You’re just not my type, my brain repeated. Another term I’d heard many times before without asking for it. No matter how many times I’d heard it, it still hurt all the same.
“Sure, yeah,” I agreed with a forced smile.
The first beat of a remake to “Sympathy for The Devil” dropped, and Kane raised his brows the same time the crowd went up in a roar. Drink-filled hands shot high into the air, and alcohol slapped over the floor. The crowded bar turned into a frenzy.
Monday shrieked and climbed over the stool and onto the bar, and the three Sullivan sisters joined her.
“What’s going on?” I called out to Kane as men snatched their drinks from the bar, clearing it for the dancing girls.
“You gonna go up there?” he asked without answering me, then lowered his soft-brown head, his nose brushing my hair. “Or has the town not gotten to you yet?”
“Gotten to me?” I glanced over to Phoenix, who threw a towel over his shoulder and leaned against the back wall, watching Fable with a shaking head as the music and stomping shoes vibrated the bar. Julian’s silver gaze latched to me, his elbows on the bar and drink secured in one hand, as if waiting for me to make a decision.
“What are you going to do, Fallon? Are you a flatlander or one of us?” Kane edged on.
Fable reached her hand out, and my brain went fuzzy. “Okay,” I said, not thinking, half nodding, half laughing.
Already committed, I linked my hand with Fable’s. Kane gripped my hips and hoisted me up on the bar, and once I was high in the air, I glanced around the room. The crowd looked up at me as the music pumped through the speakers, everyone waiting for me to do something.
“I’m a townie,” I screamed, throwing my arms high in the air. “And I’m really, really drunk!”
The entire room hollered at my declaration, and everyone went back to dancing to the unique cover of the song, including me. The crowd turned into a blur as I twirled in place with my arms out at my sides, my hair soaring all around. Fable grabbed my hand and pulled me to the center, and she and Monday began to teach me their stomping dance. I had no idea what I was doing and was too drunk to care. And perhaps this was why people drank, to not think.
To forget. To feel free.
My face burned from the candid smile stretching across my numbed lips. My limbs moved as if they had a mind of their own, and when I looked over to where Julian was sitting, he was already watching me from down below with a mysterious wonder in his eyes. A wave of gravity lifted inside me, the feeling of weightlessness after driving over a small hill. A free-fall. A tickle in my stomach.
But then my foot slipped.
Chapter 6
Julian
I reacted. I wasn’t supposed to react, but before I could stop myself, I’d already slid across the bar and caught her before she had a chance to hit the ground. Fallon Grimaldi was in my arms, and it was as if the entire world had stopped. The music had stopped playing. The crowd had stopped dancing. All horror-filled eyes flared in our direction. Everyone had stopped except me. I hadn’t been able to stop my damn self from reacting.
She was in my arms, and I couldn’t undo this.
Fallon swam in her smile. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of me. Tipsy, but unafraid.
“Hi again,” she whispered, her voice like an incantation.
I wanted to say something but couldn’t. They were all looking at me looking at her. I scanned the clarity in her eyes, her diamond-shaped face. I was holding her, and it felt as if I were holding a bomb or the colors of a sunset—a thing I shouldn’t be caught with.
“Blackwell!” someone shouted, snapping me from her spell. My eyes slammed closed as the rest of the world fell back in tune. Then I opened them again, bounced to my feet, and Fallon tumbled from my arms to the ground. If only I could’ve watched her fall.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kane barked as his fist pounded over the bar.
Ignoring him, I fixed my sleeves, keeping my attention on what my hands were doing.
The room was hushed. The energy was loud.
Phoenix threw his arms up at his sides, question marks in his fiery eyes. I pushed past him and jumped back over the same wet bar girls were dancing moments before. Where Fallon was dancing, in those little shorts and stockings and the seven seas in her eyes, swaying her hips, and I’d almost busted when she pulled her top lip over her bottom.
“I know you’re not looking at that freakshow,” Zeph had said only an hour before. “She’s one of them.”
A reminder before my reaction.
But she was dancing, and I was watching her dance.
Zeph’s gaze drilled into me.
“Let’s go,” I ordered, shrugging on my coat as my blood ran black, my darkness about to spill over across Phoenix’s bar for everyone to see.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” Kane roared again behind me, testing my patience.
My muscles twitched. I tilted my head to the side. Everyone was watching me, waiting for me to react, waiting for something to happen, waiting for me to go mad as my father had, as if the rumors were true—as if the same mania ran in my blood. They wanted to prove the shadow in the Blackwell bloodline was incurable, that I’d inevitably end up like him, mad and deranged like the men of my past. And perhaps I was.
I shifted my eyes to Fallon. She was standing behind the bar where I’d left her, staring straight ahead as if she were lost or stranded or wondering if time had swallowed her whole.
“We were just leaving.” I nodded over to Phoenix, who couldn’t afford another brawl in his bar like the one that had happened six Samhain seasons ago, when Sacred Sea ended up here after the moon filled out, and its light soaked into our veins, driving us to do the craziest of things.
“Keep your demented hands off her, Blackwell,” Kane spat, courage seeping from his drunken pores. “She’s with us. Morgans are Sacred Sea territory.” Kane was braver when he had an audience. We’d been down this road before, but it didn’t take much to see the urchin recoil. He was just as afraid of us as the rest of them because he knew there was truth in the curse. Everyone was afraid of something, even Kane Pruitt.
“Thank fuck, here I was thinking the freakshow was a flatlander,” Phoenix’s deep voice vibrated in the room behind Fallon. I cocked my gaze to him, not surprised he spoke out but endlessly wished he wouldn’t. It was impossible to control myself, let alone him.
I shot him a knowing look. One that said, contain yourself. Phoenix ignored my narrowed eyes and took a step forward. My gaze flicked to the ceiling. Here he goes …
“Now it makes sense. The thing’s with you.”
I turned my attention to Beck, who began counting his fingertips with his thumbs at his sides as he had always done since we were kids. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four …
Kane chuckled in his khaki slacks and pressed shirt. “Take off your filthy mask and say it to my face.”
Phoenix growled, taking another step forward from behind the bar, his muscles jumping in his skin. Customers inside the bar found cover, terrified. Kane’s friends whispered in his ear, no doubt trying to talk sense into him.
My gaze zeroed in on Phoenix to keep his mouth shut, my arm shot across Beck’s chest to keep him steady. I was more worried about Beck at this point. He hadn’t said a word, but his heartbeat was slamming against my palm.