“Done,” he said, releasing her.
She looked at him, surprised. It seemed like it didn’t take any time at all. She got up from his chair. “Thank you.” Without another word, she walked out of the office.
She ran back up the stairs and into her bedroom to find something to cover herself with. There was a time where that situation wouldn’t have been awkward at all, though it was now.
After a quick, hot bath, she rifled through some different tops in her dresser drawer, settling on a cobalt button-down. Without opening it, she slid it over her head and hurried to her closet where she pulled out a light, pink sweater, one Valek had picked out for her last year.
She plopped down on her bed with her sketchbook and a black, graphite pencil, and started sketching, not sure what she was drawing yet, just letting the graphite lines mark where they wanted. Her abilities had significantly improved since that drawing she gave Valek when she was ten.
She suddenly found herself concentrating on that framed picture again, how it looked hanging in his office, and started re-sketching it with the ability she now possessed. Maybe when all of this confusing turmoil was over and things were back to the way they were just a few days ago, she would give it to him.
Focused on what she was doing, she jumped halfway out of her skin when something abruptly chinked against her windowpane. She put her sketchbook down, eyeing the glass, waiting for that deformed Lycan to come leaping through it, bent on revenge.
Something thudded against it again, and she slowly got up and walked over to it. She lifted the pane and looked out into the night. Standing on the ground was Aiden, clutching various pebbles in his hand. He dropped the one he was about to throw and smiled up at her.
“Charlotte!” He waved his hand around above his head.
“Shut up!” she whisper-yelled at him. “Are you really throwing pebbles at my window? Isn’t that a little cliché?”
He dropped all of the pebbles to the ground, his cheeks flushing, his hands scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, I guess,” he admitted. “Come down here!”
“Shh!” She put a finger to her lips. “No! Valek is home. It’s not a good time.”
“I heard about what happened. I think I have a theory,” he said, a little more hushed than before.
“A theory about what? How did you find out about that?” She leaned a little farther out the window.
“I ran into Evangeline. She was carrying a pile of stuffing back to her house.” He shrugged.
Charlotte frowned. “That pile of stuffing was Edwin. But you need to be quiet, Aiden!” Valek would surely hear them, if he hadn’t already.
He smiled. “I will if you come down here.”
Charlotte sighed. How was she going to resist that? “Fine, but not so close to the house!”
“Agreed.”
“Where should I meet you, then?”
“At my house.”
Charlotte looked at her watch. It was one-thirty in the morning. “Isn’t your mother going to be furious with you for having houseguests? It’s amazingly late!” She shoved her watch out toward him, expecting him to see the little ticking hands from where he stood, a full story below her.
“My parents aren’t home.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked the pebbles by his feet. “Look, you’re wasting more time by arguing with me.”
“Fine! I’ll meet you at your house in five minutes if you leave now!”
He smiled up at her. She watched his silhouette disappear back into the trees. Her heart fluttered. She closed her window and turned to see Valek standing once again at her threshold.
She gasped. “Valek! What—?”
“What does Aiden want with you at this hour?” he asked, dryly. His usually excitable features were still bland as ever.
Charlotte sank again. Of course Valek heard them. “Oh…um….” She couldn’t lie to him, he would know. “He wants me to come over.” She fidgeted under the bandages on her shoulders.
“At this hour?”
Valek looked so handsome leaning up against the baroque scrollwork around the doorframe like he was a part of it. It crushed her that she couldn’t just sit down with him and simply talk this out. She wasn’t ready, the humiliation too fresh.
“He doesn’t have school in the morning, and he knows this is the only time I’m ever awake,” she explained.
Valek shrugged, the edge of his words biting. “Have a splendid time.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. He was never this easy. Was he just trying really hard to give her some space? “All right,” she said, making sure he was serious.
He didn’t say anything further.
“Then I guess I’ll be back a little later. I won’t stay out too long.” She took only a tentative step to the door in case he really was having more of a difficult time than he was letting on.
“Be careful.” His voice wavered.
She decided she didn’t want to say anything else to him. Instead, she cleared her throat and uncomfortably brushed past him. But before she got to the top of the stairs, she turned back around to see that he was still watching her, like one of those haunted paintings whose eyes followed you no matter where you stood in the room. Suddenly guilty, she ran up to him and delicately wrapped her arms around his middle. He reluctantly hugged her back.
“Not too long,” he whispered.
She looked up at him before descending down the staircase and out the front door.
The night outside was getting cold, a common autumn evening. Brown and orange leaves crunched under Charlotte’s sneakers as she walked down the road toward the suburb district. The warm glow of the floating, bewitched street lanterns stretched her silhouette long and black across the road. She lifted her hands in the air like claws and studied her shadow. What if she were a monster?
Hands from nowhere reached from the darkness suddenly and wrapped around Charlotte’s face, concealing her scream. She fought with the grasp, only to find she knew those hands all too well.
Aiden released her, laughing.
She punched him hard in the arm. “So what’s your theory, pond scum?”
“Wait until we get to my house,” he whispered, looking around.
“What is wrong with you? You were just screaming at the top of your lungs at my house!”
“Shut up!” He put a hand to her mouth again. “Noisy thing.” She made a face and knocked it away. He wound his fingers between hers and led her a little faster down the street.
“You’re acting really weird.”
She grimaced at their hands woven together. She didn’t like it at all. It felt too warm, somehow. Too normal.
“Oh, so you get to be a freak all the time and I don’t?” He smiled wryly, eyes still darting about the emptiness of the streets.
“Funny, but let’s remember who the freak really is.” She flicked his slightly pointed ear.
“You’re the only human living in a town of Elves and Witches. I would say you’re the freak in this case.”
The two made their way to his house without any more words. It was quiet and dark with the promise of missing parents.
Once inside, he led her into the den where they both sat together on the warm, knit area rug, an olive color on the dusty, wooden floor. He put a finger to his lips. “Don’t make a sound. My brothers and sisters are finally sleeping.” He rolled his eyes.