by Liv Olteano
He leaned into my touch. “Did you ever dream about me? I mean, me-me. As you see me now.”
“I did. But of course I had no idea who I was dreaming about. You looked like you were twentysomething when I had the first dream.”
“What happened in the dream?”
I closed my eyes as I recalled. “We were both in line to get coffee, actually. In my dream, it was my regular place. I knew it like the back of my hand. And I also knew pretty much all the regulars. Then a mass of blond curls caught my attention one morning. You were ahead of me in line, and I could only see you from behind. I remember thinking I loved your voice as you talked to the barista. I remember she laughed, a giggly kind of flirty laugh, and that it made me so jealous in the dream. I wanted you to laugh and flirt with me, not some random person. When you walked away with your coffee cup, I couldn’t manage to get a good look at you. I followed you out of the coffee shop, but the street was full of people, and I couldn’t really see you anywhere. I had that dream many times after that, each time trying to get a glimpse at your face. I never really managed it. I remember waking up so confused and frustrated each time.”
“I wonder why it was that I could always see your face, but you could only see me from behind. It’s clear I think we were dreaming of each other, right?”
“It didn’t matter that I didn’t see your face.” I smiled. “I knew your scent, in my dreams. And it was the real smell of you.”
“In Denny Park we weren’t close enough for you to pick up my scent.”
“But we were close enough for you to see and recognize me.”
“True.”
“I had visions about us becoming a couple,” I confessed. “In my visions, things always went one of two ways. Either you’d join our side and me as dreamcatcher, or you stuck by your sister, and then I joined you and left my team and my dreamcatcher life behind.”
He lifted his head to look at me. “But you were sure we’d end up together no matter what?”
I ran my hand through his hair again, focusing on those curls. “I was pretty much obsessed with you by the time we first met. What do you think?”
He grinned. “That I was too. Yeah, we would have been together no matter what.”
“So you broke into our house to follow the man of your dreams,” I concluded.
He sighed. “Make fun of me all you want. But I was willing to go the extra mile on this. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you. I followed Drew just so I could see you again. And I did, in the end.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t catch on to the fact that he was being followed. The man has gut feelings like nobody else I’ve known.”
“Maybe it’s because I was following him around with no nefarious reason?”
I shrugged. “It could be.”
“He did have some gut feeling about it, though. Because he kept turning my way now and then. But I was careful so he wouldn’t recognize me.”
That got my attention. “How so?”
“Promise you won’t laugh.”
“I promise to try not to laugh, which is the most anyone can promise.”
“Fine. I’ll take what I can get. I used to disguise myself.”
“In what way?”
“I have this buddy who works in theater,” he explained. “He also dances at Club Zee, where I saw Taka and Ginger, by the way.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Coincidence or fate, I don’t know. But anyway, this friend of mine is very into cosplay. He has all kinds of wigs and makeup tools and stuff. So I’d borrow wigs, have him do some makeup so I’d look different. It served two purposes. I could get around without any of my sister’s buddies spotting me easily, and I could follow people around without being noticed that easily.”
I grinned. “That’s a bit stalkerish, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“I know. But I was desperate. I got the boner of my life that day when I saw you in Denny Park just from glancing at you from afar. I wasn’t going to let that dream go if there was any shred of possibility that I could find out more about you.”
“What if I wouldn’t have been gay?”
He snorted. “Have you seen my ass?”
“Good point,” I admitted as I reached down to pet said ass.
It was a work of art, to be fair. He was a work of art, from head to toe. I wanted to kiss and nibble and lick and love every inch of his body—I would devote the rest of my life to that goal, in fact.
“You were pretty impossible to resist once we did meet,” I admitted.
“If I’d been hitting on you any harder, it would have been considered abuse or something. I mean, I wasn’t above getting on all fours and wagging my ass in the air, if that was what it took.”
“Without having any clue what or who we were,” I reminded him and shook my head.
“You scared my sister. As far as I was concerned, you were on the right side of anything by default.”
“Is that why you proposed the Napeva’s Tooth spell? Because you were sure we were on the right side?”
“That too. But mainly to link us together somehow. I figured even if you weren’t interested in me, it would give us reason to spend more time together. Something was eventually going to give, and I’d win you over.”
“Wow. I’m flattered.”
“You should be. I stalked people and broke into a house, endangering my well-being, though I was sure not my life, just to get to you.”
“Well, you got what you wanted. But you do realize that this might be your longest-term relationship, right?” I asked. “We could live for a long time. If there’s any doubt in your mind about us, now is the time to pull the brakes. I mean, it’s late even now, but I might be able to stay away from you if you really wanted me to. I can’t vouch for my receptivity to such a topic a little bit down the line, though.”
He pulled back a little. “That better be your way of pussyfooting around the topic of never leaving me. Because that’s what you were going to say.” He squinted for good measure. “We will not, under any circumstances, be apart. That’s what you really wanted to say. Right?”
I looked into his eyes and my heart felt overfull with joy. “Is that what you truly desire? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m fucking sure! I’ve been running around town with neon pink and bright green hair just to see you again. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let you get away from me, I’ll tell you that. So give up this honorable bullshit and be real here. Because if us being together isn’t your greatest dream come true, we do have a problem.”
I took my time to reply. I looked at him, ran my hand up and down his back, and allowed my senses to be overloaded with desire for him. I held back on putting my thoughts into action, but I did allow all of that yearning to shine through my gaze. “I love you.”
He looked into my eyes for a while, then visibly relaxed and cuddled back into my arms. “And I love you. So you’d better love me. I’ll be one goddamn tough-to-shake stalker if not.”
We both laughed. Silence embraced us, and we fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Chapter Seventeen
WHEN we woke up, I sent Taka a text that Nathan and I needed to talk to him. He replied to come in the kitchen, which we were both only too happy to do after we took a shower together.
Ginger was hanging out at the breakfast bar as Taka piled food on plates for all of us. Drew and Angelo were in the dining room, laughing about some video they were watching on a phone.
Ginger grinned. “Morning, guys. Your ties have grown even stronger. They’re so vibrant.”
“Thanks?” Nathan half asked, half said.
“You wanted to talk about something?” Taka asked as Ginger took two plates and took them into the dining room.
“Nathan and I were talking last night, after the excitement died down.”
“And?”
“We’d like to know how Vivian was able to tell that he was here.”
Taka looked b
etween us. “I’m thinking Nathan tipping her off is entirely out of the question at this point. At least intentionally tipping her off. Do we have a working theory here?”
“The only thing I can think about is a tracking spell,” Nathan intervened. “I’m not too sure about the possibilities, though. That was always Mother’s area of expertise. I didn’t want to use my magic actively, so I avoided spell studying. My mother encouraged me to practice judo instead. She said my power would be unpredictable, impossible to handle, if we didn’t get rid of it. Using it would have gone against that thinking.”
“Really?” Taka asked and frowned. “Then how did you know about Napeva’s Tooth?”
Nathan nibbled on his lower lip. “I had a more recent bout of interest in a spell like that.”
“A recent interest motivated by…?” Taka persisted, his black eyes focused on Nathan like a shark’s.
Nathan squirmed a bit. He looked my way and I nodded.
“When I was stalking Drew in the hopes of seeing Claw again,” Nathan answered as his cheeks flamed up. “After I saw them in Denny Park when I was meeting my sister and her gang.”
“So Drew wasn’t paranoid when he mentioned he felt like someone was following him. I gave him so much crap about that one.” Taka sighed. “We don’t really need to tell him he was onto something, right? It could just stay between us.”
I chuckled. “The bromance between you guys is just adorable.”
Taka glared at me, then returned his focus to Nathan. “Okay. So you brushed up on truth spells then because?”
“Because my sister was scared of you. And I really wanted to see Claw again. I figured you had to be opposing forces in some way. So if I wanted to have any chance at winning Claw over, I needed to be able to prove my sincerity. But I also had to make sure you would help me. It was obvious in the park that you knew who or what my sister was. It followed that you’d know who I was too.”
“All of that effort for a guy you caught a fleeting glance of in a park?” Taka asked, and squinted. “He is a handsome devil, I’ll give you that. But he’s not that dashing.”
Nathan took my hand. “He was to me.”
Taka glanced at our joined hands. “Things could get very cheesy very fast,” he concluded. “Let’s move on. So you’re thinking some tracking spell.”
“Could you search the database for potential clues?” I asked. “We’re thinking ley line magic, since there’s no reason to believe she had any other kind of formal spell training.”
“But why would she have had ley line spell training?” Taka asked. “I understood that she was sent away from home when she was a kid and that she ran away. I don’t suppose there are rogue ley line witches teaching random people off the street how to use their spells.”
“Highly unlikely,” Nathan replied. “It would be like giving away power to strangers. Not in a witch’s nature.”
“There’s something that doesn’t add up about Vivian’s past,” Taka said. “I’ve been looking through your family’s account history.” He glanced at Nathan. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t see why I would. I mean, it’s supposed to be confidential information, but I get the impression that you have some impressive skills when it comes to techy stuff.”
Taka smiled for a second, then got serious again. “What I didn’t get was how your sister could live so off the grid. She could have used a fake name, but I didn’t see her as the type to do nine-to-five at any point.”
“She never said anything about working,” Nathan said. “Never mentioned any kind of job, not even in passing. But then again, when they live on the streets, people do things in order to survive—things they wouldn’t want to talk about,” he said in a small voice. “I didn’t pry. I figured maybe she was doing something illegal now too. There had to be a reason for her having a gang, after all.”
Taka scratched the top of his head. “I’ve been researching her gang members since we got those first two with Nathan’s help.” He glanced at me. “They both had jobs, rented places and so on before a certain point in time. Then they vacated their places and left their jobs. But I could still see them using their credit cards, and they had money coming in regularly.”
“Why would someone without a job have money coming in regularly to their account?” I muttered.
“Maybe they had worried family members trying to help them out?” Nathan asked. “Though it would seem odd for them to send money that regularly, even so.”
Taka smiled. “Exactly. So I looked into all the names we eventually associated with them. It turns out all of them had regular transfers coming into their accounts. The amounts were never too substantial, always under $10K They’d come in through one account or another. It took some digging, but I eventually found out that they were being sent via an online payments service. You need an account there, you attach a credit card, and you can withdraw money from your account to your credit card. Then the question was: where was that money coming from?”
“Did you find an answer?” Nathan asked, seeming very caught in the epic of this investigative story.
Taka nodded. “It took some creative methods, but I did find out. There’s no such thing as restricted information online.” He grinned. “There was one account that was sending all of these users money. And that account had a credit card of its own attached to it so it could support the transfers.”
“What’s the account holder’s name, then?” I asked, not able to wait any longer.
Taka fixed his gaze on Nathan. “It’s your mother.”
Nathan blinked a few times, seeming stunned. Then he frowned. “Are you positive? My mother?”
“Positive,” Taka answered without blinking.
“Let’s take this into the dining room and talk about it over breakfast,” I suggested, to buy Nathan some time to think.
They both agreed, and we carried the other plates in, together with a tray of mugs and the coffeepot. I stepped back into the kitchen to get the boxes of apple, orange, and kiwi juice too. Ginger walked in and got the tray with glasses for everyone.
“Nathan seems a bit out of it,” he commented casually. “What’s up?”
“It turns out that his mother was sending his sister money via Vivian’s cronies.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t sound like good news.”
“Particularly not for Nathan,” I admitted.
“Was he in on it?”
“We’ll ask in a moment,” I answered, and then we went into the dining room.
I sat in the chair next to Nathan, and he reached out to take my hand. We sat that way for a few moments; then I let go to pour us each a glass of juice. He dug into the fried eggs with bacon. I started on my plate too. There was some delicious salad on the plate, something with cooked veggies and mayonnaise. I loved the taste of it, and the fact that it was cool while the eggs and bacon were still warm made for some nice contrast.
We were just about done eating, so I decided as Ginger and Angelo were pouring us each coffee that it was as good a time as any to resume our discussion. “Nathan, did you know that your mother kept in touch with Vivian?”
He shook his head, then added, “I had no idea.”
Everyone looked at his wrists. No marks showed up to make us think he was lying.
“Could she have been in contact with her the whole time?” Angelo asked, then sipped some coffee.
“I don’t think so.” Nathan frowned. “Vivian seemed very bitter about being out on the streets after she ran away. So their reconnecting had to be a more recent thing. I have no idea how recent.”
“Maybe she reached out to your parents before she met you,” Drew speculated. “If it was me, I would try my parents first.”
“But why would my mother risk her position in the coven? They don’t look kindly on those who keep in touch with family members like my sister. The family is expected to get rid of such a baby, either by killing or abandoning them. Some do come around, trying to make a
place for themselves among witches, though few. We call them drainers in the community. They’re isolated and excluded from spell studying even if they do somehow interact with any witch.”
“And then most of those spring up to mess with us as casters, I’d imagine,” Taka said. “So if the witch community sees them as pariahs, you think your mother wouldn’t want to have anything to do with Vivian?”
Nathan snorted. “Mom is all about her status in the coven, trust me. She married my dad because he comes from a strong line of witches, so she’d have the best chances at having powerful kids.”
“Is she a strong witch herself?” Ginger asked and frowned. “Because that sounds a bit more in the realm of poser, if you don’t mind me saying. My aunt is a pretty powerful witch, but she doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about her local coven.”
Nathan smiled, though it was bitter. “If I had to guess where I could find the most powerful witches in Seattle, I wouldn’t say it was in any coven. They all know who the most powerful witches in town are. I don’t think they’re joiners, by nature.”
“So the joiners would be those who have some power, but not so much as to feel comfortable doing their own thing?” Angelo asked.
“Strength in numbers strategy, then,” Drew concluded. “Makes sense.”
“So status in the coven is important to your mother?” Taka asked.
Nathan nodded. “And she’d been helping me store my extra magic ever since I was a kid. She came up with a method to separate it from me via the Silver Cord spell, then use it herself. Lying around unused could be harmful, or at least that’s how she presented things to me.”
“Which would mean that she’s been putting a lot of effort into keeping her coven status,” Taka concluded. “Why would she risk that? Did anything change recently?”
Nathan sighed. “I stopped her draining process a while back. Once I found out that my sister hadn’t been kidnapped, but that they’d given her away, I blamed both my parents. But I blamed my mother more. To my dad it was always an issue of safety. He was afraid that my sister would harm me, and then because of her ability to drain so much power as a baby. But Mom was always more concerned with how the coven would react to them. It was more about her status than anything else. So I blamed her. The fact that she then used my power—excess as it may have been—didn’t make her look any better in my eyes. So when I was bold enough to do anything about it, I found a way to stop her from draining any more of my power. That’s when I started to look for my sister too. I decided we needed each other.”