Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) (14 page)

“She’s a Thaumaturgic, an unknown in a situation where lives are on the line. Of course I watch her. It’s my job to protect you and this pack.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Chuck,” Scout said. “Maybe one day we’ll both believe it.”

For a house big enough to park a jet plane inside, there was absolutely nowhere for Maggie to draw. She supposed she could have stayed in her room, but something about the dark wood and heavy furniture made cabin fever set in at an alarmingly fast pace. She’d grabbed her sketchbook and pencils hoping to find a nice, quiet place to think, but it turned out nice and quiet were foreign concepts at Fenrir Farm. She’d thought she had hit the jackpot when she found Mischa and Imogen quietly watching
The Help
in the den, but despite the absolute silence and mile of couch separating the girls, Maggie got a strong we-want-some-alone-time vibe from the possibly-maybe-a-couple couple.

After wandering around some more, and getting hit in the head with one of the cardboard tubes Jase and Joshua were using as swords as they chased one another up and down the hallway, Maggie finally found an empty room. Like every other room in the house, it was obviously decorated by someone obsessed with Victorians. The walls were covered in a dark red satin, the carpet was think enough to double as a mattress, and the oversized desk and chairs taking up the majority of the room were carved mahogany. The only concession to modern times was the Chihuly hanging from the middle of the ceiling.

Within minutes she was so absorbed in her own thoughts and the charcoal flying across the paper she didn’t hear the door open.

“Are you supposed to be in here?”

Maggie jerked back, causing the spinny-swively chair to almost topple over backwards. Her shriek would have made a Beatles fangirl proud.

“Jesus,” the newcomer said, his hand covering his ears. “You know most of us have dog-like hearing, right? I think you just busted my eardrums.”

“Sorry.” She tried not to look at the errant streak of black stretching across the page she’d been working on. “I’m Maggie,” she said, forcing her eyes back to the guy who was still standing in the doorway looking at her like she was one of the less interesting exhibits at the zoo. “I’m staying here for a couple of days.”

“Yeah, I know. Even the Omega gets informed when a Thaumaturgic moves into the house.”

“Omega?”

The new guy ignored her question, plowing on as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “So, you guys are supposed to be like Seers, right? Like you have your one special thing you do, but instead of Seeing stuff you can like control it or whatever?”

“I’ve never said I was a—“

“So, what is your thing? Can you shoot fire out of your fingertips or breathe underwater or what?”

Maggie caught herself before explaining how it didn’t exactly work like that. Thaumaturgics couldn’t control their element so much as converse with it.

“Which Hagan are you?” she asked instead. She was pretty sure she hadn’t met this one before, but she knew he had to be one of Charlie’s relatives. She’d met a handful of them and they all had the exact same green eyes.

“Makya. Alpha Pack Omega.”

“Omega. Right. Of course.” Maggie thought over everything she knew about Shifters, and still came up with nothing. “What exactly is an Omega?”

The sigh escaping Makya’s lips said he couldn’t believe she was stupid enough to not know this.

“Omega. Lowest of the low. Servant of the Alpha Pack. See also:
whipping boy
.”

“Oh,” Maggie said, her face growing warmer and warmer by the second. She wasn’t quite sure what to say, but that didn’t keep her mouth from moving and words spilling out. “I didn’t know. I don’t really know anything about Shifters, other than they exist. I don’t suppose you have a handy brochure or instructional video to get me caught up on all the terminology and everything?”

Makya snorted. “God, don’t let Scout hear you say that. She’s been threatening to make Marie and Michelle write one. She wants to call it
There Really is a Monster at the End of this Book.
”

“I need something more self-helpy. How about
The Secret (to Living with Shifters)
?”

“
The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Shifters
?”

“
How to Befriend Seers and Influence Shifters
?”

“
Shifters are from the Moon, Seers are from the Stars
?”

Maggie wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Preaching to the choir here, sister.” Makya said as he unfolded a wand-like device with shredded rags on the end and began dusting the bookshelf on the wall behind her. For the first time, Maggie noticed the bucket of cleaning supplies he’d brought with him. He wasn’t kidding about that whole Omega thing.

Knowing Makya wasn’t one of the powerful, scary Alpha Pack Shifters made it easier for Maggie to relax.

“I’m just afraid I’m going to say or do the wrong thing,” she confessed as he moved down to the next shelf. “Everything here has its place, and there are these rules everyone seems to know but me, and I’m like this idiot child, running around trying not to accidentally stomp on anyone’s toes.”

Makya looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed on Maggie as if he was trying to figure something out.

“Okay, this is what you need to know,” he said with a sigh, turning around to face her. “One, keep Scout happy, which is basically impossible, because Scout is only happy when she’s miserable. But she’s the Alpha Female, and Liam, who is the Alpha Male, would move a mountain with a teaspoon if she asked him to, so it’s Scout you have to concentrate on.

“Jase and Talley seem like happy-go-lucky people who do nothing but touch each other all the time, but they’re both hella powerful. Jase can be ruthless and determined when he thinks something is important, and Talley is supposedly the Stella Polaris.”

“Stella Polaris?” Maggie asked, wishing she had a glossary to keep up with all these crazy names the Shifters gave to everything.

Even though Makya wasn’t quite as heart-stopingly gorgeous as Jase and Charlie, there was something about him and the rest of the Hagan men a girl couldn’t help but notice. Maybe it was the clean lines comprising their slender but muscled Shifter bodies. Maggie traced Makya’s biceps with her eyes as he reached up to scratch the back of his head. “Literally, the Stella Polaris is the North Star,” he said, oblivious to her ogling, “but in Talley’s case, it means the most powerful Seer on the planet.”

The words Talley and powerful didn’t seem like they went together, but neither did Jase and ruthless. Maggie wondered if Makya actually knew what he was talking about.

“What about Charlie?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. “What do I need to know about him?”

It took a few minutes for Makya to answer. He tried to play it off like he was too busy messing with the stuff in his cleaning bucket, but Maggie could recognize a stalling technique when she saw it. It only made her more eager to hear what he had to say.

“Charlie is…” Makya sprayed a thin coating of lemon-scented cleaner over the table. “I don’t know. Hard, I guess.” He nodded his head slightly, as if agreeing with himself. “He’s always been more serious than Jase, but after his brother… You know about his brother, right?”

She hadn’t, but once she gave it about half of a second’s thought, she thought she might know where this was going.

“Toby Hagan was Charlie’s brother, wasn’t he?”

“Big brother. Pack Leader. Idol. They all apply.”

Maggie tried to work through everything she’d learned from news reports after Scout’s rescue and look at it through the filter of knowing they were Shifters.

“Toby didn’t die rescuing Scout from domestic terrorists, did he? It was some Shifter thing?”

All the color seemed to bleed out of Makya’s face, and Maggie wondered what his own connection to Toby had been.

“He was rescuing Scout, in a way, but it wasn’t domestic terrorists,” he said, his voice rougher and quieter than it had been moments before. “Scout and Liam were making their bid to become Alphas and things went bad. There was a big fight, and Toby didn’t make it.” Wetness shone in Makya’s eyes, and Maggie had to blink back the answering moisture in her own. “After that, Charlie was different. I thought he would be angry and…” The deep breath he drew into his lungs sounded shaky as he exhaled. “He acted like he didn’t even care. I don’t know if he even cried at the funeral.”

So that was the birth of the robot. Maggie tried to imagine what he had been like before his brother died. Was he fun and flirtatious like Jase? Sarcastic like Scout? Angry like his nephew Layne?

The door slammed open and Charlie stood there as if they had conjured him. His eyes darted accusingly back and forth between Maggie and Makya as if he’d heard their conversation.

Which he probably did
, Maggie realized. Shifters and their supernatural hearing. It was going to take some getting used to.

“We need you,” Charlie said to Makya without so much as a hello. “We’re ready to bury the body.”

He said “bury the body” the same way Maggie might say “eat a brownie”.

“The autopsy?” Maggie asked, knowing they’d flown in someone from Romania to examine Barros’s body. It all seemed wrong and under-handed to not call in the cops, but Talley assured her it was best to let the Shifters take care of their own. Maggie didn’t consider burying a man next to a bunch of horses caring for one’s own, but she held her tongue. They were going to find whoever did this, and then she was going to go back to her normally scheduled life.

“He was drugged,” Charlie said. “Somebody must have slipped something in his food or drink and then attacked after he wasn’t able to fight back. Actual cause of death was a stab wound. Like Joshua suspected, the arts-and-crafts portion was done after he’d been dead a while.”

So no new information, other than maybe the drug thing. Maggie wasn’t surprised. Actually, that was wrong. She
was
surprised, just not because the autopsy didn’t uncover any important clues. What she couldn’t believe was the Alpha Pack, who was nothing more than a bunch of college-age kids who had trouble ordering pizza on occasion, had been able to keep a dead body away from the authorities and media. Every day Maggie expected to see cops pulling up the long drive, lights flashing, but so far it hadn’t happened.

Slowly Maggie became aware of something going on between Makya and Charlie. Their eyes were locked on one another, but not in a sexy slash-fanfiction kind of way. It was more like a really intense stare contest where the first person who blinked died.

“Robby and Joshua are waiting for you. You should go,” Charlie said, his tone casual despite the obvious tension in the air.

Makya stepped forward, his eyes still locked on Charlie. “I will go because I want to. Because I chose this. Don’t make the mistake of forgetting that.”

And then Makya was gone with the quiet clink of the door shutting closed.

“That was—“ Charlie turned towards Maggie, and she completely forgot what she was going to say. “Umm… What was that?”

Charlie’s intense gaze traveled over her body, and she felt herself blush at the inspection.

“What were you doing in here with him?” he asked, his voice hard and severe like it had been when he was accusing her of killing Barros.

Maggie squared her shoulders and tried to hide how he was affecting her. She would will her hands to stop shaking and her voice to remain even. He wasn’t going to push her around just because he was big and scary.

“I was drawing. He was cleaning.” She forced herself to meet Charlie’s eyes. “Not that it’s any of your business. I’m here as a guest, not a prisoner or an Omega.”

Charlie placed one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the table in front of her. She knew there was nothing behind her, but she felt pinned in all the same.

“Let me tell you what you need to know about Makya.” His warm breath fanned over her cheek, causing goose bumps to shower down Maggie’s spine. “He wasn’t chosen as Omega because he’s the weakest of our kind. He took the position as punishment for betraying his family. So if you’re looking for a bad guy around here, he’s it. Don’t trust him. Don’t feel sorry for him. And if you know what is best for you,” he leaned impossibly closer, and Maggie tried to convince herself her heart was racing from fear instead of something much more disturbing, “you won’t let me catch you alone with him again.”

And then Charlie pushed himself away from her and followed Makya, although this time the door rattled in its frame as it slammed shut. Maggie took a deep breath and sent up a plea to the universe that the Alpha Pack would find their murderer soon, because she wasn’t sure how she was going to survive if she had to be around Charlie Hagan much longer.

It was with no small amount of shock that Maggie realized she was getting used to having Charlie around all the time. The scary, growling Charlie hadn’t made a reappearance, and she found Robot Charlie oddly soothing. They spent the majority of their time in Rosa Hall where Maggie worked on stuff for her Etsy shop while Charlie messed around on the computer. It would have been peaceful if they could’ve locked the door to the studio. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an actual door, which meant fifteen different types of music was constantly waging war on Maggie’s eardrums and every independent study and grad student who wanted to come in to rant about their professors or rave about their newest project could just saunter right on in. Since neither she nor Charlie really encouraged this behavior, Maggie wasn’t quite sure how hanging out in the ceramics room became the cool thing to do. She suspected it had something to do with Pepper, the girl who had been working on her MFA in ceramics for the past two years, although she couldn’t be certain since the girl hadn’t bothered to show up at the studio since school started.

Whatever the cause, Maggie’s workspace wasn’t the quiet, serene place she wanted it to be. Chaos reigned in Rosa Hall, and whenever Maggie felt as though she was going to be buried beneath it, she would look to Charlie, who seemed oblivious to the mayhem erupting around him. He was completely unflappable, merely raising an eyebrow when one of the glassblowers got his man-purse too close to the flames and everyone ran around screaming their heads off as if the building was burning to the ground. He became her Rock of Gibraltar, a breath of sanity in Bedlam.

Friday night Maggie found herself playing an elaborate board game in which Scout, Joshua, and Liam had to try to escape her and Layne’s zombie. It was a long, drawn-out game. The clock declared it after midnight when she gleefully defeated the last of the townsfolk with a roll of double-sixes. As she climbed onto her massive Tempurpedic mattress thirty minutes later, she found herself already dreading moving back into the dorm, whenever that might be. She and Charlie had picked up the rest of her stuff earlier in the week, telling Reid she had been accepted into one of the secret societies and was moving in with one of the other members. Reid had cried and begged her to stay in a big dramatic scene, and in the end, Maggie had promised her she would have lunch with her at least twice a week so they could “stay close”.

Because, obviously, ignoring each other for ten days built the sort of bond nothing could sever.

Maybe if they found the killer she could talk Scout into letting her stay somehow. Like maybe she could do all of their laundry in exchange for room and board. Of course, that meant they would have to fire the current laundry woman, but since she was a rather cantankerous woman who kept referring to Maggie as “that mixed girl,” she didn’t feel any guilt in wishing her out of a job.

A few hours after drifting off, Maggie was ripped from sleep by a scream that would make Wes Craven’s heart stop in his chest. Without thinking, she bolted from her bed and out the door. A second scream came not two seconds later, and she took off down the hall towards the master bedroom. Her hand was just an inch from the door when a large, warm body encased her from behind and pulled her back a few steps. The only thing keeping her from shattering the night with high-pierced shriek of her own was the hand clamped over her mouth.

“Shhh…. It’s me,” a voice she knew all to well said in her ear.

She stopped trying to scream, but she still struggled against the arms holding her fast against his chest. Now she was closer, she could hear the crying and pleading. Someone was being tortured and Charlie was letting it happen.

“You can’t go in there.” His voice was soft and steady, as if he was trying to calm one of the volatile Thoroughbreds living on the far edge of the farm. “Scout is having a night terror. If you go in there, she’ll think you’re trying to attack her and retaliate.”

As if she was in on the conversation and wanted to prove the point, Scout chose that moment to scream, “I will kill you!” at the top of her lungs.

“Someone needs to help her,” Maggie said once Charlie dropped his hand.

“Liam is in there. He’ll take care of her.”

Something crashed against the wall next to the door.

“Are you sure?”

She wasn’t struggling anymore, but Charlie still had his arms wrapped around her. Maggie became aware of how very little her thin nightshirt did to cover her. The heat from Charlie’s bare chest penetrated straight through the flimsy material and soaked deep into her body, pooling up in the pit of her stomach. They were pressed so close together the hair from his legs tickled the backs of her bared knees.

If it wasn’t for the constant sounds of distress coming from inside Scout’s room, Maggie might have taken more than a second to think about the way her insides were turning to jelly.

“Does this happen often?” she asked to distract herself.

Charlie’s chin brushed across the top of her head. “No. Only when Liam’s here.”

She leaned to the left an inch, turned her head, and looked up Charlie. “Liam isn’t normally here?”

He looked down at her and Maggie felt every nerve inside her body fizzle. She wasn’t even sure what fizzling was, but she was certain her nerves were doing it. But before she could short-circuit, Charlie turned his attention back to the closed door.

“He’s here when he can be, but the Den is in Romania. He has to stay there most of the time.”  There was a fluttering sensation on Maggie’s right side, which is how she realized Charlie was stroking her waist with his thumb. Suddenly, it felt like he was stroking other, much less decent places. “When he’s gone, Scout doesn’t do more than catnap. She’s up all hours of the night, video conferencing with him or spending way too many hours in the gym. But when he comes home…”

“She sleeps.” Maggie wasn’t sure if she felt sorry for the couple, or if she was annoyed at Liam for not caring enough about Scout to stick around and at Scout for letting Liam control her life so completely.

Something shattered inside the room, and then another scream pierced the air.

“No, Scout. Wake up. You can’t. Not here,” came Liam’s voice from inside the room.

Another scream, this one succeeding in raising all the tiny hairs on the back of Maggie’s neck.

“Shouldn’t we—“

The door banging open cut off her words. Liam stood in it, his massive physique silhouetted by the light spilling into the hallway. Scout was draped across his arms, and even with the bad lighting, Maggie could see her skin rippling. As she watched, the bone beneath Scout’s eye visibly shattered.

The only thing saving Maggie from falling to the floor was Charlie’s arms tightening around her waist.

“Help me get her outside. Now.”

This time, when Maggie surged forward, Charlie let her. She held doors open so Liam and Charlie could carry Scout’s mangled body through them. Her breath came in short, painful gasps as she opened the door leading from the corridor to outside. Liam and Charlie struggled down the front steps and laid Scout on the grass. Seconds after her body touched the ground, a white wolf stood, looking like something out of a beautiful nightmare, despite the tank top and boxer shorts it wore.

“Are you going to let me get those off of you?” Liam asked, kneeling down in front of her, his hand moving slowly, palm up, just like the lady from the pound taught Maggie to do when approaching an unknown dog.

Scout answered the Alpha Male by letting loose a low growl.

“I think that’s a no,” Charlie said. He was standing next to Maggie, and without thought, she slipped her hand into his. He gave her fingers a squeeze, the action doing more to calm her nerves than she thought possible.

“Be careful,” Liam said to the wolf, who was already loping towards the back of the house. “And for the love of God, come back.”

Liam’s heartache was palatable, and if he was anyone else, Maggie would believe he was getting ready to burst into tears. If she hadn’t been tethered to the spot by Charlie’s hand, Maggie would have left him to it, but since she wasn’t about to pull away from the warmth and strength Charlie provided, she just stood there and watched as Liam tried not to fall apart.

“What the hell was that?” Charlie asked once they could no longer see the white dot moving swiftly over the ground.

Liam rubbed the back of his head so hard it was a wonder he didn’t lose skin in the process. “I don’t know. She was having one of her normal waking nightmare things, and then…” He paced away as if he didn’t want to drop an f-bomb right at their feet, then paced back and stood right in front of Charlie. “I heard what you told Maggie,” he said. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“Does she only do this when I’m here?” Liam’s Adam apple rose and fell with an audible swallow. “Am I the reason this happens?”

Charlie slowly shook his head. “Man, it’s not like—“

“I should leave,” Liam said, pacing again. “She keeps telling me you guys can handle this and I should just go back to the Den.” He stopped and rubbed his head again. “She doesn’t want me here. I make her miserable.”

“Listen, I think—“

“She still loves you, you know,” Liam said. Maggie, who had been trying to pretend like she wasn’t listening, snapped her head around so fast she made herself dizzy. “You’re a good guy. Hell, if none of this had happened you two would probably be engaged by now. Maybe I should just—“

“No.”

Liam had wandered away again, his back to Charlie and Maggie, who was trying to pull her hand out from Charlie’s grip, all desire to touch him diminished at Liam’s words. At Charlie’s refusal, Liam turned just enough that he could look back at them, his eyes shining under the moonlight. “Did you see her? Did you see what I’ve done to her?” His lips pressed together tightly, and Maggie willed him not to cry. Men like Liam weren’t supposed to cry. They were supposed to growl and glare and try to fix all the world’s problems with their fists. Crying was not part of that equation. “I can’t keep doing this to her, Charlie. She deserves better.”

“You’re right,” Charlie said and Maggie considered kicking him. “She does deserve better. Scout Donovan deserves a mate who loves her.”

Liam froze, the anger of an Alpha chasing the unshed tears from his eyes. “I do love her.”

“Does she know it?”

“Of course she does. I’m her mate.”

“Yes, she’s painfully aware of the fact that she’s your mate, but does she know you love her?”

Liam didn’t respond.

“Listen, I don’t know why on earth I’m in the middle of this, because God knows I don’t want to be, but here are the facts: You love her. She loves you. You’re both too damn stubborn to talk about it, but if you don’t, you’re going to lose each other. So do all of us in this house one big freaking favor, and tell her you’re in love with her and can’t live without her, and then spend the rest of your life proving it. Because, I promise you, if I ever found someone to love like that, they would never, ever doubt how I felt about them.” His eyes flicked to the right, and for a moment Maggie thought he was looking at her. And then she saw the same thing he did, a white wolf coming out of the tree line.

In that moment, Maggie McCray began to hate Scout Donovan a little.