DAE
The moment she touched my bare skin, everything within me stilled in utter contentment, and then surged forward so violently I couldn't breathe.
Without thinking, I covered her hand with mine. I never wanted her to stop touching me. Her heartbeat pounded in my ears and her scent filled my lungs, filling the places inside of me that had been cold and empty since the last time I saw her.
Ah, gods. That scent that made my fangs ache every single time. Warm skin and soap and sweet blood and something underneath that was just Alice, all sweet and clean and bright.
I'd had a plan. Knock on the door, hand her the bag, make some joke about how nobody should have to deal with Judy on an empty stomach. Keep it light. Keep it moving. Don't let her see how hollowed out I was from her silence.
That plan lasted right up until she came outside and touched me. The bag was on the railing now, the treat inside it steaming into the cold. I didn't even remember setting it down…
Because she was looking up at me with those vulnerable golden brown eyes, and I was shaking.
Actually shaking. And I couldn't make myself stop.
The reaction was completely involuntary.
I couldn't remember the last time my body had done something I hadn't told it to, and I hated it, and I could. Not. Stop.
"You're trembling," she whispered.
"No, I'm not."
She gave me a look. "Dae."
"It's cold. It's February." I tried for a grin that didn't quite work. I felt it slide slowly off my face even as I kept going with the pretense. "And I'm underdressed. That's what I get for forgetting my coat."
Her lips twitched. Almost a smile. Almost. But her eyes were too bright as her fingers curled against my skin, like she was checking that I was real, and the pressure of her touch sent a pulse of heat through me so sharp I had to lock my knees to keep from falling to my knees and burying my face between her thighs.
??. Fuck.
She was here. She was real. And she was still touching me.
It'd only been a few days since I'd seen her, talked to her, yet the relief was a violent wave that slammed through me so hard I had to close my eyes for a second because my senses were coming alive, doing that thing they did when the vampire in me surged too close to the surface.
To distract myself, I focused in on her aura, reading it the way other people read words.
The light that emanated from Alice had always been a thing of beauty.
Silver-white, clean, and luminous, shimmering against her skin like starlight caught in ripples of water.
It was one of the first things I'd noticed about her, years ago across a crowded room at some coven meeting or another.
Every live thing had a signature that told me more about them than they probably wanted me to know, and the witch's were especially easy to see.
Maybe because of the magic within them. Alex's was red showing his vitality, courage, and passion.
Talin's was a deep violet as she was, and still is, in a state of transformation.
Judy was a bright yellow with her intellect and sense of personal power as the High Priestess.
But Alice's had stopped me mid-sentence, and I'd stuttered over a word for a few seconds before continuing with whatever it was I'd been saying. I'd been a hell of a lot quieter in those meetings ever since, too distracted by her to think, never mind speak.
But tonight, her aura was…different.
The silver-white pureness was still there, still luminous, still unmistakably Alice.
But threaded through it — woven so delicately I might have missed it if I hadn't been looking this closely — were strands of gold.
Not the harsh, blinding gold that flared from her eyes during the possession.
This was softer. Warmer. Like sunlight filtering through honey, or the first light of dawn catching the edge of something precious.
It was beautiful.
A complicated emotion moved through me, something that hurt in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant as I watched the golden threads shimmer and pulse in time with her heartbeat.
For a few seconds, I could only stare. Then it came to me.
This was her djinn blood, her magic, finally becoming a true part of her.
It had to be. Whatever Marcus had stirred up when he'd clawed his way through her — the trauma, the power surge, or whatever — it had woken something in her bloodline.
Those golden flecks had always been in her eyes. Now it was surfacing in her aura, too.
Growing.
"Dae?" Her voice pulled me back. "What are you looking at?"
"You." The word came out rougher than I intended. I cleared my throat. "Sorry. Your aura. It's — different. You look different."
Her hand pulled away from my chest. She opened her mouth to say something. Closed it. Then tried again. "Different how?" she asked carefully.
The loss of her touch was immediate. Icy cold cooling my skin where her warmth had been. My hand hung suspended in the air for a second before I let it drop.
"Good different," I assured her. "There's gold there now. Warmth. It's..." I searched for a word that wouldn't scare her and settled on my first thought. "It's beautiful, yeobo."
Her expression softened as she stared up at me.
The tension in her jaw loosened, her shoulders came down a fraction, and for a moment she looked like the Alice I remembered from before everything went to hell.
The one who wore rainbow dresses and smiled like the sun and had no idea she was the most powerful thing in any room she walked into.
She released a slow breath. "I feel different the last few days. I thought maybe—" She stopped. Shook her head, and the worry came back into her eyes. "I think something might be wrong."
"Nothing's wrong with you." I reached for her hand and brought it back to my chest. Held it there as my blood rose to the surface beneath her palm.
"It's probably just something with your magic waking up after what happened.
I'm sure what happened the other night just shook things loose.
" By the way she was looking at me, I probably wasn't doing a great job explaining this in a way that would ease her mind.
"You survived something that would have broken most people, and you came out the other side glowing. Literally."
She dropped her gaze to our joined hands, and when she looked up at me again, her pretty eyes were wide and watery. The gold flecks in them caught the porch light and shimmered, and my heart split wide open.
"I'm glad you came here tonight," she said softly. "Though you probably shouldn't have."
"Alice—"
The corners of her sweet mouth lifted slightly before they fell again.
"I was starting to wonder if you were just too freaked out after the other night, and I know Aunt Judy is...
" She glanced toward the house, where the glow of the kitchen light spilled through the curtains, and didn't bother to finish the sentence.
Her voice dropped. "But you came anyway.
Even after watching me turn into something from a horror movie.
" That little smile came back. "Because that's the kind of male you are. I never should've doubted you."
And there it was.
The words sank into me like a blade between the ribs. Not the kind of wound that kills you fast, but the kind that slides in so clean you don't feel it until you look down and see the blood.
The kind of male you are.
But she didn't really know what kind of male I was.
She didn't know what the tattoo on my back actually meant, who put it there, and what I'd done to earn it.
I mean, I didn't hide it or anything. She'd seen the tattoo.
Everyone had. The women at the Purple Fang saw it every night, and like them, Alice probably thought it was just art. Aesthetic. A cool design.
They didn't know they were looking at a brand. An ownership mark. A record of every person who'd died because I'd pointed my finger and said, "That one is lying."
No. Alice thought I was good. And gods, how I wished I could live up to that image she had of me.
Someone else had thought that about me once, a long time ago, in a life I'd sealed shut and buried when I left my home country.
She'd loved the boy who could see colors around people.
She'd held him when the weight of what he did crushed him, and she'd kissed the stained skin on my back and told him the flowers I brought her were stronger.
And then she'd been put in the ground because I'd dared to refuse them.
That one isn't lying, I'd wanted to say. That one hasn't done anything wrong.
But I'd said it too late.
The memory washed over me like icy cold water, shocking the breath out of my lungs and leaving me gasping.
The saddest part of it all was that I couldn't even picture her face anymore.
The years had worn the details away, but the warmth of her, the brightness, that was still there.
Her aura had been the purest, most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
Until Alice's.
I dropped my hand from hers and stepped back.
The distance was less than a foot, but there may as well have been a canyon between us. Alice's hand fell from my chest and hung at her side, and I watched confusion flicker across her face, followed immediately by something worse.
Understanding. But it was the wrong kind.
"See?" she whispered. "You feel it too."
"Feel what?"
"That I'm different now. That something's wrong with me.
" She wrapped her arms around herself, and the gesture was so small, so self-contained, that it hit me harder than if she'd screamed in my face.
"It's okay, Dae. I get it. I saw your face when it happened.
When Marcus—" Her voice snagged on the name.
"You don't have to pretend it doesn't scare you. "
"Alice, no—"
"You should go." She said it quietly. Resigned. "You should go, and you should stay away from me until I figure out what's happening. It's not safe for you to—"