Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) (10 page)

Finally Scout broke the silence with a sigh. “Liam is sticking around until we catch whoever is behind this mess. He can shadow her while she’s on campus.”

“I’m sure the campus police will be cool with some large, scary-looking guy just skulking around campus. No way will it raise any red flags and get us unwanted attention.”

“Then we’ll just get him enrolled in all of her classes.” Scout shook her head as if agreeing with herself over such a splendid plan. “That could totally work.”

“Sorry, but it won’t.”

Scout shot Maggie a look to remind her she was talking to one of the most powerful Shifters in the world. “Yes, it will. We’re the Alpha Pack. We have connections.”

“Unless your connection is with Hendrick Stroud, it isn’t going to work.” And while Maggie didn’t doubt the Alpha Pack’s connections  extended throughout the world, she felt certain the mercurial art genius wasn’t one of them. “Most of my classes are art labs in Rosa Hall, and only independent study and grad students are allowed inside. Stroud is the only art prof who isn’t mentoring an independent study student right now.”

“Hendrick Stroud…” Charlie’s eyebrows darted down. “Like the guy who illustrated one of those new runs of
Batman
?”

Hendrick Stroud was a world-renowned artist, and the four issues of
Batman
he’d illustrated were some of the best selling comic books of the last few years, but still Maggie was surprised Charlie knew who he was. “Yes, that Hendrick Stroud. Sanders recruits some of the best artists in the world to be on their staff. It’s what draws in the rich kids. And they’ll do anything to keep their rockstar artists happy, including letting them get away with only accepting one independent study student every five years. Stroud just graduated his last one in May, so it’ll probably be another four years before he picks out another.”

“So, he teaches like illustrations and stuff?”

“Yes, he’s the drawing professor.”

Charlie paced a couple of steps, his hand squeezing the back of his neck. “I’ll do it,” he said, looking over where Scout sat.

“You’ll do what?”

“I’ll go talk to this Stroud guy and get registered for all of Maggie’s classes.”

Maggie tried to trample down the strange fluttering in her chest. Spend all day, every day with Charlie?

Oh hell no.

“Were you listening to me? It’s not happening. Stroud won’t accept you unless you’re some sort of undiscovered genius.”

“You can go tomorrow,” Scout said to Charlie. “I’ll get Liam to cover her for the day, and then you can pick up on Tuesday.”

“Seriously, guys. You heard me say this isn’t going to work, right? I mean, I am talking aloud and not just in my head?”

“You’ll need to reassign some of my duties here if I’m going to be hanging around campus all day.”

“Joshua?”

“He’ll whine like a baby that you’re making him stay awake in the daylight hours.”

“True.” Scout shook her head slowly as a wide grin spread across her face. “Which is exactly why I’m making you tell him.”

“I hate you,” Charlie said, his words carrying the exact opposite of malice.

“You love me. I’m your queen.” On that announcement, Scout sprang from the chair in a move so quick and graceful it looked like a special effect. “Well, I suppose my work here is done. Maggie, give Charlie a copy of your schedule. Liam will meet you downstairs in the morning to shadow you until Charlie can get everything worked out.”

“And when Charlie can’t get everything worked out?” Which he wouldn’t. Maggie didn’t feel confident about too many things at this point in her life, but on this fact she was certain. There was no way Charlie was weaseling his way into the world she’d been working towards for years in just one day.

“It’s Charlie,” Scout said pulling her hands over her head and stretching her body back into a perfect crescent. “If he says he can do it, he can do it. He’s pretty awesome that way.”

“But Stroud—“

“You got anything else for me, Boss Woman?” Charlie turned so his back was to Maggie. She took a moment to entertain the idea she might have actually turned invisible and mute over the last few minutes.

“Carry me to my room?” Scout asked, releasing her body from the odd angle. Somehow she even managed to make crumbling in exhaustion look graceful.

Charlie rubbed the back of his neck again, discomfort breaking through the carefully constructed robot mask. “Yeah, I don’t think your mate would like that too much.”

It sounded like Scout muttered, “Like he would notice,” but since Charlie didn’t react, Maggie decided she’d imagined it.

With Charlie refusing to assist her, Scout made her own way to the door. “You coming with?” she asked him, holding it open.

His eyes met Maggie’s, and for a moment she worried he would stay.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Gotta go run down Layne. It seems we’ve both gotta get ready for school tomorrow.”

Charlie hadn’t been on a college campus since he dropped out three weeks before finals over two years ago. He’d had every intention of being back in class on Monday when he drove off that Friday afternoon, but then life (and death) got in the way. And even though he’d gone in expecting to leave with a degree, the fact that he never actually finished didn’t bother him.

Until now.

“I feel like an old creeper,” he said, leaning over the back of one of the many benches decorating the campus.

Liam didn’t look up from the game he was playing on his phone. “You’re twenty, which makes you the same age as everyone else.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprising bit of information, but it was. He supposed it was true - after all, he would be a senior now if he’d stuck with it - but watching a couple of guys kick around a soccer ball, he just couldn’t see it.

“They seem younger.”

Liam put down his phone and made a point of looking around. “I don’t know. I’m not sure more carefree and less embittered are necessarily the same thing as younger.”

“Hey, I’m not bitter.”

Liam snorted as he picked his phone back up. “Keep telling yourself that, sunshine.”

Charlie would’ve argued the point, but he knew it was useless. It wasn’t because Liam was Alpha. Sure, some people might agree with everything he said just because they felt the need to completely submit to the title, but Charlie wasn’t one of them. The two of them started building a friendship after Liam’s brother Alex died, and Toby’s death brought them even closer. They understood each other in a way no one else could. And one thing Charlie understood about Liam was he didn’t feel the need to argue a point with you when pointed silence did such a marvelous job on its own.

Since Liam’s eyes were still glued to the screen of his phone, Charlie leaned over to see exactly what level of candy he was crushing and was surprised to see a tiny map covered in red dots.

“Infrared?”

“Yeah, it’s reading the heat signatures of everyone in a hundred yard radius. We’re far enough from the new moon that even the least dominant of Shifters should be showing a little warmer than normal.”

Charlie took a closer look, and sure enough, two dots right next to each other were a bit brighter than those around them. 

“I always knew I was hot.” His statement only got an eye roll from his Alpha. “I’m guessing this is a Joshua original?”

Liam zoomed in on a new dot moving into the area, and then zoomed back out when it was obviously a human. 

“One of these days I’m going to figure out exactly who that guy is and what all he’s done in his long life,” Liam said, referring to the Immortal who rarely spoke of his past but always seemed to be able to pull the most random, unexplainable knowledge out of his ass, like how to create a phone app that could read heat signatures.

Charlie walked around the bench and sat down by Liam. “Don’t count on it. I’m pretty sure he was part of the CIA for a while. You’re not going to get anything out of him he doesn’t want to share.”

“Which is exactly why I want to know so damn bad. I hate secrets. They make me stabby.”

Charlie thought about pointing out how some of the phrases Liam was picking up from Scout made him sound less manly, but decided against it. For one, he wasn’t really feeling up to Liam proving his masculinity through fisticuffs. And for another, it would take all the enjoyment he and Jase got out of laughing at him whenever he spouted one off.

Liam once again zoomed in on a new dot. When he didn’t immediately zoom out, Charlie looked over his shoulder.

“It’s just a touch brighter than the others. Looks like someone just has a fever to me,” he said, wondering how accurate Joshua’s new toy was.

“Yeah, probably...” Liam zoomed in a bit more and then looked at the building in front of them. The dot appeared to be just around the corner. “Want to take a walk?”

Charlie followed Liam around the building, making note of every person they passed. Sanders didn’t have a lot of students, but it also didn’t have a very big campus. The entire school covered about one city block, which meant the lawns and sidewalks were filled with students busily rushing from one place to another or just hanging out between classes. With that many people, Charlie couldn’t pull out individual scents, so he had to rely on observation and gut instinct to decide whether or not there were any rogue Shifters lurking about.

“So, we’re still thinking it’s an inside job?” Charlie asked, immediately dismissing an overweight guy who tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

After Charlie left Maggie’s room, where he’d somehow managed to not apologize for his previous actions like he’d meant to and ended up signing on to be her full-time bodyguard instead, Liam called a meeting of the Alpha Pack. Scout laid out what they’d found in the barn, from the body of Barros to the painting they’d found. 

“Obviously, there are some members of the Shifting community who don’t agree with how we’re doing things,” Liam said. “Thankfully, they were kind enough to leave us a hit list so we’ll know where to concentrate our efforts.”

“Not true.” Charlie had thought Aunt Rachel was asleep until she spoke.

“Which part?” Jase asked. “That’s not a hit list, or it’s not a group of unhappy Shifters?”

Unfortunately, Aunt Rachel’s Sight wasn’t an exact instrument. As a Truth Seer, she could detect flat-out lies with ease, but other truths were a bit trickier. They’d rephrased each of the statements in as many ways as they could imagine, but her sight remained dormant. They’d argued about which was more likely to be wrong until they were all so sleepy they could barely keep their eyes open. When they’d finally agreed to call it a night, they were no closer to coming to a decision than they had been hours before.

“Shifters is the only answer that makes sense,” Liam said, not for the first time. “Who else knows who, what, and where we are?”

He paused at the edge of a grassy area and looked at his phone again. His eyes roamed the space until coming to rest on a girl whose pale coloring, bloodshot eyes, and chapped nose were obvious even from ten feet away. 

It seemed the answer to,
“How accurate is Joshua’s new toy?”
was,
“Freakishly accurate.”

“Do you ever thank God that Joshua is on our side?” Charlie asked.
 

Liam nodded. “Every single day.”

There were more students on this side of the building, most of them sprawled across the grass in a style of clothes that ranged from I-think-I’m-a-hippie-but-I-really-just-smoke-pot to I’m-not-a-hipster-because-hipsters-are-passé. It didn’t surprise Charlie at all to see Rosa Hall written on the top of the building.

He wondered what Maggie did there. He added,
should have asked her what type of art she does
to his growing list of things he’d done wrong the night before. It was wedged under
forgot to apologize
,
purposefully scared her
, and
threatened her life
.

“Maggie is inside?” he asked, hating himself for the effort it took to sound nonchalant. What did it matter if he was interested in where she was? They were supposed to be guarding the girl. Of course he was interested in her whereabouts.

“Yeah, she’s--” Liam zoomed in on a section of the phone screen, zoomed out, and then focused in on a different section. “She’s...”

“Liam, please tell me you haven’t lost the Thaumaturgic.” Because if he had, then Charlie was going to have to give into these feelings of panic that were tingling in his chest.
 

“Wow, I’m so glad I’ve got you two around to keep me safe.”
 

Charlie turned towards the familiar voice. She was once again wearing a brightly colored grandma dress, but today the colors were muted by a coating of white powder that seemed to cover the majority of her body.

“You’re filthy,” he blurted out before realizing how incredibly rude he sounded.

“Thank you for noticing,” was her reply, given with a sarcastic smile.
 

Damn. So much for making a better third impression.

“So, how quick did Stroud shoot you down?” she asked as her hands danced across her dress, sending white powder flying into the air.

“He didn’t.”

“He didn’t what?”

“He didn’t shoot me down.” Charlie reached into his back pocket and pulled out his new student ID, making sure Maggie could see the gold stripe running across the top indicating his status as an independent study student. “We’re now officially study buddies.”

Charlie didn’t think eyes as dark as Maggie’s could be very expressive. They were so black they couldn’t bleach out like Scout’s did when she was angry or darken like Talley’s did when she was sad. There was such a small difference between the iris and pupil it would take considerable effort to see if the center was expanding or contracting. But despite the disadvantages caused by their color, Charlie could see everything Maggie was thinking when he met her eyes.

He tried not to be offended at her shock and disbelief. It’s not like she really knew anything about him, and Stroud had been a hard sell. It wasn’t difficult to see why someone would doubt the man would be willing to take on what he’d termed “an extra headache.”

“How much did that piece of plastic cost us?” Liam asked.

“Don’t worry. We can cover it.”

Maggie’s obsidian eyes narrowed along with the rest of her features. “You paid him off?”

“You’re angry,” Charlie said, rather stupidly. It was amazing actual physical daggers weren’t flying out of her eyes.

“The faculty is only required to accept one independent study student every five years.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“You didn’t just buy yourself a spot, you sold someone else’s.” The top of her head barely reached his shoulders, but he felt like she was looming over him. “Someone who has spent hour after hour, day after day, year after year for a chance to study under one of the greatest artists living today. Someone who deserves the chance to make their dreams come true. And you’ve just…,” her tiny body shook with fury, “
wasted
it.”

There was a time when Charlie would have let her words get to him. Guilt and empathy for the unknown person he’d wronged would have left him feeling sick until he made it right. But that was before he’d taken up an eighteen-month residence at the bottom of the pit of human emotions. He’d found his way back out into the light of day, but he’d emerged a changed man. In order to not feel the pain, he had to give up the ability to feel much of anything at all.

All in all, he thought it was a pretty good trade. Charlie was on close, intimate terms with pain, and he would choose muted emotions over revisiting it any day of the week.

“Fortunately for you, I value human life more than someone’s chance to have some arrogant ass sneer at them while he devalues their talent and hard work.” He leaned forward, crowding into Maggie’s space. “If you’re going to point a finger at me, you might take note of the three that pointing back at you. I wouldn’t be here if you had taken our advice and just took a semester or two off.”

In the move he’d made to keep from feeling like Maggie was lording over him, Charlie had moved into a position in which Maggie had to tilt her head back completely to look him in the eyes. Too late, he realized it was the same position they would be in if he was about to kiss her. And once his brain went there, he couldn’t seem to reign it back. His gaze was stuck on the dusky rose of her lips, and he became overly aware of the scent of lilacs and vanilla coming from her skin. He licked his lips without thought and saw on her face the moment she too realized the position they found themselves in. A blush darkened her satin cheeks. As he watched the color spread from her high cheekbones to the long column of her neck he imagined what it would be like to follow the same path with his lips.

Holy inappropriate thoughts, Batman.

“Don’t you dare push the blame off on me.” Why did her voice have to be so low and raspy? That certainly wasn’t helping matters. “My life was perfectly calm and uneventful until you guys brought attention to me.”

“Calm and uneventful? That sounds like a grand old time. I’m sorry you had to give it up.”

“It may not have been the nonstop party that is being a member of the Alpha Pack, but it was safe.”

Charlie’s coyote paced beneath the surface, savoring the way they drew even closer to one another as they argued. It wanted to pounce, and Charlie was having trouble keeping it leashed. He wanted to tell her to run. He didn’t know what would happen if he let that side of himself out again, but he knew for certain she wouldn’t survive it intact. But no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t get the words past his lips.

“Sorry to interrupt the foreplay you two have going on there,” Liam said, breaking the spell, “but you should know we’re being watched.”