by Mary Calmes
And I understood, for us, for warders who had lost their whole families, a hearth was all they had. But for a few clutches, a lucky few, there was even more created. There was a family.
“Who’s hungry?” Jael asked.
And since we all were, he started barking out orders. I was thrilled to have the spotlight off me as I sank down beside Joe on the chaise.
He smirked at me. “So what did we learn?”
I groaned.
“Maybe, jackass, you should think a little more of yourself and realize that in the big picture, Marcus Roth, you’re fucking vital.”
I leaned sideways and put my head down in his lap.
“I’m not petting you.”
“Please, Joe,” I whined, closing my eyes.
His hand slid down between my shoulder blades, and he rubbed gently, caressing, finally bending to kiss my temple.
“Say it.”
“I love you, Marcus.”
Always good to hear.
As we all scarfed down steaks and corn on the cob and potatoes wrapped in foil, all cooked on the grill, I was filled in on events.
“Raph went and found the doppelganger,” Jackson told me. “You told him that he helped you, so we wanted to see if we could help him.”
I looked at Raphael. “And?”
“He and his wolf are on the road, and I gave him a way to contact me if he needed. I told him that your debt became mine because while I can travel the rings, Marcus, you should not.”
“Why?”
“Your energy, more than any other warder I’ve ever known, is tangible and traceable. You don’t want something to follow you home.”
“No,” I agreed.
“I followed you home,” Joe snapped, and I realized, as I had an hour ago, that he was really drunk. The ratio of food to alcohol in his system was way off. We had missed lunch, and whereas I had waited to drink, Joe had started before anyone even arrived.
“That was a good thing,” I teased him, leaning sideways, kissing his cheek. “Now be a good boy and eat your potatoes.”
He grunted. “Did you all know that Marcus is criss-crossed with new marks from fighting those racer demons?”
Dead silence at the table. It was guilt that no one needed.
“So,” I said brightly. “You sure do track quickly, Raph. How do you do that?”
All eyes on the kyrie.
He glared at me.
I smiled back.
He growled. “You promised.”
“I didn’t mean to promise.”
He was disgusted with me; that was clear.
“What’s going on?” Jackson asked us.
I leaned forward to deliver the news.
Raphael took Jackson’s hand instead. The solemn look on his face, the trepidation in his eyes—both, I knew, were so unnecessary.
“I have wings when I’m in other dimensions.”
“What?”
“He has these huge black feather wings,” I told Jackson who turned to look at me. “They’re beautiful, you should see them.”
He looked back at Raphael. “You have wings?”
The kyrie nodded slowly.
“That’s so cool.”
Instant surprise.
“What?”
“I thought you would think it made me more demon than human and—”
“No,” Jackson cut him off, leaning over to press a kiss to the side of Raphael’s neck. “I can’t wait to see them, and you should never be afraid to tell me anything.”
“That’s how you found the edge of that dimension I was in,” Simon said excitedly. “You had a lot of ground to cover in every direction, and you did it so fast…. I wish you would have let me see them while we were there.”
“We were inside,” Raphael said softly, and I realized that he was more than a little touched by the reception over this latest development. “No need to fly in there.”
“Yeah, but still.” Simon smiled warmly. “I bet they’re amazing.”
“They are,” I assured him, looking over at Jackson. “Raphael saved my life.”
Jackson nodded.
“And you saved Jackson’s,” Raphael told me. “We’re even.”
Another looming silence seemed inevitable.
“So Shane’s not dead,” Ryan chimed in. “We found him walking down the side of the road the next day. The witch had wiped his mind, but otherwise he’s well.”
“The spell didn’t lift when she died?”
“It did after a month.” Ryan smiled, so obviously happy just to be looking at me. “He’s with Kyle and the other two warders and their sentinel in Rome being… what?” His head turned to Jael. “Educated? Tortured? What?”
Jael sighed deeply. “Tortured? Really? This is what you think of the labarum?”
Ryan shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“The council is not in the habit of hurting their own warders,” Jael told him. “They are all being retrained in their duties. The sentinel has been stripped of his rank and is now a warder again. He will be assigned to a new city.”
“That sucks,” Dylan said. “I bet he has his whole life in Lexington, and now he’s gotta move because he was stupid.”
“Very stupid,” Leith agreed. “But you don’t let an incarnation sleep with the hearth of a warder. If you ask me, reassigned isn’t enough.”
“So what happened to the real Tanner and his wife?”
“They were reunited in Rome,” Jackson said. “And he’s been stripped of his warder status and his power.”
“How?”
“The sentinel,” Jael answered.
All eyes went to him; we were all interested in this part.
“A sentinel calls for a warder and a man or woman answers that summons. At the same time, the power within the warder is awakened by the sentinel. The presence of the sentinel speaks to the dormant power in the individual. The sentinel sparks the gift, and a warder is created.”
Malic squinted at him. “I don’t remember it being that romantic.”
Dylan found that statement hysterical. Julian pushed his face down into the table, which just made Dylan laugh louder.
“But the sentinel can remove their ‘recognition’, I guess you’d call it, and it’s as though the warder was never seen in the first place, never discovered, never made.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “So Tanner and his wife are free to be regular people.”
“Yes.”
“But after being a warder, won’t that drive him nuts?” Julian asked. “Once you’ve been something extraordinary, it would be hard to go back to being a normal person.”
“Which is why Lexington’s new sentinel will keep an eye on Tanner and his wife,” Jael instructed us all. “And the labarum council is very pleased with all of you for uncovering corruption in another territory. You’re to be commended.”
“Lucky everyone lived, then, to be commended,” Joe said sarcastically.
“I’m glad Tanner and his wife are back together,” I told Jael.
“They’re getting a divorce.” Joe cackled evilly. “She doesn’t want a regular man; she only wants a warder. She’s like the blonde bitch in An Officer and a Gentleman. She wants to marry a pilot, she doesn’t want an enlisted man, she just wants to see the world…. The guy working at the grocery store ain’t cuttin’ it, you know?”
Everyone was looking at me.
I turned to look at Joe. “Baby, maybe you should eat something, huh?”
“I’m not hungry, Marcus. Thank you.”
“At least,” Malic began, picking the conversation back up, “when the new sentinel takes over, he doesn’t have to worry about Arcan or Emir or any of those other demons. All of them are dead, and the portal between Breka’s club and the hell dimension is closed.”
“And we burned the house down for good measure,” Ryan said.
“There’s nothing left,” Leith added. “We razed it.”
“You enjoyed saying that,” Simon teased. “Very barbarian of
you, the pillaging.”
“I do have that in me,” Leith said playfully. “Right, baby?”
Simon leaned forward and kissed him lightly, then sat back and looked at me. “Joe told us that his family is well.”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “Joe told me that, too, and I got to talk to all of them on the phone this morning. It was good.”
“Hey, Jael, could you strip Marcus’s power from him? I’d love him to be just a partner at a law firm and nothing else.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t patronize me, Marcus,” Joe snapped, draining his third mojito, jiggling the ice in the glass, and then loudly slurping the last of it.
“So I guess tomorrow I gotta go see my boss and see if she’ll take me back.” I tried to ignore Joe. “You gotta tell me exactly what you told her, Mal.”
“I need another one of these,” Joe said. “Or maybe just a gin and tonic. Whatever.”
“Start from the beginning,” I told Malic, prodding him as I reached for Joe.
My hearth tried to pull free when I took gentle hold of his wrist, but I was insistent, and so when I eased him sideways, into my lap, he moved of his own volition.
“Nobody cares that you could’ve died,” he whispered under his breath. “So Dylan’s upset because you hurt Malic’s feelings, so the fuck what? I give a shit.”
When he finished, his voice had risen and again, there was a silence.
“Why’re you mad?” I asked, stroking his hair, kissing one of his beautifully arched brows.
“You could have died,” he repeated.
“But I didn’t, and I’m right here.”
I felt his deep breath move through his whole body and calm him. When I looked over at Malic, he smiled at me.
“Your boss, Helene, I really like her.”
“Yeah, me too,” I agreed, appreciating the fact that he had simply changed the subject without making Joe own up to how he was feeling in front of everyone.
“I know your assistant and the associates that work for you will be thrilled to get you back too. It’s Lolita, right?”
I sighed. “Yeah, Lolita. I miss her.”
“Well, she misses you too. I saw her at the park not too long ago, and she grilled me about you. They have her working with—” He thought a second. “Douche-man?”
“Dutchman,” I chuckled. “She just calls him Douche-man.”
“Well, apparently the second you get back, she gets released, and I quote, ‘from the idiot box’, and will be allowed to return to sitting where she belongs at the desk outside your office.”
I smiled wide. “Okay, I better get my ass over there first thing tomorrow morning then.”
“No,” Joe barked loudly. “Tomorrow you’re gonna spend the day home with me, just the two of us. That’s what I want.”
“Okay.” I hugged him tight, loving the way he turned in my lap, arms around my neck, holding on tight. “Whatever you want.”
He sighed loudly as I nuzzled my face into his hair, and I felt everyone around me take a breath and calm.
“What are you doing?” I heard Malic say.
“Joe’s in Marcus’s lap. I wanna sit in yours,” Dylan replied matter-of-factly. “Just ’cause he’s drunk off his ass doesn’t count.”
At which point Joe snorted out an indignant hiccupping laugh, hugged me tight, and turned around to face the others.
“Sorry,” he sighed.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Ryan said.
And it was the truth.
IX
I wasn’t sure what to do—call or simply show up—so a day later, as Joe had requested, I went with just showing up at my office because I had always been the guy who dove into the deep end. It was really the only way to be. So, swaddled up in Armani, I rode the elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor but could get no further than the double glass doors. A woman I had never met before leaned out ten minutes later.
“Hi.” She smiled wide, looking me over with an appraising eye. “You must be Marcus Roth.”
I cleared my throat. “How do you know?”
“My boss said that if a tall, handsome man should get to the front doors and not come in, but just pace outside, I should call her right away. I’m thinking it’s you.”
It was time to breathe, so I tried. “It’s me. Who are you?”
“Suzie, Suzie Jones.”
“Nice to meet you, Suzie Jones.” I smiled, offering her my hand.
She took it, squeezed it, and beamed up at me. “I called Mrs. Kessler. She’s coming.”
I straightened my tie first, then my cuffs. “She said handsome, not gorgeous?”
“She should have said ‘hot’, Mr. Roth.” She smiled big. “Or edible.”
I arched an eyebrow for her. “Thank you,” I said as I saw Helene trotting toward me. I had never seen her move so fast, and from the stunned looks of people leaning out of their offices, frozen as she passed them in the hall, I was not the only one who was surprised.
“I didn’t know she could run.”
“I didn’t know she would,” I sighed, opening my arms.
Helene rushed past the cute little receptionist and flung herself into my arms. It was wildly unprofessional, which meant the display came right from the heart.
“Who knew you liked me this much,” I chuckled as I held her.
She squeezed tighter so I understood.
Walking into my brownstone after six that evening, I opened the door and was hit by the heavenly smell of garlic. I realized instantly that I was starving. Lunch had been at noon, and even though I had not planned to stay all day, I had ended up doing it anyway.
“Hello,” I called out.
Joe leaned out of the kitchen. “Hey.”
I dropped my keys on the shelf, locked the door behind me, and put my laptop bag on the couch as I passed it on my way to him.
He smiled at me as I walked up to him. “How was your day, baby?”
I slid my hand around the back of his neck, stroking over his nape before I tipped his head back so I could kiss him. “Long. Yours?”
“Hectic, but I wanna hear everything about your first day back.”
I took his hand and led him back into our large, newly renovated kitchen. Joe had put all his energy into the house while I was missing, and the improvements, ordered by him, supervised by Julian, were extensive and stunning. All the new stainless steel appliances, especially the refrigerator big enough that Joe could hide in it, were amazing. “What’d you make?”
“Roast chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli with fennel, and salad. I hope that’s okay.”
“Jesus, Joe, of course it’s okay. I don’t deserve you.”
“Sure you do,” he assured me, lifting his chin for another kiss that I willingly bestowed.
After I changed, we had dinner and sat at the table and told each other about our days, the friends, the crazy people, and the little things that didn’t matter to anyone else. While I was doing the dishes and he was drying, he told me that he’d gotten an e-mail from Shane earlier that day.
“Oh? What did it say?” I was interested.
“Can I say first that you need to fix the voice-activated software on my laptop.”
“Why’s that?”
“Ryan thought it would be funny to screw with it, so now every time I read e-mail it gets read to me by some Eastern European call girl.”
My iced tea went down the wrong hole.
“It’s not funny, Marcus.”
“No, not at all.”
He growled at me.
“Tell me what Shane said,” I chuckled.
“Oh, well, he told me that he was sorry for everything from being so weak that a witch could possess him—that wouldn’t have happened to one of you guys?”
“No,” I told him. “And it wasn’t possession. She made a doppelganger and inhabited it, but still, if you know yourself, if you’re confident, a clone cannot be made. It’s too hard.”
“Oh
.”
“Go on.”
“Well, he just said that he was really sorry and that he wished that things could have been different with us.”
