Page 16 of Trick Me
“Eight what?” Erynn asks, clearly confused.
“Nothing. Different conversation. In my head. Which I’m having. Apparently.”
Mikael walks straight through her, and she shivers violently, wrapping her arms around herself. “Okay, that was weird. Did you feel that? Like someone walked over my grave. Or through me. Can someone walk through me? Is that a thing that happens at fae parties?”
“You felt that?” I stare at Mikael, who looks equally surprised.
“The sudden cold? Yes.” She looks around again, then directly at where Mikael stands, though her eyes don’t focus on him. “There’s something here. I can feel it. But I can’t see it, which never happens. I see dead people for a living. It’s literally on my business cards.”
“You put ‘I see dead people’ on your business cards?” I ask, desperate to deflect.
“Well, no. It says ‘Spiritual Medium andAfterlife Consultant.’ But the point stands. I should be able to see whatever’s making you talk to yourself.”
“Tell her about the wet dog incident,” Mikael suggests. “Women love vulnerable men, and I think she likes you.”
I ignore him.
Someone stumbles down the hallway, drunk and laughing, reeking of fairy wine. They bump into Erynn hard enough to send her reeling forward again. This time when I catch her, something’s different. Her body temperature is spiking, skin feverish through her dress.
“Something’s wrong,” she gasps, doubling over. One hand clutches her stomach, and the other braces against my chest. “It’s moving. Inside me. There’s something inside me trying to get out.”
Her claws extend further, and the sound that comes out of her is a whimper that becomes a growl that grows into something else entirely.
“Tell me exactly what you feel,” I demand, keeping my voice steady despite my own growing panic. Something is happening here beyond normal fae-party weirdness.
“Hungry,” she whispers, and her voice has changed, rougher, deeper. “So hungry, but not for food. For… running. Hunting. I want to chase something. I want to catch it. I want to—” She looks up at mewith terror-filled eyes. “The spirits warned me not to come tonight.”
“She needs to shift,” Mikael says, all humor gone from his voice.
Yet she insists she’s not a shifter. I reach for my wolf, the constant companion that’s been with me since my first change as a child. The presence that defines me, grounds me, makes me what I am.
Nothing.
The space where my wolf lives is empty. Not sleeping, not distant, not angry. Fucking gone. A void where half my soul should be. Cold dread floods me.
“I need air,” Erynn gasps, then bolts.
She moves wrong, too fast for a fae, too clumsy for a shifter, too desperate for anything controlled.
I watch her disappear through the ballroom doors, every instinct screaming at me to follow. Not to help. To hunt.
“Well, go after her, lover boy,” Mikael says quietly. “Unless you want to explain to the elders how you let your mate get torn apart by your own wolf.”
“She’s not my—” I stop. The apple. The witch with her knowing smile. The peel hitting me, most likely marking me. And now with the full moon outside, she’s transforming…
“The spirits warned her,” I say aloud, pieces clicking together with horrible clarity. “They knew this would happen.”
“Spirits usually do. Cryptic bastards, the lot of them.” Mikael starts fading, becoming translucent. “Better hurry. Your wolf’s not known for its patience, and her body’s not built for what it wants to do.”
It all comes at me quickly—my ability to see ghosts, her shifting into a wolf even though she isn’t one.
We’d been cursed, and somehow our abilities swapped. How the fuck does that happen?
Chapter
Three
ERYNN
