Page 27 of Soul of Shadow #1

Clearing her throat, she said, “I don’t, actually.

” Elias had started to wrap her calf in the bandage, and she kept her eyes on it as it spun around and around.

“I’m the mildest one in my family. My brother likes to say that I could get mugged on the street and still find a way to apologize to the person who mugged me. ”

“Mason clearly doesn’t know you,” Elias said as he reached the bottom of the cut. With nimble fingers, he snipped the end of the bandage and secured it in place.

She looked at him sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, he set her foot gently back onto the floor before rising from the stool.

He gestured for Charlie to scoot over on the sofa.

She did, gingerly picking up the v?tte’s nest and setting it down beside the arm of the sofa.

He didn’t stir; the tiny snores coming from inside his towel indicated that he was already fast asleep.

Elias sat down on her other side, leaving a good foot of space between them.

He leaned against the sofa, letting one arm rest over the back.

His warm skin grazed the back of her neck, and she tried not to shiver.

“You aren’t mild,” he said at last. “Quite the opposite. You have a very obvious thirst for adventure.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Charlie, looking away. The intensity of his gaze was too much; it felt as if his eyes were burrowing under her skin, peeling away the layers she so carefully laid around herself.

“Don’t forget, Charlotte,” he said. “I can sense fear. I know when you’re experiencing it and when you’re not. And right now, you’re sitting next to a night mare. One of the worst dark spirits ever created.” His voice lowered. “But you’re not afraid.”

Her heart picked up speed. Wasn’t she afraid? Wasn’t that why her blood was pounding, the ends of her nerves screaming as if they were on fire? Being around Elias always made her feel like that, and she assumed it was because of her terror in knowing what he could do.

“I used to be brave,” she said, hoping to divert the conversation away from these dangerous waters. “But not anymore. Not since…” She trailed off.

“Not since your sister,” Elias filled in for her.

She looked back up at him. His gaze was no longer piercing. It had softened, though it still maintained the sense of searching that was always there when he looked at her.

“Your brother told me,” he said, guessing at the question in her head. “I’m sorry.”

Tightening the towel around her shoulders, she turned to stare at the fire. Embers popped and crackled from the logs as tall flames leapt toward the chimney. Soon, the wood would begin to crumble. Another log would need to be added.

“Her name was Sophie,” she said, surprising herself.

She almost never said her dead twin’s name aloud.

Not even to Mason or her mom. “We were identical, but our personalities couldn’t have been more different.

I was loud and rowdy, always getting into trouble with Lou and dragging Sophie along for the ride.

She was… shy. Soft-spoken. But not timid.

Most people thought of her as a wallflower, but the truth is, between the two of us, I think she was the braver one. ”

“Why do you say that?”

“She never cared what other people thought of her. I know it sounds cheesy, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. She was so sure of herself. She knew exactly who she was and what she wanted.”

Elias was watching her closely. She could feel the heat of his gaze. “And you don’t?”

Flames licked the bricks of the chimney. She could still feel the pain of the cut on her leg, but it was dulled now, no longer a sharp sting.

“I don’t know,” she whispered finally. “Maybe I used to. But now…”

Elias said nothing more. He didn’t need to. They sat together in comfortable silence, watching the fire eat away at the wood.

Was his sympathy genuine? Charlie really couldn’t tell. Ever since she discovered his secret, he’d been nothing but cruel and careless toward her—threatening the people she loved, casually debating her own murder. She thought he contained no impulses but anger and violence. But today…

Today had been different. They’d laughed together, fought off dangerous creatures together. He’d shown a side of himself that she didn’t know existed.

She still didn’t trust him. She knew that, at the end of the day, he had forced her into this alliance, and he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice her life if it served him. This whole “kindness” act was probably just that: a charming play meant to lure her into complacency.

None of this explained the lightness that fluttered in her stomach.

“I… know what it’s like,” Elias said at last.

Charlie looked up at him. “What what’s like?”

Pain crossed Elias’s eyes—subtle but undeniably there. He looked quickly away. Several seconds passed, during which time he seemed to wrestle with several competing thoughts. Finally, he said, “Losing a sister.”

Pain and empathy twisted together in her chest. “Before I found you in this house,” she said, “Mason told me that you lived with a foster family.”

Elias’s lips twisted up in a humorless smile. “That’s my usual cover story.”

“Does that…” She swallowed, not wanting to say it out loud. “Are your parents also…”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, echoing his words from before. There was little else to say. “Can I ask how they died?”

The flames danced across his face—orange light on pale skin, highlighting the deep cuts of his cheekbones. He looked beautiful. Ethereal. Charlie found herself transfixed with his face, realizing—for the first time—how devastatingly handsome he truly was.

After several long, silent moments, he spoke to the fire. His words were soft, almost inaudible. “They were murdered,” he whispered. “Them and my sister, too. I was the only one who was spared.”

Charlie stared at him in horror, her body going cold.

His entire family? Losing a sister to illness had nearly broken her; she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose so many loved ones at once, and in such a brutal way.

It was enough to destroy a person. Enough to burn them to the very ashes of themselves.

Enough to create a monster.

Elias blinked, as if emerging from a trance. He looked at Charlie, face twisting into a pained version of a smile. “Enough about that,” he said. “I hear from your brother that you can do magic.”

Charlie was stunned by the sudden change in conversation. “What?”

“Not my kind of magic,” he said. “The kind you watch on stage.”

“Oh. Right.” After a day spent seeing what real magic was like, she had forgotten about sleight of hand entirely. “Yes, I can.”

“Do a trick for me.”

She didn’t like this. She didn’t like the falseness of his smile, how he seemed to teeter between emotions the way performers walked tightropes in her circus classes. He was already a volatile individual; she had no idea what it would take to push him to violence.

And yet she also understood. She understood his pain and grief. She understood the deep-seated need for distraction, anything to take your mind off the well of sadness buried within you.

So, instead of protesting, she asked, “Do you have a deck of cards? I always carry a pack with me, but they’re definitely soaked after our dip in the lake.”

“I do.” He popped up off the couch, apparently delighted that she was willing to play his game. He dug around in the drawers of an old wooden writing desk for a bit before holding up a battered deck of cards lashed together by a rubber band. “Here we go.”

When he sat back on the couch, he set the deck in her open palm.

His fingers brushed her skin. It wasn’t the first time they had touched, but it felt different this time.

New. As if a strange current ran through Elias’s body, and he had passed it on to her.

She drew her hand quickly away, eyes down on the cards as she unwound the rubber band and shuffled twice.

“Now,” she said. “Tell me what card tricks you know.”

“I don’t see why that matters.”

She glanced up at him. “You’re an otherworldly being , Elias. I’m not going to show you something you’ve already seen. My magic will be boring enough as is.”

Dark lashes fluttered as he held her gaze with unnerving intensity. “I highly doubt that.”

When it came to close-up magic, Charlie had two main rules: move quickly, and ensure the audience’s attention is on the wrong place.

Misdirection was the key to all magic. If you could draw their focus to something irrelevant—the snap of your fingers, the waving of a handkerchief, the nonsense you were babbling—you had a thin window of time in which you could do the actual work: switching two cards, moving a ball between cups, the like.

Every one of her tricks operated on this principle.

Elias was going to be a difficult viewer to fool. He was naturally critical and had witnessed feats of magic far beyond her reckoning. He wasn’t going to fall for something as obvious as snapping fingers or waving handkerchiefs. Her best bet was to distract him with her words.

She splayed open the deck. “Pick a card.”

“Any card?” he asked with a grin.

She rolled her eyes.

He selected one from the middle and held it so that she couldn’t see which card it was.

“Do you have a pen?” she asked.

“I think so.” He dug around in his back pocket, emerging with a damp black pen that he spun between his fingers .

“Nice trick,” said Charlie, teasing. “Now, sign your name on the front of the card.”

Elias raised his eyebrows but did as she said.

While he was signing, she shifted the cards into what was called the “mechanic’s grip” and slipped her pinky under the top card. By the time Elias looked back up, she was already in position for the Marlo Tilt—the angle that would deceive him into thinking the cards were merely resting in her hand.

“Now,” she said, holding out a hand. “Pass me the signed card, but don’t show it to me.”

He did, and as he watched closely, she slid the card into the gap between the top card and the rest of the deck—but from Elias’s perspective, it looked as if she were sticking the card right into the center.

“I love this trick,” she said, starting to shuffle the deck but always keeping the top two cards together. “It’s a classic, invented by Ed Marlo in the mid-twentieth century. I’ve spent ages studying Marlo’s work. Books, YouTube videos, old cassette tapes…”

As she spoke, she watched Elias’s face. His eyes were glued to her hands, but she didn’t even need to look down. She had done this trick thousands of times; performing it was as easy as asking a seasoned piano player not to look at the keys.

After the first two shuffles, however, Elias glanced up at Charlie’s face.

He seemed genuinely startled to find her watching him back.

She didn’t drop her gaze. She spoke directly to him.

Elias looked back down at the cards, no doubt not wanting to miss a moment of the trick, to try and figure out exactly how she would pull it off.

But every couple of seconds, his eyes glanced back up at her.

Perhaps he was impressed that she was working without looking at her hands.

Perhaps he was listening closely to her words, searching for some clue, some deception.

Regardless, after a few feeble attempts to watch the cards, he gave up entirely, keeping his eyes fixed on hers.

He watched her with an unreadable expression.

She kept going, chattering ceaselessly about what she was doing with the cards.

His eyes slid down her face, coming to rest on her fast-moving lips.

He seemed completely transfixed by them, as if she truly were a witch and these were her words of enchantment.

At the end of the trick, she used a two-card lift to raise both the top and second-to-top cards, making sure it appeared as if she were only lifting one. She knew he would find himself staring at his own signature.

“Is this your card?” she asked.

Elias stared at her for several long, quiet seconds. Behind her, the v?tte stirred in his bundled hand towel. Across the room, the fire crackled softly. Then, without even looking down at the card she flipped over, he muttered, “Incredible.”

Charlie felt a flush creeping up her neck.

Elias leaned forward. He ducked his head slightly, bringing his gaze level to hers.

Breath hitched high in her throat. What the hell was he doing?

He was close. Too close. Was he about to kiss her?

If he was, she should move away… right?

But she found she couldn’t. She was trapped by the glittering emerald of his eyes.

Something smoldered deep in her belly, like the crackle of the dying logs in the fire.

His lips were barely an inch away. She knew she should look away.

Should shut down whatever was happening between them.

“I—” she said, mouth dry. “I don’t—”

“How interesting,” he whispered .

“W—” She swallowed. “What’s that?”

“You’re afraid now,” he said. His eyes slowly perused her face. They lingered on her lips before moving up to her eyes. He tilted his head. “The only question is—of what?”

“I’m not—”

Elias straightened, suddenly serious as he gazed down at her. His mouth opened and closed. He gave her a strange, searching look, as if he were trying to slip inside her head.

“It’s time for you to go,” he said at last.

Then he stood from the couch and walked away.