Alchemy Shift

by Jenny Schwartz

  Guardians were the fighters of the Collegium, its active response unit. Report a rogue mage, a demon or an inexplicable phenomenon, and a guardian would be the first on the scene. Delphi preferred a quieter life. Unlike her brother who had followed their mom into the police force or her sister who was a nurse in a hospital emergency room, she didn’t need the adrenaline rush of danger. So training, and then, working at the Collegium as an alchemist was perfect for her.

  Despite their name, alchemists weren’t the modern-day equivalent of medieval chemists. Alchemists were mages who studied the science of magic, its history, practices and development. It suited Delphi’s inquiring nature and used her magic in an orderly fashion. She loved it, but it was very structured.

  Letting go of her magic in her sitting room and indulging in the buzz of the city was restorative. This was her city. She’d been born and raised in it. It was in her bones and in her soul. Here, she didn’t have to be ordered and sensible. She could just be.

  Coffee, the city and thoughts of the sexy man next door had her smiling.

  Friday night. She could get glammed up and join friends at a party or the local bar. She had invitations to a couple of things. But…she curled her legs under her. Not tonight. She’d left work early to come home and make the moussaka, concerned about the kids next door. Now, she was more fascinated than ever—by their guardian.

  Jet Walsh.

  Delphi hadn’t met many weres. Since weres couldn’t be directly affected by magic, they and the mages at the Collegium tended to ignore each other. Delphi was surprised to realize that she didn’t count any weres in her wide circle of family and friends. The first time she’d seen Jet and his young cousins, the recoil of her magic from the space around them had surprised and intrigued her. A little research at work, a tiny inquiring spell, and she’d identified them as bear-weres.

  Not that she’d told anyone their identity. Everyone had a right to privacy.

  Bear-weres. Delphi smiled. She’d bet the cubs were cute, except… “That’s right.” From her research, she’d learned that weres didn’t shift form till puberty. Jet would have a few years to grow into his role as parent before the double hit of hormones and shifting kicked in.

  She realized her thoughts had a tendency to circle back to Jet, and why not? He was seriously sexy.

  In high school she’d dated non-magical, mundane boys, but since joining the Collegium, all her dates had been mages. What would it be like to be with a guy whom her magic couldn’t affect, who was all power and muscle and low-rumbling growls?

  Exciting

  Delphi laughed at herself and reached for her phone. If she was fantasizing about her neighbor, she really ought to go out. She needed people and a party. She checked that her friends were at the bar and went to get changed.

  Jet was sanding the front door so it wouldn’t stick when he saw his neighbor step out of her door.

  She saw him and halted. “Uh, hi?”

  She was dressed for a Friday night out. Nothing outrageously flirty, but a short jacket for warmth above tight jeans that showcased a heart-shaped butt and clung to long, long legs ending in high heeled boots. She wore her hair loose and curly, and he wanted to tangle his fingers in it.

  Oh man. “Hi. Going out?” Yep. He was a master of small talk.

  “Local bar.” An awkward pause. “I’d invite you along, but…kids.” She gestured at the house.

  He nodded. “Yeah.” He had responsibilities. Still, he couldn’t help the next question. He’d seen too much of life’s worst moments. “Are you walking to the bar alone? Will you be okay?”

  His concern won him a flashing smile. “The bar’s just a block or so, and someone’ll drop me home. And I’ve got my phone with an alarm attached.” She waved it. “But thanks for checking.”

  Yeah. As if I’m her dad. He felt old suddenly, although he couldn’t be more than five years older than her. “Well, have fun.”

  “Plan to!” She walked down her front path to the sidewalk.

  He made himself concentrate on the door rather than watch her. His were senses picked up the discreet perfume she wore and the fading sound of her footsteps. He sighed and ceased sanding the door. The house needed a new front door, but this would have to do for now. There were other priorities.

  He closed and bolted it, and stood inside listening to the silent house.

  Tony and Grace were upstairs, asleep. At their own insistence, they shared a bedroom. Grace got scared when she was alone.

  Jet had bought a nightlight and it illuminated the corridor to the bathroom and gave her some confidence. At least, the nightmares seemed to have stopped.

  A cold rage boiled in him and he had to force it down. Grace had good reason for her nightmares, and when he caught up with the monster responsible for them, he’d avenge her—and her and Tony’s mom.

  Jet put away his tools and sought another distraction. Working on the house would give him too much time to think, since with the kids asleep the jobs had to be quiet ones. The image of his neighbor, all dressed up to party, flashed into his mind. Nope, no good thinking of Delphi, either.

  He sat down and started a list of simple, healthy meals he could cook, and the ingredients he and the kids would need to buy, tomorrow. Planning a menu was a new and difficult challenge. He tended to eat on the run, in between jobs. The kids might like pizza, but they all needed to expand their experiences. Remembering the roast dinners his mom used to make on a Sunday, Jet added potatoes to his list.

  A sound like distant thunder had Delphi muttering and pulling the covers over her head. The forecast for the weekend had been sunshine and cloudless skies. The weather people were darned liars. There went her plan to take her niece and nephew to the park to run off their energy. “Ten more minutes,” she bargained with herself. Then she’d get up and start her Saturday. She’d mix up pancake batter, and Lori and Steve could have a second breakfast with her when they arrived.

  A ghost woowoo’d and Delphi sat upright, only to belatedly identify the sound as her doorbell, located right under the master bedroom’s window. She checked the clock, but not yet seven o’clock on a Saturday morning was too early for anyone to visit—even family.

  Someone started hammering on her door.

  She snatched up her robe and ran downstairs barefoot. She wrenched the front door open and there was her neighbor with his two kids. All three looked wet and he had plaster in his hair and on his shoulders.

  “Can we come in?” Jet asked.

  “Of course.” Whatever this disaster was, she couldn’t solve it standing on her doorstep, and the girl, Grace, in particular looked miserable. “What’s happened?”

  “Pipe burst. Ceiling collapsed. The electricity has gone off.”

  “A comprehensive list of disasters.” Delphi raked a hand through her tangle of hair, only to pause, blushing, when he tracked the gesture and smiled.

  But his appreciative smile didn’t last. “I’m sorry I have to ask, but do you mind if Tony and Grace stay with you for a few minutes while I assess the extent of the damage?”

  “Of course I don’t mind.” She smiled at the kids, realizing that they weren’t wet so much as damp. A few minutes in her warm house with a warm breakfast in them and they’d be fine. “I was planning to make pancakes, anyway.”

  Her niece and nephew would have shouted with delight and raced for the kitchen. Tony and Grace looked warily at her, and Grace clutched at her brother’s hand.

  “I’ll just get dressed,” Delphi said. “Then we’ll start breakfast.”

  “Thanks.” Jet crouched in front of the two kids. “I’ll be next door, checking on the damage. Be good for Delphi and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He left and Delphi settled the kids in front of the television with glasses of juice before racing upstairs for the world’s fastest shower. She pulled on a sweater and jeans, and tied her hair up in a practical ponytail. “Now, pancakes. Would you like to help me make them?”

&nb
sp; Two solemn faces considered her and her offer seriously, before nodding. Within minutes, Delphi had pancakes on to cook, Tony was carefully slicing a banana with a kid safe knife, and Grace was setting the table for four people. Bacon sizzled in the oven since Delphi thought Jet would need extra fuel for the day—and days—ahead of him. That thunder she’d thought she heard must have been his ceiling collapsing. Whatever his plans for renovating the house, they’d just been changed.

  “What happened?” She addressed the question to both children, but wasn’t surprised when it was Tony who answered. Grace was shy.

  “Uncle Jet was in the bathroom. He has his shower in the morning, even though he makes us have a bath every night.”

  Grace nodded solemn agreement to the awfulness of Uncle Jet’s rules.

  And Delphi wondered how the children had lived before Jet Walsh’s entry into their lives that a bath before bedtime hadn’t been part of their rituals. Her niece and nephew had a mountain of bathtub toys.

  “We got two bathrooms,” Tony said. “Uncle Jet’s and ours. Grace was in ours, going to the—” His sister socked him in the arm and he stopped. “She was in the bathroom.” He scowled at her. “Washing her hands.”

  Grace nodded. “Uncle Jet says to. Germs.” She had the faintest trace of a lisp.

  “Good girl,” Delphi said.

  Grace ducked her head, but she smiled at the praise.

  Tony continued impatiently, eager to tell the story now that he’d started. “And the tap kinda broke, or something, and water came out at Grace. And Uncle Jet slammed out of the bathroom with just a towel around him. And he found me trying to help Grace, and he picked up another towel and threw it at me and said to get downstairs into the living room by the front door. And then he ran into his room and he was just running down the stairs, pulling on his sweater when the kitchen ceiling went Wham!” Tony slapped his tiny hands on the tabletop. “And Uncle Jet swore.”

  “Said sorry,” Grace contributed.

  “And he told us to go outside, but we kinda stood in the front door, and we saw him stare up at where the kitchen ceiling used to be and more of it fell on him, and then, he brought us over here.”

  “Wow,” Delphi said and the children smiled at her, evidently feeling that was the right response. But Delphi had an even better response. She grabbed her phone. After a lifetime as a sailor, her mom’s dad was both an early riser and a jack of all trades. “Pops, my neighbor’s ceiling has collapsed, a pipe or pipes are broken, and the electricity is fritzed. He’s got kids. Could you…? Thanks, Pops, you’re the best.”

  “Who’s Pops?” Tony asked. His hair needed combing.

  “My granddad.” Delphi reached for more eggs. She’d need to triple her pancake supply because Pops wouldn’t take long to assess the damage next door before he called in reinforcements.

  She just hoped Jet Walsh forgave her meddling. He’d asked for help with looking after Tony and Grace for a few minutes. He was about to get so much more.

  Chapter 2

  “Ahoy the house!”

  The shout came from the front door, and Jet strode out of the disaster that was his kitchen to see a sturdy man in his late seventies standing in the open doorway.

  The man wasn’t tall, but he was broad and muscled and he had a fierce moustache. He was also, apparently, a man who favored direct communication. “Heard you got some plumbing problems.”

  In the course of his career as a marshal for the weres’ justice system, Jet had done his fair share of detecting. “Are you related to Delphi next door?”

  “My granddaughter.” The man strode in, his gait faintly rolling, and whistled at the sight of the kitchen.

  “I turned off the water.” Jet stared at sodden plasterboard and the battered linoleum beneath it. Water had been pouring from the bathroom overhead, the one he’d been showering in before the pipes broke so dramatically.

  “Only thing to do. Harry Kansa.”

  “Jet Walsh.” Jet had his hand wrung by a man who definitely wasn’t a were, but was strong nonetheless.

  “Can I go up?” Harry tipped his head in the direction of the stairs.

  “Sure.” Jet trailed his self-invited visitor up the stairs. He needed to call a plumber and an electrician. He could repair the ceiling himself. But if Delphi had sent her grandfather over, Jet decided to wait and see what help might be on offer. Getting a plumber and an electrician on a weekend wouldn’t be easy—or cheap.

  Sometimes a man had to swallow his pride and accept help.

  “Delphi’s house was in this state when she bought it. Rooms rented out and no maintenance done for years. Houses need work or they run down.” Harry slapped the doorframe of the bathroom. “The place has good bones. But whatever your schedule for renovations…it’s just gotten moved up. You’ll need to replace the plumbing. I’ve got a couple of nephews, their boys are plumbers, too. Family business. They can patch up the piping to get you by for a few days, but it’ll all need replacing.”

  “Before winter.” Jet wasn’t stupid. He couldn’t risk the kids in a house with an unreliable and unsafe water supply. Nor would their case worker allow it. “And the wiring.”

  Harry nodded. “Rip and replace.” He was sympathetic. “Cosmetic stuff can wait, but the basics need to be done.”

  “I’d intended to start with the roof,” Jet muttered, more to himself than to Harry. He raked a hand through his hair and plaster chips pattered down. He shook himself.

  “Patch the roof, it’ll get you through winter.” Harry fished a phone out of his pocket. “I was up there looking at Delphi’s roof a few months back. Yours can limp along. You want me to call my nephew?”

  “The plumber?”

  A grunt of assent and a look of impatient inquiry from under Harry’s thick gray eyebrows.

  “Appreciate it,” Jet said.

  Harry phoned.

  Jet tried to think what to do. He needed to clear the fallen ceiling out of the kitchen, but there was no point replacing it yet. The whole house would become a demolition center if all the pipes and wiring had to be replaced. He’d hoped that would wait till summer. He and the kids would have been more comfortable together by then. He’d thought of taking them to his cabin in Maine for the holidays while the most disruptive renovations were completed.

  No water. No electricity. He’d need to find the money not only for the early renovations, but to pay for a hotel suite. Nothing fancy but a place for the kids and him to sleep.

  Would the disruption set back Tony and Grace’s fragile confidence in him? Grace’s screaming nightmares might return.

  “Okay. My nephew’s on his way. He’s bringing his team. Weekday rates.”

  On the weekend. Jet appreciated it. “Thanks.”

  Harry clapped him on the back. “Might as well wait next door. If I know Delphi, she’ll have more than coffee waiting for us.”

  When they reached the front door, Jet’s bear-were senses told him Harry was right. He smelled bacon cooking.

  Down the path, five steps and back up Delphi’s path. Harry didn’t bother with the ghostly woowoo’ing doorbell, but pulled a key out of his pocket and opened her front door, shouting. “It’s us.”

  “In the kitchen, Pops.” Delphi wasn’t shy about shouting back.

  If the broken pipes and resulting destruction had been a punch to the gut, walking into his neighbor’s warm, dry and spotlessly clean kitchen was a different kind of punch.

  Tony and Grace sat at a large wooden table, eating pancakes rolled around bacon and drinking hot chocolate.

  This was what he wanted for them.

  “Hiya, kids.” Harry’s casual greeting seemed to set them at ease faster than they accepted most strangers. Or perhaps they took their cue from Delphi’s relaxed manner.

  She kissed her granddad’s cheek, and shook her head as he filched some bacon, winking at the kids as he did so. “Sit. Eat. Grace set a place for you.”

  “Thanks, Grace.” Harry sat. “And wh
o are you?”

  “Tony.”

  The boy looked a little uncertain, but Jet restrained the urge to step in.

  “Nice to meet you.” Harry loaded his plate with pancakes and poured maple syrup generously.

  It was proper maple syrup, Jet noted. None of that imitation sugar water. He remembered tapping trees and collecting maple syrup as a kid. That was a long time ago, before he’d learned how tough life could be. “We’ve put you to a lot of trouble.”

  Delphi smiled and flipped a pancake. She had two frying pans on the go. “No problem. Sit and eat. I’m expecting my niece and nephew—six-year-old twins—in a few minutes, so I’d have been making pancakes anyway. You’d better eat your share now before the horde arrives.”

  “Thanks.” He sat.

  She filled two mugs with coffee and pushed one toward Harry and the other to him. Her own mug was by the stove. “And since I’m babysitting Lori and Steve, I thought I might keep Tony and Grace, as well. I’m planning to decorate the house for Halloween, so the more willing helpers the better.”

  “Can we stay and help, Uncle Jet?” Tony asked.

  Grace simply turned big, blue, imploring eyes in his direction.

  Of course the kids wanted to stay. Heck, he’d prefer to stay in this snug house with Delphi to working on the cold wreck next door. “You can stay.” He looked at Delphi, who looked cute and competent and completely unfazed by the sudden disruption of her day. She was rescuing him when he wouldn’t have known what to do with the kids. During the week, he had after hours childcare sorted, but on weekends…he realized just how alone he and the kids were in New York. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  Breakfast was nearly over before Harry’s plumber nephew and an assistant arrived. They refused breakfast—the assistant unconvincingly, so Delphi gave him a rolled pancake and bacon in a paper napkin—and Jet stood to take them over to his house. “Thanks for breakfast and everything.” He glanced at Delphi who was finally seated and eating. “Kids, be good. If you need anything, I’m next door.”