Shimmer |✓|

//Glamour// Part 1

Claudia the Witch observed me from one blue eye and one brown, puffing coolly on a joint not two minutes earlier I had watched roll itself. She had then lit the spliff with a snap of her fingers, an electric-blue cherry springing to life. The smoke she exhaled formed a lethal skull with crossbones.

I was neither awed nor threatened by her parlor tricks. I was annoyed.

Anyone who saw Claudia's trailer would deem her as unassuming as her surroundings. Her tiny single wide reeked of patchouli and cannabis. The living room was covered in curling posters of rappers and pop stars, the white paint between faded with age. A shabby entertainment center supported a flat screen, PlayStation, and first-person shooter games. Books of various lengths were found in small stacks around the room, and she had no pictures of family. There was only Claudia, with her broken, mismatched furniture for company.

Earlier that night, I had followed Ethan inside, allowing the screen to slam shut behind me. The main door closed on its own.

I pretended not to notice when Claudia immediately pulled Ethan aside, circling his neck with her arms. I saw the curve of her wicked smile, indelibly close to his, and turned my gaze from the impending kiss...

"Benedictionibus et scuta..." Claudia's spell was a low whisper of honeyed poison. 

I turned in alarm, watching an unsavory glow take hold of Ethan's form, dissipating like black rain. His skin radiated, like a fire smoldered beneath. As his chest rose, so did my heart with it, yet his delight was to my horror.

And envy.

"Mmm..." Lip between her teeth, Claudia smoothed her blue-pained nails up his muscled torso. "The Goddess approves... Her blessings for you grow stronger by the week." She tweaked the tip of his nose with pride.

So that's how she keeps him coming--Earth Smoke and the blessings of some over-sexed tree-goddess. She's as cheap as they come--cheaper.

<<Your jealousy betrays you--focus! The Witch can be useful if you let her.>>

Claudia advanced, Cleopatra-eyes sitting narrow above her crooked grin, as if she heard my Wolf and agreed. In the dim lighting of her single wide trailer, her pale skin was paler, yellow almost. Her flowing, semi-dreaded hair, no longer fiery blue, was now tamely brown upon her shoulders. Yet those mysterious eyes of hers still burned, but with something beyond mere intelligence. She was cunning.

Claudia took another hit, then passed the spliff to Ethan. "Hmm... Interesting..." She tilted her head in slow perusal. Smoke flew off to the side, from the corner of her lips. A little less confidence and I would've flushed beneath her cool, steady gaze. To anyone without the character or confidence to resist, her self-assuredness would've been off-putting. "I can't see your aura, bub."

I gave a one-armed shrug, because two weren't worth the effort. "Okay. So I don't have one. Big deal." And stop talking like me!

"Oh, everybody has an aura, sweety. Even Vampires. You can't exist without an aura." Her head switched to the other side; she was observant as a doctor, without the bedside manner. "Yours, has been cloaked--by Glamour. Glamour is Vampire-magic. Huh. It's kinda pretty actually..."

Glamour. The name struck me like a pair of hands.

"Care to explain or should we grab a copy of Glamour 101?" The Alpha was subdued, arms crossed over his shoulders. Clearly the euphoria of Claudia's spell had worn off; judging by her pout, she wasn't used to Ethan's mean-y face. 

"Glamour is another form of magic, the hypnotic kind--we're talking compulsion, visual-and-audial manipulation, memory loss; usually it's minor stuff, enough to get a fanger a meal. But this--it's the big leagues." Claudia's musings were of a hollow interest, as if she observed me from behind a sheet of glass at the zoo. "Basically, this Vampire tossed your noggin like a scrambled egg. Who knows what you're like underneath his spell..."