15. Space Oddity

"How does it not irritate you?" I asked him as I rubbed my hair dry with an old t-shirt. "I just want to call them and talk shit."

"The Cullens don't inject themselves into human affairs," he repeated.

I rolled my eyes. "That's such a cop out. They could wipe out ISIS in minutes. They could literally save the world. And instead, they what? Repeat high school forever and knock up teenagers? Bullshit."

"ISIS? Since when do you care about stuff like that?"

"You're missing the point!"

He laughed at my expense as he helped peel my soaked shirt up over my head. "Why do I feel like you're ranting about something random to avoid something else?"

God damnit, Seth. "I don't know what you mean."

He stepped back and looked me over, quickly and carefully. "I smelled your blood at the graveyard, and I smell it on your clothes, too. But I don't see a mark on you."

I held my hand up. "I sliced it open, about an hour ago."

He stared at me skeptically, arms crossed over his bare chest and still in sopping wet jeans. I wrapped a towel around me and walked over to my backpack, pulling a knife free. I pushed the blade against my skin, but he reached out and stopped me.

"Liz," he said authoritatively.

"You don't believe me, so let me show you."

His free hand flashed out and took the knife from me. "Isn't there some other way you could show me?"

I sighed. "Well, I wouldn't know. This book is the only thing I have to go off of and it basically says that powers will manifest on their own." I swapped out my towel for a shirt and some panties before digging out the three notebooks that - if I'd read correctly - pointed to me being some type of badass witch. "Okay," I said after flipping some pages. "Let's try this." I held my right palm out, open. "Ignire."

The light of the fireball in my hand reflected back to me in Seth's wide eyes.

"This is unreal," he finally said.

I shut my hand, extinguishing the flame. "I disagree." I shut my eyes and focused on my hand again until I felt the heat of another fire against my skin. "I don't even need spells."

He picked up the original book, the one that had taken me twice as many pages just to decipher, and I wasn't even through yet. "Where the hell did you get this?"

"I don't know. I found it in a box of stuff from tour. People used to give me all kinds of things, I didn't look through it all until I put it up here." I glanced at my bookshelf and saw the newest issue of Inked with myself on the cover sitting there. "Oh!"

Seth stood for a few moments, watching me flip through the pages. "You just found out you can do magic and you're looking through a magazine..."

"Well... I'm in it," I said, holding up the pages with pictures of me.

He laughed. "You're so strange sometimes." He sat down next to me. "You look really gorgeous, babe. I like your... boots." He gestured to a picture of me in nothing but boots, covering myself with my LE ESP guitar. "What's it like?"

"You planning to elaborate on that question a bit?"

"On set," he said.

"Oh. It's... different, I guess. Everyone is respectful, if that's what you mean."

"Do you like it?"

I shrugged. "I do. It's kind of awkward to think about how many people see me... you know. Being all sexy and stuff. But it only bothers me when it bothers you."

"It's weird, but it doesn't bother me. I never thought I'd be with a girl that modeled. Kind of feeds my ego."

"Do you ever sit back and think about imprinting? It's kind of weird. I mean, not the imprinting itself but who you imprint on."

"I know I used to think about it a lot, but since I met you... I just don't question it."

"I just can't wrap my head around how it works. Like, everybody you know tosses theories around and a lot of them think that it has something to do with genetics, but that doesn't really make sense for some of you guys. Emily, Rachel, Kim, Claire... all Native Americans. Renesmee is white but she's also half vamp which puts her into the supernatural category. Then there's you and Josh."

"You seem pretty supernatural now..."

"I do, and according to this," I held up the original notebook, "That is something that's been foreseen for a very long time. But does that mean Ana is going to be a witch, too?"

"I don't know, babe." He did that incredibly sexy thing where he laid back with his hands clasped behind his head and all you could see of his arms were bulging muscles in places people usually had none.

"What did it feel like?"

"When I imprinted? It felt like the world fell away and there was just me and you."

"So you loved me," I stated. "Before you knew my last name or what I liked or that I was a crazy lady. You already loved me."

His darkened eyes met mine, rich with intensity. "How do most people fall in love?"

I smirked. "You don't know?"

"I really don't. The only woman I've ever loved is you."

I thought it over. "You know, I don't either." And I really didn't. "I didn't love you the first second I saw you... I mean, I loved parts of you... but at some point I fell headfirst. Couldn't tell you when."

He was looking at me all kinds of sexy, his fingertips ghosting across my arm. "For the record, I don't think imprinting has to be about mating or genetics... I just think it's magic. It's that something between two people that can't be explained."

His lips covered mine and just as the heat flooded through me, thunder cracked, lightning lit the sky outside, and our power got knocked out completely.

"Uh oh," I said, diving towards my dresser for some shorts. I knew what was coming next.

Right on cue, Ana ran into my room blindly and threw herself down on my bed. "Liz!" she yelled, even though I was standing within a foot of her.

"I'm right here." I sat down next to her and she clasped my hand.

"I'm scared. I needed my thunder buddy."

"Chick rooms with a werewolf and runs to the ninety pound blonde when she's afraid," Josh suddenly said from my doorway.

I looked past Ana's shoulder at Seth and he was staring right back. He didn't look angry exactly, but he definitely didn't look happy. He seemed a little scared himself.

"What the hell is happening out there?" Ana asked. "It's like a typhoon... monsoon?"

My head was starting to pound. "I need a drink," I said as I rubbed my temple. Ana, my dear, sweet, darling friend, immediately handed me the bottle of vodka that was peeking out of my open backpack. I swallowed some down and passed to her.

"Cups?" Seth asked.

"Yeah, looks like one of those nights." Drinks and at some point, music. Typical Ana-and-Liz stuff.

He disappeared for a moment as Ana eyed me mischievously. "I have an idea," she said. "I'll be right back."

I raised an eyebrow as Josh lit some candles around my room. "If you come back in here with Twister, I'm kicking you out of my room."

"No naked Twister. Promise," she replied, grabbing a candle.

She slipped out of the room as Seth came back in. "What's she doing?" he asked.

"Beats me," Josh said before giving me an incredulous look. "Really, Liz? Naked Twister?"

I was laughing as she came back into the room and completed the circle of us in the floor. "Not tonight," she said to Josh, pecking him quickly on the cheek. "Let's do something creepy tonight." She placed a Ouija board in the middle and set the planchette down in the middle before smiling at me. "You guys down?"