“I think you should be more concerned about whether reverse Stockholm Syndrome is a thing, don’t you? Considering you’re the one who has been holding me captive for almost three and a half months?” The crisp British accent is back, and when he opens his eyes, so is the superior smirk that makes Hudson…Hudson.
My eyes go wide. “Me? You’re the one who won’t leave my head!”
“Won’t leave your head?” he scoffs. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? I’m desperate to leave your head. You’re the one who wastes time going to classes and painting pictures—oh, and kissing my brother—when you should be looking for a bloodstone!”
“I’m sorry that me living my life is such a waste of time for you, but I can’t just drop everything and run around the world to stop you from having a temper tantrum,” I shoot back.
“Temper tantrum?” His voice is dangerously low. “That’s the second time you’ve accused me of having a temper tantrum when I’ve expressed legitimate concerns about your attitude. I put up with it the first time, but now I’m warning you. Don’t do it again.”
I take exception at the warning, not to mention the look in his eyes when he issues it. “Or what?” I ask, my entire body crackling with outrage.
Suddenly he’s up and across the room, his face several inches from mine. “Or I’ll stop playing nice, and that’s something I’m not sure you—or your precious little mate—can handle.”
“You think taking over my body and leaving me covered in blood is playing nice?” I screech, about half an octave shy of the pitch needed to actually break glass. “You think making snide comments about your brother every second I’m with him is playing nice?”
His eyes narrow to slits. “Compared to what you’re doing to me? Hell yeah, I think I’m playing nice.”
“Doing to you? Doing to you?” I throw my hand in a “step right up” kind of gesture. “Please, feel free. Tell me exactly what it is that I’m doing to you that’s so awful besides trying to find a way for you to live outside of my head?”
“You—” He breaks off, fists clenched and jaw working as he stares me down. “I—” With a roar, he whirls around and punches a fist straight through the nearest wall.
I rear back, shocked at the depth of his fury. Shocked even more by the fact that there’s an actual fist-size hole in the wall next to my head. I look down at my hands, wondering if maybe he took over my mind long enough for me to somehow punch the hole.
But my hands are fine, and the knuckles aren’t the least bit red. So no, I didn’t punch the wall. Hudson did. The only question is how?
Fear races through me at the idea that he can wield that kind of power even when he’s bodyless. Even when he’s inside me. I know his main power is that of persuasion, and for the first time, I wonder if he’s using it on me without my knowledge.
Maybe that’s why I feel bad for him sometimes. Maybe that’s why, last night, I thought that maybe he wasn’t quite the enemy I’d been afraid he would be. Maybe that’s why—
“Could you just stop?” Hudson whispers, and he looks weaker and more sickly than I have ever seen him. “Not forever, but just for a few minutes. Could you please just stop?”
46
Gargoyles Need a
Little Glamour, Too
“Stop what?” I ask, baffled, as he turns away.
His shoulders sag.
“Hudson?” I prompt when he doesn’t answer, but he just shakes his head as he walks over to the window so he can look out at the snow. “Stop what?”
He laughs, but it’s not his normal sarcastic laugh. Instead, it’s just…sad. “The fact that you don’t know says everything.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that, so I don’t say anything. Silence billows around us like a piece of the shiny tissue paper my mom always wrapped my presents in—weightless and so, so fragile—and the longer it goes on, the more I’m afraid to break it. The more I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll also break the weird truce that Hudson and I have had going on for the last two days.
And if I do, what happens then?
Thankfully, Macy comes to the rescue—as usual. At nine forty-five, a full fifteen minutes before I have to meet Jaxon at the cafeteria, she comes bopping out of the bathroom looking a million times better than when she went in.
“Give me five minutes to find my shoes and do a quick glamour, and we can be on our way,” she says as she walks to her closet.