by Eden Butler
“Plan on a conversation when I get there.” He might have looked worried when my face popped up too close to the camera on my laptop. I wouldn’t know since I hit the exit button and powered down the machine before he could argue.
“You’ll be paid well if you can get the Elam back.” Bane settled smoothly on my bed as I continued to move around the room gathering essentials, and he didn’t bother looking away when I tugged off my tank to put on a bra behind the half-open closet door.
In the mirror on the back of the door I noticed Bane working his hands together, one of only a couple nervous ticks I knew he had. He had more runes on his skin than I remembered, peeking out beneath the cuff of his long gray t-shirt and others that became visible when he discarded his jacket.
Mortals thought those were only tribal style tattoos. We let them think that. In fact, we didn’t explain anything to the mortals, even if they happened upon our world. Generally, if they sort out who and what we are, they’re too terrified or too convinced their mind is playing tricks on them to understand the complexities of magic.
Bane defied explanation anyway. Mortals looking at him would see only what their eyes told them was true—that the rugged face likely came from a roughneck gene pool; that his stature was the result of hours spent honing and sharpening his physique, that his tattoos were clever designs some artist fashioned out of his imagination on slow shop nights. But none of it was true. No artist inked doodles into glyphs and forms at random. Every line, circle and etching on his skin had meaning.
Those marks were runes, ancient symbols that engendered power; fine art that resulted from study, from sacrifice so that Bane would become more than a gifted wizard. He knew spells that time had buried, rhymes and hexes that evoked power, terror that mages and clerics of every conceivable study had blown into the winds of time. They were literally etched on his body.
My gifts did not demand the sacrifice of blood and pain. But I had studied, not to Bane’s extent, but my runes were there—smaller, simpler, but still very much there.
Mortals would never know what the symbols meant, but that didn’t mean their own instincts wouldn’t keep them from instinctual understanding they held an underlying strangeness and possibly danger. That much hadn’t changed in ten years.
I shut the closet door with a kick of my boot and zipped my leather motorcycle jacket up with a noisy scratch. Bane gave me the once over again. I felt every square inch of my skin warm beneath that close examination, and realized maybe going back with him wasn’t the best idea.
I hadn’t left Crimson Cove because of Bane Illes—I had left despite him. He was just the sort of man that could have easily kept me in that tiny town with his perfect not-a-smirk and the slow, hungry glances of those eyes.
I’d left before Bane had convinced me to stay.
I’d left because staying was all I’d wanted to do.
“You look good.” That seemed a little too honest, something out of character for Bane to admit and he seemed to regret it the moment he spoke. That frown, the heavy dip of his eyebrows made him look annoyed by his own honesty.
Years ago, when I leveled one soul-rattling kiss at him, after nine solid months of those silent stares, Bane had managed a handful of words—small promises I knew he didn’t mean. I’d spent years unable to pull them from my thoughts. But those promises and his just-uttered complement didn’t mean anything to me. It seemed odd, awkward to hear them now. Especially since I was there to do a job, not stroll down memory lane with him.
Still, I’d been a lying fool to deny what he already knew.
“Mr. Iles, so do you.”
Time kept him frozen in my mind. Over the years I recalled those quick, slow glances he’d give me when Mr. Matthews would drone on too long in class. Those glances became longer, slower until we spoke wordlessly. A flick of his lashes, the hooded cast of his eyelids; my breath fanning over my teeth, my lips barely touching as I watched him—those silent moments spoke volumes, and now, sitting there letting him take me in, I wondered if it was the same for him. I wondered if Bane remembered how we were back then, silent and curious, longing and eager but held up by the confines of the classroom and the lives we lived outside of it.
“No one calls me Mr. Iles unless they’re trying to get me to unload my wallet.”
“Technically, I am trying to get you to unload your wallet.”
He let that almost smile return and I got the feeling he was fighting his humor. “For a service.” That last word came out with the smallest hint of a growl and I tried to ignore the sweet little ache in the pit of my stomach.
“Well, yeah,” I tried, standing straighter. The scent of his skin was thick, reminded me of the honeysuckle vines that lined the path around the town square. Blinking did not move my focus from that smell or what it did to my senses so I focused instead on the small bruise under his left eye. It was crescent shaped and turning yellow. “That service.” My voice came out in a rasp despite the jar in my throat when I cleared it. “Let’s discuss that. When were you attacked?” I nodded at the scrape and bruising on his face.
Bane let the humor leave his features and the frown he gave teetered close to the scary side. “Two days ago.”
“And you’re still busted up?”
“I am not busted up.”
Just like a wizard to get defensive. There was nothing worse than a man with a bruised ego along with a busted lip. Add that to a strong, connected wizard whose body should heal hours, not days after an attack and you’ve got the makings of some serious deflection and chest thumping.
“Sorry,” I amended ignoring the frown fracturing the beautiful contours of his face. “I just thought you would have healed by now.”
“I know.” Bane left the mattress with an ease that seemed practiced. A performance that reminded me of a peacock stretching his feathers, but I doubted Bane was the sort to grand stand for a woman. Least of all me. Instead, he closed my suitcase, snapping the lock before he pulled it from the mattress. “You done?”
“Yeah.”
He watched me turn off my lights, that hard gaze following me as the apartment darkened and I tugged a scarf and my bag on. Bane stared at me, a bit longer than necessary, with his jaw working. “I suspect, as does the Oracle, that they used dark magic to inflect the injuries.”
Dark magic to hurt him, blood magic to take the Elam. This sounded like someone who knew what they were doing—the spells and curses would have required more than what both the Oracle and the Crimson Cove covens allowed its practitioners to perform.
That had me thinking of the theft again, and my gift inched back to the Cove and the stolen Elam. Even from here, something felt unsettled, like a sting against my conscience, some unknowable thing that niggled at my awareness. Eyes closed tight, I inhaled, stretching my mind back to what I knew of the Elam, of all the times I’d passed by the town square yet ignored the talisman set there as something customary and usual. My gift took over, sliding my awareness beyond my apartment, through the busy street outside my building, from Brooklyn, Manhattan, through the park, until I could no longer make out the New York landscape, until land and rivers flew past me, dropping me into New Orleans, past the bayou, past the marsh and right into Crimson Cove with its lush pecan groves and the lands split between the higher and lower covens.
In my mind I saw the amulet clearly—worn brass chains stretched out, imbedded into the wooden statue that made one column of the town square gazebo. Those chains connected out, layered beneath the wood awning, right beneath the earth, straight into the hum of energy that ran directly through the town, right into the ley lines that weaved around it. In the center of the Elam, concealed as the single eye of the statue’s whittled, masculine face, was an amulet carved from turquoise, the color dulled by the decades, but power humming from the center of its turtle-faced surface.
The relic was as common to wizards as Founder’s Day was to the entire town. But as my mind prickled with the recall of the Elam’s surface, the beauti
ful craftsmanship and magical ability it took to fashion something that would veil us from the humans’ notice, that image became fractured. As I clamped my fingers into fists, trying to keep them from shaking, the Elam disappeared completely.
“Damn. If the Elam is gone…”
“You didn’t see it?” Bane asked, voice even, but clipped.
“I saw it, then didn’t. Then…then there was blood.”
“We’ve established that.”
The breath released in a long sigh from my mouth. “If that’s true, then whoever took the Elam used Grant blood to conceal the theft. The spell concealing it was forfeited by the founders. Since there are only Grant and Rivers kin left from those lines…well. It could only be someone from one of those two covens.” The tension along my skull eased as I blinked my eyes open.
A thought occurred to me. “The Oracle couldn’t trace it?”
Bane’s frown only deepened with my question and I took his arched eyebrow as answer enough to know I shouldn’t question him. As we walked down the hall and waited for the elevator, I realized that with Bane, one of the last sons of one of the founding covens being the one attacked, there surely would have been a full inquiry. Not only would the Oracle and his team investigate—that was coven protocol—but I assumed the Grants, Bane’s family, would have spared no expense in finding out who’d bloodied his face and taken his blood.
“And they found nothing?”
He punched the Down button as though he had zero patience. There were several calluses across his knuckles, red with barely-healed scabbing. “The nothing is why I’m fetching you, Janiver.”
“Me?” A quick, humorless laugh lifted from my mouth when Bane didn’t explain himself. “Listen, I’ve been away from the Cove for a long time. I’m rusty. My nexus is twisted, blocked.”
I didn’t like the way he watched me or how he kept his attention on me as I moved into the elevator. It wasn’t a lie; I was blocked, stunted from the lines by years of city life. Yes, I could still find things. That would never change, but being separated from my roots, from the lines that fed my nexus—the one source of energy that connected me to the ley lines—made my abilities harder to control. It was one of the main reasons Sam’s call had irritated me so much. I knew with that frantic call my family needed me, but I was completely out of balance, magically. And I hated the possibility of failing them because I had let myself go.
“The Oracle can center you.” Bane sounded too confident, verging on smug. “Besides you don’t look so twisted to me.” The injected humor in his tone set me on edge. I’d never seen Bane laugh, barely smile, in fact. But when that smirk reappeared and he stared down at me, his slow, tempting gaze whispering suggestions he should keep to himself, I got the distinct impression that he found me funny. He shrugged, bringing his gaze back to my face. “Sam told me about that little kidnapped girl you rescued in the city, and the missing guy you found in the desert last summer.”
“You and my brother. That’s a dangerous partnership.”
“Sam’s my friend. Especially since he helped me with a job two winters ago.” Bane rubbed his neck, the second nervous tick I’d seen from him. “This thing happened with the Elam and Sam was at my door within the hour. He thought you’d be the best person for the job and I wanted to help your family out since…”
“Since Ronan screwed us.”
A terse frown shadowed across his face and Bane shrugged, passing off my brazen description of my brother in law’s behavior. “Your father suggested we try getting someone else to help, but I figure if anyone can find the Elam, it’s you.”
Bane was the type who was stingy with his compliments. One coming from him was something special. I should have been flattered. I should have at least smiled, but Bane had always made me nervous enough that I forgot all the things I should have done. He was like a shot of whiskey that burns all the way down; the one you know you shouldn’t take but can’t seem to keep away from.
For a moment his flattery won me over and I stared at him a little longer than I should have, brushing my hair offer my shoulder to distract myself from that heavy stare. “Yeah, Papa would resist coming to me.” No need to elaborate. Bane didn’t need to know what had kept me from the Cove all these years or why my father was fine with me staying away.
The elevator stopped at the lobby and Bane ushered me through the open doors with his hand on my lower back. The static of his fingers was electric and I managed to cover the quick shudder that ran down my spine at that touch. It wasn’t the first time I’d caught this feeling or the first time the weight of his touch had me forgetting where and who I was.
“Miss Benoit!”
Damn. Not again. Two steps out of the elevator and old man Dinkens found me. That man was relentless, likely high and had the worst timing in the world.
“Mr. Dinkens. What can I do for you?”
“The packages, Miss Benoit. There are three now. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to open them?” The old man moved his long nails through his gray and white whiskers and stepped at my side when Bane glared at him. He reeked of three-day old tuna and two-dollar beer. “I suspect they are chocolate, perhaps that whiskey I know you favor.”
“Mr. Dinkens, you’re sweet, but I can’t take gifts from you.” Dinkens had been my downstairs neighbor for three years. You bring a lonely old man one Thanksgiving dinner from the shelter where you volunteer once and the attention doesn’t stop.
“My dear, it’s just a trifle, nothing at all but the return of your kindness.”
“And still not appropriate.” When the old man took hold of my hand, Bane stepped forward and the grip he held on my suitcase tightened. “Mr. Dinkens, this is a family friend from back home.” Stepping next to Bane may have deflated the old man’s gusto a bit but Bane’s size and presence also tampered down his enthusiasm. “I’ll be going back to my hometown for a while. Would you mind telling the Super to hold my mail until I can send him a forwarding address?”
Dinkens had wrinkles under his eyes, and a bunch of severe dents over his forehead. Slipping his gaze from me to Bane and back again exaggerated those lines and made him look much older than his sixty years. “Going back?” He shuffled toward me at my nod, stopping only when Bane moved a half a step in front of me. “To Louisiana?”
“Yes.” A quick elbow in Bane’s rib that Dinkens didn’t seem to notice and the wizard’s shoulders relaxed. “It's a family matter. Would you mind telling the Super for me? It’s a little last minute.”
“Of…of course, my dear.”
The old man watched Bane closely, looking worried, maybe a bit nervous until I took his hand again. “Here.” He grabbed the card I’d slipped from my back pocket and offered it to him. “This has my cell number on in.” When Dinkens’ eye lit up, excited, I pulled the card back. “It would be a hardship if my phone started ringing all the time. I’ll be busy with my family’s situation, so please only use this as a last resort, if the Super needs me. I’m trusting you to guard my privacy.” Those whiskers twitched with the old man’s frown but then stilled as he nodded before I finally handed over the card. “Thank you. You…” I cleared my throat, not eager for Bane to overhear me. “You keep yourself fed and inside when the snow comes, okay?”
“Of course, my dear. Of course,” he said, holding my card tight between his fingers. Mr. Dinkens watched us walk out of the lobby and remained there until I waved at him through the front doors.
“Boyfriend?” Bane asked, handing over my suitcase to his guard when the trunk popped.
“Yes, that’s my thing now. Old drunks who forget to shower.”
He opened the door, waving me into the warmth of the Cadillac’s heated interior. October in New York was not cold by Northern standards, but the Louisiana girl in me still caught a chill when temperatures dipped below fifty. It seemed Bane held the same cold-natured habits, and had slipped on his jacket when he slid in next to me, folding his arms against the chill. The movement brought my attentio
n back to the tempting scent of his skin and the warmth from his large frame that didn’t come from the seat warmers under my ass.
“We have a plane ready at LaGuardia.”
“Lovely.”
That gaze felt hot against my cheeks when he looked at me. “You’d rather deal with a commercial flight?”
“I’m not complaining, Mr. Iles.”
“Jani…”
I jerked when he brushed his hand against my leg. It may have been accidental, but that didn’t keep me from a knee jerk desire to get out of that car. God only knew how I’d survive the four-hour flight alone with him on his family’s plane.
“I forgot what a snob you were about money.”
“I’m not a snob about money, Bane.” My leg squeaked against the leather seats when I moved closer to the window. “In fact, I’m a fan.”
“Just not higher coven money.”
“No.” The look I gave him likely wasn’t one an employee should shoot at her boss, not if she wanted to keep her job. But I’d spent ten long years away from the Cove, away from the by-or-leave attitude given to the likes of the higher, wealthier covens. I’d stopped reserving my contempt for them the day I left. “Not the higher covens.”
He nodded, moving his lips together as though he needed a second to think of something diplomatic to say. “And what does that say about your opinion of me?”
That was something I couldn’t answer. Not even when he looked at me as though my opinion mattered. As though I did.
I can’t stop touching you, I heard, recalling what hearing that same line had done to me ten years ago, when I was eighteen. Remembering that I’d wanted to hear him say things like that to me forever.
I don’t want to ever stop touching you.
But he had stopped touching me, because I made him stop. And I had made him stop because it would not do to hold onto something I could never have. Not if he was going to lead his coven.
Just then, as he sat next to me, leaning closer, his knee and elbow edging toward me, I doubted he was even aware of how he always seemed to gravitate toward me. Although I had closed my eyes, and was resting my head against the window, it did little to keep him away and keep me off his radar. Just as he had years ago, he sat too close and I wondered why he always did that. Even in school when those looks lingered for months, when the others shied away from him and he didn’t notice, when I unconsciously leaned toward him, Bane would match me. He’d always invited himself into my personal space.
