by Gina LaManna
My mind emptied, my lips drawn to his like a magnet, and I sighed as his kiss, soft and sweet, toyed with my mouth. One of his hands moved behind my head, his fingers gentle against my hair.
We lingered like that, deliciously content, for several minutes. The street was empty, and frankly I didn’t care who saw us. It’d been too long since I’d been kissed that way.
“I don’t want you to go to the estate tomorrow,” he said finally, sitting back in his seat, a slightly dazed look in his eyes. “I don’t like the idea of you working there.”
“But—”
“But I know what I’m getting into.” He smiled, running his thumb along my chin. “And I don’t think I can stop you from going. So, I have a proposal.”
“Gee, that was fast. Must have been some kiss, huh?”
“Let me help you.”
“Help?” I raised my eyebrows. “How?”
“I can get you a stun gun and some pepper spray, and a walkie talkie in case you need anything.”
“That sounds a bit excessive for a housekeeping position.”
“Humor me.”
“I’ll consider it,” I said. “But for now, I really need to get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
“I’ll pick you up in the morning and bring you to work,” he said. “Sweet dreams.”
“That’s really not necessary,” I said, remembering my abandoned broomstick. “I can take the bus.”
“I insist. I need to drop off your tools, anyway.”
Since I didn’t particularly feel like taking the bus, I agreed. Then I pressed a chaste kiss against his cheek. “Thank you for the pizza.”
“Goodnight, Ains—” He stopped in the middle of the goodbye, frowning at something behind me.
“What is it?” I looked over my shoulder, but I didn’t see anything.
“I thought I saw something, but it must have been a shadow,” he said, shaking his head after watching the lawn for a long minute. “I’m tired, and I know you are too. I’ll wait ’til you get inside, and then I’ll be back here at eight a.m. sharp—unless you want me to come in with you? Strictly business.”
“I’ll be fine.” I laughed. “You’re seeing things.”
I let myself out of the car and waved. I made it up the path without incident, and gave a final finger wiggle out the door before letting the exterior door shut behind me. Beck nodded back, then pulled away from the curve. I waited another moment before unlocking my apartment and heading inside.
I’d meant to head straight to the bedroom to kick off my shoes, take off my stupid pencil skirt, and get into something a little more comfortable, but I didn’t make it very far.
I had an unexpected visitor waiting for me.
Chapter 21
Sucking in a breath, my heart thumping in the quiet, I recoiled until my back hit the door. “What are you doing here?”
Ace, in all his tan, dark handsomeness, sat at my kitchen table. His hands were folded in front of him, shoulders relaxed, almost like a parent waiting to catch their teenager breaking curfew.
“What are you doing here, Ace?” I repeated. “This is my house.”
Despite Beck’s warning to watch out for Ace, I didn’t feel threatened by his presence. Deep brown eyes stared carefully back at me, the smile on his lips twitching in a mixture of amusement and concern as he weighed his words before speaking. “I came here to check on you,” he began unapologetically. “I knocked on your door and there was no answer. I called your phone, but you didn’t pick up.”
Looking down at my cellphone, I saw that indeed, my phone had powered down, probably from all the curses in the enchanted library and the extended lack of signal. As I turned it back on, I got the beep notification that told me I had one message and three missed calls.
“Sorry, I was at the library,” I said. “They make me turn my phone off when I’m working.”
Ace nodded unconvincingly. “You rushed out of the bar. I was worried.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I should have explained, but when my mind gets going, sometimes I get tunnel vision.”
“You can talk to me, you know.”
I took a few more hesitant steps into the kitchen, dropping my keys on the counter. “Are you hungry? Want something to drink?”
His eyes flicked toward the fridge. “Nah, I’m good.”
“I know that look.” I yanked the door open. “Beer, water, or soda? If you don’t answer, I’m making you tea.”
He laughed. We both knew he hated tea. “I’ll take a beer.”
I handed him one from a local brewery and took another for myself. “Is that really the only reason you came here?” I flicked the cap off with my finger using a quick Pop Charm. I caught the lid before it landed. “You sort of broke into my house.”
Ace didn’t need a Pop Charm to get the top off of his. Large, strong hands twisted until it came right off, a light red indentation on his palm. “I didn’t plan to come inside today.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I said. “You didn’t plan to break in, it just sort of happened?”
“I came here, and I stood outside for an hour. I was worried about you. If you don’t want me here, I’ll go. I debated calling your parents, but it was late, and I didn’t want to worry them. When you ran away like that, I figured something was up, and I didn’t want you dealing with it alone.”
I pointed my beer at him and winked. “Good choice on not calling my parents.”
“So, that’s why I’m here. I only wanted to check on you, and then when I couldn’t get ahold of you, I worried.”
“You never considered the fact that maybe I had a date? Maybe I was out with friends?”
He took so long to consider these options that I took a gulp of beer and shook my head.
“Ace! I do normal things,” I grumbled. “It’s not like I’ve never had a date.”
“I know.”
“Well?”
“Well, I’m not known for being discreet, so I guess I’ll just say what’s on my mind.”
“I’d like that.”
“I was standing outside waiting, calling, and I got this image in my head that maybe you were in trouble.” Looking down at his beer, he looked almost sheepish. “I don’t tend to overthink things, but all of a sudden I couldn’t stop imagining one scenario after the next.”
“Oh, Ace. That’s sweet.”
“I didn’t plan to get caught in here,” he said. “I thought I’d just pop in, make sure you were either safe or gone, and then I’d leave, but as I was leaving, you pulled up with the human. So, I figured I’d wait. To be honest, I’m glad you caught me. I’m happy to see you in one piece.”
“Why of all nights did you come looking for me today?” I asked. “I’ve worked on dangerous cases before, and I’ve run out of the bar in a rush before. What gives?”
He took a sip, his eyebrows pulled together in thought. Eventually, he shook his head. “I don’t know. The look in your eye, I suppose.”
“Tell me why the human police are after you,” I said, changing the subject. “Is it breaking and entering by chance?”
The question didn’t look as if it stunned Ace nearly as much as it should have. “That guy you came home with—did he warn you about me?”
My silence confirmed his suspicions.
“It’s a long story,” Ace said with a sigh. “There are things you don’t know about me, Ainsley. It starts with my brother.”
“You have a brother?” I’d never known Ace to talk about his family, and the news surprised me. He’d always seemed so independent, such a loner, like an only child. “Why don’t you ever talk about him?”
He raised one shoulder, as if succumbing to the pressure of telling me everything. “I suppose I didn’t want you to know where I come from.”
“I don’t judge someone based on their family,” I said gently. “If people judged me based on my family—well, my grandmother at least—they’d think I was a stuck-up snob who supports finis
hing school and tea time.”
Ace laughed, and I joined in. The moment eased the tension.
His eyes raked over the tattoos on my arm. “I suppose,” he said. “My brothers—there are three of them—are not always known for their ability to follow the rules.”
“Is that a polite way of saying they’ve been to jail?”
“It’s a polite way of saying that at any given family get-together, we have about fifty percent attendance rate—and not by choice. Someone is always in trouble for something.”
“You’re not like that, though,” I said. “You’re different. You’re successful, and you run a venue that brings the whole paranormal community together. You should feel proud!”
“It’s hard to feel proud when I get another phone call that my brother is scamming the human tourists on Nicollet Ave with amateur magic,” Ace said, and I sensed he was holding back an eye roll. “Or when my other brother decides to ‘adopt’ half of the cars in the city, change their license plates, and resell them at a markup.”
“Why are they calling you? Aren’t your brothers adults too?”
“They are,” he said. “But they’re my family. So, when I got the most recent call, I went down to Nicollet,” he said, referencing the popular promenade through downtown Minneapolis. The street hosted a variety of activities from parades to farmer’s markets to business folks eating lunch at trendy restaurants. “I caught him performing some stupid ‘magic tricks’ for money. You know MAGIC, Inc. frowns upon using magic to scam humans.”
I nodded. It was unlawful to use magic for financial gain against humans. It was also unethical because, really, they didn’t stand a chance. Most importantly, the practice was dangerous. Sooner or later, the humans always caught on to something suspicious. They might be oblivious, but they were also smart from time to time.
“I tried to stop my brother, but he wasn’t listening to reason. He vanished with the tourists’ money while one of the humans called the cops. When the police showed up, guess who was the only one there trying to sort out a magic trick gone awry?”
“You got pegged?”
“You bet I did.”
“Did they arrest you?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Not really.”
“Ace…what happened? Did you vanish, too?”
He stared into his beer as if it’d give him the answer. “I used a Smoke Screen with a touch of a Hazing Hex to get out of there.”
“Pretty standard,” I said. “I’ve used that same combination before.”
The Smoke Screen combined with the Hazing Hex sent up a cloud of black smoke tinged with some forgetfulness. Anyone nearby—usually humans—suffered a bit of a faulty memory over the following few hours. It was just enough confusion that they didn’t quite believe their memories of the event that’d happened, but not enough for their memory to be wiped completely.
“I should have just stuck it out. We’re not supposed to use magic like that in front of the humans.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ve all been there. Has MAGIC said anything to you?”
He shook his head. “But that friend of yours was there, and he’s not like the rest of the police. Most of the time, a Hazing Hex will have these folks wondering where their belly button is located, but not him. He stayed alert through everything, caught a glimpse of my face, and somehow, he traced me back to the bar. I have the feeling he’s not going to let up until he nails me for my brother’s thefts.”
“Oh, about that,” I said. “You should get a new security guard. I found the detective wandering around outside of your bar.”
“I’m on it,” he said grimly.
“You know, he’s pretty nice,” I found myself saying. I added on quickly, “All I mean is that he isn’t out to pin a crime on someone who didn’t commit it. If you told him the same story—a watered-down, non-magical version—he’d probably understand.”
Ace wrinkled his nose. “Easier to keep dodging him.”
“He thinks you’re dangerous,” I said. “He’s not going to let up.”
“He only thinks I’m dangerous because he doesn’t understand what happened.” Ace finished off his beer and leaned over to drop it in the recycling container. “He can’t understand our kind. That’s why humans and paranormals never mix.”
While he eyed me warily, expectantly waiting for a response, I remained quiet.
“It goes back decades,” he said. “That’s the way it’s always been. The unknown scares humans.”
“Not just humans,” I said. “The unknown scares everyone. There’s not as big of a divide between the two groups as you might think.”
“How do you know?”
The question sounded somewhat accusatory, and the hair on my neck ruffled. “Because I deal with humans—a lot. In my job I protect people who think they’re human,” I said, thinking of Lily Locke. “I talk to humans. I work with them, have cocktails in their restaurants, and confide in them. We’re all the same,” I said. “Some of us just have the ability to fly on a broomstick and others don’t.”
“They’re only kind to you because they don’t know you’re a witch. If they found out about you, things would be different.”
I stood up, a touch of anger in my voice. “That’s not true! They’re nice to me because they like me as a person, like what’s inside.”
Ace stood up on the opposite side of the table. When he spoke, his voice was as soft as death. “My entire family line was killed off by humans; believe me when I tell you they won’t like you when they find out the truth, Ainsley. Face the facts. Humans and us—we were never meant to mix.”
“That sort of attitude is only going to make things worse! That’s what The Faction says.”
The Faction was an extremist group of paranormal creatures, all of whom were intent on ruling the world with a magical fist. They didn’t want peace and harmony; they wanted to sit on thrones above the humans, just like the days of Greek gods and Mount Olympus.
Ace walked toward the door, zipped his jacket higher, and turned to leave. “Look, I like you, Ainsley, a lot. I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t. That means I want to keep you safe, and I don’t like you going around with that cop. It’s dangerous, and it’s a situation that can’t possibly end well.”
“Is that the truth?” My anger suddenly faded, disappearing as I saw a wave of tenderness wash through his eyes. “Or is there something more?”
“That’s all,” Ace said shortly and without conviction.
I clenched my fingers into fists, unable to stop my next words. “Are you sure this has nothing to do with the fact that after all this time, all these years I’ve been coming to your bar and fawning over you, hoping you’d kiss me…now there’s someone else in my life?”
Ace looked like someone had shocked him with a lightning bolt. “What?”
“I have been dreaming of the day you’d kiss me for ages, Ace. I’ve had a crush on you for an embarrassingly long amount of time. You knew it too, didn’t you?”
He watched me silently.
“You saw him kiss me,” I whispered. “Is that why you’re upset? Because he went for it, and you never have?”
“Goodnight, Ainsley,” Ace said, his voice icy as he turned to leave. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
I raced to my bathroom, filled the tub with water and, still fuming, climbed in. I lit a few candles, but that turned out to be a bad idea—I was so angry, I lit the candle with a fireball the size of Mars and the glass container shattered around it.
I swore, then muttered a Cleaning Charm to brush up the mess. When I finished, I lay back in the tub and closed my eyes. Then I wished to disappear…not in a temporary Invisibility Incantation sort of way, but rather I hoped the drain would open up and suck me down, spit me out somewhere across the world and leave all my problems behind.
Since I wasn’t skinny enough to fit down the drain, I stayed put in the bathtub, trying my best to relax with a few sniffs of soothing lave
nder-scented bubbles.
Unfortunately, relaxation was not in the cards for me because on one of my deep breaths, I sniffed too hard and inhaled a huge bubble right up my nostril, the soap burning on the way down. I threw the bottle across the room then sank under the water with my eyes closed, breath held.
Something about the all-consuming silence of being underwater did the trick. As I began to finally relax, the thoughts started flowing, and I found myself wishing I could take back the words I’d said to Ace. He didn’t owe me anything; he’d listened whenever I’d needed to talk, treated me like a friend—it wasn’t his fault I’d harbored secret feelings for him all these years.
Resurfacing, I leaned against the side of the tub and decided to apologize. I wouldn’t do it tonight, not over text; I’d talk to him in person tomorrow…or the next day…just as soon as I sorted out this other business as housekeeper of the castle. After all, it wasn’t like I planned to stay overnight—I’d just get in, find the shadow, and get out.
I’d definitely apologize, I thought, climbing into bed after slipping into a nightshirt. And he’d listen. He had to listen. We’d been friends for so long, he wouldn’t let one awkward moment let everything else go to waste…right? The thought lingered, discomfort on the edge of my mind as I drifted into an exhausted sleep.
Chapter 22
I pretended not to be waiting for Beck to arrive at quarter to eight the next morning.
As I huddled behind the front door of the lobby, I looked through the window for any signs of him approaching. Nothing yet. I checked my phone again, this time surprised to see my boss’s name scrawled across the screen.
“Hello?” I said.
“Ainsley?”
“Mr. Davis,” I said. “Why do you sound so surprised? Didn’t you call me?”
“The phone didn’t even ring. Were you waiting for my call?”
“Of course, boss,” I said. “I always wait for your calls at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t look good on you, Ainsley.”
