by Mary Hughes
Penalty of death.
Even so, his need to have her, to claim her, almost drove him to risk it. Throw away all caution for one glimpse of heaven.
If he could be certain she really wanted him, too, he would have.
Problem was, he’d paid attention in his arcane classes. He was thirty-nine, and despite looking like twenty-five, Zoe was, too.
Which meant insta-mate by forty.
This hard, hot, explosive need for sex might not be Zoe’s choice. It might simply be her wolf forcing her to try every potential mate she came across. Daniel might defy the Council for himself. But for her sake, he reined hard against his terrible need.
Except…only another wolf would trigger her wolf’s response, right? His spirits rose. He wasn’t a wolf. Magic, yes, but magic users and creatures of magic were opposite sides of the coin.
The more he considered the idea, the more he liked it. Only another wolf, and probably an alpha, would have fired up her mating instinct…
Then he remembered he’d punched that jingling-medal asshole in the nose. Fighting over her, definitely an alpha’s action. He groaned. Her beautiful responsiveness to him, her immediate, wild need for him. Not really him at all. Just her wolf hormones reacting to the fight. Panting and raising its tail for the winner, the alpha male.
Nothing to do with Daniel, at all.
After all, she still thought he was a dork.
All that honor and pain was barely enough to push himself away from Zoe’s gorgeous body and off that couch. But he did, barely, standing on trembling legs and trying to straighten his clothes—until he made the mistake of looking down at her.
The sight of her full breasts, sleek thighs, and especially her satisfied sex outlined by the damp, clinging, silky panties, not only made his knees buckle, it made tucking himself away particularly painful.
Her eyes slit open in her mask, gleaming with fulfillment—and something more. Something warmer and softer and very happy with him. The look said, if he wanted, she’d welcome him inside her.
It was all he could do not to fall on her again and take her. Make her mine.
He clenched his hands. Forbidden. More importantly, it had to be her choice, too. Her human’s choice, not her wolf’s instinct.
Despite all that, her warm invitation pulled at him. He trembled between the two forces—the death penalty, his resolve, and his wizard prince’s willpower on one side, only Zoe on the other. He took an involuntary step toward her.
He was going to do it, despite everything, unless he got out of there, fast. “I have an idea. How to find the key.”
A beat passed. She leaned up on one arm, her naked breasts swaying. “Don’t you want—”
“No.” He caught her flinch and amended, “Not yet. The key comes first.”
Her gaze was zeroed in on his pants, probably tented like the Great Pyramid. “Are you sure—”
“Absolutely.” Not. He locked onto her eyes. “Do you still have that napkin?”
Her brow wrinkled in question. “The one you gave me to wipe down these?” She sat up and her hands moved to her chest.
He looked. He had to.
He shouldn’t have.
She’d cupped herself, pressing her breasts together like pouting sisters. He wanted to kiss them both better and keep kissing until they smiled like twin suns.
Which wouldn’t find the key, but he was so far beyond caring, he didn’t even recognize himself. The family seer had predicted the Grand Crapyon of global disaster, annihilation of witchkind, yada yada. Didn’t matter squat with Zoe’s gorgeous breasts pouting at him.
“Ms. Blackwood?” A woman with bun and clipboard popped around the partition. “The orchestra’s ready to start…sweet sex on a stick.”
Daniel automatically moved to block the interloper’s view, but from her Home Alone gape, she’d apparently already seen everything. He glanced back at Zoe, hoping she wasn’t too embarrassed.
“Dorine, just a mo’.” Zoe straightened her dress and mask as if it was no big deal to be caught almost in flagrante delicto.
She’d never been body conscious, and now he knew why. Wolves were natural nudists. Rank conscious, yes, but not body conscious.
“Um…” The party planner swallowed visibly. “I’ll wait in the ballroom.” She edged back then spun and ran.
“I guess that let the cat out of the bag.” Zoe gave him a rueful look, and strangely, now she flushed, when being caught naked didn’t do it. “Take a rain check on that orgasm? As you heard from Ms. Newsflash, I have a ball to run.”
“You’re the Queen of Hearts. I already knew.”
She glanced away. “You always were so damned smart.”
“That wasn’t always a good thing.”
“No. But it was always an attractive thing.” Her gaze came back to him, and he read certainty and a touch of wistfulness there.
He blinked, hardly believing his ears. She’d been attracted to him then, even a little?
Holding up her bodice, she stood and presented her back to him. “Could you…?”
“Of course.” He zipped.
“Thanks.” Without looking at him, that strange color still riding her cheeks below her mask, she slipped on her shoes and started out.
“Zoe.”
She paused.
“I think giving this ball to promote romance is sweet. Kind.”
“You mean girly.” She twisted to toss him the napkin. “But thanks.”
She hadn’t asked what he intended to do to find the key, only trusted him to get the job done. As she always had. A smile lifted his lips.
Daniel waited until she was gone then pressed the napkin to his face. It smelled of jasmine and saffron perfume, the spilled drink, and that essential soft feminine scent that was Zoe herself. And, now that he knew what to pick out, the wilder component of scent that was her wolf.
He took the napkin from his face and stared at it. Now, he had exactly what he needed to find, not only the thief, but the key.
And to take the prize, a small part of him whispered. To take the parchment for himself.
* * *
“Okay, Dorine, I’m here.” Zoe tamped down on her frustration at the interruption. Daniel had almost… But the woman was simply doing her job, after all.
“The orchestra.” The planner stared at her. “You’re going to speak with the director to start the dancing?”
“Yes. Something wrong?”
“Um, what’s up with your eyes?”
Zoe glanced into the walls of mirrors. Her pale green eyes had darkened, shading toward brilliant emerald.
Her mother’s mated color.
Zoe had to be seeing things. She lowered her lids. “Nothing.”
Had something excited her mating instinct, temporarily darkening the color?
Something—or someone.
Daniel?
No. Not a human. She wasn’t an alpha, but she was in the direct line of alphas, and her wolf was strong. She’d only mate another shifter.
Wouldn’t she?
Unless she was so close to the mating cusp that her wolf forced her to take the first male to give her an orgasm.
Would that be so bad?
Wistfulness filled her. Making a den, a family, with Daniel. With the boy who’d been sweet to her, with the strong, handsome man he had become…would it be so bad?
Well, yes. He was human; he’d reject her. It had happened before. No future to it.
So no more sex with Daniel. After all, she’d gone to a great deal of trouble to stage this masked ball. She wanted…no, she needed to experience romantic love, to remember what it felt like to connect, in heart and mind, before being consigned to a life of being ruled by bodily urges. Once mated to her one-and-only, she needed to recognize the traces of love when they occurred. If they occurred.
Mating without love was her biggest fear. She needed tonight to be able to convince herself that her mating, when it happened, was more than a jail built of lust.
No letting temporary urges overcome her, even for Daniel.
At least, not right this moment. First, she had to speak to the orchestra director. Then she was getting some romance.
* * *
Daniel considered the napkin. A basic Locate Object spell—which only worked on things, not living beings—was one of the first lessons taught to a young witch or wizard.
But he needed more than a simple where for Zoe’s key. He needed a who and why, because he suspected there was more to this than met the eye.
He suspected the key thief was another witch.
Certainly, the parchment was beautiful and valuable, but it wasn’t priceless—except to a witch, because of the Quatrain.
Therefore, his locater spell needed more finesse. So he called on the expertise of a witch princess who’d been top of her class at Nostradamus U, until she’d given up magic. He still didn’t know why.
He slid his earbud from his tux breast pocket and placed the phone call.
“What is it now, Daniel?” Sophia answered, sounding grumpy. She’d been grumpy ever since she’d left university and gone into the mundane sector.
He usually tried to jolly it out of her, make her laugh, as he had earlier this evening. Now he just said, “Had it ever occurred to you that banking might not have been the best choice for a witch?”
“Has it ever occurred to you to get reduction surgery for that nosiness?”
“We’re family,” he replied cheerfully. “I have a right to be as annoyingly intrusive as I want. And I need your help with a spell.”
“Daniel, you know I don’t do magic anymore.”
“Don’t, can’t, or won’t?”
“Can’t,” she admitted. “So, while I’d love to help you—”
“Help me form it, then.”
A pause. Then, she said, “What kind of spell?” She sounded grudgingly intrigued.
He hid a smile. He’d piqued her interest, reinforcing his notion she should never have given up magic in the first place.
Briefly, he wondered what that can’t meant. Nothing outside a quartet of council Enforcers could strip a witch of her powers. Unless Sophia had voluntarily done a complete Evacuate, unheard of for a multi-element princess. The legendary evil Burgot, rising from the past and sucking out her power, was more believable than a princess voluntarily giving up all that magic.
Daniel shook his head. Fodder for a future conversation. “I need a locater, but not a simple one. Not only a where, but a who and why.”
She groaned. “Why not throw in how and when? Daniel, a double Find is hard enough. You want a triple?”
Locater spells were like map directions, with a starting point, endpoint, and route. Adding another question was like creating another endpoint—plus routes between it and the original points. One question, one route. Two questions, three routes. Three questions, six routes.
“A triple,” he said firmly. Then, because it was difficult, he stroked her ego a bit. “If anyone can do it, you can.”
“Such sweet talk. How can I resist? Does this have to do with the Quatrain? Of course it does,” she said, answering her own question. “Have you seen the parchment? Does it really contain Avignon’s prediction?”
“Invisible except for the anchor words, but it’s his script, colors, and style. I’d say yes. Look, the parchment is locked in a case, but the key is missing. I think it was stolen.”
“That’s not likely,” she said. “Then the parchment would be gone.”
“Except there’s a geis on it.”
“It’s cursed?” Sophia whistled. “Let me guess. An injunction against magical theft?”
“Got it in one. No one can steal the thing with magic, but there’s more. No one with magic can steal it. Wizards, witches, shifters, familiars…they can’t take it without the owner’s permission.”
“But doesn’t that argue against the key thief being a witch?”
“No. The parchment is still there. If a mundane took the key, he’d have walked up to the case, used the key, and with a little slight-of-hand or smokescreen or even just a bit of luck, snatched the thing.”
“While a wizard or witch trying the same thing would be repulsed.”
“Yes. Probably weak, magically, not discovering the geis until after she’d taken the key. A strong witch wouldn’t have needed to steal the key in the first place.”
“Sure, she’d have just tried magicking the parchment out and discovered the geis that way. Okay, are we using the key’s starting point itself?”
“No. A representation. A cloth napkin.” Sweet scent filled his nostrils. Zoe. He actually looked for her, before he realized the scent was from the napkin he’d raised to his nose.
“Because it wasn’t hard enough already. I think I hate you.”
“There’s another complication. The starting point for the locater spell is a shifter.”
“Stars and planets, Daniel. You don’t ask for much, do you? I’d love to help you, but I put my advanced spell books on consignment.”
“C’mon, Sophia. You studied magic like a fiend most of your life. You memorized everything you could get your hands on.”
She blew a disgruntled breath. “I used to think it was sweet that you paid attention to me. Now I think it’s a pain in the ass.”
“You love the challenge.”
“Yeah. Maybe. All right, let me think.” Sophia’s silence was punctuated by clomps, her heeled dress pumps hitting the floor as she paced. A snap of fingers. “Got it. Fire, water, and blood.”
“A heart spell?” Daniel couldn’t keep the dismay from his voice. As a wizard prince he was master of several forms of magic. But the one aspect he could never seem to get was heart. Not since high school…he frowned. He was decent at it in high school. What had changed? Besides bulking up and actually getting dates, which should have increased his ability to do heart.
“That’s the spell I remember without a book.” She sounded both irritated and embarrassed. “Do you want my help or not?”
“Yes, fine. What does it call for?”
She told him.
“Okay. Hang on while I get set up.” He followed his nose down the hallway to the food staging area where three people in white chef’s coats flew in and out with dishes.
He asked a young woman wiping out an empty chafing dish for water. She set down the dish, grabbed a carafe, and filled it from the tap, handing it to him with a hurried smile before grabbing a full tray and sailing out with it. Needing a few more supplies, he waited, pretending to get a text message and fumbling with his phone until the other two left as well. Then he snatched a canned heat, the empty chafing dish, his carafe and left.
Daniel sped with his supplies to the privacy of the decorating prep room. Remembering Dorine, he locked the door behind himself, not chancing a human seeing him do magic. Best case scenario, that would fritz the spell, and he’d have to pay a stiff fine. More likely, though, after an investigation, those Enforcers would come and strip him of all his powers—or worse, his head. The Witches’ Council took mundanes witnessing magic very seriously indeed, because if too many knew about it, magic would cease to exist.
Like Schrödinger’s cat, magical uncertainty, directly observed, collapsed into mundane reality. So magic was a secret, rarely done in front of mundanes and never done in a way that they’d think it real. The Council even got crawly if shifters got involved, which was why he was using Zoe’s napkin instead of Zoe. If she’d participated and the Council found out, punishment depended on who heard the case and how paranoid he or she was. Imprisonment, heavy fines, stripped of his powers and, well, the Council did have that headsman on payroll.
With the door securely locked, Daniel did a quick ethereal scan for electrical and metaphysical bugs. The room was clean.
Setting his materials on a table, he ticked them off against his mental list. Cauldron, check. Water, fire, check. Now, blood.
He pushed his mask up on his head to see better
then took a sterile lancet packet from his breast pocket. As a wizard, he always had one.
“Okay,” he said into his headset. “I’m ready. What do I do?”
“Put the napkin in the water,” Sophia instructed. “That’s your where. Add a drop of blood for who. Then set the napkin on fire for why. Color will let you know intention, white for pure, yellow for accident, red for greed—”
“I get it. Any specific words?” Witches were able to manipulate the unknown that was magic without changing the essential uncertainty, but no one knew how or why. Words helped that manipulation, but again, no one knew why, not since the metaphysical research branch was shut down centuries ago by the Inquisition.
“Find,” Sophia said in a “duh” sort of voice.
He thanked her, made a mental note to send her a big bouquet of flowers, and started to hang up.
“Daniel, wait.” Her voice was breathy. “I just thought of something.”
“What?”
“A find spell is a two-way street. Even a half-competent witch will feel it.”
“Yes, I know. She’ll try to trace it back to me. I’ll douse the spell the instant I know who it is. Since I’m the stronger mage, I’ll be in and out before she can find me.” Once the spell was doused, Daniel would be essentially invisible, magically. Although power betrayed itself in certain signs, especially in the eyes, magic itself could only be sensed in action or on things, not in people.
“That’s not what I meant. She’ll also know you’re on to her. Whatever plan she has—it’ll step up her schedule.”
It didn’t take him long to work out what Sophia meant, and when he did, he wanted to howl. The enemy witch or wizard had probably plucked the key from Zoe’s lovely bosom and, therefore, knew she was the parchment’s owner. Having discovered the geis, the witch’s next move would be to try to get around it: manipulate Zoe to give up the parchment.
The good news was, the geis wouldn’t work under coercion, so the enemy would try persuasion first. A wizard might even try to romance Zoe, the very thing she wanted.
But the instant Daniel did his spell, the enemy would know another mage was coming and rush Zoe to get the parchment.
