by A M Boone
“She’s flying from Nigeria, so later rather than sooner. She had an overnight layover at JFK.” His voice was soft.
“Can I have more water?”
He got me a full glass this time, and I gulped it down. Some of it dribbled down my chin.
Vincent let out a quiet snort of laughter. “Don’t choke, Miss Delacroix.”
I felt a little better now, at the least. Still felt like I’d gotten ran over by a train, but I probably wasn’t going to die.
“Does Santi know?”
He rolled his eyes. “No. He was shocked when he called you and I answered, though. He was sure I’d killed you.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“You’re in no position to—”
“Get me my phone.”
“All right.” He grabbed my bag, then fished out my phone. The screen was cracked, but it still turned on. He called Santi and put the phone on the edge of the tub.
“Ana?”
God, I missed his voice.
“I’m alive.”
“What happened?” His voice was high and panicky. “Are you okay? The shyster wouldn’t tell me anything? I heard from a friend you blew up a building? What’s going on?”
“You’re on speaker,” Vincent said, and I gave him a look.
“I’m… fine,” I said. “I’m at Vincent’s place, and I’ll probably be there for a while. I… kinda turned myself into a magical bomb? No one really knows what happened, so Vincent’s getting my magical trainer to come over.”
He took a sharp breath. “Oh, Ana… I’m coming over there.”
“No, you’re not,” Vincent said, and I gave him another look. “Miss Delacroix is in capable hands, and you’ll see her after we’ve gotten to the bottom of this.”
“Vincent,” I said softly. “Just let him come over.”
“I don’t want him in my house.”
“Vincent.” My voice was a little louder this time, even though my throat was raw. “He’s not going to chuck you out of a window again, I promise. Just let me see him.”
He huffed, blowing a bit of hair out of his face. “Did you hear that, Mr. Dominguez?”
“Yeah.”
He gave him his address and ended the call.
Felix came into the room a a few moments later. “I have ice!”
Vincent leaned back in his chair and grunted something in acknowledgment.
“How’re you feeling?” he chirped.
“Like I got ran over by a train.”
He dumped the ice in the tub, and I shivered, goosebumps popping up on what was left of my skin.
“So, next time, could you warn us before going all explode-y?”
“You weren’t even there.”
Vincent and Felix shared a look.
“What?”
He went pale. “You… you didn’t tell her?”
“I didn’t think it was any of her business.”
“Aw, man,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “I thought she knew.”
“I kept mum,” Vincent said.
“I’m confused…” I said.
Vincent stared down at me. “If you can’t figure it out on your own, it’s not my business to tell.”
Whatever. This was just Vincent being Vincent.
I dozed off again, sinking into the icy water.
* * *
Someone shook my shoulder and I jerked awake from the pain.
“What’s going on?” I choked out.
Gloria, Vincent, and Santi were hovering above me.
“Get her out of the tub,” she said, her hands on her hips. “This better be important. I was at my granddaughter’s wedding.”
“Ana, are you okay?” Santi asked. His hair was a soft pink, and his eyes were a piercing blue. Was I hallucinating?
“I’m… here.” I looked him over again, blinking. “What happened to your hair?”
“Forgot my glamour.”
“Oh.”
He actually looked kinda cute like that. It suited him.
“She literally exploded,” Vincent said. “I wouldn’t lie.”
“Mm.”
Vincent hoisted me out of the bath, and I screamed. Someone set me on fire! It burned twenty times worse than the amplification spell, and my vision nearly whited out. I shivered in his arms.
“Miss Delacroix?”
“It… It hurts…” It took everything just to force that out.
“How does it hurt—oh, my god.” Gloria trailed a finger down my arm, and I screamed again. Her finger was like a knife.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“She shouldn’t be alive right now,” Gloria said. It sounded so final.
“What does that even mean?” Vincent asked, his voice hard. “Can you fix it?”
“No.”
“Did you do this?” Vincent barked. “Was it a mistake with the spell?”
“I’m going to need you to calm down,” she said, trembling slightly. “Losing your temper will only make this worse.”
He took a deep breath. “You’re right. But can you fix it?”
“I can heal her body, but the damage done to her core… I can’t touch that. Not without killing her. Take her to a bedroom.”
As he walked me to a bedroom, the pain reached a fever pitch, and I drifted away, only coming back to the real world when she started drawing symbols on my body. I squirmed as her marker scraped my skin.
She sighed and tapped the symbol above my navel. The pain faded, thank god, and the bruises and cuts marring my body disappeared, but I was still covered in swirling black marks from the neck down.
I sat up, glancing at my body. “What’s with the marks?”
Santi gave me a sympathetic look, and I gave him a small smile. He didn’t match it, just wringing his hands.
Gloria stuffed her marker back into her purse. “It’s from taking in too much wild magic. They’re most likely permanent.”
They were actually kind of pretty, like someone drew on me with a giant marker.
“Don’t do any magic for the next two weeks and take it easy.” She shrugged. “I believe I know what happened. Some weak witches have the ability to channel large amounts of wild magic into one destructive last attack.”
“I see.”
That made sense. Kind of.
“Did you feel anything strange before it happened?”
“Dizzy and tingly.. I saw lines of magic crawling up my body. Then nothing.”
She nodded.
“Can we weaponize it?” Vincent asked. One track mind.
“No. For all intents and purposes, she should be dead. Nothing left but a puddle of flesh and some teeth. I’ve seen it happen before.”
Santi went pale, and even Vincent blanched a little.
But I was alive. I’d managed to survive, and minus the marks, I looked fine. Now that my body was healed, I was okay for once.
“It’s a miracle she survived.”
“So… now what?” I asked.
“Never do that again. That’s all I can say.”
“But I can’t control it. So, I’m just a ticking time bomb now?”
“Keep yourself levelheaded.” She sighed and stared at her shoes. “I don’t want to lose you.”
I glanced at the lights embedded in the ceiling. Easier said than done. Way easier said than done.
She poked and prodded at me a bit and ran a few tests with spell circles drawn on my hands.
“Well, you took in too much magic and damaged your core,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Think of it as magically spraining your ankle. Rest, don’t use your magic, and you should be fine. I’ll come back in two weeks to check up on you. If anything changes, call me.”
“All right,” Vincent said. “Thank you for your time.”
She turned on her heel and left.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked.
“Hungry… kind of tired. Can I get some clothes
?”
He grabbed me a robe and motioned for me to get up. Would I even be able to stand under my own strength? I’d have to try.
Santi took my hand and helped me up. I was a bit wobbly, but otherwise managed to stand. The hardwood floors felt alien under my feet. Or maybe it was just that everything, let alone standing, felt alien.
Vincent slid the robe on. It must have been one of his, since I was swimming in it, and it had his scent—that smoke and roses.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
The three of us went into Vincent’s kitchen. Why did he even have a kitchen anyway? He didn’t eat. Maybe it was just to keep up appearances.
“What do you want? I can have something delivered, or I can cook for you…”
He knew how to cook? But why?
Santi gave me a sidelong glance.
“Surprise me,” I said.
“All right. A surprise.” He pulled down ingredients from his cupboard and fridge.
Vincent Aldana, philanthropist, billionaire and cubi, was getting ready to make me dinner. What a world.
She should be dead. Gloria’s words echoed in my ears, and I shivered. But here I was. I’d survived whatever the hell it was I managed to pull off.
Vincent turned around. “Are you going to stick around, Mr. Dominguez?”
“I think I’ll be going.” Ugh. The venom in his voice was obvious. I needed to defuse the tension between them before one of them wound up dead. And knowing Vincent, it wouldn’t be him.
He vanished in a gentle flash of light.
Was I really hurting him this badly? He loved me. He loved me with all his heart, but… Being Vincent’s assistant made things complicated. Messy. If I declared my love for Santi and let him sweep me off my feet, it could…
Eggshells. Once again.
Vincent gave me a look.
“When did you learn how to cook?”
He paused, then said quietly, “Daniel taught me. He loved cooking. He actually wanted to be a chef, not an engineer, but his parents were funding his education, so to MIT he went.”
Huh. This was the first time he’d willingly said anything about Daniel.
“I see. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he snapped.
He went silent, just cooking for the next hour or so. It wasn’t anything fancy, but looked and smelled pretty good, so I most likely wouldn’t get food poisoning and die. And after being in the ice bath for three days, I probably would have eaten dog food and said thanks.
He placed a plate in front of me, along with silverware and a glass of water. It was chicken and rice, with gravy and a vegetable medley. “Eat up, Miss Delacroix. You need your strength.”
I picked at it. My stomach was still churning, and he’d never let it go if I lost my dinner in front of him.
He gazed at me as I ate. What was going through his mind? He’d nearly lost me. Felix said that losing two assistants in the space of a year wasn’t good for the psyche, too…
A ripple of something—magic?—made us both jerk up.
“Brother!” someone cried, and Vincent rolled his eyes. “I’m here to finish what I started in Oakland, and—”
“This is not the time,” he said. “Go back to Mother.”
I turned around. A tall, curvy, dark skinned woman appeared in the middle of his living room.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“My sister… I forget what name she’s going by now. Monica?” He sighed. “What do you want now?”
He had a sister? Even though I’d assumed demons came out of the aether, if he had a mother and father, he’d have a sister too.
“Who’s the girl?” she sneered. “What happened to—”
Vincent’s eyes flashed black, and he dug his fingers into the wood of the dining room table. “Daniel died back in June. You know this.” His voice was strained, and if I focused enough, other voices spoke with him, barely audible. Was that a demon thing?
“Oh. Well, whatever. I’m here to formally challenge you for the—”
Vincent teleported over to her, ripped open a hole in space and time, and chucked her into it, headfirst. She screamed the entire way down.
He rolled his eyes and closed the portal. “Again? This is the third time this month.”
“Where’d you send her?”
“Back to Thoiriele.”
“Oh.” I turned back to my half-eaten plate. “You don’t look like siblings.”
“Different fathers.”
Made sense.
“So… What was she challenging you for?”
“The throne of Thoiriele,” he said, as if he were talking about the weather.
I choked on my bite of chicken. “What? You’re royalty?”
“I never brought that up?” He cocked his head to the side.
“No!”
I fucked royalty? Oh, my god. Why didn’t Santi say anything? Why didn’t Felix or Felicia say anything?
“But yes, I am the crown prince of Thoiriele. Once my mother, Queen Funany’a of the cubi, dies, I’ll take her place as ruling monarch.”
I kept coughing. “And you didn’t bring this up, why?”
“I didn’t think it was important. Thoiriele is the smallest of the seven kingdoms of the Demonic Realms, and the least powerful. No one gives a flying fuck about supernatural royalty or nobility in the human world, so…
I forced myself to swallow. Ugh. As soon as I thought I was getting used to this new life, it had to throw me yet another curve ball.
“Why does she want to challenge you?”
“Doesn’t think I deserve the throne.” Another shrug. “She’s younger than me by… thirty years or so, which isn’t much in the big scheme of things, and she wants to be queen.”
“I see.”
“She thinks I’m just a frivolous loser who has too much money for his own good, and since her father was Thoiriele nobility, and mine was… not, she thinks she has a more legitimate claim.”
“Does she?”
“Of course not. First born child. That’s been the rule since the beginning of our monarchy.” He sat back down. “I don’t go to Thoiriele often, so she’s usually antagonizing me here. I guess setting me on fire two hundred years ago wasn’t enough…”
“But why? Didn’t you say it was lovely?”
“It is. But there’s no point. There’s nothing for me there except a gilded cage and my mother chiding me for using the wrong spoon during afternoon tea.”
“You don’t talk about your father much,” I said. “Do you know anything about him?”
“No.” His voice was curt enough that I knew not to pry. Maybe Felix or Felicia would have more information.
“What brought that up?”
“Well… a lot of people… Like Santi and my dad, say you’re not just a cubi. I was curious.”
He gave me a small, unimpressed look. “That’s none of your business. Remember what I said? Talking about blood purity is rude.”
Was his dad a human, and that was why he was ashamed?
“My father wasn’t human.”
“Oh.” I stared at my food. “I’ll drop it.”
“Good.”
* * *
I spent the next few days at Vincent’s apartment. He’d leave to go to work, or collect on debts, and I was stuck in a gilded cage. At least it was winter break, so I didn’t have to worry about missing classes. Vincent’s apartment was large, and I found something new about it every day, but there was only one way out, so I couldn’t leave. Even if I could leave, I didn’t have any clothes, and while a lot of things went in the Bay Area, public nudity wasn’t one of them.
On the fifth day, Felicia stopped by.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Better.” I shrugged. “Still a bit woozy, but I don’t think I’m going to die.”
“Good, good.” She kissed me on the cheek, and heat rushed to my face. “Is Vincent here?”
“No.”
“Where’d he go?”
I shrugged again. “Work? Maybe collecting…”
“And he left you here all by yourself?”
“Yep.”
“Figures.” She rolled her eyes and flopped down next to me on the couch. “Hang in there, okay?”
“I’ll try.”
“So…” she said quietly. “You never figured it out?”
“Figured what out?”
“My ‘dirty little secret,’” she said, grinning. “I thought Vincent would have told you.”
“Nope.” I stared at her. “If it’s that you’re a cubi, that’s already out of the bag.”
She laughed at me. “It’s not that. You’re so cute when you’re confused.”
“Now I’m curious. It couldn’t be that bad.”
“It’s not bad at all, I promise.” She laughed at me again and scrolled through her phone. Odd. What secret could she have?
The two of us sat there in silence, with me watching Netflix on one of Vincent’s many laptops, and Felicia furiously texting someone.
Vincent came back about half an hour later. “Miss Delacroix, Felicia. How are you?”
“Fine,” she said curtly. “Anyway, I’m here because your mother chewed me out a few days ago.”
“Why?”
“You know why. You threw your ‘precious baby sister’ into a portal, and she fell directly into the Southern Ocean, almost near the border with Shioya.”
One of the many kingdoms of the Demonic Realms, no doubt.
“Not my problem,” he said, shrugging.
“She could have died.”
“Not my problem,” he said again.
“Will you at least aim next time?”
“How many times do I have to say it’s not my problem?” Vincent plopped down on the couch next to her.
“Why do you two hate each other so much? Is it just the whole royalty thing?” I asked.
“Well, she did try to kill him once, so there’s that…” She shifted position and crossed her legs. “What have you been up to?”
“Tying up a few of Daniel’s loose ends with his parents,” he said. “They’re still convinced I killed him, and no amount of money will make them drop it.”
Well, placating them with money just made him look suspicious.
Felicia sighed. “Well, they never liked you.”
I pretended to be engrossed in whatever reality TV was playing on Netflix.
“I know,” he said. “They had a life planned for him, and… being with me wasn’t it.”
