Page 70 of Soul of Shadow
As if sensing Charlie’s sadness, the vätte, who had been sunning himself in a patch of warmth on the carpet, waddled over to where Charlie stood. He nuzzled his hat against her ankle. She smiled absently at the comfort.
Eventually, Lou’s voice wiggled into her conscious. “Charlie?” she asked. “Did you hear me?”
Blinking, Charlie turned away from the window. When shelooked over, Lou and Abigail were both already in their dresses and heels, Mason no longer in the room. Geez. Had she really zoned out for that long?
“Hear what?” she asked.
“I was just saying”—Lou’s tone was uncharacteristically soft and wistful—“that I wished Sophie were here. That she should be taking pictures with us downstairs.” A small smile. “She would have lost her mind if she knew I was going with Mason.”
Charlie forced a laugh, but it was stilted, uncomfortable. In her chest, her heart squeezed painfully. How was she supposed to do this? To sit on the knowledge that her sister was not only alive but had become something inhuman, something strong and fierce and magical? It was cruel. It was wrong. They deserved to know the truth.
But she couldn’t give it to them. Not if she wanted to keep them safe.
“Anyway.” Lou patted her hands to her legs. “Elias will be here any minute. You should put your dress on.”
“Right.” Charlie nodded, trying to bring herself back to the present moment. “Right. The dress.” She scooped it up from where it was laid out on the bed and carried it over to the bathroom. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
Lou and Abigail exchanged an unreadable look, then nodded and walked out the bedroom door.
Inside the bathroom, Charlie slipped on the shimmering black dress. It fell down her body, hanging almost to her knees but not quite touching. The intricate beadwork shimmered under the bathroom lights. Her wavy dark hair, usually loose and unkempt, had been tamed into an updo by Abigail, with two strands of hair dangling on either side of her face. Her eyes wererimmed with black, her lashes long and lush. Lou had done something with her eye shadow that gave the lids a smokey look. Paired with chunky black boots and the flapper-like dress, Charlie felt beautiful. Not in a traditional, pink-and-pearls type of way, but with mystery, with danger, in a darker undertone that she never imagined would suit her so well.
She had only a few additions to make. Pulling open the drawer beneath her bathroom sink, she rattled around until she found her lucky deck of cards, which she slipped into the pocket under her arm. Then she shut the drawer and opened the cabinets below it. At the very back of the sink, jammed up beneath the pipes, was the knife and pouch of feathers that Sophie had given her, wrapped up in five different hand towels. Charlie unraveled them until the leather pouch fell to the floor and the knife’s shining silver blade flashed under the bathroom lights.
She handled the blade gingerly, even knowing what Sophie had said about it never slicing its owner. With a shaking hand, she held the knife out, tip pointed down. She uncurled her left fist. Then she pressed the knife into her skin. It went against every instinct in her body, every sense of self-preservation, but she did it anyway. And she pressedhard, actively trying to draw blood.
Nothing. Not even a drop. Even though the knife looked deadly sharp, it felt, on her skin, like the blade was rubber.
Slightly comforted, she pulled open the longest trick pocket—one at her waist—and slid the knife inside. Then she picked up the pouch from the floor and tucked it into the pocket just above her backside.
Once everything was in place, she walked out of the bathroom and into the hallway.
As she approached the landing, voices drifted up the stairsfrom the front hall. She heard Abigail talking rapidly, Lou and Mason arguing over a corsage, parents mingling and admiring each other’s iPhone cameras.
“… and even the selfie camera has autofocus,” she heard her mother explaining to whatever hapless victim was listening. “I especially like the forty-eight MP sensors. I swear I can see every wrinkle on my middle-aged face.”
To Charlie’s surprise, it wasn’t a fellow parent who answered. It was Elias.
“What wrinkles?” he asked. “You don’t look a day over thirty, Mrs. Hudson.”
Charlie heard her mother’s familiar laughter. “Oh, you’re just trying to get me to approve of you taking out my daughter.”
Shuffling across the carpeted hallway, Charlie peered over the banister to see the people gathered below. Lou and Mason stood by the grandfather clock, Lou’s mother trying to prevent Lou from stabbing Charlie’s brother with the boutonniere pin. Abigail and Bex were clustered with their parents, sliding corsages onto each other’s wrists and shooting each other shy smiles. And right at the foot of the staircase—Elias, talking to her mom.
“Am I that transparent?” Elias asked her mom with a grin.
Charlie took a step back from the bannister, then another, until she was pressed up against the wall, well out of sight of the people gathered below. She let out a long exhale. This was it. The beginning of her charade. She knew her mission: extract any possible information from Elias on the whereabouts of the Fenrir monster without making him suspicious. It shouldn’t be too hard, right? He already believed they were on the same side, working toward the same goal. She just needed to make sure hecontinuedto believe so.
As she stood with her back to the wall, taking small breaths in and out of her nose, she felt another wave of fury wash over her. It was the same rage she had felt in the library, only more focused, more acute. How dare he stand down there, chatting amicably with her mother as if he weren’t plotting her doom. How dare he spread his charm around to every human he met, each one unaware of the horror he would bring down upon them.
Pretending not to hate him was going to be more difficult than she expected.
While she gathered the courage to go downstairs, she heard a squeak by her bedroom door. She looked over to find the vätte waddling out, clearly offended at having been left behind. He made a beeline across the carpet, then came to a stop beside her legs. He planted himself firmly on the floor. If his arms were long enough to cross stubbornly, she was fairly certain he would have done so.
“Do not make me regret letting you come,” she whispered to him. Then, with one final breath out, she peeled herself off the wall and began descending the stairs. The vätte squeaked and bounced along behind her.
Her friends continued to mingle and joke, completely oblivious to the nerves radiating off Charlie. But Elias, midconversation with her mother, now talking about his childhood spent moving from place to place, seemed to sense her immediately. His eyes darted from her mother to her. It was clearly meant to be only a glance, but he did a double take, stopping midsentence to properly take her in.
As Charlie stepped carefully down the staircase, Elias’s face, which had been smiling not a moment before, shifted. His eyeswidened, his lips dropping to a subtle part. He looked as if he wanted to say something, that the words were right on the tip of his tongue, but the nonexistent wind snatched them away at the very last second. It was disconcerting, how tightly he focused on her. His eyes followed her all the way down the staircase, sweeping her body, coming to rest alternately on her face, her hair, her bust, the exposed skin of her shins. It was too much. It made Charlie’s skin sear—even knowing what Elias wanted to do, even with all of that hate burning deep in her heart… she couldn’t deny the fire that lit within her whenever he looked at her. Couldn’t deny the attraction between them—no matter how badly she wanted to.
