The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1)

by Cal Matthews

  “Odd thing to fall into,” he observed, watching me.

  “I suppose it is. How did you end up doing witchcraft?”

  “Eh,” he said dismissively. “There's really nothing interesting about that. I met Shaina in college. She was way into it already, had been since high school.” he gave a low chuckle. “I kinda thought that she was a freak.”

  “Imagine that,” I said dryly, and he tossed a dried aloe stalk at my head.

  “But I felt like there was something to it. 'Cause I could, you know, feel stuff. Feel energy.” he shrugged. “Turns out she was right.”

  “But how did you get into it?” I pressed. “You didn't drop out of college, obviously, if you graduated, so how did you explain to your parents that you aren't an engineer?”

  He blinked at me. “Who says I'm not an engineer? I have a job, you know.”

  “Oh. I guess that makes sense. Not a lot of money in professional witchery, I'll bet.”

  He snorted. “But my parents. Oh God, they're horrified. Can you imagine? It's bad enough having a gay son, but a gay son who is a witch? And we're black? My father hasn't been able to look me in the eye for a year.”

  “So you're . . . out?” I asked quietly, avoiding his eyes by carefully snipping some mint from plant.

  “Yeah,” he said, as though it were a stupid question. The he paused and I felt him looking at me. “Oh. I take it you aren't? I thought that guy had the restaurant knew.”

  “People know. My family knows. They . . . found out,” I said, not quite able to keep the bitterness from my voice. “But I don't advertise it, if I can help it. I live in Heckerson, Montana. It might as well be the 19th century.”

  “I'm sorry,” he said softly, and there was sadness there, enough to make me look up.

  We regarded each other for a minute. The dusty light hit him just right, the shadows filling in the deep hollows of his cheeks, highlighting the arch of his eyebrows and the curve of his jaw. He leaned back on the stool, elbows resting on the counter behind him, the long planes of his body full on display. It was, I thought, a rather provocative pose. Only the seriousness of his expression kept him from looking lewd.

  I swallowed heavily, uncomfortable under the weight of his gaze. I wasn't one to really take pains with my appearance, and I could only imagine what he saw when he looked at me. A scruffy hick in torn work pants and scuffed boots? I hadn’t cut my hair in ages and now it touched the collar of my frayed thermal shirt, long enough to be shoved messily behind my ears.

  My body seemed to grow its own dirt; even when I scrubbed I couldn’t get the gunk out from under my fingernails. Summers of hauling hay bales and working cattle helped keep me lean, but I couldn’t seem to put on any muscle. I felt like a whippet, bony and thin. I was used to standing out, but Marcus made me feel terribly exposed. I dropped my gaze, coughing uncomfortably.

  “So you and the vampire then?” he said casually. I wished he would change the subject like any normal person.

  I shrugged. “We're friends.”

  “How'd that happened?”

  “I met him when I was a teenager. He found me in the woods with a -” I bit of the rest of my words and looked dumbly at him. Leo had found me bringing a fox back to life and had been fascinated enough to confront me. But I couldn't tell him that.

  “With a deer,” I finished lamely, but he didn't seem to notice. “I think he wanted the blood.”

  “And he's never, you know, hurt you?”

  Not unless I ask him to. “No.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Fuck, Marcus,” I snapped, glaring at him. “I've known you for about five minutes. Little personal, don't you think?”

  “Sorry. I've just never met a vampire before. What's he like?” and then, as it occurred to him. “Does he drink your blood?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Hmm. But you guys . . . you know.”

  “Marcus,” I complained, and he grinned, his eyes lighting up.

  “You are! What's that like? Is he super strong?” His eyes narrowed. “Does he throw you around?”

  “I really don't want to talk about this with you.”

  “Okay,” he said, but his smile didn't fade. “But let me ask you this: are you guys exclusive?”

  I just looked at him, completely at a loss for words. He slowly slid off the stool and moved towards me. He clearly knew what he was about; he moved like water, his legs and hips and shoulders gliding sinuous and slow. I took a step back, watching him warily, but he stopped a respectable distance away, watching me with his head tilted.

  “Are you?” he asked again.

  “Why?”

  “Well,” he gave an amused snorting. “There was a reason I put a spell on you. Just wondering if I am wasting my time.”

  “You are,” I said firmly, but my body had other ideas. It was reacting to him in entirely other ways, and it was with some awkwardness that I shifted my weight, trying to ease the sudden pressure in my pants. He noticed, his eyes flickering downward, and then back up to me. They shocked me with their color, green like the color of aspen leaves.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered.

  I really, really wasn't. I stared at him, at his ridiculously gorgeous cat eyes, and his bottom lip, shining a little from where he had just licked it. The smooth slope of his shoulders. I could so easily imagine just walking over to him and sliding my arms around his back, pressing my hips against his and taking his infuriating mouth in a kiss. It wouldn't have to be anything else. It didn't have to go any further.

  I wanted to. I very badly wanted to, I realized, staring at him. It wasn't just his looks. I liked his cockiness, and his temper. The way he oscillated between being stuck-up and being vulnerable. I liked how his mouth kept twitching when he spoke, how he seemed to always be making jokes and hoping that I would get them.

  But the space between us felt insurmountable. I couldn’t really walk across the room and take him into my arms. Impossible. Leo would kill me.

  Would he though? The thought itched at my mind, stubborn and painful. Leo was the one who was always encouraging me to find other lovers, to gain some experiences with other people. I’d been with other people, but I'd never gone past anonymous sex with anyone else. He knew I was waiting for him.

  Besides, I knew very well that he wasn't exactly faithful to me.

  No, more likely than not Leo wouldn't care in the slightest. He had made it clear to me time and again that whatever was between us was a casual thing. And though I had pined over him for years, desperate and hopeless and aching, he never treated me as anything more than a good friend.

  But he had called me his lover. There was that.

  But that was so little. Christ, couldn't I have a little bit more?

  Marcus stayed still, watching me while my mind twisted in torment. I could think of nothing to say that would explain, no way of telling him that, yes, of course, I wanted him. But he was a witch, and I had seen him lying dead in the snow. I couldn't trust him, but oh, God, the look in his eyes. I wanted to know how his hips would feel, moving under my hands.

  I waited too long; the moment passed. Marcus gave me a terse nod, and the suggestive tilt left his body, just like that.

  “Well, the offer stands,” he said stiffly, going back to perch on the stool.

  “Marcus . . .”

  “You don't have to say anything.”

  “Good, cause I don't know what to say.”

  He smiled a little. “Is it me? Or are you just afraid?”

  “No, God, it's not you. You're -” I inhaled a ragged breath, and made a vague gesture.

  “Then what? The vampire?”

  “No. I don't know. Fuck, this is a lot. I've never been propositioned like this before.”

  “Oh?” a little gleam came into his eyes and his mouth twitched. “I find that hard to believe.”

  Hadn't he been listening at all? I felt a flash of annoyance and self-pity. Wasn't the state of my life blisteringly
apparent? Looking at him leaning there all cocky and self-assured and confident made the lonely bleak landscape of my life seem all the more painful.

  I turned away, and busied myself with tidying up my work area. My hands shook when I lifted a pot of herbs and I put it down abruptly. Marcus watched with laser focus, and he opened his mouth to say something else, but I held up a finger, dragging my vibrating cell phone out of my pocket.

  It was a text from Dahlia. It read only “Bryler hasn’t seen them. Sorry.”

  Frustrated, I shoved the phone back in my pocket and looked back at Marcus. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Nope,” I said. “No luck.”

  I registered the disappointment on his face as his shoulders slumped a little.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  The memory of his blood on my hands came back to me, unbidden, and piggybacking on that, the thought of Aubrey, laying there gutted like a deer. Then I knew exactly what I had to do.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It wasn't hard to track her down. Heckerson is a small town, and while I kept to myself as much as possible, I lived here my whole life and families knew each other. Aubrey Lindstrom lived with her parents and sisters in a modest two-story house pleasantly situated right next to Rock Creek, making it feel secluded and rural, though the house was near the center of town.

  “So when did this happen?” Marcus asked. He sat beside me in my idling truck. Close beside me. He had slid across the bench seat until his thigh pressed against mine and the gearshift stuck up smack dab between his legs. I gave him a look and he just smiled back, all coy. I tried to think of the last time someone other than Leo or Cody had been in my truck and couldn't think of anyone. Leo certainly never sat close enough to me for our thighs to touch. I drove to Aubrey's house with determination, handling the stick shift like it was a live grenade.

  “Thursday night,” I said, watching out the window for some sign of life at the house. It was Sunday, after all, and most of the good people of Heckerson would be in the middle of the late morning church service, or getting in line for the Dinner Bell's brunch buffet.

  “The night we got into town,” he said softly. He turned to look at me. His proximity made meeting his eyes uncomfortable. His warm breath ghosted across my cheek. “You said that we had similar injuries. What exactly were those injuries, Ebron?”

  “Shh for a second, okay?”

  “I'll find out when we talk to her.”

  “You aren't going in there with me.”

  Marcus went stiff at my side, and he half turned, shoving his knee up against the back rest until he faced me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his face like storm cloud brewing, but I just swallowed and focused on the house.

  “Ebron.” he grabbed my shoulder, and twisted me towards him. I didn't like that, being touched without permission. Instinctively I threw him off with a violent jerk of my arm. It wasn't a shove, not quite, but he wasn't expecting it and my elbow connected with his chin hard enough to make him gasp and double over.

  “Shit.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and moved toward him, taking his shoulders in my hands and looking down into his face. “Are you okay? Sorry, I didn't mean -”

  He kissed me, and the shock of it drove any other thoughts right out of my mind.

  His mouth was very warm against mine, his lips soft and open. Sometimes Leo had a tendency to kiss me like he was trying to bite me through his lips; this was nothing like that. It was tender and slow, with an edge of uncertainty that made it all the more sweet. He brought his lips together a little, and then opened them again, deepening the kiss, and I felt something in me loosen a bit.

  I cupped his jaw between my palms, feeling the scratchiness of his whiskers and the smooth satiny skin below his ears. He moaned a little, and the sound further enflamed me. His lower lip caught between mine, and I ran my tongue over it, tasting him finally.

  We broke off, breathing into each other's mouths. No part of our bodies touched but our lips, and my hands on his face, but I felt powerfully connected to him. When his green eyes finally opened and crinkled a little at the edges as he smiled, I felt like they were a lifeboat bearing me out a storm.

  “See?” he said softly, and I felt his lips move against mine as he spoke. “That wasn't so hard, was it?”

  I wanted to laugh at that, at such a stupid thing to say. Because it had been hard. I felt like I had crossed some line, that something in me was changed. I wanted to cry for some inexplicable reason, and so I kissed him again, more deeply this time and our tongues met somewhere in the middle.

  We quickly found our rhythm, our mouths meeting to slide together. He drew back a bit, taking my lips between his and peppering them with tiny kisses that felt like they were on fire. His hands slid up past my shoulders, knocking my ball cap off and knotting in my hair. He tugged a bit, and I responded by finally putting my arms around him and dragging his body the rest of the way across the bench seat and almost into my lap. His legs tangled with the gearshift and the truck gave a little lurch, breaking us apart.

  Which was, of course, when it occurred to me we were parked in the middle of town, with houses only a few hundred yards away. Though we were partially obscured by the trees and the dim lighting, we were terribly exposed.

  “Wait, wait,” I said, pulling back. His fingers tugged my hair, and he laughed a little as he pulled them out.

  “What?' he said, his eyes bright, full of warmth.

  “We're in the middle of the street. Anyone could walk by.”

  If he was disappointed, he didn't show it. He just nodded, and took a few deep breaths, cocking his eyebrow . “Damn,” he said breathlessly. “I knew it was going to be good with you.”

  I smiled, but doubt was eating at me. Was I really doing this? Was I really going to do this? It seemed more and more likely I was. My hands were on his sides, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breaths. I fixed my gaze on his mouth, and he slowly licked his lips. A shiver went through me at the promise of that mouth.

  “Later then?” he asked.

  I swallowed hard. Such a bad idea. But I nodded anyway, licking my lips and tasting him there.

  “So what's the plan then?” he jutted his chin towards Aubrey's house.

  “I just need to talk to her. I want to see if she remembers anything.”

  “How bad was she hurt?”

  “Pretty badly.”

  “But you fixed her?”

  I looked at him warily, keeping my face as neutral as I could. “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Ebron. I'm not stupid. There isn't a scratch on me. But I was covered in blood when I woke up at your house. Drenched in blood, actually, right? So much blood you had to throw away my clothes. So where did it come from?”

  I didn't respond, my mind racing. No easy lies came to me, nothing plausible that made any sense. Fuck, I should have thought about that, it was so obvious. Of course he had been covered in blood. I was the one who had stripped him down and helped him into the shower.

  “Well, come one,” Marcus said, all snotty again. “I'm just waiting to hear the brilliant lie you come up with.”

  “That was fast,” I shot back, vaguely disgusted with myself. Last night, Leo had suggested holding Marcus hostage and I had resisted. I kind of wished now that I had agreed to that. Maybe if I thought about him in those terms, as my prisoner, as the enemy, I could get myself in the right headspace and stop thinking about the way his mouth felt under mine, and how his hips had made this jerky little circle when I touched him. It was exactly because of shit like this that I always felt like I was a walking bruise, wincing and flinching all the time. I couldn't ever see the lines people drew.

  “What?” he said.

  “A minute ago your tongue was in my mouth and now you're insulting me. Just saying. That was fast.”

  “Ebron . . .” he sighed tiredly, like I was just so fucking exhausting and went back to staring out the window at the weakly shining sun.

  “I
can't talk about it now,” I said, hoping that that was enough to placate him.

  “Why? Need to wait to get permission from your vampire?”

  “Because I don't trust you!” I snapped back, stung.

  “Well, that was fast.” He looked back at me, and I noticed for the first time his eyebrows could look exceptionally cruel. “A minute ago you were kissing me and now I can't be trusted? Geez, Ebron.”

  I wanted very badly for the whole conversation to be over. I thought about just putting the truck in drive and heading back to the trailer. There I at least could leave him to his own devices and just disappear into my bedroom. Just get the fuck away from him. Or, better yet, I could just lean across him, open the passenger side door, and shove him out with a boot to his ass. Then he wouldn't be my problem anymore.

  But I wanted to have something to give to Leo, any bit of information, that would sort of, you know, cushion the blow for when he came home and saw that Marcus was there. I wondered if he would be able to smell Marcus on me, on my mouth, and decided I had better not think about that. Would Listerine do anything for me? Of course, he would still smell me on Marcus.

  “I'm going to go knock on the door,” I said, as cordially as I could manage. “Please wait here.”

  “Fine. Leave the truck running, it's freezing.”

  A lot of things came to my head, like spoiled brat, and gas ain't free, money bags. I considered turning off the truck and taking the keys with me, just to be a dick, but it was cold out, and it seemed like a pointless argument anyway. He didn't look at me as I slid out of the truck and slammed the truck behind me. He wouldn't steal the truck, I told myself. He wouldn't.

  There were no signs of life at Aubrey's house. My boots slopped loudly over the slushy sidewalk, sounding harsh and exaggerated. The hem of my workpants stained muddy brown. There were no other footprints in the remaining snow, but the driveway looked dry, so I couldn't tell if any cars had come or gone.

  Once I got up to the front door, though, my courage completely failed me and I loitered there, shifting back and forth from one foot to another. It wasn't as though I had never spoken to one of the people I had resurrected - I had, numerous times, because it was a small town. I usually only had three or four resurrections every year--almost always local people. Still, it was almost a couple dozen people running around that I had brought back from the great beyond.