by Devon Monk
“Elevators can be fun,” he murmured against my lips.
I bit at his bottom lip and pulled away. “Over my dead body,” I said.
But that kiss had broken my panic and put me in another mood entirely.
I strode into the elevator and punched the button. Zayvion stepped in too, then stood directly behind me. The door closed. In the mirror I watched his hands wrap around my waist, saw the slight smile as he pressed his body against my back, then pressed his mouth against the side of my neck.
It was too small here for this. Too small for him to be so close. And I was going crazy for him to be closer.
His hand slipped down the front of my hip, my thigh, then rubbed up beneath the heavy coat I still wore, up the side of my hip, and pressed flat against my stomach. The heat from his palm pooled at my navel and dripped lower. He bit gently at my neck.
Tingles of pleasure poured out from where he touched me. I closed my eyes, and all I felt were his fingers brushing the curve of my breast, his lips on my skin, and his body, hard and hot, pressed against me.
A soft chime rang out and I opened my eyes. Zayvion was smiling, his gaze on the camera I knew was hidden in the corner of the ceiling. Cameras. I had totally forgotten.
Great. Wouldn’t Kevin and Violet get a kick out of watching that?
The elevator door slid open, revealing the concrete parking garage.
“This is our floor,” Zayvion said.
“Uh-huh.”
He held me a moment more and neither of us moved even though we both knew the cameras were watching us. Then the idea of the doors closing on me again, closing me in, got me moving.
I pulled away from the warmth and comfort of his arms, and strode out into the cold garage. The marks up my arm and neck began to tingle, then itch, like thousands of millipedes were crawling from my temple to my fingers. I rubbed my palm up and down my arm, trying to make the itch stop. I heard Zay’s footsteps behind me, and noticed it because he was usually silent as a cat walking on marshmallows.
“So where are you going to stay tonight, and how are you going to get there?” he asked.
Ah. I’d forgotten to let him in on my little plan.
I stopped halfway to the car and clasped my hands together in front of me to keep from scratching.
“Do you mind taking me home tonight?” I asked.
Zay strolled over, his hands tucked in that ratty ski jacket he had loaned me. Nola had washed it along with my clothes, and had done a good job getting the bloodstains out of the fabric. I’d have to ask her sometime how she did it. The way my life was going, I’d probably need to do a lot more of that kind of stain removal in the future.
“That depends,” Zay said. “Your home, no. My home, yes.”
It was my turn to be surprised. “The mysterious Zayvion Jones is actually going to show me something about his personal life? Are you feeling all right? How many beers did you drink? Maybe you should give me the keys.”
“Get in the car, Beckstrom,” he said with a smile. “I’m driving.”
He had closed the distance between us, and I took a second to really look at him. He walked sober, he talked sober, he looked sober. He even smelled sober.
“How much of that beer did you really drink?” I asked.
“You saw me.”
“I saw you take maybe two drinks.”
“There you go.”
“Don’t you trust Violet?”
He shrugged. “Who says I was staying sober because of her?”
I knew that had something to do with me. I even thought it might be something nice, something thoughtful.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome.” He continued past me to the driver’s-side door, and I walked around to the passenger side of the car and got in.
Zayvion started the engine and put the car in gear. “But if I am taking you to my private residence, for privacy’s sake, I’d like you to wear a blindfold while we’re driving around the city.”
“Won’t work,” I said. “I can see through walls, you know.”
Zayvion shook his head. But he was smiling, and better yet, he was driving. I sat on my hands so I wouldn’t scratch my arm to a bloody stump and tried to breathe away the itching. I also worked hard on dimming the glow of magic Zayvion said I’d acquired.
I leaned back in the chair and watched streetlights soldier by, lights tinged with yellow, blue, or pink indicating the kind of auxiliary spells placed upon them. There were some things worth the cost of Offloads, low-level magics that created a huge amount of good for the entire city. And making sure that there was never a chance for a blackout was one of those things.
From the spacing of the streetlights, and eventually the control towers we drove past, I knew we were on the Burnside Bridge, moving across the river from my apartment and into East Portland. After wandering through a few neighborhoods, he pulled his car into a parking garage beneath what I assumed was an apartment building, and I watched the lights of the garage go by until he parked.
“So are there elevators?”
“Yes. And stairs.” He got out of the car, opened the back doors, and dug out the remaining food Nola had packed for us. “This way.” He shut the door with his heel and, once I was out of the car, he hit a remote to lock it.
This garage was big enough for maybe a dozen cars, concrete, like the one beneath my father’s—I mean Violet’s—condo, but unlike Violet’s place, where the concrete was smooth as marble, this concrete was buttressed with lead rods that webbed the walls and ceiling. Magic collectors. Which meant this was a newer building, or maybe retrofitted.
“How many apartments here?” I asked as I followed Zay over to two doors, one that had an elevator behind it, and the other that had a symbol of stairs on it.
“A few.” He paused to shift his hands around the box he carried, then pulled the door to the stairs open. “I’m on the second floor.”
The stairs were also concrete, so too the walls. There were no windows, which I found extremely comforting because, although I couldn’t see anyone out there, no one out there could see me either. I wondered if Zay had considered those sorts of security measures when he moved in here.
Four levels of stairs later we were at the door to the second floor. This door had a small window in it, just enough that you could look into the stairwell, or from the stairs could look down the long hall. Another nice feature if you were concerned about running into people.
He pulled the door open and we stepped out of the cool cold-stone smell of old concrete, and into a softly lit hall with a carpet so plush that I lost two inches in height as soon as I stepped on it. Unlike my apartment building, this place did not stink of old magic. I caught a whiff of curry and the hickory of wood burning, and the thick spice of incense covered by an antiseptic lemon detergent.
To the left of the stairs was the elevator, to the right an umbrella stand. The hall stretched between six apartment doors, and Zay walked to the end, then turned left, down a hall that I hadn’t noticed because of the false half wall that made it look like the main hall dead-ended.
Zay walked ahead of me and paused in front of his door.
I’d said before that I didn’t think there was a spell worth paying for that could keep a burglar out of your house if they were determined to break in. But I had never seen a spell so artfully cast as the one that covered Zay’s door. The great hulking ward was so good, it was hard to actually see the thing. If I weren’t trying to keep a low profile, I’d pull on magic and Hound that glyph to find out who made it, then I’d go buy one for myself. This had to be the strongest lock-ward I’d ever seen.
So Zay was more wizard than he seemed. He did the finger-wave bit—similar to Kevin’s trick—and the spell unraveled. I could sense the strands of the spell pulling in on itself, like eels backing into rock nooks, so that the way through the door was clear. Zay pulled his keys out of his pocket and unlocked what seemed to be an average lock and dead bolt.
>
“Come on in,” he said. The lights flicked on as soon as he crossed the threshold, and with the magical trappings outside his apartment, I was expecting maybe some superintense magic-user stuff inside the apartment. Maybe an old distillery, crystal, and glass rods people used to try to store magic in. Maybe a potted Honey Spurge, which people used to think was so sensitive to impending magic Offloads that it force-bloomed and withered away minutes before an Offload could actually reach you. Or maybe that all his lights would be glowing in the soft pastels of magic.
But like Zayvion, the apartment was unassuming in its simplicity. Modern lines of brushed metal shelves and furnishings were tempered with thick blankets and a few pillows in warm, earthen tones stacked with woven geodesic block patterns, patterns reflected in the upholstery of the couch and love seat, and the area rug in the middle of the white-carpeted living room.
There were no plants in the room, no clutter, not a thing out of place. It almost had an unused look to it.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You don’t entertain much?”
Zay shrugged and headed into the living room. “Bathroom’s to your right, opposite the bedroom. I’m going to take these into the kitchen,” he said from across the room. “Hungry?”
“I could eat,” I called over my shoulder. I took off my coat and draped it over the back of the love seat, then made my way toward the bathroom.
“What?” he yelled.
“Yes!” Then I had to smile. It had been years since I’d shared yelling space with someone, and I liked the feeling of not being the only one in the house who was making noise.
Because I am a snoopy bitch, I glanced in the bathroom—clean to the point of being sparse, very bachelor—but at least there was toilet paper on the roll. I had to pee, but decided to hold it long enough to check out his bedroom.
The door was half open, so I pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped in.
Well, well. So the boy did like some luxury in his life. The bedroom was done up in rich blues and browns, with thin lines of yellow here and there, leaving the impression of dark earth below and night skies above cradling stars or moonlight. The bed took up the lion’s share of the room, and dark wood dressers and nightstands filled the corners.
“You like?”
I turned and swung my fist, but Zayvion wasn’t dumb. He’d snuck up on me and stopped outside my swinging range. That was embarrassing.
“Damn it, Jones, make some noise, will you?” I grumped.
He had taken off his coat and shoes and was leaning, arms crossed over his chest, against one side of the doorway. He was also smiling.
“So. Do you?” he said.
“Do I what?”
“Like the room?”
“It’s fine. I was looking for the bathroom.”
He pointed over his shoulder. “That way.”
“Thanks.” He moved out of the way so I could leave the room. “And yes,” I said. “Your girlfriend pick out the colors?”
“No.”
Well, couldn’t blame a girl for trying to find out a little more about him. “Your mother?”
“No. And to answer your other question, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Oh. We were being honest.
I raised one eyebrow. “Good.” I left him wondering about that, and used the bathroom—making sure I locked the door first. That man was too quiet.
I made use of the facilities and washed my hands. While I was drying them on a remarkably clean-looking towel, I realized my hand and arm did not itch. The black bands on my left hand remained the same, but they never itched much anyway. I examined my right hand in the bright lights of the bathroom and saw no change. I looked at my bare arm in the mirror, and saw no change there either. Other than the fact that it did not itch, it still had bright metallic ribbons maypoling from nail bed to temple. Pretty, really. And when I traced one line of color along my forearm, I could feel magic stir within me. Much more magic than I’d ever held before.
“What did you do to me, Cody?” I muttered. “What did I do to myself?”
Zayvion knocked on the door. “Food’s ready.”
“Thanks,” I said. I finished drying my hands and walked out into the living room. Now that I was in the middle of the room I noticed that the kitchen and living room were one shared space, with an island separating them. Zay stood behind that island, setting out matching plates that were not chipped.
I strolled over and took a seat on the barstool that faced the island. “So you are either never home and everything you own has been recently unpacked from boxes, or you are a raging clean-freak.”
“Napkin?” he offered.
I took the perfectly pressed, perfectly white cloth napkin.
“Which is it, Jones? Explain your freakishly neat house.”
“I have a maid come in and dust for me once a month. I know how to pick up after myself. And I’m not home much.” He scooped out a serving of homemade lasagna for both of us. “Get the salad?” he asked.
I popped the lid on a plastic container and split the salad between our plates. “Why aren’t you home?”
“I work a lot. Late hours.” He deposited rolls by the salad. “I don’t have any butter for the rolls. You okay with that?”
“With Nola’s cooking, I don’t need butter. Why late hours?”
He wiped his hands on a towel, folded it, and tossed it over one shoulder. “You are a painfully curious woman. Anyone ever mention that to you?”
“Constantly. Do you moonlight?”
He opened the refrigerator behind him and pulled out two bottles of grape soda. “Out of beer. Soda?”
“Sure.”
He handed me a bottle and then sat across the island from me.
“Most women are impressed by how clean my house is. You? Complain.”
“I’m not complaining. It’s just . . . don’t you ever let go, relax, and have fun?”
He wiped at his mouth with his napkin. “Sure. It’s in the schedule. Monday, laundry, Tuesday, dishes, and every other Thursday afternoon between one and one fifteen, wild abandon.”
“Well, since that line of inquiry is only getting me sarcasm, I’m going to change the subject. Why doesn’t my arm itch here?”
He stopped chewing, then started up again. I kept eating and watched his body language. He was serious Zay again.
“Do you know what those marks are, Allie?”
“I know how I got them. From healing Cody.”
“Be more specific about that. Did Cody somehow assist you?”
“Yes. He was chanting a mantra. He held my hands. He . . .” I frowned, thinking. “He reached through me and um, caught up the small magic in me and pulled magic out from the network and mixed them together through me. When he had my hands, it was like I could see magic as colors, textures, and I could see how it could be woven into a kind of healing glyph that I directed over his wound and sent deeper, into muscle and bone.”
Zay shook his head, a small smile on his lips. “Small magic in you. I’d wondered. And, I’ll point out, you didn’t tell me about that either.”
I shrugged. “I’ve tried telling people that I can hold magic, that I have always had a flicker of it in me. No one believed it.” Not even my own mother, I thought to myself.
“Well, it makes sense for why you can carry magic now. And why it hasn’t killed you.”
“But why is it so strong now?”
“I think Cody synched you.”
“Synched?”
“Old magic term, back in the days before it went public.”
I had cut a chunk of lasagna and paused with it halfway to my mouth. I didn’t know magic was discovered more than thirty years ago. That wasn’t taught in any of my history classes, and certainly wasn’t a common belief. As far as I knew magic had been discovered thirty years ago.
Zay negated that fact like he expected me to know it. Expected me to believe magic had been around for a lot longer than everyone thought.
/> “The problem with synching,” he continued, “was that a person could become so in rhythm and tune with magic that they would either become lost to it, or become a part of it. Neither of those things are good. People who are receptive to the frequency of magic can sometimes carry magic within their bodies for short periods. On a small scale, a very small scale, there was some success with this. But anyone who tried to carry more magic than enough for a simple spell—”
“Burned themselves out,” I said. “Physically, or mentally. We studied something like that in school, but they called it ‘forbidden’ and nothing else. They refuse to teach any more about it.”
He nodded. “Too many people were harmed or killed trying it. No one’s been able to isolate which combination of genetic quirks enables a person to actually house magic.”
“You think Cody can hold magic?”
“No. But I think whatever he did to you, or through you, triggered your ability to house magic on a much larger scale. But not without a price.” He pointed at my hand.
And for the first time, I felt self-conscious of it. I curled my fingers closer around my fork, and couldn’t believe I felt bad. It was just a mark. A burn. I’d been burned before.
But never like this, never with so many colors, never so sensitive, never so . . . beautiful. Did liking a disfiguring mark make me a freak? Did being ashamed of it make me any better?
I scooped a bite of noodles and sauce into my mouth. “It burned,” I said. “But it hasn’t really hurt, just itches sometimes. Do you think it will fade like a burn?”
“I think that depends.”
“On what?”
“On if you ever use magic again.”
“Listen, I like Nola and all that stuff she stands for, but I am not going to turn magic-free just because I got a little burn.”
“Good,” he said. “You have a great ability, Allie. It would be a shame to see you give it up.”
I took a swig of grape soda. “I think I can cover the marks with makeup.”
“I suppose, but I don’t think you should.”
“Why?”
“I think it’s beautiful. Exotic. Powerful.”
I looked up into those tiger eyes and saw the fire burning behind them.
