there was a time yesterday when he thought he would watch Maggie draw her last breath. “And if that was the criteria for deciding whether or not someone is interested in another person, then Talley may need to worry about Jase’s feelings towards Joshua.”

But Scout wouldn’t be dissuaded. She leaned up on her elbows, the challenge of the Alpha in her eyes. “You look at her.”

“I look at lots people. I’m looking at you right now.”

“No you’re not. You’re looking through me, just like you’ve looked through everyone since Toby died.” A flash of white pain in his chest made him want to lash out at her, but he reined it in, refusing to fall into that rabbit hole of emotion. “But when Maggie is in a room, you can’t look away. It’s like she’s a magnet, one of those cool, super-charged magnets bad guys use to steal the Eiffel Tower or moon or whatever.”