Mercy Strange

by Alisa Woods

  “Your father understanding,” he said softly. “About your Talent.”

  “Yes, you were right.” The way he was looking at her was making her skin heat everywhere—her cheeks, her exposed neck, the backs of her hands. And especially where his hand was still wrapped around her arm.

  He leaned in—way too close. “Say that again. I like hearing it.” His other hand brushed her hair back from her face, the tips of his fingers tracing a hot line along her ear and then down her neck. He followed it with his gaze, eyelids at half-mast, like he wanted to put his lips where his fingers were languorously sliding along her skin.

  “What are you doing?” Every part of her was on fire. She could barely speak.

  He sucked in a breath between his teeth. “Something you’re enjoying very much.” His gaze found her eyes again, and it was both heated and mischievous. The words, the touch, the knowledge that he knew—all of it was both mortifying and painfully erotic.

  “Don’t you have work to do?” she managed to eke out.

  His eyes glittered. “I’m doing it.”

  “This is your job now?” She gave him a look but didn’t move a muscle.

  A smile snuck out. “No, just a perk.”

  “Will you always be this annoying?” she demanded. She still couldn’t bring herself to pull away.

  He paused, his expression falling blank. “Always?”

  “I mean have you always been this annoying? Are you always… Gah!” She growled out her frustration. “Can you please not… do that.” She shrugged away his hands, both of them.

  He put a little distance between them, eyes still shining, but not like he wasn’t taking this rebuff at all seriously. “Well, your lips are blue, so that part is off limits.”

  “Everything is off limits,” she insisted, shooting a look to her partially open door. “We’re in the office.”

  A smile grew on his face. “Just to be clear, is the elevator off limits?”

  “This really isn’t funny.” She was working hard on getting very annoyed, but it just drowned in an aching desire to have his hands back on her again. Her cheek, her neck, her lips… anywhere. She was a fucking mess for this guy.

  His smile beamed. “No, it’s not funny. But it is fun.”

  Any argument against that would be a lie. “It’s utterly unfair that you know what I’m feeling so… intimately. You know that, right?”

  His smile tempered a little. “Yeah. If it’s any consolation, it’s really hard to stand here and pretend I don’t hear your desire from across the room.”

  That just spiked more heat, and it was definitely radiating lower. The reaction on his face was the kind you’d expect if she’d literally said, out loud, Fuck me now, you glorious bastard.

  “Okay, I can’t help that,” she protested.

  “Is that supposed to make it better?” He pulled in a breath. “Because it really doesn’t.”

  “Okay, look.” She turned in her chair to face him and took one of his hands in both of hers. “I’m just going to say this out loud once.” She had one hundred percent of his attention. “We are not going to have sex in my office.”

  “Today.”

  “Swift!” she sputtered.

  “I distinctly heard a today at the end of that sentence. Did you not say that out loud?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was joking, so she just glared at him.

  He gave her a crooked smile, squeezed her hand, then released it. “I’ll do my best to pay attention to the words out of your mouth, not the sexy music coming from your brain.”

  “Thank you.” She was only slightly sarcastic about that. This needed to cool right the fuck down while they were trying to solve this case. “How about if you get me some coffee or something?”

  He straightened up from kneeling. “You’re sending me on an errand?”

  “I need a moment to collect myself.” She peered up at him. “So we can both focus.”

  He smiled, and it was sweet this time. “Fair enough.” Then he gave her a wink on the way out the door, and she just covered her face with her hands and groaned. She’d had an impossibly difficult time ignoring his hotness before they kissed. And now? Knowing he was hot to take this further? And heard every spike of her lust? How in the world was she supposed to focus with all that going on in her head… and her body… and apparently in his? Maybe she should banish him from her office completely. But that thought made her stomach bunch up.

  “Fuck!” she spat out, dropping her hands from her face.

  “That good, huh?”

  “Gah!” She jolted in her chair.

  It was just Quill at the threshold of her office.

  “Holy magick, I need to start closing my door.”

  He chuckled and came in. “You looked like you were having a moment. Didn’t want to interrupt.” Then he glanced over his shoulder, out the door. “Agent Payne causing some problems?” Quill looked back at her, a little too keen on that answer.

  Which shouldn’t have annoyed her as much as it did. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she huffed. Which was a good motivator for her to get back on task, if for no other reason than to prove she could actually use her brain for something even with Swift eliciting extreme mating impulses from her body. What was the deal with that, anyway? She’d already broken her secret—Swift was far from the only one who knew. Even Quill had taken the news in stride—he seemed to think it was hot—but then she figured he was just angling for something she’d already said would never be.

  But why? All this time, she’d assumed everyone would fear her. Or at least recoil from her. And somehow none of her fears had come to fruition, leaving her feeling foolish for all that wasted time.

  And here was Quill, bringing her some news, but suddenly, she was looking at him with fresh eyes and wondering… could it be that easy now? Could she actually have someone normal like him in her life? In her bed?

  He’d leaned past her to the screen, pulling up a new interface, one she hadn’t seen before. “I finally got the deep learning algo spooled up, trained on some of the more obvious connections that we’d made before, and—” He glanced over his shoulder at her and froze. “What?”

  “What do you mean, what?” Her heart was hammering.

  He frowned. “Why are you giving me a look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

  He couldn’t read her. “I…” She swallowed. “Sorry, just, um, amazed you got that going so fast.”

  Quinn scowled, straightened, and peered down at her. “You used to be better at lying.”

  She cringed inside. “Sorry, I…” She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her fingertips into her forehead. “Oh, Quill.” He knew about her power, he already cared for her, and he was sweet and kind and, truthfully, pretty hot. All this time she’d pushed him away, but now that he knew… why was she lusting after sexy Agent Payne when a decent guy was right in front of her? Someone who would not disappear on some PsyOps mission without notice—or probably disappear altogether once this case was done? When she opened her eyes again, Quill was leaned against her desk, the scowl deeper.

  “Is it the police?” he asked.

  “No.” She dropped her hands. “It’s me. I’ve made a mess of my life.”

  He gave her a curious look, then glanced around her office. “Seems all right to me.” And that was probably true—from the outside, she looked like any other high-powered, successful witch from a High Magick family. A dangerous secret power? Probably just a sexy bonus feature, if you didn’t know the mess under the hood. Which was exactly it. Quill couldn’t see straight into her head the way Swift could… and somehow that made all the difference in the world.

  “You know… you’re right.” She shook her head. “I’m just stressed out about this case. Please tell me your AI magick is strong today. I need some kind of break here.”

  He frowned like he wasn’t quite buying that, but then he tapped at the monitor. “I think I’m onto your seeker magick spell.”

  “Reall
y?” She scooted closer to the screen. He’d brought up a half dozen documents, each showing some fraction of one of the research reports.

  Quill pointed to a chemical formula buried in the text. “See this? This isn’t some magitek convention I’m not aware of, is it, putting formulas in the text like it’s a word?”

  “No, that is odd.” She dragged the image to make it bigger. “That’s… not a chemical formula. At least, it’s not any real chemical. Look…” She pointed to a triple bond where a stable compound would have a double one. “This is wrong.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  She peered up at him.

  “Don’t be so surprised.” He gave her a mock frown. “I’m capable of looking things up, you know.” He turned back to the screen. “When the AI first flagged it as an unknown word, I checked it out. By the time I’d figured out there was something weird about it, like chemically broken, the deep learning software had already decrypted it.”

  “What do you mean decrypted it?” She searched the atoms and bonds that comprised the molecule, but no clues were obvious.

  “It’s another code.” Swift quickly tapped the formulas in the other reports, bringing them together on the screen. “The repeated usage gives them context, just like the other code names. The AI started spitting out guesses for meaning. This one means small bits. This one means tracker. And this one…” He turned to look at her. “AI says it’s transform.”

  “You think it’s a recipe.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Or a spell.”

  She frowned. “But why use formulas? Why use impossible formulas? Why not simply use code words?”

  “That’s why I’m bringing it to you.”

  “You think there’s meaning in the formulas.”

  He shrugged. “Code within a code. One only a gen-magick researcher would understand? Sounds like we’re on the right track at least.”

  “This is great, Quill.” And she meant it. “Let me dig into it and see.”

  A small oohhh at the door announced her sister’s presence. “Hey, Quill!” Verity said brightly when they both turned to look. “Is this a good time to interrupt The Science?”

  Quill smiled. “Sure. I’m all done.” To Mercy, he said, “Call me if you need anything.” There was more than an offer of tech help there, but Quill just gave her a soft smile and edged past Verity in the doorway. Her sister’s long, flowing skirts got swept along for a moment, and Verity’s gaze followed Quill out into the lab. Then she waggled her eyebrows and grinned and stepped into Mercy’s office, closing the door behind her.

  “Well, he’s hot,” Verity said.

  “He’s my IT guy.”

  Her sister’s grin just grew. “And IT is code for… Intimate Touching?”

  “Verity.” Over the last twenty-four hours, Mercy had had a couple of uncomfortable conversations with her sisters, admitting to her whisper magick. Well, the conversation with Ever was awesome—it was just Verity where things got awkward. Her little sister was this weird mix of way too knowledgeable about the world and yet still naïve.

  “Does he know?” she asked, coming closer and perching her behind on Mercy’s desk. Her eyes were all alight with this juicy gossip.

  “Yeah, he knows. He’s a nice guy—”

  “Nice in bed nice or…” She waggled her eyebrows again.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” Mercy asked a little too pointedly.

  Verity pouted. “Fine. Don’t share. But I wouldn’t let that one escape if I were you.”

  Her sister had literally no idea what she was talking about. Per usual. “What’s up?” Mercy tried again.

  Verity sighed. “Well… I wanted to stop by and remind you that the conference kicks off on Friday, and I hope you’re coming to the panel on Saturday.”

  “The one on hedge witches?” Shit, with everything going on, she’d forgotten all about that. She’d meant to pry information out of Swift or Zane or one of their FBI contacts about this Eliphas Storm character—and the sex-and-magick cult that her little sister might have gotten involved in.

  “Yes.” Verity nodded solemnly. “But even more important…” She leaned closer. “I’ve set up a private audience with Eliphas!”

  “I thought you already knew him?” Mercy frowned. Had she gotten the whole thing mixed up?

  “Not for me, silly!” She grinned. “For you.”

  “I… what?” What in the world?

  “He wants to meet you!” Her sister’s eyes sparkled in a weird way that was creeping Mercy out.

  “Verity.” Holy shit. “You didn’t tell him about my whisper magick, did you?” It was just the kind of thing her sister would do, taking private family information and handing it off to her crazy cult leader—

  “What? No.” Verity scowled, and Mercy’s panic stepped down a little. “Of course, he already knows who you are. You and Dad and all your research here. His realm is a higher plane, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand science. Especially the intersection between the scientific and the mystical, as he likes to call the magitek.”

  Mercy’s brain was doing somersaults. “He wants to talk to me about med-magick?”

  Verity shrugged. “I suppose. I mean, really, Mercy… do you have any idea how hard it is to get a private audience with Eliphas? Only his very inner circle is allowed access to him in that way.”

  “Yeah. I’ll bet.” The words inner circle and Eliphas Storm meant sex orgy in her head. The odds that Verity was involved in all that were quickly shifting higher.

  Verity scowled. “Don’t be horrible about this, okay? It’s… important to me. Not everyone is allowed to bring family.”

  Mercy tried to reel in the disapproval that had to be scrunching up her face. “Sorry. I mean, sure. Yes! I’d love to meet Eliphas.” If nothing else, Mercy could get a measure of the man for herself and see what kind of cult he’d lured her sister into. And how much danger she was really in.

  “Great! I can’t wait for you—” A soft tap at the door cut her off. Verity danced on tiptoes to the door and swung it open to reveal Swift standing with two cups of coffee.

  “Hello, there,” he said with a bemused look. “You weren’t here when I left.”

  “Oh, I was just leaving!” She raised her arms and made a show of scooting past Swift. As soon as his back was turned, Verity made an O-face at the door, fanning herself, and clearly intending for Mercy to see her fervent approval of the sexy Special Agent.

  Mercy just shook her head and took the coffee Swift had brought her. “Thanks.”

  “That was interesting.” Swift peered at the door and Verity’s quick tiptoeing out into the lab, long skirts swishing with her perky butt. Mercy had a brief and horrifying spike of jealousy—as if Swift might find her vivacious red-haired sister alluring—and Swift whipped his head back to her, surprised.

  “Okay, that’s really fucking annoying,” she complained. “Are you privy to every stray emotion that passes through my head?”

  He grinned and grabbed a chair with his coffee-free hand, spinning it around to sit with her. “Jealousy, huh? I like the sound of that.”

  “Oh my God.” She squeezed her eyes shut in mortification and inhaled her coffee fumes for a moment to gather her wits. When she had a tenuous hold on them, she opened her eyes and glared at him. “Moving on… what do you know about Eliphas Storm?”

  The humor fell off Swift’s face. “The cult leader? Divination and sex parties?”

  “My sister’s wrapped up in all that.” Wrapped up in Eliphas, more like it, which was probably worse.

  “That’s not good.” He frowned.

  “No, it’s not.” Mercy sighed. “Can you find out more about him through the FBI? He’s going to be at the International Gen-Magick Conference this weekend, running some kind of panel on hedge witches, and Verity’s got some kind of meeting set up for me…” She drifted off as it suddenly hit her. “Swift,” she breathed.

  “What?” He frowned ha
rder at the look on her face.

  “The conference.”

  “Yeah?” He half shrugged and gestured with his coffee for her to go on. But he didn’t understand. The bottom was falling out of her stomach… and she could see the alarm ramp up on his face as he surely heard that feeling ricocheting around her body. “Mercy, what is it?”

  “There will be hundreds—no thousands—of gen-magick researchers there. The world’s experts on gen-magick. All in one place.”

  His eyes went wide. “The demonstration.”

  She nodded, fast and terrified. “It’s been planned for a year, just like the Free Jumper Nationals. It’s an established time and place, national news coverage, and… oh my God… if it were me, it’s exactly where I’d run a trial like this. A public trial demonstrating world-changing magitek to the world’s experts. And Tobin Raine—he’d fit right in. He’s probably already registered.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s on the run now.”

  “You haven’t caught him? Don’t you have Violet in custody?”

  “His lawyers sprung her right away.” Swift grimaced. “I didn’t have a chance to interrogate her again.”

  Interrogate? With his Talent? Mercy swallowed. She didn’t want to know what that looked like. “So they’re both free.” She shook her head. “I can’t know for sure, but Swift… that has to be it.” She grimaced and looked at the vague and jumbled chemical code on her screen. “We have until Saturday to figure out what the hell they’re planning…”

  “And how to stop it.” His expression was dead serious now.

  Mercy nodded. She had no idea how they would do that—but she had five days to figure it out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  For five days, Swift watched Mercy wrestle with her data.

  And he’d kept his hands to himself.

  He honestly wasn’t sure which of them was more frustrated. But even as he could hear her attraction, the zing of lust and the sweet song of flirtation, he couldn’t help but admire her relentless devotion to stopping these bioweapons. Especially given she wasn’t emotionless. He’d met criminals and soldiers who were legit sociopaths, the ringing silence of their emotional soundscape making them stand out in the worst way. Mercy was driven, but she had all the feelings—a soundscape he drank in all week long, every harmony of love and anger, joy and frustration—and all of it was like a drug to him.