“Show them to the guest rooms,” Cliff said. “Last one on the left.”
The guy nodded. As the group moved past Cliff, his eyes met Aspen’s. He leaned a little farther over the bar.
“What happened to you? Lucien won’t say.”
“The less you know the less trouble you’ll be in,” Lucien said from across the room. Cliff shrugged.
“Fair enough. Just curious was all.”
“This way,” the T-shirt guy said.
The rooms upstairs were at the end of a slim hallway, the wood caked in smoke and the lingering scent of spilled liquor. Lucien walked behind them as they went, casting charms every few feet. T-shirt guy wrinkled his nose at Lucien.
“You don’t need to do that. No one’s gonna mess with Cliff.”
“We’re dealing with things that would love to mess with Cliff,” Nina said. “The spells stay up.”
The guy shrugged.
The room was pathetically tiny, filled with only one dusty bed with stained sheets and a yellowing window, so dusty you couldn’t see out of it anymore. The entire place smelled of sewage.
“Wow,” Isak said.
But the moment Aspen’s eyes fell on the bed, all her previous strength left her. The magic from before—the feeling of too much magic, too much everything—welled up inside. She found herself stumbling toward it, with a surprised Isak fumbling right behind to try to steady her before she collapsed.
She was out before she hit the sheets.
For once in a very long time, Aspen dreamed of nothing.
No fire and flames. No blackened bodies or wickedly grinning men.
Peaceful bliss.
And then her eyes were cracking open. It seemed no time had passed at all. It was dark outside—or maybe that’s how it always looked with the dusty window. The reassuring honk and squeal of traffic still passed by below. Her body felt heavy with sleep. She felt rested but…different. It took her a moment to zero in on the new sensation. Magic. It had to be. Her body was brimming with it. It sloshed over the sides of her senses, begging to be let out. She could feel it pushing against the back of her eyes, on the tips of her fingers, in the pit of her gut. After all her years of absorbing magic it was as if a wild animal had finally been released inside her and she had no idea what to do with it.
She rolled over and found she’d been tucked in, still wearing her bloody clothes. Nina was by the bedside table, gently setting down Aspen’s weapons and remaining gear.
“Sorry to wake you. I managed to grab these from the Night Court. I wish I’d given them to you earlier. Maybe then you would have had more of a chance…”
“It’s all right.”
Nina gave a shuddering breath. “What he did is inexcusable, but…Xavier. I can’t get my mind around it.”
“Believe it.”
“He…out of all of us, he was the most passionate about keeping the peace, about doing a Mage’s job. I suppose that’s why he…no, I don’t know why he’d do it.”
Aspen sat up. The movement briefly hurt, but not too badly. Her forehead was still sore where she’d smashed it into Segur’s nose and the small cuts from the glass in the alleyway stung. The moment she moved, the magic sloshed inside her again. Her body felt jittery. Wired.
She reached over and gathered the pieces of her gear.
Her knife was still there, thankfully. So was Charlotte and her grapple. But her powders and other traps were gone. She would miss them. She didn’t think she’d get a chance to restock before doing what she needed to do. Her anger was focusing now, fixating on a single point: Xavier.
Aspen threw off the sheets. “You tucked me in, right? It wasn’t…”
Despite everything, Nina let out a tired grin. “Your special friend?”
Aspen focused on putting her knife back into her jacket while the heat on her cheeks settled. “Just as long as Lucien hasn’t killed him yet. I know Lucien blames him for what Xavier did.”
“They’re downstairs. They weren’t talking when I left. But Aspen, you know Isak has no clue about Xavier. I mean…he knows you were attacked by someone when you were with Xavier, but he doesn’t—we haven’t told him yet. We thought you should. We thought he’d take it better from you.”
Aspen slowly nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
Nina put a gentle hand on hers. “You’re absolutely sure? I could, if you wanted. We might be able to explain a bit more of the why. Not that we know much...”
Aspen’s stomach was curling itself into knots, even as she said, “I want to tell him.”
Nina patted her hand. “That’s fair. It’s going to be a shock.”
“Oh yeah, I kno—ouch!” Aspen winced as she tried to slip her jacket on. Her ribs and probably a thousand other places were bruised, like a toddler had used them for hammer practice.
“Scooch.” Nina settled beside Aspen. She raised a hand and glowing runic symbol appeared in the air.
“Sem Sali fer ma,” Nina chanted. “I call on my contract with thee, denizen.”
There was a small pop and a dark blue sprite with large eyes and glass-clear wings hovered where the symbols had been. Nina pointed to Aspen. “Heal, please. Don’t move,” Nina told Aspen as the sprite buzzed behind her and placed two tiny hands on her shirt. “He’s a healing sprite. He can’t fix everything, but he’ll make you feel better.”
Aspen slowly settled back onto the bed as the sprite’s tiny hands moved over her back and skin, tickling wherever he went. Everywhere he touched there was almost instant relief, like someone had slathered a soothing balm over her wounds.
“If you don’t mind telling me…What did Segur do to you?” Nina asked.
“She jammed me full of magic.” Aspen paused, trying to gather her thoughts from the jumbled collection scattered around her mind. The last hours were an ever-cycling flow of shaky memories that made her head spin. “I told her what I was, that I was a Null and couldn’t use magic, but she said I was more than that. She said she could make it so I can use magic.”
Nina sucked in a sharp breath. Aspen glanced at her. “You knew?”
“No! Well, some of the Council’s suspected that was possible...but Nulls are so rare nobody was really sure. The one good thing about the way the Council’s treated Nulls is they’ve never used them for testing. But there’s a theory that if a Null takes more magic than it can handle then it begins to reflect that magic, to reject it.”
“That’s what Lucien said.”
“Unless the Null can’t take the magic, and then…”
“They die.”
“Yes.”
“Well I didn’t die. But I’m not sure if I can use magic.” Aspen raised her hand. If she looked close enough, she could almost swear she saw small sparks buzzing from the tips of her fingers. Despite everything, the sight made an excited trill run through her body. Magic. She had magic.
“Hold it out in front of you,” Nina said.
Aspen did so.
“Now, do you feel the magic?”
“It’s impossible not to. It’s so full it’s…I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”
“She filled you up completely then. You have to let some of it go. Push at it. Push it to the ends of your fingers. Closing your eyes might help.”
Aspen did so. Nina was right. If she closed her eyes and turned inward she could almost imagine her body as a glass, and the magic filled right to the very brim. She envisioned her arm stretched like a straw out in front of her. Now she just needed to coax it that way…
She egged the magic toward her fingers. There was resistance at first. She tried again, pushing harder. The magic fought back but slowly, very slowly, it began to move. Her hand grew warm. Nina let out an exclamation of surprise.
“You’re doing it!”
Red sparks were shooting off Aspen’s hand, cascading to the floor. Aspen continued channeling the magic as much as she could until the effort exhausted her. She could still feel plenty of power within her, but the feelin
g of unbearable fullness had tapered off slightly. She felt lighter now, almost…happier at what she’d just done. Never in a million years had she thought she’d be able to do this.
“You’re so new to this that if you can really wield magic it will take a while for you to master it,” Nina said. “For now, it’ll probably come out only during times of high stress, like during a fight.”
“All done!” The sprite squeaked.
“Thank you,” Nina said. She waved her hand again and the sprite vanished with another pop! Aspen rolled her shoulders. Most of the bruises were gone. Everything felt better.
“I’m sorry you got dragged into this,” Nina said. She’d leaned to rest her elbows on her knees. “But Xavier…Like I said, he’s the most passionate out of all of us. When I think about it, he’s also always been…intense. But never like this. I don’t think any of the Mages ever suspected this.”
Only Aspen could have suspected it, and she had been too blinded by thinking the culprit was Hugo to ever think that perhaps Xavier could have been behind more than just murdering her parents.
“Is Lucien okay?” Aspen said. “I’ve never seen him so mad.”
“He’s fine. And he usually never gets like that. He hasn’t in a long time.”
“Not until me,” Aspen said, realizing something she hadn’t before. “Not until I came along. That’s why he doesn’t take apprentices, isn’t it?”
Nina was looking at Aspen.
“Lucien does the same thing I did—I do,” Aspen explained. “He’s kept his distance from the Council, refused to take an apprentice before they forced him to. Because he’s already had one, hasn’t he?”
Nina was silent for a moment. “His name was Alex, and he was Lucien’s first and only apprentice.”
It took Aspen a moment to process that. “He…must have meant a lot to him.”
“Not at first he didn’t. Lucien’s never liked the idea of having an apprentice, even before Alex. He told me it was because he hadn’t figured everything out, so how could he teach someone? In a way I suppose he was right. Lucien wasn’t much older than Alex when he first took him on. Lucien was a prodigy. He was nineteen when he was voted onto the Council. Youngest Mage in history.”
Only two years older than her, Aspen thought with surprise.
“The things he can do with magic…” Nina said, almost to herself. “The things he refuses to do with magic. Even when we were together he never tried living up to his potential. I think he’s afraid to. After Alex, he couldn’t bring himself to…He loved him so much.”
“What happened?”
“I shouldn’t be telling you all this,” Nina said suddenly. “Lucien would kill me—”
“Lucien’s never going to tell me,” Aspen said, for some reason now desperate to know. “I want you to tell me. It’ll…I don’t know, help me figure him out a little more, I guess. I’m not sure.”
Nina bit her lips, looking at the door. After a moment, she said. “Alex’s death…Lucien pushed him because he loved him, because he could see potential. And for the most part Alex excelled. But he went even faster than Lucien expected him to. Ended up taking a job he wasn’t close to ready for and was killed. I think it was a low-level demon. We still don’t know. Lucien’s never been the same since. He had wanted to start a school before. He bought the house and started to get it all set up and everything. Now some days I swear he can barely take care of himself.”
There was no disguising the bitterness in Nina’s voice. Perhaps it was at Lucien and what he’d become, or at the circumstances that had brought them here.
“You can’t tell him I told you,” Nina said.
“I won’t.”
“No, like you cannot—”
“Nina,” Aspen made the motion of zipping her lips. “I know how this works. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Nina relaxed. Then she pushed off her knees and stood. “Actually…thanks for listening. That took a lot off me. More than I thought.” She winked. “You could be a therapist if this whole Mage thing doesn’t suit you.”
“Let me work on one impossible task at a time,” Aspen said.
“Fair enough.” Nina suddenly grinned. She was looking over Aspen’s shoulder. “And I’ll leave you two to it.”
“Two…?”
“Hey.” Isak was standing in the doorway. “I heard talking so I assumed you were up.”
“You assumed correctly.” Aspen held her arms out wide. “Still in one piece.”’
Isak shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Was it the Fae again? Nobody will tell me what happened but I can’t believe they’d be able to take you from Xavier.”
The happy, bubbly feeling inside Aspen suddenly vanished, as if the bed had dropped from beneath her.
“I’ll…be right outside if you need me,” Nina said. She scooted past Isak who stepped inside the room, looking confused. “Is everything okay?” His voice lowered. “I was…really scared. When I saw you on that table in the Night Court…I thought she’d killed you.”
His sincerity was killing her. Those dark eyes boring in her own, the worried expression she wished she could remedy.
Just tell him. Get it over with.
“Segur…did put a lot of magic in me. She thought I could use it.”
Coward.
“I can, a little. But…it’s strange. I’m not quite sure what all I can do yet.”
“If you need help you can ask me,” Isak said. “We can talk to the Council, clear this whole thing up once we find who’s really behind this. Break the Bond and—”
Before she could think too much, Aspen stepped toward him and pressed her lips to his, first gently, then forcefully.
Just a bit. Just to show him how she felt. Her body buzzed with a sensation that had nothing to do with magic. She wasn’t sure what had come over her in that moment, wasn’t sure if her feelings had been leading up to this for a while or just the last few seconds, but she wanted nothing more than to feel his arms around her and think about nothing else but the two of them here, together.
“Uh…” Isak looked pleasantly blindsided when she pulled away. “Not that I’m not happy, but what was that for?”
“A thank you…for saving me.”
She kissed him again and this time he responded enthusiastically. His hands found her waist, ran up her arms, while hers measured the contours beneath his shirt, tasted the scent on his lips.
“And that one,” Aspen said softly when they broke apart, “was hopefully to make what I tell you hurt less.”
“What are you talking about?” Isak said, still grinning like a fool.
“I’m going to hurt you, Isak.”
He sighed. “If this is about the Bond, I told you we can—”
“The Fae didn’t take me from Xavier. They didn’t hurt me after I was taken out of the Council.”
His smile remained fixed. “What?”
“Lucien and Xavier were fighting, that’s what. Because Xavier tried to kill me, Isak. He killed my parents during the Shopping District fires ten years ago, and I know, I know he’s the one draining supernatural beings and trying to take down the wards.”
The words were rushing out of her now, as though a stopper had been pulled. They came faster and faster, and as they did Isak’s smile fell more and more.
“He’s not who you think he is,” Aspen said. “I knew it from the moment I saw him again on the Mage’s Council. But I didn’t tell you because…well at first I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to possibly use it against me. I told myself that was the reason. Until I realized I really wasn’t telling you because I cared about you. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Isak’s hands dropped from her waist. He didn’t shove her away, but his dark expression might as well have.
“Did Lucien tell you to say this?”
“Lucien didn’t tell me anything,” Aspen said, shaking her head.
“But you don’t believe what you’re saying, do you?”
>
Aspen’s mouth fell open. “Of course I believe it! Xavier murdered my parents, Isak!”
“So you say.” Isak’s voice was rising. “I get what this is, Aspen. You’re just saying it to hurt me, not because you believe it but because this—” He gestured between them. “—whatever this is, might be the most real thing you’ve ever had. All of this is, Lucien included. You’ve been alone so much of your life that you’ve pushed everyone who ever cared about you away, and now when you’ve finally found those who do care, you can’t handle it.”
“Would you stop being selfish for just one moment!” Aspen bellowed. “This isn’t about me and you—”
“It has everything to do with me!” Isak roared, and Aspen knew she’d lost him. “Look at you! You’re not a Mage, not Lucien’s apprentice, not anything. And you’re still siding with Lucien.”
Isak turned to go but Aspen grabbed his arm. “You can’t go back to Xavier! I don’t care if you don’t believe me, but he’s going to—”
But Isak yanked his arm back at the same time he thrust out with his other hand. Magic shot from the floor and slammed into Aspen, shoving her back into the bed.
“Isak! Isak, wait!”
Aspen rushed out after him, past a stunned Nina, straight into Lucien who was coming up the stairs. He caught her arm.
“Aspen, stop.”
“He won’t believe me! He’s going back to Xavier!”
“Aspen.” Lucien remained infuriatingly calm, still firmly gripping her arm so that Aspen couldn’t get away unless she attacked him. Didn’t he know? Couldn’t he see what Isak was doing? “Of course Isak won’t believe you. Who do you expect him to trust, you or the man who gave him a new life and raised him like a son?”
“But Xavier…”
“Xavier won’t harm his prodigy.” Lucien slowly let go of her, a humorless smile on his face. “I know Xavier, and he wouldn’t dare hurt someone so devoted to him, someone he’s molded to be just like him.”
Aspen shook her head furiously. “Isak’s nothing like him!”
Mage's Apprentice (Mages of New York Book 1) Page 26
