Page 56 of Faerie Gift

A gasp interrupted the silence and I jerked around to see someone staring at me. A familiar someone.

Nora.

Oh. Well, crap.

Her eyes had gone wide, her mouth gaping open and she took a step in the opposite direction. Away from me. “You…you just changed,” she said. Gawking, surprised and scared. “You changed from a moth to a human. I saw it!”

It wasn’t a look I wanted to see on her face. Onanyone’sface, let alone a friend. Especially not when it was directed at me.

A sense of finality crashed over me. My secret had come out, and although I still hadn’t found the Augundae Imperium, it was over. Damn it!

“It’s not what you think,” I told her immediately. Sounding almost identical to Mike when he’d been caught with Persephone.

Nora’s brain struggled to digest what she’d seen. I saw it clearly as she shook her head, hands twitching in time with the motion. “IthinkI saw you change from a moth into a human!”

If she screamed…yeah, I had to keep her quiet at all costs.

“What are you doing here this late at night?” I demanded. What are you doing here,period? I thought.

“The insomnia was really bad tonight.” Nora pushed her glasses up to her forehead and rubbed her eyes. “I couldn’t sleep so I decided to take a walk.”

“Walk off some energy so you can get to sleep? Probably a good idea.”

We stared at each other and the seconds ticked by. Then she said, “Tavi, transfiguration isn’t a natural fae power. It only happens when you have shifter…” She trailed off. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” What else could I say?

“Oh, Tavi.No.”

Nora shrank back from me, with shadows flickering in her soulful brown eyes. I reined in my grimace at her response. Not the best way for us to have this conversation. I wouldn’t have dared tell her my secret under regular circumstances.

Shaking my head, I didn’t think twice about what came next. I knew what I had to do. I dug inside myself the way I had when I took my cognitive manipulation test in front of the professors. And reached out to grab her mind with my magic. Her aura shone clearly around her body in shades of navy and gray.

This would be too easy.

I’m sorry about this,I apologized to Nora in my head, taking hold of her mind and her energy to make her believe she hadn’t seen me here tonight. If I could force people to believe what I wanted, then I could erase memories. Implant new ones. Make Nora believe she saw nothing.

I’d remember this for the rest of my life. And had no assurance I’d ever forgive myself.

Nora’s energy was warm, bright, butexhausted. Oh my goodness. I wasn’t sure how she stayed standing up, let alone awake. How many nights had she gone without sleep at this point?

I forced my mind to clear. None of that mattered now. What mattered was making sure I protected my secret.

I’m so sorry.

“You went out for a walk,” I told her. “And saw nothing out of the ordinary. Do you understand?”

“I saw nothing unusual,” Nora repeated mechanically.

“You’re going to go back to your room, crawl into bed, and sleep.” It was worth a shot, right? Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. “Sleep, Nora. Your body needs it. The walk helped you. You will fall asleep immediately and stay asleep until the first light of dawn, when you will wake well rested. Tell me, Nora. What are you going to do?

“I’m going back to my room.”

“Exactly right. And then?” I pressed. Three more seconds of staring at her made my stomach sick with anxiety. I shouldn’t be doing this.

“Then…I’m going to sleep,” she replied.

Her mind had bent to my will. Molded and accepted my suggestion. I cemented the new memory with a little push. “You never saw me. You saw nothing odd on your walk. Do you understand?”

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