by Devon Monk
Weird. I mean, if there was ever a place I expected to find a ghost, it would be here, in a cemetery. The hazy, faded colors shifted a little, as if an unseen wind stirred them. But that was all.
Good.
I directed the magic into my hands, into my tactile sense. I felt rather than saw magic wrap around my hands like liquid ribbons of warmth. I sent those ribbons down into the earth where my father’s body lay at rest.
Maybe it was a creepy idea. Death makes people do creepy things. But I needed to acknowledge his life one last time. Maybe more than that, I needed to acknowledge the cold, hard reality of his death.
Then hopefully there would be no more of this ghost stuff for me.
I braced for the awareness of his flesh and bone, well on their way to decay and collapse. I braced for the sensation of a once-living man now reduced to an inert lump of tissue. I braced for the feeling of a body completely absent of life, of soul.
What I did not brace for was to feel nothing.
Nothing.
I frowned. I could sense the weight of dirt and stone around the casket. I could sense the casket, made of wood, still strong and whole.
And I could sense the emptiness within it.
There was no body in that casket. No decay. Not even a single bug. Nothing but stale air.
Was this the wrong grave? I glanced at the headstone, read my father’s name, his date of birth, date of death. This was the right grave. His grave.
It couldn’t be empty.
Wishful thinking? Delusional thinking? I closed my eyes, tipped my head down, and whispered a Seeking spell. My headache would last twice as long now, but I didn’t care.
Magic jumped in intensity, spooled out of me, plunging deep into the frozen earth, brushing like hands around the casket. Wood and metal, smooth, whole. I sent it deeper. Soft, cushioned lining, silk casket dressing. I sent it deeper. Stagnant, stale air.
And nothing more. Nothing.
They told me he had not been cremated. They told me it had been an open-casket viewing. People—a lot of people—had seen him dead and had seen him lowered into the grave. This grave.
So where the hells was he?
Dad, I thought. Is this why you came to me? Were you trying to tell me something about being buried or not being buried?
“You picked a cold day to say good-bye,” a man’s voice said from behind me.
I’ll admit it—I jumped. I hadn’t seen anyone else in the graveyard, hadn’t heard anyone walk through the soggy, noisy grass.
I spun where I crouched and pulled magic up into my fingertips, ready to weave an entirely different kind of spell.
Black ski cap pulled tight over his head only made his golden brown eyes larger and warmer against the darkness of his skin. High-arched cheekbones, strong wide nose, and an undefinable cut to his features made me think Native or Asian flavored his family’s blood.
Zayvion Jones, the man I might love.
He wasn’t wearing a scarf, just that ratty blue ski jacket zipped up to beneath his jaw, jeans, and sneakers. Against the stark gray of the day, I found myself drawn toward him, toward a forgotten warmth.
I couldn’t remember it, but I’d risked my life to save him once. Knocked myself into a coma. Still, emotional echoes of him remained within my subconscious. I remembered him being there when I found out my dad had put a hit on Boy in St. Johns. I remembered him following me to my dad’s office the day my dad was killed. And then, all I remembered was finding him a couple weeks ago at a diner and asking him why the hells he’d left me a Dear John note.
We hadn’t seen each other since then. I thought he’d givien up on us. Or that maybe there was no “us” to give up on.
Still, those echoes of emotional memory, of what his touch had made me feel like, resonated through me like a deep-tolling bell.
Oh, I had it bad for him once.
Maybe I still did.
“What are you doing here?” I tried to sound annoyed but it came out a little breathless and husky. Hells, I wanted him. Wanted him to touch me. Needed him to touch me. Not just because I was feeling a little alone and a lot spooked right now.
Okay, maybe just because of that.
Zay shrugged. “Lucky coincidence?” he said in that damn voice of his, low and easy, delivered with that damn Zen calm. “I was driving by and saw you get out of the cab. I thought you might need help finding his grave. It’s out of the way over here.”
I stared at his handsome face and didn’t believe a word he was saying. Oh, he may have seen me get out of the cab. Probably because he had been following me. Maybe he’d been following me since I saw him outside the bus this morning. I had a feeling nothing was quite as it seemed with Mr. Jones.
If he’d told me he was stalking me, that I might believe.
“Why don’t I think anything is a coincidence with you?”
He tipped his head to the side, giving me a nod. “Because you have trust issues.”
“I don’t think you know me well enough to say things like that.”
He pulled his head back as if I’d just slapped him. His breathing changed, and I suddenly realized that Mr. Jones was a very dangerous man beneath that Zen calm.
I stood up, not liking the dynamic of me crouched down with him towering over me. And besides that, magic was pushing in me, filling me again too full, and I was having a hard time keeping control of it.
Even though I am six feet tall, Zayvion still had a couple inches on me. And standing this close to him, I could see he had width too. Though he managed to hide it, he was built like a brick wall under that ski coat—wide shoulders tapering down into a narrow waist, and all that relaxed body language doing little to conceal that that body knew how to fight, and did it often.
“My apologies,” he said stiffly. “I see you didn’t need help finding it.”
I had no idea what we were talking about.
“Your father’s grave?” he reminded me.
Right. He was talking about my dad’s grave. What I was doing was trying to figure out why he was here, and getting all frickin’ dizzy again. Magic was still filling me, filling me too full. I had tapped into it, used it to look for my dad’s body, and now I couldn’t seem to make it stop filling me up.
This was something I’d been dealing with a lot since I came back to Portland. Keeping a close hold on the magic in my body so it didn’t just escape me and do something stupid like burn down a city block was getting to be a real pain.
I was a walking time bomb. But I really was getting good at keeping my finger off the trigger.
Well, except for right now.
Maybe the whole weird morning was starting to catch up with me. Maybe the magic-sucking watercolor people had damaged me in a way I didn’t know. Maybe the price for the magic I’d used today was coming due.
Whatever. I felt like hell.
The gray day went dark at the edges, and the ringing in my ears harmonized with the thrum of my blood. Oh, hells. There was no way I could handle this much magic. Magic pulsed and slid, pulsed and slid, filling me full, too full, too tight.
I held my breath against it, bit the inside of my cheek, and tried to think calm thoughts.
I am a river. Magic pours through me and back into the ground. It does not shape me. I do not shape it.
“Allie?”
What were we just talking about? I blinked. It felt like my eyes stayed closed for a long time. When I opened them again, I was on my knees.
Weird.
“Allie?” Zayvion’s voice floated down to me from far, far away. “Don’t try to stand. Lie back and take slower breaths. It’s going to be okay. I got you.”
That didn’t sound good. Still, I had apparently lost the ability to speak, or breathe out, or really do much else, so Zayvion’s suggestions were helpful in their way.
Even more helpful were his hands.
I exhaled as minty heat from his palms soaked through my heavy coat. Mint spread down through me, like water
against a fire. The mint calmed the magic pouring through me, blanketed it, pushed it back to my muscles, my bones, and then down deeper—pushed the magic back into the ground from where it came. Zayvion’s touch eased the ache of magic, giving me room in my own body to breathe again.
“Excellent,” Zayvion said. “Slower breaths. Good.”
I did as he told me, let the mint fill me, cool me, stroke soft and sweetly through me, leaving shivers of pleasure across my skin. Sensual. I wondered if he was like this in bed.
Now there was a memory I wished I still had.
“Can you open your eyes?”
I could and I did.
Zayvion’s face filled my vision. His eyes were brown and burning with gold I did not remember seeing before. And beyond that, beyond the tiger brightness, was a vast, vast feeling of emptiness, of space. I could suck up all the magic in the world, pour it all out into him, and never be able to fill him up.
Nice.
“I don’t know if you remember,” he said, “about this. About us. I’m Grounding you, Allie. If you want to help, just clear your mind and think calm thoughts. Meditate.”
Right. And after I did that I’d jump up and sing some show tunes.
That also must have shown on my face because Zayvion’s lips quirked. “Whatever you’re thinking—it’s not helping.”
Well, it was good to know he couldn’t read my mind. I licked my lips, or at least I thought I did. I actually couldn’t feel my mouth, couldn’t feel my body other than in a distant, half-asleep, still-room-for-breathing sort of way.
That worried me.
But instead of panicking, I took a nice, deep breath and focused on Zayvion’s gold, gold eyes.
I am a channel, a river. Magic flows through me but does not fill me, does not change me.
Zayvion could fill me, could change me. And I’d like it. That didn’t help clear my mind either, so I went back to the river thing, repeated it to myself until it became a mantra, a meditation. Repeated it until I could feel my body—cold and wet down my back, butt, and legs; warm and dry down my front from Zayvion leaning across me, his wide back sheltering me from the falling rain.
Until I could feel the heat of him more than the heat of magic.
The mint sensation grew stronger, like I’d just been rubbed down with wintergreen leaves. Tingly, cool, and warm everywhere, inside and out.
“Beautiful,” Zay said, soft and sexy-like.
I licked my lips and felt them this time. “Thanks.” “Sure.” He didn’t move. I didn’t want him to. He was so close, the overpowering pine scent of his cologne mixed nicely with the smell of winter grass and wet jackets. Even though I probably shouldn’t, I liked the combination. I gave myself a heartbeat or two to wonder what his lips would taste like.
Hells.
I kissed him.
I think he was surprised. But it didn’t take him long to get over that.
His lips were soft, thick, and gentle. I opened my mouth for him, and he responded, deepening the kiss, making promises, or maybe just suggestions, that I completely agreed with.
I inhaled the heat of him and my body stirred with sensations and memories that had nothing to do with magic.
Zayvion made a needful sound at the back of his throat, and the magic within me rose up, coaxed higher by Zay’s mouth on my own, his thumb tracing the whorls of magic that pulsed against my throat.
Wait, I thought. Something. Something wasn’t right about this.
Zayvion’s mouth moved to the edge of my jaw, and then his lips, soft, warm, opened against my throat as he sucked, nipped.
I moaned. Magic, oily and hot, pulsed through me, rising to Zayvion’s tongue that gently stroked across the marks on my neck, easing the edge of my need in only the smallest degree and making me want more.
He knew me. Knew what I wanted.
“I’ve missed you,” he breathed across my skin.
Then the rest of it—the reality of it, of where I was, of whom I was with, and why I was here—hit me.
I was making out with a man I couldn’t remember, and wasn’t sure I could trust, on my father’s grave.
Talk about a mood killer.
“Let me up,” I said, my voice a lot stronger than I’d expected. “Up. Now. Off.” My voice rose with each word. “Off me. I can’t. Not here. With you.” I meant to say not on my dad’s grave but I didn’t get the chance.
Zayvion pulled back, studied my face, those gold eyes dark with hurt or anger—I so wasn’t in the mood to suss out the difference. I didn’t have to. He rocked back on his heels away from me.
The rush of cool air between us made me gasp so hard, it hurt. He looked away at the horizon, the muscle at his jaw clenched, while I gathered myself until I was sitting and then standing.
He stood too, with the kind of grace that comes from martial arts training. When he finally looked at me again, his face had settled into Zen calm.
“I’m sorry,” he said. A shadow of hunger shifted in his eyes, gold, then brown, then was extinguished, leaving his gaze emotionless, flat.
I sniffed and rubbed my gloves over my butt, trying to brush off grass and mud, trying to pull myself together. Why did I feel so guilty?
“I needed the . . . that Grounding. Thank you. Sometimes . . . magic . . . It’s not always easy, but usually I’m fine. Today’s been”—horrible, I wanted to say, but instead I said—“long. So don’t apologize for Grounding me.”
“I wasn’t.”
Oh.
That flare of heat and desire flickered in his eyes. He blinked once, slowly, and gave me the Zen calm again.
“Oh,” I said. “Good. And you’re really good at that. Grounding,” I clarified. “Studied much?”
His lips tightened at the corner. For some reason, that question brought him pain. “Yes. But Grounding isn’t really my specialty.”
“Really? What is?”
He nodded. “I don’t think you want to know.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”
Well, could I be more awkward and standoffish? No, I think not. Before things could get worse, I took a deep breath and tried to say something that didn’t sound like I was itching for a fight.
“What are you really doing here?” I asked.
“Looking for you. To ask you out. On a date.” As he said it, his gaze flicked over my shoulder and rested just a little too long on the horizon.
So I turned and looked back there too. Close to the mausoleum at the top of the hill, a figure moved, walking among the graves. Heavy knee-length coat, a hat. It didn’t look like anyone I knew, but from this distance it was hard to tell.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
See how I bought myself time to think about the whole date thing?
“Not yet.” Zayvion had not moved, had not stopped squinting off into the heavy drizzle. “Maybe not at all.” He wiped rain off his face and pulled his beanie closer to his head. “This place always makes me jumpy.”
“Always? How often do you come here?”
Zayvion finally looked away from the figure, who had stopped walking between graves and was now standing, just standing there, staring in our general direction.
“I was last here at the burial,” he said quietly.
I glanced down at my father’s grave. The press of our bodies had left the image of a broken snow angel in the soft grass and soil. A mud angel. Oregon style.
“You saw him lowered down. Down into that?” Into that empty grave, I wanted to say, but didn’t, couldn’t, yet.
He nodded. “Are you done here?” he asked. “If you want to go, I have my car.”
He didn’t look cold despite the rain. Didn’t look like he was in a hurry. Didn’t look like he might be trying to avoid answering my questions too.
“Maybe,” I said. “Will you tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“Everything.”
“Everything might take some time.” He tipped
his head down a bit, his smile warm. More than warm—it was firelight in the damn cold world, a heat I wished I could pull deep within me. Maybe I could overlook the darkness of the rest of the day if I could hold on to a little bit of that fire.
“I have some time,” I said. “Until noon, anyway. You have somewhere you need to be?”
