Maid of Ice

by Shona Husk

  “Of course I did. I didn’t expect him to realize what you were so fast though. Maybe we should move again.”

  “No. We’ve only been here a year. I’m sick of moving just because you get a feeling.” Those feelings were exactly what Alina trusted. Should she trust her mother’s? If they left did that mean Will would never come after her with a gun? Why had she seen that possible future and not others? Was there nothing good in her future? She didn’t believe that.

  “Your grandfather tried to snatch you once, Alina. He said I was an unfit mother after Neil left. I know I couldn’t let my father have you because he’d do exactly the same to you as he did to me. I wasn’t a child. I was an experiment.” Her mother’s pain radiated through her words. “Someone needs to watch what he is doing. He’s using too much.”

  Alina didn’t doubt what her mother was saying, but that didn’t change the way her mother had tried to live her dreams through her daughter. She hadn’t been a child either. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “My grandfather still alive?”

  Her mother nodded. “He’s a plastic surgeon on the other side of the city. He’s the one who did our ears to blend in better. It’s dangerous for our kind to stand out. Finley will bring trouble. He is too open. That accident…” Her mother shuddered. “Everyone will know he used magic to survive.”

  “No one knows he used magic, except the Albah.” And the Guardians, but they would already know what he was, so it wasn’t a surprise.

  Her mother knelt on the floor with her. “There are others. People who want our kind dead. Dad warned me about them and how dangerous they are. You need to be careful. Stay away from Finley. He’s trouble in every sense.”

  He wasn’t trouble, but he was in trouble and needed help. “Who is my grandfather?”

  “Walter Silverman.” Her mother put her hand on Alina’s arm. “Going to see him will bring no good. He only loves magic.”

  “I don’t want to see him.” But if he was fixing ears it might be a good place to start. Did he regularly fix the ears of other Albah? He certainly had access to blood as a plastic surgeon and he was obsessed with magic. But liking magic and being interested in a person’s abilities didn’t mean that he could make vampires. “I have the right to know who my family is. Who my father is.”

  Her mother looked down. “Your father was killed in the line of duty ten years ago.”

  “What?”

  “He was in the army and away half the time. I was young and thought we could make it work, but we were just kids. I should’ve listened to my mother, but even then I’d been wanting to get away from them. Don’t make my mistake and rush into something just because you want to change your life.”

  That wasn’t why she was dating Finley. Maybe it was just a little.

  “I’m not rushing into anything, just trying to work out who I am and who I want to be.” Right now, the possibilities were endless. Or they should be. The man with the gun was going to haunt her until she worked out a way to get rid of that potential.

  Chapter 13

  Finley’s leg was going dead from having Alina draped over it but she looked so good in his T-shirt, her long legs stretching over the sofa, that he didn’t want her to move. They were both staring at the screen of his laptop. Finley had spent more time trying to find rumors of a vampire than he cared to admit. He was beginning to think that his father had deliberately asked him to do the impossible. If there was no trail of bloodless bodies, did it matter? The Guardians probably hadn’t heard of it either.

  But waiting until there was a trail of bodies didn’t sit well either. Vampires had been found and discovered all around the world. Six of them so far. If humans started putting it together, there would be a problem.

  “Mystery virus kills three people?” She pointed to one of the headlines.

  “Really?” The trouble with seeking clues in hospitals was that humans died there all the time.

  “Gut feeling?” She smiled, but it was tight with nerves.

  They’d spent an hour trying to find ways for her to peek into the future and it had ended in disaster. She’d frozen water in his glass mixing bowl because she seemed to have more affinity with water when it was frozen. Her frustration at not seeing anything had turned ice to steam. There’d been no time to do anything but throw up a shield. Although it had been less of a shield and more of a redirection of air currents to take the debris away from them.

  The bowl had shattered into lethal shards.

  If he hadn’t reacted in time they’d both be dead. The police would’ve had a fun time explaining the double fatality. Death by exploding glass mixing bowl probably wasn’t common. Afterward, neither of them had spoken. The glass and steam had tumbled together in Finley’s air currents.

  She’d apologized and he’d put the glass and steam in the trash and tried to act calm when he felt anything but. He hadn’t realized how dangerous water could be or how dangerous an untrained magic user could be. Alina was lethal.

  He was going to invest in plastic bowls.

  But he also trusted her gut instinct and clicked on the link. She sucked in a breath.

  “What is it?” He glanced at her instead of the screen.

  “That’s the hospital where my grandfather works. I checked him out already.”

  Walter Silverman, plastic surgeon and ear straightener. Finley had done a bit of research on him too, but he’d only got so far as the man’s Web site. It was slick and Walter was smiling. Finley had decided he’d seen enough. He’d tell his father later and maybe they could put together a missing branch of the Albah. That had to be bonus points in his favor, though he wasn’t sure when he’d started caring about being in his father’s good graces. Right now, it mattered. He couldn’t say he was searching for vampires purely because it might make him look bad if he didn’t.

  Damn it. It was much easier being selfish.

  “Okay. That doesn’t mean anything.” He wasn’t sure how Alina would feel if her grandfather was connected to this, but things were suddenly pointing in Walter’s direction.

  They both read the article, but it didn’t mention blood loss or any hints of something vampiric or magical. This was another dead end.

  “Maybe there is no vampire, or even if there is then they are being very well behaved.” She glanced at him with a hopeful expression, eyebrows raised and a faint smile on her lips.

  So well behaved that it wasn’t worth going after them? He could only wish that were the case. But it wasn’t just the vampire that was the problem, it was the Albah making them. Finley shook his head. They’d been through this. They had to find the maker and his or her vampires.

  Alina sighed. “Are vampires always bad?”

  “They were made to pass knowledge over generations and to keep the civilization stable.” He ran his fingers through the bright red strands of her hair. “That’s what I’ve been told. It was so long ago though who knows? It’s said that some of the original vampires are still sleeping, buried around the globe.”

  Her eyes widened. “What? Like thousand-year-old, hungry vampires waiting to rise?”

  “Older than that. The Albah’s cities were destroyed thousands of years ago.” No one knew when exactly, and there had been many theories put forward over the years, back when the Albah had been more plentiful and they’d had scholars who cared about that kind of thing.

  “So why didn’t you all get together and rebuild?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how much is truth and how much is myth. I don’t even know if those sleeping vampires are real.” Or if his mother had spent her life believing in a tale instead of taking care of him. He’d needed her as a kid. Sleeping vampires didn’t need anyone. They were best left sleeping.

  “You don’t believe.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I don’t. I know magic is real because I can do it. I can see it.” He wasn�
�t sure that there were enough Albah to save. They were so fractured and so few, yet he didn’t want magic to die out. For the Albah to vanish with one last sigh that no human could even hear.

  “You believed my vision.”

  “Because I know the future can be seen and changed.” Even if he hadn’t seen her vision, he trusted her not to lie about it. Will had already posted the footage of her skating from this morning. She was amazing. Why Will had even been there was a more disturbing question that neither of them had liked the answer to.

  “I could’ve lied.”

  “You could’ve, but I don’t think you are. What would you stand to gain?” Until she’d said it, he’d never have thought Will could get violent. He’d never thought Will was anything but a pain in his ass. Yet something pushed Will to draw a gun and aim it at Alina. If he’d known that dating Alina would put her in danger, he’d have never started.

  Alina didn’t have anything to gain by lying about her vision. But others might. A chill sped down his spine. Her grandfather’s picture was on the laptop screen. What if she was a pawn in their game and didn’t realize she was being used? But how would a vision of Will holding a gun help anyone, and he doubted very much that Alina would tell him someone else’s fabrication.

  He had to stop expecting lies. People were generally good.

  Even Albah were generally good, but then most of them believed that when they died their use of magic was weighed against the purity of the silver coins they were buried with and if they’d been bad… He had no idea what happened to them. He’d stopped believing in the myths so long ago that he’d stopped listening. But he still believed in vampires.

  He stared at the picture of Walter. “Maybe I should get my ears straightened.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I like your ears.” She ran her fingers along the edge.

  “I’m not actually going to get them done.” He couldn’t think of anything worse, except becoming a vampire.

  She flicked her hair over her ears. “You don’t like mine.”

  He leaned down and kissed her. “I like you. Your ears are fine.”

  “For a human.” Her voice was flat.

  He studied her for a moment and tried to find the right words. He wouldn’t change the way he looked, but she’d never been given that choice. “It’s probably safer to appear human at the moment.”

  It wasn’t something he could joke about. He’d known that he was putting himself out there for all to see the moment he’d accepted the TV role. While he’d walked away from the responsibility of being heir to the Albah kingdom, such as it was, he hadn’t walked as far away from his people as he’d thought he had.

  He clicked through to the more information page and filled in a form to request an appointment to get Dr. Silverman to examine his ears. Silverman wasn’t a traditional Albah surname, so it was one the family must have taken while still alluding to what they were. Many families had changed their names over the centuries to blend in better. He wasn’t sure if there were any of the old names left, except Ryder.

  He wasn’t sure if there were any real traditions left.

  They weren’t a society or even a community, just a bunch of strangers linked by their ability to use magic.

  “So what do we do next?”

  Finley hit send on the form. “I don’t know. I wait for an appointment and speak to your grandfather, I guess.”

  “I thought vampire hunting would be different.”

  “It would be if there were bodies.” He was glad there were no bodies. He didn’t need Guardians invading and taking out everyone who appeared vaguely Albah. “Be glad there are no Guardians here also looking for vampires.”

  He doubted Will was a Guardian. If he was, Finley should be well and truly dead by now.

  “So it wasn’t them who damaged your car?”

  “If it was they’d have tried to kill me again by now.” He shrugged. He couldn’t worry about it too much, or he’d never get out of bed. As soon as he went into hiding, the Guardians started winning. He wasn’t going to change his life because the bogeyman might get him.

  Alina ran her fingers along his jaw. “Quit grinding your teeth. It gives away that they do bother you.”

  Finley consciously relaxed his jaw. He needed Alina to be able to see ahead for them both but he wasn’t willing to lose another mixing bowl. He caught her hand and kissed her fingers. “Let’s put all this aside and enjoy the rest of the evening.”

  * * * *

  Alina was tempted to agree with him. They could forget about magic and get lost in each other, but it would all be waiting for them, closing in. And if she didn’t get her magic up to speed fast, she was going to get swallowed up because she had no idea what she was doing. “You don’t want me to try again?”

  Finley wanted her to be able to peek into the future. It was the one thing he couldn’t do. The one thing they needed. And the one thing she couldn’t do.

  “No. If we get really stuck I’ll call home. Saba should be able to do it despite the distance.”

  “Who is she again?” He kept throwing around names like she was supposed to remember them.

  “My half sister. The older one.”

  “The one dating the cop that killed the vampire?” It was kind of hard to keep track of his family, but for a man who didn’t want much to do with them, he knew them all and what they were up to. It made her smile, on the inside, that he still cared even though he didn’t want to admit to caring.

  He nodded and smiled.

  If her mother wasn’t so anti-magic she’d have been able to get some advice on how to see into the future. Her mother hadn’t volunteered to help, and Alina hadn’t shared that she’d been experimenting either. Her mother would be horrified Alina was dabbling in magic.

  Alina sighed and let her hand fall away. She’d come around and they’d had dinner and played with magic. It had been fun, but then it had become serious when the topic had turned to vampires.

  “What’s wrong?” He put aside the laptop they’d been working on and stretched out on the sofa with her.

  “I actually don’t know.” Here was the great guy, who had people lining up to date him, and he knew about magic, and was showing her this other world and she was feeling twitchy and unsettled.

  Her skin was almost crawling. She scratched her arm, but couldn’t reach the itch inside the cast.

  He put his hand on her arm and somehow a cool breeze slid over her skin beneath the cast. “Better?”

  She nodded. That didn’t fix everything. The rest of her was still unsettled.

  He kissed her cheek and she turned her head so she could claim his lips. “Do you ever feel like everything is just too much and that your body is going to jump out of your skin?”

  Finley considered her for a moment, then the corners of his lips drew up. “You need to stop showering.”

  “That’s disgusting.” He’d mentioned that in passing earlier, before she’d made the glass bowl explode and nearly killed them both. Next time there would be no glass involved.

  “I’m serious. Showering disrupts the magical field around you or something. So every time you do it your body has to rebuild. Now that you’re using magic you’re becoming more aware of it, and the field around you is getting stronger.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is that the technical explanation for not washing? Or are you joking and seeing if I’ll fall for it? You shower.”

  “Not very often.”

  “Ew.” She sat up.

  “I take a bath.” He pulled her close so she had to smell him.

  He didn’t smell sweaty or unwashed. He never had. The sandalwood soap he had in the bathroom clung to his skin. His hair had been wet when she’d arrived and he’d been wearing only track pants. He’d put a shirt on, even though she’d insisted that he didn’t need to—why a
nyone would ever cover their abs when they looked like that she didn’t know. If her stomach was half as ripped as his, she’d wear a crop top in the middle of winter.

  He kissed her, slowly, taking his time to deepen the kiss until she opened her mouth to him. She let the kiss take over until she needed to breathe, but he wasn’t going to sidetrack her on the shower issue. “So what’s different about a bath?”

  “The water is still.”

  She was not convinced about the bath thing. Sitting in a soup of her own dead skin cells and sweat wasn’t her idea of getting clean. “And?”

  “It’s not interfering with the magical field, disrupting it and tearing it from your body.” He kept kissing her as he spoke.

  She slid her hands under his T-shirt and pulled it off, then she ran her palms down his chest and over his stomach. It was clear what his intentions were from the way his pants were tenting toward her.

  “And how do you get clean? Properly clean?” She didn’t believe a bath would be enough. Ever enough. She wasn’t sure she wanted to sacrifice showers for magic. That seemed like a rather big thing to ask.

  “Do you need a demonstration?” His voice was low.

  Her heartbeat quickened. “I think I might. I wouldn’t want to do it wrong and mess up my field.”

  He kissed her again with a grin on his lips. “I still shower, just not all the time. I’m weaker if I shower too often.”

  “Maybe that’s my problem.” She ran her hand over his length; he wasn’t wearing anything under his track pants. She wished taking too many showers and not enough baths was her only problem when it came to magic.

  “Maybe.” He stood up and offered her his hand.

  She reached out and remembered the cast. “I still have to keep this dry.” At least in a shower she didn’t have to bag it up all the time.

  “Why don’t you get the bath started, and I’ll get something for your cast.”

  “You could just fix it.” She knew he could heal. If her arm was better the cast could come off and that would get rid of one problem.