Blackbirds & Bourbon

by Heather R. Blair

  The heat and the pressure all combine and combust. Sending me spiraling, everything taut inside me breaking like a hundred guitar strings. All the stresses of the last month pinging away one by one as the orgasm rips through my body, pleasure shooting through every last cell.

  Oh fuck.

  I can’t scream, I can’t breathe, my body is beyond my control. Silent and writhing with the billiard balls rolling around me, I scrape the felt with my nails as I ride it out. It takes forever for the almost-painful ecstasy to subside, for my muscles to unlock and soften. Jack is frozen, breathing hard as he watches me come down, his expression awed and full of something so tender it drives a shard of ice into my heart.

  Don’t do this to me again. Don’t you fucking make me love you again.

  The tension that dissipated with my release is coming back, seeping in like a dark, insidious fog. There is the rattle of keys, a door being closed just as my breathing finally slows.

  “Seph, you here? The door was open?” Benji’s curious voice floats up the stairs. Jack tenses. More from the look on my face I think than from the interruption, but who knows? I push up to my elbows, trying hard to sound normal.

  “I’m here, Benji, up in the loft. Meet you in my office in a minute, ’k?”

  “Sure, boss.” His footsteps move through the open room below and down the hall. When they fade away, my eyes meet the ones above me. I’m not sure what to say, so I settle for “Pretty decent timing.”

  He laughs softly. “It’s a gift.” When he slides his fingers from inside me, I can’t help but shudder at the loss, my fingers clinging to his shirt as he helps me up. My legs are still unsteady as Jack sets me reluctantly on my feet. His jaw flexes, that sexy hollow winking in and out.

  “We’re going to finish this…and soon, princess,” he whispers.

  He definitely needs some finishing. Jack is hard as steel, his need clearly outlined in those softly clinging jeans. I can’t help but trail my hand down his body to touch.

  His eyes half close as I run my palm over that thick ridge. Then Rochie’s words from last night echo in my head. Jack hisses when I pull my hand away. My eyebrows draw together. “Soon as in before Yule, I suppose?”

  He frowns. “What the fuck does Yule have to do with anything?” His cell rings, and Jack draws it out of his pocket, still giving me that perplexed look. He lifts the phone to his ear. “Yeah?”

  Instantly his eyes go hard and cold, though they don’t leave mine. “On my way.” He thumbs the touch screen, ending the call. Running one of the fingers he used to get me off over my lower lip, he shakes his head. “I have to go, but you’re going to explain that comment to me later.”

  I shrug, pushing his hand away. “Sure, I need to explain. Whatever, Jack.”

  “Seph—”

  “Go. It seems we’ve both got work to do.”

  He stands there for a second, one hand clenching as he looks at me. Then with a shake of his head, Jack walks away.

  I’m in a black mood for the rest of the day. I finally leave T&T around three, since it’s Sunday and slow…and because I can’t take my own bitchy self any longer.

  I want Sy, but she’s still on weekend duty with the Guard, so I’m SOL.

  Finally, I just head home, hoping for a nap or some of Carly’s cookies, or both. She’s in the kitchen when I get there, bouncing along to freaking “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which sets my teeth on edge. If I never hear that goddamn song again, it will be too soon.

  I look around warily for Styx before entering, but big, tall and glittery is nowhere to be found. Relieved, I slip into a chair at the table and grab a cookie. Before I can take a bite, Carly whirls around, her smile widening when she sees me. She whips off her apron in a cloud of flour that dusts her red-gold curls in white.

  “Oh Seph! I’ve been waiting for you. Leave that and come upstairs, I’ve got something to show you before I get ready. Styx is going to pick me up soon. Come on!” Grumbling, I set my cookie down and follow her as she almost glides to her room, three floors up.

  Moments later, she’s flashing a necklace at me, a happy smile on her face.

  “That looks like an absorption stone, only I’ve never seen one made of onyx before.” I stare at the polished black stone on a leather cord that my sister just dropped in my hands.

  “It is.” She claps excitedly. “But it’s special, Seph. Made specifically for elemental magic.”

  I blink. “Is this to protect me from the Council or something?” Absorption stones have a finite life, most of them usable only once or twice.

  She shrugs, pushing me gently into the chair in front of her vanity as she takes the necklace from me to fasten it around my neck. “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure? Didn’t you make it?”

  “Nope. Mom did. It’s her Christmas gift to you.”

  13

  My jaw drops, both me and my reflection staring at my sister in the etched oval mirror as she fastens the clip, humming to herself.

  “When did you see Mom, Carly?”

  She smiles vaguely. “Late last night. She talked to Ana, too.”

  “What? You’re talking about our mother—the one that’s been gone for three damn years?”

  “Don’t be mad, Seph,” Carly says softly. “She has her reasons.”

  Reasons to see my sisters. But not me. I swallow past the sudden burning in my throat. “I hope they’re fucking good ones.”

  “Sure they are. She’s trying to help you, silly.”

  “Help me? She could help me by actually being here.”

  “She believes otherwise.”

  My fingers curl, nails digging into my palms, pain and rage playing dodgeball in my brain. “I don’t suppose it’d do any good to ask you why?”

  Carly fusses with my hair, her eyes soft as she shakes her head. “You’ve never been any good at letting people help you, Seph.”

  “Since when?”

  Carly folds her arms, her look uncharacteristically stern. “Oh come on. You’ve always act like you don’t need anyone. Who had to buy a bar, all on her own? Who decided protecting Duluth is her personal purview? Who didn’t ask for help when Georg went all crazy caveman… Or when Jack showed back up in town?”

  “I’m handling it.”

  “Are you really?” Our eyes meet in the mirror, both big and blue, but hers with that faint touch of green, reminding me of Jack. I look away first.

  “It’s got to be confusing for you. Even I could feel the pull between you two that day up on the Shore. It was like standing between a couple of human-sized magnets.”

  “That’s just sex. We like the look of each other is all.”

  “Uh-huh. Why do you think Styx and I didn’t tell anyone when we started going out?”

  The apparent change in subject makes me blink. “Umm, I don’t know. Maybe you didn’t want to deal with the gossip?” Styx is a legend, after all. A badass one. I had never heard of Styx tapping the local dating pool any more than my sister.

  “Exactly. And he didn’t want my family giving me grief about seeing him.”

  “I like Styx! We’d never give you shit about being with him—”

  “Ana did.” Her lips press together once.

  “When was this?”

  “You were otherwise occupied. The point, Seph, is that I understand the draw of a dangerous man, but…”

  “But what, sissie?”

  “Never forget Mom’s mantra. Shoes don’t stretch…”

  “And men don’t change. I know, I know.”

  Carly nods, then frowns, the dying light of sunset dappling the pale cream walls, catching her curls and turning them to a halo of fire. “Though I will say, when Jack found us on the side of the road…the way he looked at you... It’s hard to believe anyone could fake that look.”

  I clench my teeth. “Jack can. Trust me on that. I’m not stupid, Carly.”

  “I know,” she says softly. “But still, be careful with him,
okay?”

  I don’t want to hear any more of this shit. I’m far too confused about Jack as it is. Carly isn’t helping. And my mom. I can’t believe she was here. I can’t believe she would come home and not bother to see me. Especially with all I’m facing. Maybe she hasn’t been the most maternal of women, but she always tried her best. This feels like she’s throwing me to the wolves.

  My throat tightens again and this time I know the tears are going to come if I don’t get the hell out of here. I push to my feet and shove past my sister. But then I catch myself with one hand at her bedroom door, looking back at her.

  “Carly?”

  She doesn’t move from the window, still silhouetted by that violet light. “Yeah?”

  “You know I need you, right? All of you. It’s just…hard for me sometimes. Being the baby, and the weakest.”

  She snorts softly, looking over her shoulder at me with a gentle smile. “You’re not weak, Seph. You’ve always been the strongest of us all.”

  As I stumble through the tiny third-floor landing and down the stairs, my vision blurry and hot, I want to throw myself on the floor, kicking and screaming. I want to pack my shit and run away…or at least get far enough out of town that I can throw a few fireball spells and blow shit up while I have a good, loud cry.

  When I pass the door to Thomas’s room, though, I change my mind. I’m not too far gone to realize I need a friend right now. Someone sane and not family who can help me work out these snarls in my head before I do something stupid again. Thomas fits that bill perfectly.

  He’s sitting in bed when I come through the door, watching the last dregs of a deep purple twilight drain from the sky. It’s been a long haul over the last few weeks, evident in the sickly pale undertone that still colors Thomas’s normally rich brown skin. The plants surrounding his bedside look a little droopy, too, so I wave a hand at them. Leaves perk up, green stalks infused with new life, blossoms opening wider and colors intensifying. Thomas glances at my handiwork without comment, but his lips part slightly. Even after all he’s been through, the man still isn’t used to magic. Or pain. I see the grimace he fails to hide as he shifts his weight. Leaning over, I adjust his pillows until he grants me a short nod, the lines in his face easing slightly.

  I flop down into the one comfortable chair in the room, squishy with a yellow and red floral print. “You may be the only one in the whole world besides Syana who doesn’t lie or hide shit from me, Thomas.” I stare at the reinvigorated flowers, wishing that broken trust could be restored as easily.

  He clears his throat, eyes leaving the window to study his hands on the coverlet. An unmistakable flush creeps up the side of his face that I can see, the unscarred side.

  “Thomas?” There is a sinking feeling in my stomach even before he opens his mouth.

  “It was only once, Seph. And I did owe him, you see.”

  “Let me take a wild stab here and guess you’re talking about Jack?”

  Sheets rustle and Thomas stifles a moan as he turns to face me. He nods, his dark eyes solemn.

  “What the hell could you possibly owe Jack?”

  “My life. Up in the woods, after the werewolves left me for dead... He was the one that found me and brought me to your house. I lied because he asked me not to tell anyone it was him.”

  If I weren’t already sitting down, I would be now. Thomas always maintained he had no idea how he got to our house. I always figured it must have been a sympathetic sylph or maybe a gnome, but this…

  “Did you know him before the attack, Thomas?”

  He sighs. “Yes, Seph. Not well, but we’d talked once. About you.”

  “What?”

  “It was a long time ago, back when I still worked at East. I saw him picking you up. On that bike of his.” The look Thomas gives me approximates what I imagine a concerned father’s might.

  I blink. “I take it you didn’t approve.”

  “Of course I didn’t. He was too damn old for you. We talked a little the next day, mano a mano. I knew you didn’t really have anyone looking out for you, so…” He shrugs. My fingers tighten on the arms of the chair and once again, the taste of tears chokes my throat. “I was afraid he was taking advantage.”

  “Turns out you were right, Thomas.”

  “Was I?” He lifts a hand when I open my mouth, so I shut it again. “I know he hurt you, and very badly from what I’ve gathered over the years, but it seems to me he’s been looking out for you as well.”

  “Why? What else do you know, Thomas?”

  His hand falls back to the bed, big and strong, but trembling from the slight exertion. “Nothing really, and that’s the honest truth. But he’s checked in with me about you over the years and he was right there when you needed him with the wolves. Maybe he had his reasons for not wanting you to know he saved me, Seph.”

  I put up my own hand, getting to my feet even though my insides are shaking. “Reasons, my ass. This is another one of his games. And I am fucking sick of them.”

  Before I walk out, I straighten Thomas’s pillows as gently as I can, even though my own hands are trembling with barely suppressed anger. Not at my friend, but at everything that seems to be gathering, hovering over me like Tyr’s blade in that damn cavern under Palisade Head. Just waiting to slice down and rip everything I know to shreds. I won’t bow my head and accept my fate this time, though.

  I’m done.

  I stand in the hallway, listening to the silence. Everyone is gone now. Carly on her date with Styx, I guess. Ana and Jett, god knows where. Probably avoiding me so I don’t ask them about Mom.

  In less than forty-eight hours, I’m supposed to stand in front of the Council and likely accept punishment for a crime I didn’t commit. I’ll then be at the mercy of the Dark Council and anyone else who wants to have a go at the witch worth the price of a small lottery. In my time of need my mother finally shows up—not to see me or to offer comfort or advice—but to leave me a Christmas present she can’t even be bothered to deliver in person. Jett, for all intents and purposes, is nearly as unavailable as Mom lately, and neither her nor my other sisters offer me anything but vague assurances, like crumbs wiped from the table to placate a hungry pet.

  I know I’ll never be able to find Mom if she doesn’t want to be found, and Jack is almost as bad. So what to do?

  Stopping in the hallway, one hand to the wall, I watch one of Carly’s murals stir. A sleeping bear with one paw over his eyes. He lifts it to look at me with a golden brown gaze that has me wishing I could slip through his painting to appear instantaneously at the Den again. To see Sy and…

  Wait a minute. I straighten slowly. An idea has bubbled up through all the noise in my head. Like Rochie appearing out of that mural the other night. She said that magic was never a one-way street. I can feel the lightbulb flash on over my head.

  No place to hide, eh, Jack?

  Pushing away from the wall, my frustration burns off into grim purpose. I whisper my rhyme, low and soft, “…to set before the king.”

  It only takes a few stanzas to draw enough magic for my purpose. A revealing. I lift my arms as the magic floats down, coating my skin in lavender and gold glitter. To my surprise the first spell I sense is old, older than anything Jack could have placed on me, surely. It’s a spell of concealment, and the way it’s weaved is so odd. Not as if whoever cast it was trying to hide me, but hide something from me. I know the weaver. Her style is unique and as familiar to me as my own.

  What the hell, Mom?

  My teeth grind together, but I press on, studying the shiny bits of magic clinging like tiny magnets to the spell residue left on my skin. There’s nothing more. My first thought is that the absorption stone is affecting Jack’s spell somehow. I even wrap my fingers around the chain to take it off, but then I realize that can’t be it. Absorption stones only work in real time. They can’t suck away old magic. It’s true that I’ve never heard of an absorption stone for elemental magic before, but surely the sa
me principles apply. Then it hits me. Elemental. Jack’s spell isn’t witch magic, so maybe witch magic can’t reveal it.

  But I’ve never consciously summoned elemental magic before.

  I think of Cerunnos’s taunt in that cave. Whatever power you drew on that night, you have no true command of it yet.

  Time to prove you wrong, old man.

  But when I strain for it, probably looking an awful lot like I need a bathroom break, it doesn’t come. I don’t feel a whisper of that dark shadow that brushed at my mind when I faced down Owen. Or the clarity that came after.

  Frustrated, I bang my head back against the wall. Think, dammit.

  Cerunnos said a lot of things during our short time in that cave, but one comes to the forefront. He thought it was interesting that my first use of elemental power took the form of ice. Jack’s weapon of choice.

  Jack was at the beach that night, but he hadn’t influenced my use of elemental power.

  Or had he?

  Maybe he hadn’t consciously done anything, but could he have been the conduit? Shivers cascade down my back as I push away from the wall again, my eyes going wide. Carly said she could feel the connection between us, like a magnet. She was only being metaphorical, but what if there’s more to it? What if Jack is my link to elemental magic?

  But if that’s true, how the hell do I use Jack to find Jack?

  Argh! Swearing, I almost give up when, strangely enough, some words of my mother’s float through my aching head.

  Sometimes the idea of a thing is more powerful than the thing itself.

  Huh. Well, it’s worth a try…

  Breathing deeply, I close my eyes, picturing Jack in front of me. Dark chestnut hair, tousled and pushed back from his forehead. The planes and angles of that wickedly handsome face. The lush curve of his lips. His smell seems to dance on the air in front of me, pine and smoke, and I can see his eyes, stormy grey ringed with green…