Charcoal Tears (31 page)

He’s going to get the wings.

Don’t let them do this.

Eventually I pointed to a tiny silver hoop. It would fit snugly around the top part of my ear. Noah grabbed the attention of the guy behind the counter and pointed out the ring, detailing where I wanted it. The guy kept glancing at me, probably wondering why I wasn’t speaking for myself. The truth was, I wasn’t sure what I would say when I finally opened my mouth. He had almost as many tattoos as Clarin, and there was a line of piercings up his left ear, as well as one through his eyebrow. When he spoke, I saw the flash of something in his mouth—another piercing, presumably.

“You guys are going to have to wait out here,” he said, pulling a part of the counter up and motioning me through it.

He pulled the shelf out from under the display cabinet, extracted my ring, and ushered me through a door. He pointed me to a chair that looked a little bit like a reclining dentist’s chair, and then he swept my hair away from my face.

“Do you talk?” he asked, fiddling with things on a bench beside the chair.

“Sometimes.”

“Which one of those guys is with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Which one is your boyfriend?”

“Ah, none of them.”

He met my eyes for the first time—since it wasn’t so easy for me to look down when I was lying waist-height and horizontal—and he paused a minute, his eyes widening, snapping from my blue-violet eye to my blue-green one. The stillness in the room barely lasted a second, and then he seemed to recover.

“So why get a piercing? Any particular reason? Is it your birthday or something?”

I shrugged. “Not really.”

“You don’t have any piercings at all?” He drew my hair up over the back of the chair, his eyes checking my earlobes.

“Nope.”

“Well, this’ll pinch.”

He had a thing in his hand that faintly resembled a gun, and after he disinfected the area, he put it to my ear and pain shot through me. Without thinking, I gasped and grabbed his arm. He chuckled, putting the gun thing down. Another shock of pain went through me as he slid the hoop through the hole he had just made and secured it. My nails dug into his skin for the barest of seconds and then I quickly took my hand off him, my stomach roiling uncomfortably. I’d been brushing past people at school all day, had touched Clarin’s chest in the car, and now this guy’s arm. I had a feeling I was reaching my quota of physical contact with unfamiliar people. I tucked my hands beneath me as he cleaned my ear, and then he sat back, fiddling again.

“So, can I ask for your number, or are those guys out back going to bury me six feet under?” the guy asked.

“The second option,” Silas answered.

I jumped, looking to the doorway. A girl was leading him into the room, and she was pierced and tattooed enough to convince me that she worked here. My piercer glanced back, seemingly annoyed, and touched my arm in the guise of helping me off the chair. I watched Silas sit down in a different chair, and saw the girl fiddling with her own instruments. He was quite a sight, with his half-bruised face and bandaged hands.

“Hey,” I said to the guy who was leading me back to the door. “Do you think I could watch for a bit?” I tilted my head in Silas’s direction. He followed my eyes, and a smile lit up his face.

“Sure, I don’t see why not. Just you, though.”

Silas glowered, and I was cautious of the feral temper that momentarily glinted. Silas wasn’t a guy that you wanted to piss off, and people hitting on me
really
seemed to piss him off. I didn’t want him following this guy home and beating him to a pulp, so I decided to stay and play bodyguard. I sat in a chair, drawing it a little closer to watch. The guy disappeared out the front for a while, and then came back and drew up a chair next to me, planting his leg over his knee and shuffling it restlessly.

“So, what’s you name?” he asked me.

“Seph.”

“Cool, I’m Danny. That’s Tina.” He motioned to the girl, who flicked us a bored glance.

“Seph is a… different name.” He tilted his head. “Your parents foreign or something?”

I exhaled quickly, the sound partway amused and exasperated. My parents?

“Yeah,” I said. “They’re pretty foreign to me.” Silas’s lips twitched, but I continued speaking, ignoring him. “Seph is actually short for Stephanie. It’s a nickname.”

“Alright.” Tina spun around. “Where do you want it, handsome?”

Silas didn’t answer straight away. He looked at me. “Seph, you should go take those three somewhere before Clarin decides he wants another tattoo and we get stuck here all day. This is going to take a few hours.”

I looked at him dubiously. “Promise me there won’t be any… consequences—” I flicked a glance to Danny so that he knew exactly what I was talking about—“and I’ll go.”

His eyes narrowed, and Danny shared a perplexed look with Tina. Finally, he nodded.

“Thanks.” I gave him a smile and skipped from the room.

I let myself out from behind the counter and pulled my hair back to show Noah my piercing. Cabe and Clarin seemed to have disappeared, and Danny hadn’t followed me out, so we had a moment alone. He brushed a few more strands of hair out of the way and smiled, his stormy eyes flashing with genuine pleasure.

“I like it,” he said, pausing. “It suits you.”

“Good.”

“We’ve got to meet up with Cabe right now before Clarin finishes trying on shoes. We need a moment alone with you.” He led me outside and we met with Cabe as he was walking out of a jewellery store.

He tapped my nose when he saw me. “Hand over Miro’s watch. I need to get a few links taken out so that it fits properly. He’s had the same one since he was fifteen—I doubt he wants to lose it now.”

I unclipped the watch and handed it over. He disappeared inside the shop again and came out a minute later empty-handed.

“Let’s go,” he said to Noah.

They drew me down a short corridor and toward an emergency exit door, and then I found myself on a balcony overlooking one of the busy highways a short distance away. There was a metal tin behind the door filled with cigarette butts.

“Close your eyes and give me your hand,” Cabe said.

I did so, listening to the sounds of traffic and tyring to push away the scratchy feeling caused by his long fingers capturing mine. Even with the odd sensation, his touch was almost comfortable after having felt the piercer’s skin against mine. I blinked my eyes open as I felt him slide a ring onto my second finger, not waiting for him to tell me that I could look, and stared down at. The band was carved into a delicate design, and there was a tiny pearl set into the middle.

“Ohh…” I breathed.
Too much
.
It’s too much
.

“Girlfriend insurance.” Cabe’s voice was entirely too cheerful for how horrible his words made me feel. Weren’t they all taking this a little too far?

I wanted to find fault with the ring, but I still loved it. I touched the pearl setting and looked at Noah, who was watching me for a reaction. Something sparked in my mind then, something that should have occurred to me long before this moment, but somehow hadn’t. I reached out and touched my fingertips to Noah’s chest. Cabe’s expression didn’t alter, but they both shared a flicker of curiosity. I remembered the reaction when I had touched Clarin, and faint alarm bells started to ring in my mind.

I reached out with my other hand and flattened a palm against each of their chests, pushing them gently back to the railing.

“Why doesn’t this bother you?” I fixed both of them with a speculative glance.

“What are you talking about, Seph?” Cabe was wary.

“This.” I tapped his chest, and then tapped Noah’s. “Imagine I was doing this to someone else.”

They both tensed immediately.

“Why the hell would you be doing this to
someone else
?” Cabe asked, his jaw tight.

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but why do you four not seem to care when either one of you touches me, but then you get so… so… angry when someone else does it?”

They didn’t relax, but Noah captured my hand, tugging lightly until I fell against his chest. As if realising it had momentarily abandoned its post, the scratchy discomfort rushed back into me with renewed vigour. “We’re part of a pair,” he explained. “When Cabe touches you… it’s almost like I’m touching you. When you smile at him, it’s kind of like you’re smiling at me. With other people it’s different.”

Noah moved his body in a flash, and I was trapped between them. Cabe’s back was against the railing and Noah had captured my hands, threading his fingers through mine and tugging my arms to his sides, a little way behind me. Cabe pressed against my front, tilting my chin up, his thumb sliding over the side of my jaw and then inching up to brush the underside of my lip. They way they had just coordinated with each other… it shocked me. I knew that it was meant as some kind of demonstration, but my discomfort doubled, and I began to feel lightheaded, the creeping darkness threatening the edges of my vision.

“Don’t—” I started.

“It’s a little different with Silas and Miro,” Noah smoothed over my protest. “They are a pair on their own, but when it comes to you… it’s similar again. When Miro puts up his walls, we can
feel
how much it hurts you, and it hurts us too. So… it’s different, but the same.”

Cabe tilted my head suddenly to the side, and Noah’s head ducked like they could read each other’s minds. Noah’s lips whispered over mine in a kiss so brief, so slight, that the darkness didn’t entirely consume me for it. I almost wished that it had. After only a fraction of a second, Cabe tilted my head back to him, and the door to the balcony swung open. Clarin was there, tapping a cigarette packet against his palm. He froze when he saw us, a wall quickly slamming over his shock, rendering his expression blank. The boys moved so quickly that I stumbled, and found myself hidden behind their backs as they rounded on Clarin. Unfortunately, my faintness from their touches was still with me, and I had to tamp down on the valcrick so that it didn’t give away my discomfort. Whatever Clarin had just seen was bad enough, but to know that it negatively affected me in some way? That wouldn’t be good.

“You saw nothing.” Noah was suddenly cold, and I wanted to reach out to sooth him, but the darkness hadn’t yet receded, so I didn’t dare.

“It looked to me like Cabe was about to kiss another pair’s Atmá,” Clarin said easily. “Or was that just a story that you fed Poison to keep the attention off her? Are you scared that someone will bond with her and steal her away? No—don’t answer that. I saw the looks on your faces when she pulled that valcrick trick today. You don’t want anyone near her. You
and
your brothers.”

I walked out from behind Noah and Cabe, my strength rapidly returning. Whatever secrets the boys were hanging onto, it was important to them that they stayed secret. I wanted them to tell me, but I was willing to wait, and I wasn’t entirely happy with Noah for stealing a kiss from me, but I couldn’t muster the anger that was required to admonish him.

“We’re just fooling around,” I said casually, folding my arms over my chest.

His eyebrows shot up. “You don’t seem the type to fool around, Seph.”

“Oh yeah?” One of my eyebrows twitched up, and I went to move past him, pausing when we were shoulder-to-shoulder. “It’s too bad about
you
, I’m in a bit of an experimental faze right now.”

The shock in his expression made it all worth it, though I worried about the traction of this new lie, since I’d made my stand on getting
boned
awfully clear in the car earlier that day. I wrenched open the door and left them all out there, feeling a small sense of triumph, and a bigger sense of relief, because there hadn’t been any interest in his eyes, only shock, and maybe a little bit of disbelief. They eventually caught up to me and acted like nothing at all had happened.

“You need clothes,” Cabe informed me. “We only have what we got you weeks ago, and that isn’t much. Plus it’s colder here right now.”

“Clothes?” Clarin’s eyes took on a particular gleam—the very gleam that had been missing only minutes ago—and he grabbed my arm, causing me to stiffen. “This is my god-damn
domain
, dudes.”

“Way to play into the stereotype.” Cabe rolled his eyes.

Clarin dragged me toward one of the shops and the boys trailed behind, looking uncomfortable but not interfering. I was glad that Silas wasn’t there. Clarin wasn’t joking. He really did love clothes. He held up things against me, muttering about what was my colour and what wasn’t my colour, and how I needed to stop dressing like a pre-schooler. He loaded his choices up into my arms and then told the boys to go and wait somewhere else, because they were scaring the store assistants.

I glanced over at them hovering on the other side of our clothes rack, their expressions dark and uncomfortable, radiating hostility, and I sighed. “You actually really should go. We’ll be fine.”

They left, and it was almost like the whole shop took a collective sigh of relief. Clarin perked up, and when I couldn’t hold another item of clothing, he shoved me toward the dressing room. He set the pile down outside on a bench and pushed me into a booth, shutting the door behind us.

“Off with them.” He gestured to my clothes and folded his arms, waiting.

“W-what?” I stuttered, backing against one of the padded benches that ringed the little dressing space.

“You heard me, mouse. I need to see what I’m working with.” He tossed a sky-blue dress onto the bench and reached forward, tugging the shirt I wore straight up and over my head.

I stood there, stunned into unmoving silence, realising that I’d cooperated with him out of sheer reflex. Now I quickly wound my arms around my chest and backed up. He was tilting his head, examining me, and there was nothing sexual in his expression at all. He flicked me an annoyed glance and drew my arms away from myself.

“Cut it out, stop being shy or this will take all day. I need to see what I have to work with,” he repeated. “Off with the shorts.”