“No.” Palla rotated his healing shoulder.
“No, what?”
He sighed. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“No you don’t.”
“I don’t have to be in your head to know what you’re thinking.”
“Oh, really?”
He glared at her. “You’ve got yourself convinced we were all about the sex and nothing else.”
“Weren’t we?”
“Yeah, right. That’s all it was.”
They didn’t speak until they were in San Francisco and closing the door to the elevator in his building. He punched the button for his floor.
He said, “I was thinking about doing you way before I realized Maddy was right to pull you in.”
“You were not.”
“Can you fucking read my mind?” He was healed now. Not a mark on him. No sign of injury except his ripped shirt.
“Not right now, I can’t.”
“That’s right.” His mouth firmed. “You cannot. I was thinking about it. I liked the way you looked when you smile. I was thinking you’d be something different.”
“Different.” Too many people used that word when they didn’t want to be more straight up. She was right to protect herself from this disaster. The elevator groaned on the way up. Instead of saying, why me, instead of asking him why am I shut out? she said, “I’m pretty damned different from your usual. Blonde and blue-eyed, am I right?”
He gave her a stink-eye. “Are you saying it’s a problem I thought a black chick is hot?”
“No.”
“Because, angel. The minute I saw you in that bikini, I wanted some bad.”
“For some reason, I’m not flattered.”
He let out a breath. The elevator stopped, and he opened the door. “Did I say you were supposed to feel flattered? I saw you. That’s what I thought. You don’t owe me anything just because I wanted to tap that.”
“Thanks for nothing.”
“You humans. The way your minds work, sometimes I wonder why you even have brains, because you don’t use them when you most need to.”
She waited until they were inside. “Now I’m supposed to be something I’m not. Great.” She was too tired and hollow and upset to think straight, and there was blood on her shoe. Palla’s blood. “You didn’t know me. What else would you think is different besides the color of my skin? It’s the first thing anyone notices about me. Sometimes it’s the only thing.”
He threw his keys on the table. “How about nothing like Randi? And I don’t mean the blonde hair. How about you’re more like Maddy? A human woman I admire and who wouldn’t give me the time of day if she was available.”
Her insides twisted. This was all messed up and getting worse. “So you settled for the black chick?”
He smiled at her. Not angry, and he was doing that on purpose. Controlling himself and keeping her locked out of his psychic state. “I said you’re like them. So I wasn’t fucking settling for you.”
She cradled her purse in her arms. She was getting upset, and he wasn’t, and what was she supposed to do now? “Wait just a minute—”
“There’s a lot that’s different about you that doesn’t have anything to do with that bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit for me.” Tension knotted the muscles along the tops of her shoulders. “Why don’t you ask Tau how often he gets followed around a store? There’s a lot of baggage, Palla. A lot. Things you never see or deal with.”
He rested a palm on the wall beside him. “Let me get this straight. I wanted to bone you because I couldn’t get a white chick?” He shook his head. “I wanted Randi plenty.”
“They’re not the same thing.”
“That’s right.” He leaned in. “I’m not saying you live in a fair world.” He brushed her cheek. “I’m not saying you don’t get followed in stores, or any of that, but I’m kin. Not human.”
“Next you’re going to tell me you don’t see color.”
He slid two fingers across her cheek. “I don’t live with your color the way you do. You weren’t mageheld for five hundred years. That didn’t stop us from having good sex, did it?”
She took a deep breath. “This is not a contest, and I don’t want to fight.”
“Don’t. Don’t you pull that shit on me. If I want to be pissed off at you, I have that right.”
“Go ahead and be pissed off. Just don’t take it out on me.” She stared past his shoulder. She tried to find her serenity and couldn’t.
“Admit you’re picking a fight because you think I’m going to dump you now that I’ve got what I want.”
“Aren’t you?” The way she said that came out too serious, and all the emotions she’d been pushing away rushed in to make it even worse.
Palla got quiet. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
That was a slam to the heart. She knew that about him. She’d known they had no future from the start, and she’d gone and fallen in like with him. She liked him. She did even though he could be a jerk. He’d been patient with her and he’d given her the key to her magic, and in a way, liking him was worse than falling in love, because this was ripping out her heart just the same. She walked away from him. “You don’t owe me anything. You really don’t. I said I’d help you, and I did.”
“It’s complicated.” He stayed with a hand on the wall. “It’s always complicated between the kin and the magekind.”
“What does that mean?” She stared at the ceiling and the stars she and Palla had rearranged.
From the entryway, Palled said, “You’re not sworn to Nikodemus, and I am, and that matters, for one thing. And for another thing, I don’t like witches, and you are a witch.”
“We’d never have met if I weren’t.” He wanted to make love to her when he wasn’t human, and how messed up was she that she wanted that with him, when he’d taken such care not to ask her if she’d let him. She sat on the couch, hard.
“And here you thought my irony detector was broken.”
She covered her face with her hands. “Don’t make me laugh. This isn’t funny.” It was never funny when someone was breaking your heart.
He sighed. “I don’t even get why we’re having this discussion.”
She rested the back of her head on the couch and stared at the ceiling and the constellations there. “You started it.”
“If you think I don’t have my own baggage, Wallace, you’re crazy.”
She looked at him when she had herself mostly settled down. “I should have held out for more money.”
“Money is not going to be an issue.” He headed for living room, too.
“Two million isn’t be enough to retire on at my age. I still need a job.” She shrugged. “I guess have plenty of time to find something I’ll like doing.”
“Nikodemus takes care of his people.”
“I’m not one of his people.”
“You’re a witch in his territory. He’ll take an interest.”
She couldn’t close her eyes. Whenever she did, she saw him fighting for his life—her life—because she wouldn’t kill a woman who had murdered God knows how many others, and because she hadn’t, those other demons were still slaves. “How many of the kin do you think she’s killed?”
“Couple or three hundred. For her to look so young and still be alive. Probably more. Avitas wouldn’t have been her only talisman.”
“Can you get out of your oath to me?” He’d been clear with her about the parameters of their agreement. Now they were done, and they’d go their separate ways. “I can’t go home with you still bound by your oath.”
He came closer. “It complicates things.”
“So what do we do?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
“If I don’t survive cracking the talisman, my oath dies with me, and we have no problem.”
“No,” she whispered. “No.” Louder. “I did not drag you out of there just so you could die anyway.”
&n
bsp; “Not your choice.”
She refused to look at him. “I know. I know it’s not.”
“If I survive cracking the talisman, I’ll get Nikodemus or Carson to break the oath. Will that work for you?”
CHAPTER 17
He wasn’t good at reading expressions, but by now he knew Wallace pretty goddamned well. He could read all the signs he needed to. In all the time they’d been talking, she hadn’t taken off her shoes or her jacket or put away her purse. In fact, she still had her purse clutched in her arms. Because she was leaving.
Part of him wanted to her not be here, and the rest of him wanted her to stay. Even more fucked up, he wanted her to want to stay. “Humans talk things to fucking death.”
“Yeah, we do.”
“I don’t get why you’re all worked up. All things considered, this went better than I expected. We’re both alive, and I have Avitas. How is that anything but a win?”
“A total win.”
“Then what?”
She shook her head, and he didn’t know what she was thinking. He hated not knowing. “You were right. Ideas about peace and serenity are fine until you end up leaving people enslaved because you couldn’t kill someone like that.”
“Don’t beat yourself up because you think you should have done something you didn’t believe in.” That was despair. He recognized that expression. “If you’d killed her, there’d still be magehelds. Kill a witch, and there’s magekind who say there’s all the proof they need to keep killing us, too.”
“What are we supposed to do, then?”
“Why do you think I swore fealty to Nikodemus?”
“I don’t know why. I don’t know anything except he asks you to kill for him, and you’re not the only one, either.”
“Maybe I do kill for him, but I didn’t swear to him for that. I did it because he was directly responsible for my freedom. I did it because he wants stop the killing rituals. No talismans. No magehelds. If the price of that is I don’t get to take possession of humans without asking permission first, than that’s worth it.” She was doing that trick where he couldn’t make head or tails of what she was feeling. Everything about her was neutral. Lots of human sensitives had learned to do that. She opened her purse and dumped the fake wallet and the ID and the car fob on the coffee table. Then she took out the talisman. “Here.”
He took the box from her. His skin vibrated where it came in contact with the surface. Fact was, he was sorry he hadn’t been the one to kill dit Menart and even more sorry he hadn’t killed Jeanne. Then Wallace wouldn’t be blaming herself.
“I don’t want you to die, Palla.” Her voice wavered.
One small blue-and-white tile box contained all that was left of Avitas. “You can let go now.”
She knew he meant her magic because a second later, he felt the shiver and pull of the disintegrating awareness trapped inside. Wallace stood and rested a hand on his upper arm, a light touch, and there was a moment when he looked up and expected to see Avitas. But Wallace wasn’t Avitas. Nothing like. “Do you need to be alone?”
He gave her the brutal truth. “I don’t want anyone here.”
She walked away. Toward her room—the guest room—even if it felt like she was going the wrong way. She’d hadn’t slept in there since about the second night he brought her here.
The madness emanating from the talisman was less virulent than it had been at Jeanne’s, but it was there, and he felt the pull. The skin across his upper back rippled, and his gut clenched. Now that he and Wallace weren’t in the same room, he was on edge. His oath bit at him to be in contact with her, to visually confirm she was safe. Well, fuck that. She was safer here than anywhere else.
He put down the box and stripped. When he cracked the talisman, he was taking his true form. None of the limitations of a human aspect when he did this. The minute he touched the box again the quiver in his fingers started and spread up his arms. His oath to Wallace flared up, too, and though he pushed it back, it was there. She was in her room and the wards protecting the building and his apartment were intact. He let his head drop back as he changed.
So much closer to everything that mattered. Magic was brighter this way. Sharper. Colors more saturated. Power flowed through him, energized him. They’d been free from worries about rules and humans or other kin, even, because they hadn’t needed anyone else.
The psychic resonance of the humans in the vicinity came to him sweet and clear. There was a man on the third floor who didn’t know yet what he was. Another was a minor street mage and currently a dabbler. There was Wallace, too, a beacon. Now that he knew how to see her magic, he marveled at her resilience. Magekind like Jeanne acted like street witches didn’t matter, but Wallace wasn’t the only one who’d turned out to have more power than some of the humans who’d been trained up from the age of three.
He moved just his head. Wallace was coming this way. She emerged from the hallway in the same clothes as before. She had all her things. Her purse, her jacket, shoes, coat. The battered suitcase she’d brought with her.
Her eyes got big, but not much rattled her. She’d seen demons in their true forms. Maddy didn’t let the witches go long without that experience, and besides, she’d fought magehelds, and Jeanne, and handled herself brilliantly. With her ability, she didn’t have much to worry about.
She put down her things and returned to the coffee table for the items she’d dumped from her purse. “Are you all right?”
Palla lifted the box that contained the talisman. He focused on her, on Wallace, and not the energy rocketing through him. “This is an abomination.”
“It is.”
Avitas was whispering to him, calling for him, but he looked at Wallace. “Will you bear witness to me, too?”
“I promised you I would.”
“What I’m doing, it is an honor,” he said. “Sacred.”
She lifted one shoulder. “I know.”
He stared at her with eyes that saw colors she could not. If he did not survive, there would be one person left to honor the memory of Avitas and him. With his vision beyond human acuteness, he could see the glow of the band of color around her arm. In a future that did not include him, would she look at it and think of him?
“In a couple hours, I’m going to call that number you gave me and have someone check on you. See if you need any help.” She headed for the door.
“Better if you call now. Before. Someone will come and get you so I know you’re all right.”
She turned around. “Because of your oath, you mean?”
“Otherwise, I would eventually be compelled to follow you. To be sure you are safe.”
She stood for several minutes, chewing on her bottom lip. “What happens if I wait here? Until this is over?”
The whisper of insanity from the talisman was working its way through him, slower than at Jeanne’s, but inexorable. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he went under the way he had before. “You cannot stop me.”
Her face softened, and he understood even before she spoke that she would never interfere that way. She replied in a low voice. “You deserve better, and so does she.”
Words would not leave his tongue, but she was used to silence from him.
“Once, at Maddy’s, one of the other witches told an awful story about an assimilation that didn’t go well. She was there. She saw it happen. You can’t pretend it isn’t dangerous, what you’re about to do.”
He laughed.
“I won’t let you die alone. You don’t do that to anybody. Especially not to people you love. So, you do what you have to.” She put down her things, just dropped everything on the floor, and sat beside the pile. “I’ll be right here.”
He nodded, because he trusted her. A witch. He trusted a witch more than he trusted some of the kin. He turned his attention to the box. Jeanne had sealed it with a nasty trap, but he unwound it without much trouble. Inside lay a marble cylinder that, to his enhanced vision, glowed with the life ento
mbed in it. Unmarked, unpolished, level at both ends. He brushed the marble with the back of his finger. Cool stone, yet there was an electric buzz at the contact.
He opened himself to Avitas. A dry moan rustled through his mind; a death rattle that had lasted half a millennium. She was closer, so close, this echo of the missing part of him. The inseparable separated.
He wanted to touch her again. Hear her laughter, be complete again, but all that was left of her was inside the cylinder balanced on his palm. His shattered blood-bond with Avitas surged through him, insisting they could be whole again. The quiver that had begun in his fingers reached his shoulder, and the howl in his head was louder. So loud he could hardly hear.
His palm burned where the talisman touched his skin. At every point of contact there was a spark, a pinprick transfer of heat, and a tiny world in which he and Avitas were one and the same being. When he cracked the talisman, there would be nothing left of her. If all went well, and he survived, he would never have even this echo of what they had been.
He ignored the increasing pain of contact with the cylinder and closed his fingers around it. The energy from the material had nowhere to go but into his skin. He reached out, tapped with his mind and was engulfed.
CHAPTER 18
In his true form, Palla was a sleek, virescent black that scattered cat’s-eye gold in the light. From her cross-legged position on the floor, Wallace watched, memorizing everything. The center of her chest vibrated with her reaction to him in this form, and to the undercurrent of the talisman. She, too, heard the screams of his still-dying blood-twin. She would not forget this. Whatever happened, she would have the memories she’d promised to him. Honor demanded it. Even if it meant watching him die.
Of all the demons who’d worked with her, he was the only one to see something in her besides the mundane. Because of him, she’d found the talent that lived in her. He’d trusted her with not only his life, but his blood-twin’s, too. He’d endured centuries without his blood-twin, knowing she’d been condemned to suffer without cease, and he’d been powerless to help her. Today, this moment, the wrong done to him and Avitas ended.
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