Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers) (20 page)

Charlie didn’t say anything more to her as she crossed back over to her side of the studio and settled in to start on the section she was painting tonight. She was only able to do a few inches a day, the intricacy of the design and the small space her hand had to work in making it impossible to do too much at once. She was getting ready to make her first stroke when Charlie sat his computer in front of her.

“
Calisthenics
? I haven’t read that in ages,” she said, struggling to keep her tone normal. Problem was, she couldn’t remember what normal sounded like. “It was huge for about five minutes, but then the guy who was writing it, H.C. Charles, stopped posting on a regular basis and everyone went back to reading
Homestuck
. Still, it was a pretty cool webcomic. Did you just now start reading it?”

Instead of answering, Charlie leaned over and made a few clicks and keystrokes. When he pulled back again, Maggie was looking at a screen prompting her to create a new post.

No. Not her.

H.C. Charles.

“I was afraid if I used Hagan someone might figure out it was me, so I just reversed my name. H for Hagan, C for Christopher, and then Charles. H.C. Charles. Me, but the opposite of me.” He rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes locked on the screen instead of Maggie. “It’s lame, but I was like sixteen. I thought I was being deep and artistic.”

“You’re H.C. Charles.” Maggie hit the back button, taking the computer screen back to the public page, and began scrolling through the panels.
Calisthenics
was an alien story, which normally wasn’t her thing, but she’d been drawn in by the art. The minimalist style and sparse use of color was a beautiful backdrop for a story that ended up breaking her heart on a weekly basis. “You didn’t buy your way into your independent study did you?”

“Not with money.” Charlie still wouldn’t meet her eyes. “But I did have to tell him who I was. It was the first time I ever told anyone. I thought after all these years it would be nice to finally have someone give me credit, but it just made me feel like I’d cheapened it somehow.”

Maggie stopped scrolling on a panel where the main character, Chuck, was getting hit by his father. Even though Chuck was an alien done in classic alien style - oversized head, giant black eyes, and tiny mouth - Maggie could still see he was modeled after Charlie.

“No one else knows you did this? You were like an internet celebrity.”

Charlie shrugged. “I didn’t really see much of that. Once it started getting a lot of readers, I turned off the comments and tried to ignore the stuff people were writing about it online.” Finally, he looked at her. “I wasn’t doing it to get famous. I just needed to process. I needed to think, and this was how I did it.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “Of course, I didn’t really realize that was what I was doing until a much better artist pointed it out to me recently. I just thought I was getting back at everyone who was making my life hell by airing their dirty laundry on the internet.”

“What about Jase and Talley? What about Scout? Don’t they know…?” Surely they had to know. Most of the time it was like four bodies sharing one brain.

“They don’t even know that I draw or write or anything. I’ve never been comfortable sharing it with people I know. It just seems like something that should be personal. Private.” Maggie’s chest constricted at the sound of her own words being repeated back to her. He was doing this, laying his soul bare, to make things right between them.

Maggie realized she might be in danger of falling in love with Charlie Hagan.

“What about the rest of it? Did they know about that?”

She probably shouldn’t have asked, but there was no way to take it back now.

“They knew Dad…” He picked at a chip in the table, looking less like the fierce Shifter warrior she’d come to know and more like the vulnerable young alien from his comic. “They knew we didn’t get along and he sometimes hit me.” He peeled back a piece of flaking paint, embedding a splinter in his finger in the process. He pulled the tiny dagger of wood from his flesh and watched as a drop of blood formed. “They didn’t know how bad it was, but they knew enough to try and keep me out of the house and away from him as much as possible. It’s the reason I have custody of Layne. My parents wanted him, but Scout threatened to banish my dad if he didn’t convince social service Layne was better off with us.”

Maggie could see how life had been for him. An alcoholic father who constantly put him down and told him he was worthless and emphasized the point with his fists. A mother who wouldn’t stand up for him, preferring to drown out the yelling and tears by turning up the volume of the show tunes she turned to when things got tense. And all of this he had to endure while pretending everything was okay, while seeing how easy life was for Jase and Scout, whose parents loved and cared for them. He’d spent his teen years feeling like a failure and an outsider.

She understood why the robot existed now. How could one person deal with that much hurt? And it wasn’t like things had gotten easier for him once he was able to escape his craptastic home life. Maggie didn’t exactly know how Scout and Liam rose to power, but she knew it was messy. She knew Charlie had been seriously injured and almost died. She knew his brother had died in some epic Shifter battle. And she knew he carried around the responsibility for Alex’s death, whether he deserved the guilt or not.

Charlie is off fighting his demons.

And he had so very many to slay.

In that moment, she hated the other members of the Alpha Pack for making him fight alone. No one should have to wage wars on that scale by themselves. Maggie had no armor or sword of her own, but she was ready and willing to fight by his side if he would let her.

“You’re amazing,” she told him, too overwhelmed to be embarrassed by how much the awe in her voice gave away.

“At best, I don’t suck, but thanks,” he said, misunderstanding what she found amazing. “Stroud has me working on a new comic. He wants me to ‘stretch myself as an artist’, but I don’t really have anything left to stretch.
Calisthenics
was the absolute edge of my skill set.”

“I doubt that.” Unlike Charlie, Maggie had spent her whole life devoted to art. He was obviously untrained, and his art lacked polish, but there was so much raw talent there it took her breath away. Under Stroud’s guidance, Charlie could become the kind of artist whose name was whispered with reverence in comic shops and cons. “
Calisthenics
is good, but you could be better. And I know you, Charlie Hagan. You’re not going to just coast by. You’re going to work your ass off to make sure this new comic makes fan girls weep in the streets over its sheer amazingness. Hearts will break. Panties will burst into flames. And anyone who knows a damn thing about comics will hate themselves for not having done it themselves.”

“So much faith.” He stepped forward so his jeans were tickling the insides of her knees. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

His thumb was warm as it traced across her jawline. “Live in this world and still believe there is good in it? That there is good in me?”

“How can you live in this world and not see the good in it? How can you not know who you really are?”

With every breath they were drawing closer and closer together. Maggie’s entire body buzzed and tingled in anticipation.

“Who am I, Maggie?”

“You’re Charlie Hagan. Stratego of the Alpha Pack. Creator of one of the most well-regarded web comics of all time.” She breathed in the scent of him. Cinnamon and male. “You’re a fighter of demons and protector of innocents.” Unable to stop herself, she finally did what she’d been dreaming of since she first met him and placed her lips against his. It was just a fleeting caress, but she felt it deep in her soul. “You’re beautiful,” she said, knowing it wasn’t a strong enough word to describe him.

Charlie closed his eyes as if he could hide from her words. His forehead tilted down until it rested against hers. Maggie felt his breath warming her face and once again gave into temptation, turning so she could gift him with another peck against the corner of his lips.

“I can’t be what you need me to be.” The whisper sounded as if it had been wrung out of him.

A pronounced ache settled in her chest, but she wasn’t going to let this fragile thing they were starting end here and now. She wasn’t a quitter.

“Then I’ll take whatever you can give me.”

Monarch, Tennessee was one of those small, depressing southern rural towns whose nicest buildings were a Wal-Mart and McDonald’s.

“Left on Vine, and then a right onto Third,” Maggie directed, her fingers tapping out a nervous rhythm on her thigh.

Taking Maggie home for Thanksgiving was the absolute least Charlie could do for Maggie, but he’d almost failed at even that, thanks to his Alphas.

“I understand wanting to see your family and all that jazz, but in case you’ve forgotten, there is still a killer on the loose who wants to see her dead,” Scout had said when he brought it up.

As if he could forget. The painting remained stretched out on the wall in the gym where he worked out on a daily basis. No one had seen any reason to move it, and this way they could all sit around and study it whenever they thought they had a clue, which was less and less often. There had been no more direct attacks since the brake line was cut on the Humvee, and there had been very little information on Mandel coming in over the past three months. Liam had even gone so far as declaring Mandel an enemy of the Alpha Pack, but still they had very little to go on. A map was taped up next to the painting, thumbtacks marking places where people had reported seeing him.

So far, the map boasted only three thumbtacks.

Charlie didn’t know if it was because Mandel was hiding so effectively, or if it was due to a lack of support for the new Alphas. Either way, they weren’t getting much help from the general Shifter population, and they’d already used every resource they had at their disposal. At this point, it was a wait and see game, which was turning into a whole lot of waiting with no seeing to show for the effort.

In the end, Charlie had won the argument. It wasn’t more than a quick pass-through anyway. It couldn’t be. The full moon was Thursday night, so they were driving down on Wednesday afternoon and would be on the road again tomorrow. Luckily, Maggie’s family didn’t seem to mind turning the holiday into an eat-lunch-and-run event. His own parents would have had more than a few unkind words to say if he suggested doing the same thing at their house, which was one of the many reasons he wasn’t going there.

“It’s two driveways up. The one with the red car in it.”

He turned in behind an old Mustang. It was one of the hatchbacks from the early 90s that didn’t look so much like a sports car as a really small and confused family car. The paint was originally red, like Maggie had said, but one of the doors was now black and the bumper, which didn’t look like it was exactly the right size, had been spray-painted blue.

Charlie finally understood why Maggie seemed so relieved when he’d suggested taking the truck he’d inherited from his grandfather instead of the Humvee.

“So, this is it,” Maggie said, her voice quaking.

He didn’t know how to respond. He would have said it was nice, but they would both known it was a lie. This was obviously the wrong-side-of-the-nonexistent-tracks side of town, and Maggie’s house wasn’t one of the nicer ones on the block. Some effort had been taken to keep the yard clean and neat, and the roof wasn’t half-caved-in like one of the neighbors, but that was about as positive as you could get about the tiny house with peeling paint and taped-up windows.

“I guess I should have mentioned we’re dirt poor, huh?”

Maggie’s face was flushed with embarrassment, which made Charlie feel like a complete ass. Like it mattered where she lived.

“You should ask Liam about the first place he lived in Timber.” She gave him one of her I’m-not-falling-for-this looks. “Seriously. I’m still not sure how a guy his size was able to walk around without the whole thing collapsing around him.”

A shadow appeared in the window. The curtains moved back just enough for a sliver of a woman’s face to be seen, her eye narrowing on the truck and its occupants.

“This was a bad idea,” Maggie said. “Let’s just go back home. Or to Scout’s parents. Or Vegas.” Her eyes were pleading when they met his. “Please? Anywhere but here?”

Charlie responded by opening the driver’s door and sliding out into the crisp November air. Almost immediately the front door of the house swung open and a tiny little Asian woman darted down the stairs.

“Maggie Mae!” she squealed, arms stretched out as she sprinted around to the side of the truck where Maggie was dragging herself from the passenger’s seat. “I’ve missed you, sweeting.”

“It’s nice to see you, too, Mother,” Maggie replied drily.

“And you!” Maggie’s mom, whose name Charlie thought might have been Lynn, turned in a dramatic sweeping movement. She clasped her hands to her chest as her eyes roamed all over Charlie’s body in a way that made him want to find a trusted adult and tell them someone’s mommy made him uncomfortable. “My goodness, Maggie Mae. You’ve certainly outdone yourself in the boyfriend department.”

“Charlie isn’t my boyfriend, Mother.” New splotches of red having nothing to do with the cool wind whipping around them spread across her cheeks. “I’ve already told you that more than once.”

Lynn draped an arm over Maggie’s shoulder, which only served to highlight how dramatically different they were. It wasn’t because Maggie’s skin was so much darker or her hair was a wild, kinky mass of curls while her mother’s dark hair was so straight and shiny it seemed to be made of glass. No, the major differences between Maggie and her mother had nothing to do with the physical traits she inherited from her father.

Standing there, Maggie looked like… well, like Maggie. She was wearing gray wool tights, a pleated black skirt, a vintage CBGB t-shirt, and a purple pea coat. Even if he couldn’t see anything but the outfit, he would know it was her in a room filled with a hundred people.

On the other hand, her mother was wearing a pair of skinny jeans, an Abercombie shirt he would have thought came from the kid’s section if Abercrombie & Fitch had a children’s section, and a pink jacket with “pink” spelled out in pink rhinestones on the back, just in case you were confused as to what you were seeing. Basically, she looked like a million other teenage girls in the world. Problem was, she wasn’t so much a teenager as the mother of a teenager.

“Sweetie, if you’re waiting for something better to come along, just give up now, because you are not going to get any better than that.”

Charlie squirmed under another all-over perusal, and Maggie threw a hand over her face, muttering something about how dying of embarrassment would be a welcome relief at this point.

Realizing she wasn’t going to get anything other than uncomfortable looks from the two of them, Lynn gave a dramatic sigh. “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing you two are ‘just friends.’” She added an eye-roll to the sarcasm and air-quotes. “You’re going to have to share a bed while you’re here, and I’m definitely not ready to be a grandma yet.”

Maggie tensed under her mom’s arm. “What do you mean we have to share a bed? Charlie can sleep on the pullout.”

“We don’t have it anymore,” Lynn said, dropping her arm and giving Maggie the freedom to move closer to the truck. Charlie could see the desire to jump in and drive away in her eyes.

“What do you mean we don’t have the pullout anymore? Did it break?”

Her mother played with the zipper on her jacket. “I sold the couch.”

“You sold the couch.”

“I needed the money.”

“For what?”

Lynn shrugged. “Stuff. Like the electric bill.”

“Mom, I pay the electric bill. Try again.”

Lynn turned to Charlie, all batting eyelashes and pouting lips. “Do you hear how she talks to me? Is that any way for a child to speak to her mother?”

It is if you don’t realize you’re supposed to act like a mother.

“Don’t worry about the sleeping arrangements,” Charlie said instead. “I’ve got a sleeping bag. I can just crash on the floor somewhere.”

Maggie’s eyes met his from across the bed of the truck. “I told you this was a bad idea,” she said. “Let’s just go.”

“Leave? What? You can’t leave, Maggie Mae. You just got here.” A tear trailed down the side of her face, but instead of making Charlie feel sorry for her, he kind of wanted to shake her a few times and tell her to get ahold of herself. “I’m sorry I sold the couch. I know you worked really hard to get enough money to buy it, but the brakes went out on the Mustang again, and it’s the only way I can get to work. I had to do something.” She surged forward and grabbed onto her daughters hands. “Please don’t leave me, baby girl. I miss you so much it hurts.”

Maggie closed her eyes and took a deep breath before finally giving in and wrapping her arms around her mother. While they embraced, Charlie went ahead and got their bags out of the truck.

An hour later, Charlie was looking at the pictures covering the wall of the living room when an older man saddled up next to him, a can of Budweiser in one had. The smell had Charlie’s stomach working itself into knots. Beer had always been his father’s drink of choice.

“Who are you, Charlie Hagan?” Maggie’s grandfather asked. Charlie had been introduced to the burly man when he’d entered the house. Even though he hadn’t lived in Scotland since he was five, Barron McCray still had a touch of an accent. According to Maggie, he clung onto it for dear life, out of fear that once he lost it he wouldn’t be able to ramble on about
“the way things are done in Scotland”
for hours on end any longer.

“Charlie Hagan, sir,” Charlie said, even though the man obviously already knew his name. Still, what was he supposed to say? If Maggie had asked, he would have had a million different answers.
“I’m the guy who thinks of you twenty-four hours a day;” or “I’m the guy who doesn’t deserve your friendship but is damn grateful he has it anyway;” or “I’m the guy who can rip the door off of a car if the moon and mood is right, but would rather run and hide than talk to your grandfather.”
“I go to school with Maggie.”

Mr. MrCray studied Charlie’s expression in the reflection afforded by the glass in all the picture frames. “I want to know what you are to my granddaughter.”

“I’m her friend,” Charlie replied automatically, although even he wasn’t stupid enough to think that was the right word for what they were to one another. She wanted more. It was obvious when they were together, leaned against one another on the couch as they watched whatever BBC nonsense Jase and Talley were forcing on them or while they were bent over a project one of them was working on. In those moments Maggie would look at him like she was waiting for something to change, for their relationship to finally make that final shift. As if he had something more he could give her. As if he was holding part of himself back. What she didn’t understand was there was no more of himself left to give. The part of him she wanted was gone forever, and it was only when he was with her he regretted losing it. Because in those moments, he wanted to give her everything he’d once been and more.

Charlie looked around for an escape route, but there was nowhere to go. He could hear Maggie humming in the shower where she retreated to hide from her family, and he silently begged her to hurry up and save him.

“What are you doing with your life, Charlie?”

“Ummm… I go to school?”

The old man narrowed his eyes. “You plan on staying there your whole life?”

“God no.” While it wasn’t nearly as bad as he imagined, Charlie was looking forward to the day he didn’t have to sit through a lecture ever again. “I’m going into the service.” Because being in the Alpha Pack was technically a type of service, right?

Mr. McCray rocked back on his heels. “I was in the army for eight years. It’s how I met my wife.” He pointed to an orange-hued picture of a young man in a uniform with his arm wrapped around a woman who looked almost identical to Maggie’s mom. “I was stationed in Japan. She worked at a little store just off the base, and I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I made excuses to go to that damn store every day. Sometimes I would beg the other guys to let me go buy their smokes or magazines for them just so I could see her.”

“Your strategy obviously worked,” Charlie said. There were several pictures of the couple scattered across the wall, and in all of them, they were clinging onto one another as if they were the only things worth having in this whole world.

“It did. We got married right before I got shipped back to the States. I couldn’t leave her there, and luckily, she felt the same way.”

They didn’t speak for a while. Mr. McCray seemed to be lost in his memories while Charlie tried to figure out where this conversation was going.

“I may be an old man, Charlie, but I’m still a man,” Mr. McCray said, breaking the silence when Charlie was getting to the point that he was thinking about just walking away. “I know what you’re thinking about when you look at my granddaughter—“

“We’re just friends.”

The old man turned, his eyes drilling into Charlie. “You seem like a good kid, Charlie, but she deserves better than you.” And with that he drained the last of his beer and shoved past Charlie into the kitchen.

Charlie’s gaze went back to the wall of pictures and stopped on one of a Kindergarten-aged Maggie, her hands caked in mud and a blinding smile on her face. Mr. McCray hadn’t told Charlie anything he didn’t already know. Maggie did deserve better than what he could give her. He’d been saying the same thing for a month now. But knowing that didn’t stop the growing ache in his chest or the desire to prove the old man wrong.