Quicksilver - Amanda Quick [124]
“You’re Arcane, aren’t you?” Slade asked.
“Yeah, the whole family has been Arcane for generations.” She made a face. “Mostly high-end talents. I’m the underachiever in the clan. I’m just a rainbow-reader.”
“What’s that?”
“I see aura rainbows. Totally useless, trust me.” She tried to focus on Slade as he reached down to pick up her glasses. “They’re probably smashed, huh?”
“The frames are a little bent and the lenses are scratched up.”
“Figures.” She took the glasses from him and put them on.
The twisted frames sat askew on her nose. The fractured lenses made it difficult to see Slade’s face clearly. She knew exactly what he looked like, though, because she had seen him often in town and down at the marina where he worked. He was nineteen but there was something about his sharply etched features and unreadable gray-blue eyes that made him seem so much older and infinitely more experienced. Other boys his age were still boys. Slade was a man.
She and Rose had speculated endlessly about where he had come from and, more important, whether or not he had a girlfriend. If he was dating anyone they were very sure that she was not a local girl. In a town as small as Shadow Bay everyone would know if the stranger who worked at the marina was seeing an island girl.
He had shown up in the Bay at the start of the tourist season that summer, looking for work. Ben Murphy at the marina had given him a job. Slade rented a room above a dockside shop by the week. He was polite and hardworking but he kept to himself. Occasionally he caught the Friday afternoon ferry and disappeared for the weekend. It was assumed that he went to a larger town on one of the other nearby islands—Thursday Harbor, maybe—or maybe he went all the way to Frequency City. No one knew for sure. But he was always back at work at the marina on Monday morning.
“Lucky I’ve got a backup pair of glasses at my aunt’s house,” Charlotte said.
She was immediately mortified. She felt like an idiot talking about her glasses to the man who currently featured so vividly in her fantasies. Not that Slade knew about his role in her dreams. She was pretty sure that to him she was just the weird girl who worked for her crazy old aunt in the antiques shop.
“What are you doing out here at this time of night?” Slade asked.
“What do you think I’m doing out here? I wanted to see the Preserve. My aunt talks about it sometimes but she won’t take me inside.”
“For good reason. It’s beautiful in places but it’s dangerous in some parts. Easy to get lost inside. The Foundation that controls the Preserve put up those NO TRESPASSING signs and the fence for a reason.”
“You were inside just a few minutes ago. I saw you come out through the trees.”
“I’m a hunter, remember? I can see where I’m going.”
“Oh, yeah, the night-vision thing.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? Your breathing sounds funny.”
“Actually, I’m getting over a panic attack. I’m doing a breathing exercise. This is so embarrassing.”
“Panic attack, huh? Well, you had good reason to have one tonight. Getting assaulted by three jerks on a lonely road would be enough to scare the daylights out of anyone.”
“The attacks are linked to my stupid talent. I started getting the attacks when I came into my para-senses two years ago. At first everyone assumed that I was just reacting to the stress of high school. But finally my mom sent me to a para-shrink who said it appeared to be a side effect of my new senses.”
Great. Now she was babbling about her personal problems.
“That’s gotta be tough,” Slade said.
“Tell me about it. If I run hot for any length of time, I start shaking and it gets hard to breathe. I was really jacked a few minutes ago so I’m paying for it now. I’ll be okay in a couple of minutes, honest.”
“You should go home now,” Slade said. “I’ll walk with you and make sure those guys don’t come back.”
“They won’t return,” she said, very certain. She finally managed to take a deep breath. Her jangled senses and her nerves were finally calming. “I don’t want to go home yet. I came all the way out here