“There’s not much to tell.”
“How old are you?” Silva queries.
“Twenty-two.”
“Have you always lived here?” Keegan prods.
“No, I moved a lot when I was little, but I’ve been in Vegas for the past eight years.”
“What’s your family like?” Aydin throws out there casually, but the tick in his beard covered jaw betrays his tone.
The rapid-fire Q and A session stalls while everyone waits for me to answer Aydin. I wrestle with how vague I should be about how I grew up, but my gut tells me to lay it all out there. I go with my gut.
“Until I was fifteen, I was raised by a monster of a woman named Beth. There wasn’t a single moment where Beth let me forget how much she despised me. I had a sister. I was five when Laiken was born--.”
I choke on the words in my throat as I’m hit with the sudden sadness and grief that always slams into me when I think about Laiken. My heightened emotions send a flash of magenta and orange energy down my arms, and I grit my teeth in an effort to control my emotions and the power.
“You okay?” Aydin asks me, and I notice he and Evrin leaning as far away from me as possible.
I tighten the stranglehold on my emotions and start again.
“I’m fine. Strong emotions feed the power,” I offer vaguely. “Beth and Laiken were murdered when I was eighteen. Beth was always mixed up in some shit, and Laiken paid the price. I’d probably be dead too if Beth hadn’t done me the favor of kicking me out of the house at fifteen. I’ve lived on my own ever since.”
I decide not to say anything about Talon. These strangers know enough about me as it is and talking about Talon feels like it should fall intosnitches get stitchesterritory.
“That’s about all you’re going to get out of me until you tell me what’s going on.”
Veiled looks are passed back and forth at my demand, and just when I think they’re not going to say shit, good ol’ Evrin breaks the silence again.
“Um…you know you’re not human, right...Vinna?”
7
Evrin’s question sits like an anvil on my chest.Not human?I mean I knew I was different, that I was somehowother, but I never really questioned my humanity underneath all the extra I could do.
“So what the fuck am I, then?”
“Well, witch is probably the name you’re most familiar with, but we call ourselves casters,” Silva tells me.
I look around to gauge if these assholes are fucking with me, but I’m met with dead serious expressions.
“What makes you so sure I am one?” I whisper, not quite willing to believe what they’re telling me.
“We all saw you use magic when you fought, and then there’s these…” Evrin points to the line of markings that run up the outside of my arm, and dot my ring and middle finger. “I don’t recognize these exact runes, but there’s no doubt in my mind these are caster runes you’ve been tattooed with.”
“Which should be fucking impossible,” Lachlan grumbles, speaking for the first time in a while.
Man, I wish he’d just kept his mouth shut. “What should be fucking impossible?”
“You can’t tattoo runes on a caster. It messes with the caster’s natural branch of magic. You want us to believe you have no idea about casters and magic, but the magic-infused runes tattooed all over you tell a different story.”
“First of all, you fucking tool, why would I lie about the shitty childhood I had. Secondly, my markings, or runes--or whatever the fuck you want to call them--aren’t tattoos. I didn’t do this to myself. I woke up on my sixteenth birthday feeling like I was melting from the inside out and then these showed up.” I pull the neck of my shirt away and point to therunesthat run across the top of my shoulder to the base of my neck.
“Lachlan, just stop. You’re not helping.”
To my surprise, Lachlan listens to Aydin and grinds his teeth closed. The car grows quiet again as each of us silently navigate through the smothering tension. Eventually the questions burning holes inside of me win out over my desire to master the silent treatment.
“So, give me theeverything I need to know about being a castercliff notes,” I urge no one in particular.
