Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  I waited until Isa placed two of the ginger snaps on a plate and settled on the couch across from me, with the mug of tea in one hand and the plate balanced on his knee. Christopher moved a chair into place between me and the entertainment center that held the TV and all his video games. He dropped his gaze to the mug of heavily sugared tea in his hands.

  “Does your father know?” I asked, taking a sip of my tea. It was still slightly too hot for me to thoroughly enjoy.

  Isa Azar tilted his head. “That I’m here? No. I saw no reason to inform him of my intentions. If Aiden chooses to make peace with me, I will mediate his return to the cabal with my father.”

  Christopher chuckled.

  Isa darted his gaze to the clairvoyant, then looked back at me resolutely.

  “No,” I said. “Does your father know that you’re the reason I had to rescue him in Los Angeles seven … almost eight years ago?”

  The sorcerer stilled. Then, never dropping his gaze from me, he gently set his mug and the untouched plate of ginger snaps on the coffee table.

  It would be easier for him to throw magic with his hands unencumbered.

  I took another sip of my tea, deliberately keeping both of my hands wrapped around my mug. Christopher mimicked my movement. Blatantly telegraphing that neither of us was remotely concerned about the pending confrontation.

  Footsteps sounded from the front patio, quiet enough that the sorcerer might have missed them. I picked up a slight hum of shapeshifter magic, and Christopher tilted his head, indicating he’d sensed it as well.

  But Jenni Raymond, the only shifter who regularly wandered onto our property, didn’t knock on the front door. She also didn’t leave. It was an easy guess that she had taken up a sentry position on the patio, fixing the sorcerer waiting in the SUV with a dour stare.

  I stifled an involuntary smile. The shifter was growing on me. Like a helpless puppy might. But other than with Paisley, I really wasn’t the rescuing type. And the demon dog was an asset in many ways, as well as a companion. The shifter wasn’t either of those things.

  Isa Azar leaned back, allowing one arm to drape across the top of the couch and the other to rest on his knee. The runed rings on each of his fingers were all thick platinum bands, but he didn’t trigger whatever magic he had stored within them. “Los Angeles, eight years ago … so you were the one that rescued him from the rogues,” the sorcerer said.

  I shrugged, then deliberately reached forward and took a cookie from the plate. Isa tracked my every move. “One of a team.”

  The sorcerer nodded. “I heard of the incident, of course. But you don’t seem like the mercenary type.”

  I assumed that his supposition was based on interactions with all the other amplifiers he’d ever met. Though such magic was rare among the Adept, most amplifiers lacked offensive or defensive magic. I didn’t.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” I said conversationally. “Since we turned Silver Pine’s greater demon against her last September. About how she’d managed to lure your father away from his power base. It was obvious even in the snippet of conversation I overheard between them that he didn’t trust her at all. But she didn’t act alone, did she?”

  “Silver Pine?” Isa asked archly, reaching for his tea and taking a sip. “A witch lured my father for the rogue shifters? I highly doubt it.”

  “So did I. Yet here you are, wearing Aiden’s missing rings around your neck. So that solves one mystery. Does Aiden know? Is that why he tried to kill you?”

  Isa Azar tensed. His magic finally stirred, running through the rings on each of his fingers. Then he visibly relaxed, chuckling. He slowly raised his hand from his knee, lightly tapping on the necklace tucked under his white dress shirt. “Aiden’s rings were gifted to me … anonymously.”

  He was lying. He had to be. Otherwise, there were too many coincidences clicking into place. And when magic was involved, coincidences had a way of twisting together into elaborate plans.

  Christopher glanced over at me. “Difficult to rile up.”

  “I gather it’s an Azar trait,” I said wryly.

  The clairvoyant turned his attention to the sorcerer, obviously bored with the slow pace of the conversation. “Do you represent the Collective?”

  “No.” Isa’s tone was steady, firm. “I know of the organization, of course. Nothing more than whispers through the years. An idea, really. Of a powerful group of Adepts banding together to stand against the established powers within our society. Foolhardy. And, in my opinion, unnecessary. Sorcerers police themselves. As do witches and shifters. I’m simply here to reconnect with my brother.” He leaned forward. “Why would you ask? Was Silver Pine a member of the so-called Collective?”

  “How did you know Aiden was here?” I asked, not bothering to address his questions. “If you didn’t know Silver Pine?”

  Isa Azar grinned easily, settling back on the couch again. “Aiden has sent a few packages to this address, routed through third parties, of course. Through those, I’ve tracked him to Paris, to Hong Kong, and finally to India. Each time, he had departed before I arrived. So I decided to come here instead. The common denominator.”

  Aiden had been regularly sending us packages, gifts, from multiple places for the past five months. “Silver Pine?” I asked again, bitingly. “She took the rings from Aiden. Why would she have sent them to you? Anonymously or otherwise?”

  “Well … I never said I didn’t know her.”

  He was playing word games with me. I loathed word games. Banter, half-truths. I wanted to lunge across the coffee table, grab his wrist, and interrogate him properly — thereby giving the sorcerer the power display that he had seemingly been pushing me toward earlier.

  Christopher abruptly stood, stepping between me and Isa. His magic danced across the back of my neck and down my spine. “We’ll let Aiden know that you’d like to make contact.”

  Isa’s eyes widened in confusion. He opened his mouth to speak, but Christopher cut him off.

  “Your companion must be getting cold, and the late-afternoon forecast is calling for snow. A lot of snow.”

  The sorcerer frowned, as confused as I was by the interruption, the dismissal. But he stood, smoothing his hands down his suit jacket, then bowing slightly in my direction. “Thank you for your hospitality. We’re staying at the Lake Cowichan Lodge for a few days. Perhaps we can all have dinner together tomorrow evening?”

  A room at the Lake Cowichan Lodge most likely meant that Isa and Ruwa had checked into the first hotel they’d seen after pulling off the highway. So they’d been planning to stay before they’d even set foot on the property, or known whether Aiden was actually in town.

  Neither Christopher or I responded to the dinner invitation. I wasn’t certain what glimpse of the future the clairvoyant was trying to thwart, but his attention, by the tenor of his magic, was shifting back and forth between the present and our immediate future.

  Another tense moment passed before Christopher nodded to the sorcerer, then gestured formally toward the front hall.

  I stood, setting my mug down on the coffee table.

  Isa Azar crossed through the open doorway into the front hall.

  A few steps behind him, the clairvoyant deliberately kept his shoulder angled between me and the sorcerer. I hadn’t actually been preparing to attack Aiden’s brother, so I was somewhat intrigued by whatever future conflict the clairvoyant had seen and decided to quell. Christopher usually enjoyed a good fight.

  The sorcerer rested his hand on the doorknob, sweeping his brown-eyed gaze over Christopher, then looking at me. He nodded stiffly. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Emma.”

  That was the first time he’d used my name. It seemed pointed, deliberate. But with what intent, I didn’t know. I also didn’t respond.

  Isa frowned, perhaps still unsettled by the abrupt interruption of our verbal sparring session. But Christopher rarely intervened, and I wasn’t stupid enough to question his choice to do so in front of
the sorcerer.

  Isa Azar opened the door, stepping through onto the patio, tugging at the sleeves of his suit jacket as the chill buffeted him. Even in the short time we’d been inside the house, it felt as though the temperature had dropped a few degrees. The sorcerer jogged down the three wooden stairs, swiftly crossing toward the SUV without even bothering to glance at the brown-haired, ski-jacket-and-fleece-swathed shapeshifter who was leaning against the house to the left of the door.

  Typical sorcerer, believing that a shapeshifter was beneath his notice. Though perhaps he’d based his assumption on the muted tenor of the out-of-uniform RCMP officer’s magic. And he would have been correct in that assessment.

  Ruwa, seated in the passenger seat and reading something on a tablet, didn’t bother looking up. She appeared to have wrapped her neck and shoulders in multiple layers of fabric. Shawls, perhaps. Or more silk dresses.

  The sorcerer paused abruptly with his front foot hovering over a large clawed paw print in the thin layer of snow. A series of these prints ringed the SUV, as if a creature had paced around the vehicle in concentric circles. Isa glanced around, likely looking for — and not finding — whatever path the creature had taken to and from the vehicle.

  The prints were Paisley’s, in one of her larger forms. But the demon dog was nowhere in sight.

  The sorcerer shook off his hesitation, quickly traversing the last couple of steps to the SUV. As he slipped into the driver’s seat, he glanced back at Christopher, Jenni, and me on the front patio. His gaze momentarily lingered on the shifter, who was currently wearing hiking boots. It was an easy guess that Isa Azar was wondering if she’d left the tracks in her beast form. And based on the size of those tracks, he was likely intrigued as to what that form might be.

  Ruwa barked something in Arabic. Isa muted her — from my hearing, at least — by firmly shutting the door behind him.

  “More sorcerers,” Jenni spat.

  Isa started the SUV, backing it up toward the barn so he could turn up the driveway. Ruwa was gesturing emphatically, magic glinting from the gem-crusted bangles that ringed her wrists and lower forearms.

  As far as I could see, Isa didn’t answer the peeved sorcerer. He actually didn’t take his gaze from me, not until he was forced to do so in order to drive away.

  We watched them go in silence.

  “Did we avoid an incident?” I asked after they had driven through the gate and turned east to head into town.

  Christopher glanced at me. The white of his magic had faded from his eyes. Then he cut his gaze toward Jenni Raymond.

  The shifter stiffened, straightening away from the house, then dropping her eyes to somewhere around the vicinity of Christopher’s shoulder.

  The two of them had slept together five months before. Before Jenni had known that Christopher was clairvoyant — though, honestly, that was just willful stupidity on her part. And before I’d amplified her magic, forcing her to reveal her coyote form to all of us. In the immediate aftermath of that, I had assumed that Christopher had chosen to keep the shapeshifter at arm’s length. He wasn’t one for long-term relationships, other than with the Five. None of us were, as far as I knew.

  But more recently, I had begun to get the sense that it was the shifter who hadn’t wanted to repeat their sexual encounter. And for some reason, her rejection of Christopher — no matter that it was the appropriate choice — bothered me.

  “You would have been upset,” the clairvoyant said, speaking to me and obviously lying. Or telling a half-truth, at least. “And Aiden isn’t here to fix the broken pottery.”

  He reached up, brushing his fingers lightly against my upper spine, directly over the blood tattoo that tied him to me. Then he stepped away without offering further clarification. Barefoot in the skiff of snow, he crossed toward the barn. His magic lingered, ebbing and flowing across my blood tattoo.

  Jenni watched the clairvoyant go, but for a completely different reason than I did. Sadly, maybe? But resolute.

  “The tea should still be warm,” I said.

  The shifter nodded once, then ducked inside the house without waiting for the invitation to be repeated. I had a note to send by magical means, but I didn’t want a pot of rare tea to go to waste.

  Plus, the shifter’s visits were infrequent enough that there was likely a reason she’d shown up. And if that reason had anything to do with Isa Azar and Ruwa, Aiden’s former lover, I was definitely interested.

  Possibly to my own detriment. But honestly, it was one thing to wish for a quiet life, and completely another to experience five uneventful months. In a row.

  After casting a final gaze toward the main road — the sorcerers’ SUV was nowhere in sight — I stepped back inside.

  By the time I wandered into the kitchen, Jenni Raymond had cleared the tray and the discarded mugs from the front sitting room, as well as put the kettle back on the stove. I settled on one of the stools by the island, watching her and trying to be patient.

  After amplifying her five months ago, I had expected the coyote shifter to either sulk or demand that I give her more power. She hadn’t done either. That hadn’t made our conversations any less stilted, but the shifter only inflicted her presence on me when she deemed it necessary. I both appreciated that, and was oddly saddened by it. I ignored the irrational part of my reaction, though.

  Jenni plugged the sink, turned on the hot water, added liquid soap, and proceeded to wash the stoneware mugs. I reached over and took one of the ginger snaps from the plate, still set on the tray with the teapot.

  “I thought it was Aiden.” The shifter kept her gaze on the soapy water. She’d removed her boots at the front door, and her puffy ski jacket was hanging over one of the kitchen chairs.

  “In town?” I asked. “Or once you got to the property?”

  Her shoulders stiffened. She carefully rinsed a mug, placing it into the stainless steel dish rack set over the second sink to drip-dry. “In town. I scented them.”

  I nodded, though the shifter couldn’t see me. Jenni still didn’t like using her magic, and she really didn’t enjoy talking about it. But amplifying her last September had come with ramifications — including an increase in, and access to, the abilities that came with her genetics. As I’d known it would. The shifter, who had always preferred to suppress and ignore her magic, wasn’t entirely amenable to the changes.

  “They’re half-brothers,” I said.

  “And the woman?” She sniffed loudly. “There’s something off about her. Besides the layer of weird sooty perfume. She left that stink through the whole town.”

  “She wasn’t wearing any perfume,” I said, keeping my tone light, casual. “But there’s definitely something odd about her magic. It might be the spell that binds her to Aiden’s brother.”

  Jenni sighed. Bowing her head, she thrust her hands into the soapy water and just held them there for a moment. She had washed all three mugs and set each in the drying rack. “I didn’t want to come here,” she finally said, still not looking at me. “Like always. I actually … I paced the length of the gate, over and over.”

  “It will wear off,” I said, not unkindly.

  “You’ve been saying that for months! I’m not your fucking lapdog.”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah.” She laughed harshly, throwing her head back. “Except I come running whenever I think you might need me. And even now I want … I want to kneel beside you …” She cut off whatever else she wanted to say with a short growl.

  The kettle started whistling.

  “I’ll get it.” I slid off the stool, crossing around the counter. Then I proceeded to resteep the used loose tea still in the strainer.

  Jenni dried the three mugs and set them down beside the teapot. Then she leaned against the counter beside me with her head bowed. “Do you think … has this happened to you before? When you’ve amplified someone … like me?”

  I set the timer on the oven, then leaned against the counter, standing oppos
ite Jenni but slightly to the side. “I’ve never amplified someone like you.”

  She looked up, frowning. “You’ve never amplified a shapeshifter?”

  “Not one who denies her magic.”

  She clenched her fists. “I don’t … I …” She growled again at herself, at her reactions. “It’s an … inconvenience. Like your fucking period. You know?”

  “You feel like it controls you. The need to change forms. But if you embraced the magic, then you could change at will, mold it, harness it —”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “And I’m not a fan of repeating myself.”

  She looked at me grimly. “But you’re stuck with me now.”

  I sighed. “Do you want tea or not?”

  “I do.”

  I stepped forward, putting two of the ginger snaps on a small plate and handing it to Jenni.

  She took the plate, carefully not touching me as she mumbled, “Thank you.”

  Jenni hadn’t been at all forthcoming about her background when we’d first met. But then, neither had I. It seemed highly unlikely that she understood the significance of food — of having others cook for and serve you — for pack shapeshifters. Still, we were all molded by our DNA, so perhaps that understanding was something she carried in her blood. Either way, though, she was so repressed that it seemed unlikely she would ever acknowledge it — or even acknowledge why coming to the property and sharing food with me settled her.

  But as she’d said, she was my responsibility. At least until the aftereffects of being amplified eased further.

  The timer pinged. Jenni turned it off. I poured the tea, heavily dosing the shifter’s mug with milk and sugar.

  “Tell me about the sorcerers. Where did you track them from? How long did they linger in town? Who did they talk to?”

  “Are they going to be a problem?”

  “Most likely.” I smiled involuntarily, taking a sip of my steaming tea and deliberately singeing my tongue. Then I added more milk to cool it quickly.

  Jenni snorted, shaking her head. She took a bite of a ginger snap and asked, faking a casual tone, “Did Christopher see them coming?”