Page 28 of Hunted By Fae

It’s over.

I wipe the back of my hand over my lips, then fall back onto the sand.

Bee considers me with a frown, silent.

I stare up at the sky, a streak of blue, wisped with white clouds.

I almost smile.

Bee drapes down beside me. Her hand inches over the sand for mine. “Happy birthday.”

The cool touch of metal presses against my palm.

It’s so familiar to me, I don’t need to look down to see what it is.

“I polished it,” she tells me, soft.

I wonder if she means that. That she has gone out there to buy polish, or she just used a rag in the camper to wipe off the sweat and dirt gathered over these past couple of weeks.

It’s nothing special, the locket, nothing like solid silver or white gold. It’s plain old dipped silver that, under pressure from just pinched fingertips, will bow. But it was my mum’s locket, and the photo clippings inside are all that I have left of her.

I pocket it.

Bee’s hand follows mine—and lures.

I allow it, the threading of her fingers through mine, and turn my chin until my cheek is pressed to the sand.

I study her.

In the light, the grey of her eyes is speckled with faint glimmers of green. The mousy ponytail that’s notched to the top of her head has two loose pieces to frame her round, pretty face.

When I first met Bee, as a new housemate at the home-share in London, about a decade ago now, I took an instant dislike to her.

Truthfully, it was her face.

Not just pretty, not just beautiful, but alluring, too. Like the wink she used on Ramona, the one that sent her off to town for food, or a quick seductive smile that gets us freebies at the bar.

There’s something about Bee that just draws people in. Her smiles dazzle more, her eyes glitter more.

She has that vibe.

People like that never sat right with me.

Besides, I never expected her to bother much with me, not when there were four others in the houseshare, cooler and smarter than me, nicer and kinder, prettier and funnier.

But out of everyone in that house, she likedme.

She worked for it, too, my approval. Really wore me down every chance she got, and the moment I let her close, and I saw that her allure was from something beyond manipulation, our bond was latched.

If soulmates are friends, she is mine.

I am hers.

But that means I know her.

It means I can read her.

I can read most people, see the little looks out the corner of my eye, the faces they make when they think I’m not observing, the shift in body language when I enter the room.