my power to tell me that, but my magic ensures that I feel it like a light rainfall, drops saturating my clothes and adhering to my skin like cool sweat.
“We made a deal,” I remind him. “Four nights ago, remember? When I found you looting through the dumpsters out back, looking for bottles of alcohol to get you through the night.”
He swallows hard and wipes his forehead with his sleeve. “Yeah, I fucking remember. I just...I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“You said yourself you needed the money,” I remind him quietly, careful to keep my voice low and even. I don’t dare raise it. Even with the pulsing music, vampire hearing is superb. “Or do you want to keep being a vampire pet forever?”
His face flushes with anger. “I’m not a pet,” he grumbles, keeping his body in the shadows of the curtain at our backs. “No one else was offering me a fucking life when they took me in off the streets. I just didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know that once you’re owned, they won’t ever not own you,” I guess.
He nods stiffly.
I give him a placating look. “All owners are the same.” I point from my collar over to the necklace of bite wounds around his own neck. “Just because our collars are different doesn’t mean I don’t know what it’s like. We can help each other. Everything is going to plan, and the final act is nearly over. The fight is about to begin. No one will know.”
Panic flares in his eyes at the ebbing timeline. We don’t have long. Two minutes, and their dance will be over.
“W-well, maybe I changed my mind,” he stutters. “Maybe I can find another way that won’t get me fucking killed either by them or your crazy ass troupe master.”
I turn my entire body until my sole focus, my very demeanor, is bearing down on him. The kid’s eyes widen for a second before he cowers, and I hate myself a little bit for it. But this is the eleventh hour, and I’m not letting this chance slip through my fingers. Not after searching for so long.
I’m not a hard man. I’m not gruff or scary. I’ve been molded to be on stage. Handsome. Polished. An object of desire. Easy to approach, easier to give bets to. Trustworthy. But that’s my stage presence. My mask. There’s a world of pent-up hidden anger behind it all. And sometimes, like right now, I let it slip through the cracks.
The kid takes a step back, his expression letting me know that he’s just now seeing me as someone to fear. Our daily training keeps me at my physical peak, so I’m trim, but strong. Yet because of my halo of bright blond hair, I always get sidled with the role of the hero. But right now, I’m not playing the hero. For Jetta, I’m more than willing to be the villain.
“You will do this,” I begin quietly, my voice barely audible over the pulsing staccato of music. “Because you agreed to it.”
When he opens his mouth to reply, probably to argue, I settle my hand on his shoulder, and he immediately swallows his words. My power is already extended out of me in a hundred different directions like strings cast off from a fisherman’s pole, connecting to nearly everyone in the room.
The only outside indication that my power is in use comes from the blue tattoo of four interlocking triangles with the single line set on the top of them located on my left bicep. It will be glimmering slightly right now, but it’s always covered, hidden from perceptive eyes.
One more string doesn’t make a difference to the amount of power I’m already using to keep the vamps in this place pulsing with confidence. So I easily cast out another line that only I can see, and fling it toward the conjurer kid.
My string finds his dwindling confidence buried in his fear, and I hook into it, yanking on it until my line pulls taut. I reel it in like a resigned fish, its tailfin already stopped flapping. The tension immediately eases off him, his entire posture changing as his eyes lose the sharp edge of his defensive fear.
“Sorry, man,” he says, shaking his head. “I was just freaking out. I’m cool now,” he assures me.
I pat him on the back and let my hand drop. “Good. You know what to do, and like I said, no one will be able to