Shimmerspell (A Faerie Tale Girl Novella, #1)

Chapter Five

Jensen came up swinging as she was jostled awake by warm, calloused hands. Those same hands slid down her arms, pinning her wrists to her sides and forcing her to forego her attempts at slaying her captor. She cracked her lids, expecting to find herself a prisoner in a forest of pitted concrete and cold iron bars. But warm sapphire eyes stared down at her, filled to the brim with worry.

Liam furrowed his brow and released her wrists, brushing back the black strands in her eyes. “You’re safe.”

Jensen’s hand flew to her throat. “Where am I?” she croaked, feeling like she’d swallowed barbed wire.

“My home. Do you remember what happened?”

Images filled her mind. Dead fingers squeezing her throat. Glazed eyes peering at her while a crimson tide oozed across a beatless chest. She shook her head, not wanting to go there. “Where’s Lauren?”

“Who?”

“My … cousin.”

Liam’s eyes filled with awareness, then he averted his gaze, focusing on her ring. “I know of no Lauren.”

Jensen pushed herself up and swung her legs off the side of the bed. “I have to go.”

“Where?”

She shoved a foot into a navy striped flat. “I don’t know. Somewhere.”

“Look at me.” When she didn’t comply, he reached down and tilted her chin, gazing into her eyes. “You will recall that you’re staying with my family while your cousin’s away on business.”

She smacked his hand away. “What the hell are you talking about?”

His eyes widened and his mouth fell open. “I know things seem weird now, but—”

“Weird? One day you’re normal and the next, you’re walking around with a butterfly attached to your back. Then Malice in Wonderland tries to squeeze my head off, and you’re calling it weird. This is beyond weird. Crazy, fantastical even, but definitely not weird.”

Liam rubbed his hands down the middle of his face, pausing at his mouth. “Bad choice of words,” he mumbled through his fingers, then headed for the door. “I’ll be right back.”

Jensen nodded, going through a mental list of places Lauren could be staying. Their last conversation rushed back to her, along with that terrible hollowness in the space where her heart used to live.

Her sister didn’t want to be found, didn’t want to be around her anymore, like she was this terrible burden to deal with. And with that, Jensen didn’t know what to do. For a moment, terror welled up inside of her.

Forgetting Liam had left, she turned back to ask what the hell was going on and met a closed door. She wrapped her fingers around the knob, pulled it open, and eased into the dark hallway. Voices carried up the stairs, soft but understandable.

“Are you sure you did it right?” a boy’s voice asked.

“Of course I did Eiden,” Liam replied. “It’s just not working. The girl is Two-Sighted.”

“How can that be? She wasn’t before,” Eiden said.

“Well she is now.”

“Liam, humans don’t just wake up with Sight.” A girl spoke now. “They either have it or they don’t. There’s no gray area, no in-between.”

“She sees through my glamour, ignores my compulsion.” Liam’s voice sounded solemn, distant.

They hurled the word human like it was a disease, one they didn’t share. What the hell were they?