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If someone ran over my foot with their car, I could spend weeks trying to figure out why, trying to track them down and discover the great meaning behind it, or I could suck it up and move on. Knowing why sure as hell wouldn’t speed up the healing.
He tilted his head, his gaze on my forearms.
It prickled at me, that unease when people noticed what I’d tried so hard to hide.
“It’s nothing,” I muttered and turned my arms to hide the white scars.
Hunter grasped my wrist and tugged my arm into his lap. He traced the raised scaring. “It’s something.”
I refused to look at the marks. I’d spent far too long staring at them in the past. “Anyone who says tattoo removal works is a liar. It might pull out the color, but it sure as hell leaves scars.”
“And who put them on you?”
“How do you know it wasn’t a stupid, drunken teenage mistake?”
Hunter lifted an eyebrow as he peered at me. “Because these aren’t just random designs. This symbol is an enchantment.” The stroke of his finger across the scarred skin left the sensation of burning behind it, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. Hell, it made me want him to keep doing it. “It’s a symbol to hide you from the dead, Ava, to keep them from seeing you. I suppose that makes sense why the thing in your living room that first night couldn’t find you.”
“No. They’re tattoos someone put on me when I was three because my parents were drug addicts.”
“You were that young when you got them? Do you remember it?”
I shook my head. “I just have the records. I was found outside a fire station, with the fresh tattoos on my arms. I figured they had to be on drugs. What other explanation would there be for doing this to a kid?”
Hunter eased my other arm out after setting my tea on the nightstand. He again traced the scarred design left behind from a lot of expensive and painful procedures. “This one keeps you hidden from the living world.”
I huffed. “Trust me. The living world can see me.”
“It doesn’t work by making you invisible but just…less noticed. Have you ever felt like you walk into a room and people just don’t seem to see you? They pass you over?”
As soon as he said it, that familiar pain lanced through me. How long had I felt unseen? Sure, if I spoke directly to someone, if I was in their way, if they were looking for me specifically, they’d notice me, but otherwise?
I was the one no one seemed to notice. They’d walk past me without a word. They’d pick others instead of me. In a room full of people, I’d be the one by myself.
I’d chalked it up to being exceptionally awkward, as though they knew just by looking at me not to expect any great conversations, which led them to choosing better people to speak to.
“Why would someone curse a child?” My parents had screwed me up plenty. Them abandoning me had left its fair share of scars. The idea that they’d somehow had managed to actually put a spell on me that further ruined my life seemed unbelievable. Hadn’t they doneenough?
“These aren’t curses, Ava, they’re marks of protection. Whoever put them on you figured you needed safety from not only the living, but the dead, too.” He continued to trace over the marks as if consumed by them. “And they weren’t put there on a whim. This takes serious power to perform, and nothing that takes power comes cheap.”
I couldn’t believe that. I’d spent years furious, saving for so long to remove the black marks that had marred my forearms, shamed by them. So many people had looked at them, tried to pretend as if they hadn’t seen them like some unsightly spinach in my teeth. I’d accepted that my parents were twisted assholes who had permanently marked me then thrown me away.
The idea that I’d gotten it all wrong was too much for me to accept right then.
“You’re wrong,” I said.
“I’m not. Trust me, Ava, I can feel the power off this thing. There isn’t a lot that can throw a poltergeist into a wall like that.”
I shook my head. “My parents were freaks and these are the proof of it.” I pulled from his grip and angled my arms toward him.
When I brought my forearms together, an odd burning started, something that reminded me of when I’d tossed Melinda into the wall. How had I never done that before? How had I never realized they had power? Doing in that moment had been instinct, as if I’d somehow known what would happen if I did… Maybe that same deep-buried instinct had prevented me from doing it before?
Before it expanded, before whatever happened before happened again, I found myself flat on my back.
Hunter had pinned my hands to the bed beside my head, trapping me beneath his large, strong form.
I’d known he was big—it wasn’t easy to ignore that—but having all of that against me was a far different matter than knowing something logically.
“I don’t mind rough sex, but I’d prefer not to get thrown across the room before we even get started. How about you not point that mark at me?”
