by Jayne Faith
I had enough time to think about how bad it would be to slam my head against the pavement before my feet flew out from under me.
Wincing, I tensed against the coming impact. But instead of ice and asphalt, I slammed into a solid body. Strong arms wrapped across my back and around my waist.
“Caught ya,” said a deep voice.
I looked up into the amused face of Caleb Montgomery, the handsome, rusty-haired Supernatural Special Forces guy with sparkling green eyes who’d invited me out when we were finishing up at the construction site job.
There was a little smattering of applause from a few passersby, and I realized that Caleb held me in a dip, as if we’d just finished a dance number and this was our final pose. He carefully levered me upright, planting his foot against mine so I wouldn’t slide, and then kept a hold of my arms.
“I didn’t see you inside,” he said, and it took me a moment to realize he meant the bar.
I shook my head. “I wasn’t in there. I came from upstairs.”
His brows rose.
“Not an apartment,” I said. “The healer I use has a clinic up there.”
“Ah.” He seemed glad about that clarification.
“Thanks for that,” I said as he released my arms.
I twisted around, looking for my fallen phone. Bad idea. My head swam, and I nearly lost my balance again. Caleb grasped my elbow.
“Maybe you need a refund from that healer,” he said, his tone joking but his eyes intent. “Seems like you’re not quite right yet.”
I blew out a breath and ran one hand down my face. “She’s really good. It’s not her fault. She told me I shouldn’t rush off yet,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was telling him those details. “Ugh, I don’t know where my phone went.”
His hand moved to the small of my back, and he guided me forward a few feet toward a big, vintage H3 Hummer parked at the curb. He took my wrist and planted my hand on the passenger door handle, wrapping his fingers around mine to make sure my grip was secured. His warm touch sent a pleasant little zing through me.
“You hang on, and I’ll find your phone,” he said. “Any idea where it might have gone?”
I pointed down the sidewalk with my free hand. “Down there somewhere, I think?”
He turned on the flashlight function on his own phone and began sweeping the little beam of light back and forth, searching. Then he dropped to one knee to peer under a parked compact car. He reached under it and then stood, raising his hand triumphantly.
He wiped it off across the front of his jacket and then handed it to me.
“Oh, thank you,” I said with a sigh of relief, suddenly realizing that if I lost the phone I would have also lost the temporary number where I could reach Zarella.
“Why don’t you sit down a sec?” he suggested, gesturing at the car I was clinging to.
I blinked at the Hummer. “Is this yours?”
“Yeah, my baby. I restored it myself.” He patted the hood and then gently moved me aside so he could open the passenger door. “Here, get in.”
I didn’t have the strength to resist. And I was a little bit afraid I might drive off the road if I tried to get in my truck just yet.
I leaned back in the seat while Caleb went around to the driver’s side, got in, and started the engine.
“Was it the job that drained you?” he asked. It took me a second to clue in to the fact he was asking about the construction site. In some ways that job seemed like ages ago.
I shook my head. “That wasn’t much of a strain,” I said.
“What happened?” he asked. He was leaning forward with his arms draped over the steering wheel, his head turned toward me and his eyes intent with genuine interest.
I sighed heavily. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m a pretty good listener.”
I gave a short little laugh, a polite sound. Part of me wanted to unload everything—tell someone about Damien, Evan, San Francisco, all of it. But there were some things I couldn’t talk about. Like the part about becoming buddies with the most notorious madman since the Nazis.
“C’mon,” he said, gently insisting. “You’ve obviously got a lot on your mind. Does it have anything to do with the disappearance of your old partner?”
I wasn’t sure how he’d heard about Damien, but I wasn’t completely surprised. Caleb was fairly new to Boise, but he and many others probably knew that Damien and I had gone into business together after I was fired from Demon Patrol and he left voluntarily. And I couldn’t exactly hide the fact that on the last several jobs awarded to our company, Perfect Circle Supernatural Services, I’d been the only one to show up for the work.
“In a way, yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
“What happened there?” he asked. “Or is that prying too much?”
I turned to look at him. “I’m not trying to be cryptic, but you probably wouldn’t even believe me if I told you.”
He crooked a smile at me. “Maybe. How are you feeling now?”
“A little better,” I said. “Thanks again for keeping me from cracking my skull open on the curb. And digging my phone out of the muck.”
“No problem, Ella.”
I liked the way my name sounded in his resonant voice. I liked that he seemed so normal. And kind. And really fricking hot, if I let myself focus on that.
“We should get together sometime,” I blurted. I snapped my lips closed. Where the hell had that come from? The last thing I needed was to start dating. And I wasn’t ready, anyway. At least, I hadn’t thought so.
“I’d love that,” he said sincerely. “This weekend?”
I couldn’t back out now. I’d suggested it, after all. But I found I didn’t want to back out. I needed something good to look forward to. Something normal. Something with sparkling green eyes and a ridiculously cute dimple.
“Sure, if I’m in town.” And not dead from mage magic.
I gave him my number, and then there was a pause. I wasn’t sure what else to say and didn’t want it to become awkward, so I started to reach for the door handle.
He leaned in and touched my cheek with the tips of his fingers, and his lips brushed mine. It was a quick, soft kiss, with no demand or force, but somehow still electric. Warmth flooded through me, and I resisted the sudden urge to lean in for more. There was no need to rush. There was enough heat in his kiss to clearly convey the promise of more intensity. I savored the prospect of it, to my own surprise.
He pulled back a little, his eyes only inches from mine. “Just trying to distract you from your brooding thoughts.”
I let out a little laugh. “It worked.”
He got out of the car and came around to my side, clearly intending to walk me to my truck, which was just around the corner. He didn’t try to hold my hand or anything, and I was fine with that.
Still buzzing on the feel of Caleb’s lips, for a minute or two after I started my truck I nearly forgot about Zarella. At a stop light, I called the number he’d given me. It rang twice, and then there was a faint click.
“Hello, Ella,” said the madman.
Chapter 10
“ALOIS,” I REPLIED. He’d warned me to not ever use his real name in our conversations or correspondence.
Zarella tsked. “You shouldn’t have gone to San Francisco, Ella.”
I smothered a sigh at the back of my throat. “You heard about that, huh?”
“We had eyes on the boy,” he said. “We were only waiting to find out when and where the mages plan to make their move. We had things under control.”
I started to feel suitably repentant about rushing off so haphazardly. But then something suddenly occurred to me.
“Then why didn’t you stop me? You could have, if you’d wanted to. You’ve got necromancers at your disposal. Probably some really powerful friends, too. Right?”
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something was pinging in my gut. Why hadn’t Zarella stopped me from confronting Damien?
> “You assume that would have been an easy thing to do,” he said. “But you do not give yourself sufficient credit. I have powerful friends, yes, but no one with the ability to chase you between the realm of the living and the land where souls await the reaper’s blade.”
What he said might have been true, but I didn’t completely buy the flattery.
“So now what?” I pressed. “Where did Damien fly off to? How are we going to keep him from giving Evan to his parents?”
He made a sad little humming sound. “I wish I could trust you with that information, but you’ve shown yourself to be too impulsive.”
My chest clenched. “No, you have to tell me. He’s my brother.”
“We have a plan in place. All we need is the time and location of the planned sacrifice. If we need your assistance, we’ll be in touch,” Zarella said. “Until then, you shouldn’t interfere, Ella.”
“You’ll be in touch?” I repeated incredulously. My breath was coming faster as my pulse sped in anger. “That’s not how this works. You don’t get to decide you’ll be in touch.”
On some level I realized what I was saying was absurd, that Zarella really did have all the power in this situation, but panic was gripping my heart with ice-cold fingers. I knew the madman could do whatever he wanted to, and there was hardly a damn thing I could do to stop him.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he snapped. “And remember who you’re talking to. You’ve failed over and over again on your own, remember? You need me, if you want any chance at saving your brother. I’ll say it again, but only once more. Do. Not. Interfere. Goodbye, Ella.”
Angry heat flooded up the back of my neck. “How dare you try to cut me out of this,” I hissed into the phone. I knew he’d already disconnected, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from yelling. “I won’t let you do it. He’s not yours. Damn you, Zarella, don’t hurt him!”
I slammed on the brakes and pulled over and then jammed the phone into the passenger seat before I tried to throw it through the windshield. I gripped the steering wheel, squeezing until my arms shook.
I wanted to kill Zarella. If he’d been there at that moment, I’d have tried to strangle him with my bare hands. His words hammered through my mind. There was truth to what he’d said, which only fueled my outrage.
My head began to throb, and my vision swam. I tried to calm myself, but my breath only became more ragged. Something wetted my upper lip, and I tasted blood. Maybe this would be the aneurism that ended me for good. The reaper helped me heal quickly from bodily injury and even protected me from dying under certain kinds of attack, but if blood vessels in my brain burst, I’d no longer be there, even if the reaper kept my body alive. I’d be a shell carrying the soul of Xaphan the reaper. Maybe they’d name a new kind of zombie after me.
All of those thoughts floated on the current of my anger, and when the hottest flash of it began to recede, I finally lifted my head and peeled my eyelids open.
The throbbing in my temples had calmed. My nose was no longer dripping blood. But my hands were bathed in sparking crimson.
I blinked down at them. Carefully, as though trying to avoid spooking a tiny bird, I lifted my arms until my palms were level with my eyes. The blood-red magic soothed me, somehow, surrounding me in warm velvet. Reaching out with my mind, as I did when I took control of demons using necromancy, I probed the pulsating magic. It responded by flowing over my arms, and up my chest. I inhaled sharply as it continued up my neck. It dulled, and afraid it would disappear, I forced myself to stay calm.
Like a living thing, the magic crept up my neck and over my head. Again, I had to tamp down my panic as it covered my eyes and flowed into my nose. I could still breathe, but the air in my lungs felt heavy, like steam, and the crimson magic smelled faintly metallic in my nostrils. A tingling sensation began on my upper lip, where a bit of blood had dried, and zinged up my nose.
The sensation was too intense, and I sneezed. When I opened my eyes, the crimson magic was gone. But the tingle remained, zinging around in my sinuses as if the magic were still reacting with my blood.
I blinked at the windshield, still focused on the sensations and not really seeing anything beyond the glass.
I felt vital. Energized. Almost as if I’d gone back for more healing. My adrenaline had faded, and my anger had died down to an ache in my chest.
It wasn’t that I was okay with what Zarella had said, but I was calmer. Focused. Thoughts were becoming clearer, and as I sat there in my truck in the freezing cold, something dawned on me. Zarella had kept me in a position of weakness, stringing me along and chastising me. But I wasn’t weak. I carried more magics in me than most crafters would dream of, and I was as powerful as any Level III alive. My biggest problem was that I was unskilled. Well, that was too damn bad. I didn’t have years to train. But I had plenty of tricks up my sleeve, and I was suddenly sure that if I could figure out how to use the blood-red magic, it would be the crucial thing I needed to take on Damien and the Steins.
I reached for the key in the ignition, started the engine, and then flipped a U-turn and headed home.
Loki greeted me in the dark apartment. After setting my keys on the table near the door, I dropped to one knee and took his face in my hands so I could scratch behind his ears. Faint fiery light flickered deep in his irises as he panted happily at the attention.
“Good boy,” I whispered, giving his head one final pat before rising. “Want some kibble?”
He followed me to the kitchen, where I used his bowl to scoop out a generous portion of dog food. Leaving him to chomp his way through it, I went to the living room and stretched out on the sofa with my phone. I was drained past the point of exhaustion, but it would be a while before my brain was ready to shut down for the day.
I scrolled through my emails, stopping when I got one from the Society of the Underworld. I sat up a little straighter. With everything else going on, I’d nearly forgotten the Society had a meeting scheduled for the next night. It would be only my third since getting inducted into the group. The memory sent a sharp pang through my heart. Rogan had been there for the first one. He’d introduced me around. And after, he and I had spent the night together for the first time. It wasn’t long after that he’d become possessed by a genetically modified demon and then had killed a Supernatural Forces soldier, thereby rendering himself unsalvageable. Once a possessed person killed, the demon can’t be exorcised. The only safe option is euthanizing with obliteration magic.
I pressed my lips together and pulled them in between my teeth, biting down hard to keep tears from springing to my eyes. Deep down, I’d probably known that Rogan and I couldn’t last. After all, he hadn’t truly belonged in the realm of the living. But still, the loss hurt.
Zarella was part of the Society, actually one of the more powerful members, but Rogan had been a member for longer than Zarella. I’d always thought Rogan was a hermit with no real social ties, but since his Earthly death and return to the in-between, I’d learned he did have a few friends in the Society. Perhaps they’d know something about the crimson magic and be willing to keep it secret. I’d start with Florica, the Romani woman who served as the secretary for the Society.
With that intention set, my mind seemed ready to let go, and consciousness faded into sleep.
While Deb was at work the next day, I alternately scoured supernatural contract job listings and tried to learn more about the Steins.
I knew Damien’s family was essentially mage royalty, but the mages were extremely secretive. In fact, they’d only revealed themselves to the world after the Manhattan Rip because they’d felt obligated to come forward and offer their powers to help stem the tide of demons pouring through into our world. Since then, they’d managed to avoid the media to an admirable extent.
I’d actually seen Damien’s parents in person not long ago, when I’d been briefly held prisoner on the Gregori Industries campus. His mother and father were beautiful, imposing, and cold. They’d come to
take Evan from my uncle Jacob Gregori, which he had clearly not been happy about. But Damien had helped me escape and break Evan free. I’d thought my former partner had good intentions, but he’d stolen Evan from me within hours. Until the confrontation in San Francisco, that had been the last time I’d seen either of them.
My thoughts suddenly flicked to a different track, the one that cropped up every once in a while and repeatedly told me I was an idiot when it came to men. Damien wasn’t even a romantic interest—he was gay—and yet it seemed I’d still been naïve about what he really valued. The past several years had been a string of misjudgments about men, starting with getting into a relationship with Brady Chancellor, a Strike Team guy who I much later realized was actually kind of an asshole. Johnny Beemer had been a slight improvement, in that he was a decent guy for the most part, but we were a bad match. With Rogan, I’d briefly felt at home, but he was a reaper trapped in a man’s body, and the whole thing was probably doomed from the start.
Deb came in the door, her winter jacket straining over the roundness of her belly. The coat was second-hand, one we’d found a couple weeks ago after she could no longer close the zipper on the one she usually wore.
Her brows shot up as she took in my expression. “You look pensive. Everything okay?”
I sighed and rubbed one hand across my forehead. “Yeah, just thinking of Rogan. And men in general.”
“Uh oh.”
She put her school bag and purse down on the leather chair and began unwinding the plaid scarf around her neck. It clashed terribly with the pink coat, but we didn’t have the luxury of being picky.
“I think I might be getting a little better,” I said. “Rogan was the best one yet. Except for, you know, the not-being-totally-human part. And his death wish. Okay, maybe I haven’t improved all that much.”
