New Blood

by Gail Dayton

  It wasn’t all her own blood. On her right hand, the bloodiest, it mostly belonged to Jax, for she’d had her arm around him, under his coat, where the cut on his back had bled. It tasted the same, but it... felt different. Stripped down to basics, and yet with a bright complexity that promised… But she wouldn’t have years for exploring Jax’s complications. She needed to set him free of her as soon as possible.

  The thought twisted her stomach, churning it more than the horrors committed by those criminals. But she refused to keep him where he didn’t want to be.

  “Amanusa?” His weary voice came from the shadows beside her. His hand fumbled from his lap into hers until he found her hand—the one she wasn’t licking clean—and clasped it. Her stomach relaxed its twist.

  “Yes, Jax?” She cleaned a thick pool of his blood from her palm, savoring its differences.

  “Will you marry me?”

  “What?” Shock thrilled through her, from her suddenly racing heart out to her tingling extremities and up into her head where it rendered her mind inoperable.

  “Will you please do me the honor of becoming my wife?” He turned in the seat and brought her hand up to his mouth where he kissed her blood-smeared fingers.

  “B-but—”

  “I had just realized what a great, hulking idiot I am when those creatures attacked. I understood finally just how much you trust me, and that you hold me at greater value than I hold myself—than I have held myself in a very long time. Yvaine taught me that I am worth nothing—less than nothing—”

  “That’s not true!” Amanusa couldn’t keep the words from bursting out, though she’d had no intention of interrupting him. His speech began to heal the aching hollow in her gut. He’d asked her for marriage this time.

  She saw his smile in the light of a passing gas lamp. He brushed his fingers along her temple, down her cheek, leaving a cool dampness behind.

  “You are the first to think so in a very long time. But because you believe it, I begin to believe it as well. And if you have enough faith in me to think I am worth marrying, then I will do my damnedest to live up to that faith. Because of you, I am no longer just a magical construct. For you, I can be a man again. And this man humbly begs you to grant his plea for your hand in marriage.”

  “You have to take all of me, not just my hand.” Amanusa wanted to smack herself for the stupid quip, but her hands were both holding tight to both of Jax’s and her mind still wasn’t working quite right.

  “Every wonderful inch,” he agreed. “And you have to forgive me my idiocy.”

  “What idiocy? Jax, do you mean it?” She could scarcely believe it.

  “We can marry tomorrow, if you like. I did promise, and a Greyson always keeps his promises. At least, I do now. I just couldn’t believe you truly meant for me to keep it.”

  Joy flooded Amanusa so swiftly she had no time to wonder at its cause or source. She stretched up toward Jax, her eyes locked on the rough-carved planes of his familiar, comforting face. His eyes flicked from hers, to her lips, and his mouth met hers in a kiss.

  Had she meant for him to kiss her? She didn’t know, could only react, with her brain out of commission, and kiss him back. His mouth opened, his tongue licked across her lips and she gave him entry, tasting her blood and his mingling from what had been deposited on his lips and hers.

  A new flavor—not a literal, physical taste, but something that wasn’t magic and yet registered with the same magic sense—slid across her magic sensor. Something that was partly Jax and partly Amanusa and wholly new. Magic shivered into being from that new thing. Powerful magic that whispered gently through Amanusa. Warm, without the acid burn. She whispered back, sending it to shield and to heal. She could sense the pain in Jax’s back and forearm fade, and she reveled in the delicious feel of this new magic.

  It buzzed over her skin, sensitizing it to every touch, making her yearn for more. More touch, more sensation, more everything.

  The horse came to a halt and Jax broke the kiss, staring at her in shock as his tongue swiped across his lips, licking up the last of the stains. “What have you done?” he gasped out, voice harsh. “That wasn’t just your blood. Much of it was mine.”

  Amanusa shrugged, not sure why he sounded so frantic. “I know.”

  “Yvaine never tasted my blood. Ever. She went to great lengths to avoid it.”

  “Why?” She frowned at him. It hadn’t felt dangerous, tasting his blood. It felt good. To both of them. His pain had abated as his wounds began to heal, and she felt energized, her veins fizzing with the new, mellow-feeling magic.

  Jax shook his head. “I don’t know—”

  “Are you all right?” Elinor Tavis hovered beside their cab.

  “Better than before,” Amanusa said as Jax alit and helped her out. “I was able to start the healing on Jax’s injuries.”

  She hissed and jerked away when Harry Tomlinson took her injured arm to help her into the hotel. She had to speak out to be heard over his apologies. “It’s too bad I can’t work healing magic on myself.”

  “Wizardry will have to do, then.” Elinor hustled them across the hotel to the stairs. “Come along with you, now.”

  “I don’t suppose either of you would know whether it’s possible to arrange for a wedding by tomorrow,” Jax said diffidently.

  Elinor squealed. “Tomorrow? Truly?”

  “We put it off until we got to Paris. There were… complications in crossing Hungary and Austria. But now that we are here—” Jax smiled down at Amanusa. “I find myself unwilling to wait any longer.”

  Amanusa felt her face burn in one of those blasted blushes. Fair as she was, the blush showed clear to the part in her nearly transparent hair. But she’d have been even more embarrassed if Jax hadn’t taken the lead in asking. He truly did want to marry her. Soon.

  Worry rose off him in waves. Tasting his blood had so sensitized her to his moods that she could tell what worried him. Besides his worry about her taking in his blood, he worried about her injury, that she’d lost too much blood too quickly. She did feel a trifle light-headed.

  With a curse, Jax swung her up into his arms. “She’s bleeding too much. Where?” And he strode up the stairs and down the hallway, following Elinor’s rapid scurry.

  They reached Elinor’s hotel room where Amanusa insisted Jax remain for the healing. She didn’t want him out of her sight. Bad things happened, and worse happened when they were separated.

  Besides, the lessons from Yvaine warned over and over again about the care that had to be taken with disposal of the sorceress’s blood and Amanusa’s had spattered everywhere. That in the street and on the cobbles was used up in the justice magic, but her skin and clothing held more. She needed Jax to help her with it.

  While Jax rinsed blood from the rag used to wash her clean, Elinor stitched up the spell-numbed cut in Amanusa’s arm. The stitching didn’t hurt, but she found the tug at her skin a bit unnerving, and distracted herself by calling the blood together in the water basin so Jax could soak it up with one of his rice-paper squares. She gathered up the rest of the ambient coppery-tasting magic, leaving behind the green-grass-smelling magic—and then didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Give it to me,” Jax said.

  Elinor looked up for a moment from her stitching, at Jax and then Amanusa. Then she turned back to her work, whispering a spell as she sewed. Amanusa could feel it working, could hear the wizardly melody floating in the room, and knew she could never create such delicately beautiful magic.

  Her own magic was rich and earthy and… sensuous. It held the pounding rhythm of a heartbeat and the hot rush of desire. No wonder people feared its power.

  “Give me the magic,” Jax said again. “It’s why I was bound. It’s what I’m for.”

  Elinor faded from Amanusa’s awareness as she looked up at Jax, there beside her, holding her up. Her fingers slid between his, pressing their palms tight together. “If that is what Yvaine believed, then she was a fool,
because you are so much more than she ever allowed you to be.”

  “Give it to me.” He whispered it this time, bringing their clasped hands to his lips to press a kiss to her fingertips. “Elinor stores magic in her ointments and amulets. Harry stores his in his pebbles. Blood magic can only be stored in blood and bone. You’ve done it before. You know it won’t harm me. It may be what has kept me alive so long.”

  Amanusa brushed the back of her hand along his whiskery jaw. His beard was redder than the hair on his head. She cupped his face, then closed her eyes to look for the magic storage spaces inside him. But she couldn’t get in.

  Something held her at bay, held her outside of Jax’s body, apart from his thoughts. She could still feel her magic, her blood sliding through his veins, and it warmed her, kept her from panic when she bumped up against the—the skin, the barrier that kept her out.

  Elinor had gone. Amanusa was vaguely aware of that. She’d gone out the door after responding to Harry’s knock. There was only Jax, only Amanusa here now. She leaned toward him, close and closer still as she sensed something layering over Jax’s continuing worry—his awareness of her as a woman and of her semiclothed state.

  “Jax?” Amanusa’s lips brushed his as she murmured his name, utterly unafraid. “Take the magic.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The barrier between them vanished as he somehow reached out and took the excess magic from her. There, along his bones, she saw the places made to hold the magic and laid it in gently. Not like the last time, during the attack in Budapest when she’d had to pour it clumsily into him, desperate to rid herself of it without ever having done it before.

  Jax gasped and pressed his cheek tight against hers. “I’d forgotten,” he whispered. “The glorious burn of magic in my bones.”

  “It hurts you?” Amanusa grabbed hold of it again, ready to haul it out and send it… somewhere. To the victims of those criminals.

  “No, no.” He caught her hands, kissed them both, distracting her. “I’m fine. Grand. It feels good. But it’s like using a muscle after you haven’t in a long time. There’s a bit of an adjustment. A tiny strain until you’re used to it again.”

  She studied his face, watched inside him as the magic settled in, ready to act if he didn’t tell the absolute truth. After a moment, he relaxed, smiled at her, and she found herself eased out of his body as if she’d been politely ushered to the door. What if she needed the magic? Would she be able to get it? How was he able to keep her out when he never had before?

  Jax fetched the clean blouse Elinor had hung from the doorknob before she stepped out for her corridor conference with Harry. As soon as Amanusa was buttoned into it, she ordered Jax out of his shirt and frock coat and went to fetch Elinor to work her magic on him. Harry and Grey Carteret came in with her.

  “I thought you were staying at the laboratory,” Amanusa said as she rinsed the cloth to wash Jax’s arm while Elinor began work on his back.

  “Something’s come up,” Harry said. “Alvaro—he’s near as smart as Pyotr—thinks they might ‘ave learnt something an’ I thought you might want to ‘ave a look with your magic and see if you agree, so we came to ask. Good thing we came back when we did, or we’d’ve missed all the excitement. We ‘eard a scream and saw Cranshaw run, an’ followed ‘im. And there you were, at the end of the scream.”

  He plucked a chair from the desk across the room and set it near the bench where Amanusa and Elinor worked over Jax before sitting in it backward. Grey sprawled across the bed, ignoring scowls from Harry and Elinor.

  “What is it they’ve discovered?” Amanusa asked through a yawn.

  “Rather not say.” Harry folded his arms on the top rail of the chair’s back. “Better if you wait an’ see for yourself. Reach your own conclusion, like.”

  He sat up straight, making a fist to bounce on the chair rail. “While I was waitin’ for Elinor to finish here, I had Grey send a message to a bloke I know with the French government. Dalcourt says you can get married tomorrow at the registry, but there’s a heap of paperwork to be done first. He’ll get it all arranged. So that’s done. You’ll have to be at the Faubourg St. Michel registry building by nine tomorrow morning to sign things.”

  “Thank you.” Jax nodded at the two men, dignified despite the woman muttering spells at his naked back. Amanusa let Jax’s thanks stand for them both.

  After another moment, Elinor finished with Jax’s back. She stood and lifted his injured arm to inspect it. “Nice clean slice. No need for stitching here.” She probed it lightly. “Already healing, like your back, thanks to Amanusa’s sorcery. We’ll just numb it, clean it, and dress it.”

  Amanusa’s heart felt full. These people owed them nothing, yet they’d helped when she and Jax needed them. They did want something from her—but it was no more than she expected from herself. She wanted to help with the deadly magic-free zones.

  Jax shrugged back into his ruined frock coat. “My sorceress is beyond exhausted. I am taking her back to her room and sending her to bed.”

  “Don’t forget,” Harry said. “Nine o’clock sharp at the St. Michel registry building.”

  “Will you come?” Amanusa gave in to sudden impulse. “You and Elinor. As witnesses.”

  Elinor scrambled up from her chair to hug Amanusa. “Of course we’ll be there. We wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  “Should I be feeling unwanted?” Grey put in.

  “You are unwanted,” Harry retorted. “It’s ‘cause you’re useless.”

  “I am useful for a great many things.” Grey paused, as if considering. “Of course, a great majority of those things are useless…”

  Amanusa couldn’t help laughing. “Come, if you like. If you’re awake at that hour.”

  Grey struggled to escape the pillows and the fluffy featherbed, making a show of it, extending her laughter. Once on his feet, he bowed. “Gentle lady, for you, I will force myself.”

  “Good evening, then.” Jax bowed, and steered Amanusa out of the room.

  There was something she’d wanted to ask him when they were alone, and now that they were, she couldn’t remember what it was. She scoured her mind from one end to the other, turning out all the corners—if minds had ends. Or corners. They had trails and paths, she was certain, for her thoughts often raced along them like frightened rabbits. And she’d gone wandering down one of them now. She was too tired to remember, and her arm hurt. She was just barely aware of Jax tucking her into bed.

  ———

  The morning of her wedding day—a day she never thought she would see—Amanusa dressed in another of the white dresses Jax had insisted on. After last night, she understood clearly why a sorceress wore white. The dark blue of last night’s dress hid the blood, made it that much harder to retrieve it and its magic. The magic released by the burning was much less than magic collected by recovering the blood. She would be wearing more white in the future, even if it did make her look pale.

  This dress had frills, but not so many she looked silly in it. Made of thin muslin, it was cool in Paris’s late August heat. In the usual way, she had no right to wear white to a wedding. But as a sorceress—she had every right.

  Jax wore white too, a white linen summer coat that made him look very man-of-the-world. After three hundred-plus years of living in the world, she supposed he was. He’d risen early, dressed quickly in the suite’s dressing room, and vanished.

  Elinor walked down to their suite on the floor below hers, looking fresh and lovely in a bell-skirted dress of pale green muslin. Together they descended to the lobby where Jax waited with a bouquet of roses that took Amanusa’s breath away. White, with every petal edged in crimson, they were sorcerer’s roses. They still had their thorns.

  He had a little posy of pinks in the same colors for Elinor, who was touched by the gesture. Harry, waiting with Jax, looked both bewildered by Elinor’s reaction, and as if he wished he’d thought of the posy himself. They were on their way out when G
rey clattered down the stairs, skidded across the lobby’s polished marble floor, and pulled up with quickly assumed dignity at the back of their party.

  Chapter 20

  At the registry building, the paperwork was assembled and waiting for them, including a paper from the English embassy that had to be signed and sealed by the local magistrate. Once everything was filled out in multiple copies, and signed in a dozen places, and stamped and sealed by three or four officials—or so it seemed—the wedding itself was anticlimactic.

  The magistrate spoke a few simple lines, got the agreement of John Christian Alvanleigh Greyson to marry Amanusa Maria Whitcomb, and her consent to marry him. Then he said a few more official-sounding sentences. Everyone—Harry, Elinor, and Grey included—had to sign yet another document, and it was done. Amanusa was Mrs. John Greyson.

  They all went together to an elegant restaurant to celebrate at their wedding breakfast with coquilles and omelettes and eclairs and framboises and a great deal of champagne. Amanusa laughed until tears ran down her face, though when Jax asked, she couldn’t tell him what amused her so.

  “It’s only a bit after noon,” Harry said, leaning back in his chair, an arm draped over the back of Jax’s chair beside him. “Conclave meeting’s not, until five, when some of the conjury spirits start waking up.”

  “Mine don’t.” Grey yawned. “Mine are proper slugs. Refuse to wake ‘til the moon’s risen. Or midnight, depending.”

  “Moonrise today is at four-seventeen.”

  Grey paid Harry’s announcement no attention, other than raising a single eyebrow.

  “I know a conclave meeting ain’t—isn’t exactly anybody’s idea of wedding day fun,” Harry said. “But I think you ought to go, after last night’s adventure. I think we ought to make sure the governors know what happened, an’ I think we ought to make it as public as we can. The more as knows what’s goin’ on, the ‘arder it will be for ‘em to do it again.”

  “Reluctant as I am to be separated from my new bride for any length of time,” Jax said with a gallant little bow toward Amanusa, “I believe you’re right. I think Amanusa should go to the afternoon’s meeting. I’ll keep Elinor company in the lobby.”