Braving the Elements (Darkness #2)(14)

“She isn’t working for Trek. She’s barely working for herself, and she has a vested interest in staying alive. She learns incredibly fast with hands-on, but try to explain something to her and at the end of your sermon, she’ll still be looking at a flower instead of you, completely oblivious. She isn’t a spy. Definitely is not a spy.”

“How can you be sure? Spies are deceptive…”

Charles laughed. “Yeah, she’s deceptive, all right. You’ll think she’ll say or do one thing, then she does something else entirely, not even knowing why herself. No, spend any amount of time with her. That chick ain’t no spy!”

Jameson shook his head, his glance passing by Stefan. He worried. Hell, so did Stefan in the beginning.

The blockage cleared suddenly, and just like that, he felt her again. Her misery, her depression, her utter hopelessness. Stefan’s heart constricted. He started to run.

*****

I came awake slowly, my body sore and the grief still fresh. I’d run for a while, blasting through underbrush and dodging around trees, but my directionless plight finally sank in. Until I got on my feet, I needed Stefan’s hospitality. The only other people who could possibly take me in were my foster family, and they’d already done so much of that my whole life, I couldn’t ask for more.

Hopelessness washed over me again. I needed to get a job. I had to quit the crappy school job I had when I took up this gig. I had renter’s insurance, so I probably had some sort of money coming my way, but I needed a steady income to live. That was probably step one. Except, there was that tiny problem of monsters tracking me down and dragging me away to a group of people even less hospitable than Stefan’s clan…

Sitting up painfully, having slept for an indiscriminate amount of time on jagged rocks, I sensed a presence in the failing evening light. My head swung to the left as my midsection gave a lurch. I recognized the supportive, luring feeling of the link between us before my eyes hit his perfect face. Stefan stood some ten feet away, leaning against the tree, staring at me with his striking, dark eyes.

My body immediately leaned forward, wanting to go to him as I always had before. My mind, however, rebelled.

“You’re angry.” His voice was so deep and thick. It coated me in pleasure just by reaching my ears.

I mentally slapped myself and retorted, “Did the scowl give me away?”

“That was one indication, yes. Plus, I can feel you as you can feel me. I can sense you as you can sense me. Always have been able to, but now it’s clearer since you’ve taken large quantities of my blood in a short period of time.”

No problem. I imagined myself lifting a giant, rubber drain stop and smothering that blasted pit in my chest that constantly asked to be filled with him. I may learn incredibly slowly, but eventually I do learn, and since doing it in the height of my emotional crazy, I knew what to do now.

His head tilted and his eyes hardened. “That trick is not supposed to be possible. How do you do it?”

“A woman never tells.”

His eyebrows lowered a fraction, his long black lashes casting shadows over his eyes as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. I’d lost a whole day atop a pile of rocks. “I wish you would leave it open. Let the connection last. It’s comforting.”

“So you know I’m not in enemy hands? That I’m right under your nose where you can keep tabs on me? Like a pet.”

“Yes. Be thankful it isn’t a shock collar.”

His chiseled face remained impassive, as did his eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

Lifting my chin like it didn’t matter, I climbed to my feet and dusted myself off. “Well, you’ll be happy to know I have decided to stay on for a while until I can sort myself out. I will put up with your crap—to some extent. I will take the classes, and I will even bear the a-holes who call me your pet.”

“I am delighted to hear it.”

Again with the impassive delivery. It was almost as if he mocked me somehow. Or shared a joke that I didn’t find funny. This was unfamiliar ground with him. Usually, he was stodgy and leader-like—super commanding and dominating. And while he was still dominating (that trait seemed built-in) he seemed more relaxed. Relaxed enough to joke?

Did he joke?

I surged on with my agenda. “I’ll only be around for a while, though. And when I want to leave, I’m leaving. You know I can.”

He studied me for a long moment. “I don’t usually have this much problem with minions following orders.”

His eyes twinkled, which didn’t stop my eyebrows from lowering dangerously.

A strange flash of guilt covered his face before the wisps of a smile died. He sighed. “Look, let me be honest with you. You have an extremely rare type of magic, a powerful magic, which makes you extremely valuable. Both to my clan, and to our larger organization as a whole. You come at exactly the right time, because we badly need someone to take on Trek, the Eastern Territory’s mage. We both need you trained—you and me—because without it, you run the risk of doing too much and killing yourself. You’ve been in that situation twice.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. He didn’t need to remind me.

“There’s nothing I can do about others calling you a pet,” he went on. “It’s a stigma with humans. We see so few of them, and those can always be so easily manipulated, they do become a pet, of sorts. They usually have low ranking power. As such, they are sniffed at. Being labeled as my pet, you have some clout. Now, with the type of magic you possess, and your value, you will have even more. But that stigma will be a slow thing to erode. I cannot counter that. Anything I do or say will be passed off as my affection for you. We all have a hard road. You are no different.”