by Sarah Fine
He hadn’t shown any relief that I was alive. But he had been bleeding profusely at the time, so maybe that wasn’t entirely fair.
I tripped over a clump of grass and nearly fell on my face. “Stupid grass. Stupid Ward brothers,” I grumbled as I shone the flashlight ahead of me, where the inky darkness of the woods awaited. Had Asa really gone in there? I paused and turned to look back at the camp, a collection of glowing tents and squares of light within trailer windows, laid out under a bright gibbous moon. I could go back. My entire body was aching. Betsy would give me a place to sleep it off. And if I stayed on this path, I was risking getting my head bitten off by a man who did ornery better than almost anyone I knew.
But I kept trudging between the trees, following a narrow footpath toward the distant glint of moonlight on water. “Asa?” I called as I got closer.
All I got in response was a soft yip from Gracie, but it was enough. I headed toward the noise and ended up on the bank of a swollen creek. Gracie came bounding over, her tongue lolling and her stumpy tail wagging. She pressed her wriggling body against my legs and nosed at my hands until I scratched between her ears. I knelt to give her a hug. “Where is he, girl?”
She licked my neck and set off as soon as I released her, winding her way along a slippery, muddy path, over a few fallen tree trunks and through a few patches of brambles. My bare arms were stinging by the time we reached a place where the trees thinned out. I aimed my flashlight beam at a dark shape rising from the edge of the water but turned off the beam just as quickly.
I had a thing about seeing Asa with his shirt off. It just always felt like too much.
“Didn’t take you long to get back on your feet,” he said as he wrung out his black T-shirt and pulled it back over his head.
“Well. You know me,” I said breezily, then laughed.
Now I was sorry I had turned off the flashlight, because I wanted to see the look on Asa’s face. He was staring at the water. “Bet you’re gonna feel it tomorrow.” He ran his hands through his dripping hair. It looked like he’d dipped the entire upper half of his body in the creek. “But you must’ve thought coming all the way out here to lecture me was worth the effort, so go ahead.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “Let’s get this done.”
Irritation tore through me, obliterating any concern I had for him. “What the heck, Asa? Why do you always assume the worst of me?” My voice cracked as he turned toward me. “Ever since we met, you’ve been more interested in your arrogant beliefs about small-town, close-minded Mattie—”
“And you never assumed anything at all about me.”
“So, what? Is this payback or something?”
“Everyone makes assumptions. It’s what humans do.”
My fists balled in my sweaty, mud-streaked baggy T-shirt. “Semantics!” I shrieked.
“Do you know what ‘semantics’ means?”
“Argh! You are such a—” My big finish ended with a strangled sob. I tripped over my own feet as I turned to storm away, and landed with a splat in a muddy patch beside the trail. Expecting to hear a derisive laugh, I began to push myself up, only to feel Asa’s arms slide around me and guide me to my feet.
He didn’t let go once he’d steadied me. Instead, he pulled my back to his chest, holding me as I struggled halfheartedly, driven more by pride than by an actual desire to get away from him. The truth was, this was the safest I’d felt in hours. The water from Asa’s shirt soaked my back as he laid his chin on the top of my head and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I blinked at the darkness as his arms tightened around me. “Say that again.”
His chuckle sent a shiver through me. “You heard me.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not really.”
I closed my eyes as his fingers rose to encircle my throat, and I didn’t resist as he tipped my head back so it leaned against the hard curve of his shoulder. He looked down at me, his eyes black in the darkness. “It’s easier when I can put you in a box,” he said. “Can you get that?”
“Yeah. That actually makes perfect sense.” I’d done the same to him over the past year, trying to fence him in along with the entire magical underworld. And it had nearly destroyed me.
“Why didn’t you tell me what Ben had done to you?” he murmured. “Why did you let me think—”
“Why did I let you? Like it’s my fault you decided to be a jerkface?”
“I never would have let him in the van with you if I’d known what he did.” His voice had gone rough and his body tight, as if he were tempted to go find Ben and start round two.
I gave a weary sigh. “It was just such a mess. I don’t even know how to sort it all out.”
Asa twisted my engagement ring around my finger. It was loose after all the weight I had lost, ready to slide right off, but he didn’t try. “You’ll be able to figure it out now that you’re not moments away from death,” he said wryly.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “You saved my life.”
“Did you think I was gonna let you die?”
“Not for a moment.”
His smile made my stomach swoop. Even in the dark, I could see that it was his rare, sweet smile, the one usually reserved for Gracie and no one else. “Dammit, Mattie. I hate apologizing.”
“Now there’s a shocker.”
“But I think I’m gonna have to do it again.”
“Why?”
I gasped as his lips descended on mine. This kiss wasn’t the soft, sweet touch I had felt in the tent; there was a strength to it, a command, that made me rise to my tiptoes and tilt my head back, offering him more. My fingers curled into his biceps, my fingernails digging into his skin as his tongue slid along mine. His arms were steel around me, one hand on my ribs, one clasping my chin, anchoring our mouths together. He was in charge, and I was totally good with that, because he was totally good at this.
When I reached up to slide my fingers into his hair, though, he caught my wrist and pinned it to my body, keeping me wrapped up tight. Contained. Tied up just like he’d tied me to that cot tonight. Under his control. And instead of being disappointing, it was somehow more erotic, frustration and curiosity and trepidation and need all mixing together, melting my insides with its heat. I could feel his growing arousal pressed against my back. I craved each second of it.
I was kissing Asa Ward.
Not Eve. Me. Kissing Asa Ward.
Clutching at his arm while the diamond from my engagement ring left its imprint in his skin.
The unsteady feeling inside me suddenly gave way like one of those melting ice shelves in the Arctic. A bright, blinding blade of pain twisted in the new emptiness inside me. I whimpered.
That was nothing compared to Asa’s reaction. He tore himself from me and staggered back with a hoarse curse, then turned and retched violently into a bramblebush. I stared as his back arched and his body heaved, as Gracie whined and let out a high-pitched bark. “Asa?”
I pushed away the ridiculous impulse to feel hurt about the fact that kissing me had made Asa throw up in the bushes. Was it an aftereffect of the magic that had been there? Could he still feel it somehow? “Are you okay?”
He held up a finger as he spit on the ground, then walked stiffly over to the creek bank, where he dropped to his knees and brought some water to his mouth in his cupped palm. After spitting again, he slowly got to his feet.
Even in the mostly dark, I could read the horror on his face. “Ben said you had been sick for a while,” he said slowly. “I assumed it was because you had been trying to freelance solo, but he said you hadn’t touched magic until he—” His fists clenched. “He could have killed you. This almost killed you.” He grimaced. “This still might kill you,” he whispered.
“Asa, you’re scaring me.”
“How long has it hurt?”
“It’s really nothing—”
“How long?” he shouted.
“Since I got back from Vegas,” I said lamely.
; “Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”
“I just thought it was . . .” I gave him a sheepish look. “Emotional.”
“Fuck.” He wiped his sweaty face on his wet sleeve. “This is all my fucking fault.”
“Well, if we want to argue semantics—”
“It’s been in there this whole time,” he muttered, staring at my chest like one might stare at a rattlesnake, which frayed the very last of my nerves.
“Would you please just tell me what you’re talking about?”
“The Strikon relic.”
“For the last time, it was the Sensilo relic,” I snapped, wincing as the knife turned yet again. “Ben took it from my Grandpa and—”
“I felt it when I touched you. I knew that’s what it was,” he continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “Shit. I brushed it off. Because . . . fuck.” He braced one hand on a tree and ran the other through his hair, which had dried enough to stand on end. “Mattie. We have to fix this.”
“I don’t want to do anything but sleep.” I held on to a tree as I stepped carefully onto the trail, then I stumbled forward, clutching at my head, which felt too full to balance on my shoulders.
He caught up to me, took me by the arms, and shook me a little. “We got the original Sensilo magic out, but that’s not the only thing in your vault.” He ducked his head, trying to catch my eye, but I stubbornly stared over his shoulder. “Goddammit, look at me! Last summer, when Jack was shot during that transaction . . . it interrupted the flow of the Strikon magic back into its relic, and it must have fractured the magic. There’s a splinter of it still inside you.” His fingers were bruising my skinny biceps. His face was taut with pain, maybe from the contact with my skin.
“Asa, I’m all right,” I said in a high, brittle voice. “Really.”
“No, Mattie,” he said quietly. “You’re dying.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“That can’t be true,” I said. “You would have known it immediately after Jack was killed. You tried to sense it! You said all of it was out!”
He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how much Strikon magic was in the room that night? This splinter was like a needle poke while I was being run through with a sword or three.”
I flinched at the reminder of just how much the magic hurt him. “And once we were at that abandoned mall . . . Reza was there. And you were wearing the relic.”
“I never had the chance to figure it out.” He left the rest of it unsaid. Because I had refused to go with him. Because I had sent him away. “And because I didn’t detect it, that goddamn shard of magic has been snagged inside you ever since.” He let me go and turned his face to the sky, his hands clawed at his sides. “Fuuuuck,” he roared. He whirled around, his eyes wild.
I stepped between him and the poor, innocent tree he’d drawn back his fist to punch. “Your hands are already pretty torn up.”
His fist dropped to his side. “Didn’t you wonder?” he snarled, and I realized that by blocking his target, I had become his target. “It didn’t once occur to you that magic could be causing your health problems?”
I shrugged. “After seeing a few specialists, I did find a medication that helped a little.”
“Yeah? What was it? Some happy pill that numbed you up?”
The longer I had known Asa, the more attractive I had found his angular face, with its crooked nose and deep-set brown eyes, but right then, he seemed so ugly that I had to turn away. “Just because you’re mister I-only-eat-fair-trade-organic-vegetables-farmed-by-Tibetan-monks—”
“Better than using pills as a crutch.”
“Screw you, Asa.” I blundered through the woods toward the camp.
“If you’d just faced what was right in front of you, you could have figured this out months ago,” Asa shouted from behind me. In the next instant, Gracie sailed over a tree trunk and landed on the trail in front of me, then slowed down, blocking my path.
“You little traitor,” I wailed. “What happened to girls sticking together?”
Asa caught up with me, and we walked silently toward Betsy and Vernon’s tent. I had nowhere else to go, really—all I knew was that I wasn’t about to ask if I could sleep in Asa’s van. On top of that, my sweats were covered in burs, and the front of my T-shirt was splattered with mud. Compared to me, Asa actually looked pretty put together, which made me even more angry. I sped up, but seeing as his legs were about a foot longer than mine, I wasn’t presenting him with much of a challenge.
And then I had nowhere to run, because as the wind lifted the tent flap on Vernon and Betsy’s silk haven, I caught sight of Ben sitting on the cot, gingerly dabbing blood from the corner of his mouth. I came to a dead halt. “Okay. What now?”
Asa inclined his head toward the trailers and then walked toward them, obviously assuming I would follow. He knocked on the door of one that looked like a giant, rusty steel egg. The door opened just a crack and Betsy’s face appeared. The two of them spoke in murmured tones for a few minutes while I fidgeted behind Asa, feeling like a child. Finally, Betsy disappeared back inside and Asa turned to me. “Vernon’s out of commission for the night. Betsy’s not gonna let him do any conduit work for at least twenty-four hours.”
“Are there any other conduits here who could do it?” I was guessing every single person in this camp was a natural.
“Not as strong as he is, and for this, we need the best. Vernon actually has some control over the way magic flows through him, and we’ll need it. I want to pull the splinter out of you gradually instead of yanking it out like a superconductor would.”
I looked down at my chest, my small breasts hidden by my baggy T-shirt. “Either way, this isn’t going to be fun,” I said quietly.
He moved closer. “Want me to check on it? Now that I know what I’m looking for . . .”
“Okay.”
“I’m gonna stick my hand under your shirt now.”
“Wow, what a gentleman. Usually you just do it.”
“Yeah, but I figured, after what Ben did . . .” His hands balled into fists for a moment, then relaxed again. “You ready?”
Not really. “Go ahead.”
He moved close enough for me to count the beads of sweat along his upper lip, glinting in the light from Betsy and Vernon’s trailer window. His fingertips skimmed along my stomach, making it tremble, and straight up the center of me, until he laid his palm between my breasts. I tried to breathe slowly, but his touch made my skin feel supercharged, as if I were about to be struck by lightning. When he bowed his head and closed his eyes, I was glad, because I didn’t have to guard my facial expression so carefully. I leaned back against the trailer and let my eyelids fall shut.
“Found you,” he whispered. “Nasty little fucker.”
“How come it made you nearly puke a little while ago, but now you can be close to me without being sick?”
“Well, the fact that I had my tongue halfway down your throat probably made some difference,” he said drily.
“Apart from that,” I snapped.
“I think your vault is broken, honey.”
“What?”
Asa’s hand slid back down my stomach, and maybe I was imagining it, but it really seemed to move slower than it needed to. “Just a theory, but when we were interrupted midtransaction, I think your vault door was still open, and the splinter sort of jammed in there, not letting it close completely. Now the door can’t lock, not really.”
“So how come I don’t feel it all the time?”
His mouth twisted as he thought about it. “You know how sometimes a car door looks closed, but sometimes it’s not? It’s closed enough to make it hard to tell, but the damn light on the dash keeps flashing red?”
“Yeah. So it closes, but it’s not latched.”
“And sometimes it swings open. My guess is that it happens when you’re stressed, or maybe feeling strong emotions?”
Like just now, when he was kissing me. It had happened the moment I’d focused o
n my engagement ring, and the guilt had risen hard and fast, knocking me off-kilter. “Maybe. But sometimes it just happens out of the blue. Like when I was having my wedding dress fitted.”
Asa bowed his head so I couldn’t see his expression. “We won’t know if the damage is permanent until we get the magic out of you. And that needs to happen as soon as possible.” He reached down and stroked Gracie’s neck, and she leaned against him with a weary grumph. “But in the meantime, I think we both need to get some sleep.”
He sounded as if he were about to collapse. Now that we were out of the darkness of the woods, I could see the purple circles beneath his eyes—and the ugly bruising on his cheek and along his jaw.
“I probably shouldn’t ask this, but who threw the first punch?”
Asa began walking toward his van, which was parked at the edge of the midway, in sight of Betsy and Vernon’s silk tent. “I did.”
“Why?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Asa was better at storming away than I was. I had to jog to keep up. “Were you just ticked that you were wrong about everything, and took it out on him?”
He whirled toward me so fast that I nearly fell on my butt. His face was alight with rage. “I’m ticked, Mattie, because my brother is apparently the kind of guy who can listen to the woman he claims to love begging him not to force one of the biggest pieces of magic in the world inside of her body, and he can still do it anyway,” he shouted.
“Some of us are trying to get some shut-eye,” yelled someone in a trailer a few rows away.
Asa’s mouth snapped shut, but then his glare landed on me again. “What I want to know is how come you’re not pissed? I know you want this life, Mattie, but are you really willing to let him rape you to keep it?”