On a Razor's Edge (8 page)

“Everyone
get comfortable,” Toa said softly.

Weaving the spell, I let loose and coated the room
like a blanket. As the spell sank in, the tiny movements everyone but Toa made ceased. I’d frozen everyone in place.

“I was trying for a light one—you know, so you could still move instead of being totally frozen…” All eyes stared at me, patient. Except for Jonas, wh
o was mad as usual. No mouths moved.

“Right.
You guys can’t talk. Umm. Okay. I’ll try the disintegrate thing.” Alarm slowly crept into a few peepers. Like me, they also hoped I didn’t blow them up...

I analyzed the spell as movement caught my eye. Like a person walking at full speed to
ward a freshly cleaned sliding glass door, I knew what would happen a second before it did. Tim’s features went
splat
against the clear air-wall of my spell, his limbs hitting a second later. He bounced back, the look of supreme confusion on his face as he stared at nothing in the doorway.

His gaze hit mine as I started to giggle. “It’s a thickening spell. Air’s solid in here.”

“Then why can you move?” He glanced around, smirking when his gaze caught the side of Jonas’s motionless face.

“I have no idea, Tim. But as soon as Toa can talk, I’m sure he’ll lecture me on that.”

“Mhmm,” Toa answered.

I gave Tim a
see?
look.

Tim glanced at Jonas again and let a small smile quirk the lips. He looked back at me.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Tim motioned me out of the room.

Tim was trying to irritate Jonas, which I could definitely get behind.
I glanced around the patient faces. “I should probably try to get them out of this.”

“It’ll only take a moment.”

“Mmm mmm,” Jonas hummed, trying to prevent my leaving with a wordless growl.

Jonas still wasn’t my favorite person, what with trying to get me killed and all. And being that no one else liked him, either, I figured they’d be okay with hanging out for a minute while I pissed him off. “Sure.”

Outside the room, Tim leaned against the wall, surveying me. “I wanted to check in with you. Make sure you had everything you needed.”

I bobbed my head. “I do, thanks! Everyone is being really nice and helpful.”

“And the crew that came with you? Is Jonas treating you okay?” Steel crept into his voice, his bearing relaxed but the edge in his words hinting he could
turn lethal in the blink of an eye.

“He’s being Jonas. Hovering around, shooting everyone angry
glares, and making sure I don’t step out of line. Stefan sent him, so…” I shrugged. Like Charles, I wondered if sending Jonas was the best idea, but Stefan knew what he was doing. I knew he would do everything in his power to protect me, even if he couldn’t be with me. If he thought Jonas would do that, I wouldn’t question.

Besides, there was a huge camp of mean, fighting,
potentially furry bodyguards. I’d be fine.

Tim, probably thinki
ng the same thing, said, “Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything. Or if you have any questions. Everyone says you’re really trying to learn our ways and fit in, so I want to help you as much as possible with that. Ignorance is dividing us from Stefan’s crew—I want to combat that any way I can.”

I smiled at him, because it was a really sweet thing to say. Anyone that could help me fit in was
A-Okay in my book. “I better try to unravel that spell. Or charm. I still don’t know the difference.”

“Why don’t you ask Toa?” Tim walked me back
to the room. “He seems to have a well of knowledge.”

“I did. And he explained it. But he’s so hard to focus on. I find myself nodding off after the first thirty seconds.”

Tim laughed and watched me reenter the room. He continued to watch, probably in fascination, as I frowned at the air and busted my brain trying to figure out how to unravel the spell. After a while of pawing at nothingness, I found the hairline cracks in my spell, and began pulling apart the fibers little by little. Carefully.

Finally, my face drenched with sweat,
I plucked the last magical knot and felt the spell disintegrate into nothing.

“Much better,” Toa said, stepping forward as if he hadn’t been frozen for the last fifteen minutes.

“Don’t step out of here when I’m immobile,” Jonas commanded.

I rolled my eyes, then
immediately lost focus as Toa started to explain about that spell and how it worked.

A few hours later and I found myself traipsing through the bare halls of the main cabin. Fierce-eyed men and women, gliding with a killer’s grace not unlike Stefan’s clan, passed on their way to their duties, or maybe just after eating and heading to settle in somewhere and relax.

While the
Mata
weren’t night creatures, they didn’t seem to keep normal hours, either. It seemed like they prowled half the night, slept way late, and started their day near noon. Basically, it was like living with a bunch of bartenders. Being that I got to see the sunlight with that schedule, while still keeping Toa happy, it was the schedule everyone kept.

Jonas grumbled about it constantly.

“Mage.” A stocky shape changer titled his head at me in greeting as he passed.

He just called me mage!
I couldn’t help the foolish grin as I sauntered into the large kitchen and dining area. I had no idea why Jonas and Stefan hated these people—they seemed really cool to me.

Three burly men sat at the far end of a large wood table, hunched over their plates with wide smiles. As I entered, their eyes flicked my way. Their bodies straightened up marginally, smiles dwindling. Each gave me a nod hello.

“You guys don’t need to act all serious around me. You’re not on duty or anything,” I mumbled, turning right, toward the worn lime green kitchen island. Unlike Stefan’s mansion, which was kept pristine and refined, these cabins were mostly older and worked in. Clean, but not current. Did the same job, though.

“Don’t mind them,” a pixie-like girl with a shock of bright blue hair said
as she strolled in. She scooped a mound of mashed potatoes out of the bowl on the island and dumped it onto her plate. “They think the sun shines out of their asses.”

Without turning around, the
men at the table facing us straightened even more. Huge shoulders rolled. “We
know
the sun shines out of our asses, actually, “the one in the middle said, "and if you’d care to put your money where your mouth is, I’d show you.”

“No
, thanks. I don’t like seeing hairy full moons.” The girl winked at me with a smirk. The other two guys at the table huffed out a laugh. One slapped the butt of the joke on the back with a hearty guffaw.

“Hilarious,” he draw
led, standing up with his plate in his hands. He flashed the blue-haired girl a glare as he stalked our way.

Magic filled me instantly
. I wasn’t sure what this guy would do, but was ready to unleash hell if he got violent.

The man
gave me a wide berth as he entered the kitchen area, but veered in close to the blue-haired girl. Lightning-quick he reached toward her, his plate still in his free hand.

A blast of electricity zipped through me
as I feared he might strike her. Pure black shot out of my hands, wrapping around his body and squeezing.

“What the
fu—?ˮ
The word ended in a wheeze.

“What’s happening?” one of the other guys barked, jumping up from the table. The wood
en table surface jolted, knocking the remaining two plates to the ground. They crashed to the floor, food and porcelain splashing across linoleum.

“Don’t kill him, Sasha,” the girl said,
a grin spreading up her face as she watched the man turn purple. “He was just trying to make me flinch. Haven’t been paying attention to the magical woman you were sent here to guard, have you, Rodge? Didn’t realize she acts first and thinks later when someone she knows is in danger. Not so detailed in your job, hmmm?”

Rodge wheeze
d harder as I worked on unraveling the spell.

“Sorry—I thought you were going to hit her,” I squeaked.

“What’d she do?” one of the rescue party asked, standing just where the linoleum of the dining room changed into tile of the kitchen.

The spell peeled away. Rodge took a huge,
lung-filling breath, leaning forward against the island.

“She got him with a spell, obviously.” The girl spear
ed a piece of roast beef with a fork and hauled it onto her plate. “You guys better clean up that mess before the Alpha comes in here.”

Rodge shot me a glare.
With wooden movements, he dropped his plate, miraculously unscathed, into the dishwasher.

As he moved away, leaving his two comrades to clean
up their mess, the girl titled her head toward the food spread out on the counter. “Help yourself. I’m Ann, by the way. The one with the mullet over there is Pete.”

The guy on his hands and knees, wiping up spilled food, glanced up. “It’s not a mullet. I just haven’t had time to get to the barber.”

“Uh huh. And the other one is John.”

A man with bushy eyebrows and a receding hairline said, “Hi.” He jerked his head toward Pete. “It is a mullet, isn’t it?”

Pete straightened up with a pained expression. “The back just grows faster than the sides. I can’t help if that every time I
change
my hair gets a weird urge to Rapunzel down my back.”

“Anyway, don’t worry about Rodge,” Ann continued, laughing. “Being a shape changer goes right to his head. Thinks he’s invincible or something. Isn’t that right, guys? You all think you’re God’s gift.
”

John
huffed, a smile tweaking his lips. “You’re one to talk. Wasn’t it you that challenged the Alpha right after you changed?”

Ann’s face went crimson, but she smiled at me. “I totally did. I just felt so…
strong!
How about you? Do you get stronger with the magic?”

The guys paused, staring at me.

Still tingly from the scene a couple moments ago, and a little shocked that Rodge didn’t try to throw me through a window, I carefully picked up a plate with a shaking hand. “No, I didn’t get any stronger. And, as you apparently know, I don’t really have a firm control over my magic.”

Ann waved my comment away
as she headed toward the table. Pete said, “It took me a few years to have a firm grip on changing. You can’t just learn everything right away. It takes a while. You have that vampire-looking-dude to help you out, though, right?”

I giggled. I couldn’t help myself. “He does look like a vampire, doesn’t
he?”

“I thought the myths were true when I first saw him,” Ann admitted, cutting her meat. “What’s with the staring?”

“I
know,
right?” I laughed as I moved toward the table with my plate. “Drives me crazy. But he knows what he’s doing.”

Pete leaned
against the door frame. “Always helps to have a good teacher. Listen to that guy and you’ll have all this down lickety-split. Well, nice to meet you, Sasha. See ya later.”

“See ya.” John gave a salute as he followed Pete out the room.

“They’re friendly,” I said before I shoveled some mashed potatoes into my mouth. Constantly working with magic, and the energy drain that went with it, had me famished.

“Yeah, everyone here is pretty cool. We’re family. Changing for the first time is really scary. It
hurts, itʼs foreign, you turn into a thing out of story books, and you think you’re going to die. I freaked out for the first year. Didn’t ever want to change. Tim coached me through it.”

“He’s a good leader, then?”

Ann nodded adamantly. “He’s the backbone of this whole outfit. That guy bleeds for the pack. He’d do anything for any one of us. A lot of us would be running around wild, terrified and getting dead if he didn’t create the structure we have now. Yeah, it’s good here. I’m used to what I am, now, but at first…” She shook her head. “It was a hard first year.”

I took
a steadying breath. “I’m still in that first year.”

Ann leaned against the table, surveying me. “You don’t really fit in, huh? I mean, you’re human, so that’s gotta be weird, right? Hanging out with a bunch of giant dudes with perpetual boners…”

I choked out a laugh, spraying food. I raked the back of my hand across my face. “Don’t do that when I’m eating!”

She chuckled and cut off a bit of her meat. “What? Spread my hilariousness around?”

“Yes, exactly.” I sobered. “And yes, it’s a little…lonely. Where I’m at.”

She beamed.
“Was lonely. We aren’t exactly the same, I guess, but we both started out human, and we both had to get used to what we’ve become, right? So, now you got a partner in crime. Which is great, because I have a great idea for a practical joke, and I can’t think of anyone that would hate it more than that surly bodyguard of yours.”