Touch (Denazen #1)(47)

“You should have let this go,” he whispered as he leaned in, brushing his lips to mine.

Electric at first, so much like our first kiss—but it quickly changed. From my toes to my chin, everything started to sting and itch. I pulled away from Kale, who smiled sweetly at me. Looking down at my hands, my pulse spiked. Right before my eyes, my skin began to pale—then gray, finally shriveling like a grape left out in the sun. I watched as my hands crumbled, starting at the tips of my fingers and working down to my wrists. Next were my arms. Around my face, my hair fell to the ground, tiny tufts of dust rising as chunks of it impacted the grass.

Then there was nothing.

I woke up drenched in a cold sweat and gasping for air. I’d barely caught my breath when a loud knock came from the other side of my door. Dad’s voice, cold and sharp, called, “We leave in twenty minutes.”

§

“Tell me about your gift,” the bulky man asked as he entered the room. No hello-how-are-you. No, hi-my-name-is. These people were obsessed.

“What do you want to know about it?” I asked, leaning back against the far wall. The first thing I’d done when I walked in the room was check out the floor. No metal wires.

“You can start by telling me what it is.”

“I, uh, can change things.”

“Define change things.”

“I can mimic things. Change one thing to another, as long as the size is relatively the same and I’m touching both objects.”

The man looked around for a moment, before digging into his pocket. He handed me a pencil and a ballpoint pen. “Demonstrate.”

I took them from him. Yet another reason I’d never told anyone. Being asked to perform on command like a monkey dancing for change on the corner pissed me off. Squeezing both writing utensils between my fingers, I closed my eyes. The pain was instant and fierce, sending stabbing prickles down my neck and into my shoulders. When I opened my eyes, I had two pens—and a slowly fading headache. He took them from me, scribbling a line on the back of his hand with each one. “It’s solid. It actually writes.”

I shrugged. “Of course it writes.”

“So if you were to say, change a plum to a nectarine, it would taste like a nectarine?”

I nodded.

He seemed fascinated. “We have a shifter who works for us, but her shifts are nothing more than illusions. Tricks to fool the mind. And she can only change herself. Nothing foreign.” He set the pens. down “What about people?”

“People?”

“Can you change into another person?”

I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Suddenly, the room got a whole hell of a lot smaller. I couldn’t even imagine what a mimic like that would do to my body. Fry my brain? Liquefy my internal organs? “I’ve never tried it.” Despite my best efforts, my voice shook because I knew what was coming next.

Folding his arms impatiently across his chest, the man said, “Well, no time like the present.”

“I really don’t think—”

He tapped his watch. “I’m not getting any younger. Let’s go.”

Crap. Shaking slightly, I took his hand. It was clammy and I had to resist the urge to gag. Closing my eyes, I focused on his bulbous nose and chubby cheeks. The pain came fast. Shooting needles up and down my spine. I tried to swallow, but it felt like my throat was swollen. Trying to take a deep breath, I panicked when I realized I couldn’t feel my ribs. After an agonizing few moments, I collapsed, gasping for air. “I can’t.”

Squeezing my hand harder, he hissed, “Try again.”

Talk about performance anxiety. I closed my eyes and tried to focus. In the pit of my stomach, something snapped. A few seconds passed. The hair on the back of my neck tingled. Something wasn’t right. I tried to take a step away from him, but my feet felt weird. Heavy and too big. When I managed a glance down at my hands, I gasped. So did the man. Sausage-like fingers attached to wrinkled, mocha-skinned hands instead of the pale, long fingers I was so used to.

He released me and I sank to the ground. Coughing, I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. When I brought it away, it was streaked with red. Don’t let him see you panic! I rubbed my hand over the soft material of my tank to hide the evidence.

He was eyeing me like a hungry lion would an elk. In order to unmimic something, I had to be touching both items. Technically there wasn’t a me to touch anymore—something I should have thought of before I’d tried this. Would it even work? The thought of being stuck in this guy’s body made me sicker than the actual mimic. And that was saying a lot. I closed my eyes and prayed to God that my insides—which technically I was touching cause they were inside—were still my own.

The edges of the room began to water. Ears popping, I had to force the air painfully in and out of my lungs to keep from passing out. The pain, if possible, was worse than before. On a scale of one to ten, it was peaking at about fifty. When my vision cleared, I saw the edges of my small, pale hands braced against the cool tile floor. Had I done internal damage? What if I’d broken something? Poked a hole in a vital organ or caused a hemorrhage in my brain? Oh, God. What if I hadn’t been able to change completely back? External things that used to be his could now be mine… Extra appendages… I squeezed my legs together and let out a sigh of relief. No leftover man-bits.