Shadow’s Edge

“I think I need to sit down now,” she said.

He moved instantly to drag the ruined silk chair over to her. He positioned it behind her and she sat, her back ramrod straight, her naked body swathed securely in deep folds of cashmere.

She gazed out the windows toward the veranda and the city skyline beyond and didn’t make a sound.

“I know it must be shocking for you. Unbelievable, most likely,” Leander said, unnerved by this unnatural calm. He couldn’t begin to imagine what was behind it. The first time he’d Shifted, at eleven years old, he’d run screaming with joy in circles over the lawn at Sommerley.

But then he’d been prepared. He’d known his whole life who and what he was. He’d always wanted it. While Jenna...

He dragged the other side chair across the carpet and sat down across from her in it, while she only continued to stare out the window, silent, still as stone.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he began, uncomfortable with her continued silence. “I didn’t actually know you would—it’s not your time yet, you see, we still have a few more days—I thought I would have more time to explain. I only thought to show you how I—” He checked himself and ran a hand through his thick hair when he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Jenna gave him a long, frozen look that stripped away every pretense of softness between them. “What else can I do?” she demanded, cool and controlled. Accusing.

He was taken aback by the difference in her. Only a moment ago she had been pliant and soft in his arms, she had kissed him so passionately he’d felt himself melting. He still had the taste of her on his tongue. But now she was sitting soldier straight in her chair and glaring at him with daggers in her eyes.

“I don’t know yet. I’m not sure exactly what you’ll be capable of—”

“But you have an idea,” she interrupted, her voice still the same low, guarded cadence that twisted his heart into knots. Her lovely features hardened into a mask of wariness.

She looked at him as if he were a stranger.

As if he were an enemy.

He longed to reach out to her, find her hand under the layers of cashmere, gather her into his arms, slide his hands into the cool weight of her hair. But he knew she would only recoil, so he remained in the chair, an unhappy clench in his stomach.

“If you can make the Shift to vapor, you’ll be able to Shift to panther as well,” he said. “It’s what we are. It’s what you are.”

This time she didn’t even blink. Her eyes were clear and dark and fathomless. Her gaze flickered down to his lips, then she turned her head away again, raised her chin, and gifted him with her profile.

“A panther,” she said, without inflection.

“Yes.”

A slight pause, then—“A cat.”

“Technically, yes. A cat.”

A little huff of air escaped her lips, which could have been either amusement or disdain. She watched the heat of the day bend the air into shimmering waves over the rooftops of the city beyond the windows and her nose delicately wrinkled, as if she smelled something bad.

“Wonderful. What else?”

Leander leaned back in his chair and debated how much he should tell her. This air of bored civility might be the way she normally reacted under stress, or it could be the calm before the storm broke. He didn’t know her well enough to judge.

He hated that he didn’t know her well enough to judge.

“Not just any cat, Jenna, and certainly not the average domesticated house variety. You are a predator, and a lethal one at that. You’ll have the speed and agility all felines possess, but you’ll be far faster, far stronger.” He watched the light play over the contours of her face, watching carefully to see her reaction. To see any reaction. She gave none.

“You’ll be able to see clear as day through a night pitch black. You’ll be able to hear a whispered conversation half a mile away, smell a rainstorm a week out, and sense everything around you with perfect, unbroken clarity. You’ll be in tune with nature in a way no other creature on this planet can ever be.”

Through all of this, she remained a sphinx: beautiful and cold and unmoving.

His voice dropped to a murmur. “You’ll be able to feel the very heartbeat of the earth.”

That seemed to get through to her, barely. Her lips twitched and she inhaled deeply, then let out the breath silently through her nose.

“I assume you’ve known about some of these talents for years. You must have known you were different,” he continued, wondering what it must have been like for her to hide who she was, to try to act like the rest of the people around her, though she was so much more.

He pictured himself living a life among all those cow-witted humans and suppressed a shudder.

He leaned toward her in the chair and rested his elbows on his thighs. “But now that you’ve Shifted to vapor, they’ll be exponentially stronger. And once you Shift to panther, the surge of sensations will be almost overwhelming. In order to thrive, in order to survive,” he emphasized, “you must learn to regulate how much you let in.”

His eyes searched her face. Jenna sat mute, expressionless.

It was thoroughly unnerving.

“Also, every Shifter has talents individual to himself—or herself—which will vary in strength. You, for instance, can obviously read minds with a touch of your hand. Anything else you may be capable of will reveal itself to you when the time is right.”

“And you?” she said, barely audible.

Her hair glinted gold and honeyed blonde in the light, casting a warm gleam over the rose-cream clarity of her skin, lighting her features with a glow so bright it was almost incandescent. It did nothing to warm the ice in her eyes, however.

“I can Shift to vapor as well—”

“Can’t they all do that? All the Ikati?” she interrupted.

“No. Only a very few, only the most Gifted. Most of our kind are earthbound.”

“Could my father Shift to vapor?”

Among other things, he wanted to say. But that didn’t seem prudent. “Yes.”

She gave a little, satisfied nod, then turned her face away to gaze out the window once again. She crossed one leg over the other, sending a tiny whiff of the warm, wind-clean fragrance of her skin to his nose. He watched one slender bare foot begin to dance up and down.

The cashmere blanket covering her legs moved higher over one knee, rising up her unclad thigh, but she didn’t seem to notice. He gritted his teeth.

“Morgan? Christian?”

He didn’t particularly care for the sound of his brother’s name on her tongue. “Neither can Shift to vapor. Morgan has the power of Suggestion—”

“Suggestion?” she repeated, her voice rising an octave. Her head swiveled around sharply and she fixed him with a wide-eyed stare. “Like mind control?”

“Didn’t you see that when you touched me?” Leander said, surprised.

He realized instantly it was a poor choice of words. She winced and closed her eyes for just longer than a blink. “I was too busy seeing everything else,” she muttered as she turned her head. All at once the unnatural poise and calm seemed to flow out of her like water down a drain, leaving only a pale shadow of barely concealed distaste flattening her lips.

She fell silent once again.

He forced himself to remain relaxed, willed himself to be calm, fought his instinct to pull her back into his arms. After long minutes of watching her breathe and gaze numbly into the heat-glazed horizon, he spoke.

“Is there anything else you want to ask me, Jenna?” He waited patiently for her to respond.

He waited for a very, very long time.

Jenna stared out the bright windows. She listened to the faint hiss of traffic on the streets below, caught the scent of heat-baked stone and wilting roses rising up from the rose garden, tasted the ashes of her former life in