Gray (Awakening Book 1) (10 page)

Okay, that was the most insane thought anybody could possibly ever have. It was all just ridiculous . . . or was it? I didn’t believe in magic, but magic appeared to believe in me.

Air, water and stones had all wanted to do whatever I asked. I had felt that even in the human world. The elements called to me.

“Shayla?”

I blinked, startled to find Ben giving me a speculative look. Oh. Right. We stood in the cafeteria. I was supposed to appear to be an ordinary human girl.

Right. Ordinary. That was me, through and through. “How do you feel about horses?” I asked with a prayer my voice sounded at least close to normal.

He gave me a hard look before he shrugged. “I feel better about them than I do about cleaning out their stalls.”

“Ever ridden Thor before?”

“The demigod or your horse?”

I beamed at him, thrilled that he would play along with my ‘let’s pretend everything is normal’ game. “I would love to see you try and ride the demigod, but I’d rather ride the horses and Thor likes guys better than girls.”

He grimaced. “My mom found that out the hard way.” He nudged his chin to the side as though to beckon me to follow him.

I looked over at Francis, unsure what had caused the change in him, but in the moment, he didn’t matter that much to me. I waved in farewell to JJ and walked to an empty table with Ben, my mind filled by all which had come back to me in the last few minutes.

I was an elf. Okay. I could handle that. I had always felt as though there was something different about me, so the idea of being a mythological creature . . . it was bearable.

The woman I had called Gran all my life hadn’t been my grandmother at all. That one was painful. She had meant the world to me, but was just a guard who had been sent to protect Dad and his family, a guard who had failed entirely.

Magic existed. That one was even harder to handle. Things did tend to happen around me, but I had never thought of it as magic. Or had I?

If the things I had seen were true . . . the only thing which mattered was the fact that White elves had murdered my family. Why? My mom and dad had been good, loving people who everyone loved.

I rubbed my hand over my eyes, unsure about anything anymore. But no. That wasn’t true.

What I was sure of, was Ben. He was my friend. He and I would ride the horses after school and he would make an awesome wolf for his Halloween party. That was all I would think about for the moment. Everything else could wait.

The air was cool as we rode back into the stables. It was a nice feeling. The freedom of movement made me feel . . . free.

“You look happy,” Ben said as we brushed the horses down.

I grinned from Sif to him, then back to the horse. “Happy? Me? Never!” I said and kissed her muzzle. “
Vænn
Sif,” I told her.

“What did you say?” Ben asked, his brows cocked high as he leaned his shoulder against the wall.

“Beautiful Sif,” I said and hooked my arm around her neck. “Come on. Admit it. She’s dazzling.” I gave the horse one last pat and guided her back into her stall.

“Gorgeous,” he agreed, his eyes fixed directly on mine.

“See. I told you.” I patted Sif one last time and walked to Thor’s stall. “Now this guy could never be called beautiful. My mom always called him the
dýr
. It means the beast.” I pulled my arm out of the way as he nipped at me. “Old devil,” I accused and stepped away.

Ben rolled his eyes at the horse, his hand on my shoulder as we walked toward the house. “You okay with being here?” he asked, like he thought I might have a breakdown or something.

I tipped my head back to look at him and grinned. “I’m fine with being here. Are you okay with the fact I plan to collect the rest of my stuff?”

He let out a laugh and shot me an incredulous look. “You have MORE stuff in the walls?”

“Not the walls, but in the fireplace and under the floor of my room.”

“Which room was yours?”

“The one you found the box of sketches in.”

“You’re telling me that for the last five years, there’s been stuff under my floor I never knew about? I must be slipping,” he said and opened the back door for me.

As had happened when I had come to the house the first time, the smell hit me first. Disinfectant. I missed the smells of my old home, the way Dad would scoop me up, how Mom would laugh in a way which made everyone want to as well, the way peace had been mine in those days.

Peace. If I found it again, would the elements . . . no. That thought was one for another day. Not right then. Right then, I had a job to do.

“Okay, Fenrir. Let’s turn you into a monster,” I said with a smile, doing all in my power to turn my mind away from the insanity which was my life.

“Mind if I take a shower first? If I smell like a horse under my wolf makeup, that might be confusing.”

I huffed a little, but nodded. “I’m so used to your stink, I hadn’t even noticed,” I said stupidly. I tried with everything inside me to look like nothing was wrong.

He grinned, but motioned me toward my room . . . his room, whatever. “I’d really like to know how you hid something in the floor. People usually can’t hide things from me.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“It’s not. It’s a statement of fact.”

“Cocky,” I stated and walked down the hall to what had been my room eight years before.

I took in a long breath before opening the door. Oddly, as I looked around, something inside me indeed felt at peace. The walls were painted black, with a stone-gray comforter on the bed, the only color in the space a huge photo of the mountains. It could have been stark, depressing even, but it wasn’t. It was simple and clean, very much like Ben.

“I did not expect this,” I said, my eyes fixed on the mountain in the photo. It looked so familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“What? You thought I’d have football posters?”

I shook my head. “No, I thought you’d be normal and have a messy bedroom.” I stepped over to stand in front of the picture on the wall, that location so familiar, it made my skin crawl.

“Have you met my mom?”

I blinked, startled to find that he stood next to me, his eyes fixed on mine. “Your mom is one of my favorite people in this town,” I said in a weak voice while my heart pounded. The air called to me. It wanted to help me. It wanted me to ask.

“Shayla, you look like you’re going to pass out.” Ben took hold of my arm and guided me back to sit on the edge of his bed. “You want to tell me what’s going on, or should I just make assumptions, like I’ve been doing all along?”

“Assumptions?” I asked, my eyes still fixed on that photo.

Ben crouched down in front of me, but he was so tall, his eyes were on a level with mine. “I see things that most people don’t see. Always have. Right now, the assumption I’m making, is that whoever took you when you were little, wasn’t human.”

I blinked and turned my eyes to meet his. “What . . . what do you mean?” Did he know I wasn’t human either? How did he know anything like that?

He leaned closer, his hand on my knee. “You want to tell me the truth, or should we go back to your usual routine, of laughing it off, pretending like nothing happened?”

“It’s a good routine.”

He shook his head. “It won’t work forever. It’ll all come crashing down on you and likely, you won’t like what it does to you.”

I raised my brows. “Is that what happened to you, Ben?” I asked, aware it wasn’t fair to ask him personal questions when his questions about me couldn’t be answered.

He swallowed hard and turned his eyes down. “I was eleven when my dad and sister died. It was hard, but it was even harder on Mom. I did everything I could to try and make her feel better, but by the time I faced the fact I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t recognize myself anymore. Then we moved here and it was like my last link to my family was gone.” He stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the land around. “I’m still mad, but I finally learned that holding it in only makes it worse.”

I walked over to stand next to him. I felt closer to him than to anyone else in the world. “I remembered something today.” I touched one of the scars on my shoulder. “Wherever I was, the two guys I remember most clearly are like night and day. One was a friend, a great guy who taught me everything good I learned, but he also knew the truth about my family and never told me. The other guy is like an uber-villain, but from what I remembered today, it’s possible he was my dad’s brother,” I swallowed hard, still unsure how to process any of it. “I know you’re trying to tell me that the more I refuse to face it all, the harder it’s going to be on me, but right now, if I think about it, I’m going to run screaming into the mountains.”

Ben kept his eyes fixed on the window, but it was clear he understood me far better than anyone else. “When you crash, just know I’m here,” and he turned away, apparently to go get his shower.

I stared after him, then shook my head. I didn’t have the strength to face it in the moment. Anyway, it would ruin the party for both Ben and me if I did.

So in an effort to make things light again, I walked to the very center of the room where the floor sloped just slightly and jumped. I had set it up so that in that precise spot under the wood floors, a cord had been placed so when pressure was laid on it, the line would come loose and the little door in the floor would release. I grinned when it squeaked. It clearly hadn’t been opened in years.

I walked over and crouched down. A small laugh bubbled out when three Barbie dolls, a paint-by-number canvas and two more of Kassia’s favorite books were revealed. What a bratty little sister I had been. It was a wonder she had put up with me at all.

I pulled them out, but my hand stilled. At the bottom of the space, a jagged bladed knife sat, like a reminder of everything I wished to forget. I pulled it out, my fingers shaky.

It was beautiful, the blade crafted of smooth stone, with a gold hilt which had a wolf engraved into it. I ran my suddenly icy fingers over that wolf’s face. It was identical to the brand which had been seared into my shoulder blade.

As I stared, something on the back of my hand began to come clear. It was like some veil had been lifted from my eyes to reveal a tattoo of a spear of Odin. The house of Gungnir. I was one of them. I had been trained by Dorian.

I stared at the mark. My eyes moved from it to the blade and back. It was crazy to realize just how vast the world was, how many legends must be true.

I stared for a long moment, until it all began to make sense. Dad. The stone blade must have been his. He must have put it there for me to find. Had he known his mother had chosen to save me? Had he been the one to ask her to do it? What about Kassia?

I had known all my life that Kassia wasn’t Dad’s daughter. Did that mean . . . what did that mean? Who was Kassia’s Dad?

“That’s some pretty serious weaponry.”

I jerked at the sound of his voice. I hadn’t heard Ben return. I sheathed the blade quickly. Everything inside me had gone cold.

I remembered. I had been on the verge of escape, but one of the Black King’s men had found me, then another had stabbed me. Dorian had transferred the injury to himself, which left me with a thick, red scar, but nothing else.

Unconsciously, I touched that scar through the fabric of my shirt, my hand still shaky. No. I couldn’t allow it to break me. I was free. I would remain free. The Black King . . . my uncle, would not hurt me ever again.

I stuck the blade into the inner pocket of my jacket and motioned to the things which had been in the floor for years. “Looks like I owe my sister kind of a huge apology for being such a kleptomaniac. She spent days on that paint-by-number thing.”

Ben considered me for a long moment, then shrugged. “I apologized to my sister once for being such a brat, but that was only because I wanted her to drive me to the movies.”

I smiled, though it was a strained, broken kind of expression. “Did she take you?”

“Nope.”

I sighed. “Kassia did start teaching me how to drive, so maybe if I give her back this stuff, she’ll be nice enough to buy me a car when I get my license.”

Ben didn’t respond to that comment, but motioned to the hollow in his floor. “How did you hide that? It’s no small hole.”

I reached under the boards to where the cord was, looped it around the hook and placed the boards back where they were supposed to be. “Magic,” I said, my voice still a little weak.

Ben crouched down next to me, his eyes probing mine in an almost clinical way. “You getting ready here or do you want me to drive you home?” he asked, though his tone told the truth of his feelings.

“Ben . . . I think my dad put the blade there for me to find. I think he was trying to protect me, but . . . I was—” I broke off, then just lifted my shirt to show him the scar on my rib. “When I escaped, one of them stabbed me with a stone knife just like that, other than the wolf on the hilt.”

Ben stared at the mark for a long moment before he turned his eyes back to meet mine. “Will you let me help you, Shayla? Please.”

No. He was human. He couldn’t be dragged into whatever was going on in my crazy life. He had to be kept safe. I never should have showed him, or told him anything about it.

I pulled my shirt back into place, my eyes down. “Don’t worry about it, Ben. I’m sorry I bothered you with—”

“Hey there, Ben! We’ve come to help you get ready!” London shouted as she walked into the house like she owned the place.

Ben closed his eyes and let out a quiet groan.

Thank God for London. She was the perfect distraction. There was no way he would think about that knife or my scars when she was there.

I smiled at him. “Mind driving me home so I don’t get the urge to commit crimes while in your house?”

“You’re not leaving me alone with them, are you?”

“You’re a big boy. You can handle it . . . or you can come with me and let them trash the house, but I think your mom might take offense to that idea.”

He shot me a wide grin. “My mom did tell me that if certain people showed up, she’d bail me out of jail if I chose to throw a punch or two.”

I grinned and rose, offering my hand to help him up. “Think she’d mind bailing me out too? Kassia would probably let me rot for a while if I got arrested.”

He took my hand but didn’t allow me to help him, just stood while he held it. “I’d say you’re far safer than I am, since the Chief is in your corner.”

I looked at our hands which were still clasped together, they so very different. Mine was small and bone white, while his was big and russet. The contrast between them was kind of amazing.

“You’re not dressed yet?” London said loudly from the doorway. She flounced into the room in the mermaid costume, which she had added glitter to.

It was pretty, but with the glitter all over her chest and the way she’d done her eye makeup, she looked more like a hooker than anything else. Anger rose inside me. Her little warning at lunch that day appeared to have been more of a threat than anything else.

She walked over and put her arm around me, her eyes fixed on mine and Ben’s hands which were still clasped together. “Oh Ben, you are so sweet to help our poor little Shayla.” She smoothed her hand over my hair much like I had done with Sif.

Ben didn’t even look at her, his eyes still fixed on me. “You and Jormungand aren’t leaving me here alone, are you, Shayla?”

I chuckled and squeezed his hand, then pulled mine away. “Of course we’re not. We have some humans to crush,” I said, happy to have that distraction from all the craziness in my life.