by Sonya Clark
Lizzie snorted.
“What I’m trying to say, badly, is that I can help people but I can’t fix people. I don’t think it works that way. People have to fix themselves. I had to. That’s where the high-functioning part comes in and how I learned to stay away from the hard stuff. I can’t cure you of your problems.”
“I never thought you could.” She toyed with the too-long sleeves of his shirt, which she still wore. It must not have fit him quite right either. “Distract me with good sex, maybe, but not fix me.”
“Sweetheart, please. I can distract you with fantastic sex.”
“I know I need to deal with it myself. I want to stop. I hate it.”
He took her hand in his. “Don’t get worked up again. Nice and steady, okay?”
She laughed. “You’re just afraid I’ll destroy your apartment.”
“Damn straight.” He sat forward to face her, cupping her chin. “No need for any meltdowns. Everything’s fine. You’re safe here.” A sensation of incredible tenderness wrapped around her. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt that emanate from Vadim. Healing magic had been briefly discussed during her hours with Braeden but at the time she hadn’t put two and two together.
“I know.” She kissed him, reveling in that feeling of warmth and security. They had until morning before she had to go back to her world. She didn’t want to waste a moment of it arguing. It was tempting to spend it all in his bed but her curiosity nudged at her until she broke the kiss. “Do I still get to see your club?”
“Hmm.” His lips curled into a lazy smile, his eyes half-closed. “If you want. Or we can stay here.” He bent his head to brush his mouth over the hollow of her throat.
“I’d like to see Sinsuality.” Gently, she pushed him away. “But I really need to go home. Just to get some clothes, don’t look at me like that.” She gestured at yesterday’s skirt. “I’m not exactly dressed for the most notorious nightclub in town.”
“I can get you some if you tell me sizes.”
That struck her as odd. “I’m not wearing clothes left behind by old girlfriends.”
“As if I let women leave their crap all over my place. No, I take it out and throw it in a burn barrel as is proper.”
Inappropriate laughter bubbled out before she could stop it. “God, you’re awful.”
“And yet, here you are.” He walked to the desk in the corner, returning with a pen and notepad. “Write down your sizes and an idea of what you want. We’ve got a few stores here. I’ll do my best.”
“And what will I do while you’re off picking out clothes for me?” Inwardly, she shuddered at the thought of what he’d come back with. She had no problem with revealing outfits; it was his taste she was concerned about.
“Take a bath, read a book. Go through my things in a vain attempt to learn more about me.”
She smiled. “You’ve got all the good stuff hidden, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
Minutes later he was gone. Lizzie stood in the middle of the living room and turned in a slow circle, taking stock. She wouldn’t abuse his trust by searching for hiding places but since he’d practically invited her to look around his home, she felt no compunction about doing so.
Three walls were covered by bookcases. Two of them held books in various formats, including a large selection of Russian literature and nonfiction. Several binders occupied a shelf with a paper label taped to the edge that said Serials By Zinnia. The third unit held the liquor and a variety of objects. A number of small digital frames with photos were arranged on one shelf. A face in one image caught her attention—Detective Perez, with his arms wrapped around a beautiful, smiling woman with purple hair. After receiving a commendation for solving the murder of Dr. Alan Forbes, Perez had been thought to be on a fast track for success in the New Corinth Police Department. Instead, his career had stalled. Rumors of a witch girlfriend had begun to make the rounds. She’d heard something about him being pressured to leave the woman. Clearly he hadn’t, but what would the ordinance do to them?
Lizzie examined the other photos. A few were obviously a younger Vadim, from childhood to young adulthood, always with an older woman who looked nothing like him but nonetheless shared the same sardonic grin. Probably his mother, but there was no evidence of a father in his life, at least not from these photos. Young-adult Vadim had a bit more hair and fewer miles on his face, but an early version of the sensual nature and dominant personality that made him so compelling now was already evident in his eyes and the curve of his mouth.
She walked around the rest of the apartment slowly. The furnishings were functional but not what she’d expected, considering he was known to be one of the richest residents of FreakTown. Whatever he did with his money, it didn’t involve posh living quarters for himself. Aside from the books, the nicest thing she found was a Japanese tea set on a low table by the floor-to-ceiling window that made up the fourth wall. Wide bamboo blinds blocked the view. She lifted one and peered out the window. The back gate to the zone was visible and beyond that, the Rockenbach section of New Corinth. Harsh late-afternoon sun glared, a rare break from the near-constant rain this time of year. It would be nightfall soon.
Exhaustion crept in, always a lingering side effect from a bad episode. Panic attack, anxiety attack, nervous breakdown—the name didn’t matter. They wore her down and sharpened the edge of the world for a while, making her want to hide. She padded into Vadim’s bedroom, left yesterday’s skirt on the floor and climbed into bed.
That was one piece of furniture he hadn’t skimped on. She sank into its comfort gratefully and fell asleep.
* * *
Vadim returned to his office after dropping off new clothes for Lizzie and finding her asleep. He’d let her rest for a while longer before waking her. In the meantime, he’d take advantage of another opportunity to trance into the darknet.
While Braeden had been working with Lizzie much of the day, Vadim had been scouring the vast darknet for signs of whoever was targeting the underground railroad. He checked bank accounts, chat rooms used for meetings and information dead drops, forums where messages were spread in code, GPS maps of the routes used to traverse the mostly empty rural areas between cities. In one area after another, he had found some sort of problem. Compromised passwords that needed to be changed. Failed attempts at downloading information protected by spells. Firewalls made vulnerable by repeated attack, and more than one breach. He had to shut down several chat rooms.
The underground could no longer safely communicate on the darknet.
A migraine had sent him out of trance and into a cloud of nightshade incense. Once the worst of the headache cleared, he wrote a note in established code and arranged for it to be delivered to Tuyet. The railroad had a couple of Normal contacts who traded with Magic Born artisans at the bazaar, people licensed to move crafts from one city to another. Sometimes they carried messages too. This one would be a warning to avoid too much interaction on the darknet until the problem could be dealt with.
There couldn’t have been many Normal hackers good enough to get this far against Magic Born trancehackers. A list of possible suspects was what he needed now. He downed a couple of pills to help keep another migraine at bay and floated into trance. The circuits of the tablet popped and sizzled against his consciousness. Either it needed charging or he was way overdoing it for one day. Probably both. He didn’t intend to stay long this time so he ignored the discomfort and entered cyberspace.
He found the forum he was looking for quickly. The site owners didn’t bother to bury it under layers of security and obfuscation like so much in the darknet because it mostly served as an information directory. Anyone who wanted to find a hacker to do a nasty bit of business went to the hot bzns forum.
Vadim ignored anybody advertising their services. None of them would be good enough. He concentr
ated on the sub-threads created by people looking for hackers, scanning them quickly to see what names popped up in the comments. Three names were repeatedly mentioned for especially difficult jobs, most of which involved corporate espionage of one kind or another. He committed them to memory and left the forum.
In a quiet corner of cyberspace, he stopped to rest. In realspace he sat at his desk, eyes closed, stylus wand in one hand and tablet in the other. Pain behind his temple and squeezing the back of his head like a vise tried to kick him out of trance. He breathed through it until it subsided into a dull throb.
Vadim had taken refuge in the murky remains of a defunct site. Curious, he pushed energy into it. A ghostly echo of mournful song rose from the broken code, patchy and falling into silence at odd moments. Faint color rose around his avatar, a washed-out gold that shimmered as magic wafted through the site like a gentle breeze. He could have made sense out of something deleted more recently but this had to be decades old. There wasn’t enough HTML left to figure out the original purpose of the site. Beyond the faded lines of gold lay a vast expanse of velvet black. In the distance, bright lights shone like stars burning in a spectrum of color. A galaxy full of energy and information and worlds he could never touch while trapped in FreakTown. Melancholy rose from that part of himself that still yearned for something more, a part he’d learned over the years to keep locked up tight and hidden away. The emotion filled in the parts of the music skipped by broken code, turning it into a heavy, bass-laden industrial rhythm. Dark as empty cyberspace. Almost as dark as the realspace he existed in.
The pressure in his head told him he didn’t have much time left before he’d have to drop out of trance. As quickly as he could, he crafted a search spell and planted a marker in the site. With a push of will he cast the spell and watched it spread out in a ripple of electric blue. He would return for the information the search spell gathered as soon as he was able to trancehack again.
Now it was time to show Lizzie the one part of realspace where he thrived—Sinsuality.
Chapter Fifteen
The dance hall shook with stomping feet and bodies bouncing in time with the music. Vadim and Lizzie watched from the security monitors in his office. The room was scented sweetly with nightshade and glowed with witchlight in his favorite color of electric blue. His headache had faded, his mood restored by a shower and a meal. He’d already told Gina she’d be taking over soon so he could enjoy the night. Adrenaline sent his heart hammering against his rib cage, and his feet were barely able to stay still. It wasn’t an esbat night but the same excitement was there. It would have been perfect if Lizzie could have looked like herself, but that was too dangerous for her so he’d insisted on the glamoured bracelet. Soon enough she’d take it off and look like herself, just for him.
The glamour altered her features in a very subtle manner, making her look like a sister might rather than a complete stranger. The red hair he loved so much was blond but still long and thick, falling in loose waves down her back. He’d picked out a simple black dress for her, short to show off her legs and spaghetti straps to keep her cool on the dance floor. And killer heels that gave her an inch of height over him. He reached for her hand and lightly tapped the bracelet as she stared at the monitors.
“You doing okay with this? It’s not strong but you’re not used to it.”
“It’s fine,” she said, distracted. “Feels a little warm on my skin, that’s all.” She gestured at the monitors. “I see where some of your money goes. This is top-of-the-line stuff.”
“A certain level of blowing off steam is tolerated, especially if the right people get paid off. I can’t afford to let things get too wild in here or they’ll shut me down.”
“And the nightshade is allowed? I could smell it when we came in and the place wasn’t even open yet.”
“Religious use. And bribes.” He didn’t want to talk any more about habits she didn’t approve of. “So what do you say? Feel like dancing?”
“Won’t people notice the club owner is dancing with someone they don’t recognize?”
“There’s a healthy market for these kind of glamour charms.” He rubbed his thumb over the braided leather. “No one will think twice and if they do, they won’t be stupid enough to say anything about it.”
She continued to watch the screens. Worry crept in. If she changed her mind they’d go back to his apartment. He had plenty of ideas on how to spend the time. For reasons he wasn’t quite sure of, he wanted her to be in his world for a while, and he especially wanted her to see the show planned in the Garden later.
“Let’s go,” she said, giving him a sidelong look.
Grinning, he pulled her out the door. Gina waited in the hall, head bobbing to the music. As he walked past he tossed her the keys. “All yours.”
“Have a good night, boss.” She nodded politely at Lizzie and disappeared into the office.
Vadim led Lizzie down the metal gangplank to the dance floor. Bass thudded in the soles of his feet and deep in his chest. Witchlight flowers bloomed over the dancers’ heads. He watched the smile on Lizzie’s face, loving the openness of it despite the glamour. The music pounded louder as they reached the floor, blasting away all the shit that had rained down on him in recent days. All the anger and the ugliness and frustration was scrubbed clean when he pulled her into his arms. He gave his body over to the hard, steady rhythm and placed his hands on her hips, guiding her to do the same. She followed and soon they were swallowed up by the crowd.
Waves of magical energy undulated across the dance floor, created by the emotions of the dancers and given a boost by the witches among them with empathic abilities. It worked even better than nightshade to help him relax. Lizzie’s not-quite-right face was a distraction. As one song blurred into the next, he led her to a small, round table at the edge of the dance floor. She climbed onto the stool and he raised two fingers at a passing waitress. The girl was new but nodded in recognition, satisfying him he’d get the good stuff and not the cheap watered-down booze most customers got.
Lizzie leaned across the table, wearing a teasing smile. “I thought we were going to dance.”
“Just going to have a quick drink.” He looked around for anyone who might approach. “I want to try something.”
“What?”
The waitress brought the drinks. Vadim thanked her, blanking out on her name. The kid didn’t seem to notice but Lizzie caught it. He shrugged. “What? A lot of people work for me.”
She sipped her drink, then raised the glass in appreciation. “Whatever you’re up to, hurry. I’m in the mood to dance.”
He held an arm out toward the dance floor. “By all means, enjoy yourself.”
Smirking, she said, “I do believe I will.”
Vadim grabbed her for a quick kiss, tangling one hand in her hair. He released her just as suddenly. She shook her head and moved to the floor, swaying with the music. He watched her body move, admiring her subtle curves and long legs. Then he turned his attention to the single hair he’d snagged from her head during the kiss.
Old-school magic might not have been his forte but he was no stranger to it. Making nightshade was as much witchcraft as chemistry. His favorite absinthe recipe was the same. The type of spell he had in mind was fairly straightforward but rarely performed. Looking through someone’s glamour spell was considered ill-mannered at best. At worst, it was a gross invasion of privacy. He should have asked her first or at least told her what he intended. Casting the spell would be quicker than explaining himself so he said to hell with it and focused his energy.
The hair allowed him to forge a connection with Lizzie. As inconsequential as it seemed, it was still enough for someone as sensitive to magical energy as he was to pluck out the telltale hum of her essence. Dredging up the spell from memory proved a little more difficult. He finally got the words in the right order,
whispering as he curled the strand of hair in his palm. As if he was using different muscles for a new—or in this case old—workout, magic pulled and pushed inside him at odd angles. The blond hair glowed, quickly returning to its natural shade of red.
Vadim found Lizzie on the dance floor. She was in the middle of a throng of people, smiling, arms in the air and hips doing things that made his breath catch. A gauzy film of magic surrounded her, stronger around her head. The bracelet was doing its job as far as everyone else could see. He saw her true face, and she was mesmerizing.
His one regret about their night in her childhood bedroom was not seeing her face. Tonight would be different. The music had softened all the hard edges she’d built to protect herself, leaving her looking happier than he’d ever seen her. No, happy wasn’t the right word. At peace within herself but transported at the same time, as if the dance floor was the one place she could unlock Lizzie from inside the prison of Elizabeth Marsden and let her be free.
He wanted to give her that. He wanted to put that look of sweet bliss on her face.
With a glance he destroyed the strand of hair so no one else could somehow use it to see her by accident, disguising the quick burn with witchlight. He brushed his hands together to get rid of the faint trace of ash and finished off first his drink, then hers.
She was dancing in a line of girls when he reached her. He grabbed her hips and pulled her to him, away from the clump of people. She draped her arms around his neck, one hand on the back of his head, and pressed her mouth to his. He broke the seal of her lips with his tongue, chasing hers and tasting alcohol and Lizzie.
“Dance with me,” she whispered in his ear, teasing the lobe with her teeth.
He gave her what she wanted, ignoring curious looks and staring down anyone who made a play for her attention. When a slow number finally played he nearly dropped from gratitude. Slick with sweat and floating in a kind of euphoria that he usually only found in especially potent nightshade, he held her close, their bodies swaying together.
