Charcoal Tears (11 page)

Blessed invisibility.

I gradually relaxed, and when I glanced to the popular table, only Cabe was there. He had his arms folded. He was hard Cabe again. I quickly looked back down and slipped out of the cafeteria before the bell rang to signal the end of lunch. I was the first person in the classroom for art, and Quillan glanced up, his dark eyes travelling straight to the bruises on my face. The flames flickered to life—the same smoulder that I saw whenever he was angry—and I flinched back a step. He wasn’t surprised at all. That hit me the hardest, and I marched to the back of the room, throwing my bag down moodily against the floor, the same thing running through my mind over and over.

“Shit,” I muttered, kicking the base of my easel.

A shadow drew over me, and I smelt something reminiscent of sweet spices and wood smoke.
Noah
. I folded my arms and continued to stare at the base of my easel. He didn’t speak. I assumed that Cabe was there as well, but he wasn’t standing so close. I continued to stare at the same spot for the whole lesson, and still didn’t move as the bell rang. My shadow hovered, but Quillan’s voice carried to my ears, calling me to the front.

I stalked to the desk, still not looking up, and waited until the door to the classroom had closed.

“Take a seat,” Quillan offered, his deep voice making me want to do anything that he suggested, even if I was inexplicably angry with him.

I pulled up a stool, sat, and glared at the floor. He got up and moved in front of me, tapping my chin. Usually, this raised my eyes, but today I was stubborn. He sighed and ducked down, cupping my jaw at the same time and applying a small amount of pressure. We met halfway.

“What’s wrong, Seph?”

“You knew,” I spat out. “You saw the recording too?”

He drew back like I had slapped him.

“What’s your first name?” My voice was almost a growl. “Is it Silas?”

Mutely, he shook his head.

“Miro?”

He nodded.

The anger sizzled right off my tongue, melting away into shock. I hadn’t actually expected a positive response. He… “You were in their apartment the other day? And you left?”

Again, he nodded.

“Why aren’t you speaking?”

His breath left him in a rush, and he looked to the door. I wondered if he was considering sending me away, or running away. “This is a little difficult for me.”

I could feel my eyebrow arching. “I don’t get it. What’s difficult?”

“Look, Seph, I can’t really go into specifics right now.”

“When can you?”

His mouth twisted in a grimace. “Maybe next year?”

My mouth fell open. I wouldn’t even be here next year; I’d be in university. Was he saying that he’d never tell me?

He ran a hand over his face and stepped back around his desk, his expression pained, his dark eyes simmering with emotions that flickered by too fast for me to grab a hold of. “You should go now.”

I planted my feet, kicking back the stool; it made a scraping sound against the floor. “No.”

His mouth twitched. “Scared of Cabe and Noah?”

I folded my arms tightly. “No…”

“Liar.” He moved toward me again, taking me by the elbow. Familiar feelings shimmered up my arm, itching into my stomach, and I tried to ignore them. He opened the door. “Don’t be scared of them, Seph. They’re just upset, they don’t understand why you’re ignoring them.”

“They’re only friends with me because of
it
. I was so desperate for friends I tried to convince myself that it was all normal, that the way they treat me is normal… but they’re not
really
my friends. They don’t
really
like—” my voice caught, and I shook my head quickly to clear the looming sadness—“have you
seen
them?” My voice picked up a little bit. “Have you seen
me
? Of course they didn’t just want to be friends with me. I’m a freak, like everyone says.”

His palm slapped against the door and it fell shut again. “What the hell are you talking about? What’s wrong with… you?” His eyes slid from my face but just as quickly returned. There was anger in his face, but there was fear, too.

My mouth fell open, I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with my art teacher, but I waved at my face, at my mismatched eyes and the mottled bruises flowering beneath the foundation I had tried to apply. “I’m a freak,” I repeated, slowly, like maybe he hadn’t heard me properly the first time.

He fell silent, the dominant expression in his dark eyes now that of shock. He fell into the door, hitting it hard with his forehead. “I can’t believe this.”

I had never seen him lose this much composure. Usually he just hovered and observed, pulling me this way and that with his deep voice. Right now his eyes were closed and he seemed to be holding his breath. He drew back from the door, and I still hadn’t moved. Other than the stranger at the bar, Quillan was one of the tallest men that I’d ever stood next to. I had to tip my head right back to meet his eyes.

“You’re a miracle, Seraph. You’re incredible. You just don’t know it yet. Now get the hell out of my classroom.”

I should have put my foot down and stayed, demanded to know why he’d suddenly lost his mind, but he was using that commanding tone of his, and I was obeying before I even knew what I was doing. I was halfway to my music class before his words hit me.

You’re a miracle, Seraph. You’re incredible. You just don’t know it yet.

My book bag fell from my shoulders and a few more safety pins popped off, but I didn’t move. By the time I collected myself and made it to music, the class was almost over. The teacher frowned at me and I muttered an excuse about feeling sick, which she didn’t believe. I dashed straight to the corner of the room, and it only took a second for the boys to corner me.

They each planted a shoulder against the wall, and angled themselves to close the space between them and hide the rest of the noisy class from me. The message was clear: no escaping this time.

“What’s going on?” Noah’s voice was quiet and calm. “Why are you ignoring us?”

You’re a miracle, Seraph.

I started to hyperventilate a little bit, but then someone plugged in a guitar and the loud sound of an amp flare cutting through the room brought me back to earth.

“I was… angry.” My voice was too breathless. “I had been wondering why you two were trying to be friends with me… it didn’t make sense, but now it does. I just—I just hoped maybe—” I cut my hand through the air. I wasn’t even understanding myself anymore.

“You’re going to kill me,” Noah groaned quietly. “Don’t think like that about yourself, Seph. Even if you hadn’t been one of us, we still would have stalked you to the grave.”

I snorted on an unwilling laugh, feeling like he had stolen it right out of my throat, and he grinned.

Cabe looked a little incensed. “We don’t stalk her.”

“If she didn’t want to be friends, we probably would be,” Noah countered.

Cabe tilted his head, considering this. “Yeah, okay.”

I groaned, hitting both of them on the chest, one after the other. They let me, so I did it again, harder. This time Cabe’s hand snaked out and grabbed my wrist. “Alright, you emotional wreck, stop beating up your stalkers please. We need to stay healthy, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

I shook my head, swallowing down another laugh. “You’re absurd.”

6

The Questionable Sanity of Silas Quillan

The rest of the week passed in a cycle of avoidance. Gerald avoided me, I avoided speaking to Quillan, and the boys avoided talking about the Zevghéri. I fell into a normal routine with them, hanging out after school and going to work on my own.

Everything came crashing down again when I opened my locker at the end of the day on Friday. Hundreds of Polaroids spilled out, a mass of them hitting me right in the chest, the rest of them fluttering innocently to the ground. I picked out one and held it up, and then immediately began trying to stuff all of them back into my locker. The one I had picked up was a picture of me sleeping.

It had been taken inches from my face.

Too soon, I found myself facing the back wall of my locker. It had been painted in sloppy red letters.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

The pictures kept sliding back out of my locker, and I was sobbing. One of them had cut my finger, but the sting was muted, existing somewhere in the inconsequential part of my mind that worried about things like homework, and whether I would have clothes warm enough to last me each winter. I could hear the dull whispering of the gathered students rising to an ear-burning babble, and could sense the flash of a cell phone camera, but I was numb with shock. I couldn’t break from the circulatory motion of catching falling photographs and stuffing them back, only to catch them again as there was no room for them to stay. Eventually someone dropped a hand on my shoulder and pulled me back. Quillan picked up one of the pictures and flicked it over. He stilled, looked over my shoulder and his voice boomed out.

Footsteps scurried behind me and the hall cleared.

He tossed the picture into my locker and grabbed another one. He released a slew of curses that managed to shock me even further, and then ran his hands through his dark hair, messing up the perfect style. He pulled out a phone and sent a quick text, before reaching over and empting my book bag. He was on the ground, stuffing pictures into my bag when Cabe and Noah ran into the hallway. Arms tightened around me from behind, pulling me away, and I didn’t resist. The arms turned me, and I caught the electric fury brimming in Noah’s eyes before he lifted me, an arm strapped across my thighs. I stared unblinkingly over his shoulder, and Quillan looked up, meeting my eyes. Fire, consuming and dangerous. I wavered, deciding that I was going crazy. For a minute, Quillan had looked exactly like the stranger from the bar. That confused me more than anything, because my feelings for both men were strong, but vastly different. Quillan was important to me, but the stranger… he
fascinated
me. I didn’t like that they reminded me of each other.

Not at all.

Noah got into the back of the car and I curled into the seat beside him. Cabe wasn’t there, and when I said something about it, Noah told me that he was talking to Tariq.

“I should talk to Tariq too.”

“No.” He brushed the hair from my face. “Sorry, Seph. Seeing you like this will only scare him.”

I sniffed, leaning back to stare at the roof of the car. Someone had been in my house. Someone had been watching me sleep. I had thought that the messenger had given up, but whoever it was had simply been proving a point. They had been following me even closer than ever, and none of us had noticed.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked.

Noah dug into his pockets and dropped a phone into my lap. I looked into his recent contacts, clicking on the one named
Miro Quillan
.

He answered on the first ring. “Yeah?”

“What are the other photos?”

He paused. “Seph…”

“Please.” My voice was strong. I could hear Noah breathing erratically beside me, but I was gaining control of myself quickly.

“They’re all of you in the house, getting dressed, sleeping, fighting with your dad or talking to Tariq. In some of them you’re sleeping on the end of his bed. In some of them you’re in the shower.” He cut his own words off abruptly with the last part, like he wanted to tear out his own throat just for saying it.

“I see.” I didn’t see. I didn’t understand at all.

“Put Noah on the phone.” His voice was a gentle wash, deep and soothing, just like I was accustomed to hearing it. I knew he was forcing it to be that way.

I handed the phone over. In greeting, Noah merely made a sound. Over the speaker, I could hear that Quillan was shouting. Noah hung up without saying goodbye, tossed his phone to the seat beside him, and then picked it up again as Cabe got into the car. He dialled a number, held it out to Cabe, and then dropped an arm over my shoulders. He held onto me tightly enough to convince me that he needed the contact more than I did.

I didn’t listen to what Cabe was saying, but I knew that he was talking to another of the Zevghéri, possibly Silas. I suddenly wished that I hadn’t asked Quillan about the photos. Once Cabe was finished with his call, he wedged the phone into one of the cup holders and started the engine. I closed my eyes and blocked everything else out. Noah’s hands were soothing, tracing over my arm, brushing the hair from my face and spiriting away whatever errant tears dared to track down my cheeks under his almost humorously-careful watch. I knew that they would take me to their apartment, so I didn’t bother to look up as the engine cut off and Noah herded me past their doormen and into the lift. Cabe opened the door to their apartment and muttered a word to somebody who stood inside. A phone rang, and I stared at the black boots of their visitor as I sat down on one of the couches and drew my knees up to my chest. I closed my eyes and smelled fresh spring grass and toffee, and knew that Cabe was beside me. He bundled a blanket around my legs and I screwed my eyes shut even tighter.