by Amie Gibbons
I nodded. “Yeah, like his magic got into her when he came in her and it made her a little crazy, and made her care about him and all that.”
Me being that blunt had to be Carvi’s influence.
Carvi raised his eyebrows at me.
“Ya know,” I said, “like what you were sayin’ about sex being an exchange of energies. That magic in her system is what made her crazy about him.”
“No, it’s not!” Carvi scoffed. “She went crazy for him because she liked him and lost her virginity to him, and fixated on him because he traumatized her. That little amount of magic in his cum that may have been absorbed by her didn’t do jack shit. If it did, she’d be fucking insane from all the sex she’s had with me!”
My mouth fell open.
“Yeah,” Carvi said. “I’ve come in that woman every which way a hell of a lot more than once, not to mention her taking my blood, giving her my energy, and would give her a power boost if she had any spark of magic in her, and all it does is give her energy and make her horny and kinky.”
“Well, duh,” I said. “I feel stupid. There goes that theory.”
“So I was in love with him?” AB asked roughly.
“No,” Carvi said softly, “you were obsessed with him because you liked him, lost it to him, and were traumatized by him.”
“Emily said I was in love with him.”
“Fae lie.”
AB nodded slowly.
“But,” she said slowly, like the thoughts were too hard to form, let alone get out, “why do I feel like this with him dead? Why do I feel like I lost someone I love?”
“Because you did care for him. He wasn’t your friend, but you were his. You never stop caring about your people, AB. Once someone’s in your heart, they’re there for good. That’s just how you are. You weren’t in love with him, but you did love him, if that makes sense.”
“Sure,” she said mindlessly, still staring at the ceiling.
“Are you in love with me?” Carvi asked bluntly.
“No,” she said with a slow shake of her head. “I love you, I’d kill for you, and I love sex with you, but I don’t want to marry you or anything. But you do make me feel a little crazy.”
“You like it,” Carvi said with a wink.
That earned him a weak smile.
“Will you be okay while we do a little mind diving?” I asked.
“Huh?” she said, sounding a little more with it.
“With Grant?” I said.
“What?” AB sat up.
And turned bright red, pulling the robe that’d fallen into her lap up to cover her breasts as her eyes landed on Shawn.
“Sorry!” he said, eyes very obviously on her face. “I came out of the bathroom and you were naked. I didn’t look.”
She glared at him, and I snorted as I realized part of the squint was her trying to see his face without her glasses.
Which was not close to possible with her prescription.
I grabbed her glasses off the bedside table and handed them to her.
“Thanks,” she said, propping them on her nose and giving Shawn a proper glare now that she could see him. “So what’s going on with Grant? I’m sorry, I was… not with it.”
“Yeah, neither is Grant.” I quickly explained about the chaos room we’d found him in and how I was pretty sure he had some of it in his head.
“I thought you said you were positive,” Carvi said.
“I…” I paused, wiggling a hand in front of me. “I’m like ninety percent.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“So what if I’m wrong?” I threw up my hands. “If we go in there and it’s not something we can chase outta his head, we’ll know we need to get some kinda fix in Fairy instead.”
“It’s a risk to go in there whether there’s Fae magic, or he’s just insane,” Carvi said. “If he’s insane, then we’re taking the risk for nothing.”
“It’s worth it,” I countered. “Carvi, he’s Grant. I’m doin’ this, with or without your help. Get on board or get off the tracks.”
He sighed, looking at Shawn. “How did I end up with such difficult women?”
“You…” Shawn’s mouth worked as he switched a finger between me and AB. “You’re with both of them?”
“He’s with a lot of people.” I waved a hand.
I so did not want to address this with AB in such a delicate place. Last time me and Carvi had done anything, she’d flown off the handle.
Then again, that was more about her ex than us, and she’d been in therapy for months since then.
But still.
She’d just lost Thomas. Who knew how she’d react to me and Carvi… er, doing a hell of a lot of stuff.
I don’t think just callin’ it sex really covered it.
It definitely was not making love.
Carvi grinned at me, and it was my turn to blush.
Crap.
If AB noticed, you couldn’t tell it by me.
“So, you guys are going to get on Grant,” AB said, sliding off the bed, careful to keep herself covered while she turned and half squatted behind the bed.
To pull on the robe without showing more than her bare back, I realized.
“While you’re doing that, I’m going to research,” AB said as she turned around, fully covered by the robe.
“Research what?” I asked.
She shrugged. “The eclipse, the Fae, their magic, everything. Carvi, your people finish scanning your books?”
“Mostly,” he said. “There’s one chunk of the library left, but all the books on the Fae should be in your database.”
“Fantastic,” she said, crossing her arms. “I owe your people a huge batch of baked goods.”
The no-nonsense scientist once more.
“Laptop?” she asked.
“In the computer bag in the living room,” Carvi said.
“Good. More than one?”
“Not in here, but I can get one from my people in the next room. On the right.”
“Okay, Ed, you’re with me.”
“Ah, it’s Shawn,” he said. “Now that we’re out of there.”
“Okay,” she said like it made no difference.
Yeah, she was definitely in Aspie mode right now.
Easier than feelin’ stuff, I suppose.
“Does she have multiple personalities or something?” Shawn asked after we heard the front door open and close.
“No,” Carvi said, “she has different parts to herself like all of us do. She just has to do more work to get them talking to each other and working together so she’s less inconsistent.”
I looked at him.
“Her therapist has her working on her inner world,” Carvi said. “To get her parts more in sync so she’s not at war with herself.”
“I know,” I said. “Not sure she’d be okay with you sharing that with a stranger.”
Carvi shrugged. “Good point.”
“My lips are sealed,” Shawn said. “I do know I don’t want to get on that woman’s bad side.”
Carvi gave him a considering look.
“You like her.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Look, dude,” Shawn said, holding up his hands, “I’ve had a really bad few days and I was starving and traumatized, and she saved me from getting raped. I don’t know what I feel, but I’m not touching another man’s woman.”
“She’s her own woman,” Carvi said. “We’re friends, and I love her, but we’re not a couple. And you heard her, she feels the same.”
“I… can’t even think right now, let alone feel. So…”
Shawn looked almost scared as he kept his hands up in front of him, fending off whatever it was freaking him out.
Maybe everything.
“Consider it dropped,” Carvi said. “It’s not like anyone has to figure out anything personal right now. I was just asking.”
“Okay.”
“Carvi,” I said. “We good to try?”
> “There is no try. We do it or we don’t, but we don’t try.”
The way he said it made it clear it wasn’t meant to be funny, and he wasn’t quoting.
He really meant it.
I gulped.
For some reason, that scared me.
I nodded and we walked into the living room.
I sat cross-legged in front of Grant, and Carvi sat behind me, still naked, and pulled me against his chest.
He was hard against my back.
“Carvi,” I sighed, rolling my eyes.
“Dude, can you put on some clothes?” Shawn said from behind us.
“Why?” Carvi asked. “Am I making you horny?”
“No!”
“What kind of sex Fae are you?”
“A human one!” Shawn snapped.
Carvi was off my back in an instant and had Shawn by the front of his shirt by the time I turned around.
“Don’t use that tone with me,” Carvi said, low and dangerous.
Shawn was pale and wide eyed as he held up his hands.
“I’m not trying to pick a fight or play whose got the bigger dick, dude,” he said. “I can already see you do. It’s just making me uncomfortable, and I’m asking you nicely to put on some clothes. Please. I don’t want any trouble. I’ve had enough for a lifetime.”
Carvi frowned and nodded once. “Fair enough.”
He let Shawn go.
“But you did take it badly when I said you were Fae,” Carvi said conversationally as he kneeled in front of the suitcase with the lid already propped open and leaning against the chair next to the couch.
“I don’t like that part of me,” Shawn said. “Luckily, it’s pretty weak. I mean, I have a high sex drive, but I don’t… I don’t hurt people. I’ve never used anyone for sex. I’ve never had a one-night stand. I don’t want to be that man.”
“Good for you,” Carvi said in a bored voice as he pulled out slacks and a gold shirt.
He pulled them on, and Shawn turned his back while he did.
I was thinking more of Shawn now.
Because of how he thought and expressed himself.
He seemed pretty calm in general now that we were outta Fairy, and he was able to get Carvi to back down without challenging him.
That was, if he wasn’t as big a liar as Emily.
“How do we know he’s not in on all this?” I asked Carvi silently.
“We don’t,” he said. “I don’t sense deception, but Fae are masters. I’ve been fooled before.”
“I remember.”
I didn’t say more.
Carvi didn’t like talkin’ about the Fae woman he’d fallen in love with who’d been lying to him and tricking him the whole time.
I looked around. “Where did Pyro go to sleep?”
The guys looked with me.
“Over here,” Shawn said after a moment, pointing under the little dining table.
Pyro was stretched out under it.
Probably figured under the table would guarantee he’d be outta the way while being fully stretched out so he wasn’t cramped when he woke with the eclipse.
“Do we have time to do this?” I asked Carvi. “I mean, save Grant?”
“I don’t know,” Carvi said. “If we can save him, then it’s worth it. We’ll need him for the fight. If we can’t, it’s a risk and a waste of time and magic. Your call, lea.”
“We do it,” I said. “It’s worth it.”
I meant he was worth it.
Carvi grinned at me, and I knew he could read that as easily as anything else in my head since we’d… I couldn’t think of a better word for what we’d done besides fucked.
It seemed so crass now though.
In the middle of things, when it was hot and dirty, I liked that word. Liked the effect my dirty talk had on Carvi.
Now it sounded wrong.
That word didn’t capture the extent of what we’d done.
It wasn’t sweet or gentle.
But there was love in there.
I met his eyes.
And we stared at each other.
Not saying anything.
Not needing to.
“After,” Carvi said. “We can talk about why I left you after all this is over.”
“What if we don’t make it?” I asked. “I want to know.”
He smirked and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Then I suggest you don’t die today.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said.
Suddenly feeling very tired.
“I know,” he said.
We sat down again, and I leaned back against him without him having to pull me.
The contact would help us go in together.
“Don’t you people ever sleep?” Shawn asked.
I burst out laughing.
“Not when there’s shenanigans goin’ on,” I said.
“Shenanigans?” Carvi asked.
“Yeah, shenanigans. I like that word.”
“What we did earlier was shenanigans, lea. This is war.”
The way he said war made me shiver.
And not in the good way.
“Is, um, AB coming back?” Shawn asked.
“In a moment,” Carvi said. “She’s saying hi to a few people.”
“Can you hear her over there?”
“No. I feel her.”
“Oh.”
I didn’t have to turn to see Shawn’s face to know this whole thing was freaking him out.
“It takes some getting used to, Shawn,” I said, extending my mind, trying to read more off him.
He was an open book, mind a swirl of tangled, fearful thoughts.
It was so real, so freaked out, his brain covered by denial that broke here and there.
It felt real.
But then again, so had Emily’s mind.
“How did she trick us so thoroughly?” I asked Carvi silently, projecting what I remembered gleaning off her brain to show him what I meant.
“Fae know how to mirror thoughts,” he said after a moment. “It’s like they take the mental signature of someone else and place it over their own. Makes it so they can pass any lie detector humans can employ, both physical and magical. Everything on the surface of their brains is that signature. Think of it like mental method acting. The surface of their brains becomes what it’s pretending to be.”
“So, kinda like Silence of the Lambs, putting on the woman suit?”
“Or like that, yeah.”
“So she just grabbed some mental signature and put it on?”
“Based on what I saw, she grabbed it from a girl on campus, and then probably used AB’s energy to really boost it. Thomas being there when she decided to strike was bad timing.”
“You think he was in on it!”
Carvi snorted out loud and said, “No.”
“Huh?” Shawn asked.
“Nothin’,” I said out loud.
The door opened, and AB walked back in with a laptop under her arm and a big thing of grocery store sushi in her hand.
“Food?” she asked the room, holding up the package. “It’s from Kroger, but their sushi is pretty decent, and this stuff looks fresh. Feather grabbed it for us. She thought we might need it when we first popped in through the dimensional rip.”
“Feather?” I asked as I grabbed plates out of the kitchenette’s cupboard.
“One of our play toys,” Carvi said.
“Our?” Shawn asked.
Now that it was here, I realized I was starving.
“She’s one of my employees, works security,” Carvi said, walking over. “Her and AB hit it off, so when I visit, I bring her, and her, AB and I have a good time.”
Shawn gapped at AB, who was blushing as she lay out the cheap wooden chopsticks and the packets of soy sauce.
I put down the plates and we all dug in, piling pieces of sashimi and rolls on our plates.
My stomach growling cut off me even thinking about getting into Grant’s head first.
I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly.
“You’re bi?” Shawn asked.
If he was faking any emotions before, he still was, cuz the lust that’d been clamped down in him since the near rape flared up, and he was sure he was interested now.
“No.” AB cleared her throat. “Not really. I play with girls with Carvi. Feather and I get along in bed well, but it’s just physical. I don’t have the same emotional connection with woman I play with in bed as I do with men. Real bi people can feel that way about both genders.”
“Whatever you say,” Shawn said.
“I’m still stuck on the name,” I said.
She snorted. “Yeah, her parents were kinda hippyish. She’s used to the name, but she’s heard all the jokes, trust me.”
“So, what do you do when you play with girls?” Shawn asked.
“Kiss, touch.” AB shrugged, eyes solidly on the food as she grabbed a piece of roll and shoved it in her mouth.
“Double up on one person,” Carvi said, voice hinting at wicked fun things. “Usually with Feather, we tie AB up. She likes being dominated, so she’s usually tied up or pinned down. And I fuck her while they kiss, or AB goes down on her, or she goes down on AB while AB has me in her mouth.”
AB stared at him in horror.
“Only time AB gets dominant is when she bites,” Carvi said, like he was talking about what he’d read in the news that morning. “We’ve made a game out of her having to find a spot of edible oil on one of us, kissing and biting. On me, she has to break skin wherever she finds the spot. On Feather, she bites, then hands her over to me, and plays with Feather while I bite her.”
“Oh my god, Carvi, stop talking!” AB finally found her voice and squealed. “You can’t… tell people that stuff!”
“What? I’m sure you’ve told Ariana much worse, girls always talk, and I’m saying this for Shawn’s benefit. He already likes you, and now he wants to fuck you just as much as I do every time I see you.”
AB stared very intently at her sushi, and I looked at Shawn.
He was staring straight down too.
Carvi was making both of them hot, but embarrassed about it.
“You like bi girls?” AB asked very carefully.
“I… um, I don’t know,” Shawn said. “Never tried anything like what he’s saying. Sex is more than play for me. I don’t… don’t want to be like that.”