by Maribel Fox
Reason be damned.
I pull her to me and just before my lips press to hers, her mouth parts, our lips meeting in a heated embrace that stretches time. Her magic awakens at our touch, reaching out to me, pulling at my own, mingling in a sizzling marriage that makes me feel more alive than I have in ages.
It’s a brief kiss for all that. For the punch it packed, it couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of seconds, and when I pull back Ava’s looking as stunned and shaken as I feel.
Saying anything now will likely ruin this moment. Slowly, my hand falls from her face, fingertips lingering until the last possible moment, and then I give her a final look before retreating back down the hallway, my body buzzing in a wholly unsettling way.
13
Ava
Sleeping last night was not easy, let me tell you. Besides everything already swirling through my head, that damned crazy Irishman had to go even further out of his mind and kiss me.
And the way my body reacted to it… The memory alone is enough to bring goosebumps to the surface of my skin, shivers teasing through me. I don’t know about all this magic stuff, but there was something in that kiss that went beyond anything normal. His lips touched mine and sparked a fire inside me, a hungry yearning eager for more after its first taste.
It was just a kiss though. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. After sleeping — despite how difficult it was, I did eventually manage it — everything is much clearer to me. How I need to handle it all is obvious, and I’m calm in a way I haven’t felt in a long time.
These guys are insane.
That’s the conclusion I’ve ultimately reached. Whatever nonsense is going on with them doesn’t need to concern me. And I’m getting too attached to them.
That’s the other thing I decided. Getting attached to any guy right now seems complicated and difficult with all the other stuff going on in my life, but sorting through my feelings for four guys at once? Yeah, no way. No thank you. I’ll pass.
My plan this morning is to retrieve that damned sword, return it to Seamus, and send all four of them packing.
I just have to be firm. Resolute. I can’t waver in my decision when I hear that sweet musical lilt of Seamus’s accent, or when Raj flashes me a dangerous grin that sends bolts of anticipation all the way to my toes.
I have to be strong when Micah looks at me with his earnest eyes, full of goodness. And Kushiel… He hasn’t been around long but already the way he teases me, the way he doesn’t hide his naked appreciation for everything I do — it’s intoxicating. He has an easy air about him that soothes the restless ball of anxiety that lives inside me.
But these are all the reasons I need to cut ties now and move on. Already I’m too attached. Already, my relationship with these guys is highly inappropriate. Not that it seems to matter to any of them. It’s crazy. They’re crazy.
That’s why you’re getting rid of them, right?
Right.
Sneakers laced up, windbreaker donned, I head out into the forest toward the picnic table. It’s early morning, the sky dove gray and misty. The sun’s hardly more than a frosted bulb high behind layers of thick clouds. The air’s damp, not really raining, but wet enough that water beads on the surface of my jacket. It’s chilly too. That’ll break later in the day, but right now I’m grateful for the extra layer. Especially when I push into the dark cover of the trees.
The paltry morning sun hasn’t gotten this far yet, but I know these woods. I know my way to the picnic table. What’s harder is remembering which direction I flung the sword yesterday.
I start walking outward from the table, back and forth, sweeping the surrounding area. There’s no way it could’ve gone this far though. I know my own strength; even angry I couldn’t ever make it out this far. Somehow, I missed it somewhere.
I’m just turning back when a glint catches my eye. I’m using the flashlight on my cell phone to look around, and I swing it back, following the little glimmer.
The trees grow close together here, blocking my view, but then I spot it.
I stop in front of the stump and drop my phone hand, staring at the sword.
How in the world did it end up like this? It’s lodged in a stump, way too far from the picnic table to have landed here when I threw it.
I still get the feeling that someone’s screwing with me here. There’s enough of a penchant for trickery in the group to have me wary about any of this being real. Not to mention my innate skepticism. The weird block I seem to have when it comes to thinking about magic. All of it.
“Come back to apologize?” I jump at the sound of Kushiel’s voice, turning on my heel to find him leaning on a nearby tree. He’s wearing a navy-blue hoodie, pulled up over his mop of hair, and gray sweatpants that sit a little too low on his waist, displaying a hint of the ridge of his hips, that grooved v that makes smart girls dumb. He’s got one hand in the hoodie’s pouch, and in the other hand, he’s holding what looks like a lit cigarette. One sniff tells me that’s not tobacco, though.
“What?” I stammer, more to cover for my staring than anything else. Not that I remember what he said. Did he always look so good? There’s something about him against the mist of the early morning, fog and smoke mingling to cloak him, his easy nature making him almost blend in with the air.
“The sword. Heard you weren’t very nice to it,” he says, approaching me, miming throwing a sword as he comes over. I shrug, looking back.
“Swords don’t have feelings.”
“You sure? This one might. It’s special at least. Never know,” he says, grinning at me, making my pulse race even as I roll my eyes. He takes a drag of his joint, exhales smoke off behind him. Silently, he offers it to me. It’s tempting, but awfully early in the day to be committing myself to uselessness.
“I’m pretty sure,” I mutter. “I just want to give it back to Seamus…”
“Yeah, and?” He’s close enough now that I can smell the oceanic scent of him behind the musky tang of weed. He drops what’s left of the joint, stamping it out, his eyes locked on mine. I don’t know him well enough to know what he’s thinking, or even what he might do next. This guy’s an unknown quantity.
And I’m in the woods with him. Alone. Where no one knows I’m here.
Smart move, Ava.
But there’s no danger coming from Kushiel. Not that I can sense. Not in the mortal sense anyway. Danger to my sanity, maybe. My life? No.
“And,” I say, licking my lips, trying to focus and struggling. “I dunno if you recall, but the last time I touched that thing it kinda spontaneously combusted. And right now, it’s lodged in a stump. You ever seen what happens to a tree that burns from the inside?” I ask, eyebrow arched. It explodes. With a lot of shrapnel. No thanks.
Kushiel laughs, his eyes crinkling around the edges attractively. “Fair enough.”
“Do you think you could get it for me?” I ask.
“No can do. I’d love to, don’t get me wrong—” he says quickly to my offended expression. “Thing is, we all four tried it last night. None of us could get it to do anything. It’s like, really embedded in there man. You must have quite the arm on you. You do shot-put? Baseball?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“You should try to pull it out. Will definitely be a blow to their egos if you manage it,” he says laughing harder.
I side-eye the sword. As tempting as the thought of humbling Raj and Seamus is, I’d rather never touch the damn thing again. Touching it makes me feel… weird. And it’s not just the fire on the blade. It’s more than that. It’s the fire inside me. When I touch that thing, the two connect, feed off of each other. And I feel like the fire inside of me is going to consume me, overwhelm me, make it impossible for me to push back.
I swallow and shake my head slowly.
“No, I’m sure if the big strong men couldn’t pull it out, little old me wouldn’t be able to manage it either. You’ll all just have to keep trying. I’d like
you all to leave as soon as possible.” Saying it out loud feels strange. The look on Kushiel’s face makes it worse. He looks like I slapped him. Stunned, not sure how to respond.
“Ya know, we’re not exactly all here together, babe.”
I cross my arms, turning to him with a sharp look. “Ya know, you’re all here because of each other, so if one of you left, the rest would follow. Babe,” I grind the last word through clenched teeth, but Kushiel doesn’t take the hint. He smirks, moves closer. Too close. But I’m not backing down. Not a freaking chance.
“Correction, doll — we’re all here because of Seamus. You want us gone, you gotta get rid of him first. And something tells me you don’t want to get rid of Seamus. Not really.”
“What?” The sly way he says it, the gleam in his eyes, the utterly incomprehensible confidence in his voice staggers me. I wind up stumbling backwards a couple steps, blinking.
Is this guy really trying to hit on me by pointing out how attracted I am to someone else? What is his play? I don’t even know. Maybe I’m misreading all his signals, and this is just the weirdest attempt at wingmanning I’ve ever witnessed.
“You heard me,” Kushiel says, stepping forward. I’m not as good at holding my ground now. There’s a crackle in the air, a density that pushes me back, keeps me searching for a retreat.
Instead I find a tree, pressed against my back. Great.
Kushiel’s still grinning, moving in till he has me trapped between his impossibly perfect, warm body and the tree behind me.
“I think even though you won’t admit it, you like having Seamus around,” Kushiel says, brilliant blue eyes locked on mine. “I think you want him to stay right where he is,” he says, moving closer and closer with every word until his breath is brushing across my skin.
I’m paralyzed in the moment, torn between wanting to flee, to run far and fast, and the desire — no, need — to give in to him and see what these feelings all mean.
It’s a point of no return, though, making that choice. There’s no going back once I unleash this thing inside of me.
“Well, maybe a little bit lower?” Kushiel asks lips barely skimming my neck. Sometimes his touch is so soft that it’s only his breath I feel warming my sensitive flesh. His lips make me dizzy, and my knees buckle, nails digging into the bark behind me.
“I—”
His teeth drag softly across my collarbone, and my spine arches, thrusting my neck and chest toward him without a thought.
“Maybe with that wicked Irish tongue of his planted between your legs?” he says, moving to the other side of my neck.
I pant, heat rising inside of me, breath hard to catch. The combination of the images his words elicit and the reality of what he’s doing to me — not to mention how I’ve been pining and fantasizing and practically cock-blocking myself for the past few weeks — is dizzying and I’m not sure how I’m going to pull myself away.
“Ya know, you can take your revenge,” he says, his fingers sneaking up the bottom of my jacket.
It takes me a moment to parse the words, and even then I can’t make sense of them. “W-what?” I ask, shivering as he slowly drags down my zipper. When the weight of his hand passes over my aching nipple, I can’t hold back a small cry.
My windbreaker falls open, baring me to his gaze, only a thin t-shirt shielding me. I see the primal need in his eyes, as he rakes over me with his gaze. Part of me shrinks back — the part that worries about decorum and propriety and monogamy and the outrageousness of fucking one of your boarders, against a tree, in the woods.
Another part of me, a part that’s stoked by the flames locked inside, is pleased as punch about my current predicament. That part of me is chanting “kiss him, lick him, suck him, fuck him” and is getting much harder to ignore. All of a sudden, I realize Kush’s mouth is moving, and struggle to rein in my focus.
“—revenge. You can do to me exactly what I’m doing to you. In fact, I encourage it.”
“You… you want me to…” I can’t even think of the words.
“Touch me, babe. Touch me anyway you want to,” Kush says, his voice low and sinuous. His hand wanders under my t-shirt, walking its way up my ribcage, and I lose all rational thought again. But that little chant in the back of my mind has changed — now all I can hear is touch him on repeat.
“Kushiel, I’m disappointed. Do they not teach you how to share in Heaven?” Raj asks, stepping into the clearing, tutting and shaking his head.
Great, now Raj is going to have all the wrong ideas about the two of us.
Are they that wrong though?
Shut up.
Kushiel steps back enough to address Raj, enough that I’m not pinned to the tree anymore.
“Hey man, no need to trash my rep. If the lady’s not protesting, I’m down with sharing,” he says, flashing a winning grin at both me and Raj.
Raj steps closer, and the hungry wild thing inside me is desperate to escape.
Magic.
I need to call it what it is. Whether I like it or not, it’s there. And it’s responding to these men.
Everything in me is telling me to give into it. To let it happen. That it’s supposed to happen.
“Well, Ava? Doth the lady protest?” asks Raj.
“I can’t,” I squeak, breaking free from Kushiel’s arm cage, fleeing off into the woods. Where I’m safe. Where I’m not confronted with impossible things that make me question everything I know.
No matter how far I go though, there’s the pull to go back. To finish what I started.
14
Micah
The time to report back to Heaven was bound to arrive eventually. I knew that. I had always known that my purpose down here was to gather information and deliver it to those above me.
So why, as the bush to my immediate right crackles and pops with the first embers of ignition, do I have a pit of unease settling deep within me?
My time here has not been as anticipated, that is for certain. But how to explain that? How to convey the unfinished business I have here, when it is nothing more than personal business I should not be concerning myself with in the first place?
Perhaps that explains the tightness in my chest.
In my time here, I have been tempted. I have been doubtful. My faith… Well, it has not been shaken, although I have begun to wonder if there is more going on than I am being told.
Not that that is suspicious in its own right. I may be a Senior Auditor, but that is hardly the highest of ranks. There are things discussed in rooms where I could only dream to ever have access. Things that I may possibly be unaware of their very existence.
And it is that knowledge — the knowledge of how much I do not know — that has me wondering about the circumstances of my old friend Kushiel’s quote-unquote death.
Flames lick up from the base of the woody red barberry shrub, encasing the spindly branches with harmless fire.
Kushiel has done his best to avoid me and any discussion of what happened to him those sixty years ago when he went missing and Heaven thought him dead.
Or did they? Surely they would know the status of one of their own.
So why the secrecy?
I struggle to believe that Kushiel would vanish and let me believe him dead of his own choice. Which only leads me to wonder what persuaded him. What, or who, provided the leverage to make my friend, my partner, my brother, disappear without a word? What kept him from ever reaching out?
There are forces beyond my understanding at work here. Perhaps sinister forces? It is difficult to say with so many signals mingling in this area.
Finally, the flames engulf the entire bush, crackling intensely bright. I look over my shoulders, making certain there is no one observing the conversation. Why Heaven has not managed to discover a better method of communication, I cannot say. Being rooted in tradition is not a bad thing. It can prove detrimental if it leads to a lack of flexibility. Something I have begun to notice more and more in my superiors a
nd peers.
Kushiel always teased that I was too rigid, but even I am more permissive than most on high.
“Senior Auditor Micah Ward,” a voice intones from within the flaming bush. There is no face, though the flames dance in time with the words, making it seem like a sentient thing.
“Present,” I reply, kneeling before the bush, bowing my head in deference. Though the flames will leave the shrub unharmed, the fire feels real enough at this distance, warming my skin, chasing away the lingering dampness left by the air.
“It is time to return. We await your status report,” the voice says, no room for argument. No room for one, though for a moment I still consider it. What exactly am I to report? Seamus and Raj are staying in this town for reasons unknown. The sword, which may or may not have something to do with it all, is firmly lodged in a stump and does not seem likely to move any time soon.
And there is Ava…
I swallow, throat tight, hands balled into fists at my side.
“Of course.”
“No delays, Ward,” the fire says. The voice always sounds the same coming from the bush, but those words, that tone gives away the speaker. Knowing changes nothing, only my willingness to argue — which I have since moved past. Arguing will not get me anywhere. My best bet is to angle for more time, but to do so in person.
I know that. And yet knowing that doesn’t make it easier to leave.
The flame dies after its last admonition, and I am left kneeling in front of a completely ordinary bush, all the air around me suddenly cold.
I stand to my full height and brush forest debris from my knees.
Leaving is not a problem because I think I will miss out on valuable information. Leaving is a problem because of her, and I know it. I struggle to be dishonest, especially with myself. There is no greater purpose to lying to myself. Only the creation of unnecessary problems.
But Ava herself is a problem, lying to myself or not. I never want to leave her side, although I force myself to keep my distance as much as I can bear. She has an energy that keeps pulling me back, a certain sway in her hips that awakens things in me I long thought non-existent.