Page 80 of Psycho Beasts
“Are you sure you’re okay, sis?” Lucinda narrowed her too-familiar ruby eyes at me.
“No, I’m not okay. Creepy voices love to talk to me, and apparently instead of being maternal, I instinctively want to bully small children.”
Aran groaned as she opened her eyes and stretched. “You’re being dramatic, Sadie.”
I glared at her. “A female voice in my head just said, ‘I’m ice; he’s fire,’ and, ‘You need to complete it,’ most likely referring to me and you, since you’re the only guy here. Well, kind of. I don’t know.”
I pressed my palms into my eyes. “It was the numb’s voice, but I hadn’t activated it, so theoretically it should be impossible to speak to me. Why do voices always talk about us? What does any of it mean?”
The room went silent.
At least now everyone would panic with me, and Aran would finally realize how serious the situation was.
“Oh no,” Aran said as I grabbed a small paper bag from the en suite bathroom and breathed into it rapidly.
I rasped, “I know, right,” and continued huffing into the bag.
Aran pulled her sleeping mask back over her eyes. “The sun god probably realizes I’m an absolute dynamite of a man and wants to tell me how sexy I am. You probably need to complete your life’s purpose by telling me that.”
It was official.
I was about to murder my best friend.
Jinx choked on a laugh, and Lucinda cracked a smile. Jala and Jess woke up and looked around, confused by what was going on.
“Jinx, hold the glam ferret,” I said.
She scooped Noodle up protectively, and I let out a war cry, throwing myself on Aran, elbow pointed down for maximum impact.
Even with a blindfold over Aran’s eyes, it wasn’t a fair fight.
“Fight, fight, fight,” the teenage girls squealed with glee as we tussled across elegant silk sheets and I tried to stuff the paper bag down Aran’s throat.
The match ended quickly.
Aran pinned me beneath her with her forearm across my windpipe, and my left arm twisted behind my body at an awful angle.
She grinned down at me, still blindfolded by her sleeping mask, perfect white teeth flashing. “Admit I’m sexy.”
“Something serious is going on here,’’ I whined. “I can feel it in my bones. Maybe I’m ice, and you’re fire. We probably have to do something together. The creepy poems said something similar to us. Also, you only pinned me because your male enchantment makes you wider and stronger.”
Aran shook her head, eye mask still on. “Oh, dumb, innocent Sadie. The enchantment is a mirage. It makes me appear wider with a more masculine build, but doesn’t actually change my physical form at all. Just what you perceive.”
My jaw dropped.
The hands pinning me to the bed were strong as shit, and I’d lost circulation where they pressed against me.
Then I remembered what she’d said. “I am not innocent.”
“So you finally admit you’re dumb?” Jinx asked lazily as she petted Noodle.
For what happened next, I blamed the terror that still shook through my veins from the voice speaking to me.
“So you admit you’re annoying?” I mocked the twelve-year-old.
“So you admit you’re a nincompoop?”
“So you admit you’re the size of a garden gnome?”