Skye
The street outside Abby’s favorite nightclub is washed in shades of hazy blue and green. It’s a frigid night, and we’re both bundled to the chin as we approach, slipping through the heavy front door and into the long hallway lined with lockers. Abby skips ahead to pay the cover charge while I open and shut lockers to find an empty one.
My twin brothers visited Aurorium and the university last year in the dead of winter, just after Solstice. Having grown up in Moonrise, they were shocked by the idea of having to shed layers every time they stepped into a store or restaurant, but after years of this, I’ve grown used to it. Wearing thick boots in a club? That still feels weird, but when it’s negative forty, there’s no way around it.
My bracelet snags on my parka sleeve. Adrenaline rushes to my fingertips, prickling like little needles. I force myself to take a breath, overcome by the memory of the bracelet coming unclasped in my office a few days ago, and slowly untangle it before taking off the parka and stuffing it into an empty locker.
The heat in the hallway floods over my body, seeping through my sweater. I shiver. It feels nice–so good, actually, after a full evening running from one store to the next gathering all the random, specialty grocery and toiletry items I need for my new condo. My fingers are chilled to the bone even after wearing gloves for the past three hours, and when Abby returns, she notices how I’m pinching my skin, trying to bring feeling back into my body.
She eyes me for a moment before taking a deep breath. Her dainty features crinkle. She frowns at me, shuffling as she pulls her arms through the sleeves of her parka. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” I pull my hat off my head and begin unraveling the tight braid I wore underneath.
“Have you been hanging out with Dr. Scarlett?”
My hair falls in loose tendrils over my shoulder. I brush them back, trying to smooth the static electricity causing the pieces to stick to the fibers of my dark blue sweater. “Define hanging out.”
“You know what I mean, Skye. Are you guys, like, a thing?”
“A thing?” I try to sound shocked she’d even ask, but I’m not sure how to arrange my expression to match my tone. I doubt I look shocked. We have been hanging out, if I can call it that. I did go to his office this afternoon, knowing how unlikely it was he’d be there, but he was, like I was pulled in by a magnet. I wanted to see him. I’ve been thinking about him. He’s been taking up little pockets of my mind that had otherwise remained untouched.
“Do you like him?” Abby asks, leaning her shoulder against the locker.
“Abby–”
“Look, I just want to know.”
“I know how you feel about him.” I hold her gaze. I don’t want to hurt her. Her hatred toward Alex is well-known, but the more I get to know him, the less I understand why she feels so strongly about him in the negative. But then it clicks. I see it first in her eyes, the slight glossiness, the little wrinkle between her eyebrows. “Are you jealous of his relationship with Toby?”
She blushes and tries to laugh, but it’s half-hearted. “No. It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?”
“You go first. He’s been around so much. He helped you move, Skye. He carried your mattress across campus!”
“We needed his help, and you know it!”
“I just need to know whether my best friend has a thing for my research director or not, okay?” She crosses her arms under her chest and fixes me with a sharp look.
I bristle, relax, and take a deep breath before replying, “I’m not going to lie. I like him. I find him… handsome.”
“Handsome?”
“He’s hot. You’ve even said so.”
“I didn’t think he was your type.”
“Do I even have a type? I’ve been on, maybe, six dates in total since I moved here.”
“Is he nice to you?” Her voice falters, and she looks down at the toes of her boots.
“Yes, Abby, he is. He thinks highly of you, too, you know. He thinks you’re kind of lazy in the lab, but you already know that's actually the case.”
She tries to glare but huffs, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “I hate the ice lab.”
“I think you make that perfectly clear.” I step closer to her as another group enters the hallway. “I’m going to be helping in his lab for a bit, I think. He needs a consultant from my department, and we have been seeing more of each other lately, but it’s not like you’re insinuating.”
“Oh, really? Because he looks at you like he wants to eat you.”
I blink several times, too stunned to speak. “He does not.”
“Oh, my dear, sweet Skye, you have no idea, do you?”
“No idea of what?”
“Abby? Oh, hey! I thought you guys were going to get here like an hour ago!” Toby’s voice rings out from the main entrance of the inner sanctum of the club.
Abby angles her body toward him to wave, but I step closer to her, spurred into action by something I can only call delusion. “Why do you ask?”
“About Alex?”
I nod, gripping her forearm enough to hold her attention.
“Because he talks about you all the time to Toby, and Dr. Scarlett rarely talks at all.” Her dark gaze cuts through me like a blade, awakening something new, something foreign. Something that feels a lot like want.
She whirls out of my grip and practically floats over to Toby, who bends to kiss her forehead before they disappear through the door into the club proper, leaving me standing like an idiot against the lockers.
I’ve always confused curiosity with true feeling. I blame my dad for that. He loves Mom, of course, but never, not once, has he been open with me about how deep that love runs between them. Mom did her best to explain it–that Dad loves her to the point of obsession. That to him, she’s the moon, the stars–his entire world in one soul, one body, and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
But Mom’s a full shifter. Shifters feel things so heavily, so physically compared to… what I am. What my dad is.
Maybe that’s why there’s been this disconnect between my rational mind and my feelings for my entire life. As a mystic, I see things too deeply and read too sharply between the lines. I’ve read the curve of Alex’s smile and the way he leans toward me during conversations. I’ve studied how his hands move when he reaches for me. I’ve tried to rationalize the feeling of his touch and the way I warmed from within, waking up to his eyes, his face, after having that terrible vision in my office. I don’t know how to process this strange feeling. There’s no equation I can use to work this out. Nothing I can study. Nothing I can research.
I have a crush, I think. That’s what Abby would call it. It sounds so simple putting it that way.
Simple–and stupid.
I scrub my cold cheeks and take another deep breath before marching into the club to perform the ritual I’ve been following for years–find our table, drink a single cocktail, and wait for Abby to release me back to my cave of solitude, where I’ll crumble under the weight of my feelings for the one man on campus who has tangled the loose threads in my mind so heavily I’ve found it hard to think of much else.
But the club rushes toward me, and everything feels off. The colors are sharper than I remember. It’s louder, but the music doesn’t rile my powers aggressively like it normally does. In fact, I feel like I’m moving in slow motion toward our usual table, taking breath after breath, each inhalation causing my heart rate to jump. The music thrums over my skin, settling me, melding with my powers and calming them in a way that makes me feel suddenly light as air.
It’s not the usual screeching of voices I hear when I’m overstimulated. No. I feel….
I look around, feeling hot, my sweater sticking to my skin. I’m wedged in our usual booth–alone. Abby’s on the dance floor. I can see her through a haze of bodies–all color and light. I blink, trying to clear my hazy vision. What’s happening to me?
I check my bracelet, wondering if this is a vision, but it’s still on. I pull my sweater over my head. I’m only wearing a pale gray camisole underneath, and the air against my bare skin feels like the Goddess’s kingdom.
I slide out of the booth with a relieved sigh, swaying as I move toward the bodies dancing to music I can barely hear over my pounding heart. I feel drunk. I feel… good. I feel… heavy. Even my powers are bogged down, subdued. Or spent. I have no idea how I end up in the center of the dance floor, closed in by other bodies, other lifelines that stretch like little golden threads toward the ceiling. I normally can’t see that unless I want to, unless I summon my powers to show me the tapestry beyond the stars, but here it is, stretched across the ceiling, and it’s… glorious.
I know something is wrong, but I don’t feel anything other than heat and bliss. My body moves on its own volition, swaying and writhing to the music. I lift my arms in the air and close my eyes and just… feel. Feel everything. Feel nothing. My overactive brain quiets until I’m nothing but instinct and feeling, and when I open my eyes again, there he is.
Alex is standing on the outskirts of the dance floor wearing dark jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair is ruffled, and he looks… damn good. Undone, unburdened, loose.
His bright blue eyes hold my gaze so intensely I feel it in my stomach, which tightens with a fresh, bright wash of heat when he slowly narrows his eyes at me, taking me in.
It’s just me and him. The rest of the club fades. I stop dancing to look at him, and it feels like time is moving at the speed of light around us while we remain trapped in a vacuum where everything is slow and heavy.
He takes a step toward me, and the club rushes back into focus. The music throbs through my ears, and my body moves to it. I can’t resist. I surrender, even as he moves in my direction, parting other dancers and side-stepping through the crowd to where I am.
He says nothing when he reaches me. His hands are cool against my heated skin when he caresses my cheeks and forces me to look up at him.
I want to melt into his touch. He smells divine. The fabric of his shirt is so soft. The feeling of his hands on me and his proximity is entirely intoxicating.
“Dance with me,” I murmur, but the words feel garbled, and I’m not sure I’ve even said them out loud.
He tilts my chin up, looking down at me with narrowed, inquisitive eyes. “Your eyes–”
I rise up on my toes until our mouths are only centimeters apart, mouthing his name before pressing my lips to his.
He doesn’t pull away.
I think… I might have pulled away, because now I’m looking up at him again, and he’s arching a brow, utterly concerned as the world starts to spin, and the colors and sounds around me funnel into a kaleidoscope of color.
“Skye? Hey, something isn’t right. What have you had to drink?”
Darkness sweeps over me, dragging me into the depths.
* * *
I sit up, holding myself up by the elbows as a living room almost exactly like mine comes into startling focus. Everything is off, all turned around. The staircase leading to the loft is on the opposite side of the room, as well as the kitchen. The colors are wrong, and none of my rocks, crystals, or plants are here, either. I lean back and palm my face, trying to scrub the heavy feeling from my eyes and brain, but then I peek through my fingers at Alex.
I forgot he was here… in his own house.
I’m in his condo.
Not mine.
How did I end up here? What happened last night?
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, to inspect me. I jerk back. The look of concern drawing his brows together makes me feel awful, to say the least. I must have blacked out. How much did I drink last night? Actually, what time is it? I was just in the club. I can still hear the music, feel the heat on my skin.
I part my lips to ask what happened, but all that leaves my tongue is a groan.
“Here. Drink this.” He extends a glass of water, but it takes me a moment to get my fingers to flex. I finally manage it and take several greedy gulps, wincing at the slightly sweet and salty taste. Electrolytes? Probably. I suppose I should thank him. “How do you feel?”
“Um–I don’t know. Bad? What happened? How’d I get here?”
“You don’t remember?” He arches a brow.
“No? Should I? What time is it?”
“Just after six in the morning.”
“The morning?”