Shadow Kissed 03 - Shadowman

midway across the street as a lovely child with huge expressive eyes emerged from the throng on the other side. The maturity in his perfect, guileless gaze was piercing and unnatural. Layla looked up the street to find perfect person after perfect person emerging from the stream of otherwise bland and ignorant pedestrians. A car jerked and made a new lane to get by Khan and her.
    â€œKhan?” Layla flipped her gaze to the other side of the street. A watcher here, another there. Oh, God, she was going to lose it.
    â€œYou have nothing to fear,” he said.
    Yeah, right. The whole world had just turned upside down.
    A screech sounded behind her, and she turned as a car jockeyed to get ahead of a bus. Bumpers touched, scraped, crumpled while a wave of traffic poured through the intersection, a light turning green. Cars collided with earsplitting force, and a Chevy suddenly fishtailed, its hulk careening toward her position.
    â€œKathleen!”
    Layla’s senses foundered as darkness broke into the world around her. Faraway screams of alarm warped in the air, and she had a sickening sense of displacement. Attachment to her body seemed suddenly tenuous, the exotic, woodsy scent again filling her head. She was drifting, separate, her tether to the world loosened.
    And then she was standing on the sidewalk beyond the accident, Khan’s arms around her. It felt so good, so right, against him, as if some part of her could finally rest, while her nerves vibrated with excitement. A new sense of street orientation was slow in coming, so she clutched at his arm and managed a breathless question. “Magic?”
    His answer was an affirmative low growl. The tightness of his returned embrace told her that he was deeply disturbed by the sudden danger as well.
    â€œI thought you needed a magic mirror to get from one place to another.”
    â€œNo,” he answered. “I didn’t want to scare you the first time you touched Shadow.”
    â€œStill scared, though.” She panted with shock, trying to recover her equilibrium. The accident involved no less than five cars, but the speeds hadn’t been great, so the only lives at risk had been those of the bystanders, most particularly her. Close call. If not for Khan, she could have been seriously hurt.
    The strangely perfect people who’d been watching them had disappeared, though the sidewalks weren’t so busy that they could melt into the crowd. It was as if they were never there. She’d have dismissed them from her mind entirely, and even had a niggling inclination to do just that, if not for Khan holding her tightly, proof that magic was all around her. That was twice she’d been transported now, and she didn’t feel drugged.
    Layla swallowed hard as she watched people emerge from their cars to check the damage and yell at each other with wild gestures. “So this magic thing?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œIt’s everywhere in the world?”
    â€œMore so than ever.”
    â€œAnd everybody just goes around oblivious?” Except, maybe, me?
    â€œMost are aware on some level.” She felt him lower his head to her shoulder. “Each must experience it for himself or herself sooner or later.”
    â€œI want to know everything. I mean everything .” The blood now pumping through her veins had way more to do with this incredible revelation than with her near miss. This was huge. Way bigger than the wraiths. This was her life.
    â€œYou will learn if you stay with me.”
    â€œRight now.”
    He chuckled softly against her, the movement teasing her wayward senses.
    She didn’t see what was so funny. This knowledge was momentous. She could not conceive of going through another day without a full understanding of this unbelievable power and its influence on the world. On her.
    She gripped the arm he’d circled around her waist and glanced over her shoulder. “Do it again.”
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    Khan got them as far as her neighborhood, and then they walked the “little ways down here” to her home while he responded to her rapid-fire questions.
    How did you learn to use your power? Came naturally. Do you cast spells? No. Can you do anything else? Like what, for example? Kill a person? Yes. Kill a wraith? Certainly. Guess lotto numbers? What are those?
    He didn’t elaborate on the nature of Shadow; she’d see it soon enough for herself and he didn’t want her to fear