Watercolour Smile (3 page)

I sighed. “General rabble,” I recited. “Underage kids and their unimportant parents.”

“Here?” she inched her hand higher on her arm-scale.

“Klovoda agents and their unimportant, tag-along families.”

“Here?” Higher again.

“
Bonded people—the Atmás and their pairs—and then the Klovoda, Dominic Kingsling and right up the top is Lord-bloody-Weston.” I ticked off the rest of them and flopped back, blowing out my last words on a frustrated exhalation. “The
Voda
.”

“Miro is in line to be the next Voda,” she told me, taking pity on me for a moment by sweeping a lock of hair out of my brooding face. “And you, munchkin, are his…
you know what
. Silas isn’t as important as Miro, because he’s the younger twin—plus Weston kind of despises him with the fire of a thousand suns… but the other three? We’re talking about the golden boys of the Zev community here. I don’t blame them for wanting to keep you a secret. Hell, if I were them, I’d lock you up in a little cupboard and feed you scraps of bread for the rest of your life, occasionally bringing you out for walks down the hallway or so that you could howl at the moon, because I’m pretty sure you’d go crazy being bonded to four people at once.”

“Gee.” I made a face at her. “You make it sound so fun. You’re really winning me over. I don’t feel anywhere
near
as uncomfortable with the situation anymore. Thanks, Poison.”

“My point is that you’re walking on eggshells. Noah and Cabe need to stop acting suspicious. The entire female population at this stupid school will once again weep for joy and cry out from the rooftops because the Adairs didn’t suspiciously turn gay overnight after all. And
you
, Seraph Humphrey Black—”

“Lela.”

“—will go on a date with me, Mark, and Mark’s friend!”

“Is it even possible to date someone when you’re bonded to four other people?”

“Sure it is.” Poison smirked. “The bond doesn’t make you feel nothing toward other people, it simply makes you rely on your pairs for general things, like the ability to breathe air and not self-destruct or whatever.”

“Fine.” I gave up. “I’ll go, and I’ll tell Cabe and Noah to start acting like themselves again.”
Not that I minded doing that
, I thought. Maybe it would ease some of the pressure that I could feel building up in the back of my neck, giving me inexplicable kinks whenever I thought about the bond.

“That-a-girl. I know the bond probably gives you hell whenever another girl enters the scene, but it’s for the best. At school you need to try and act like the normal family that you most definitely are not, and at home you need to act as messed-up with those four as possible. The more confused Tabby gets, the less she’ll spill to Weston. Handing the wrong information to Weston is basically a carnal sin, in our world.”

The bell rang and we gathered up our stuff, heading back into the school building. Noah and Cabe were out on an assignment for the
Klovoda, which meant that they weren’t at school today. It was the first time I had gone a full day without them shadowing my every step, blocking people from talking to me and being their general overbearing selves. It was equal parts endearing and suffocating, but I knew that they were just frustrated. We were doing something unnatural, resisting the bond for so long. Or, in my opinion, simply being connected in such a way in the first place.

I hadn’t found out much more over the months since Aiden’s death. The messenger had descended into radio silence, and I had come to terms with something that made me very wary. He had made contact with me several times, but each instance was in reaction to something that I had done—or so it seemed to me. Not that I deserved the things that happened, but I had an odd feeling that the messenger was logging my actions. When I did something to anger him, he punished me. Running away from him to Maple Falls had been a bad move. It had made him angry, and something at Poison’s party had tipped him over the edge. I thought that he had been quiet over the last few months simply because I hadn’t done anything. I had purposely kept my distance from the boys—had kept my head down at school; and had kept my mouth shut around Tabby. He was watching me with Noah and Cabe—I was sure of it—waiting for a sign that we were going to form the bond.

That had always been his primary focus.

Strings can be severed. Bonds can be broken. Would you like to know how painful it is?

I shook off the memory and said goodbye to Poison in the hall, trudging the rest of the way to Quillan’s office.

“I have to go on a date,” I announced as soon as I walked through the door.

Quillan was sitting on the edge of his desk and there was a woman standing beside him, her hands on her slim hips. She spun around, and I got a brief impression of smooth brown hair looped into a high ponytail and fierce green eyes before she opened her mouth and tilted her head, confusion settling in. I registered her beauty in the same moment as I recognised Quillan’s discomfort. My eyes immediately flew to the ground and I hesitated, on the brink of backing awkwardly out of the room.

“My student,” Quillan finally said, standing from the desk. “I told you I had someone to tutor this period, Sam.”

The woman dismissed me with a turn. It wasn’t a rude gesture; she just didn’t seem to think that my presence was of any consequence. She laid her hand on Quillan’s arm, and his eyes flicked over her shoulder for the briefest moment, before focussing back on her face.

“Just call me, okay?” Her tone was low, her voice pleading. “We’ll talk about it.”

She walked out of the office, closing the door behind her.

“Sorry,” I managed. “I should have knocked.”

Quillan seemed to relax, and he reached up to loosen his tie. “Don’t worry about it. What’s this about a date?”

I glanced back at the door, an uneasy feeling trying to claw its way into my belly. I shoved it away, almost viciously. I refused to feel jealous about Quillan, even if fighting off the feeling caused my knees to momentarily knock together and a short wave of dizziness to radiate through my skull. There was a reason he had been avoiding me lately. We had kissed, and as much as it was supposed to have fused us together, it succeeded in creating a giant chasm between us. I could see it now, in the space that stretched from him to me. Cabe or Noah would have already been reaching for my hands, my shoulders—they constantly needed to touch me. Quillan had his arms folded loosely over his chest, and his eyes were wary, perhaps tuned into what he could sense of my inner turmoil.

“Who was that?” I asked, indicating the door.

If there was a girl wanting to get to know Quillan, maybe that was a good thing. He could use her to keep up appearances. I mentally shook myself, pulling my thoughts up with a rough admonishment.
Maybe he liked her
. Unbidden, my hand curved around the watch I wore, fingers tapping the metal. Would he ask for it back? Some part of me would be relieved, but a bigger part of me would be anxious. How would a girlfriend fit into this equation? As much as I didn’t harbour any romantic feelings for Quillan, I was well aware that he spent too much time with me, that he often had to be there for me in a way that a girlfriend wouldn’t be happy about. Also, there was the not-so-insignificant fact that I could
feel
any sudden spike of emotion that he had, if he was close enough.

“Sam and I were involved, in a way, before I moved to Seattle.”

I threw my hands up as my previous anxiety melted away. “Another ex-girlfriend!” My voice was only half-heartedly exasperated, especially since this wasn’t a problem that I usually had with Quillan—and Sam hadn’t seemed as mean as the girls I usually encountered. “Thank god Silas is scary as all hell, I don’t know how many I can handle. I swear they pop up every time I turn a corner. Poison has taken to pointing them out, like she’s playing Where’s Waldo, except that Waldo would be the girl that those boys
haven’t
slept with.”

Quillan’s laugh sounded with a sudden burst, my words acting as a needle to pierce the barrier on his usual control. “You won’t have that problem with Silas.” He swallowed his laughter as suddenly as it had appeared, but I could see it trembling at the corners of his mouth.

“Why?” I ventured. “Is he gay?”

“No.”

“Is he a robot?”

Another laugh. “No, Seph.”

“Did Weston neuter him?”

Quillan blinked. “Ah… wow. No.”

“Fine. I give up. Why won’t I have that problem with Silas?”

“He’s never been in a proper relationship. At least… not that we know of.”

“He’s a virgin?”

For a moment, it seemed that Quillan wasn’t sure whether to laugh again or not. He stared at me, his jaw dropping incrementally, and I could have sworn that there was colour high in his cheeks. “What? He, er… We’re a little older than you, Seph…”

“I know,” I said, too quickly. “I know…”

“I have something that will make you feel better.”

I watched his hand disappear into his right pocket, trying to fight back my embarrassment from our conversation. I moved forward as he pulled out an iPhone, but then paused, uncomprehending.

“It’s yours,” he said with a sigh, rocking it from side to side like a pendulum before my face. “You can’t keep roaming around without a phone, Seph. What if we need to get into contact with you?”

I folded my arms over my chest. “No.”

He rolled his eyes and tucked the phone away again, pulling out something familiar from his left pocket. “Silas said you’d refuse it,” he said, plonking my old phone unceremoniously into my waiting palm. “He had to wipe everything, so I programmed our numbers into it again.”

I turned the phone around to display the single crack that fissured from one side of the screen to the other, slicing it in half. There were dents all over the case, and some of the colour was peeling off, but it was virtually indestructible, so I had grown fond of it. Sort of.

I switched it on and found all of their contacts, along with Tariq’s, Poison’s, Clarin’s and Tabby’s. I stared at the eight numbers and realised that I was looking at a summary of my life. Eight people. I had eight people that I considered friends or family, and seven of them I hadn’t even known two years ago.

“How much did you pay for the iPhone?” I asked, beginning to feel guilty that he had gone to the effort of getting me a gift, and I had refused him.

“It was free.” Quillan smiled. “They were having a sale at the Apple store.”

“Not funny,” I grumbled. “For one, there’s no such thing as a sale at an Apple store, and also, you guys promised that I would be able to get a job with the Zevghéri. I know Cabe is sending Tariq money. I’m not stupid. My ledger is really starting to add up.”

“Ledger? Seph… tell me you’re not keeping track of—”

“I want a job,” I interrupted. “I mean it. If you won’t let me work for the Zevghéri, I’ll look for one elsewhere. I have enough experience.”

Quillan shrugged his shoulders, his dark eyes settling on mine. This was another difference between him and Silas. Whenever Quillan looked at me, it was with weight. When he was upset or angry, he eyes always landed on mine, hard, rooting my feet to the floor and licking an uncomfortable feeling up my spine. Silas’s dark eyes—so similar and yet so different—would instead flit over my face, categorising my features before he met my gaze, and I would feel the tiny pinpricks of fire along my brow, the slope of my cheekbones, my lips, as if he had physically touched me. 

“Silas is organising it,” Quillan promised, his voice as heavy as his gaze, clamping down on my insecurities and wagging a finger at them to behave. “It’s not easy to get you in with the Zevg
hé
ri missions when you haven’t even been formally introduced to the Klovoda yet.”

“Maybe I should just meet with the Klovoda?” I ventured cautiously. “I mean it’s not really obvious that we’re bonded, right? Unless someone is hurting one of us, I guess.”

Quillan said nothing for a moment, and I realised that he was thinking of an answer. A calculative expression rolled over him, and then he moved suddenly, leaning forward and winding a hand around my waist. I didn’t have a chance to brace myself against the scratching feeling that I knew would thread through me, and so I was even more shocked at the onslaught of agitated feeling that clawed beneath my skin, forcing me to stumble forward. I collided with his chest, accidently pushing him back against his desk. He grunted in surprise, the fingers of his hand spreading out to get a better grip, steadying me. The scratchy feeling bubbled up, dancing hotly over my skin and forcing a quick flash of near-blackness to blanket my awareness. I swayed and fought back the bile, swallowing several times to make sure that I didn’t suddenly vomit.

My negative reaction to Quillan had grown violent in its intensity ever since we had formed the bond, and that troubled me greatly. I had been hanging on to the hope that forming the bond would banish my strange reactions to him—and the others.

“It’s a little obvious,” he said, looking down at me.

There was regret in his dark expression, and I knew better than to assume that he had been offended by my reaction. His regret mirrored my own.

We didn’t want to be connected this way.

I swayed, fighting off the darkness, because it shouldn’t have attacked me so viciously. He was only holding my waist. Cabe and Noah had done worse, and the blackness had only come when they tried to kiss me. Silas sometimes crowded my personal space—mostly when he was angry—but I’d never almost fainted around him.

“Seph,” Quillan said.

I felt him tense up, and I quickly gathered my wits about me, feeling as though I had to scramble around the floor as they danced away from me.

What a mess
.

I pushed against his chest, and he let me go. I took several steps back, my eyes averted to my sneakers. I was suddenly struggling to breathe, and I knew that the bond was unhappy with me. Ignoring the churning emotions that warred for recognition inside my mind, I walked straight to the canvas set up in the corner of the room by the window. It was my own little spot.