“I know you have a gift,” he said.
I stabbed a crouton. “It’s not a gift.”
Taking a bite from his burger, he studied me for a moment. He swallowed, then said, “Yeah, I can see how it wouldn’t be.”
I didn’t want to like him, but his empathy was another new experience for me. He sounded as though he truly understood what burden I carried. Naturally no one at the boarding school knew that I was an empath because I couldn’t tap into their emotions so it had seemed pointless to explain what I couldn’t demonstrate for them. They were all Statics. I certainly wasn’t explaining Shifters to them. That would have brought other complications. So at school I was blessedly normal.
“It’s the reason I sought out a place where there were only Statics. Their emotions don’t reach me. All I have to deal with is how I feel.” He didn’t say anything so I leaned forward. “Your emotions aren’t reaching me either. How do you do it? How do you close them off? Did the elders teach you how to keep everything boxed in?”
“No, they didn’t teach me anything, and as far as I know, I’m not doing anything to close off my emotions.”
Incredulous, I stared at him. “But I don’t get a sense of what’s going through you. Your emotions don’t touch me—at all. I’ve never been around a Shifter whose emotions don’t touch me.”
“So you don’t know what I’m thinking?”
I shook my head. This was so difficult to explain. “I don’t tap into people’s thoughts. I can only sense the emotions: fear, anger, embarrassment, acceptance, lust—”
“Lust?” he interrupted me. “That must be awkward. So if some guy has the hots for some babe or she has the hots for—”
“I don’t know who they’re lusting after,” I cut in. Thank God for that, but if they were in the throes of passion…it could be unbearable and such an invasion of privacy. “Because again, I don’t know their thoughts. It’s like a…how do I explain this? A ball of energy. No, a water balloon. It slams into me and drenches me, so I experience it as though it’s part of me. All the physical reactions that a body has when we’re afraid or anxious or in love…my body responds as though the emotion were mine. If several Shifters are in the area, then I can be hit with different emotions jumbling around inside me. Unless someone is having a really intense emotional burst—then maybe the lesser emotions will be drowned out. If you couple that with my own emotions, it’s incredibly overwhelming and confusing. But I don’t feel that when I’m someplace that’s inhabited with only full humans.”
He either didn’t know how to respond to my lengthy discourse on what it was to be me or he was thinking about it, trying to make sense of it. I studied him for a minute. His story was that he’d come to us from another group of Shifters, but I didn’t know if anyone had checked it out. I thought about how easily I’d convinced Spike and the others that I was a college student on winter break—just looking for a temporary job. Perhaps Daniel wasn’t a Shifter after all. Like Brittany. Her father was human, her mother a Shifter, so I supposed she was part Shifter, but her human side dominated. She didn’t have the ability to shift, and her emotions never touched me. Was Daniel a mixture of Shifter and human? Or was he maybe a full human who had lied to infiltrate our clan? But then the question would be why? And he had managed to find me so he had mean tracking skills. I couldn’t help but be impressed.
Last summer, when I’d been at Wolford for a couple of weeks, I’d overheard other girls talking and giggling as they whispered about guys, comparing their wolfish attributes, but I’d never understood their interest. Until now. For the first time in my life, I was curious about another Shifter’s fur.
Our individual wolf coats are one of a kind, although it usually matches our hair to some extent. Like my sandy blond hair meant that I would be a light-colored wolf. Daniel with his black hair would have black fur. But there are still differences. Would it have a bluish tint? Would it be like a black hole? Like a night sky?
But I couldn’t recall hearing anyone talk about what he looked like in wolf form. And I hadn’t seen him that night in the clearing. How convenient. And if I thought about it too much: suspicious. I furrowed my brow. “But I get nothing coming from you. And I don’t recall anyone ever describing you in wolf form. Are you a Static?”
He laughed, a deep rich sound. “No. Don’t you think the elders, the other Shifters, would sense if I was?”
He had a point. Shifters could sense other Shifters, but only after our initial transformation. Everything changed when we were touched by our designated full moon. I didn’t want to contemplate all that awaited me—even the possibility of death.
“Yeah, I guess,” I muttered, wanting an easy explanation. “But if you’re a Shifter, why are your emotions cut off?”
“I don’t think they are.” He dipped an onion ring into the ketchup and proceeded to eat it as if I wasn’t dealing with an incomprehensible situation here. How could he be so unaffected? It irritated me that he wasn’t willing to help me solve this puzzle.
“Why aren’t they slamming into me?” I persisted.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you doing something to hold them back?”
“If I am, it’s subconscious. Or maybe it’s because we’re not at Wolford. Have you ever sensed Shifters’ emotions when you weren’t at Wolford?”
“Yes.” I’d lived with my parents in Tarrant, before they’d died. Humans and Shifters resided there, although the humans weren’t aware of our abilities. The small town was near the national forest that we considered our true home. As a child, I’d felt Shifters’ emotions—even when we were on vacation. My parents tried to take me places where there would be mostly humans, but Shifter families enjoy Disney World as much as humans do. I’d gotten lucky with Athena.
Daniel distracted me from my thoughts when he set his elbow on the table and bent his arm until his fingers touched strands of my hair. I’d released my hair from its clip before leaving work. Now it hung loose past my shoulders. “So you don’t know what I’m feeling right now?” he asked.
Swallowing hard, I thought it would be extremely easy to lose myself in his eyes, especially when he acted as though touching me was the most natural thing in the world for him. Why was he so comfortable around me when I was so uncomfortable around him? I’d never before flirted with a guy. I’d watched Lisa, picked up a few tips, but I’d never tried them out. As much as I wanted to with Daniel, I knew that he was here on a mission to take me back to Wolford. I didn’t want to fall under his spell. I turned my gaze away from him. “I think you’re messing with me.”