Enhancing Naomi's senses

When Naomi stood, she offered her hand by reflex before her brain could remind her: Don’t touch. Danger.
At the contact of the raven-haired girl’s palm, she shivered reflexively as another jolt leapt up her elbow. The strange energy that entered her seemed to pour hot oil into her heart, making it pound faster. Shooting back a step, she severed the connection. What was that? It summoned a vivid mental image of Ryn’s mouth pressed to hers underwater, one that left her lips tingling. A terrible thought worked through her: That’s why I can’t forget her. Why she sticks to my senses for hours after she’s gone; why she haunts my dreams, both good and bad; and why my skin remembers her when she comes closer. It’s some kind of… spell.
That dreadful thought seized hold. She was helpless before the power of this spell, but it put all these past months’ confusion into sharp relief. Denise had been right—she’d poured her attention into Horatio and Patrick, trying to find in them the things Ryn had unleashed with her clever magic.
Staring at the slight, dangerous creature before her, Naomi tried to hate her.
She couldn’t. That was how deep the magic had rooted.
Denise stepped in to guide Ryn by the elbow. Naomi trailed, but for the entire walk her head swam with sensations. The air was delicious, and every current of wind exploded her senses. Colors had brightened, refined, and she could distinguish minute shades that changed the foliage from a swaddle of green to something infinitely more nuanced and beautiful. Her brain absorbed details until she felt dizzy.
At first she wondered if it might have been caused by nearly drowning in the river—but no, this was more than sensory overload. The air tasted alive. She could distinguish smells she’d never known before—that Elli was on her period, that Jane carried enough of Todd’s scent that she could tell they were an item.
Her thoughts warred: though Ryn had saved her, she’d also done this to her; changed her senses, how she felt, and against that spell she was defenseless. If Ryn could do all that, what else was she capable of?
Downstream, the rafts were dragged to an embankment and Todd had corralled everyone around untouched lunches. Relief overtook all their faces at the sight of them—everyone except Patrick, who sat on a cooler with guys on either side of him. He registered only surprise, and maybe guilt.
Naomi could feel from ten feet away Ryn’s skin tightening, hear the low-frequency growl purr from her throat and gradually swell into the range audible to humans. Slipping close, she set her hand to Ryn’s damp shoulder, sensing that coiled-spring body beneath her fingertips. “Please don’t,” she whispered. If he threw me into the river on purpose, she might hurt him. Or worse. She didn’t want this creature to murder Patrick on her behalf.
Ryn wore her intensity like a cloak. Simply in touching her, Naomi became somehow aware of her friend’s body, of its shape beneath wet cloth—from powerful heartbeat to the soft contours of her skin, an intimate knowledge that burned her ears. Jerking her fingers away, she was scalded by the swell of desire it produced.
Hovering there, the raven-haired girl danced on the balls of her feet with the energy of a lightning bolt with nowhere to go. She stormed across the beach with Denise at her heels, the blindfold not seeming to hinder her one bit.
It took a while to explain what had happened to everyone’s satisfaction: to describe Ryn’s rescue while editing out the supernatural parts—and also how their mouths had touched. She echoed assurances that she was all right again and again, more frustrated each time, because all she really wanted was to puzzle out this otherworldly girl who had bespelled her.
Jane finally ended the explanations by asking if Naomi wanted to leave. “We have a radio. We can hike up to the road.”
“No,” she said automatically. Though terrified of what Ryn was doing to her, she couldn’t risk letting her disappear again—maybe this time forever. Maybe I’d get my regular feelings back. But did she even want to? Some dark part of her liked being in its thrall.
“You’re sure?” Perhaps Jane sensed her uncertainty.
Looking to the distant log where Ryn sat alone, she nodded. “I want to keep going.”
The crowd clung to Naomi, trying to drag her into more detail about her brush with death, but anyone who spoke to Ryn ran into a stone wall of silence and eventually gave up. Patrick stayed on his cooler, nodding wanly when a boy muttered, “God, that was lucky.”
But when she next looked to the log, Ryn was gone. Edging from the crowd and making excuses all the way to the trees, Naomi slipped into the forest. No, she’s not gone. She could feel Ryn, taste her in the air, and she peeled through brush until she found the girl gliding between trunks—angling for Patrick’s position. No blindfold. The sight stilled her, because she’d come upon a predator in the woods, and her heart crushed against her ribcage. She managed to ask, “Wh-what are you doing?”
Ryn crouched on a splintered stump, head bowed to hide her searing gaze. “What I’m best at,” she whispered, and Naomi was seeing her for the first time—seeing the animal in her stance, her voice. “Hunting.”
“Please don’t hurt him,” she whispered. Bowing in turn, hoping supplication would win her over, she said, “I don’t want you to kill because of me. And… I want to know why he did it.”
She loosed a low, clicking growl. “I hunt other monsters. This is my way.”
“Please. Is it because you think he’ll hurt me?” She risked a glance.
Ryn nodded, thankfully keeping her gaze low.
Taking a breath, she tried to bargain with the monster who was her friend: “If I rescind my… request… that you leave me alone… if I ask you to watch over me instead, will you agree not to hurt him?”
“Do you know what promises are to me?”
“I’m beginning to understand.” She lowered her head again, aware she was bargaining with something far different from the shy creature she’d befriended. “The truth is, I don’t want you to go,” she confessed.
“Why?” When Ryn lifted her gaze, the sight forced Naomi back into the crux of two slender maples. “You know what I am.”
“A demon. Or an angel. Or something stranger. I don’t know, but I don’t want you to disappear again, and I don’t want you to hunt Patrick.” She at last looked up, eyes pleading.
With a solemn slowness, Ryn crossed one finger over her heart, as she had several times before; except now Naomi felt the gesture’s gravity. “I vow to protect you until you’re safe from him. And I will not harm him—unless he first tries to harm you. Then he is mine.”
It would have to be enough, because Jane was calling the campers back to their rafts. With a quick aside, Naomi convinced the counselor to swap her onto Ryn’s, mostly to avoid Patrick. She paddled one seat ahead of Ryn and, in spite of the blindfold, could feel how the monster’s attention fixed on her. It marched a prickly sensation up the ridge of her spine, the fine hairs on her neck abuzz. Her heart came alive at the crisp spray of water against her face. Sophisticated river smells danced through her forebrain, and Naomi marveled at the subtle difference between sweetly oxygenated surface water and the moldering fragrance of the nutrient-rich depths.
Ryn’s attention had a texture to it, the sensation reminding her of the dressing room, where nearness had caused Ryn’s teasing breath to tickle her hot skin; or how it had felt to dance with her for hours, reveling in their two bodies’ intimate knowledge of each other without ever touching; or how safe she’d felt falling asleep on her bed while Ryn perched stalwart above her.
That last memory lingered, and Naomi had never been sure if the dream of soft fingers brushing her hair while she dozed had been real or imagined—because oh, she’d had so many dreams. Some unintelligible with terror, dark shadows in Ryn’s shape prowling through parking garages or the corners of her house. Some not just frightening, but thrilling, the shadows wrestling her into dark, sweet-smelling places, tangling around her like bedsheets, tightening—but not too tight—capturing her and holding her exquisitely still. How often had she dreamt that and thrashed in anticipation of forming shadows whose soft breath brushed her body? How often had she woken in a state of half panic, half arousal?
Naomi had to shake off the redolent memories, as they’d joined with her sensitized skin and the rocking of the raft, leaving her acutely aware of how near Ryn was behind her. It changed something in the air—her own scent, she realized. The monster was right about her scent, and her cheeks burned with shame. She couldn’t look up from the paddle or water for the remainder of the trip. From the beginning, Naomi thought. Ryn had worked this dark magic on her from the very beginning.
By the time they arrived at their campsite and had dinner, all Naomi wanted to do was get the monster alone and pry out why—why her, to what ends, and would it ever end? At least, she hoped that was all she wanted.
The sky darkened over their grassy embankment above the shore, where everyone erected two-person tents—boys on one side, girls the other, and a shared firepit between. Ryn took a tent away from the group, placing it among the network of roots and beneath the crowning of an oak’s mossy branches. In spite of the blindfold, she found a gap in the roots and felt out locations for spikes with her fingers, sureness in every motion.
Naomi approached, hands clasped behind her. “Can I help?” She knelt, finding Ryn’s blindfold hid those impossible eyes and she could get near; even reach for the hammer.
Ryn jerked away. “I can do it.”
“It’s our tent,” she decided then and there, pulse racing. “I’ll help.”
“…our tent?”
“I was with Denise, but she can bunk with Elli. So I’ll be with you.”
Ryn fidgeted with the hammer until Naomi plucked it from her hand.
She started to tap the spikes in place. “I don’t bite.”
“What if I do?” the monster asked.
That pulled from Naomi something between a shiver and wiggle, between fear and… want. She cleared her throat. “I’ll have to take my chances,” she said properly. More quietly, she added, “I mostly need to talk. About… what you’re doing to me. I’d like it if you’d stop.” God, it sounds like I’m asking a favor. “Please.”
“Stop what?” Ryn threaded poles into the nylon of the tent; it rose, taking shape.
“Whatever this magic is.” She sighed. “I admit, it feels… kind of good. But it’s scaring me. Like I’m losing control. And it’s not who I am.”
Ryn’s eyebrows pinched together in bafflement.
“I understand you’re maybe not doing it on purpose. If you are, I’m flattered, sort of.” Naomi felt weak dancing around it, so she squared her shoulders and started over. “I’m not stupid. I see and smell and taste all kinds of things since you… put your mouth on mine. I know what I’m feeling isn’t normal.”
Now her friend nodded. “Yes. That. I’m sorry. When we touched, when you shared my breath, some of my power went into you. My power is chaotic. The effects fade.”
“Good.” But her heart dropped a little. “All of it, though, right? Including the stuff from before we touched?”
“Before?”
She nodded. “Yes. Like how you made me feel when we danced. Or in the dressing room, or…”
“We shared no breath.”
“You don’t have to lie. I won’t be mad, I promise. I just want to go back to normal.”
Ryn crossed her heart. “I vow that I’m speaking truth. I didn’t make you do any of that; I can feel when my power goes into a mortal, from any distance, and the river was the first time it touched you.”
“Then how did—”
A shy smile appeared on Ryn’s face, showing the tip of a sharp canine. “What did you feel?”


Chapter 21, Page 317-322