Watercolour Smile (25 page)

He slapped the hairdryer down onto the bench and swooped me into his arms, spinning me around. “
You’re the
best
!”

I laughed until he put me down, and then I turned back to the mirror, pulling my towel tight again. “You’re not going to leave my hair like this are you?” I indicated the still-wet side of my head.

Clarin finished up with my hair and then lugged a big black case onto the counter, opening it to reveal layers and drawers of bottles, vials, tubes, sponges and brushes. He set a stool by the counter and I sat, sifting through the items in the case in an attempt to recognise something. I found foundation tubes and powder compactors, mascara and eyeliners before Clarin smacked my hands away.

“Clarin! Seph!” Cabe called out from the bedroom.

“In here!” Clarin answered, pulling out a tube of moisturiser and tapping it against his fingers.

The bathroom door swung open and Cabe stepped through, two bags dangling from his fingers.

“Dude.” Cabe dropped the bags, his eyes dragging over my towel and down my legs. “I leave you alone with her for
one
afternoon!”

Noah appeared behind him, his mouth clinching into a hard line.

“Oh yeah,” I said, my voice low. “Clarin’s bisexual, didn’t you guys know?”

Clarin forced a sheepish look onto his handsome features.

Noah made a sound deep in his throat and then sprang at Clarin. I jumped between them, laughing too hard to stand properly—forcing Noah to pull-up short. Clarin lost it, and I slumped against the wall, clutching my towel again. Noah’s eyes switched from murderous to incredulous in the space of seconds; behind him, Cabe seemed torn between laughter and disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” I eased out between bouts of laughter. “But seriously, Clarin’s seen worse. The most you have to be worried about is a Silence of the Lambs situation in the case that he gets too obsessive over my girly skin.”

“It’s true,” Clarin confirmed, laughing again.

Cabe screwed up his nose. “This is going to take a little getting used to.”

Noah fell back a step, turning on me. “I guess it’s hard to figure out how a guy can stay gay when you’re literally standing naked in front of him.”

“Ah,” I indicated the towel, “
not
naked.”

“Almost.” Cabe said, siding with Noah.

“My sexuality hasn’t been questioned this much since I discovered I was gay.” Clarin got over his laughter and nudged me back to the stool. “Now can you two get out? In case you haven’t noticed, Seph isn’t dressed for visitors.”

“We noticed.” Noah bared his teeth at Clarin. “Just remember that she belongs to us, Clarin.”

Clarin suddenly got serious, his deep green eyes growing shrewd, his features sharpening with an acute sobriety that I had never seen in him before. “Does she?” he asked, his tone deceptively light.

Noah stilled, and I could almost see the clouds that rolled into his eyes, threatening to throw us all into a hurricane until we bent to his will from sheer force. I stood, slowly, a nauseating realisation dawning, spinning dizzily through my brain until I was forced to reach out and grab it.

He’s seen much worse
. I had said the words only minutes ago, but I was only now recognising their significance. My eyes rounded in shock, travelling up to Clarin’s face. As if sensing the look, he turned from Noah to me, and the confirmation was there in his face; in the guilty glint of green irises, in the tremble of his lip as it hovered between his staple good-natured smirk and something that wanted to dip with apprehension.

“You heard me, mouse. I need to see what I’m working with.” He tossed a sky-blue dress onto the bench and reached forward, tugging the shirt I wore straight up and over my head.

I stood there, stunned into unmoving silence, realising that I’d cooperated with him out of sheer reflex. Now I quickly wound my arms around my chest and backed up. He was tilting his head, examining me, and there was nothing sexual in his expression at all. He flicked me an annoyed glance and drew my arms away from myself.

“Cut it out, stop being shy or this will take all day. I need to see what I have to work with,” he repeated. “Off with the shorts.”

Months.

He had kept this secret for months.

I grabbed Noah’s arm, my voice refusing to work. Noah took one look at me and then communicated something silently to Cabe, who stepped up and shook my shoulder.

“What is it?”

“He knows,” I croaked. “I only just remembered… I mean… I didn’t realise at the time…”

Cabe pulled me into his side, his voice rumbling through his chest. “What is she talking about, Clarin?”

“I believe she’s remembering the day we went shopping. Four months ago. That’s how long I’ve known that she was your Atmá. Silas and Miro’s Atmá too.”

The door closed with a sharp snap and then I felt the heat of Noah’s arm against my side. “You’ve known for that long and you didn’t say anything? How did you even find out?” he asked.

“He saw my marks.” I felt like I was in a dream, and some terrible part of me wondered if Clarin would betray us. Or if he already had. Weston had killed his mother… would he lie again? If I was in his situation, would
I
have the strength to lie again? “I didn’t even think about it at the time… but he definitely saw them. He kept saying that he needed to know what he was
working
with. I thought he meant the clothes.”

“I’m surprised it took you this long,” Clarin remarked lightly, as Cabe shifted from foot to foot.

It seemed that he was wrestling with the same indecision as me, which didn’t bode well, since he had more reason to trust Clarin than I did.

“We didn’t want to put you in a position where Weston would hurt you again,” said Noah. “Otherwise we would have told you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Clarin said. “And you don’t need to worry. I haven’t told anyone. I’ve been spreading rumours about her imaginary pair in Seattle.”

“You don’t have to lie for us,” Cabe said gently. “You didn’t need to do that. You could have pretended to know nothing.”

“Don’t mention it.” Clarin was casual now that it was clear that none of us were going to freak out.

“Seph?” It was Cabe that spoke, and I realised that I was clutching his shirt a little too tightly. I quickly released it and stepped away from him.

“You should have told us that you knew,” I said to Clarin, sitting back on the stool and twisting my fingers in my lap.

“It was fun to watch you all trying to cover it up.” He shrugged. “But I was serious, you two need to get out. People are probably already downstairs and it’ll take me a while to get the Duchess ready.”

“You too?” I groaned. “Enough with the Duchess thing.”

Clarin smiled and shooed the others away. I was equal parts relieved and dismayed when the door closed again.

“It’s Seraph,” I said, once it seemed like Clarin wasn’t going to immediately go back to work. “My real name. Not Stephanie.”

“Is Seph a real nickname?”

“Yes.”

“Well then it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

I returned his smile, feeling some of the tension leak out of me. “Thank you,” I said. “For protecting us.”

“There’s no
us
in that equation, mouse. I’m protecting you. Those guys aren’t in any danger from their father—except Silas, I guess. It’s always been about protecting you, even before they knew you. I guess I’m protecting them by extension, and that’s how it started… I mean, it was a given that they’d be hurt if their Atmá was hurt, but you’re no longer a means to an end. You’re my friend. I don’t want you to get hurt because you’re a nice person.”

“I know that it’s dangerous…” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure whether to keep going, to ask the questions on the tip of my tongue, knowing that the more information in my head, the bigger a threat Weston would become to me. “I know that Weston has been searching for their Atmá for a long time—”

“Their whole life,” Clarin corrected. “Ever since the twins were born, their birthmarks matching. Ever since Cabe was born with a mark that matched Noah’s. Weston had hoped that Noah was an Atmá for a while, but then Cabe came along.”

“Okay… what I don’t understand is—”

“Why?” he interrupted again. “
Why
he’s been searching for their Atmás?”

“Yes.”

He reached for a bottle of foundation, testing the shade against my skin to busy himself, and then he tossed it back into his case. “You don’t even need it,” he mumbled.

“Clarin?”

He sighed, turning to face the mirror. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted, echoing Poison’s earlier sentiment. He stared at something in the mirror’s reflection. “Nobody seems to know. Once I thought that Miro did, but he’s never said anything about it. Maybe Silas does—he knows
a lot
, and he never lets on, because it’s not like people actually tell him things. He hacks them. Borderline stalks them, until he knows everything about them. He doesn’t like loose ends. Or secrets. If Noah or Cabe know, they haven’t told me anything.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Twenty-five years of Weston’s famous
Atmá Hunt
, and nobody seems to know the real reason behind it. My guess is that he’s angry that his sons are pairs, instead of Atmás. He would have just kept having babies until he got lucky, I suppose, but Yvonne got sick after having the twins. She got some tumours or something. I don’t remember, but they had to remove her uterus. Tabby was worse. It took her seven years to carry a pregnancy full-term. I don’t know how many miscarriages she had before Noah. It would explain why Weston has so many bastard children, too. I mean, if your aim is to have an Atmá, and both of your wives can’t have kids… why not keep trying with other women? Of course… the chances aren’t good, because the magic is strongest with an Atmá and their pair, not other ordinary Zevs. But anyway, that’s just my guess. The Zev powers are heavily genetic, and the Voda power is hereditary, so with the way he’s slept around, it’s actually a little surprising that none of his bastards have turned up an Atmá.”

“Why does it even matter? Whether he has an Atmá or not?”

“It matters a lot. Like I said, the Voda power is hereditary, and Zevs with magic usually have an ancestor with the same, or a similar, ability. So the long line of Vodas—Weston’s ancestors, have mostly been Atmás. It’s one of those bigoted, unspoken traditions. A member of a pair has
never
been a Voda. We’ve had a few normal Zevs, but mostly Atmás.”

“Hmm,” I replied, grappling with the wrong piece of information. If the Zevghéri power was heavily genetic… then why had
my
parents been normal? Why had I known nothing about my valcrick or the Zevghéri people before Noah and Cabe?

“You’re very good at resisting the strain,” Clarin noted as he returned his attention to my makeup. “But it’s a terrible idea. I watched Aiden and his pair do it for years. It’ll mess you up, mouse.”

“How did you know I was resisting the strain?”

Instead of answering, he dropped a hand and absently touched my fingers. I stopped twisting them together and he touched my chin. I pulled my teeth out of my bottom lip, feeling a tingling indent where I had been biting too roughly.

“Right.” I sat on my hands. “But resisting the bond is better than what happens when I give in to the whole strain thing.”

Clarin barked out a laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re actually attempting to be platonic with those guys?”

“I’m trying.”

He paused, a mascara brush wavering before my eyes. “Seriously? But I found you literally tied to your bed the other week.”

“I was straining…”

“So… wait… they’re
helping
you keep things platonic?”

Instead of answering him, I knocked the mascara brush out of the way before it could poke out one of my eyes, forcing him to rummage through his case to find it again. He pulled out a few brushes, and then frowned, his forehead crinkling in confusion as he extracted a tiny scroll of paper.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Dunno.” He tried to wipe it off. “One of my powders spilt onto it.” He unfolded it and his frown deepened. “Trash,” he decided, throwing it onto the counter. “Just some nursery rhyme. Probably Poison’s. She’s always scrawling creepy notes to people.”

I gripped the stool beneath my thighs, fighting off a sudden wave of nausea. Clarin continued to hunt through his case, and once I thought I could manage it without my hands shaking, I released one of my hands and
snagged the note from the counter. 

Tell tale tit,

Your tongue shall be slit;

And all the dogs in town,

Shall have a little bit
.

“Seph? What is it? Your face has gone all white.”