Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

Kissy and I were in that car faster than you can say ’pulse. We didn’t question how the man had known or why he was helping us.

His eyes, shining sea-foam green, said it all.

The man’s name was Walter, and he was a perfectly nice s

ort, a few years older than Mom and Dad would have been if they’d lived. Unfortunately, Walter didn’t seem to know any more about what we’d gotten ourselves into than Kissy did.

“I just got a feelin’,” he said, rubbing one hand over his chin. “And this feelin’, it said, ‘Get in your car, drive your car, pick up them girls.’ So that’s what I did.”

Like Kissy, Walter was no stranger to “feelings,” but he wasn’t particularly given to philosophical pondering, so all he’d say about them was that some itches needed scratching and if you had the sense God gave a goose, you’d scratch them.

Not exactly illuminating, if you asked me.

Still, we made it from Dallas to San Antonio in record time— no stops, no explosions, no black-eyed people gunning for my throat. Walter pulled up next to the River Walk, and as he put the car into park and let us out, the unnatural sheen faded from his eyes, until they were hazel, as ordinary and down-home as the rest of the man.

“You girls take care of yourselves,” he said.

Kissy smiled. “We will.”

I wasn’t feeling quite so optimistic, because even though we were in San Antonio, even though we’d done exactly what the ’pulse had told Kissy to do, her eyes were still shining, so bright that the sunglasses weren’t really doing the job anymore.

“C’mon, Jess!” Kissy sounded giddy and free and, if I’m being honest, just a little bit drunk. “We have to go this way!”

She ran down a stone staircase. I followed, and the closer we got to the River Walk below, the more adrenaline flooded into my system, my heart skipping like a stone across water. My breaths were shallow and hot in my chest, and I prepared myself for what might come.

What I wasn’t prepared for was Kissy sidestepping the second we got to the bottom and me running right smack into something that felt like an anvil and looked like a guy. He caught me by the elbows and steadied me on my feet. For a moment, I stopped breathing altogether.

His hair was the color of desert sand, his features symmetrical and sharp. He wasn’t particularly big or small, and I couldn’t pinpoint his age, but there was something unspeakably perfect about his body, his face, the way he stood—so perfect it sent a chill creeping down my spine.

It hurt to look at him. It hurt not to.

This is it.

I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, the beginning or the end, but every bone in my body was certain that this was something, that he was something. Beside me, Kissy pulled her sunglasses up onto the top of her head and blinked.

Her eyes were brown.

“I’m starving,” she said. “There any place good to eat around here?”

“Kissy.” I hissed her name. “All of this, everything we’ve gone through to get here, and you’re thinking about food?”

Kissy had the decency to look a tiny bit ashamed of herself. “I never got to eat my Egg McMuffin,” she mumbled.

Given the whole people-with-black-eyes-keep-trying-to-kill-us thing, I really didn’t think that should be her primary concern, but what did I know?

“You’re safe here, Jess.” Those were the first words our companion had said to me, and his voice washed over my body, leaving goose bumps in its wake. He didn’t sound as alien as the girl at the gas station had, but there was a heaviness to his words, like he’d been waiting to say them for longer than I’d been alive.

I looked into his eyes. They were blue: light and crystalline and inhuman in ways I couldn’t begin to explain. For a split second, those eyes looked away from mine and spared a glance for Kissy.

“You’ve done well,” he told her.

She preened. I rolled my eyes and waited for the flirting to start up, but the next second, the boy with the light-blue eyes was looking back at me.

“My name,” he said, “is Ariel.”

A dozen offhand comments about The Little Mermaid sprang to mind, but I figured it would be in poor taste to say any of them out loud.

“I’m Jess.”