Skye
Alex nods, looking thoroughly concerned while I spiral into oblivion. “Skye–”
“Did we…?” I look down at my clothes, voice shaking, and see that I’m wearing the same outfit I wore out last night, much to my relief. It was a stupid question, but I’ve already asked it.
“We did not,” he confirms with a soft wince. “Do you remember anything from the club last night?”
“Barely. Was I drugged? I don’t drink that much. I don’t think I even had a drink last night at all. I remember walking in and….” My memory is strangely hazy. I take several gulps of water and try to hand the glass back, but Alex shakes his head.
“Finish it. It has electrolytes in it.”
“I didn’t drink–”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re going to feel like hell if you’re dehydrated. You’re a shifter, remember? You metabolize like a slug.”
I frown, the rim of the glass pressed against my lower lip. He’s not wrong, but it’s still a mean, but very true, thing to say. “Was I drugged? Why do I feel like this?” My bracelet is warm against my skin, like I’ve been using my powers. In fact, the numbness in my hands is beginning to feel familiar–that cold, frosty bite when I’ve overdone it, stretching my powers too far and too thin, but the last time I did that, I was a kid. I would remember using my powers. I know it. Everything right now just feels wrong.
“No, not explicitly.”
“Explicitly? What?”
“Drugged. It wasn’t on purpose.”
“What are you talking about?” I take another drink to appease him and set the cup down on the glass coffee table, but my hands are unsteady, trembling, and I miss the coaster, and it falls over on its side, spilling.
Alex silently rises and walks into the kitchen, a blur of movement in the darkness. Beyond the windows, it’s another bitter cold, impossibly dark morning, the stars on full display. My last concrete memories were admiring those same stars while walking into the club and putting my parka in a locker. Then everything fades, like sand through my fingers.
“Have you ever heard of something called Stardust?” he asks, returning with a towel to mop up the spill.
I sink into the cushions of the couch that smells like him. “No.”
I catch his gaze. That concerned look eats away at me. It’s familiar, like I’ve seen that exact expression shading the sharp angles of his face recently, and then it hits me.
“Oh, gods!”
Alex chuckles as he sits back down beside me. “It’s all coming back now, isn’t it?”
“We kissed!”
“Um, no.” He leans back against the cushions. “You kissed me.”
“You–you didn’t pull away!” I turn to look at him and find him smiling again as he massages his temples. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept all night. Like he was sitting right here, making sure I didn’t keel over. “How did you get me back here?”
“Well, you were lucid enough to walk out of the club and begged me to take you home, so I did. I had to carry you onto the train.”
I bury my face in my hands and groan with embarrassment.
Loving my reaction and continuing the torment, he explains, “You did walk here, to the condo, from the terminal, but you couldn’t tell me the code to your door. It locked me out after twelve tries of the random chains of numbers you gave me, which you thought were hilarious, most of them being strings of 69 or, my favorite, 8008135.”
“What?”
“Well, the version of you I met last night had the mind of a thirteen-year-old boy, because that string of numbers looks like ‘boobies’ on a calculator.”
I gape at him. My cheeks singe red under the weight of my embarrassment, but he’s loving this. He stretches his arms behind him to cup the back of his head with a sigh and says, “Anyway, I obviously couldn’t get you into your condo, and I wasn’t going to leave you on your doormat, so I brought you here and spent the night making sure you didn’t slip into a coma.”
“How did…. I don’t do drugs, Alex.”
“I know.”
“Then how?” I find it hard to swallow. I’m itchy and cold, like I can feel the poison in my veins. I pull the blanket draped over my legs up to my chest, tempted to cover my face with it. “Oh, my Goddess, is Abby okay?”
“She’s totally fine, and she’s with Toby. They’re both okay. Neither were affected. I’ve been texting him updates all morning. Abby is likely still drunk and will be horribly hungover when she wakes up.”
Silence settles between us for several seconds before he rises again and paces to the windows, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans. When he turns around to face me again, he looks more serious, and I sit up a little straighter. “You had an odd reaction. I’m curious about that.”
“I don’t even know what I took.”
“You didn’t take anything. Not on purpose.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” I wish my brain would just function normally for a single second.
He rolls his lower lip between his teeth and says, “Stardust is a highly illegal substance with hallucinogenic and euphoric properties. A normal person would have been–”
“Tripping balls?”
“Where did a princess learn a phrase like that?”
“I have two younger brothers.” This time I pull the blanket up to cover my face, but lower it when Alex remains quiet for the space of several heartbeats. He’s still watching me with that slightly enthused expression that makes my skin tingle in unfamiliar ways. “How did I get it? I don’t remember. I barely remember anything. I remember dancing and… you.”
“I know. I saw you on the dance floor. You were… not yourself.” His eyes are suddenly intense.
I shiver involuntarily at the heat of the memory now barreling through my mind. The moment I placed my hands on his chest was real. The feeling of his shirt. The slow thump of his heart. He smelled incredible, like heat and sex and everything soft and delicious.
“What were you doing at the club?” I ask, tearing myself out of the memory at the moment I rose on my toes to kiss him. He has to know I’m thinking about it. My skin is on fire, and it has to show on my face.
He also has an uncanny ability to sense these changes–the skipping of my heart, the flushed sensation sweeping through me–like no one I’ve ever known. He’s brought it up multiple times.
“I was there to find what you ended up ingesting, and that’s why I said you didn’t do it on purpose. It was in the air last night. Someone brought it to the club, maybe spilled it on a table, on the floor, something like that. Just a little bit can cause a slightly euphoric high, but nothing anyone would really notice. Dosed appropriately, it can be a wild ride, but you weren’t exposed to nearly enough for that. However, your eyes? They were glowing like I’ve never seen. Not like in your office, either. This was different. I was there to try to collect Stardust and ended up finding you.” He looks suddenly guilty. “Toby has a contact in Aurorium who can get us whatever we need–lab supplies, blood samples, you name it, without having to go through the university chain of command.”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah.” His jaw flexes. “I was tasked with testing the blood samples from the murder in the terminal two weeks ago. We found something else in both samples, something synthetic–a drug, we thought. Stardust was the most likely because it’s so prevalent here, and I needed some to test to rule it out, and something went awry that night, obviously, because the sample we went to pick up ended up on the floor of the club, and… in you.” He sighs, running his fingers through his hair before pacing back to the couch. “I feel responsible. I am responsible, and I’m sorry.”
“It’s not a big deal if I don’t die.” I try to laugh, to sound teasing, but the words spill and strain against the tip of my tongue. “I’m going to be okay, right? I didn’t–I didn’t hurt anyone, did I?”
“No, you just danced. You were happy. I think you had a good time.”
I sit up a little straighter, scoffing, “A good time? I’ve never done drugs in my life, and I barely drink alcohol, Alex. I could have seriously hurt myself or someone else!”
“You were more inclined to kiss someone, that someone being me.” The glint of his teeth in the starlight when he smiles makes me slip off the couch and onto wobbling legs.
“Well, it was the drugs. I kissed you under duress!"
“Felt like it,” he murmurs, smiling softly. “Please, sit down before you fall over.”
“What happens now?” The blush wreaking havoc on my face spreads over my skin like wildfire when I heed his warning and ease back onto his couch, hating every second of surrender, but he’s right. I’m like a baby deer.
“You sleep it off. Drink water. Eat something. You’ll be fine in a few hours.”
“Have you slept? You look exhausted.”
“I haven’t. I don’t need it.” He gets to his feet.
“You look–”
Alex gives me his back and walks to the kitchen. He scribbles something on a piece of paper and folds it neatly before pivoting back in my direction. “Would you be willing to have your blood drawn?”
“My blood? Why?”
“I don’t have a sample of Stardust anymore, but I do have you, and judging by the way your eyes are still glowing and you’re panicking, you still have it in your system. I would have gone directly to the Beta to acquire samples of the drug except for the red tape, and I need to get this taken care of as soon as I can. There are other things my lab should be focused on.” He extends the paper, which turns out to be a slip to the clinic with instructions for a lab tech. I clutch it with shaky fingers and read his neat, quick handwriting.
“But… no one can know I have this in my system. I could lose my job!”
“No one will know. The samples will go directly to my lab, and I’ll destroy them personally when I’m done.”
“You’re so confident.”
“Do you think this is the first time the biology department has had to go to illegal lengths to get their hands on samples like this?” He leans his weight on the kitchen island, brow arched in challenge.
I don’t doubt it. Judging by the look on his face, I’m sure he’s had to ask for worse and has secrets buried under the ice.
I lean back against the cushions, surrendering, letting the ebb and flow of whatever Stardust is left work through my sluggish shifter system.
“What is Stardust, exactly?”
His eyes catch on a moonbeam stretching over the kitchen island. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“Try. You owe me, seeing as your idiotic idea to buy illicit contraband put me in this position.”
“It’s… space material.”
“It’s what?” I blink, wondering if I heard him incorrectly.
“Meteorites. Ground up, mixed with herbs I’m not totally sure about, but that’s the gist of it.”
“You’re joking.” I clutch my bracelet, which has several charms made of a single meteorite I found as a child.
“I’m serious. And if you’re willing to help, I might be able to pull specifics out of your blood sample if you go to the clinic.”
“Why can’t you just take my blood here? I know you can get your hands on the supplies you need. The clinic is right next door to the biology department.”
He hangs his head, shoulders going rigid. “I–no.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re squeamish.” I rise shakily, fighting a wave of dizziness that threatens to take me to the floor. “Fine. I’ll do it. But only because I’m curious about how the hell people are grinding up meteorites and turning them into party drugs. I’m sure my Aunt Maeve will want to know all about this.” I also need to know about this. Badly. No wonder I feel like my insides are turned inside out.
“I’m sure she would.” He watches me cross the room, hyperaware of every step I take across the carpet to where he left my boots by the door. “Are you feeling all right?”
“As good as I can.” I huff a breath while forcing my feet into the boots with a hand braced on the wall. “I’ll get my blood drawn, okay? But if my department finds out, and I lose my job, I’m coming for your neck.”
Alex’s eyes darken a shade, turning from ocean blue to the deepest cerulean I’ve ever witnessed.