This section of downtown has been blocked off to traffic, and pedestrians teem through the streets, laughing and talking and singing. Neon signs glow in every other window, music drifts from doorways, and the smell from food trucks and restaurants wafts through the streets. I soak it all in, revel in it. I hear a catcall or two, but my focus is on the lights, the colors. When something catches my eye, I turn and follow.
An older man busks on the street corner, his guitar slung over his shoulders and his case open before him. The glint of the coins catches my eye, and then the music curls through my mind, lifting me up and onto a new plane. I stay with him for a while, sometimes dancing, sometimes singing along, until some new thing draws my attention.
Eventually, I find my way into a club, up a flight of stairs, and into the crush of bodies on a dance floor. This isn’t at all the kind of dance I used to inspire, used to enjoy, but there’s still something about it that makes me pause.
Sweat-slicked limbs.
Bodies pressed close.
Bass thrumming right through my skin.
There’s a strange kind of poetry in it. Raw and animalistic and desire in motion.
Once upon a time, I considered myself Greek, so I know a thing or two about hedonism. These days I don’t really claim any place as home. I belong nowhere, so nowhere belongs to me.
When I’m in the middle of the crowd, I stand still, picking out shapes and lines in the writhing bodies around me. It really is something to see—the way people interact. Whether they’re friends or lovers or strangers, everyone is connected on this dance floor. One body touches another that touches another without any insecurity, and I wish I weren’t the only one to see the beauty in it.
That gives me an idea, and I draw in a deep breath. What if they could see it? What if I could make them? Stretching out my arms, I push that breath out, expelling some of the energy swirling in my chest with it. My fingers graze and drag along anonymous skin.
For a second, the whole room shudders, contracts and expands like a heartbeat. The crowd seems closer, bodies tight against mine. Hands settle on my hips, and a warm body presses at my back. But I barely feel that through the rush of power leaving me.
Now that the floodgates are open, the swell of pleasure that comes with the energy release overwhelms me. I don’t focus, I can’t. Heat rushes up through my skin, and my head spins in a way that feels simultaneously alarming and brilliant. All I can do is ride the wave as it leaks out of me and spills across the room. Sound. Touch. Sight. Smell. It’s all somehow heightened and muted at the same time.
Long minutes later, the bliss begins to fade and my head starts to clear. Too late, the horror dawns and I try to throw up my walls, try to pull back the energy, but my wits are scattered, and I’m exhausted.
I don’t realize how much all that energy had eclipsed my own thoughts and emotions until it begins to disappear. Suddenly panicked, I whip around, scanning the room, and my stomach heaves in fear. On the surface, the only obvious difference I can see is that the once frenzied movements of the crowd have begun to ebb and flow in a way that’s almost in sync, almost choreographed.
But the people nearest me, they’re the real problem. A few just seem manic, their eyes dazzlingly bright, smiles wide, laughter pealing from between their lips. Two have begun to dance so intensely that the crowd has stepped away, forming a circle around them, watching. One woman is sobbing, and her friend next to her is staring on in a mix of wonder and horror and fascination. The guy behind me, the one who’d had his hands on my hips, now drags those same hands back and forth between his ears and his eyes, undecided as to which he wants to cover more.
It’s too much. It’s all too much. And all I can think of is Van on that stretcher. He’d been with me longer, but I influenced him slowly, artfully. There was nothing careful about tonight. I’d dropped my walls and the magic had flowed from me unharnessed, uncontrolled, a blunt force trauma of power. I have no idea what that could do to people. Especially people I’ve not carefully studied and vetted.
The guy behind me collapses to his knees, and no one around us notices. It’s someone farther out who pushes through the people to get to him. I reach out a hand, to help or soothe or something, but then pull it back fast.
I shouldn’t touch him again. I’m still giving off waves of power, less now, but even slight contact between our skin could push him over the edge.
I wrap my arms around my middle and do my best not to touch anyone as I shift my way through the crowd. A fight breaks out behind me, and I hear people screaming.
I squeeze my lips tightly together, clamped between my teeth, until it feels like I might cut right through the skin. I know I’m crying, have been crying, when I taste salt even through my closed lips. More screaming erupts upstairs as I stumble out the door and over the uneven slabs of concrete on the sidewalk. I barely catch my balance before I go sprawling out on the street.
A hand reaches out to steady me, but I jerk myself away.
“Don’t touch me. Nobody touch me.”
I limp away, shaky and sick and … oh gods what have I done?
I pass the same street musician, and he calls out for me to join him again, but I keep my head down, my thoughts focused on reconstructing the mental shields I’d all but demolished back there.
What have I done?
I think it again and again as I push myself farther and farther from that club, turning north, away from the crowds and the bars.
What have I done? What have I done?
I must say it out loud because a man with a grizzly beard leaning against a brick building answers, “You’ve been bad, pretty one. That’s what you’ve done.”
I jolt, edging sideways to put distance between us. There’s a high population of homeless people downtown, especially because there’s a shelter not too far from here. Many of them are lovely people that have the same kind of vibrancy as this city. But you can never be too careful, and this guy … something about him makes alarm bells ring at the back of my weary mind. He reaches out to touch me, and I try to jump away, but he’s quicker than I expect him to be.
His hand locks around my wrist and no matter how hard I tug, I can’t break his hold. He squeezes, and the pinch of pain makes me focus on him. His skin is weathered and tough, but clean. And up close, his beard isn’t as gnarled as I expected, just full and long. It’s not until I look into his eyes that I know for certain this is no homeless man.
Deep set and large, each of his eyes has two irises and two pupils, and I know if I were to search, I’d find more than those four eyes trained on me, more than four eyes on him.
“Reckless,” he says, his voice graveled and hard. “I don’t need to tell you what happens to the reckless ones, Kalliope.”
“How do you—”
“Don’t play dumb with me, girly. Your life might be all pretty things and pretty words, but you’re not naïve.”
Lead lines my stomach, and I want to run, but fear weights me to my spot.
“Son of Argus,” I say, and he arches a brow. “Watcher.”
There’s not many of us left in the world from the old days, but even so, the greater gods don’t trust us to live out here on our own. The Argus are said to have hundreds of eyes, and never are they all closed at once, not even in sleep. No one knows quite what they see and how much, but it’s enough that the gods trust them to keep the rest of us in line.
He nods, and my gaze catches on his strange eyes again. They’re a blue so light it borders on silver. Cold. Hard. “Right you are. And I don’t particularly like having to venture out among humans because some little goddess can’t control herself.”
Indignant, I say, “I can control—”
“Can you? Do you know what’s happening back in that club right now?” I shake my head hard, not sure I want to know, but he answers anyway. “Complete chaos. The cops are currently wondering if it was some kind of bad drug reaction.” He pauses, squints for a moment, then adds, “Someo
ne just suggested bioterrorism.”
I wince, and my stomach pitches, nausea rising swiftly up my throat.
“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”
He takes hold of my other wrist, drawing both arms up between us until he towers over me. He seems larger, more intimidating than before, and I try not to appear afraid.
“No more accidents,” he says. “Risk exposing us again, and the gods might decide this world has enough art already.”
I open my mouth, to say what, I don’t know. But I never get that far.
Someone calls my name, softly at first, then louder.
“Kalli? Is that you? Kalli! Hey, man, let her go!”
The Argus holds on tight for another moment. His grip doesn’t hurt. Not really. But his gaze almost does. Like he’s looking into me, through me. I hear footsteps coming fast, and then my wrists are free, and the watcher moves too fast for a man who looks so old. He slips around the corner and out of sight just as another person skids to a halt beside me.
“Hey, Kalli right?”
I look up, and I’m so stunned that I forget to flinch away when a hand comes up to touch my cheek.
“You okay?”
I don’t know. Don’t know that at all. But I know this guy.
This time there’s no little girl, no grocery store, no magazines. Something leaps behind my ribs, but it’s not power. It’s something even harder to control.
Want.
“Hi Wilder.”
Chapter Four
His hand is warm against my cheek and he tilts my head up, peering into my eyes. He’s not wearing the glasses tonight, and a few days worth of stubble resides on his jaw, and he looks so different than the last time I saw him. No tie. No button down. Instead he wears a fitted tee, a black leather jacket, and dark jeans that hang off his body perfectly. Even so, I still get that same steady feel from him.
Though that could be because he has his other hand braced at my waist, keeping me upright. Either way, he makes me feel safer than I have any right to be after a run in with one of the Argus.
“Are you okay?”
I nod, pulling back from his hand at my cheek like I should have done the instant he touched me. I’m lightheaded though, and as soon as I’m free my knees quake, and I throw out a hand to steady myself.
“Easy there.” He loops an arm around my waist, and I can feel it burning through the fabric of my dress.
He leans close, peering at my eyes, and the smell of him surrounds me, warm and masculine with a hint of spice.
He asks, “How much have you had to drink?”
I tense. “None. I’m fine.”
He arches one perfect eyebrow and says, “Try again.”
“Really, I swear.”
His gaze dips down, and I think he’s looking at the rounded neck of my dress, and my heart flips over, sending off a ripple of anticipation in its wake. Then he says, “You’re barefoot,” and that anticipation turns to horror.
I step back, and sure enough, he’s right.
My feet are bare and dirty, and now that I concentrate, I can feel a few stinging cuts on the bottom.
“I—” I pause, completely at a loss for how to explain this without sounding like a complete lunatic. I lift up my hand, wondering if I’d left my house this way, or if perhaps I’d taken my shoes off at some point and had been carrying them. The last few days are kind of a muddled blur in my mind. I can remember some of how I felt and thought, but physical actions … not so much. I had been completely in my head, but now the energy that had consumed me is all gone.
Horror slicks my stomach. I’d poured it all out on that crowd. I can’t feel even an inkling of it now. A slideshow runs through my mind then of all my failures, all the artists I kept too long or let get too close. I see their faces, both as they once were, and then how I left them—broken, shells of their former selves. Van wasn’t the first of mine to do violence against himself or someone else. Some had done it in misguided attempts to win me back. Others let their loss turn to anger. Against me. Against the world. But mostly themselves.
That’s another reason why my body renews itself daily. Not just so I’ll stay young and pretty, but because there’s an unfortunate tendency for the affected to lash out, to try to destroy the beautiful thing that had once brought them success or motivation or joy.
I’m not saved from that kind of violence. No, the gods enjoy others’ pain too much to give me that kind of gift, but at least I don’t wear the marks of it forever on my skin.
For the most part, my entanglements are simple and short with just the right amount of give and take to leave the artist happy and on his or her way to a well-led life. But there are the exceptions. The ruined ones. The ones whose personalities pull too close to obsession; those who can’t deal with my absence. They’re rare. As are those who turn to violence. And I know it’s not healthy or fair, but I’ve come to accept that when the violence turns to me, it’s the world’s (perhaps the gods’) way of seeking balance.
Wilder’s sigh brings me back to the present and he asks, “Where’s your car?”
I swallow and look around, unwilling to tell him that I walked all the way from my place up by campus. Because that will make me look even crazier than I already do.
“What are you doing here?” I ask instead.
I get that same almost smile he gave me as I pulled out of the grocery store parking lot, and it hits me just as hard this time. His half smile is more charming than most peoples’ full out grins.
“You’re bossier than I remember.” When I try to pull away, he appeases me by saying, “I was out with some friends, and I saw you leaving a club. You looked …”
He doesn’t finish his sentence, and I’m glad for it. I don’t want to know what I looked like.
“You followed me?”
“I tried to. I lost track of you in the crowds for a bit. I was crossing the street to keep searching down Sixth when I looked up by chance and saw you with that homeless guy.”
“Oh.”
Oh. That’s all I’ve got to say right now. Even if I weren’t completely addled by the events of the night, I don’t think I would know what to say to this guy. He isn’t one of my potential partners. I’m not luring him in to satisfy the necessities of my curse.
But I want to lure him in all the same, and that makes me feel guilty and sick and excited all at the same time.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why what?”
“Why did you follow me?”
He turns his head, looking down the street, and for a moment I don’t think he’ll answer me. Then he laughs. “I’m still trying to figure that one out. Give me a few minutes. I’ll think of a reason that’s not at all creepy. I promise.”
Carefully, he eases back until his arm is no longer around me, and just his hand is left bracing me at my waist. I’m sure he doesn’t mean for it to be suggestive, but I’m still coiled tight from the club, from the way it feels to use my ability. The simple touch of his hand sliding across the thin fabric of my dress is enough to set my nerves on fire, and I shiver.
He immediately sheds his jacket and hands it to me. The leather is worn and smooth, and for a moment I just hold it against me. It smells like him, and the warmth and scent is so comforting after the night I’ve had that I feel tears prick at the back of my eyes before I manage to get a grip on myself.
“Put that on. November in Texas might not be that cold, but I can’t believe you left the house in just that dress. Or did you lose a coat too?”
I tilt my head to the side and survey him with a frown before tugging the jacket on. “And you called me bossy.”
He smiles for half a second, but then his expression turns serious. “But really, what happened? Are you okay? Your face as you left that club … Are you … Did—”
“I’m fine. I swear. Just a weird night.”
He reaches forward and pulls both sides of the coat together, cocooning me inside. His hands slip up, and
I bite my lip, wanting him to put just a little more pressure behind that light touch. He lifts the collar, so that my face is blocked from the wind, and his knuckles graze my cheek.
I can tell he’s not going to let it go. He’s going to keep digging, and I have no idea what I could possibly say. “Where’s Gwen?” I ask quickly, and it’s such a stupid question, but it’s the first thing that pops into my head. Like he would bring his daughter out for a night on the town. God, I don’t even know what time it is. Sometime before two when the bars start to close, that’s all I know. She’s probably at home with her mother. His girlfriend, maybe. My stomach turns, and his hands drop from the jacket, making the sensation worsen.
“She’s at home with my mother.” I feel an inkling of relief before he adds, “Our mother. She’s my little sister.” That almost smile drives me almost mad again. “I tried to tell you, but you bolted out of the store. Left your ice cream and cookies behind.”
Oh gods. Could I have made a bigger fool of myself? Why is he even standing here with me? He should think I’m crazy. All I’ve done is act it around him.
“Sorry, I had to go.”
“Yeah … you said. You seemed a little spooked.”
“I wasn’t spooked. I just remembered something I had to do.”
His expression tells me he doesn’t believe me, and I fight not to blush. I must fail because his hand goes back to my face, a thumb dragging over the exact spot where I can feel the heat rising on my skin. His eyes are big and dark as he scans my face, and when he leans in, his body comes incredibly close to mine. “Is it strange that I wanted to go after you? I think I might have, if Gwen hadn’t been with me.”
I swallow once. Then again. Because it’s not strange. He’s reacting to my ability, to the way I look. I don’t exclusively influence men, but they open up a lot easier to a pretty face than most girls do.