by Alisa Woods
“Did you threaten to magick-fry them?” Mercy asked, and not like she would have disapproved either.
“Pretty much.”
Her father spoke directly to Swift. “The sketch is as best I can remember. I’m afraid even with the scrying, it’s not much.” He gestured at Nia, and she produced a sheet of printed paper from her trim leather jacket.
Swift took it. A young woman stared at him from the page. Long blond hair, heavily made up—the scrying tech had brought out the color and contours far better than a pencil sketch could have done. The mystery woman was pretty, her almost owlishly big eyes made bigger by giant circles of ocher around them. “I’ll put it through the FBI database and see what we can find. Maybe she has a record somewhere.”
“Hang on.” Mercy peered at the paper then took it from him and scowled. “I know this woman.”
“You do?” Dread clinched his stomach tight again. He didn’t want to see Mercy in cuffs at the end of this.
She looked up. “Subtract out the makeup. I met her at a conference once, and then again, later, when we did the merger.” Her eyes had gone wide. “She’s one of the researchers at Raine Magitek.”
“Looks like we’re on the right track, then.” He smiled, and he wasn’t just glad for the slight blush that caused on Mercy’s too-white cheeks. He was hoping this meant she wasn’t involved at all, beyond being the resident expert on all the magitek. Because he had way too much desire to see her again.
And not in prison clothes.
Chapter Three
Mercy thought Swift’s hotness would dim with time.
Instead, he was back to full, blazing supernova this morning.
He held the door for her as she stepped out of the limo she’d ordered to take them to Raine Magitek. Their undercover operation. Which was deeply funny, in a way—she stood out, on purpose, way too much to ever be a spy. Swift, on the other hand, was smooth and sexy and somehow just moved through space with preternatural ease. There was nothing special about his clothes—classic adept styling, trim black leather from his jacket to his pants, only his metal-tipped black cowboy boots showing a bit of fashion flair. It was simply the way he wore them. He swept his coat back in an economy of motion to hold the door open while she climbed out in her overwhelming lace and chiffon death couture. Then he strolled next to her, his expressive eyes attentive on her face in a way that made heat run laps around her body. The smooth notes of voice rumbled both deeply masculine and yet gentle. His long-fingered hands made flourishes in the air, caressing more than conjuring.
Or was that just how she saw it? Even if he wasn’t using magick, he was casting a deeply troubling spell on her, conjuring a steady drumbeat of attraction even more intense than the day before. She’d spent hours in her tiny office with the man, talking tech, then she’d gone home and given her vibrator a hell of a workout, something she hadn’t done in far too long. That still didn’t ease this throbbing attraction. As they strolled across the concrete plaza toward her magitek company that might be harboring a madman, Mercy’s whole body was on fire with Swift’s every look, sound, and even the smell of his fresh-washed skin, which kept wafting across the air.
Her frustration with this ever-present lust reached a peak. So he’s fucking hot! she screamed inside. Get over it!
“You okay?” Swift said suddenly, cutting himself off mid-sentence. He’d been briefing her on Raine Magitek.
Holy, shit, was he reading her thoughts now? But it was obvious she’d just let some of her frustration show on her face, despite her attempt to cover it with extra paint today—glaring red lipstick with a makeup-drawn flame of red around her eyes and painted black horns for eyebrows. The streaks of red in her hair and the choker of obsidian and lace completed the look, which said, Fuck right off, today is not the day to whoever might want to mess with her.
Mercy scowled at his concern. “I told you it’s probably no good me being here.” Her seething was only partially aimed at him and partly at the looming concrete tower in front of them, but mostly at herself for getting worked up by a hot FBI agent instead of focusing on the task at hand.
“Look, this is important.” Swift stepped in front of her, turning his back to the building and holding his hand up to stop her.
Which she did, hands clenched at her side. “I know.” She pursed her lips, trying to reign in the turbulence of her emotions. She was all over the fucking place. “Worry about yourself. I’ve got this.”
He cocked his head like he wasn’t buying that. At all. “We’ve got another body this morning.”
“You told me.” She struggled to take down the annoyance in her voice. “I’ll add the new genome to our data when I get back to the office.”
“It had a note,” he went on, undeterred.
He hadn’t told her that part. “And?”
“Time, date, and a number.” His eyes narrowed. “The field office is going nuts trying to decipher what the number means, but the time and date are clear. This asshole is taunting us. He—or she, given this mysterious oncology intern at Raine Magitek is a suspect right now—has something planned for tomorrow afternoon. And given what you were telling me yesterday, about what these bioweapons can do, I’d really like to get this figured out before then.”
Bioweapons. That’s what they were, even if she thought of them as medicine. Medicine that could cure her. Maybe. “I want to stop this, too.”
He seemed very unconvinced. “But you’re emotionally compromised.”
She sighed. “I’m just frustrated, okay.”
A little of the tension drained from his face. “It’s okay to feel… conflicted.” He seemed to mean more by that than the words themselves. He stepped a little closer, which was playing havoc on her nerves—specifically the ones between her legs which she was trying to ignore. “Let’s use that.”
She drew back a little. “What do you mean?”
“Let’s pretend that you and I are, shall we say, intimately acquainted.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Sweet fucking magick, could he tell she was ragingly attracted to him? Was she that obvious? Her mortification level was shooting through the roof.
“My cover is that I’m a friend from college, right?” His eyes were locked onto hers. “That way they’re less likely to brush me off. More understandable why you’re personally walking me in. Let’s use that. We’ll step the story up a notch. Pretend we’re old lovers. That way all this tension…” He gestured between the two of them, as if the lust she was feeling was some kind of magick field that bridged the gap between them. “Becomes explainable.”
“I am not proclaiming that we’ve slept together as a way of introduction for a job.” It was slightly offensive but mostly just embarrassing. Her personal life was the subject of lots of rumors—she was a Strange; the family’s dramas and affairs were standard tabloid fare. She didn’t need to add to the gossip, especially with a lie.
Swift seemed to hold back a smirk. “You don’t have to say anything. Just follow my lead. I’ll have them thinking I have special access to the highest private levels of the Strange family… and that the full cooperation of Raine Magitek would be greatly appreciated. And then all this…” He fanned those long fingers in the heated air between them. “Makes a lot more sense.”
She grimaced, not quite sure what he meant by all this, but pretty sure she was jeopardizing their “undercover operation” with her rank amateurness. “Sorry I’m messing this up.”
He smiled. “You’re not.”
The mortification just intensified. “I always seem to be apologizing to you.”
He smiled more. “There’s no need.”
She sighed and glanced away. That smile was just riling her up inside again. “You know,” she said, studying the ground before she dared look at him again. His smile had vanished, thank magick. “I thought you were an incubus at first.” She cocked her head. “You’re not, right?”
His eyebrows jumped up. “Uh… no.”
She
nodded, but inside she was cringing. “I thought the FBI was bringing in another one, like Zane, and my sister is already caught up in that mess…” She trailed off at the sudden coolness of his expression. “Shit. He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?” Damn, she could get nothing right with this guy.
“No.” But his voice didn’t warm up, and he even eased back a little. “I don’t know him personally. But I know a bit about the judgment people have about magick that’s… different.”
The mortification was back in force. Because who was she, really, to judge anyone—given her hidden magick was about as vile as it got. Which was precisely why it had to stay hidden. “I’ve just studied a lot of magick and… well… I know how dangerous mental magick can be.”
“Don’t you use mental magick?” He was giving her no quarter with this. “Isn’t that what healing magick is? I read your file.”
“There’s a file on me?”
“Nice dodge.”
She kept the growl inside. “Healing magick is different.” For fuck’s sake, everyone knew that. “Yes, technically, it’s mental magick, but it’s affecting the body not the mind—”
“Because there’s such a huge difference between those two.”
Her mouth fell open. Then shut. He was right—technically—that the body was intimately connected to the mind and vice versa, and that anything that affected one could have disastrous effects on the other. But he had a degree in Biological Magick—he knew the difference in how magick was deployed on biosystems. Didn’t he? “I’m just… I’m worried about my sister, okay? I don’t want anyone controlling her. And my father just got his magick wiped out, so he’s kind of down for the count. My younger sister is—Verity’s just no good for this kind of thing—and the rest of the family is all cousins and uncles and… it’s just me, okay?”
All the coolness had evaporated. He stepped closer again, then slipped his hands around one of her tightly clenched fists. The contact surprised her, rushing heat to her face and sending a jolt through her chest. His hands blanketed her cool skin in warmth. “You love your sister. Nothing wrong with that.” He wasn’t letting go, and she was drowning in the kindness of his brown eyes. What the hell—why did this guy affect her so much? “But I can assure you,” he said, “that Agent Walker isn’t using his powers on her. I’ve seen what incubi do to their victims, and trust me, you’d know.”
Then he let her go, and she almost embarrassed herself by grabbing his hand back. But she managed not to, mostly because his words had worked a peculiar alchemy on her, transforming a hidden knot of worry in the pit of her stomach into a loose heat of relief.
“Thanks,” she said. And she meant it.
Swift nodded. “Just remember, not everyone has a warm and loving family that gives them every advantage in the world, Mercy Strange. Some of us have to make do with what we’ve got.”
She frowned and opened her mouth to ask more, but he turned away and said, “Let’s go.”
He left her there, gawking, and strode toward the sliding glass doors of the building entrance. She hustled to catch up.
“Are you going to tell me more about that?” she asked, keeping pace with him. They’d almost reached the front.
“Obviously not.” But then he flashed her a smile, taking the sting out of those words. “I’m your old boyfriend from college that you still have very conflicted feelings for, and you’re trying to get me a job here locally so maybe something will develop between us. Got it?”
“Yeah.” Talk about dodge. But he didn’t owe her any answers—they were here on a mission, one that would hopefully stop some bad magick from being released into her city. She could still feel the warm ghost of his hands on hers, the soothing of the knot in her stomach—he probably did all that to keep her on task for the mission, but she was still grateful. And she didn’t want to screw up her part.
Her nerves did a little jangle as they crossed the threshold. The lobby was a shallow temple of marble with an arch of metal-detectors walling off the rest of the floor. Mercy strode ahead to the receptionist’s desk since she was ostensibly the one in charge. “Mercy Strange,” she introduced herself to the gray-haired receptionist. His eyes went wide, and he scrambled to his feet, sending the wheeled chair scuttling behind him. “I have an appointment with Tobin Raine,” she added.
The receptionist grabbed his phone. “I’ll let him know right away—”
“That’s not necessary,” a male voice called out from her right. Striding through the security arch was Tobin Raine, CEO and founder of Raine Magitek—Mercy had never met him, but she knew the face. “Ms. Strange. Such a pleasure to meet you.” His smile was bright white, and his thin face was pretty in a boyish way, even though he was probably ten years older than her, maybe mid-thirties. He swept back his moppish brown hair before extending his hand to her. His skin was cool like hers, but his grip was strong. Overly so. And his grey-green eyes were boring into hers.
“Mr. Raine.” Mercy managed not to flinch and pull back when he held her hand a beat too long… then he finally released her. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice,” she bumbled out.
“Of course.” Now that he’d dropped her hand, he spread his arms wide, and his smile blazed. “Anything for the Strange family. What can I help you with?” His exuberance seemed forced… or maybe she was just unnerved by his intensity. He was slender, only slightly taller than her, but he seemed to vibrate with hidden energy he held back only by the thinnest of threads. His clothes matched the romantic style of her Victorian-era dress—a soft, black velvet jacket, silk cravat at his throat, and not a hint of leather anywhere.
“I, uh, have a favor to ask,” Mercy stumbled. “For a friend.” She lamely turned to Swift.
He already had his hand out, and his own brilliant smile weaponized. “Swift Payne. I’m the friend.” There was a touch of aggression in that statement.
A fleeting look of annoyance passed over Tobin’s face, but he shook hands with Swift. It only lasted a fraction of a second, much shorter than his emphatic handshake with her. All of it seemed odd, then again, people got weird around her—the status of her family did that sometimes.
Tobin’s attention was quickly focused on her again, this time giving an uncomfortable level of scrutiny to her dress. “You have excellent taste, Ms. Strange.” His gaze finally found her eyes again. “But you drown your natural beauty in it.”
What the hell? She was at a loss of what to say. This man left her worse than cold. Chilled.
Before she could think of how to respond, a woman came skittering through the security arch. She was slender—even more so than Mercy remembered—but it was definitely the woman she’d seen at the technology conference and again at the acquisitions meeting for Raine Magitek. The one whose face matched the memory scry her father had made of the oncology intern. She was their one big lead, and here she was, pattering up behind Tobin, head bowed, hands tormenting one another in front of her. Unlike the memory scry, the woman was scrubbed clean of makeup, making her look super young, almost child-like. Her eyes were big and blue and her skin so milky pure and smooth she could pass for a living doll.
“You’re late,” Tobin whispered, admonishing, but it was so quiet, it took Mercy a second to understand the words.
The woman didn’t answer, just bowed her head more.
Then louder, Tobin said to them, “This is my assistant Violet Thorn. I summoned her so that she could assist you with whatever you need.” He gave a sharp-eyed look at Swift before returning his still-appraising gaze to Mercy. “But I wanted to greet you in person. I couldn’t pass up the chance to meet one of the transcendent Strange sisters for myself.”
“Okay.” Again, Mercy had no idea what to say. Tobin’s bizarre behavior was shorting out her brain. “Like I said, I, um, had a favor to ask…”
“I’m truly lucky Mercy was willing to help me out.” Swift moved in close then gave her a one-armed hug that felt… possessive. His steely gaze was all for Tobin.
“I’m between positions at the moment and was hoping you might have a need for a short-term lab tech. I’ve got a few skills Mercy felt might be useful to a company on the leading edge of med-magick like Raine Magitek.”
“I see.” Tobin said it while staring at Swift’s hand, which was still gripping Mercy’s shoulder. Then Tobin raised his gaze to meet Mercy’s. “Is this what you want, Ms. Strange?”
It was finally sinking in—there was some kind of weird dominance game going on. She knew Swift was just playing a part, but what the hell was Raine’s deal? And the way he was challenging her with his eyes… she couldn’t decide the right answer to his question.
But he was pissing her off.
She rested a hand on Swift’s, the one gripping her shoulder. “Swift is an old friend of mine.” She lifted her chin to Tobin. “I’m certain Raine Magitek would find him useful in some capacity.” It was a challenge, and she could see the fire in Tobin’s eyes. He did not care for that. Oh, shit. Was she blowing this already by pushing too hard?
Tobin held her gaze but raised his hand and flicked a finger, gesturing Violet forward. She’d been lurking behind him, half obscured, but now she sprung forth suddenly and came to a lurching stop right in front of Swift.
“What’s your background?” she demanded. Her posture was excessively straight. Her black velvet jacket was like Tobin’s, only hers covered everything from neck to knees. Her high boots disappeared under the hem, and her long brown hair fanned over her shoulders.
“Biological Magick.” Swift scanned her doll-blank face and rigid body language intently like he was reading a secret code. As far as Mercy could tell, it simply said, I have some serious issues and should probably be in therapy.
“We perform very sophisticated, world-class gen-magick research at Raine Magitek,” Violet said stiffly. “What possible benefit could you bring to our labs?” It was awkward and cringe-worthy.
Swift kept his voice smooth and friendly. “I’ve been helping Mercy and her dad out in their lab. Just the basics, really. Experimenting with gene drives. Looking for the right enzyme to edit out Talents that—” He stopped himself and gave Mercy a wide-eyed, playful look. “Oops, I’m probably not supposed to talk about that.” He turned his smile back to Violet, who was now even more owl-eyed and almost quivering. “Well, in any event, I know my way around a sequencer and any analysis software you might have. Mercy’s is all custom…” He gave her a smile and a squeeze. “So she’s been giving me lots of tutorial sessions.” Violet was dashing looks to Tobin, looking for his lead or something. To Tobin, Swift added, “I’m sure I could help you out in some way.”
