“Can’t you get a better angle?” Ted demands.
JJ shakes his head. “Bro, it’snotmy cameras. I think it doesn’t want to be seen and is making a damn good show of it.”
“Did somebody hack your cameras and erase their image from the recording?” Eli offers.
“No,” JJ growls, and it’s the first really bear quality I’ve noticed from him. “That’s dumb.” His expressions smooths as he says, “What it does mean is whoever that is or, or whatever that is has some connection to either mage or faekind.”
“Like a spell?” Ted asks.
JJ shrugs before rubbing his chin in thought. “A spell, a mage who can prevent their image from being recorded, a shadow fae if there is such a thing? I don’t know man; Ma specifically moved up to a human city so we wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of bullshit.”
“Can’t you tell if someone is magic or fae? Like you can smell it?” I ask to keep from drowning in more scary uncertainty.
“Like the wolf said,” Ted explains. “We can smell magic.”
“It’s terrible,” Eli interjects, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “Nasty stuff.”
“But you are something different which is why I couldn’t tell you had powers,” Ted explains.
“Bears actually have a keener sense of smell,” JJ adds, leaning in. “So much so that we usually taste whatever we smell.”
“We haven’t come into contact with a lot of fae,” says Ted. “So while we instantly scented out the wolf, it’s more of a territorial response. We can’t do that with every fae creature.”
“Trying to sniff out what type of fae creature is on our territory would be like trying to identify an individual flavor in a soup when you’ve never tasted any of the ingredients before,” JJ says, making the screen with the shadow bigger as we watch it move around my house.
“Gross,” Eli says, but JJ just shrugs.
Apparently, they are really picky about scents and taste. But I guess I knew that from Brexley.
The shadow creeps up the stairs and my heart lodges in my throat, beating there as I watch my own sleeping form roll over onto my side. My nails dig into my thighs as I bite my lip, watching the figure about to enter my bedroom.
It’s like watching a movie where you know the hero is going to come out alive, but you are so wrapped up in the moment, your emotions and brain tell you otherwise. Except the hero is me, and even if I know I’m okay now, I’m not sure I can handle seeing what’s about to happen to me on screen.
“I think you both need to go,” Ted says to JJ and Eli as he half rises from his chair, voice taut as string about to snap.
Oh faelords, he’s thinking the same thing.
If something bad happens to me in my sleep, I don’t want them to see either.
Acid rises, stinging my throat as my pulse races. I shove the side of my fist into my mouth to keep from screaming at my own prone form. I don’t want to watch but I can’t look away.
JJ is half up, but he stops and sits back down. “Did you see that?”
I blink. The bed is empty.
“Did you skip forward? Hit a button?” I ask, my voice shaky. He must have jostled something when he moved.
JJ hits some buttons and rewinds the footage. There I am again. Sleeping in my bedroom. This time I make sure not to blink, not even as the shadow creeps up the stairs toward me a second time.
Then I disappear from the bed. Like a blip, I'm there one second and gone the next. Ted stiffens, his confusion mirroring mine.
“Whoa, no way,” JJ breathes, rewinding and playing it a third time. My figure in bed seems to just. . . vanish. A glitch in the matrix.
“What?” Eli asks, crowding in from behind me.
JJ scratches his head. "Did you just. . . teleport?"
A scoff escapes me, my nerves strung tight. “First I'm a siren, now I can teleport? There’s no faefreaking way.”
