Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) (2 page)

While Conan O’Brien, sweater vests, and rugby were all considered a yes, paper, chalk, and snow didn’t make the cut.

Maggie risked another glance at the pale figure to her left and caught Scout staring back at her. She was about to apologize when Scout asked, “Who are you?”

“Me?” Maggie looked around to make sure there wasn’t someone of importance standing just over her shoulder. “I’m Maggie. Maggie McCray.”

“McCray? I don’t know any McCrays.”

“Sorry…?”

Scout pushed a piece of her short, spiky hair behind her ear. “You really should have informed us you were going to be here. I mean, I don’t care really, but Liam gets a little worked up over this type of thing. I’ve tried to tell him it’s not like I can’t take care of myself, but he’s a guy, which means his ears don’t work when a female speaks.”

“Liam?” This conversation wasn’t making any sense whatsoever. No one mentioned Scout coming away from her abduction with a brain injury, but Maggie supposed the girl was entitled to a mental issue or two.

Scout’s eyes narrowed until only a tiny slice of arctic blue could be seen. “Don’t you dare get all weak-kneed and terrified because I mentioned Liam. We’re equals. He’s not more badass just because he’s a guy. I’m just as scary as he is. Promise.”

Maggie would’ve happily told Scout she couldn’t imagine anyone more terrifying than a crazy Mila Jovovich, but Dr. Suddeath chose that moment to start lecturing. While he went over the syllabus and explained the college’s academic integrity policy for about the millionth time, Maggie tried hard to ignore Scout, but it was hard since Scout showed no signs of ignoring her. Maggie could feel her eyes on her through the entire class and wasn’t at all surprised when the other girl loomed over her desk the instant they were dismissed.

“Who are you?”

Again Maggie glanced over her shoulder to make sure there was no one standing behind her.

“Maggie McCray,” she repeated.

Scout leaned in, crowding Maggie’s personal space. “Why didn’t you answer me?”

“I… I just did.” Definitely a brain injury. “Are you okay? Do I maybe need to call someone for you?” Surely Senator Harper didn’t let her just wander around like this. There had to be a secret service detail or nurse or something to keep her from roaming into the middle of the street and getting run over, right?

“The hustings is this weekend,” Scout said, sliding something onto Maggie’s desk. “I expect you to be there.” And with that, she turned and walked out of the room.

Maggie sat and stared at the business card sitting on the middle of her desk. It was plain white with a black paw print and address printed on one side. She flipped it over to find the other side blank. “What the…?”

“Oh. My. God.” Reid was immediately at Maggie’s shoulder. “Did you just get tagged? By Harper Donovan? How freaking cool is that?”

Maggie flipped the card over again as if some sort of explanation would magically appear. “Tagged?”

“That was Harper Donovan. She’s like a rock star.”

“She was kidnapped by terrorists. That’s not the same as selling out the Staples Arena.”

“What did she say to you?” Reid’s fingers clamped onto Maggie’s arm hard enough to leave bruises. “Did she give you something?”

Part of Maggie wanted to be bratty and just slip the card in her pocket, but she handed it to Reid instead. “She invited me to some party or something. I think she was confused.”

Reid’s eyes narrowed on the card. “Obviously.” Reid rubbed her finger over the embossed paw print. “Mind if I keep it?” she asked, cutting her eyes at Boyfriend as if asking his permission. “You know, since you don’t need it?”

Maggie probably should have been offended by the obvious cut, but she wasn’t. She didn’t really care what Reid or Scout thought about her, and the last thing she needed was to get caught up in some rich kids’ club. Unlike her perpetually bored classmates, she had better things to do with her time than following esoteric rules just so someone would pretend they liked her. For example, she only had five minutes to make it to the other side of campus before her drawing lab started. With any luck, today’s nude model would be somewhat less wrinkly and smelly than Old Man March from yesterday.

“Take it,” Maggie said, throwing the strap of her satchel over her shoulder. “It’s yours.”

Reid bit her bottom lip and snuggled the card against her chest. “Thanks, Mags. You’re the best.”

She wasn’t. Not yet. But that was why Maggie was at Sanders College. One day, she would be the best, and then people like Reid would be clamoring for her attention and acceptance. Until then, she was on her own. But it was okay. Alone was all she’d ever known.

Charlie Hagan scanned the nearly two hundred faces staring up at him, his fingers tapping out an impatient rhythm. After his third sweep of the room, he dug out his cell phone.

“Where are you?”

He waited thirty seconds for a reply. When none came, he typed out the same question again and hit send. He sent the message five times before Layne sent back a response.

“Jesus. Can I not take a piss w/o u getting all up in my business?”

“Not when you’re supposed to be attending a hustings,” Charlie typed back. “Get your ass in here now.”

The last thing Charlie needed was to be dealing with his nephew when Shifters and Seers from all over the world were wandering around to see just how spectacularly the newly minted American Alpha Pack was failing, but he didn’t have much choice. Since his brother died last year, Charlie had become Layne’s legal guardian, which meant he had to deal with the thirteen year old’s crap no matter how inconvenient it was or how ill equipped Charlie might be.

“Any sign of Scout’s unregistered Seer?” a voice asked from over Charlie’s shoulder at the same moment Layne slipped through the door and found a seat in the back row. Even if he hadn’t recognized the voice, Charlie would have known it was Joshua by the smell of chocolate clinging to the Stratego. Somehow Joshua managed to smell like chocolate even immediately after taking a shower. Charlie figured he’d eaten so much of it over the years it was somehow permanently embedded in his chemical make-up.

“None,” Charlie said, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice. “Did Michelle get any hits in the Archives?”

“No, and I didn’t find anything when I poked around the innerwebs.” By which Joshua meant he hacked into every database he could find and traced her digital footprint back to birth. Joshua could do things with a computer Charlie didn’t know were possible and were most certainly illegal. The popular belief in the Alpha Pack was Joshua’s computer prowess came from actually building the internet with his own two hands. The guy might look eighteen, but he had been born back when Model T’s were still chugging up and down the streets. Eternal youth was just one of the many advantages of being an Immortal. “Want me to send Makya out to bring her in?”

“The Alpha Female said to let her be for now,” Charlie said even though he really wanted to disobey the order. Most Shifters would have shrugged off an unregistered Seer, thinking they were harmless. They assumed since Shifters were the who could Change into a wolf - or in Charlie’s case, a coyote - they had nothing to fear from girls who could See the future, someone’s thoughts, or whatever their particular power might be. But Charlie knew you didn’t have to grow fangs and claws to tear a person apart. As far as he was concerned, anyone who wasn’t aligned with the Alpha Pack was an enemy.

Which unfortunately meant he had a lot of enemies.

There was some commotion to Charlie’s right, and he turned to meet a pair of eyes the exact same shade of green as his own.

“I see news of my beauty has traveled far and wide,” Jase Donovan, Charlie’s cousin and closet friend, said. “You think we might have to build onto the barn to accommodate my ever-expanding fan club?”

The Alpha’s farm sat on 1800 acres, 800 of which were wooded. The main house had three floors and eight bedrooms. Four other small houses also sat on the property, which meant the majority of the American-based Alpha Pack could cohabitate without having to invest in bunk beds. And then there were the barns. Charlie grew up in western Kentucky where barns were small affairs that either housed a tractor and its various accessories and maybe some hay, or they were a place where you strung up tobacco leaves and smoked them before taking them to market. If western Kentucky barns were a pick-up truck, then central Kentucky barns were stretched limos. Their property housed twenty different barns. A handful of those were actually old tobacco barns, but most were either six or ten stall horse barns, and a few of them boasted places for humans as well as horses to sleep. But the biggest barn, the farm’s crowning glory, was a 2700 square foot building with a vaulted ceiling and hand-carved stone covering the exterior. It didn’t look so much like a barn as it did a cathedral, which is why it now served as the location of the Alpha Pack’s summer hustings, a time when any Shifter or Seer could seek audience with the Alphas.

The barn currently held over two hundred people.

“Surely to God we won’t have this many people every time,” Charlie said. This wasn’t even the first hustings they’d held since the new Alphas came into power over a year ago. The other two had attracted even larger audiences. “You can only gawk at Scout so many times before it either gets old or she stabs you in the eye.”

Talley Matthews, who was sitting on the other side of Jase, looked up from her Tablet. “Who is stabbing what?”

“You,” Jase said, grabbing her hand and placing it on his chest. “You’re stabbing my heart with tiny arrows from Cupid’s bow.”

Talley’s blue eyes slid back to her device. “Nice try, but you’re still not forgiven.”

Since Jase and Talley were disgustingly in love and Talley was generally acknowledged as overly kind and forgiving, Jase had to have done something rather remarkable.

“You know, I got hit in the head during my workout yesterday. Hard. Hard enough to cause brain damage.”

“You don’t have brain damage,” Talley said to her mate, flicking her finger across the screen of her device. “You just forgot.”

“I didn’t forget. I just failed to remember.”

Talley frowned, but even Charlie could tell it was just an attempt to keep from smiling. “That’s the same thing.”

“Did you forget your mating ceremony anniversary?” Charlie guessed, knowing the two had completed the ritual that bound their lives together forever and always as mates last August.

“I got a dozen roses, a two pound box of chocolates, and a necklace,” Talley said, fingering what appeared to be a ruby surrounded by a bunch of diamonds.

“Pick that up at Wal-Mart, Jase?”

“Tiffany’s, actually. The store. Not Tiffany, the crazy lady with all the cats who used to live next to Gramma. Did you know they actually put their stuff in little blue boxes? I thought that was just in the movies or something, but it’s true.”

“Good to know you went for low-key and subtle.”

“Well, it’s only the first anniversary. I’m saving the extravagant stuff for five years.”

While Jase was talking, the room, which had been filled with the buzzing of over two hundred voices speaking at the same time, grew eerily quiet. Charlie didn’t have to look up to see what - or, more accurately,
who
- caught their attention.

“Well, we’re here now,” Scout said, stomping up to the table. “Don’t worry, Jase. Liam and I just walked on over. It’s a lovely day for it.” A small puddle was forming around her. She peeled off her raincoat and tossed it in a heap behind her.

Charlie closed his eyes. “You forgot the Alphas?”

“I don’t like the word ‘forgot’,” Jase said. “It makes me sound careless.”

“You forgot the Alphas, and then didn’t go back to get them?”

“By the time I remembered I was supposed to drive them over, they were already trudging through the field.”

“She will kill you, and I will let her.”

“Nah.” Jase smiled out at the crowd before them, and Charlie was pretty sure he actually heard a few of the Seers sigh. His cousin had that effect on people. Charlie had too once, but that was a long time ago. “Half of these idiots are going to piss her off so bad she’ll not even remember I made her walk through the rain and mud.”

And half of those idiots were dominant enough to be able to hear Jase’s muttering even though it was the new moon, the time when their powers were at their weakest. If he’d said the same thing five minutes before, Charlie would probably be sporting a bloody nose and a few broken bones by now. If they were a real Alpha Pack, then no one would even think about it, but everyone knew how big of a joke they were. Instead of pooling together the strongest Shifters in the world, Scout surrounded herself with her friends and family when she became Alpha Female. Charlie tried to explain how coyote Shifters weren’t really Alpha Pack material - the gig was pretty much reserved for the more dominant wolves - but she was stubborn and one of the two most powerful Shifters in the world, so she got her way. Charlie’s cousins now sat in the majority of the seats facing the audience, and the others were occupied by a hodgepodge of Seers ranging from kick-ass (Talley) to… well, to a woman who didn’t actually See anything (Michelle, the glorified librarian).

The only thing keeping them from being torn to shreds by a hundred other Shifters wanting to be in power was the guy rubbing a towel over Scout’s wet hair. At an imposing muscle-corded 6’3”, Liam Cole radiated a power even the most nonmagical person in the world could feel. There hadn’t been a Shifter of his dominance in known history. While most Shifters had to wait on the full moon to Change into a wolf or coyote, Liam could go furry whenever the mood struck. After he rose to the Alpha Male, a few Shifters were stupid enough to Challenge him for the position. It didn’t take long for even the most ignorant of their kind to realize it was a very bad idea.

Everyone was scared of Liam. Even Charlie, whom Liam considered one of his closest friends, was a little intimidated by the guy. But what very few people realized was Liam wasn’t the biggest threat in the room. There was one Shifter whose dominance was equal to, if not greater than, his. And while Liam had very little patience for the idiot Shifters of the world, the girl he bound his life to had even less. In fact, she was just as likely to punch you through a wall as shake your hand.

“Chuck,” Scout said, taking her seat next to him. Some may have thought sitting at the Alpha Female’s right hand was a sign of prominence, that Charlie was some kind of super-important member of the Alpha Pack, but that was about as far from the truth as you could get. Charlie had a pity position, but he wasn’t a total waste of space. He’d made a vow to protect the Alpha Female at all costs, even his own life. Hence his spot at the table.

It was much easier to take a bullet for someone when you were only inches away.

“Your majesty,” he teased because it was what was expected of him. “Might I say, you look especially professional today.”

“I do what I can,” Scout said as she zipped up the dry Green Lantern hoodie Liam had dug out of his gym bag. “Anything I need to know before we get started?”

Charlie acknowledged the Alpha Male with a nod of the head as Liam took the seat next to his mate. “Nothing new since Joshua forwarded our report to your iPads an hour ago.”

“And this Maggie person?” Liam asked.

Charlie shook his head, and Scout cursed.

“I can send Makya—“

“No,” Scout said. “She’s probably just scared. God knows people have had a reason to fear the Alpha Pack before.”

“But we’re different.”

Scout looked him in the eye, and it took everything he had not to look away, scared of what she saw swimming in their depths. “Yes,” she said with a hint of sadness in her voice. “That we are.”