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He surveys me with a strange look on his face. “You don’t sound very frightened about that fact.”
“Should I be?”
“I don’t know … The creatures I track can be dangerous. And sometimes that danger occasionally follows me home.” He shifts his weight, strands of hair falling into his green eyes as he tips his head forward. “Not that I’d ever let anything happen to my family, but there has been once or twice that …” He pauses to take a breath then lifts his gaze back to me. “But yeah, anyway, that’s what I do for a living and what I was doing that night when I pushed a thought to go to sleep inside your mind, which again, I’m sorry about.”
“No worries,” I say, even though I’m kind of wigged out. “But, who else was with you that night? I thought I saw two other figures.”
“One was Ollie and the other was Porter.”
“Does Porter track outlaws, too?”
Max shakes his head, his expression neutral, guarded. “No, but sometimes I ask him to help me when I’m searching for a specific creature.”
His hesitancy makes me not want to ask, yet I find myself doing it anyway, too curious to keep my trap shut.
“What sort of specific creature?”
His lips tug up into a plastic smile, then he lightly tugs on a strand of my hair. “You, beautiful, curious creature, need to get going before you’re late for your first day. Plus, Charlotte is making waffles, and if you don’t get down there soon, you’re going to miss out. And trust me; you don’t want to do that.” His smile turns real. “Charlotte makes the best waffles in all the worlds.”
I smile back, but the move feels a bit rigid due to his purposeful avoidance from answering my question.
When I first met Porter, I sensed something was different about him, an allure flowing off him that made me dizzy. And, when we did the merging enchantment, I felt a lot of weird feelings flowing off him. In particular, there was this intense hunger to devour something. I didn’t feel enough to know what that something was, but between that, the conversation with Max, and the allure I felt when I first met Porter, I’m wondering if perhaps there’s something different about the Everettson brother with the lavender eyes. The question is: what?
And why does everyone seem so hesitant to tell me?
Chapter 4
Max walks with me downstairs in uncomfortable silence. I’ve never been good at striking up a random conversation, especially when it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want to talk to me. So, I let the silence be until we enter the kitchen, where a sixty-something-year-old woman with grey hair and glasses is busy cooking away. Her smile is bright and welcoming, along with the scent of waffles flowing through the air.
“You must be Sky,” she greets me. She’s standing near a waffle maker on the kitchen island’s counter. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”
I adjust the handle of my backpack higher onto my shoulder. “You’re Charlotte, right?”
Her smile brightens. “The one and only cook extraordinaire.”
I smile, but inside I feel miserable after hearing the news about Grey. Sure, he’s an asshole and maybe deserved what happened, but him having to go to the hospital because he kissed me only cements the fact that I can’t be with anyone else except Foster. Which, yeah, he’s been nice to me over the last twenty-four hours, but probably because of what I am.
If I ever do fall in love, I want it to be with someone I connect with, who gets me, who is my other half or whatever, not the only person—creature—I can fall in love with.
Sighing, I lower myself onto a barstool beside Foster, Easton, and Max, and Foster glances up from his plate of waffles. Unlike the last time I saw him, he has a shirt on now, along with a pair of thick boots, and his dark hair is no longer wet but styled. His eyes are also silver. While he still looks gorgeous, I kind of miss the lightning-blue eyes.
“You put eye drops in already?” I quickly bite down on my tongue, my gaze skating to Charlotte.
Crap, was I not supposed to say that in front of her?
“It’s fine,” Foster assures me. “Charlotte is one of the few who knows what I am.”
I breathe a sigh of relief then face forward on the barstool as Charlotte sets a plate down in front of me. “Thanks,” I tell her. “I don’t mind serving myself food next time, though.”
“And I don’t mind doing my job.” She hands me a fork and a bottle of syrup. “In fact, I love my job. It’s way better than working anywhere in Elemental.”
My brows knit as I open the top of the syrup bottle. “Elemental? That’s the world where elementals are originally from, right?”
She nods as she picks up a measuring cup from the counter. “It used to be a lovely world until it started shrin
king and became overpopulated.”
“Worlds can shrink?” I ask, pouring syrup onto my waffles.
