In that moment, as the worry in her face dissolved to relief and a mist of tears, he realized that he knew three things without question: He loved her. He trusted her. And, somehow, his mother had to be wrong. He wasn’t sure how, or what he could do to prove it, but she was wrong. Myrinne was… Myrinne. She wasn’t working for anyone else, wasn’t plotting behind his back. He loved her, believed in her.
More, she was his. And anybody who wanted to mess with her was going to have to go through him to do it… including his mother’s ghost.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
September 17
Four days to the equinox; three months and
four days until the zero date
Monterey, California
“I’m sorry, sir,” the little blue-haired docent said, “but that particular piece has been relocated. It was a last-minute substitution into the display we sent out for tonight’s gala.”
“For—” Sven stopped himself. “Right. The gala.” He didn’t need to take another look around the wood-paneled, elegantly appointed Playa Maya Museum or at the rock on the docent’s ring finger to have his mental cash register give a cha-ching. Of course they needed funding, and a chichi party would be par for the area. “Are there any tickets left? We had planned on attending, but things came up—you know how it is—and I never got around to RSVPing.”
Her lashes fluttered down over eyes gone suddenly bright and interested. “As a matter of fact, yes, there’s one stateroom left.”
Cara turned from the display of three-legged pots she had been pretending to study. “Stateroom? The gala’s on a cruise ship?” She frowned prettily, somehow managing to look a little ditzy, which he would’ve thought impossible. It was the third or fourth time she had slipped into a conversation with the museum staff with a perfectly timed question, bouncing off his conversational openers until they had the information they needed without the other person ever suspecting they were being pumped.
She was wearing sleek, upscale black, with her hair in a twist that showed the white in a repeating pattern that made him want to touch. Then again, pretty much everything about her had his hormones on red alert, and had since Anna zapped them to the drop site and disappeared, leaving them alone together, far from Skywatch. What was it Reese had said about it being good to get some distance? Shit, as far as he could tell, that was a matter of perspective. For her and Dez it might be a good break. For him and Cara… dangerous. He was far too aware that they were away from witnesses, away from judgment. And now it was looking like their quick in-and-out was going to turn into an all-night affair, unless they could figure out how to get at the screaming skull before the gala.
“It’s just an overnight trip,” the docent said brightly. “You’ll be back bright and early in the morning. Shall I ring you up for that last stateroom, then?”
Overnight. Brilliant. “Sure, thanks”—he belatedly glanced at her name tag—“Doris.” He touched Cara’s arm and together they followed her to the gift shop, where he handed over the magic plastic—aka one of the limitless AmExes that were linked to the Nightkeeper Fund—and didn’t let himself look at the number when he signed the slip.
Meanwhile, Cara chirped away, pleasantly wringing Doris dry of information about when, where, and how the screaming skull was being moved and displayed. The answers pretty much added up to there being no way in hell for them to get at it before the party. Seeming entirely unfazed by the prospect of spending the night, Cara burbled, “Is there anything we need to know about the gala? Dress code, silent auction, that sort of thing?”
“The dress is black and white.” Doris leaned over the counter toward Sven, giving him a whiff of something lavendery and old-ladyish. “And between you and me, the food isn’t very good—it’s supposed to be Mayan, but one of the board members is some sort of health nut and pitched a fit, so dinner is going to be faux-veggie Mayan. The staff did their best, I’m sure, but it’s all very… healthy.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’m smuggling in a couple of Big Macs and some homemade brownies to hold me over.”
Despite his inner turmoil, Sven grinned. Old Doris might’ve just hustled him for a few thou—okay, he peeked—for what had to be the most expensive room on the ship, but a fellow junk-fooder couldn’t be all that bad. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he assured her, and sent her an eyebrow wiggle on his way out the door, making her laugh and shoo him away.
Outside the museum, he and Cara found a small, secluded spot among the lush landscaping, and hunkered together to call Anna and update her on the situation. After a quick confab with Dez, she came back on the line, her voice slightly distorted as she said, “If you get in trouble, call me and I’ll come for an emergency evac. Otherwise, I’ll meet you on the dock in the morning. I’d rather not have to target a ’port onto a crowded boat in the middle of the Pacific.”
“In other words,” Cara said dryly after they signed off, “Dez said to leave us alone together for the day to duke it out.” She didn’t meet his eyes when she said it, though, and a faint flush stained her cheeks.
“It’s not the worst idea.” He leaned back and looked up at the sky, which was almost painfully blue through a feathering of brilliant green leaves. The day was bright and sharp, the air subtly scented with flowers, the niche a perfect little spot for a kiss… and three months from now, it could all be gone if the Nightkeepers and winikin didn’t get their shit together. Which meant that he and Cara needed to get to work. But when he looked back and found her sitting there with her eyes closed and her face turned up to the sun, something shifted in his chest. She looked peaceful, almost happy. It wasn’t until he saw the difference in her that he realized just how tense she was at Skywatch, like she was always braced for the next disaster. And he didn’t want to put that look back on her face. “Fuck it. Let’s play hooky.”
Her eyes flew open, then narrowed. “That’s so not happening.”
“Why not? They’re not expecting us back until morning, and we can’t do anything with the skull until the gala. We’ve got all day.” He shifted to face her but didn’t let himself reach out. This wasn’t about sex; it was about… Shit, he didn’t know. He just knew that they needed this. “Come play with me, Cara,” he said softly. “I think we could both use a day off.”
Come play. He used to be the guy who surfed instead of studying but aced his tests anyway, the guy who was always the first one into the pool and the last one to leave the party. When had he forgotten how to play? When had he gotten so freaking serious? The answer was right in his heart, though: He had stopped being that guy when he bonded with Mac. It was the first time in his life that he had made a real and lasting commitment to something, putting him on a different track with the magi. He was their hunter now, just as much a killer as Michael with his death magic. And, damn it, he wanted to play again.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” The shadows in her eyes tugged at him, moved him, and suddenly there was nothing he wanted to do more than take them away—for a few hours, at least.
And he thought he knew how. “Come sailing with me.” The ocean was the one thing they had in common as actual people.
Her gaze sharpened. “That’s not fair.”
“So sue me.… But do me a favor and wait until after we’ve run away to sea for a few hours.” His voice dropped. “Think of it—the wind in our faces, the sound of the waves, the feeling of the boat moving under us…” And in thinking of it, he yearned for the days when that had been his whole world, back before the Nightkeepers, the magic, and Mac. Maybe he’d been young, cocky, and irresponsible, but he’d been, at his core, happy.
He didn’t know whether she was humoring him or if she too missed her days on the water, but she hesitated only a few seconds before she nodded. “Okay. I… Okay, let’s do it.”
Feeling like the bell had just rung on the last day of classes, he surged to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go find ourselves a marina.”
She joined him, eyes lightin
g with a glint of the excitement that was suddenly racing through him—not the toxic restlessness that dogged him when he stayed in one place too long, but the anticipation of the rush and the roar of the ocean.
“You find the marina and charm someone into renting you a boat you’ll be happy with. Text me when you’ve got something and I’ll meet you there.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“Shopping.” Her lips twisted in a rueful smile. “We both need bathing suits… and unless I miss my guess, we’re short on some black and white.”
“I’ll do it.” The words were out before he knew what he was saying.
Her startled eyes flew to his. “Wait. What?”
“I’ll do the shopping. You find us a boat.” And if that wasn’t a vote of trust, he didn’t know what was. But with her wearing his mark on her wrist, the last thing he wanted was for her to do his chores.
Faint color stained her cheeks. “Are you sure?”
Yeah, if it made her look like that… then yeah, he was sure. “Positive. Let’s go.”
The next hour was, mercifully, a blur that mainly consisted of walking into the first high-end place he saw that had a tux in the window on one side and a sparkly dress on the other and throwing himself on the clerk’s mercy.
The bathing suits were easy enough—after getting a baleful look for his semiobscene charade of, “She’s about this big,” he texted Cara for the info the saleslady wanted, and then went off to the other side of the store for a pair of trunks and the joy of having his inseam politely groped. The tux was a no-brainer—he just nodded and let the sales guy go to town with the caveat of, “Anything, as long as I can walk out with it”—and when the ladies’ attendant came back with three gowns she thought would work, he “eenie, meenie, miney, mo’d” it… and then picked the one he liked because it sparkled like the sea in bright sunlight, washing everything to white and glitter. And when he reached the register and a gleam of black and white caught his eye, he added it to the pile and got a gush of thanks in return.
This time he went ahead and looked at the total, and he chuckled when he signed off. Granted, it wasn’t as fun as back when Jox was handling the purse strings—it’d been entertaining to watch the poor guy twitch when Alexis had killed a rented BMW and left it on the AmEx—but it still felt just illicit enough for him to get a kick out of it.
It took him fifty-two minutes from in to out, and when he hit the street lugging a bunch of bags, he was feeling pretty damn proud of himself. And, as he headed for the marina, he caught himself whistling and realized that, for that precious moment, he was at peace, headed out to sea with Cara. It might’ve been one of the fantasies he’d had down south of the life he would’ve liked to live if he could’ve done anything he wanted. But for today, it was real.
Ditching his purchases for the gala in a couple of guest lockers, he headed for the water with the bathing suits, still whistling.
“Hey!” She waved from a slip halfway down the dock, where she sat perched on the gunwale of a jaunty motorboat with sleek lines and a big-ass engine. When he came level with her, she said, “I went with horsepower over wind power so we’d be certain to make it back in time for the gala.” A grin lit her face. “And because I feel like going really, really fast.”
“Then let’s get going. Fast.”
They set about casting off, working smoothly as a team, just as they had back at the museum. And as they did, he made only a token effort to hold back a surge of pure male appreciation for a gorgeous woman dressing up a powerful machine. With her hair slicked back into a tight braid and the gleam off her narrow black sunglasses mimicking the startling white streak in her hair, wearing a new polo shirt emblazoned with the marina’s logo over her own black pants, she could have passed for anything from an employee to a rich owner, and would’ve gotten second and third looks no matter what. More, she moved about the boat with the easy grace of someone who hadn’t just spent a few months aboard a whale-watching boat, but was a natural, to boot.
She turned around, caught him looking, and went still. He fully expected her expression to flatten out, maybe go annoyed. But then her lips curved and her eyes warmed, and she called, “Less staring and more doing, mister!”
His heart kicked a funny beat and he snapped a salute. “Aye, Captain.”
That set the tone for the afternoon, as they roared out to sea and then up the coast with the throttle wide-open and the wind in their faces. They didn’t talk much, didn’t touch each other aside from a friendly shoulder or hip bump in passing as they traded off on driving, or maneuvered around the narrow space belowdecks where she had stored food from the marina’s snack bar, which was predictably overpriced but not half-bad.
Beyond the galley was a low-ceilinged room with a wide sleeping platform, but they kept the door shut by unspoken consent and stayed mostly on deck, breathing the salty air and leaning into the whip of the wind. And although they both kept a sharp eye on their surroundings and had weapons hidden beneath their clothes or, once they were in their bathing suits, close at hand, the threats all seemed mercifully far away.
At noon, as they throttled down to putt-putt past a sea lion rookery and did bad impressions of the hugely raucous creatures, Sven was as relaxed as he’d been in the past… gods, he didn’t even know how long, eased by the roll of the waves beneath the boat and the way they could just be together, without chattering or trying to impress each other.
At two, as they turned back with a shared look of reluctance, he was in a pleasant haze brought on by the warm sun, moist sea air, and her company. And it wasn’t that she was so unobtrusive that he could pretend she wasn’t there, that he was alone as he often preferred. Exactly the opposite, in fact, as he found himself turning toward her to point out the things he saw—here a small pod of dolphins, there a rocky outcropping that should be a postcard and probably was, and beyond it a cormorant just coming up from a dive and hopping up onto a rock to cock his long black wings and hang himself out to dry.
Gods above, he thought as she laughed up at him, her expression open and animated, and so damn beautiful it made his heart hurt. Why can’t it always be like this?
Why couldn’t they just be two normal people who’d met in a normal way—at a bar, on the beach, somewhere that didn’t come with the rules and ungodly pressure of Skywatch? If this was the kind of thing she was picturing when she talked about the life she wanted to lead after the war, he could see now how it could be a powerful motivator. He’d never really thought that way, never really looked beyond the war. Now, though… it twisted him up inside to know that if they were seeing her future now, he wouldn’t be in it. Not only because he believed her when she said she was going to walk away and not look back, but because his instincts said so. He was no prescient, but somehow he was certain that whoever the guy was in her future happy day on a boat, it wasn’t him.
He must have stared at her too long, because she tipped down her sunglasses to look at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” When she didn’t look convinced, he crossed to her and took her hand. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t pull it away, not even when he brushed his lips across her knuckles. “Right now, in this moment, it’s nothing.”
She shook her head and reclaimed her hand, but squeezed his fingers in parting. And for the next couple of hours they were mostly silent, lost in their separate thoughts.
Still, at five, as they motored back into the marina and did the seesaw routine required to slide the boat back into its original position, crowded one among many, he didn’t want to let go of the day.
In the past, by now he would have been chafing for some time by himself. Instead, when she would have hopped out of the boat he talked her into one more soda, a few more minutes of them quietly chatting about nothing in particular—the view, the birds, the strangeness of being on the water after spending so long inland, and how quickly it felt like home. He didn’t want to leave, didn’t want the day to be over.
<
br /> “It’s not over, not really,” she pointed out when he said it aloud. “But it is time to shift gears, get suited up, and head for the gala.” Her fingers worked at the beads of condensation on her can of Diet Coke, suggesting that she was tensing up and getting excited for the op, just as she had been that morning.
He couldn’t blame her—the cloak-and-dagger stuff was pretty cool, and he was usually just as excited to get rolling. He wasn’t, though.… If anything, he wanted to full-throttle it back out of the bay and not look back.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this, he thought but didn’t say. The equinox was only a few days away and they needed the screaming skull. So instead, silently vowing to make damn sure she made it out in one piece no matter what, he said only, “Promise me you’ll be careful?”
Her eyes sparked, but she must have seen something in his face, because after a brief hesitation, she nodded. “Okay, I’ll promise… if you do the same.”
How long had it been since anyone had told him that before he headed off into action? Shit, he didn’t know, just like he didn’t know why it hit him so hard now, punching a tight fist beneath his heart. Or, rather, he knew, but it was better if he pretended he didn’t. Not because Carlos was worried about his magic and focus, or even because of the other winikin, but because she had been right to call him on his bullshit. He didn’t get to have her unless he was ready and willing to be there for her a hundred percent… and that was the one thing he knew he couldn’t give her.
Damn it all.
He could give her this, though. “Yeah. I promise.”
Her expression firmed, going more serious than it had been only moments before, as if she had caught some of his mood. “Okay, then. Let’s do this.”
They headed for the marina’s clubhouse, where she had gotten day passes as part of the rental, and they separated to their respective locker rooms to get gala’d up.
Magic Unchained Page 24
