Friends.The word stings like a slap, but I force a laugh. “Exactly how much beer did you drink before I got here?” I ask, grabbing the pitcher and starting to turn away.
“Jocasta—” he begins, and my grip on my temper slips.
“Carter, why do you care?” I demand. “You said it’s too much of a risk, and nothing’s changed.”
“I miss you,” he says with a straightforwardness that stops me in my tracks.
When I glance back at him, he nods, blue eyes meeting mine without hesitation, confirming that I heard him correctly. Longing squeezes my chest.
But then he continues.
“And I’m not the only one with issues,” he says pointedly. “The first time we met, you told me you didn’t ‘do relationships.’”
My cheeks flush hot. “That’s not the same thing.” It’s dangerous to let my guard down, to be that vulnerable. Dangerous for him. Plus, even if he was able to accept me for who I am, that would mean opening him up to a world he doesn’t even know exists.
Carter reaches out and gently takes my free hand. Startled, I allow it. He tugs my sleeve up, exposing my wrist and forearm.
“This one is Ancient Greek.” His finger traces over the black letters tattooed vertically from the base of my thumb down the side of my hand, and I can’t breathe for fear that he’ll stop.
Then he turns my palm face up. His thumb moves horizontally over the vulnerable skin at the inside of my wrist, where a stringof cuneiform signs, tiny black images, live. It feels so good, the surety of his touch. Not hesitant. Not afraid. “This one is, I think, Sumerian.”
The pitcher in my other hand starts to wobble, sending foamy beer perilously close to the edge.
How does he know Sumerian? Ancient Greek, okay—we live on a college campus and several of the letters are obviously recognizable as such, if he’s at all familiar with the fraternities and sororities.
But Sumerian? No one knows Sumerian. That was, in fact, the point. That only a few specific people—using that term generously—would be able to read it. My “father” was so pissed. My mother just hated the way the tattoos looked.
Carter must read the question on my face.
“Talin zijn mijn hobby,” he says, releasing my hand.
The only word I get is hobby. The rest sounds like when Daan is speaking to friends and family back in the Netherlands. But I understand the gist. This, this is why I can’t stay away from Carter. Who else has a hobby of learning random languages for fun? Despite the current chatter about six-packs and thigh cuts, which he does have, curiosity and interest in learning more, being more, is always going to be hotter. For me, at least.
“Why do you have tattoos declaring yourself poisonous, Jocasta?” he asks, leaning closer, his serious brow furrowed with concern.
Technically, I have tattoos declaring that I’m toxic—deadly, even—but close enough.
Oh, hell.I sigh. He thinks this is all because of some deep-seated struggle with inadequacy. That’s what all that “You’re so smart, Jocasta” stuff was.
Of course that’s what he would think. What else is he supposed to conclude? Certainly nothing close to the truth.
But as I open my mouth to respond, the loud crash of glass breaking brings everything except the jukebox—Mariah Carey crooning about Christmas already—to a halt. At the far end of the bar, Dove stands with her arms loosely at her sides, staring off to the opposite side of the room, sparkling bits of glasses and larger hunks of beer mugs scattered on the mat at her feet. She’s making no move to pick any of it up.
Frowning, I set the pitcher back on the bar and lean forward to check on her. “Hey, are you—”
Goosebumps erupt suddenly on my skin, prickly shivers spreading up my arms, across my chest, and down my back. Like my skin is trying to shed me.
Oh no.I know what this is. It’s been over three years since I felt it last and never,ever, in Beecher, but it’s not a sensation easily forgotten.
Dread makes my stomach pitch southward.
“Jocasta?” Carter asks, but I ignore him, my whole body shuddering in reflex.
Someone else is here. Someone like me, a child of the Old Ones.
And whoever it is, they’re fucking spraying the room with magic.
3
