“Caveman,” I muttered.
Smirking at me, he kicked off his shoes and slid the phone into one of them before reaching for his shirt and shrugging it off.
“Are they coming?” Cabe asked, toeing off his own shoes.
“Yeah.” Noah unbuttoned his pants and shoved them off, revealing the boxers he wore underneath.
I turned away and walked toward the water in my dress, pondering over how convenient boxers must be, as far as clothing was concerned. You could take off your pants pretty much anywhere, and have mini-pants beneath. Cabe appeared beside me in his own mini-pants, which I avoided looking at. I walked close to the middle of the pool, supressing a shudder as the cold water lapped at the hem of my skirt. I didn’t dare go in any further, not when Clarin had gone to such trouble to dress me.
“That’s freezing,” Noah complained, though he lowered himself into the water fully, allowing it to lap at his chest.
Cabe followed him, ducking his head under the water. I grabbed his hand when he rose again, giving in to the need to touch one of them. He tugged and I stumbled, the water catching at my skirt again, flattening the light material to my thighs. The water was ice-cold, but it helped to sooth some of my tension. I tugged back and Cabe smiled, getting a better grip on my hand. We both knew that he was stronger, but he allowed me to stay where I was.
“The messenger left another note,” I told them, pulling the little scroll of paper from where I had been hiding it, down the front of my dress.
“You got anything else in there?” Cabe asked, deadpan.
“No.” I gave him a sideways look and handed the note to Noah, who unrolled it and read it out loud.
“Tell tale tit, your tongue shall be slit; and all the dogs in town shall have a little bit.” Noah shook his head. “Where was it? I don’t even know this nursery rhyme.”
“In Clarin’s makeup case.”
“Makes sense.”
“It does?” Cabe and I both asked at the same time.
Noah rolled his eyes. “He’s warning you not to talk. Tell tale tit, your tongue shall be slit? He’s telling you not to gossip. This isn’t a real threat, not like the others. Who knows how long it’s been in that case. He probably slipped it in there when you moved here, knowing that Clarin would get his hands on you eventually.”
“I thought something was different,” I muttered. “Usually his threats are a little more intense. More showy.”
“He’s covering his bases. I guess if I was killing people and blowing up things I’d probably want to discourage gossip too.”
Something chose that moment to slither over my foot, and I jumped to the side, breaking my hold on Cabe’s hand. I wasn’t proud of the squeak that slipped from my throat, but I didn’t have any time to be ashamed of it as my foot landed on a moss-covered rock and everything slid out from beneath me. I spun, still trying to catch my balance, and ended up falling backwards into the water. It rushed in over my head, shocking the eyes that I hadn’t had a chance to close.
I ended up on my knees, my hands in the sand. I could have kicked up—the water wasn’t that deep—but I didn’t want to. I felt as though I had frozen reality. My tempestuous existence had paused atop the climb before the plunge, and my life became still around me, baited with foreboding anticipation—the dangers just out of reach. Below me was nothing but sand. Nothing but darkness. Above me was nothing but water, nothing but empty possibility. I must have sat there for too long, because my lungs started to strain, and then hands were grabbing at my arms, pulling me out of my still-life fantasy. My head broke the surface, and I landed over someone’s chest, their arms tight around my spine, crushing me against them.
“We shouldn’t have brought you out tonight,” Noah agonised, his voice in my ear.
I rested my head on his shoulder. “I do embarrassing things when I’m straining. I was trying to ignore it.”
“Ignoring something doesn’t make it go away, Seph.” Cabe spoke from behind me.
In a movement typical of their own unearthly synchronicity, Noah turned me around in the same moment as Cabe stepped forward, catching me between them. For the first time, I actually wondered how they managed to be so attuned to each other—how they managed to speak to each other without words and move in perfect symmetry with the other’s thoughts. They acted more like twins than Silas and Quillan, who were supposedly identical. They were almost always with each other. They did almost everything together.
“You two are close,” I muttered, lazily examining the prickly sensations that were skittering over my spine and sparking to life in the pit of my belly. The cold water seemed to have had a calming affect on it.
“Huh?” Noah sounded distracted.
Cabe brushed his hands down my arms, finding my hands. “Are you tyring to change the subject?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. What were we talking about?” My voice came out sounding a little dazed.
“We were telling you that you can’t ignore the strain.”
“You’re right.” I sighed the words. “My valcrick gave Clarin the wrong happiness today.”
“What?” Cabe laughed. “What did you do?”
“I told him to let me go or I’d never let him dress me again, so he did. Problem solved.”
“Hm.” Noah’s arm tightened around my middle, lifting me up higher in the water and pulling my hair off the back of my neck so that it fell over my right shoulder. “You’ll need to figure out a better incentive for us.”
“Are you straining too?” I asked Noah.
He laughed, but the laugh ended in a groan. “Fuck.”
I blinked.
“The pairs don’t strain.” Cabe spoke quickly, his fingers linking through mine and drawing my hands out and up, until my wet arms looped around his neck. Luckily, I wasn’t so far distracted by the strain that I didn’t realise that he was trying to distract me from Noah. Had I upset Noah by staying underwater for too long? “Remind me, Noah,” Cabe’s eyes bore into mine, “why do we let her make the decisions?”
Noah chuckled, and I felt it against the back of my neck. The itching sensation spread over my skin with each warm drag of his breath. “I can’t think,” he whispered.
What had Cabe just said?
“Make the decisions?” I finally asked. “Me?”
“The strain would be a hell of a lot easier to deal with if you weren’t trying to keep your distance from us.” Cabe was serious, his eyes capturing mine and holding me hostage. His expression was almost cold, but I could sense the hurt that he was trying to conceal.
“I’m not… I can’t—”
He cut across me, the way they did every time I started to voice any kind of rebuttal. “I know. I’m sorry I kissed you… twice. I want you to feel safe with me. When you’re straining, when you’re normal. I don’t want you to be scared about how I’ll react.” He blinked, breaking eye contact with me and glancing down. “I promise; you can feel safe.”
His sincerity chased away the annoyance that I had felt at him talking over me. “Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay,” he raised his head again, a hopeful look sparking over his face.
“Even if the strain makes me attack you?”
He laughed and tilted his head to the side, baring his neck.
I was confused until he said, “Go ahead, bloodsucker, do your worst.”
I laughed at the idea that my strain needed his blood to be satiated, but the sound was muffled against his skin, because my teeth were already clamping down on his neck. True to his word, he didn’t react in the slightest. It was an odd thing for us to be doing, and he tasted like seawater, but I was inexplicably curious about this new dynamic. I wondered if he would keep his promise. I sucked at his skin a little bit because I was starting to drool, and I felt his whole body tense up.
“Not like that,” he said. “Jesus. Don’t do it like that.”
I pulled back, but Cabe’s expression was carefully masked.
 
; “There’s a way to do it?” I asked.
My brain was suddenly preoccupied with the memory of what Quillan had interrupted between Silas and myself. I had bitten him, and his feelings had rushed into me with such a drugging thud that I could almost feel it again now; a ghostly reverberation that carried straight from my memories and planted itself firmly into my chest.
Without warning, Noah’s teeth sank into the skin at the base of my neck, just above the collar of my dress. My thoughts stuttered, tripping over themselves in an attempt to catch-up to the present. Valcrick brushed over us, lighting up the darkness as breath rushed out from between my lips in a sound that was suspiciously similar to a groan.
We all froze, and Cabe’s eyes grew wide, searching my face. “Did you just—”
I couldn’t bear to hear the question, so I tilted my head down and sank my teeth back into his neck, biting down as hard as Noah had just bitten me, and then harder. I wanted to punish them for my own mistake. I wanted to be punished, for losing myself. As soon as I did, Noah licked the spot he had just bitten, causing the familiar darkness to flicker into my head and sending every wayward thought scattering. Reflexively, I softened my bite. Cabe pulled my head away from the crook of his neck and gripped my chin sternly, like he was about to lecture me on something. I wasn’t sure what he saw in my face, but the firmness of his grip eased, and he dragged his finger over my bottom lip, spreading dampness to the corner of my mouth.
“Switch,” he grunted.
Noah flipped me so quickly that it left my head spinning. My back landed across Cabe’s chest and I found myself staring into Noah’s blue eyes as Cabe’s hands settled on my hips.
“Five more minutes,” Noah said, his hands moulding to either side of my face, drawing me up until I was straining on the tips of my toes. The burn of my pulled muscles was oddly welcome.
“Five minutes?” I asked.
“Five minutes,” he repeated.
“You bit me,” I accused him.
“I know.” His eyes were heavy on my face, trying to draw forth whatever secrets were to be found in my expression.
“I’m straining.”
“I’m trying not to take advantage of it.”
“I have full confidence in you.”
“You’re naïve.”
“I’m sure.”
“You’re deluded.” He laughed.
“Totally deluded,” Cabe agreed.
I ignored them both. I was right, whether they wanted to agree with me or not.
“Four minutes,” Noah said. “Lift.”
Cabe’s hands shifted higher, settling into the dip of my waist and lifting me easily. Noah leaned in, trapping me between them. I didn’t have to tip my head back to meet Noah’s eyes now, and I could see the edginess lurking in his gaze, tainting the usual force that his eyes commanded until it no longer seemed like controlled gravity, but more like a looming hurricane. His hands slid from the sides of my face to my neck, settling into a gentle hold as he dipped forward, the tip of his nose brushing mine. He was too close, I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I dropped my gaze to his chin instead.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I should have said it earlier, I know you’re both finding it difficult, but you’re trying. You always back off when I need you to. Thank you.”
Noah’s hand twitched on my neck, and we stood like that for a short time, until he drew back enough for me to see his eyes again. He seemed on the verge of smiling, and then he left me completely as Cabe set me down.
The sound of approaching people drew my attention, and I looked towards the rocks as Silas came into view. He appeared like an apparition of the night—dropping from some unidentifiable point above him, landing in a graceful crouch on the sand. Quillan climbed after him in a more normal fashion. Their eyes scanned the inlet before finding us in the pool.
“At least one of them has clothes on.” Silas was toneless.
A heady warmth filled me as his eyes flickered over my face and Quillan’s gaze collided with mine, silently asking if I was okay. Having all four of them there was a relief, but it was also somehow aggravating the strain. I had the most insane urge to run into Silas’s arms, and I told myself that it was because he was standing closer than Quillan.
He didn’t seem likely to approach me. He was taking in my wet dress, and the piles of clothing in the sand. He looked away, and I could see a muscle ticking in his neck. His jaw flexed, like he was grinding his teeth.
“I’m ready to go home,” I said.
“Go.” Silas wasn’t looking at me when he spoke.
Cabe and Noah were oddly quiet as they walked up the beach. I made to follow them, but Noah touched my arm, shaking his head. Confused, I glanced at Cabe, but he was avoiding looking at me, his mouth pressed into a tight line.
What is happening?
Quillan shrugged out of his jacket and moved toward me, but didn’t get very far. Silas made a growling sound in his throat before Quillan had moved past him, and Quillan paused. He looked at me, laid the jacket on a nearby rock, and retreated back the way he had come.
“What’s happening?” I finally vocalised. I cringed at the hint of panic that carried in my tone, echoing through the tiny inlet.
Cabe and Noah had managed to pull their clothes back on and were halfway over the rocks. Quillan motioned them to keep going when they paused.
“It happened about five minutes ago,” he said, unable to mask his cringe.
Silas flinched as though someone had actually struck him, and Quillan threw me a sympathetic glance before following the boys over the rocks. I stared at the spot where he had disappeared, realisation freezing me to the spot.
Five minutes ago… they felt my emotion. The barrier over my emotions must not be working very well with the strain.
Silas stalked toward me, and the second realisation crashed into me. His eyes were black and burning. He wasn’t Silas right now. The others had too much faith in my ability to tame his beast, apparently. I inwardly cursed. Maybe I had proven myself fairly competent at it, but those instances were few, and they usually included someone else as the focus of Silas’s… negative energy.
“U-um,” I stuttered as his boots hit the water.
He didn’t stop until he was toe-to-toe with me and the saltwater was dragging at his knees. His eyes were categorising everything. I wondered if there was a mark on my neck, and if he could see it. He started to scowl, his eyes landing back on my face again.
“Are you angry because someone touched me?” I asked.
Barely, he nodded.
“But it’s Noah and Cabe.” I laid a hand on his arm, trying to pacify him. He stared at my hand as though it offended him in some way, so I dropped it again.
The switch in him was barely visible; his pupils became smaller, his shoulders rolled back, and his fists loosened. He started to circle me, that animalistic prowl of his proving effective even with the water dragging at his legs, attempting to hinder his movement. He paused when he was behind me, and I knew that he had seen it. He touched a spot at the base of my neck with the pad of his finger. It was sore.
“You have no idea what you’ve taken from me,” he said quietly. “You have no idea what you’ve done.” He suddenly moved close, his breath whispering over my ear. “You own me, angel. You won’t ever let me go. We weren’t supposed to meet you, but those idiots were drawn to you, because you own them, too. None of this was supposed to happen.”
I began to spin around, anger bubbling in my throat, but he grabbed my shoulders, keeping me still.
“Make sense, dammit,” I growled.
He laughed, but the sound was bitter. “It’ll never make sense. I made sure of it; I took care of it. You’ll never understand.”
I froze, a chill creeping into my bones that had nothing to do with the water. He moved closer, making another one of those sounds in his throat—though this was one of dark amusement. I could feel angry valcrick bubbling beneath my skin, and for a brief moment, I to
yed with the idea of using it.
“Won’t work,” Silas muttered, his fingers constricting on my shoulders. “We’re bonded, your valcrick can’t hurt me. Self-preservation mechanism. You might not have one, but your valcrick does.”
“Great,” I seethed, “I’ll just have to hurt you in other ways, then.”
I elbowed him in the torso, and it hurt. Badly. I might have broken something, but there was enough force behind my action that Silas fell back from me. I turned, spraying water in an angry, cutting gesture of my hand. He had his fingers splayed over his stomach, tapping each digit thoughtfully. The beast was still in control, and he didn’t seem to be in any pain. He was calculating my next move.
“You know,” I said, trying to take a subtle step backwards, “you’re going to be pretty unhappy with yourself, when you, you know… come back to yourself.”
“Hm?” He noticed my retreat—of course—but didn’t make any move to follow me.
“Why don’t you tell me a little more about this thing you took care of? What have you done?”
“Okay.” He grinned, and it was terrifying.
Christ, I never wanted to make Silas angry again. Could I trust what he was saying—or was his beast taking crazy? I didn’t know.
“Run,” he said. “Run away, as fast as you can. That’s what you said to me. That’s how it all started.”
The boy didn’t run. He fell back against the topside of a table, running a hand through his mussed hair to pull it back from his forehead again. “Get out of my head,” he said. “You won’t find anything new. I told you already, I didn’t feel anything. She’s not my Atmá. Not her, and not any of the others.”
I flinched back from the vision, and Silas watched silently.
“What was that?” My voice trembled.
“You want answers? Fine. Let’s play the game.”
He moved toward me, and I moved away, until my feet hit dry sand, and then we both stopped.
“Truth,” I relented.
“What happened?”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” I hedged.