I stared at her for a moment, stunned speechless.
“You did not just say that,” I said. “For the record, lesbian sex is not sloppy seconds. It counts, both in practice, and for the purposes of magical virginity—”
“Of course lesbian sex ‘counts.’ I didn’t mean—” Jewel began, then shook her head. “But if there’s no, uh, penetration, real penetration, then I don’t understand why it, uh, ‘counts’ as sex for the purposes of magical virginity—”
“Oh, what kind of lesbian magician are you?” I asked, opening the cabinet, carefully withdrawing the engraved glass tube with its long horn, holding it up at her eye level. “But, for the record . . . you lose magical virginity through interpenetrating auras.”
Her eyes went even wider as she inspected the long, gleaming, spiral horn. This one was recently shed, just weeks old, and looked unreal—a shimmering spiral, translucent and gossamer, glittering silver threads woven through it picking up so much light it looked like it was glowing.
Of course, with horn this new, maybe it was.
I pulled out the needle case the horn had been resting on—a narrow mahogany box that held the remnants of my last horn and the needles I’d made from it. I set the case on my glass desk, and gently put the horn cylinder on it. Then I closed the shades and killed the lights.
The horn gleamed in the dark, an icicle of light, sparkling as echoes of sunlight rippled through the slow threads woven through the horn. It was so beautiful, even I gasped, but Jewel was no longer looking—her head had been turned by the magical pigments in my case.
In the magic light of the horn, the glass case glowed to life, shimmering colors shifting from vial to vial as slow echoes of magically filtered sunlight resonated with first one kind of pigment, then another, a dozen principal colors and thirty mix-in pigments: prismatic gold, newts-eye green, firecap red, butterfly blue, dandelion yellow, coals-eye black. In the slow kaleidoscope of the unicorn horn, the case became a Technicolor display of fireflies.
I stood behind Jewel, one hand on her shoulder. Eventually, Jewel turned her head.
“Magic tattooing is a little more . . . complicated than fire magic, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. Between banging my head, stumbling through forms of power, and watching all Jewel could do, magic fire seemed complicated enough. But Jewel swallowed, turned away—then saw the horn, and clapped her beautiful, delicate hands to her face with a squeal of glee.
“Oh my God!” she said. “Oh my God! It’s glowing! It’s really glowing!”
“That it is,” I said, leaning over her as she leaned over it. It sat in rings of etched glass that protected it from stray mana and, well, “spirits,” if you believe in such things. After seeing that dragon, I was less of a skeptic. “I’ll make the needles for your tattoo from it.”
“Does . . . does every tattoo use a brand new needle? For health or something?”
“Every time,” I said. “For health reasons, of course, but for the art too, and most of all for the magic. You don’t want some scratcher muddling your hide with a worn-out needle filled with stray mana traces it picked up from half a dozen other pigments.”
Jewel leaned closer to the horn, still not touching it. “You don’t like scratchers, do you?”
“I love my work,” I said, standing, oddly irritated. I sat down on the edge of the butcher’s block, the cabinet to my back. “No, that’s not it. I care about the people getting tattoos. They’re permanent marks. Every time you pick up the needle, you have to give it your A game.”
Jewel turned around. She stared up at me, an unreadable expression on her face. Then she turned around, carefully picked up the edges of the mahogany box without touching the horn atop it, and turned around, proffering it to me. I took it and locked it back in the cabinet.
When the cabinet clicked, her arms wrapped around me. She squeezed me, just for an instant, then spun me round, laced one hand in my deathhawk, and pulled me down to her.
———
Her wet lips touched mine, I smelled patchouli, and my mind dissolved into bliss.
41. All Yours
“You,” Jewel said, kissing my knee, “are the most flexible person I’ve ever met.”
We lay in my bed, afraid to move. I didn’t want it to be over. I lay behind her, curled about her, right leg hooked over her, knee drawn up to her chin, toes downward between her thighs, pointed, like a blade. I caressed her cheek with my right hand, then set my hand on the bed and lifted. I slid my left hand down from above her, down her back, under her curvy rump and beneath, seizing my own big toe, drawing it against her. She gasped. Her thighs clenched.
“Ohhh,” she breathed. “How do you do that? Your hands are everywhere.”
“Long arms,” I said, slipping my right arm down around her breasts, my hands once again cradling her cheek. Everywhere I touched her . . . “You are so soft.”
“And you are so strong,” she said, touching my biceps. Her fingers played over them, warm, sliding against my skin and sweat. “Are you a tattoo artist . . . or a weightlifter?”
“Both,” I said. “But most of my muscle is from being a martial artist.”
Jewel shivered a little, then curled up even more. “I’m not into fighting.”
“You don’t have to be,” I lied. Then I realized we were intimate now. I couldn’t start a relationship based on lies. I had to tell her what I really thought, regardless of consequences. “I don’t really believe that—everybody should know how to defend themselves.”
“Or become a pacifist,” she said.
“Or become comfortable getting your ass kicked,” I said.
“Is that what you were doing?”
“I said kicked, not licked.”
She laughed, and I released her, rolling on my back. Jewel had been so wonderful. She wasn’t “experimenting,” or just “curious,” or inhibited—she knew what she was doing. Tribadism wasn’t a dirty word to Jewel, and she held no expectations that interfered with our enjoyment.
She was a sub, but didn’t demand that I act as a domme. She was extremely experienced, but didn’t press me any further than I wanted to go. Even her odd hemp undergarments revealed her relaxed nature. They were shibari, Japanese rope bondage, but when I asked about them, asked about something she was so obviously into that she never went without it, she just shrugged and said, “Sure, that’s my thing, but I’m in no rush, Dakota.”
She was so refreshing. When Savannah and I had dated, we were just learning. Michael too. I barely remembered the parade of clumsy, groping men and shy, halting women in the drunken stupor I fell into as I dropped out. Then Calaphase—ouch. I drew a sharp breath.
“You’re glowing,” Jewel said, hand brushing gently down my thigh. “Literally.”
I looked at her. She was sitting up, all soft curves in the shimmering light. I stared at her fondly, looking at the strange almost-tattoos she had. Then I realized there was nothing to illuminate her in my dark, spare bedroom, and I sat up and looked in the dresser mirror.
I was the light in the darkness. My tattoos were shimmering with magical power. Of course; skindancing was based on body movement . . . and sex was the best dancing of all. My skin glimmered with magical afterglow, just a hint, just enough to see my outline without detracting from the glow of the magical circuits rippling over my body.
My Dragon slid over my body, slow, sinuous, luxuriating in the afterglow of power. Now I could see what Arcturus had said about it reflecting my intent—when I wanted to fight, it reared for battle; when I wanted to be intimate, it caressed me like a second lover.
I drew a breath, and a pulse of power rippled across the body of the Dragon. Mana sparkled through the jewels, glittering flares escaping into the air like stardust. Roses bloomed, releasing wafts of mana; butterflies flapped, making the mana d
rifting off me coil in the air.
In the mirror, in the light of my magic, we were not a traditional couple, even by lesbian standards. I’m long, muscular . . . lanky; she’s curvy, generous . . . fat, some would say. My tattoos, even her scarification, are beautiful—to us; that taste puts us in a definite minority.
Jewel shifted, looking at me. “Why are you crying?”
“It’s nothing,” I said, wiping the tears. In that magic moment, seeing us both together, I had put him from my mind. I did not want to go back there. But Jewel put her hand on her curvy hip, scowling, and I gave it up. “Just thinking of . . . of my last time with my last boyfriend.”
“Oh, thanks,” Jewel said, turning away. I could tell she was really hurt.
“It’s not like that,” I said, drawing a breath. Jewel looked at me, concerned. “Calaphase wasn’t just the last person I’d been with. He was the first person I’d been with in a while.” I said, staring off. “He was killed in front of me maybe an hour after we hooked up for the first time.”
“And I, somehow, reminded you of him?” she said, horrified. “Oh, God. Quick, call Nyissa! We need to get some bodyguards up in here, pronto—”
“What? No, I—” I began, then stopped. She was smiling, and I snorted. “You—”
“You laughed,” she said simply. “I thought you needed it.”
I took her hand. “You reminded me of him because being with you was such a wonderful experience,” I said. “I pray to God that there are few other similarities.”
“No penis, for one thing,” she said smugly.
“Nor fangs,” I said. “Though you do bite.”
Jewel swallowed. “Fangs? I didn’t think you went in for that . . . that sort of stuff.”
I stared at her. A year ago, I would have said the same thing. But being with Calaphase had opened my eyes to vampires—they were just people. And her “that sort of stuff” line reminded me too much of Saffron’s attitude about tattooing before she pulled the stick out of her ass.
“I’ve been where you’re coming from,” I said. I don’t know what was wrong with that, but it was like I’d slapped her. “No, it’s OK. It took becoming friends with a vampire for me to see I was treating them like ‘the other.’ And once we were friends, things sort of . . . evolved.”
I looked away. Back there again, in that sad space. Son of a bitch.
“Hey, let’s always be honest with each other,” she said. “Even if it hurts.”
I smiled, sure she didn’t realize the door she’d opened. “Fine for you to say, Miss Won’t Teach Me About Fire Magic—”
“Keeping secrets is not dishonest,” she said. “There’s plenty I’m sure Cinnamon has told you in confidence you’d never dream of telling me, and that doesn’t make you dishonest. Can’t you accept I’ve made promises that matter as much to me as Cinnamon’s trust matters to you?”
Slowly, I nodded. “But—”
“But this is magic, and you’re the head of the brand-spanking-new—”
“She said spanking.”
“Ha. The brand-new Magical Security Council, a self-appointed post, if I understand the story right,” Jewel said. “Is there nothing you’ve learned that you wouldn’t feel safe sharing? Nothing that you learned in confidence that you don’t feel allowed to share?”
I nodded again. I did have many, many secrets.
Jewel nodded in response, then nodded a second time.
“Let’s promise—always be honest with each other. We may not—yet—be in a position to share all each other’s secrets. We may never be. I may never learn the intricacies of the MSC, and you may never become a fire initiate. But we can be honest in what we do share.”
“Honest,” I said, extending my hand for an in-air brotherly clasp.
Jewel stared at it a moment. “Honest,” she said, taking my upraised hand, “and on that note, you are the butchest butch I’ve ever dated.”
“Ha,” I said, squeezing her hand back. “Honestly, I’m not—I think you bring that out in me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this role in a relationship.” Then I felt it all rushing back. I pulled my hand away, and my face became a mask. “Sorry. It’s—”
“It’s OK,” Jewel said, pulling closer to me. Her hand fell, very gently, on my knee. “It’s OK. You can let it out. You don’t have to be the big bad butch biker twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty five. You don’t have to be that at all. It’s OK to be hurt. You loved him.”
“I did,” I said, staring down at my hands.
“And he’s gone,” she said firmly. “He’s gone.”
“He’s gone, and I miss him,” I said. Now tears started to flow—not a flood, just a few . . . but each drop was pent-up pain. “Not just him. I’ve got so many regrets. I miss the roads not taken: Calaphase, and Philip, and Savannah. All the things I could have had with them—”
Jewel drew a sharp breath, then drew her hand gently up the curve of my thigh, up over my hip, touching my stomach. “Don’t you have something else now?”
We kissed, glow and glitter and sweet patchouli. My eyes closed, and I lost myself in her soft, wet kisses, her cradling hands, the warm curves of her body against mine.
———
“You don’t have to share,” I said, opening my eyes again at last. “I’m all yours.”
42. A Spring in Her Step
“You have a spring in your step,” Arcturus said.
“She’s datin’ again,” Zinaga said.
I raised an eyebrow. “That I am, God help me.”
True, I was happy to have finally connected with Jewel—but even under the joy of a new relationship, I’d felt a clock ticking these past seventy-two hours leading up to the new moon, getting increasingly antsy for the chance to finally get some answers about my old Dragon.
When the eleventh came, I wound my way back through the red clay and kudzu maze of Blood Rock, and again found Arcturus and Zinaga on his porch like a Deep South version of the minotaur and his wife. But this time, Arcturus was subdued, and Zinaga was beaming.
“What’s his name?” she said with a challenging smile.
“Her name,” I said, “is Jewel. The firespinner we talked about.”
Zinaga’s smile cracked, just a bit, but she recovered. “I’m so happy for you,” she said, but Arcturus harrumphed at her. Then she softened a little bit. “All right, you made your point, Arcturus. If Frost can learn to behave, I’ll try not to shove my foot in my mouth.”
I was already climbing the steps, but Zinaga stood and raised her hand, stopping me. The position left her still a half head above me, looking down, trying to look haughty, with Arcturus standing behind her, watching grimly, arms folded.
“Why are you here, Frost?” she said.
“Because you asked me?” I said, and Arcturus rolled his eyes. Oh, wait—that was the same question he’d asked me, so many years ago. “To learn how to ink magic.”
Zinaga stared down at me in triumph. “So you wanna join our studio?”
I rankled . . . but then thought about what Jewel had said, more than once, about me being arrogant. I was here for their help, and, hell, I needed to learn a new level of humility if I was going to run the Magical Council successfully. Practice made perfect.
“Yes,” I said at last. “Yes, I do.”
Zinaga’s mouth quirked up. “You willin’ to be my apprentice?”
“With all due respect to my former master,” I said with a nod to Arcturus, “yes.”
Zinaga let her mouth fall open, a slight ahhh, like a little orgasm. I looked at her and then Arcturus in alarm, and he shrugged. Then Zinaga shook her head.
“Well, as much as I might like that, you’re outta luck,” she said, raising her hand before I could say anything. “As far as I
’m concerned, you’re way past apprentice. You’re skilled, your book learnin’s powerful stuff, and you’ve put what you learned here to good use—”
“Thanks, I—” I said . . . and then shut up when she glared.
“But you’re not ready to be a part of the studio, because you never finish anything,” Zinaga said. “I’ll sponsor you as an initiate, Dakota, but I insist if you do, that you gotta make a college try at learnin’ everything Arcturus and I wanna teach you, within reason.”
Arcturus shifted on his feet. I looked at him, tilting my head oh-so-slightly at her. Arcturus smiled tightly, then nodded. I think both of us were more proud of Zinaga at that moment than we’d ever been. I’d be her learner if it helped her grow into a teacher.
“All right,” I said, smiling.
“What?” she said, dumbfounded. “Just . . . ‘all right?’ No quid pro quo, no demands—”
“Check her,” Arcturus said. “I think she might be a pod person.”
“I mean, damn,” Zinaga said, “what did that girl do to you, Dakota?”
I laughed. “Quite a lot, as it turns out. Can I come up on the porch now?”
“Sure thing,” Zinaga said. “Well, I don’t care how all gooey you’ve gone now, it won’t last. We’ll have answers for you, but—did you skip food, like I told you?”
“I did not eat,” I said, rising on the porch. I saw why Zinaga had stopped me—I had a head and a half on the both of them. I enjoy being tall, but people don’t enjoy being intimidated, especially when trying to establish authority. “I took you seriously.”
Arcturus and Zinaga looked at each other, then shook their heads.
“Pod person,” he repeated.
“Rocked world,” she shot back.
“I’m standing right here,” I said.
Arcturus and Zinaga welcomed me inside. Before we got started, Arcturus reminded us of the date and asked for a moment of silence. After a brief double take, I nodded. It had been six years, but apparently memories of 9/11 were stronger in rural Georgia than in urban Atlanta, and we all raised glasses of Zinaga’s awful-but-it-grows-on-you limonshine in remembrance. After a grimace and a difficult swallow, Arcturus shook his head, clapped his hands, and took us out to the sandpit to practice.
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