Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) (16 page)

“Of course there is a face beneath mine. We already covered this. My face was probably added no more than forty-eight hours before we found it. The paint was still wet, remember?”

Charlie’s eyes followed her as she moved around the kiln, removing bricks and squinting into the haze.

“And you think they painted it over another face?”

Maggie slid the last brick home. “Of course they did.”

“And you didn’t think to mention this to someone before now?”

“Let me say, yet again, I thought we already had this discussion.” Maybe Robot Charlie and Angry Charlie were two different personalities who didn’t share information well.

“We discussed that your face was painted last, not that it was covering up an old one.” Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose, an uncharacteristic display of annoyance. “Maggie, you’ve got to stop hiding information from us.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not hiding anything.”

“Really? Then what is it you can do, Thaumaturgic?”

Maggie swallowed down something that couldn’t have been guilt. Nope. No guilt. Definitely not that. After all, it wasn’t exactly like she was the only one who thought it was a bad idea to tell the controlling group of her people’s natural-born enemies what she could do. After Scout and Charlie left her room that first night, Joshua had found her, and they had a little talk, Immortal to Thaumaturgic.

“Their knowledge of what I am and where I come from is very basic,” Joshua said. “It’s not that I don’t trust the people in this house. I do. More than I’ve ever trusted anyone else in my life, which has been considerably longer than this handsome face would have you believe.” He was sprawled over the same chair Scout had occupied earlier, which made Maggie wonder if it was the chair or if every member of the Alpha Pack had horrible posture. “But they’re still the Alpha Pack, and the Alpha Pack is an institution which has had a long history of not cooperating with other supernaturals. And one day, whether it’s in a hundred days or a hundred years, Scout and Liam’s Alpha Pack will be gone, and another will take its place. Scout and Liam I trust, but their successors? Maybe I will, but there’s a chance I won’t, and I won’t risk the lives of the other Immortals on that chance. So, I keep an air of mystery when it comes to my race, and I suggest you do the same.”

And so she had. Everyone from Jase to Liam had asked her what it was she could do, but she’d kept her mouth shut, just as Joshua had suggested. It hadn’t been hard, and no one had pressured her for an answer after a single attempt, although she felt certain they were working together to wear her down. But somehow with Charlie it was different. He was altering his entire life to protect her, yet he didn’t even know what he was really protecting. And stupid feelings of jealousy aside, the two of them had formed a timid sort of bond over the past week. Friends may have been stretching it a bit, but whatever friend-type relationship a girl and robot could have, they were building one of those. He was like her very own C3PO, just not as shiny or British.

“It’s not like you’ve spilled all the secrets about Shifters and Seers to me.” It sounded defensive because it was. “Are you going to tell me what Talley can See?”

Charlie crossed his arms over his chest, a challenge in his eyes. “Thoughts and emotions. She can also catch small glimpses of the future.”

Maggie nearly dropped the vase she was moving in a bout of nervous organizing. “Two sights? But I thought they were only supposed to have one talent, like us.” Not that she was admitting to being a Thaumaturgic.

Except she kinda just did.

Damn it.

“Talley is special. Joshua thinks she’s the Stella Polaris.”

Maggie watched thousands of particles jump up to embrace the afternoon sun streaming through the window as she ran a duster over a stack of bowls she was pretty sure had been there since Lindsay Lohan was known as that cute red-headed kid from Disney movies. If he was willing to tell her about Talley, how much more would he share?

There was only one way to find out.

“So, Talley knows what is going on in my head at all times?”

He knew it was coming, and quite frankly he was a little surprised it had taken this long, but he still hesitated. Liam had told him to give her whatever she wanted to know. The Thaumaturgics didn’t have a central ruling body like the Shifters and Seers did, so there was no one for her to leak their information to. She had the full trust of the Alphas, and even without Talley’s gift, Charlie knew she wasn’t the kind of person who would do anything to harm the people who were trying to protect her. They may have only known each other for a week, but it had been a fairly intense week. Still, he didn’t want to start down this path. He knew all too well where it would eventually lead, and they were just getting to the point where she didn’t look at him like he was a monster. He hated to prove he was everything she initially thought and more.

“She has to be touching a person to See them,” he told her. “And then she only Sees what she wants to, with the exception of Immortals, Thaumaturgics, and their offspring.”

Maggie climbed onto the table next to him. It was too close. From this distance he could smell the lavender and vanilla mingling with her distinctly Maggie scent, which reminded him of open fields on an early summer morning. The smell had his coyote, who he’d been fighting extra-hard to keep at bay, sitting up and taking notice. It would appear rude and be completely cowardly to get up and move to the other side of the room like he wanted, but he did manage to put some space between them by leaning his chair back on two legs and propping himself against the wall.

“How are we different?” she asked, not realizing she’d admitted to being a Thaumaturgic for the second time in just ten minutes.

“Immortals and Thaumaturgics are harder for her to See. Joshua has to be projecting pretty hard for her to get anything at all. With you, she says you’re a little more open naturally, but still she only gets a surface glimmer.” The full truth was Talley could glean more off Maggie than she ever thought possible for a Thaumaturgic who wasn’t actively projecting, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Talley’s feelings were too easily hurt by people who avoided her touch. “It’s the reason we knew we could trust you. Talley said she could See you weren’t lying.”

“And here I thought she was just one of those touchy-feely people. Instead, she was just trying to rummage through my head.”

“Oh, no. Talley definitely is one of those touchy-feely people. Sometimes she’s just hugging you because she likes hugs.”

He hoped she would leave the discussion there, but his hope fizzled as she pulled up her feet and arranged her legs in crisscross-applesauce style, bracing her elbows on her knees. There was no mistaking her I’m-in-this-for-the-long-haul pose.

“And the visions of the future? What are they like? Can she give me tonight’s winning lottery numbers?”

“No, her visions are sporadic and more of the bad-things-are-coming variety than fabulous-wealth-and-riches.” The worst part was, once she Saw something, it would happen. There was no changing that moment, though they’d found they could prepare for the moments after. “As far as I know, they’ve all been about Scout.”

Because he was paying so much attention to her, he saw Maggie’s eyes tighten ever so slightly. “It always comes back to Scout, doesn’t it?”

“She’s the Alpha Female. The first Shifter Alpha Female in over a thousand years. It’s kind of a big deal.”

“So loyal,” Maggie said, and it didn’t sound like a compliment. “What did she ever do to earn your undying faithfulness?”

“She forgave me.”

“For what? Forgetting to bow down when she entered the room?”

“For killing the boy she loved.”

There it was. He laid it out there, and now it was hers to do with what she would. He couldn’t change or forget the past, no matter how much he wanted to. The night his coyote sent Alex’s wolf over the edge of a cliff would forever be burned into his brain, a nightmare he created and could not escape.

It took so long for her to respond he eventually had to draw a breath. She tilted her head and watched as he fought to keep his emotions at bay.

“You didn’t mean to do it,” she finally said. “It was an accident.”

Accident
. It’s what everyone had been saying from the beginning, but he knew better. He went out that night enraged Scout had chosen Alex over him. He couldn’t remember the details, but when he was human again, Scout was in a hospital bed and Alex was dead. Liam and Scout had both forgiven him, but he would never forgive himself. He would die with Alex’s blood on his hands.

“You don’t know,” he said. “You weren’t there.”

“But I know you.” Some unnamable emotion shot through him at her declaration, but he quickly buried it. “You wouldn’t hurt someone on purpose unless they deserved it.”

“And you know this how?”

He held his breath as she leaned in close, and then two fingers trailed lightly over the tips of his lashes. “Because sometimes even Robot Charlie can’t keep the truth out of your eyes.”

She hadn’t even touched a place with nerves, but his whole body felt her caress. It was a remembered sensation. His body knew how her small frame fit against his, of the warmth and softness that was her skin. There was no quelling his coyote now. Something about her had spoken to that side of him since the moment he first saw her, and her touch was quickly becoming an addiction to his more primitive side. Last night, when she’d pulled away to go to bed, it’d taken everything Charlie possessed to not to prowl after her. The coyote demanded more touching, and it was only through the discipline Charlie had been subjecting himself to for the past year that he was able to walk away.

“Why it happened doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice rough. Maggie moved away from him, but it wasn’t helping. His teeth ground with the effort of putting the coyote back in its cage. “Some mistakes shouldn’t be forgiven.”

“What a completely horrible thing to believe.”

“The truth is often horrible.”

For some absurd reason, Maggie smiled, a bright, full smile that almost managed to chase away the ghosts now haunting him.

“My grandmother would have loved you,” she said. “She was an eternal optimist, a true believer in goodness and light and all that stuff.” She hopped off the table. “Basically, the exact opposite of you.”

“And she would love me… why?”

Maggie walked down the aisle, looking back and forth beneath the two tables. She stopped near the end and pulled out a large plastic container. “My grandmother loved many, many things. Hot chocolate on cold winter nights. The way dogwood trees bloom in the spring.” She popped off the lid and began peeling back the plastic sheets beneath. “The one thing she loved more than anything else, though, was arguing.” She flashed another smile his way as she grabbed a wire cutter. “She would have had field day with you, Charlie Hagan.”

“I’d like to meet her,” he said, surprised he actually meant it. He could just imagine what Maggie’s grandmother would be like. A little woman with a big smile and lots of attitude.

The pause was small, hardly noticeable, but Charlie caught it, and he knew what it meant. He paused the same way every time someone asked him about Toby.

“Grandmother died last year.” Another pause, this time to blink back the moisture shining in her eyes. Once she had control of her tear ducts again, she took a deep breath and flashed another smile, although this was much more subdued. “Which is why I’m doing this as my final project for the year.”

“This being…?”

She thunked the clay onto the wheel. “It’s a show-and-tell. You’ll have to wait.” He watched as she flitted around the studio, getting everything she needed ready. He’d grown accustomed to seeing her in her brightly colored dresses, which somehow made her outfit of jeans and an old, faded t-shirt seem almost more revealing even though considerably less skin showed. By the time she planted herself on the other side of the wheel he was fighting once again to keep his coyote under control.

It only took seconds for a shape to start to form. Charlie had watched other people throw clay in class. When they sat at the wheel, they used their hands to guide and shape the mud to create a bowl or vase or whatever. Not Maggie. When Maggie’s hands glided over the mud they weren’t doing something so basic as moving the clay to suit her needs. No, Maggie’s hands merely danced along as the clay formed itself. They didn’t guide and shape so much as coax and encourage. It was beautiful to watch.

“I’ve been wondering something about last night.” Charlie’s head jerked up, his cheeks flushing. How long had he been sitting there hypnotized by her hands?

“Last night?”
Why, yes. I did enjoy touching you. Can we do it again soon? Like maybe now?
“What about?”

She pushed the clay up, adding height. “What happened with Scout? It looked like she couldn’t Change. Her body was trying to, but she couldn’t do it until she was outside. Was it the moon? Because I thought you guys only did that under the full moon, but last night was like a half-moon or something. It seemed to be enough to help Scout, though.”

“Most of us do only Change under the full moon,” he said, making an executive decision to let her in on some lesser-known facts about the Alpha Pack. She was living with them and could learn most of this by paying attention. Anyway, he needed to think about something other than the way those jeans hugged her body. “Scout and Liam are special. Liam can Change anytime he wants, but it’s still the slow, painful process we all go through. Scout on the other hand…”

“Is all, ‘Poof! I’m a wolf.’”

“Exactly.”

“Except she couldn’t last night.”

“No, she couldn’t do it last night,” he said. “She’s completely asleep during her night terrors and has no idea what she’s doing. I’m sure she thought she was in a massive field or thick patch of woods, but she wasn’t, so she didn’t have any energy to tap into.”

A lip started to form at the top of the vase. “Energy? From the moon?”

“From the ground.”

For the first time since she started, Maggie’s eyes left the wheel to meet Charlie’s. “The ground?”

“Yeah, we pull energy from the ground when we Change. It’s all the conservation of energy, E equals MC squared stuff.”

Maggie’s focus went back to the clay as she began slowing the wheel. “Energy from the ground. That’s interesting.”

Charlie didn’t find it so much interesting as deathly boring, but then again, he’d grown up a Shifter. Everything about their world he took for granted was new to Maggie. He could see the way she ate up every morsel in her expressive black eyes.

“Well,” Maggie said, taking a deep breath, “here comes the moment of truth.” She ran a wire cutter under the vase and lifted it off the wheel, her measured breaths the only sound in the room as she crossed over and sat it on the table. “Oh my God.” She spoke in a whisper, as if she thought too much noise would shatter it. “I did it.” Her smile was so joyful when she turned to him that Charlie felt the corners of his mouth tilting up in response. “Come look!”

There was no way he could resist. He was out of his seat and by her side in seconds, borrowing a bit of speed from his coyote.

“Oh, wow,” he said, immediately regretting the way all of his words came out bland and bored anymore. “This is amazing. I swear, I can almost see through it.”

Maggie ran a finger over the lip. “Once it’s fired, painted, glazed, and fired again, you’ll be able to.”

“Really?” Charlie knew just enough from his one week crash-course in the world of ceramics that was a very big deal.

“If the Grolley is as good of a porcelain as I’ve been told, then…” Those expressive eyes traveled over the vase and then back to him. “Yeah, I think it’s going to work.” If possible her smile spread even further across her face. “I’m going to paint the inside with cobalt. Oh, here.” She turned and yanked up her shirt, causing Charlie to clench his hands so tight there was a chance a bone may have snapped in two. “This is the pattern I’m going to use,” she said, referring to the blue rose pattern tattooed on her side.

“I think my mom has some dishes with that on them,” he managed to ground out.

“Yeah, well…” Maggie shrugged. “It’s something that was important to my grandmother.”

“Which makes it important to you.”

“Exactly,” she said, dropping her shirt. If she noticed the way he was growling the words at her, she didn’t show it. “So, the plan is to paint that on the inside. Then, if God loves me as much as Reid thinks he loves her, when you hang a gallery light right over the top, you’ll be able to see the pattern from the outside.”

“So, what you’re telling me is I’m currently looking at what will become ceramics answer to the Mona Lisa?”

Maggie bit her lip and tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowed on the vase. “No…”

“I’m telling you, Maggie. I don’t know—“

“Not this one,” she said, picking it up with considerably less care than when she’d taken it off the wheel. “I’m going to throw another one. A thinner one.”

Charlie’s experience with perfectionism was vast. He was, after all, a member of the Alpha Pack. Perfectionism and control issues where pretty much standard issue. But no one took it to the extreme quite like Maggie.