Watercolour Smile

  “What kinds of pranks? We could say it’s because they ran out of girls to sleep with.”

  “Stick with me cupcake, no changing the subject and no joking around. Everyone is getting suspicious, and suspicious isn’t a good thing around here. I should set Cabe up with someone—Noah too. Soon enough Lord Weston is going to find out that you’ve bonded—”

  “Shh—” I slapped a hand over her mouth, checking to make sure that nobody stood around us.

  She pried my fingers away. “And then hell will descend,” she finished in a quieter, albeit much more dramatic, tone.

  “Why do you think Tabby hasn’t told him yet?”

  “Because she’s still suspicious. You don’t give that woman enough credit. She’s got issues up to her eyeballs but she’s smart. She’s very smart. You told her you bonded with the Quillans, but Miro avoids you like you’re contagious most of the time and Noah and Cabe are always around, hovering and being general annoying bodyguard-oppressors. I don’t know what Silas does. Nobody does. He probably returns to the underworld to make sure his demons aren’t slacking on their torture schedule or—”

  “Silas isn’t a demon, Poison. We’ve been over this.”

  “I’m going to need proof. Have you ever seen him sleep? I bet he hangs from the ceiling—”

  “Also not a bat.” I sighed.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a vampire. And I know he disappears all the time, but have you ever marked off the days on a calendar? I bet it has something to do with the moon—”

  “Ahh, werewolf. That’s a new one.” I clapped my hands slowly, showing that I was impressed.

  Poison’s mouth quirked up into a wry smile. “Anyway,” she said. “With all the rumours that are circulating, Tabby’s probably thinking that the bond with the Quillans is just an elaborate farce to protect some other truth. She probably thinks that you have no idea of the gravity of what you were saying. Let’s be honest, when it comes to Zevghéri politics, you’re pretty clueless.”

  I flopped back into the grass, my arms stretching out either side of me. The tree above me swayed gently, and it was almost calming. The leaves were beginning to turn yellow in preparation of autumn, and the cold breeze had a bite to it that was currently being assuaged by the lazy gaze of the sun. I stretched my arm out in the still-warm grass, trying to catch the edges of the receding sunlight, my mind snagging on yet another thing that was lying just out of my reach.

  “Miro and Silas don’t want to get too close. Not while Noah and Cabe are trying to prolong the bond.” I said the words slowly, like I was hoping that they would sink into my brain and settle there, and I would be able to accept the truth of them and move on. Instead, they churned uneasily in my stomach, making me swallow tightly and give up my grapple for sunlight in favour of balling my hands into fists—as if the hint of perspiration that was suddenly misting my palms would be visible.

  “It makes sense. I’ve never even heard of two pairs before. I can’t imagine how it would work. If Noah and Cabe can’t bond, it’s only fair to maintain a little distance.”

  I shrugged against the grass. “So Cabe and Noah need to show a healthy interest in other girls for a little while? I’m not going to stop them.”

  Poison’s narrow-eyed consideration honed in on my face, and she tucked her legs beneath her, pushing up onto her knees. This meant that she was now looking down at me, which somehow deepened the suspicion and disapproval set into her striking features.

  “Look,” she said, “I know it’s not…”

  “Ideal?” I supplied, and she cringed, so I continued while I had the upper hand. “Fair? Moral? Feasible?”

  “Alright, Grandma! I’m sorry that despite having known about the true nature of the bond for months, your delicate sensibilities are still reeling. I apologise for that, I really do, but you need to start taking them seriously. I promise you this: they are taking you seriously.”

  “You don’t know that,” I deflected, causing her brows to draw down heavily. I was lying, probably, but I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t acknowledge what was happening, what had already happened, and what it all meant. Not yet. Maybe not ever. “And it’s not that I’m not taking it seriously. All I’m doing is supporting what you said; I think you’re right. They should date. They should show an interest in other girls. Go out and stuff. Dissuade suspicion.”

  “Silas and Miro too.”

  I opened my mouth to agree, but the words got caught, and a strangled sound escaped instead.

  Poison gave me a look of pity, and I averted my gaze to her skinny jeans, catching a glimpse of pink through the ripped pocket. Despite my current roil of emotion, it made me want to smile. Poison was very dramatic with what she wore, and powder-pink underwear certainly didn’t match her current ensemble. Her singlet was cut off at the stomach, and it depicted an image of Charlie Chaplin riding a unicycle, which might have made her seem a little geeky, if Chaplin’s top-hat hadn’t been cut off to make room for a deep plunge of cleavage. Her eyeliner wasn’t too thick, but it was smudged into a smoky charcoal glare, the only makeup that she wore. The whole look was pulled together by a cut-off leather jacket with silver studs on the pockets and the collar turned up. There was also a Batman pin hooked into the zipper.

  I hadn’t spoken to Poison about my feelings for the guys, and she didn’t push me for explanations, but she knew that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the whole love-at-first-sight side of the bond, and she knew that I had feelings for them, she just couldn’t seem to figure out what they were.

  She wasn’t the only one.

  Poison huffed out a resigned breath. “Look, just come on the date, okay? Mike has nice friends; he won’t set you up with any weirdos. You don’t even have to do anything. Just sit there and let them ogle your crazy-beautiful face for an hour or two.”

  “Can Noah and Cabe come as well?”

  Poison sat up suddenly and loomed over me. “Seraph Judith Black—”

  “Lela.”

  “You have to get it through your head. You’re not,” she lowered her voice to a whisper again, “bonded to just anyone. Lord Weston is the Voda. The Voda. I’ve told you this before.” She held out her arm, fingers directed to the sky, and then she pointed at her elbow with her other hand, making her arms into a ninety-degree angle. “This is the bottom of our society. Who lives down here?”

  I sighed. “General rabble,” I recited. “Underage kids and their unimportant parents.”

  “Here?” she inched her hand higher on her arm-scale.

  “Klovoda agents and their unimportant, tag-along families.”

  “Here?” Higher again.

  “Bonded people—the Atmás and their pairs—and then the Klovoda, Dominic Kingsling and right up the top is Lord-bloody-Weston.” I ticked off the rest of them and flopped back, blowing out my last words on a frustrated exhalation. “The Voda.”

  “Miro is in line to be the next Voda,” she told me, taking pity on me for a moment by sweeping a lock of hair out of my brooding face. “And you, munchkin, are his… you know what. Silas isn’t as important as Miro, because he’s the younger twin—plus Weston kind of despises him with the fire of a thousand suns… but the other three? We’re talking about the golden boys of the Zev community here. I don’t blame them for wanting to keep you a secret. Hell, if I were them, I’d lock you up in a little cupboard and feed you scraps of bread for the rest of your life, occasionally bringing you out for walks down the hallway or so that you could howl at the moon, because I’m pretty sure you’d go crazy being bonded to four people at once.”

  “Gee.” I made a face at her. “You make it sound so fun. You’re really winning me over. I don’t feel anywhere near as uncomfortable with the situation anymore. Thanks, Poison.”

  “My point is that you’re walking on eggshells. Noah and Cabe need to stop acting suspicious. The entire female population at this stupid school will once again weep for joy and cry out from the rooftops because t
he Adairs didn’t suspiciously turn gay overnight after all. And you, Seraph Humphrey Black—”

  “Lela.”

  “—will go on a date with me, Mark, and Mark’s friend!”

  “Is it even possible to date someone when you’re bonded to four other people?”

  “Sure it is.” Poison smirked. “The bond doesn’t make you feel nothing toward other people, it simply makes you rely on your pairs for general things, like the ability to breathe air and not self-destruct or whatever.”

  “Fine.” I gave up. “I’ll go, and I’ll tell Cabe and Noah to start acting like themselves again.” Not that I minded doing that, I thought. Maybe it would ease some of the pressure that I could feel building up in the back of my neck, giving me inexplicable kinks whenever I thought about the bond.

  “That-a-girl. I know the bond probably gives you hell whenever another girl enters the scene, but it’s for the best. At school you need to try and act like the normal family that you most definitely are not, and at home you need to act as messed-up with those four as possible. The more confused Tabby gets, the less she’ll spill to Weston. Handing the wrong information to Weston is basically a carnal sin, in our world.”

  The bell rang and we gathered up our stuff, heading back into the school building. Noah and Cabe were out on an assignment for the Klovoda, which meant that they weren’t at school today. It was the first time I had gone a full day without them shadowing my every step, blocking people from talking to me and being their general overbearing selves. It was equal parts endearing and suffocating, but I knew that they were just frustrated. We were doing something unnatural, resisting the bond for so long. Or, in my opinion, simply being connected in such a way in the first place.

  I hadn’t found out much more over the months since Aiden’s death. The messenger had descended into radio silence, and I had come to terms with something that made me very wary. He had made contact with me several times, but each instance was in reaction to something that I had done—or so it seemed to me. Not that I deserved the things that happened, but I had an odd feeling that the messenger was logging my actions. When I did something to anger him, he punished me. Running away from him to Maple Falls had been a bad move. It had made him angry, and something at Poison’s party had tipped him over the edge. I thought that he had been quiet over the last few months simply because I hadn’t done anything. I had purposely kept my distance from the boys—had kept my head down at school; and had kept my mouth shut around Tabby. He was watching me with Noah and Cabe—I was sure of it—waiting for a sign that we were going to form the bond.

  That had always been his primary focus.

  Strings can be severed. Bonds can be broken. Would you like to know how painful it is?

  I shook off the memory and said goodbye to Poison in the hall, trudging the rest of the way to Quillan’s office.

  “I have to go on a date,” I announced as soon as I walked through the door.

  Quillan was sitting on the edge of his desk and there was a woman standing beside him, her hands on her slim hips. She spun around, and I got a brief impression of smooth brown hair looped into a high ponytail and fierce green eyes before she opened her mouth and tilted her head, confusion settling in. I registered her beauty in the same moment as I recognised Quillan’s discomfort. My eyes immediately flew to the ground and I hesitated, on the brink of backing awkwardly out of the room.

  “My student,” Quillan finally said, standing from the desk. “I told you I had someone to tutor this period, Sam.”

  The woman dismissed me with a turn. It wasn’t a rude gesture; she just didn’t seem to think that my presence was of any consequence. She laid her hand on Quillan’s arm, and his eyes flicked over her shoulder for the briefest moment, before focussing back on her face.

  “Just call me, okay?” Her tone was low, her voice pleading. “We’ll talk about it.”

  She walked out of the office, closing the door behind her.

  “Sorry,” I managed. “I should have knocked.”

  Quillan seemed to relax, and he reached up to loosen his tie. “Don’t worry about it. What’s this about a date?”

  I glanced back at the door, an uneasy feeling trying to claw its way into my belly. I shoved it away, almost viciously. I refused to feel jealous about Quillan, even if fighting off the feeling caused my knees to momentarily knock together and a short wave of dizziness to radiate through my skull. There was a reason he had been avoiding me lately. We had kissed, and as much as it was supposed to have fused us together, it succeeded in creating a giant chasm between us. I could see it now, in the space that stretched from him to me. Cabe or Noah would have already been reaching for my hands, my shoulders—they constantly needed to touch me. Quillan had his arms folded loosely over his chest, and his eyes were wary, perhaps tuned into what he could sense of my inner turmoil.

  “Who was that?” I asked, indicating the door.

  If there was a girl wanting to get to know Quillan, maybe that was a good thing. He could use her to keep up appearances. I mentally shook myself, pulling my thoughts up with a rough admonishment. Maybe he liked her. Unbidden, my hand curved around the watch I wore, fingers tapping the metal. Would he ask for it back? Some part of me would be relieved, but a bigger part of me would be anxious. How would a girlfriend fit into this equation? As much as I didn’t harbour any romantic feelings for Quillan, I was well aware that he spent too much time with me, that he often had to be there for me in a way that a girlfriend wouldn’t be happy about. Also, there was the not-so-insignificant fact that I could feel any sudden spike of emotion that he had, if he was close enough.

  “Sam and I were involved, in a way, before I moved to Seattle.”

  I threw my hands up as my previous anxiety melted away. “Another ex-girlfriend!” My voice was only half-heartedly exasperated, especially since this wasn’t a problem that I usually had with Quillan—and Sam hadn’t seemed as mean as the girls I usually encountered. “Thank god Silas is scary as all hell, I don’t know how many I can handle. I swear they pop up every time I turn a corner. Poison has taken to pointing them out, like she’s playing Where’s Waldo, except that Waldo would be the girl that those boys haven’t slept with.”

  Quillan’s laugh sounded with a sudden burst, my words acting as a needle to pierce the barrier on his usual control. “You won’t have that problem with Silas.” He swallowed his laughter as suddenly as it had appeared, but I could see it trembling at the corners of his mouth.

  “Why?” I ventured. “Is he gay?”

  “No.”

  “Is he a robot?”

  Another laugh. “No, Seph.”

  “Did Weston neuter him?”

  Quillan blinked. “Ah… wow. No.”

  “Fine. I give up. Why won’t I have that problem with Silas?”

  “He’s never been in a proper relationship. At least… not that we know of.”

  “He’s a virgin?”

  For a moment, it seemed that Quillan wasn’t sure whether to laugh again or not. He stared at me, his jaw dropping incrementally, and I could have sworn that there was colour high in his cheeks. “What? He, er… We’re a little older than you, Seph…”

  “I know,” I said, too quickly. “I know…”

  “I have something that will make you feel better.”

  I watched his hand disappear into his right pocket, trying to fight back my embarrassment from our conversation. I moved forward as he pulled out an iPhone, but then paused, uncomprehending.

  “It’s yours,” he said with a sigh, rocking it from side to side like a pendulum before my face. “You can’t keep roaming around without a phone, Seph. What if we need to get into contact with you?”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “No.”

  He rolled his eyes and tucked the phone away again, pulling out something familiar from his left pocket. “Silas said you’d refuse it,” he said, plonking my old phone unceremoniously into my waiting palm. “He had to wipe everything, so
I programmed our numbers into it again.”

  I turned the phone around to display the single crack that fissured from one side of the screen to the other, slicing it in half. There were dents all over the case, and some of the colour was peeling off, but it was virtually indestructible, so I had grown fond of it. Sort of.

  I switched it on and found all of their contacts, along with Tariq’s, Poison’s, Clarin’s and Tabby’s. I stared at the eight numbers and realised that I was looking at a summary of my life. Eight people. I had eight people that I considered friends or family, and seven of them I hadn’t even known two years ago.

  “How much did you pay for the iPhone?” I asked, beginning to feel guilty that he had gone to the effort of getting me a gift, and I had refused him.

  “It was free.” Quillan smiled. “They were having a sale at the Apple store.”

  “Not funny,” I grumbled. “For one, there’s no such thing as a sale at an Apple store, and also, you guys promised that I would be able to get a job with the Zevghéri. I know Cabe is sending Tariq money. I’m not stupid. My ledger is really starting to add up.”

  “Ledger? Seph… tell me you’re not keeping track of—”

  “I want a job,” I interrupted. “I mean it. If you won’t let me work for the Zevghéri, I’ll look for one elsewhere. I have enough experience.”

  Quillan shrugged his shoulders, his dark eyes settling on mine. This was another difference between him and Silas. Whenever Quillan looked at me, it was with weight. When he was upset or angry, he eyes always landed on mine, hard, rooting my feet to the floor and licking an uncomfortable feeling up my spine. Silas’s dark eyes—so similar and yet so different—would instead flit over my face, categorising my features before he met my gaze, and I would feel the tiny pinpricks of fire along my brow, the slope of my cheekbones, my lips, as if he had physically touched me.

  “Silas is organising it,” Quillan promised, his voice as heavy as his gaze, clamping down on my insecurities and wagging a finger at them to behave. “It’s not easy to get you in with the Zevghéri missions when you haven’t even been formally introduced to the Klovoda yet.”