by Lucy Auburn
"I haven't," I confess. "But I'm not really sure how I would be able to, anyway."
"Tell me the details of each of your Affinities and what you've done with them," she insists. "We have dossiers on all the students, of course, but sometimes getting the information firsthand is helpful. Maybe I can guide you in discovering new ways to see."
Shifting a little uncomfortably under all the attention, I go over all four of my Affinities one by one: my Physical Affinity force field, which I've used to launch attacks, protect myself, and push poison out of my blood; my Spiritual Affinity of summoning ghosts, which has mostly given me information from the dead and once protected me while I was at a graveyard; my Emotional Affinity, which lets me see through Killer's eyes every day; and my Mental Affinity of foresight, which has proven the most slippery yet has the most potential, and brought me here in the first place.
Sasha considers all my powers for a moment, and I find myself battling an intense curiosity to find out what her Affinity is. "When you use your Mental Affinity now that your weakness has risen, do you visually see anything?"
"Yes. Entire scenes. Vividly. But I don't see how that helps me see the present."
"It doesn't, as long as you can't control it. But if you can see the near future then you may be able to supplement your vision with foresight."
"Oh." There's an entire realm of possibility in her words. If I could see three or so seconds into my own future, it would be almost the same as actual sight. "I never thought of that. But I can't control how long my visions last—they slip away once I've seen whatever I need to see."
"Then we'll consider that a backup plan. What about your force field? Echolocation is a method of sensing the world around you. Perhaps you could mentally 'touch' things with your Physical Affinity."
Terrance cuts in before I can answer, pointing out, "That won't help Ellen read the materials, though. And I'm not sure her Spiritual Affinity will help her much either. What we need to do is what I insisted on before: bring one of her Conduits here to help her. It's the only thing that makes sense—when you have a Brutus as a source of information, you don't hobble them by not using all resources possible."
Sasha frowns. "But we should be able to figure this out without compromising the archive's integrity with unnecessary visitors."
"I would've agreed before," Perry says, "but now that we're viewing the limitations in real time, it's clear we made the wrong choice. Ellen—do you think one of your Conduits would be willing to help out here?"
I have to run down my list of what each of my four guys are up to, and come to a quick conclusion: there's just one who isn't in classes or training right now and is available to play hold-the-hand with me.
It's hard not to snort aloud at how the dignified Shadow Fold will react to his presence in their secret archives.
"I know just exactly who will be eager to help.
"Wow." Levi whistles as he stumbles through the portal into the Shadow Fold archives, his feet making enough sound against the floors to wake the dead, kill them from annoyance, and wake them up again. "So this is where the bodies are hidden. Hey Ellen. Guess I'm your seeing eye dog now. Should I start sniffing crotches like Killer does?"
I can barely swallow my laughter. Of course Levi would be more of a goof, not less, in the presence of professional assassins. Based on the annoyed looks Perry and Sasha are wearing, fetching him was likely an exercise in frustration—especially since he hasn't bothered to look like he belongs in an elite bank lobby at all.
"Just come over here and help me read my book," I tell him, reaching out a hand. "You'll have to sit still and be quiet for a while, which I know is tough for you, but somehow you'll manage."
"I brought my fidget spinner," he jokes, pulling a short knife from his belt that he uses to cut his fingernails, unnerving people. "I'll practice my knife tricks while you read or whatever. How is this supposed to help us get that Brutus jackass again?"
As Levi's fingers twine with mine, I can see a broader ranger of vision—which includes Terrance's facial expression. He looks amused more than anything. Most people find Levi to be exasperating, frustrating, and even enraging. But thankfully the de facto leader of this Brutus hit squad doesn't seem to mind his general shenanigans.
As Terrance explains, "With Ellen's foresight, we're hoping to track down his movements and see what he plans on doing next. But the best way for her to see him will be if she has information to focus in on him."
"So far my visions have been useless," I tell Levi. "Mason and I have tried over and over again, but at the most we just see a tiny slice in time. Nothing useful, no new information. Meanwhile we know he'll want a new body soon and he's going to show up to get Cleopatra back so he can have her help him body jump properly. So this book..."
"Has info on the fuckface. Got it." Levi rolls his fingernail knife across the back of his knuckles so fast that I wince, certain he's going to cut himself. "After we read this book can we go check out the clean room? I've heard it's epic."
John frowns at Levi. "You're not supposed to know about the clean room. Who told you about it?"
My Conduit just smirks. "Snitches get stitches."
Terrance tells us, "There's a reading nook set up for you two over there. We'll be seeing what other info we can gather for you, Ellen. Including artifacts that may or may not be connected to Brutus. Let me know if you need anything."
As we sit down in the reading nook, hands intertwined between the armchair, Levi murmurs, "I can think of one thing I need. It's been a while since you showed me what you like to do to yourself. Have you been thinking about me when you get off, like I asked you too?"
Warmth tingles between my thighs, but I refuse to let it distract me. Damn Levi and his sexy talk. He's hard to resist in moments like this, when my alternative is a dry old book.
"Hush." I elbow him, wanting nothing more than to finally accomplish what I set out to do the night my mom was murdered, and put my hands around the bastard's neck. "I need to get this done. Play some kind of game on your phone if you're bored."
"Nah. I think I'll just stare at you and mess around with my knife."
And he does. As I read page after page from the point of view of a farmer who seems to have sheltered Brutus in his barn while soldiers were hunting him down, Levi does everything he can to distract me. He tickles my palm with his finger. Does impossible things with the knife that make me twitch, certain blood is about to gush when he stabs himself. Stares at me closely. Stares at the ceiling like there's something up there. Murmurs dirty words in a barely audible voice, making me wriggle in the armchair.
When I'm done with the journal, I sigh and close my eyes, rubbing the spot between my eyebrows. "That was incredibly boring. I'm not sure it'll help at all. Knowing Brutus' past can't make his future visible."
"Maybe. But haven't you mostly seen into the future of people you already know fairly well?"
"True. I guess it could help." I lean my head back against the armchair as Levi rubs his thumb in circles around the back of my hand. "I just wish I had definitive answers. Why does magic have to be so tricky?"
"Who the fuck knows. You're asking the guy who makes loud noise when he moves, after all. Some sense of humor our Affinities have." He snorts, putting his knife down on the armrest of the chair. "There's no greater irony in the world than the fact that my Spiritual Affinity gives me the ability to poison people."
"What do you mean?"
"Poison is how I tried to kill myself."
He says the words so straightforwardly, like he's reading the weather report or telling me the color of the sky. But it can't be. Happy-go-lucky, eternally unserious Levi couldn't have ever done something like that. The thought makes my mind skip and rewind like a record player scratching.
Levi notices my sudden reticence and waggles his brows. "I'm even more handsome now that you know I'm broody and mysterious, aren't I? What can I say, everyone loves a bad boy with a dark past."
&nb
sp; "I just... Levi..."
"Don't pity me. I didn't do it out of misery. I tried to off myself because I couldn't stand the guilt of knowing what I'd done."
My mind goes back to what he's said about that most pivotal moment in all our lives, his first kill. "There was a lion tamer, wasn't there? You said you killed her. Did you try to kill yourself because you were guilty about that, or... I guess it's none of my business."
He squeezes my hand. "Everything in my past is your business. Especially because I can't keep my big mouth shut. Just like you can't keep your stinky farts in."
I roll my eyes. "Trust you to lighten the mood with an inappropriate joke. This is why I can't take you anywhere."
"I'm here, aren't I? Don't see the other guys around."
"I'm serious." Wriggling around in my chair, I turn to face him, our clasped hands held between us. "What happened? I want to know. You're the one who brought it up, so don't try to dodge talking about it now. You said you'd tell me."
"Fine, fine." He smiles a little and rolls his eyes towards the ceiling like a beleaguered husband on a '90s sitcom. "It all started with a severed dick... wait, wrong story. So, there was this lion tamer. Real bitch of a woman. Mean to the lions, of course, because they don't really do tricks unless you starve them and hit them and yell at them. I never thought I'd feel bad for a giant ass predator that can tear out my throat in the blink of an eye, but man those lions—I felt bad for them."
"So she was an animal abuser."
He grimaces, his face falling flat. "And a people abuser. I didn't find out the details for months... I was so busy training, perfecting my routine, getting better at my falls and wowing the crowd. I got wrapped up in what I was doing and forgot to look at the world around me. It's easy on tour—every night in a different place, all the lights, the clapping... so I didn't see. That's why it hurt so much to realize what had been going on the entire time."
"The whip. You said something about that."
"She used it on the kids who apprenticed under her." A hard look enters his eyes, and for a moment I can see the Levi who killed someone years ago, the one who doesn't joke at all—just ends life in a decisive moment of rage. "When I found out, I was furious. I demanded she be cut from the program. But the ringmaster didn't want to do that, and neither did the boss back in Jersey. I was on my own, and there wasn't another circus around that would let me do my routine—half the stuff I did was too dangerous, uninsured, totally outrageous. So I stayed on even after I knew. And then I saw Natasha's scars..."
I give him a moment, watching his eyes flutter briefly closed and open back up again, his silvery blonde hair falling into his eyes as he leans forward, shoulder bowed under the weight of his memories. In a low, still-angry voice, he tells me, "She whipped my sister."
Gasping, my free hand goes up to my mouth in shock. I reel—I didn't even know Levi had a sister until now, which makes my stomach twist in guilt. There's still so much I need to learn about my Conduits, to let them into my life and finally let myself fall into theirs.
"That's when you killed her." It isn't hard to figure out. "By why feel guilty about it?"
"I didn't feel guilty about what I did to that lion tamer." His face hardens. "I don't even like to say her name aloud. As far as I'm concerned, she doesn't exist anymore—no one should remember her so her spirit can wither and die as well as her body. What I felt guilty about was not knowing, not seeing, what she'd been doing to my little sister. If I'd been around, if I'd paid attention... maybe I would've been able to stop it."
"It wasn't your fault."
"Natasha said the same thing. But I'll never really believe it." He raises a thin brow at me with dark humor. "I'm a stubborn asshole, after all, and I don't listen to other people when they give me their opinions."
I sigh. "So you poisoned yourself? That's very dramatic. Like something out of a Victorian novel."
"Yeah, and I didn't do it very well. Drank some bullshit herb concoction—look, it was what the lady who told fake fortunes had, and I was desperate. Besides, I couldn't use a gun or hang myself. This beautiful face of mine has to stay intact."
I have to laugh a little at this, but I sober up immediately. "I'm glad you didn't die."
"Me too, in the end. And I wonder sometimes if maybe the reason why I went with the stupid poison is because I didn't really want to die. They pumped my stomach and Natasha made me promise never to do it again. She wanted me to join her on the tightropes—she graduated to full acrobat while I was in the hospital." He looks wistfully out towards the bookshelves. "Of course, once I was released I discovered that I made enough noise to wake the dead, shake the tightrope beneath me with the vibrations of my feet, and turn a beautiful routine into something comical. Then I saw the doors, and well... the rest is history."
"I'm sorry." I squeeze his hand, bring it up to my mouth and place a kiss against his knuckles. "I know how much it sucks to have that taken from you."
He shrugs inelegantly, though I can tell there's pain beneath his casual motions. "At least Natasha still gets to walk the tightropes. And I killed the woman who hurt her. I'll always have that."
There's not much left to say, so it's a relief when Terrance shows up with more reading material for me, as well as a few weapons and a hair comb they think belonged to Brutus in a previous incarnation. It's not much to go on, but maybe Levi is right: the more I know about the man, the easier it'll be to track him down.
It's not the only information I plan on getting from this archive today.
"You said it's a pentagram?" Perry frowns at me, his freckles standing out on his skin. "We have plenty of records on those, but if it's demon summoning you're after, I'm afraid they don't exist. Though plenty of non-magical humans out there have tried to get them to take revenge on their enemies. Maybe if I could see this necklace..."
My hand instinctively goes up to my shirt collar, and his eyes follow the movement. Terrance watches as well; both of them are finding materials for me at my request, while the other three are setting up a quiet room for me to try my foresight in, to see if I can look into the future—even without Mason.
"I guess I could show it to you." Reluctantly, I pull the necklace out of my hemline with my free hand; the other is loosely curled in Levi's grip, while he plays some kind of weird game on his phone. "It's just a closed pentagram with symbols that represent the five points to a Brutus connection with four Conduits: the Physical Affinity, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual, and of course the Brutus with all four."
"Huh." Terrance frowns as he leans forward to study the necklace, which I keep firmly on its chain around my neck. "I think I've seen that before. Where did you say you got it?"
"I didn't." Licking my lips, I try to banish my nervousness. Levi looks up from his phone and frowns at me, glancing back and forth between me and the two assassins. "I actually got it from... from my father, Vincent Arizona."
Levi jumps in to say, "He was a Shadow Fold member. A pretty infamous one, as I'm sure you know. So if you have any information on him, it might be helpful, since we've been told that this pentagram is the key to defeating Brutus."
"According to whom?"
My father's dead ghost. And the man himself, who killed my mother and stepfather in his hunt for it, then took out my stepbrother as well. "He's been searching for it this whole time. It's valuable to him. I think it's why he killed my father and took his body—he must've hoped he would be able to use him to find the pentagram, but he wasn't able to until... until my powers woke up."
"Interesting." Terrance rubs his chin thoughtfully. "I wonder if that has something to do with your being a Fourfold Affinity."
"I like that name for it. And I think that's part of what it is. For some reason the pentagram responds to me whenever my Conduits and I combine our powers together. I just don't know why, or how to use it to its fullest effect. Maybe if I could, I'd be able to..."
"Kill Brutus?" Narrowing his eyes at me, Terrance says, "That's for us t
o do, Ellen. You're still a student, and a newer one at that. Leave the dangerous work to us. As to getting you information about this pentagram, and your father—I think that's something we can do. Whatever research we pull will be sent to your room at the university."
"Technically Eve's room," I admit, though these days she's barely in it, they're sending her out on so many missions. "And thank you. Anything I can learn might help me, uh, use it again... my Marks so I can graduate on time."
Based on Terrance's knowing look, he's well aware that I'm not going to listen to his orders to stay away from Marcus Junius Brutus and let someone else take care of it.
What I will do, though, is try to look into the future, see where the asshole is going to be soon, and send Shadow Fold assassins against him. Even if they don't manage to kill him—something I have the feeling only the pentagram can do—maybe they'll weaken him for me.
Or maybe I can follow them straight to where he is and get to him before he comes back for me and my Conduits.
Chapter 25
I'll give credit where credit is due: Levi Ward knows how to go down on a woman until she's shaking, trembling, red all over, and crying a little. As his tongue works my clit to orgasm for what feels like the thousandth time, my back arches and I cry out, sweat rolling down my back.
I have to practically beg him to stop.
Then beg him to take the hard, thick erection between his legs and finally put it where it belongs—inside me, thrusts hard and deep, his arms pulling me legs around his waist as he pummels my warm, tingling body and finds his own orgasm inside me. Our mouths connect as he spills over the edge, shaking and kissing me deep, his fingers digging into my ass cheek.
Beneath us, Eve's thousand thread count sheets are like silken heaven.
Yeah, so I still have sex in her bed. Kill me—well, she might, point in fact. But when it comes to Levi's enthusiasm, not many places are cut out for his thorough rounds of fucking. I'm pretty sure that if we tried this in my pitiful bed in the loft we'd take half the apartment down around us. When it comes to screwing a woman—to screwing me— Levi leaves no stone unturned, no pussy unfucked.