Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  I held onto the envelope and the crumpled letter, unsure if I should follow him or not. When I walked away from someone, it was generally because I wanted to be left alone. And I was at the point now where I tried to not leave a room unless I meant it. That was another learning curve when dealing with anyone who wasn’t blood bound to me — specifically, Aiden and Opal. I couldn’t get away from the other four that made us the Five even if I tried. But walking away from Aiden in the middle of an argument hurt the sorcerer. If I was overwhelmed, I now told him so. And I never wanted to act like I was abandoning Opal, even when I needed space to think.

  All the way through the suite now, Aiden opened the door that led to the small landing at the top of the exterior stairs. He stepped out, standing in the sunlight and drawing in long, steadying breaths.

  I understood that impulse, and the relief achieved by standing with the property spread before me, knowing I was home. A spark of satisfaction drove away my trepidation. Aiden felt that now too. That grounding.

  I glanced down at the note crumpled in my hand. The dark-blue wax seal had snapped cleanly in half. The rune that had been pressed into the wax had disappeared, and the magic once embedded in it had been expelled. At least as far as my senses could tell. I picked up power easier from people than I did with magical spells or objects.

  I smoothed the thick, slightly rough paper open, reading.

  Aiden. My son.

  I’m dying.

  I desire to see you before I leave this too-mortal coil.

  Forever your father.

  The signature — a stylized K and A — was so elaborate that I didn’t doubt it also functioned as some sort of magical rune when inked by Kader Azar. Presumably a spell that informed the sorcerer when and where his letters were opened.

  Well. That was unexpected.

  And damn it.

  Aiden’s father was dying.

  Unless it was a trick of some sort? But I had no idea what benefit there would have been in lying. If Kader wanted to speak to his son, I was certain he could find another way. And based on Isa’s overt desire to usurp his father as the head of the Azar cabal, admitting that he was dying placed the sorcerer Azar in an unstable position — though Isa had claimed to not know the contents of the letter when he’d handed it to Aiden.

  I was waffling, standing in the loft, watching the obsidian stones smolder, while pretending I could sort things out in my head that I had no actual context for. I should have been engaging with Aiden, including him in the conversation, the decision-making process. More so than normal even, since the situation involved his actual blood relationships.

  And if Aiden had needed to be alone to sort out things, he would have actually left the building.

  Still holding the letter, I skirted the pentagram, following the sorcerer through the loft suite. The day was warm, but the painted wood-slat flooring was cool under my bare feet. The double bed situated to my right had been made up. A diamond-and-pink-dogwood-patterned quilt that I’d recently purchased from Hannah Stewart’s thrift shop was tightly tucked in on three sides. Two pillows in plain white cotton cases lay flat against the brass headboard, not propped up.

  Christopher must have made the bed before he left. Because not including the quilt, it had been made with the precision that had been drilled into us as children by the Collective.

  The Collective.

  Of which Kader Azar was one of the main members. One of the inner circle that had spent over a hundred years entwining magic and genetics to create me, create us. The Five.

  Christopher more often opted for throwing an overly large down duvet across his own bed. If he slept with covers at all. His mind must have been elsewhere when he made up the bed in the loft.

  I hesitated.

  Why was I obsessing about the bed? Aiden hadn’t slept in the loft since the first night I’d asked him to join me in my own bed.

  No. That wasn’t what was bothering me.

  Why would Christopher have felt the need to make the bed at all before he left?

  Damn it.

  Again.

  Apparently, we were expecting a guest. And the clairvoyant hadn’t bothered to mention it. Either that, or the branch of the immediate future he’d seen before he left wasn’t solidified. He might have picked up only a glimmer of the possibility, but nothing substantial. He could also be planning on returning with Fish or Bee in tow, with the bed made up for one of them. Even though I’d made it clear that I wasn’t interested in any sort of reunion for the Five.

  Shoving thoughts of close-mouthed clairvoyants away, I swiftly crossed through the suite, stepping up beside Aiden on the upper landing of the exterior stairs. Any serious conversation I’d had with Christopher lately was still muddied by the memory of the clairvoyant throwing me in front of a death curse in February, three months ago. No matter how rational I strived to be, I apparently couldn’t force myself to so easily forgive that incident. That choice on his part. So I hadn’t been surprised when Christopher announced he was joining Samantha on her next mission in her hunt for Bee, even though it was planting season.

  Brushing my shoulder against Aiden’s arm, I folded and tucked the missive from his father into the pocket of my light-blue linen sundress. Together, the sorcerer and I gazed out at the back half of the property.

  The main garden spread out immediately below us, only a third of its raised beds planted. Beyond the fenced field that was currently seeded as hay for the cows, a forested area bordered Cowichan Lake. The large, white-sided, red-metal-roofed house sprawled to our immediate right. New vintage lace-edged curtains framed the windows of my bedroom on the upper corner. A breeze stirred the wind chimes I’d hung on the lower back porch a week before.

  I was actually surprised the wind chimes were still in one piece. Paisley had been eyeing them darkly for days, presumably for disturbing her afternoon sun naps.

  From my vantage point, the seedlings in the nearest beds were points of green within lush, dark-brown soil. The peas weren’t bearing yet, but we’d been picking at the lettuce and other greens already.

  “At least Christopher got the tomatoes planted before he left,” I said.

  Aiden grunted quietly. “I told him I’d finish digging the compost into the empty beds and keep an eye on the temperature at night for the peppers and cucumbers.”

  Christopher had an elaborate self-watering system of grow lights and heating mats set up on the workbench in the barn. The chicks that had hatched in the midst of the chaos in February were now in a temporary grow-out coop in the orchard, only a few weeks away from being transitioned into the main coop.

  “He won’t be gone that long,” I murmured.

  Aiden glanced my way. “You know? Or you’re guessing?”

  “He made the bed in the loft.”

  Aiden flinched, whirling to look behind us as if he expected to be attacked. Then he muttered to himself darkly. A curse, I thought, based on the magic that shifted through his words. Or perhaps a protection spell.

  “Warding off evil?” I asked playfully.

  Aiden grimaced, wrapping his hands over the top railing so tightly that his knuckles whitened. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to cajole him through whatever he needed to work out. A decision based on his father’s request, I presumed. A reaction to Kader Azar’s attempt to take that decision away from him with a ridiculously powerful teleportation spell.

  “Christopher had me help him set up a bed in the empty bedroom as well.” Aiden’s tone was calmer than his body language. He shifted his gaze back out to the expanse of the property. “I assumed it was for Samantha.”

  “Might be,” I said. “Long term. But my point is, if Christopher’s expecting visitors, he won’t be gone long enough for us to worry about needing to plant the peppers.”

  Aiden nodded, only half listening to me. I brushed my fingers against his forearm. He had waxed almost all of his body hair in order to apply the runes. And now, stripped of their magic-imbued ink,
he looked naked. Exposed. His muscles shifted under my touch, but Aiden kept staring outward, breathing in the warm spring air steadily, efficiently.

  My latent empathy triggered with our skin-to-skin contact, but it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Aiden was frustrated. Pained, though not physically hurt. A hint of doubt and trepidation underlaid those main emotions.

  “He must have known you’d be able to counter the teleportation spell,” I said, trying to address the whisper of doubt I felt from him. “Given the wording of the letter itself.”

  “ ‘Forever your father,’ ” he muttered darkly.

  Ah, that was what was bothering him. The claiming. “The Collective is big on ownership.”

  “Unfortunately, I share enough of his blood that he can actually claim me. Bend me to his will.”

  “No,” I said. “Not anymore. You’re too powerful for him now. The spell you just thwarted tells you that.”

  Aiden sighed, shaking his head and dropping it forward. He laughed shakily. Then he sobered, still looking away from me. “No. You’re too powerful for him.”

  A tiny fissure cracked open in my chest, right under the spot that still occasionally ached from the death curse. A completely psychosomatic pain that felt utterly real.

  Aiden snarled quietly, then reached for me, tugging me against his chest. He pressed a harsh kiss to my temple. “I’m acting like an idiot. I’m sorry.”

  I spread my hand across his bare, smooth chest, over his heart. “We’re a ‘we’ now,” I whispered.

  “Yes. Goddamn it.” He squeezed me tightly, then even tighter. “We … we are too strong for him. Together. I agree. I just …” He glanced out at the garden again. “I feel like … like I’m about to lose … all of this …”

  His declaration — echoing my own trepidation from a few moments before — made me feel raw. Aiden was usually so steadfast. “Including me?”

  He shook his head, seemingly incapable of expressing himself. Empathically, I could feel the jumble of his emotions, with a layer of frustration that was no doubt all about himself and his father over top of it all.

  Aiden sighed, easing his hold on me to run his fingers through my hair, then down my spine to rest at the small of my back. I leaned into him, not certain if I was trying to comfort him or myself. Both, perhaps.

  And I decided that was okay.

  Silence fell between us, comfortable and warm. I could hear the chickens cackling away. They had spent the winter and early spring foraging in the garden, fertilizing it, but we’d moved their coop into the orchard at the beginning of the month so they wouldn’t tear up the young seedlings. The plum trees were already setting fruit. The apple and pear trees were in full bloom.

  I enjoyed lingering in the orchard after letting the chickens out of the coop every morning, watching the mason bees coming and going from their ‘condo’ as they industriously filled in its channels with mud and pollen, collected from the fruit blossoms and the orchard grass that Christopher had planted so he didn’t need to mow around the trees.

  “I idolized him.” Aiden’s raw voice cut through the pleasantly warm air.

  My heart pinched with what felt like shared grief, though I wasn’t certain I’d ever experienced such a thing. Loving someone — multiple someones — had hurt me in so many different ways, more than any knife or magical wound ever had. I healed quickly, far quicker than most Adepts. Definitely far more quickly than other amplifiers. Stolen juice, Samantha would have called it. Stolen power. But my robust magical healing didn’t work on emotional wounds.

  “I idolized him for years …” Aiden trailed off, continuing to gaze over the gardens.

  “Until you discovered what he did to your mother,” I said softly. Not wanting to interject, but wanting to participate in the conversation. Neither of us talked about the past much. Only when we were pushed to do so by external circumstances.

  And Kader Azar had just given us a hard shove.

  Aiden laughed ruefully, scrubbing his hand over his face. “Honestly? Not even then. Because she stayed.”

  “After the enchantment wore off?” Kader Azar had entranced Aiden’s mother, Cerise Myers, because he coveted her particular brand of witch magic. He’d entrapped her into a coerced, long-term sexual liaison that had resulted in Aiden. That much I knew.

  “She was seventeen when he saw her. Took her. Wooed her on the streets of Paris, according to him. Deep layers of beguilement take time to anchor. Weeks, months. Even for a sorcerer as powerful as Kader Azar was, even thirty-three years ago.” The rawness was easing from Aiden’s tone, as if he was working through it with each word he spoke. “Cerise was nineteen when she had me. He removed the last of the beguilement spells a few months after I was born. She could have left.”

  “But he used you as leverage.”

  “Of course he did,” Aiden snarled darkly. “Maintaining the spells took too much energy.”

  “And the experiment had been completed.”

  Aiden looked at me sharply. But his expression softened as he absorbed my implication. “Yes. I suppose. Though he wouldn’t know whether it worked until my magic matured.”

  “All experiments run their course,” I said ruefully.

  Aiden caressed a fingertip lightly across my cheekbone, pinning me in place with his sharp, bright-blue gaze. “Some more successfully than others.”

  I grinned. A fierce flush of my earlier anticipation returned. “And sometimes, those same experiments blow up, taking their creators with them.”

  “No, Emma.” Aiden gently placed the heel of his hand over my heart, fingers spreading along my collarbone. “No blowing yourself up. Surviving him is the best way forward.”

  “Then that applies to you as well.”

  “Of course.” He smiled, though the expression didn’t reach his eyes or mitigate the frustrated anger I was still picking up empathically.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Absolutely nothing. He can rot for all I care.”

  I felt the lie the moment he uttered it.

  I had never felt a falsehood from Aiden before. Not ever. We didn’t lie to each other. Not directly. I started to call him on it.

  But then I realized he was lying to himself more than to me.

  “You were telling me something? About your childhood?” I asked instead. Because even as emotionally stunted as I was, I knew he wasn’t going to figure out what he wanted to do about Kader Azar without taking some time. Given the content of his father’s letter, though, we didn’t have much time. So talking was the next-best strategy. We had already fortified the house and property, built up Aiden’s weapons cache, and powered up my blades.

  And I had just wasted the retrieval spell that had taken Aiden over a week to tie to me, slowly coaxing my magic into accepting it. I’d had to absorb the spell, cast by the sorcerer, over and over — once again stealing the magic for myself — before it could become something I could personally wield.

  Aiden pressed another kiss to my forehead, murmuring, “Can we continue this conversation over iced tea? And ginger snaps?”

  “It’s a little early for tea,” I groused.

  He laughed. And that genuine joy swamped the anger he’d been struggling to hold at bay. I could actually feel his ire ebb away from our empathic connection. A connection that was only ever a brush of fingertips away for us. Or even better, a touch of lips to lips … or other intimate places.

  “All right,” I said huffily, covering my own rising desire because the timing seemed inappropriate. “Just this once.”

  He wrapped his arm around my waist, turning us toward the stairs. The embrace made traversing those stairs awkward, but I didn’t complain.

  I adored my home and my partner. And it seemed very likely that I was about to kick some serious ass. Ass that — if I was being completely honest with myself — I’d been eager to kick for many, many years.

  Kader Azar knew where Aiden was. And if and when he came to collec
t his son, he would find me waiting.

  A pleased grin spread over my face. Apparently, it wasn’t just the little things that made me happy.

  Aiden placed his iPad on the small round table set before the cushioned patio chairs as I poured the iced tea. I added a couple of teaspoons of sugar to both glasses. The Ceylon black tea was more traditionally flavored and slightly too bitter for me without sugar. Plus, I’d oversteeped it. I had rectified the error by cold-brewing a second pitcher of my favorite fruit tea, but it wasn’t ready yet.

  I curled my legs underneath me, nibbling on a ginger snap and watching Aiden out of the corner of my eye as he opened an app on the iPad, signed into it, then checked to see if Opal was online yet. Her profile picture — a recent shot that Aiden had taken of the young witch with her arms wrapped around Paisley’s neck — wasn’t accompanied by a green dot. Our daily chat was earlier on Fridays because Opal had a break in her schedule before an early dinner. Plus, oddly, the Academy’s time zone was three hours ahead of us, even though the campus Christopher and I had taken Opal to was just outside Seattle.

  The Wi-Fi was strong enough to pick up a call on the patio, but Aiden had upgraded and started paying for a data package when Opal went back to school. So we’d never miss a call from the young witch. Just one more reason I was utterly enamored with the sorcerer — our priorities aligned.

  “Friday night is movie and sushi night,” I murmured, licking the ginger snap’s brown sugar from my lips. “She won’t want to talk for long.”

  Aiden’s gaze snagged on my mouth. He didn’t answer me.

  I took another small bite of the cookie. But before I could do anything more to tease him, Aiden leaned over. Practically knocking the cookie and my hand aside, he laid a blistering kiss on me.

  I abandoned the cookie, shifting halfway out of my chair to meet his sudden intensity with my own. He’d been quiet and withdrawn as we’d put together the tea and headed out onto the back patio. But now his fierce desire overwhelmed the lingering anger and uncertainty that I’d felt empathically when I touched him. Though as usual, his expression revealed none of that inner turmoil.