by Ann Macela
“And not attacking would have given the other two time to get to us,” she retorted, conveniently ignoring the fact she hadn’t seen them until Jim had pointed them out. “Then we would have had to fight them also.”
He shook his head in dismissal of her assertion. “Your lightning bolt was premature, too. I had plenty of time to slip through the left-turn lane and get across the intersection before they caught up. When they followed, they’d have been right in the clutches of the Swords. Again, we could have questioned captives and not had to waste time guessing what Ubell might do next.”
She drew herself up straight. “I’m a Sword. I’m trained to act in a crisis, not sit around like a damsel waiting to be rescued.”
He put his hands on his hips and looked her up and down like he was a drill sergeant. “If I understand right, this is your first real Sword assignment. That makes you a rookie, and rookies make mistakes. I’ve been a cop for a long time. I know how to handle myself. I know when to wait, how to assess the situation. The last thing I want is to get into another one of these fights with spells going off all over the place, but if we do, for all our sakes, follow my lead, will you? Don’t go off half-cocked.”
She had no immediate answer to his statements, so she scowled at him. She’d worked hard on becoming a Sword. She’d defeated the thugs. Who was he to be telling her what to do?
She was marshalling her response when he asked, “What would you have done once we had captured those guys? Or if your spells had failed, or worse, backfired? Had you thought about, do you know, what to do next? Would you have cast those spells if you were with Whipple instead of me? What about teamwork?”
Oh, damn. He spoke the absolute truth. The Defender principles had been drummed into her with Sword instruction and practice. Be ruthlessly honest about your own abilities. Know your limitations. Don’t get caught in a trap of pride. Another, the most important, the bedrock of the entire Defender/Sword combination: function always as a team.
Think, Irenee. He’s correct, and you still have to tell him about soul mates. Time to back down and restore peace.
She took a deep breath and released it, walked forward and sat on the couch. “No, you’re right. I would have waited for Fergus to agree before I threw a spell. I was going to cast stun at the guy you slugged in the parking lot. I didn’t have a future plan for after I threw the lightning bolt. I never thought about capturing any of them, only getting away”
She drew herself up to face him squarely. “My biggest mistake was not thinking of you and me as a team. Defenders have always worked in teams. If it hadn’t been for the team when we were battling Alton’s Stone, I probably wouldn’t be here now.”
He looked both satisfied and surprised by her answer, and he sat down on the easy chair, from which she usually watched TV. He asked quietly, “How bad was it?”
“We had to call in every Sword and Defender in the complex. That black flame you saw in your dream? The Stone kept shooting energy pulses from it at me and only me. John was on one side of me and Johanna on the other, blocking the attacks as much as they could. Dad was giving me power directly, and the Defenders kept pouring energy on all of us. Fergus and other Swords bombarded the item from all sides. The Stone finally died, but it took a long time. I expect when we take on Ubell’s bigger piece, it will be much harder to destroy.” She shuddered at the thought.
“If my dream showed even half of it,” he said, “I probably have only a small idea of what you went through. I really want to learn exactly how you go about destroying one of these items before we meet it in a fight.” His grim expression underlined the determination in his voice and his words.
“I’m sure you’ll see it. You may even be involved in it as a team member.”
“What? Me? I’m not a Defender.”
“That’s part of what we have to talk about.” She rose. “I’m going to get some water. Do you want some?”
“Yeah, I could use a drink.”
“Water or something else? I have wine, beer, soft drinks.”
“Water’s fine.”
She brought out glasses with ice and two water bottles and put his on the side table next to the chair. Taking her seat on the sofa, she busied herself with pouring her water while trying to decide how to begin. With everything going on, she hadn’t really had the chance to practice a presentation.
He didn’t give her much time to think, however, because he asked, “Okay, what’s so critical? What’s left I don’t know about practitioners? Me, a Defender? Lay it on me. After the past several days, I’m ready for whatever you throw at me.”
She decided to get an idea of his general attitude about the result of the phenomenon before hitting him with the big news. “Have you ever been married, Jim?”
He blinked at the question, but answered, “No, not even close.”
“Ever thought about it—in general, I mean. Having a family of your own, for example?”
“Nope, too busy.” He looked at his hands, reached for the water bottle, uncapped it, took a swig. “Why? What’s this have to do with practitioners? I thought bloodlines were all about your ancestors, not descendants.”
What a non-answer. So, he’d thought about it, and family was a sore subject. She could see how it might be difficult to discuss when his parents and sister had all died, and he was probably very lonely. She might feel the same way, wanting to wall herself off, not let herself care about someone who might not be there in the future. She, however, could offer him solace and companionship and a family—and more. Good. He should therefore like the concepts she was about to explain—she hoped.
Irenee took a drink of water to soothe her suddenly dry throat. She cleared her throat and plunged into her explanation.
“There’s one important part of practitioner life we haven’t mentioned, Jim, and it has to do with family, specifically the bonding between a man and a woman and the making of a deep relationship.”
Her statement got his attention, all right, because he was staring at her. If his expression was more of “suspicious cop” than “deer in the headlights,” that was good, wasn’t it? No matter what, she couldn’t stop now.
“In the practitioner world we have a concept called the ‘soul-mate phenomenon.’ According to the circumstance or wonder or situation—people call it by different terms—every practitioner has a soul mate and will find the person, and the two of them will spend the rest of their lives together. Always. An ancient force, the soul-mate imperative, helps you identify him or her and makes sure you’re together. Soul mates usually have similar interests, likes, dislikes, opinions, and they get along extremely well. Their occupations often complement each other.”
She paused—what did she and Jim have in common? She didn’t have a clue yet. As for getting along? Was he going to fuss at her for every little thing? Also yet to be seen. Occupations, she wouldn’t worry about; she knew lots of couples who had no work connection.
“They’re also extremely attracted to each other—sexually” She tried to say the last word nonchalantly, but with so much at stake, she wasn’t sure of her total success. It probably didn’t matter, however, because the laser beam coming from his eyes told her she had his complete and total attention. She wrenched her gaze away before she got lost in his and forgot her own name. Concentrate.
Where was she—oh, yes, attraction. “I’m told this magnetism is far greater than what non-practitioners feel for each other. If that’s not enough, the soul-mate imperative, which Fergus calls the ‘enforcer,’ makes sure the mates can’t resist each other. Furthermore, or worse, if you try to reject your mate, the imperative makes your life miserable and causes you all kinds of pain and heartache, particularly in your magic center.”
Although he hadn’t asked any questions, maybe it was okay. She’d rather tell him at her rate, not submit to an interrogation. Here came the most important part. She spoke quickly to get it all out. “When these soul mates act on their sexual attraction and make lov
e, they share magical energy and create a bond between them. I understand the experience is stupendous. The first time they make love is called the ‘first mating.’ It’s not a single event, though. It’s a process. Making love activates and seals the bond. After the mating, the two are bound together, and the bond grows stronger over time. From then on, they’re with each other forever in a lifetime commitment.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Jim asked in a raspy voice, his only indication of a reaction. She was clueless about what it meant, however. Body language didn’t help—he sat absolutely still, and his face could have been carved out of granite.
She took a deep breath and blurted out the answer. “Fergus, Bridget, and my father all think we, you and I, are soul mates.”
“Based on what evidence?” More rasp, as though he was forcing the words out of his throat.
Oh, he was not going to make her explanation easy, but she could almost swear on her sword the tiniest bit of fear had flashed in his golden-green eyes. What did he have to be afraid of? Her?
“Based on how we look at each other,” she answered. “On what happened when your magic center woke up, on how you can see through my spells. Soul mates can’t cast spells on each other, except for healing and defense. I can cure a headache or make you stronger. I can’t cast even one that might make you act against your will. You can see through my spells, like invisibility, for example, but only my spells, not Fergus’s. Trying to cast a spell on someone is one of the tests to see if you’re soul mates. It’s also a safeguard so a person can’t decide he wants someone as a mate and casts a spell to make her think they’re mates. It’s unethical to cast a love spell.”
“One of the tests? What are the others?”
He didn’t sound like he really wanted to know. Too bad.
“Another is the ability to see each other’s spell aura—I can definitely see yours. The definitive one is to make love. If we’re not soul mates, we won’t be able to ... do it, to consummate the union.” She was certain her face matched her hair after that statement.
He looked at her for a long moment, ran his gaze up and down her body as if memorizing a description—or, a worse thought, testing her worthiness and his attraction. She kept absolutely still, although her insides were jumping like crazy, and her center was humming.
Finally he asked, “What do you think? Are we these ‘soul mates’?”
“I don’t know for sure. The others think so, and we do seem to be attracted to each other. Our lightballs merging is bound to be significant. Therefore, I’m keeping an open mind.”
“How do we find out? Have sex? Go through this ‘first mating’? What does that entail, screwing each other till we’re blue in the face?”
She stifled a sigh. From those words and his sharp, cutting tone, it looked like persuading him to accept the actuality of the phenomenon was going to be more difficult than she originally thought. He’d accepted the reality of being a practitioner, hadn’t he? Why couldn’t he at least say the phenomenon was possible? Or did he object to her, personally? How could he even frame the idea with the soul-mate phenomenon in full active force?
“Do you want us to be soul mates?” he asked. “To have me for a ready-made, automatic, arranged mate with no say of your own?”
That was the question on her side, of course, and she could understand his opposition based on those factors. She could only tell him the truth. “To your first question, I honestly don’t know. We’ve only just met. Neither of us knows the other well. I have no real objection to the idea. I like you—although you can be exasperating at times.”
He snorted, and she ignored the derisive noise. “I think you’ve handled finding out about your talents really well. I admire what you do for the DEA. I think you’re a man of integrity, intensity, and purpose. I think you’re good-look ing—but appearance doesn’t really matter to a soul mate. I don’t know what you like or dislike yet, except for my throwing spells at what you think are inopportune times.”
She said the last with a smile. He didn’t smile back, only maintained his relentless scrutiny.
“Granted,” she continued, “I’m coming at the possibility from a very different place than you are. I’m used to the idea. I grew up with the certainty that ‘someday my soul mate will come,’ and I expect to make a life with him. I’m open to the idea of you as my mate.”
She expected to fall in love with him, and he with her. Her expectation, however, seemed both too important and too “fairy tale-ish” to mention at this stage, so she tried to lighten the conversation. “When I was young, I did all the foolish daydreaming a girl does about the man in her future. I must tell you, you’re nothing like what I expected.”
He smiled grimly at her statement. “I’ll bet. What did you expect?”
“Some sort of corporate honcho or lawyer, like all the men I saw at my parents’ parties, or maybe one of those very serious, nerdy academic types. Most probably a man who needed my organizational skills. I watched a number of practitioner friends find their mates, and each couple seemed made for each other. Fergus, however, knows a couple who, on the surface, are almost total opposites, even to the way they work magic, and they’re together as solidly as those totally compatible mates.”
“Great, so there’s hope for us yet.”
She couldn’t let him sit there and make snide comments. They’d never get through this and to his agreement. Time to get him talking.
“All right, those are the basic facts about soul mates and the imperative. What do you think so far?”
He leaned back in the easy chair, put his elbows on the armrests, and steepled his fingers under his chin. His lids half-covered his eyes, and she had no clue as to what he might be thinking.
She made herself sit still and wait.
Finally, he rose, shook his head, and said, “I think it’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. The idea some magic force would bring two people together for a happily-ever-after is ridiculous. God, talk about a fantasy. You people actually believe this stuff?” He made a scoff ing gesture with one hand.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Irenee sighed to herself. Jim was reacting as she was afraid he might, claiming the entire soul-mate phenomenon was their imagination. Thank goodness she hadn’t mentioned love. He really wasn’t ready to face that idea yet. She’d let him fuss and fume and see if he talked himself into accepting the situation. Most of the evidence was indisputable to her, but twistable by someone who didn’t believe in or couldn’t accept the magic.
Walking around the chair, he began to pace in front of the windows for a few seconds. He finally stopped to lean on the back of the chair and look at her. “You, Whipple, and the rest have thrown a lot of info at me in the past couple of days. Fantastic, surprising stuff I never even thought of and wouldn’t have believed possible.”
He ticked them off on his fingers. “Practitioners exist and can do magic. I’m one of them. I actually cast a spell—or did something to light a damned candle and put a ball of light in the air.”
He straightened up and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve seen you do things that should be impossible—your little ‘puff of wind,’ for example. I’ve heard about evil magic items and how Finster and Ubell have been using them. Except for the last, I’ve seen proof with my own eyes of all those things, and the problems the accountants are having with Finster’s books is convincing evidence, too. Yes, magic exists, and yes, you—and I—can cast spells.”
Irenee made no movement, said nothing. He was going to deny the phenomenon. He had a surprise coming.
“But you’ve gone too far with this soul-mate business. It’s entirely too much to swallow. Yeah, I’ll admit I’m attracted to you. What man wouldn’t be? You’re a beautiful woman, sexy, smart. I’m certainly up for a fling if you are.”
He gave her what she could only think of as a predatory smile before scowling. “I’m definitely not interested in a long-term anything. Never have been, nev
er will be. Soul mates? Bullshit to get you practitioners together and keep the bloodlines going.”
She simply looked at him for a few seconds. Sure enough, as she expected, there was a reaction to his rejection of the entire phenomenon, and it didn’t come from her.
“Ouch!” He started rubbing his center and almost doubled over. “Damn!”
She stopped herself from grinning. Served him right for not believing. “That’s the soul-mate imperative telling you it isn’t pleased.”
Slowly and still bending over, he made his way around the chair and collapsed into its cushions. He continued to massage his middle. She said nothing; what he decided was between him and the imperative.
“This isn’t a spell you threw on me to convince me, is it?”
“Of course not. Weren’t you listening? Soul mates can’t cast spells on each other except for healing and defense. I can’t cause you harm. In our specific case, I can’t cast a defense against the imperative either. It’s totally out of everybody’s power, including Fergus’s. You’re only looking for an excuse, a way out.”
Pressing his hands against his breastbone, he winced and shifted his position several times. The imperative was obviously hitting him hard.
She said nothing. It hurt her to watch him suffering—little jabs were hitting her own center as if goading her to persuade him. She knew from the discussion with Fergus, Bridget, and her father, however, whatever Jim concluded had to be his decision alone.
After a while, he asked through gritted teeth, “How do I get it to stop? Is it one of those ‘almost conscious’ forces like the items?”
“It seems to be aware and to respond—when it wants to. We’ve found, if you continue to reject the idea, the pain will only get worse. To stop the torment, I imagine at the least, you have to accept the phenomenon’s existence and be open to the possibility of a mate—and you have to mean it. I’ve been told the imperative won’t let you fake it.”
