Inspire (The Muse #1)(7)
Author: Cora Carmack

A hand reaches out to steady me, but I jerk myself away.

“Don’t touch me. Nobody touch me.”

I limp away, shaky and sick and … oh gods what have I done?

I pass the same street musician, and he calls out for me to join him again, but I keep my head down, my thoughts focused on reconstructing the mental shields I’d all but demolished back there.

What have I done?

I think it again and again as I push myself farther and farther from that club, turning north, away from the crowds and the bars.

What have I done? What have I done?

I must say it out loud because a man with a grizzly beard leaning against a brick building answers, “You’ve been bad, pretty one. That’s what you’ve done.”

I jolt, edging sideways to put distance between us. There’s a high population of homeless people downtown, especially because there’s a shelter not too far from here. Many of them are lovely people that have the same kind of vibrancy as this city. But you can never be too careful, and this guy … something about him makes alarm bells ring at the back of my weary mind. He reaches out to touch me, and I try to jump away, but he’s quicker than I expect him to be.

His hand locks around my wrist and no matter how hard I tug, I can’t break his hold. He squeezes, and the pinch of pain makes me focus on him. His skin is weathered and tough, but clean. And up close, his beard isn’t as gnarled as I expected, just full and long. It’s not until I look into his eyes that I know for certain this is no homeless man.

Deep set and large, each of his eyes has two irises and two pupils, and I know if I were to search, I’d find more than those four eyes trained on me, more than four eyes on him.

“Reckless,” he says, his voice graveled and hard. “I don’t need to tell you what happens to the reckless ones, Kalliope.”

“How do you—”

“Don’t play dumb with me, girly. Your life might be all pretty things and pretty words, but you’re not naïve.”

Lead lines my stomach, and I want to run, but fear weights me to my spot.

“Son of Argus,” I say, and he arches a brow. “Watcher.”

There’s not many of us left in the world from the old days, but even so, the greater gods don’t trust us to live out here on our own. The Argus are said to have hundreds of eyes, and never are they all closed at once, not even in sleep. No one knows quite what they see and how much, but it’s enough that the gods trust them to keep the rest of us in line.

He nods, and my gaze catches on his strange eyes again. They’re a blue so light it borders on silver. Cold. Hard. “Right you are. And I don’t particularly like having to venture out among humans because some little goddess can’t control herself.”

Indignant, I say, “I can control—”

“Can you? Do you know what’s happening back in that club right now?” I shake my head hard, not sure I want to know, but he answers anyway. “Complete chaos. The cops are currently wondering if it was some kind of bad drug reaction.” He pauses, squints for a moment, then adds, “Someone just suggested bioterrorism.”

I wince, and my stomach pitches, nausea rising swiftly up my throat.

“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

He takes hold of my other wrist, drawing both arms up between us until he towers over me. He seems larger, more intimidating than before, and I try not to appear afraid.

“No more accidents,” he says. “Risk exposing us again, and the gods might decide this world has enough art already.”

I open my mouth, to say what, I don’t know. But I never get that far.

Someone calls my name, softly at first, then louder.

“Kalli? Is that you? Kalli! Hey, man, let her go!”

The Argus holds on tight for another moment. His grip doesn’t hurt. Not really. But his gaze almost does. Like he’s looking into me, through me. I hear footsteps coming fast, and then my wrists are free, and the watcher moves too fast for a man who looks so old. He slips around the corner and out of sight just as another person skids to a halt beside me.

“Hey, Kalli right?”

I look up, and I’m so stunned that I forget to flinch away when a hand comes up to touch my cheek.

“You okay?”

I don’t know. Don’t know that at all. But I know this guy.

This time there’s no little girl, no grocery store, no magazines. Something leaps behind my ribs, but it’s not power. It’s something even harder to control.

Want.

“Hi Wilder.”

Chapter Four

His hand is warm against my cheek and he tilts my head up, peering into my eyes. He’s not wearing the glasses tonight, and a few days worth of stubble resides on his jaw, and he looks so different than the last time I saw him. No tie. No button down. Instead he wears a fitted tee, a black leather jacket, and dark jeans that hang off his body perfectly. Even so, I still get that same steady feel from him.

Though that could be because he has his other hand braced at my waist, keeping me upright. Either way, he makes me feel safer than I have any right to be after a run in with one of the Argus.

“Are you okay?”

I nod, pulling back from his hand at my cheek like I should have done the instant he touched me. I’m lightheaded though, and as soon as I’m free my knees quake, and I throw out a hand to steady myself.

“Easy there.” He loops an arm around my waist, and I can feel it burning through the fabric of my dress.

He leans close, peering at my eyes, and the smell of him surrounds me, warm and masculine with a hint of spice.

He asks, “How much have you had to drink?”

I tense. “None. I’m fine.”

He arches one perfect eyebrow and says, “Try again.”

“Really, I swear.”

His gaze dips down, and I think he’s looking at the rounded neck of my dress, and my heart flips over, sending off a ripple of anticipation in its wake. Then he says, “You’re barefoot,” and that anticipation turns to horror.

I step back, and sure enough, he’s right.

My feet are bare and dirty, and now that I concentrate, I can feel a few stinging cuts on the bottom.

“I—” I pause, completely at a loss for how to explain this without sounding like a complete lunatic. I lift up my hand, wondering if I’d left my house this way, or if perhaps I’d taken my shoes off at some point and had been carrying them. The last few days are kind of a muddled blur in my mind. I can remember some of how I felt and thought, but physical actions … not so much. I had been completely in my head, but now the energy that had consumed me is all gone.