And you had no idea this was happening?
‘I haven’t paid attention to that room probably since it was built. Like a weenus.’
“The fuck?” she whispered.
‘Skin on your elbow. I don’t know. One of my owners mentioned something about not being able to feel it. Then again, he was a mage. Do witches even have weenuses? Weenusi? What do you even—’
“You’re seriously deranged.”
‘I like you too.’
“I suppose that’s an acceptable reaction,” Leandras muttered as he painstakingly rolled onto his back. “Though your penchant for understatements astounds me.”
‘Well that was sweet.’
Shut up.
Jessica took a hesitant step toward the fae sprawled out on the floor, then couldn’t help but return her attention to the complete mess he’d made of the office. She couldn’t even see the whole room and didn’t particularly want to go in for a closer look.
The fae man’s eyelids fluttered as he let out a weak, strangled groan. Then his eyes fully opened, completely silver. Not dark with a silver tinge, not flickering with fae magic, not a trick of the light. Silver and shimmering like liquid mercury. And they settled on Jessica’s face peering at him upside-down from where he lay. “I can only imagine what this must look like to you—”
“Well that makes one of us.” She folded her arms and looked him over. Streaks of soot now covered his rumpled satin suit, and the edges of his jacket cuffs looked like they’d narrowly escaped being burned off his wrists. “You have some serious explaining to do.”
“I understand. But I’m afraid discussing the Gateway will have to wait for another time.”
‘I knew there was a reason I didn’t trust him. He’s just trying to slimeball his way out of your binding.’
Yeah, that was what it looked like. Except for the fact that any slimeball fae trying to pull one over on a witch they thought was stupid enough to believe the act didn’t usually have black, sludgy blood trickling from their pointy-tipped fae ears. And if Leandras was faking it, he must’ve gone to some kind of method-acting school. The trembling in his slender hands was all too real.
“The binding can’t be reversed,” she muttered, trying to find a mix in her voice between warning and something like compassion. A small part of her wondered if she’d had anything to do with this. Her magic. Her binding.
‘You’re barking down the wrong prairie-dog hole, Jessica. He was already a hot mess when he fucked up your boss to save your little witchy hide. Quit trying to take the credit for everything.’
What are you now, my conscience?
The bank didn’t have an answer, fortunately.
Leandras, however, seemed chock-full of pathetic excuses.
“I’m not interested in reversing it or undoing it or acting against our agreement in any way. Regrettably, however, my current—” He clenched his eyes shut with a pained grimace, then let out a long exhale. “—predicament necessitates the asking of a favor.”
No way. Now he was playing the pity card?
“Sure.” Jessica nodded toward the front door. “Have anyone in mind? I’m happy to make some calls.”
‘No you’re not.’
No, she wasn’t.
“Even if you hadn’t taken custody of my phone, Jessica, I’d rather this remain between the two of us. As…partners.”
“We’re not partners.”
“Two parties chained to a single agreement, then,” he snapped, finally gathering the strength to push himself off the floor. Then he sat there with his shoulders hunched and his head dropped low over his chest as he struggled to catch his breath again. “A personal favor, Jessica.”
Unbelievable.
She shook her head and stepped back. “No, we’re not going down that road. Ever.”
“I understand your skepticism—”
“So quit acting like I have any reason to go above and beyond what we both swore.”
The fae slowly lifted his head to meet her gaze again. A split in the corner of his parched lips was already darkened with a smear of his weirdly blackened blood, and the sunken circles beneath his all-silver eyes made a lump form in Jessica’s throat. In the last four hours, he’d practically become a corpse.
“I wouldn’t ask this of you if the circumstances were any less dire,” he said softly. “And believe me, I don’t enjoy this any more than you do.”
‘Well I, for one, am enjoying the hell out of this.’
If you can’t say anything helpful, bank, keep your nonexistent mouth shut.
‘Fine.’
After another seemingly endless moment of staring at the fae who looked like magical death, Jessica spread her arms. “What’s this favor, then?”
“I believe I’ve mentioned my gúlmai. Briefly. As unpleasant of an admission as this is, I…require the retrieval of it now, as it’s been out of my possession for far longer than it should have been. Since I’m sworn to remain here for the next five days—”
“No. Forget it.” She turned away from him, shaking her head. “I already took that coin out of the vault when I shouldn’t have, and I am not going on a fae treasure hunt just because you think you want something you don’t have.”
“Desire and requirement are two very different things.”
“Not right now, they aren’t. And you’re really not in a position to ask favors of me when you haven’t given me a single thing I asked for.”
“What do you want?”
“I require what you promised to tell me about the Gateway.” Jessica spun around and pointed at him. “That was the deal.”
“And this is an external request beyond the terms of our binding,” Leandras growled, his silver eyes locked onto hers and blazing brighter as his breath quickened. “I can assure you this isn’t an attempt to overrule any of it.”
“Then tell me first.” She gritted her teeth and managed a small, painful shrug that didn’t help the slash of bruising running down her spine. “Give me something to work with, and maybe I’ll consider it.”
“I don’t have the time—”
“And I don’t have the time to let your personal issues get in the way of what I have to do here. With this bank. With all the assholes who keep barging through that door trying to take what doesn’t belong to them because you kicked off the reckoning and still won’t tell me a goddamn thing about it!”
‘Hey, you’re starting to sound like you actually know what you’re talking about.’
“So tell me what I want to know, and maybe I’ll consider this favor.”
Leandras blinked and slowly lowered his head again, his shoulders sagging. “It has to be now, Jessica.”
“Why? We’ve got five days—”
“Because I won’t make it through the night if I don’t have what I need!” The force of his shout propelled the fae forward over his lap, a mist of spittle flying from his cracked lips, and he stared at the middle of Jessica’s shin.
The lobby filled with a tense silence. Even the bank was apparently rendered speechless by the fae’s outburst. Only the sound of Leandras’ ragged breathing broke through, then he swallowed dryly and clearly tried to compose himself again.
Jessica pressed her lips together and studied what little she could still see of his face. She’d seen plenty of other magicals break down beneath physical wounds, illness, or spells gone wrong. Hell, she’d been there herself, even before her close call today. But she’d only heard the same kind of desperation worded just like that from one other magical, and now the pieces all slid into place in her mind.
‘You never told me Rufus was an addict.’
You told me you wouldn’t bring him up.
‘Shit. Sorry. Hard to stick to it when you’ve got it all racing through your head like an all-you-can-eat buffet. You think the fae’s got the itch?’
She closed her eyes and blew out a long sigh. Forget the bank’s lack of mastery over common phrases—or whatever the thing thought it wa
s trying to say. Jessica had no idea what was wrong with Leandras. It could’ve been some kind of magical addiction, if fae were even susceptible to stuff like that. The only experience she’d had with that was with Rufus, and she and Mel had done everything they could to help their friend through his own special brand of demons.
Whatever it was, she didn’t doubt Leandras believed one hundred percent that what he’d just said was absolutely true. It wasn’t Jessica’s job to figure that out, but she couldn’t risk letting him wither away inside her bank just because she didn’t understand the truth. If he died, she was shit out of luck.
When he still didn’t look up at her, she turned to grab the office chair behind the desk and rolled it across the floor toward him. The squeaking of hinges and puff of air from the broken gas lift cylinder as she sat might have made her smirk if the silence in the lobby hadn’t been filled with so much tension. With a deep breath, she leaned forward, ignored the ache in her back, and folded her hands over her thighs. “What’s this…goolmy thing? Or whatever.”
“My gúlmai,” Leandras corrected, his voice low and scratchy and still carrying a hint of frustration. “I suppose you might call it a power source of my magic.”
“Like a channeler.” An image of the half-giant’s billy club she’d snapped in half entered her mind. Fae didn’t go for gimmicky accessories like that. They didn’t have to.
“It is most certainly not like a channeler.” He cleared this throat again, and when he looked back up at her, Jessica didn’t think she’d seen anyone look so pitiful and lost. Definitely not a fae and especially not this one. “I can’t expect you to understand, Jessica, but I need this. Very much. At this point, my life quite literally depends on it.”
“Because you’re…what? Powering your magic with it or something?”
The bank snorted. ‘Please. I’m the only one who uses somebody else as a literal power source.’
With a pained frown, Leandras drew himself up to sit taller than seemed possible right there on the floor in front of her and lifted his chin. “It is my magic.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“It’s your magic?” Jessica abruptly sat back in her chair and glanced behind the fae at the destroyed office and the last weak flash of silver light pulsing along the charred black cracks in the wall. “As in you actually removed it from yourself?”
Leandras’ gaze flickered across the lobby, then returned to her face. The slight cock of his head was all she needed to know.
‘Ha!’ The bank’s violent shriek of laughter made her grit her teeth. ‘You guys are two peas in a fucked-up pod, aren’tcha? And he has no idea!’
She couldn’t see how any of this was funny at all. What were the odds that she and Leandras had done the exact same thing with their own magic? The difference, of course, was that Jessica had spent eighteen months without hers and didn’t look like she was about to drop dead at any second. No, she was just a lot more prone to almost dying because she couldn’t use the full extent of her power if she no longer had it inside of her.
Out of all the things she could have said in response, somehow, her brain settled on, “And you named it?”
“What?” Leandras blinked.
‘What?’ The bank snorted.
“Gúlmai. You named your own magic.” A viciously poorly timed smirk lifted the corners of her mouth. “That’s…different. I mean, I get that it’s a big deal. We all need our magic, but even I didn’t take it that far.”
“I did not name my magic.” The fae’s cracked lips pursed when he apparently had to look away from her. “That’s a ridiculous presumption.”
“Well yeah. But it has a name.”
“No. The gúlmai is merely a vessel, Jessica. Meant to hold stores of power for prolonged periods of… I’m sorry.” Leandras cocked his head at her and raised an eyebrow. “Did you say you didn’t take it that far?”
“What?” Shit. There she went, running her mouth because it was impossible not to find hilarity in what was so obviously not a hilarious situation. Not even a little.
“You said, ‘We all need our magic, but even I didn’t take it that far.’ Have you—”
“Wouldn’t,” she said quickly. “I meant I wouldn’t take it that far.”
The fae narrowed his eyes at her. “It takes a certain level of well-attuned empathy to imagine oneself in another’s predicament with such effortless fluidity. I certainly don’t possess this ability. Nor do you, and I think we both know that.”
Jessica swallowed. “We’re not talking about me, though, are we?”
Despite how awful he looked and had to have felt in that moment, a tiny smile lifted at the blood-smeared corner of his mouth. “Well now, the answer to that seems far less cut and dried.”
They stared at each other, and she did not like the way he looked at her now. Like he’d just walked in on her in some kind of private moment no one else was supposed to see. And she’d practically opened the door to it by blabbing away like an idiot.
‘What kind of private moment, though?’
That’s enough, thanks.
“So.” Jessica clapped her hands and spread her arms before dropping them on the armrests of the office chair. “You somehow ripped your own magic right out of your body and stuffed it into a vessel for safekeeping. And then you lost it.”
Leandras’ smile morphed into a twitching sneer. “Mock me all you like, but if that room behind me is any indication, I really don’t think either of us has much time to debate semantics.”
“Oh, I think we can make the time. If you want me to get your gúlmai for you.” She slowly rotated the chair back and forth as she watched him. Okay. The personal favor was definitely a surprise, but she was pretty sure she had the upper hand again. “You should probably tell me everything about this too. You know, so I don’t accidentally blow myself up or kill you prematurely.”
“Ah, yes. I had a feeling that one was on your to-do list.”
“I meant by mishandling your power source.”
“Yes, Jessica. I’m well aware.” Leandras smoothed a hand through his hair again, which clung to his head this time only because he was now covered head to toe in a sheen of sweat. It didn’t make him look any better. “This is…not something I’m particularly fond of discussing. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never found myself in a position where discussing it was even remotely relevant.”
She forced a tight smile onto her face and nodded. “Okay. I promise I’ll do my best not to laugh. Or say something shitty about it. That’s really all I can promise.”
He seemed completely unaware of her attempt to lighten the mood, now that they were finally getting somewhere. Instead, he glanced at the hallway leading to the stairs and licked his lips. “I seem to have become a bit more parched than usual. Would you mind—”
“Oh, now’s the time for tea.” Jessica pointed at him and raised an eyebrow. “You have a really weird concept of priorities.”
“Well, I’d much rather be able to use my voice at all. And no tea, thank you. Water will do.”
“Sure.” She stood from the chair and watched him close his eyes and sink farther into himself on the floor. Jesus, this guy was seriously hurting, and he somehow still managed to talk like he owned the whole world and had been running it since the beginning. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Impossible even if I tried,” he muttered.
Jessica headed quickly toward the hall and then down to the kitchen, trying to stretch out her neck and shoulders, testing her range of motion with the remnants of Mickey’s attack. That bastard had really wanted to torture her before he took her life. Maybe when all this was said and done, she’d have a chance to return the favor.
‘Only if you’re running at full power…’
Yeah, and she’d only do that if it was absolutely necessary. Just like Leandras was asking for help from the one magical who seemed to irritate him more than his own deteriorating physical state.
She filled two glasse
s of water at the sink, and when she returned, she found Leandras propped up in the armchair again, his eyes closed and the backs of his open hands resting on his thighs.
“Here.”
“Thank you.” He gently took the glass she offered and drained it all in one breath. Then he nestled the empty glass between his thigh and the armrest and chuckled weakly. “It only took a sworn binding and both of us nearly incapacitated to finally sit down with a drink for one of these chats.”
Hearing him say it out loud like that was definitely weird, but Jessica couldn’t help a small huff of a laugh in response as she sat back down in the office chair. “But it’s not like you would’ve tried this sooner if you’d known that was the case.”
“Hmm. Yes, I imagine hindsight in this case isn’t particularly useful.” Leandras leaned his head back against the chair and studied her face.
It went on longer than any situation warranted, and Jessica started to get itchy under his intense gaze. She shifted in the office chair, turned to set her mostly full water glass on the desk, and cleared her throat. “So. You’re telling me about the gúlmai. Which I’m assuming we should get to pretty quickly so you don’t die before I can get what you swore to give me.”
“No, I won’t hold you back from that any longer.” The fae sighed, picked at some nonexistent lint on his crumpled, charred, soot-stained pantleg, and cocked his head. “I suppose in order for any of this to make sense to you, so you know what you’re dealing with when you retrieve it, I should start by telling you that I am…not from this world, Jessica.”
She raised her eyebrows. Definitely not what she’d expected to hear first.
The Cursed Fae (Accessory to Magic Book 2) Page 25
