Chapter 6

Treading deeper into the forest, she could hear the rain, first soft and dull, growing faster and harder, sending leaves falling to the floor around her, torn from their thick branches.

"You shouldn't be this far from the house," Angelo said softly, making her jump.

She faced him. "Do you have to sneak around so much?" she asked, her heart thudding.

He was cruelly handsome, with such pale eyes, like wintry sunlight, his dark hair streaked blond, untidily pushed back, a thick fringe of it falling into his left eye. He strode through the forest like he owned it, and in a way he did: he was a shape-shifter, transforming into a cougar. He watched Sarah like he was interested in her, but he did that to every female: males he would regard like opponents.

"I'm a guard," he reminded her coolly. "I'm meant to sneak around, Strange."

Her lips twisted in a smile, partly relieved to be in the company of a guy who certainly wasn't interested in her romantically, nor was able to do anything magical, could only transform and rip her apart.

"So no activity?" she asked keenly.

"Nah," he said carelessly. "Just the new kid. Two werewolves tried to follow his escort, but I dealt with them."

She shuddered at the way he said it, and an absurd image appeared in her head, imagining Angelo tossing the bodies of two werewolves into a river, chains and blocks of concrete around their feet. She didn't doubt it of him at all: there was an angry wilderness in his pale, wintry eyes under light blond eyebrows, a bright, excited flush in his cheeks as he set off walking. But she followed him, because he knew the forest so well.

"There," he said knowingly, pointing at the churned up earth. "A squirrel dug up its foods there. Then a fox came and carried it off."

She looked at the ground: saw the lone pawprint of the fox among the scuffled earth, the only clue of it.

"It happened this morning," Angelo continued, giving her a small, sideways smile. "When the fox was dozy and barely able to believe his luck."

"How d'you know?" she asked interestedly.

"I watched," he said simply, still smiling, that gleam in his wintry eyes.

She laughed despite herself and he laughed too, after a moment.

"I'm sure the boy will try and run away tonight," Angelo continued, smiling pleasantly. "Do you want to help me catch him and knock sense into him?"

"Run away?" she asked, astonished. "Kierlan?"

"He hates it here," Angelo said calmly. "Loathes it with all his heart. He'll run through the forest until he thinks he's near civilisation. And I shall catch him, take him back to Rita and tell him just what he's got into."

It was times like this that Angelo spooked her.

"You've got a heart of ice," Sarah said, keeping her voice calm.

"Some people say I'm crazy," Angelo agreed.

"And what do you think?" she'd asked him this before. He gave her the same answer. "Let people think what they think."

Then he asked her again, setting off walking again as though following a route set out for him. "So, will you help me catch the boy?"

"Why should I?" she asked, amazed.

"He'll hate you," Angelo said comfortably. "And if you're good enough, he'll fear you too."

"Why should I hate him?" she asked numbly.

And his pale, wintry eyes found her. "You answer that, Strange."

With that, he changed his route, making his way back to the edge of the forest, up mounds of bracken and fern, weaving between discarded badger sets and rotting tree stumps. Teasingly, he flicked ferns to spring back into her face and twitched at branches to shower her with droplets of the rain. She took it in her stride, her mind buzzing with what he'd said. Sometimes I wonder if he's not an Old Soul, she thought in amazement. How can he see so much? Even more than a shapeshifter.

Then she reached the edge of the forest. Angelo didn't even pause, leaving her there and striding back into the forest to stroll the paths as though hungry for trouble, for hunting out intruders.

Maybe I should want him to hate me, she thought numbly, coming to the kitchen door just as a streak of light lit up the window of the study. Susie, she thought knowingly with a smile, creeping to the window.

"See?" Susie was saying earnestly, standing only a breath away from Kierlan, her arms stretched out, her palms cupped like she held water within them. "Make a shape with it, Kierlan. Control the magic, and its form."

She didn't duck in time from the window through which she watched them. Kierlan's eyes met hers, startled, just as his magic left his palms, like an arrow of blue mist, then carved out a blue misty shape in the air between them, of a heart.

He watched her steadily, his face clear even through his misty magic, as the heart wavered and stayed there, hanging in the air.

Horrified, she broke free from his spell and bolted into the kitchen, up the stairs to her room where she slammed the door shut, leaning her back against it.