by Shona Husk
“Sure.” Saying no would be rude, and she’d already left a disastrous first impression.
He was fire, like her. Except not like her, because male Albah’s magic was different. They had defensive magic and healing. The women had the ability to see the future, which wasn’t always useful, and the past and the much more dangerous attacking magic.
“Dale needs to move his car.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder.
Julian took a few steps back into the house. “Dale, shift your car.”
A few seconds later, the human inconveniencing everyone appeared and he didn’t look at all sorry. No doubt Saba had put him up to it. She was either going to have words with her sister or stop talking to her altogether.
“My mother was fire too,” Julian said as they waited.
His mother had been killed when he was a kid, a car accident. Everyone knew the story. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t your fault. Like Dad said, accidents do happen. We can’t jump at every shadow. I have her diaries, the ones about magic. They helped me and they might help you.”
Leira bit her lip. That was a very generous offer. “Thank you. You aren’t worried that I’ll set them on fire?”
“How about I ward them first?” His smile widened as though it was funny.
Maybe she’d be able to look back and see the funny side of accidentally setting things on fire when she had control. Right now it was stress that she didn’t need, and the more stressed she got the more likely it became that she’d screw up.
“All clear, sorry about that,” Dale said as he walked by. “I’ll see you at the next poker night?” he said to Julian.
“Yeah, mate.”
Leira waited for the door to close. “You know him well then?”
“We’ve met a few times. You don’t like your sister’s boyfriend?”
How could she say that cops were too…establishment…without insulting Julian’s father? But then Quinn did like rules. “He’s human.”
“So’s your father.”
That was true. And while her father knew some of the truth, he didn’t know it all, and he would never understand magic and talk about it the way her mother did with other Albah. Dale knew far too much already. She opened her car and cleared her gym bag and backpack for college off the front seat by throwing them on the backseat. “Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”
“That’s okay.”
She glanced at him as he buckled in. “Why didn’t you drive here?”
“I haven’t bought a car yet. I only moved back here six months ago and I haven’t needed to.”
Leira started her car. Well, it was really her mother’s car. While her mother was traveling, Leira got use of it and she got to stay in the house. All she had to do was pay the utility bills.
“So you catch public transport?” At night? Alone. Hell no. She could burn an attacker to a…a crisp and she still wouldn’t do it.
He shrugged. “The hospital and my apartment are close to stations.”
“Where are you staying?” Had they even come close to crossing paths or was fate being a dick?
“North Fremantle.”
Saba’s shop was in Fremantle. That was close.
“And you work where?” She was giving a stranger a lift. Just because he was Albah didn’t make him safe. Albah could become the undead and feast on blood. Dale’s tick of approval didn’t help. But Leira did trust her sister. Saba must have suspected that Julian was the man on the train from her vision but she hadn’t said anything, wanting it to work out. Saba had even tried to get Leira out of this meeting.
“Perth Central Hospital.”
So he’d be on the Fremantle train line. She took the Fremantle line when she wasn’t driving to university, and she’d been driving less lately. Had they crossed paths already? How close had she been to meeting him before the fail of tonight?
She pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the station. “I do need help with the fire, but I’m tired of being treated like the baby of the group.”
The few times she’d met Quinn it was like he was expecting her to screw up. At least she hadn’t disappointed him tonight.
“Why don’t we get together over the weekend?”
Because this is all wrong!
Where were the sparks, the attraction and the romance? Sure she knew it was him, but that wasn’t the same as that rush of attraction. She wasn’t even sure that she liked him now that he was in her car. He was good looking, short blond hair and blue eyes and a nice strong jaw. He was obviously smart because he was a doctor. And he shared her element.
There was definitely something wrong with her. Maybe it was because he was older than she’d imagined he’d be. She’d thought the man would be her age or maybe only a couple of years older. Julian was, what, thirty?
“Have you ever had a reading done for you?” She wanted to know if he’d peeked into his future.
“No,” he said with rather more finality than she’d expected.
“Why?” Being able to glimpse the many paths and what might be was fun. It was the one thing she could do without needing the fire brigade on standby.
“Because I don’t want to know my future.”
“Oh.” Probably best not to mention Saba’s vision and the way she’d been checking up on it, or how she planned to check later tonight. “I can do that bit.”
He was watching her now. “This is starting to feel like a bit of a set-up.”
“You think? Dale wasn’t very subtle, was he?”
Julian stared out the window. “I went to Sydney to study because I needed to get away from here. I thought it would be different coming back as an adult with my own life. Dad is still all about duty to the Albah and all that.”
“He is kind of the king.”
He gave a small laugh. “I know. I do plan on doing the right thing eventually, but in my own time. I know that the men are outnumbered ten to one. And fire is getting rarer with each generation. I get that, but I don’t like the feeling that I have to.”
Leira nodded. Definitely not telling him about the vision and their supposed future. She hadn’t realized that the genders had become so skewed. Ever since the Albah had gotten rid of arranged marriages and monitoring the magics, things had been falling apart.
Her people were fading away.
“Well, you don’t have to help me.” She tried to make her voice light.
“No, that I do have to do. Mum would want me to, she would’ve wanted to. She’d have been so thrilled to have a girl to teach.”
If Julian’s mother had been alive, there was a bloody good chance that Leira’s own mother would have left her behind as soon as her magic showed up. Part of her wondered what it would have been like to have a normal childhood. Going to the same school and keeping friends for years.
Instead she’d wandered the globe with her wildlife photographer mother and philanthropist father, building villages and digging toilets.
She parked at the station. “But do you want to?”
She didn’t want to be on his list because other people, even dead people, thought he should help her.
He nodded slowly. “I’ve never met another Albah in person who could use fire.”
“But your mother…?”
“She died the day my magic kicked in,” he said softly.
“You were in the car.” She’d heard that trauma could make it happen. But no one had ever told her that Julian was in the car when their mother had died.
“Kirin was too. I couldn’t get the baby seat unbuckled. Mum wasn’t answering. When the car caught fire, I hugged Kirin, trying to protect him. I couldn’t make a shield big enough to protect my mother too. I tried and I got burned.”
She had never heard that part of the story. “That’s an awful way to get your magic.”
He shrugged. “Better than being dead. I think Mum must have already be
en dead. The driver hit us head-on. The cops think he was drunk, but he fled the scene.”
“Where was Finley?” Technically her half-brother, but the closest she’d ever been to him was the cover of a glossy teen magazine.
“We were on our way to get him from something, probably sport practice.”
“I would totally get it if you didn’t drive because of that.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to drive after hearing about that. The idea of being stuck in a burning car. She suppressed a shudder. Fire was her element, but she was still wary.
He shook his head. “Life and magic are unpredictable. Everyone is watching you because you have fire, but if you stop trying to please them, it will be easier.” He pulled out his cell phone. “What’s your number?”
Whoa, advice and wanting her number in the same breath. She rattled off her number, not sure if she would make time this weekend to see him. She didn’t want to seem too keen. But she was. She wanted to read his mother’s diaries. Even though that probably made her a bad person, and she wanted to see what it would be like to work with a fire user instead of her air driven sister, who could literally suck the air out of an argument.
She was already too curious to back out.
Chapter 4
Leira sat quietly on the bathroom floor—it was the safest place for her to practice, given the abundance of water and the lack of flammable items. She’d moved the towels well away as an extra precaution. The tiles were cold under her butt. She’d been sitting here for half an hour with the unlit candle. She was running out of time if she wanted to get this done before she had to get to university. While she could light a candle safely, if she saw something that shocked her… Well, she didn’t want a repeat of the crisps incident.
Saba would’ve happily done a reading for her if she’d asked, but Leira wanted to do this herself, and she didn’t want anyone else to know. She didn’t want Saba to know if everything had gone wrong. And if it had, how was she going to fix it?
She didn’t know that either.
Which was why she hadn’t lit the candle yet.
Sitting here wasn’t going to change anything. Maybe nothing had changed and it would all be okay, but she didn’t believe that for a heartbeat. Last night every time she’d looked at him she could feel the tracks changing direction, derailing the future she’d been expecting.
She shook out her hands. Maybe she was being overly dramatic, after all, if it was one of those meant to be things, why hadn’t she felt more than a tingle? All she’d gotten—once she’d gotten over the shock—was the same tingle she got when seeing any hot guy.
A smile formed. Julian was hot, and not just because his magic was fire. And they had agreed to get together to talk magic. And he’d offered to let her read his dead mother’s diaries, which was probably a great way to kill any mood.
There’d been no mood in the car, but there had been an undercurrent of something. She didn’t know what it was or how to deal with it, or him. She’d expected fireworks and…and something more. She wasn’t sure he’d felt anything for her except pity, because she couldn’t control her magic, and then embarrassment because it was pretty damn clear that everyone in the room thought they needed smooshing together. Saba had promised not to interfere, but that had been before, when the vision was still true.
Now it wasn’t. They had met and she needed to find out what had changed.
She drew in a breath and then exhaled.
In her mind she saw a circle form around her, in her next breath it became real. She waited another couple of heartbeats before visualizing the flame. If she was lighting a candle for the oil burner, she didn’t bother with the ritual, but this was about her future. She could’ve used a match and not worried about the magic, but she refused to use matches and lighters. She had to be able to do this.
Leira pictured the flame in her mind, then pushed it out of her. The candle lit with a spark and a crackle. She leaned forward and rested her hands on her chin so she could stare into its blue center. As she did, the flame expanded. The blue becoming a ball three inches in diameter.
Her concentration remained steady. How many exercises had she done just on focusing without even using fire? She’d lost count. She could do this without burning off her eyebrows now.
The blue started swirling as though filled with currents.
Show me the path I am on.
She expected to see the train, Julian—he had a name now—and herself giving lectures. Her future still steady even if she didn’t know how to get there. She’d met him; all they had to do was fall in love. When she thought of him, that feeling was there even though when she was with him it wasn’t. Was she getting herself muddled by constantly checking and imagining? No, she knew the difference between the present and the future.
This time Julian didn’t appear in the flame. The currents grew darker as though made of thick oily smoke. No, it was smoke. And flames. Her future was nothing but smoke and flames.
No!
She gasped and dropped the circle, batting the ball of fire away. It bounced off the wall and into the two inches of water she’d put in the bath in case of emergency, where it then fizzled and went out.
Her heart beat fast. That didn’t make sense. Just because her initial meeting with Julian had gone wrong didn’t mean her whole life was going to go up in smoke.
Did it?
Fire was her element. What was she going to do, spontaneously combust?
A nervous laugh slipped past her lips.
She must have projected her own feelings about the situation. Saba was better at this than she was. Saba was better at everything, except school grades. That had been the one place she had bested Saba. Leira had worked hard to be good at something.
What if Saba saw exactly what she had seen? What did it mean?
It couldn’t be death. There were other paths. There were always other paths. She knew that. All that she had been shown was the path she was currently on.
Right. She could fix this. She calmed herself. She just had to find a new path.
The trouble was, how would she know if she was on the same path or changing direction? She couldn’t check every decision that she made and sometimes it was the smallest thing that could create the needed ripple.
Last night had been more than a ripple.
Her phone buzzed from the kitchen. Saba had already called her twice this morning, Leira had ignored both. She’d better respond to this one or her sister would send out a search party. Slowly she got up. She left the candle there for tonight, when she’d check again. It would be nice to be able to hold the fire in her hands and be able to scry at the same time instead of needing a candle to hold the flame for her.
The message wasn’t from Saba. It was from Julian. Her breath caught.
Hi, it’s Julian. Did you want to go to Leighton Beach on Sunday? Ten?
What was the right answer?
* * * *
Julian had kept his promise to Emily, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do. She’d downloaded a movie and was dimming the lights and trying to make this get-together more date-like.
He wasn’t in the mood. He was tired and he’d spent most of today thinking about the meeting last night and Leira. She had been shocked to see him, as though she’d known him, and yet they hadn’t met before last night—he didn’t count seeing her as a baby. He knew he’d seen her as a baby because there were pictures of the Ryder boys with the Venn girls. Leira must have been very young, only months old. The two families had been close until the previous tomb watcher had retired and Archie, Leira’s mum, had taken over. Archie had packed up her two little kids and human husband and taken off around the world. Julian knew about the tombs of the Keepers of the Law, ancient Albanex who had been buried millennia ago. They weren’t a myth, but he didn’t know where they were. He wasn’t sure his brother was up for the job of guarding them.
“Stop being so glum.” Emily put her
hand on his leg. “Was catching up with your father that bad?”
“Just some family stuff.” He wasn’t going to say any more than that. Couldn’t.
“Like what? You hardly talk about your family.” She leaned in closer as if expecting to hear a secret.
She was always asking, digging for more than he wanted to share. “You don’t talk about yours either.”
“It’s just me and Mom. Nothing to say.”
He shrugged. “Same.”
“So…” She stared. “You have no plans to take me to a family dinner?”
Julian blinked and stared at her. “You’re on a travel visa. We’d agreed this was a short-term, good time.”
She looked away and crossed her arms. “Fine. I get it. I’m not good enough, Doctor Ryder.”
Julian drew in a breath, considered arguing, and then thought better of it. He really didn’t care. “Let’s just watch the movie, okay?”
Then in the two hours that took, maybe he’d come up with a way to end it. He should have ended it three weeks ago when she’d first started angling to meet his father and expecting more from him. He liked her and she was fun, but something had changed and he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He didn’t like that. What they had wasn’t fun anymore.
“Can you make popcorn and put the icing sugar on it?” She smiled, but there was still ice in her eyes.
He was comfy and he didn’t want to get up. He didn’t want to listen to her sigh and put on a pout either. “Sure.”
In the kitchen he put the bag of popcorn in the microwave, then grabbed a cider out of the fridge. He started drinking while he waited.
He didn’t need a reason to end it. He could just end it if it wasn’t working, and to be honest he wasn’t sure it had ever really worked outside of the bedroom. There was no point in hanging on to it when it was clearly not making either of them happy anymore. She could move on and find some other guy to date for her last couple of months in Australia.
