New Blood

by Gail Dayton

  “Trust a woman to keep us focused on practical matters.” Grey’s eyes twinkled as he swept off his top hat and bowed to her.

  “I been thinkin’,” Harry said.

  “Dangerous behavior,” Grey put in when the silence stretched.

  “Stifle it, conjurer.” Harry didn’t bother to look at him, just glowered at the dead zone and the machines. “I been thinkin’ it for a long time, that we needed all four magics to deal with these things, all four workin’ together, and it worried me, ‘cause we didn’t ‘ave but three. Till now.”

  “But what kind of spell would work?” Amanusa couldn’t imagine.

  “We shouldn’t simply make something up.” Elinor sounded less alarmed than she likely was. “We need to study the matter, look at possibilities, see what’s been tried before.”

  “I know what’s been tried before,” Harry said. “I’ve kept track of every spell in every country across Europe. I’ve done ‘alf of ‘em. An’ nothing’s worked. Not until Mrs. Greyson here worked that justice magic that made the dead zones shrink.”

  He bent and picked up a handful of dust and gravel from between the cobblestones. “Amanusa’s right, though. We need to start with keepin’ the zones from growing. All the magics ‘ave protective warding spells. Let’s try buildin’ one. We got magicians here from all the four guilds. Let’s each of us put up our own sort of seal an’ figure a way to tie ‘em together.”

  “If everyone contributes a little blood,” Amanusa offered, “I believe I can do that.”

  “Wot do we put it in?” Harry cast about for a container. “An’ I’ll need water, as well as earth. Earth with magic in it.”

  “This dead zone stretches for five city blocks,” Grey said. “Just how much blood are we talking about?”

  Five blocks. Amanusa blinked. She hadn’t thought there would be so much ground to cover. She should have, given the size of the dead zone they’d passed through in the Grand Duchy of Baden. “More than a few drops. Less than the average doctor’s bloodletting. But if you’re that opposed to it, Mr. Carteret, I don’t want your blood. It must be willingly offered. Otherwise, it’s no use to me.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t willing,” Grey protested. “I simply reserve the right to moan and whinge about it. I’m perfectly willing.” He thrust his arm at Amanusa, exposing the veins on his wrist, covering his eyes with his other arm. “There it is. Take it.”

  “Let’s wait ‘til Harry’s found us a bucket.” Amanusa glanced at Jax, who rolled his eyes, and she sputtered with laughter.

  “Now you’re laughing at me?” Grey lowered his arm and glared at her over it, before dropping his mock-cower. “I am hurt. Deeply hurt.”

  Harry returned from his search. “Found a lad who’ll sell us a bucket and fill it with water—from a fountain, not the Seine—for a few francs.”

  “Why not the Seine?” Amanusa asked.

  “Clean water’s got more power. An’ I think the river runs too close to the dead zone here. I think it’s leaching magic out o’ the river.”

  “The river doesn’t flow into the dead zone, does it?” Elinor touched Harry’s arm, concerned.

  “Nah. No river does, that we’ve found. Probably part o’ the reason the zones are in spots.” Harry looked at Elinor. “You got what you need for the spell?”

  “Oh. No.” She looked sheepish. “I’d better busy myself with my gathering, hadn’t I?” She glided to one of the living chestnut trees lining the streets and stared up into its branches. “Though as usual, I seem to be in need of more stature. I need twigs. Green branches to build my wall. And I can’t reach them.”

  “I can.” Harry grabbed the nearest branch and paused before wrenching it free of its parent. “Is there some particular way I need to take it? Or can I just break it off?”

  “Just break. I’ll tend to the particular matters. But no branches thicker than that one.”

  Amanusa removed the lancet from her pocket as Elinor began to murmur while Harry broke off slender branches. She slid her finger into the silver ring and Grey shuddered ostentatiously as he watched her.

  “What about you?” she asked him. “Do you have what you need for the spell?”

  He looked at the sky, then he pulled a large watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. “If our Harry is correct about moonrise at four-seventeen, then in twenty more minutes—by the time all the components of our five-block spell are assembled—I will. Until then—”

  He looked about, spotted a bench against the wall of one of the houses, and strolled in its direction. “I believe I shall rest for my labors.”

  Grey flipped up his coattails and sat on the wood slats of the iron bench seat. Then he pivoted, lifting his feet as he lay down, tilting his hat forward over his eyes, all in one smooth motion. He seemed to be quite practiced at resting.

  Amanusa sighed, trying to relax her shoulders by force as she exhaled. She’d slept wrong last night, or perhaps the tensions of the last few days had tied her shoulders and neck into the aching knots they seemed to be made of today.

  “All right?” Jax moved close behind her, his head dipping as he spoke quietly near her ear. It felt as if he wrapped himself around her, made himself into her shelter. She’d had so little shelter in her life.

  She couldn’t stop herself from leaning back into him, taking advantage of his strength. “Mmm.”

  “Mrs. Greyson.” He brushed his knuckles along her cheek.

  She looked up at him, feeling peculiar. She wasn’t used to the name, though it had been used several times already. “Mmm?”

  “I just wanted to say it. Mrs. Amanusa Whitcomb Greyson. My wife.” He slid an arm around her waist, nuzzled her ear. “I like the sound of that.”

  She leaned back harder, letting him hold her up. She liked the way he said it. Possessive, but in a good way. Not the way one would say “my house” or “my jewelry,” but the way one might say “my son,” or “my beloved.”

  Not that they were in love. They weren’t. But there was that same pride in the other, the enjoyment in being together. Would she say it the same way? “Jax Greyson. My husband.”

  It felt different from saying “my servant.” It had much the same feeling as when she’d laid claim to him on the boat to Vienna, declaring mine. So she said it again. “Mine.”

  “Yours,” he agreed.

  And tonight, he would take possession of her, with more than just words. She wasn’t afraid, she realized. Nervous. Jittery. Not exactly aglow with eager anticipation. But she wasn’t afraid.

  “Don’t think about it,” he murmured into her ear.

  “About what?” But she knew, and she knew he knew. “I’m not.”

  “Liar.” He closed his lips on her earlobe and rubbed his tongue over it before suckling gently.

  Amanusa shivered, able to give herself up to the sensation because they were standing in broad daylight in the middle of a public street. Nothing too intimate would happen here.

  “You know you have nothing to worry about tonight.” Jax’s words came out muffled, because he still held her earlobe gently between his teeth. He released it to press a kiss just beneath the ear he’d teased so sweetly. “You know I will never do anything you don’t want. If kisses are all you can bear, then kisses are what you shall have.”

  He laid another kiss along her jaw, just over the bone, and it skittered through her, making her breasts feel heavy and her nipples pucker as if from cold. But it wasn’t cold she felt. She burned, as if magic raced along behind his kiss. Perhaps it did. Was this desire? He’d said kisses could raise magic if backed by desire.

  She tried to think like a magician. “Jax—” She tilted her head to give him access to more of her neck. “This is protective magic we’ll be working here, correct?”

  “Aye.” He slid his lips along the skin she offered.

  “So, wouldn’t the magic from a few kisses seal off the zone even better, if we add it? I sealed the machine in the box with just bl
ood, but wouldn’t… well, blood and sex make a better protective seal for five city blocks?”

  He paused in his progress along her neck, lifting his head, but only a small distance. “Possibly.”

  His breath whispering over the damp left by his trail of kisses made her shiver. Again, not with cold.

  “Probably.” He raised his head more and scanned the street. “Not much privacy here.”

  “Jax.” She whipped around to glare at him, pulling out of his embrace. “I didn’t mean sex sex—”

  “I know.” He caught her hands, kissed them. “I know. But it is so very public here. Too public for the kind of kisses this magic would need. Too public for you.”

  “But if it’s for the magic—” She let go one of his hands to turn and examine the street. “What about there? In the corner by the stairs up to that door.”

  “It’s not very sheltered.” Jax sounded dubious.

  “It is from the live end of the street.” Amanusa gestured at the dead zone. “There’s nothing living in that direction to see us, except for machines. And Grey, and he’s got his hat over his eyes.”

  “Are you sure? Not about Grey, but about—” Jax searched her face. Then, apparently finding what he sought, he strode toward the sheltering stairway, towing Amanusa after him with the hand she’d kept in his.

  Amanusa was still laughing when he spun to set his back into the corner where stairs met building, using the momentum of stride and spin to impel her into his embrace. She collided with his chest with a tiny “oof” and looked up at him, her laughter fading at the intensity of his gaze.

  “Jax?” Her voice trembled and she hated it. She wasn’t afraid. Just… shaky.

  “Amanusa.” His intensity didn’t fade. Somehow, it increased as he lifted his hand to trace his fingertips across her forehead and down her cheek. He smoothed over her eyebrows and down the length of her too-prominent nose. She’d never liked her nose, but if Jax did…

  He slid a finger—bare like hers, for he was as likely to need lancing as she—across her lips, parting them slightly. She didn’t feel blisters. Had they healed so much already? Must have. She wanted him to kiss her now. Her lips quivered in anticipation. But he didn’t. He brought his fingertips to her eyes, closing them, teasing across her pale lashes.

  Then he kissed her. Tiny touches of his lips to her eyelids. “Amanusa,” he murmured when he kissed the first one.

  “Mrs. Greyson,” he said, after he kissed the other.

  Eyes still closed, lips parted as he’d left them, Amanusa turned her face up to him, waiting for the kiss he’d—he hadn’t promised it, not in words. But he was here, in this sheltered corner, with her. Surely he meant to—

  His mouth brushed butterfly-soft across hers, and he spoke against her lips, into her mouth. “My wife.”

  Amanusa’s eyes flew open and she saw Jax staring back at her, his eyes clear green-blue, without a speck or smudge of brown anywhere. “My wife,” he said, and he kissed her.

  Chapter 21

  Jax had kissed her before. On the train. In a carriage. On the boat. They had all been very nice kisses. But this kiss made those kisses dry up and blow away like leaves past their time. Those kisses were puppies playing on the lawn. This kiss was the wolf at the door, ravenous and demanding to be fed.

  Jax spun again, trapping Amanusa in the corner, shielding her from the street. With the arm around her back, he pulled her hard against him, so her skirt was forced into the wall behind them, driving them a little way out of their little shelter and threatening to snap another hoop. Amanusa didn’t care.

  She was in a corner, a man taller and stronger than she between her and the open air. And she didn’t care. He held her so tight she couldn’t get away, her breasts crushed into his chest, his mouth taking possession of her own, and not only did she not care, she liked it. Because the man was Jax, and Jax would never, not in another three hundred years, do anything to hurt her.

  Because she knew it wouldn’t hurt, she could let herself notice that it actually felt rather nice to be held this way, to be kissed this way, as if he needed to kiss her more than he needed to breathe. The press of his hard, male chest against her breasts made them feel full and… and eager? Anxious?

  How could breasts be anxious? She didn’t know, but they were. Or she was. She wanted—wanted—

  “Oi.” Harry’s sardonic hail broke through the veil of sensation wrapped around Amanusa.

  Jax broke the kiss, but other than tucking his cheek against Amanusa’s to gasp in her ear, he didn’t move. Amanusa was reasonably certain that she couldn’t. Her knees seemed to have dissolved.

  “I know you’re newlyweds an’ all,” Harry said. “But we do ‘ave a bit o’ work to be doin’ ‘ere.”

  Amanusa peered past Jax’s shoulder to see Harry standing with his back turned pointedly toward them. Elinor hovered just beyond, staring at the ground while she blushed a fiery red. And past Jax’s other shoulder, Amanusa could see Grey Carteret sitting up with his feet still propped on the bench, his arms looped around his upthrust knees, watching them with an intent, utterly absorbed expression on his face.

  As her blush burned up her skin, Amanusa hid her face in Jax’s jacket. How long had Grey been watching? What had he seen? Surely very little, with her hidden behind Jax’s broad shoulders.

  “At least we didn’t break another hoop,” she muttered.

  Jax pulled back and looked at her, a peculiar expression on his face. “You’re not angry.”

  She blinked up at him. “Why would I be? I’m the one who suggested it.”

  “But I—” He took a deep breath, then took a step back, drawing Amanusa with him so her compressed hoops wouldn’t suddenly spring up in front of her. “My control doesn’t seem to be what it ought.”

  “I didn’t notice anything wrong with it.” She smiled at him. He seemed to need the reassurance. She adjusted the lancet still on her finger and took a deep breath, preparing to go forth and work magic.

  “Amanusa.” Jax touched a strand of pale hair escaping from her bonnet. “When it’s time—tonight, when we’re alone—we can begin with kisses and simply see where they lead.”

  He didn’t need to reassure her again. That kiss was all the assurance she needed. “If we begin with kisses like that one, I have no doubt they’ll take us anywhere we want to go.”

  She led him back to where Elinor and Harry peered into their bucket. Half full of water, mucky from the earth mixed into it, Elinor’s twigs stuck up out of the concoction, most of them still bearing their leaves, creating a bizarre bouquet. Amanusa could sense the magic pooling inside. Like Elinor with blood magic, Amanusa could only poke at it, make it squawk rather than sing. But with her magic added…

  Grey strolled up from his bench, tucking his pocket watch away. “Shall I go last, or shall you?” he asked Amanusa. “If you, we have a few more minutes yet to wait. My familiar spirits prefer that the moon be a full handsbreadth above the horizon when the moon insists on rising in daylight. It took me ages to convince them they could rise with the moon.”

  As she spoke, Amanusa watched Jax, wanting his confirmation that her guesses were reasonable. “I can go ahead now and do the warding part of the spell, then when your spirits answer, I can see about binding the magics together.”

  She raised her little fingertip lancet. “Your wrist, sir.”

  With a mournful sigh, Grey extended his arm and covered his eyes with the other. Amanusa took hold of his hand to steady him, and stopped. She shook her head and let go. “No good.”

  Grey jerked his arm from his eyes and glared at her. “What do you mean, my blood is no good? I’ll have you know it’s the best blue English aristocratic blood available—”

  Amanusa laughed. “I meant, your shirt’s in the way. And your jacket. You need to take off your jacket and roll up your sleeve so you don’t get blood on your clothes. The blood itself is perfectly fine, I’m sure.”

  “Oh.” Grey adjusted his s
houlders beneath his frock coat, then he shrugged the garment off. “Quite.”

  He unfastened the gold cuff link and rolled up his sleeve exposing a sinewy, tanned forearm. Mr. Carteret wasn’t as languid as he seemed to wish everyone to believe. Again, he presented his bare wrist, but this time he didn’t cover his eyes.

  He watched intently as Amanusa gripped his wrist with one hand to steady it. She studied the pale blue lines of his veins, rippling over muscle and tendon, selecting the most prominent. She posed the lancet over it and spoke just louder than a whisper. “Steady.”

  She plunged the point through his skin, holding tight against his reflexive jerk. Jax was immediately there with the embossed silver vial to catch the blood that flowed out. Four seconds. Five, and she pressed her thumb hard over the opening, holding it there until she sensed the blood beginning to clot. She licked her other thumb and substituted it over the little wound, whispering a “quick-heal” spell.

  “That’s it?” Grey asked when she released him. “That’s all of it?”

  “That’s all of the collecting-your-blood bit.” Amanusa cleaned the lancet on a bit of rice paper she dropped into the potion bucket. “There will be more when I actually work the spell.”

  “It hardly hurt at all. It did a bit, of course, but very little. Less than I expected. You didn’t take very much.” Grey examined his already healing wrist. “Are you sure you took enough?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Harry already had his jacket off and his sleeve rolled up, Elinor holding the jacket like a proper apprentice. He didn’t flinch when the lancet struck, staring stoically off into the distance while Amanusa drew five seconds’ worth of his blood. She could feel the magic stir when his blood joined Grey’s in the vial.

  Elinor was next. Her hiss at the stab of the lancet made Harry recoil and Grey flinch, and they both insisted on inspecting the tiny puncture when it was done. Elinor appeared quite flustered at all the attention.