by Shona Husk
The bouncer called the cops.
Finley would have to talk to them now. He didn’t think the thief was his stalker, especially after he’d started saying someone had paid him.
The bouncer crossed his arms, not believing that another person was involved. Finley wasn’t as quick to dismiss the claim. He searched the shadows across the road but saw nothing and no one suspicious. He was tempted to ask the thief more but he didn’t want to get more involved. He’d let the cops do their jobs and ask the questions, though he doubted they’d do much. It was just another Friday night. Another random robbery by someone who was desperate, so desperate he was trying to blame someone else.
Except it wasn’t.
Finley had used magic to get Alina’s bag back. He probably shouldn’t have, but the happenings of the last week had left him on edge. He hadn’t died, but he nearly had. Things had been left at his apartment and now this.
It was as though someone wanted him to be scared. And it was working.
He didn’t like that at all.
Frowning, Alina watched the man. “How did it only blow him over? It snatched my bag out of his hands.”
Finley forced a breath out between his teeth. “Don’t keep asking those questions so loud.”
Now her silvery gaze was on him. He was sure the silver was gleaming in his eyes, too. He had to tamp down on the desire to use magic. This week, he’d done more magic than he had over the last year.
“Why?”
“Because other people will start asking and that isn’t a good idea. I’ve watched your water bubble. I saw you knock it over and not spill a drop. You must have some idea about what is going on.” Or she had no idea and he had just stuck his neck out that extra inch too far.
Her eyes widened and her mouth opened like she was about to argue but then her expression changed. A wariness formed, her eyebrows drew together slightly and her head tilted and she examined him as though really seeing him for the first time.
“You made the breeze.” Her voice was low but her words hit hard.
He nodded. She didn’t know what she was, what he was. Someone had kept it from her. Her mother, she only had her mother. Why would her mother hide that? Fair enough to live quietly and pretend not to be Albah, but to try to deny the elemental magic that was part of who she was? He couldn’t imagine living without magic. “My element is air. Yours is water.”
She laughed and shook her head. “No.”
“Your hair is naturally as blond as mine. Your eyes have silver that shimmers to the surface. But your ears…”
She took half a step back, brushing her hair to hide the ears in question. “So what? My mother had my ears fixed. They stuck out.”
“Like mine?” The tops had a fold that made them curl over a little. Nothing too much or too odd, unless a group of Albah got together and then it became clear that something was odd about them. They were all just a little too similar.
She stared at him.
This wasn’t the place to be having this conversation. He’d never wanted to have this talk with anyone. He’d been quite happy to go his whole life pretending he was human with no magic until meeting her. Now he wanted to talk magic and find out what had happened that she didn’t even knew what she was.
Dating Alina was a very bad idea. If there were Guardians watching him, they would now be watching her, unless she had everyone fooled.
Perhaps he was just a fool.
But he was sure she had magic even if she didn’t know how to use it. She was Albah, but her mother had never told her what that meant or shown her what she could do.
Her gaze darted to the side and he glanced at the cop walking over.
“We can continue this later if you still want to come back to my place.” That wasn’t going to happen now. She probably thought he had a few screws loose.
Her smile became fixed and the cop came within hearing range. Alina hadn’t answered him.
Maybe he should’ve kept his mouth closed. Or his magic to himself. It was only a handbag. Now he’d risked exposing himself, and all Albah. He really needed to stop doing magic, unless the situation was life threatening.
* * * *
Alina answered the cops’ questions by rote. She wished this whole thing had never happened. She’d tried so hard over dinner to keep the excitement and nerves under control to make sure nothing odd happened. If her mother knew how careless she’d been, she’d be furious. She had no doubt that her mother would eventually see something about it. She’d search the gossip columns.
Ever since Alina was a teen, odd things had happened. Her mother had spent years teaching her how not to be weird, always worrying about someone noticing. And now Finley had noticed. And he was just as weird.
He’d conjured the wind that had tripped the would-be thief.
He’d done it deliberately and with precise effect.
She couldn’t do that. All she could do was try not to let it show. Try not to stand out. At one point, she’d thought she was possessed. Weren’t possessed people able to do freaky shit because of the demon inside of them? She’d never shared that fear with her mother.
Gradually the fuss died down. The cops left and she had all her things and her bag back. Finley had his car brought around and she had to decide. Did she end this now before it got stranger or did she dive in?
But it wasn’t just her that was odd. Now she knew there were others.
Her mother must have known. Did her mother know that Finley was like her? Was her father like these other people? Was that why they were hiding from him? She had so many questions. So many times, she’d tried to ask her mother and got no response. Finley was offering answers.
The valet held the door open for her. She glanced at Finley and got in.
“I can take you straight home,” he said when he closed his door.
Her stomach bounced, and she could feel the bubbles of nervous energy forming in her blood. “I don’t want to go home. I want to know what happened.”
He nodded but didn’t look at her. As he drove, neither of them spoke.
She wanted to break the silence, but didn’t know what to say. The longer she waited, the more it seemed like nothing strange had happened and she was making it up. She’d convinced herself so many times over the years that what had happened was her imagination and nothing more. The way that sometimes when she skated she seemed to know the ice as though it were a part of herself. That was just practice. Not magic.
Her water unexpectedly fizzing, maybe she’d ordered sparkling by accident?
She had an excuse for just about everything. Even almost spilling her water. She had quick reflexes. But she’d felt the way the water had wanted to spill and had pushed back.
She’d felt the breeze that had targeted only the thief. She glanced at Finley. He’d said his element was air and hers was water. And while she didn’t know exactly what he’d meant, it kind of made sense. Her weird stuff only happened with water. “Explain what happened to me.”
Finley tapped the steering wheel as he waited for the light to change. “There are people who have an affinity with an element.” He stared straight ahead. “Mine is air. It’s how I survived the accident. I was taught how to use it by my father.” He glanced at her then. “Why weren’t you taught?”
“I don’t know. My mother would tell me to keep my emotions in control.”
There’d been times when she’d lashed out. When she’d boiled water in anger or frozen beer in the bottle. It had been all her, and her mother’s fear had always made her wary of what she could do. She didn’t want to hurt people.
“Your mother, does she have blue eyes, blond hair?”
“Yes.” Her mother dyed her hair brown. Her ears were normal. She studied Finley’s ears. It had been a long time since she’d looked at the old photos. There were none up in the house.
They were packed away. Had her ears been like his before the surgery, or had they stuck out the way her mother said? “My mother has magic too?”
“Probably. I understand the desire to hide, but not the suppression of magic.”
“I don’t understand either.” She wasn’t sure she even believed in magic. It couldn’t be magic. “I’m not magical.”
She was an ice-skater, past her prime, who was tired of skating and didn’t know what she was going to do. And for some reason she’d been drawn to Finley. A man who appeared to have answers about why she was weird, or he had a special kind of madness.
He laughed. “You’re Albah. Magic is part of who you are.”
“It’s part of who you are.” She’d watched the accident footage. There’d been no sparkles, no sudden bang or colored smoke. “How did you do it?”
“What?”
Everything. How did he know what he was and what to do? She was adrift and didn’t even know what she was. What if she was one these Albah and she did have magic? “Why would my mother want us to hide?”
“There are people who hunt us.”
“Hunt us? Are you joking?” She did not want to be hunted.
“We have magic and they don’t like it, but there’s more to it. And it’s complicated. I can’t take you through centuries of history in five minutes.” He switched lanes and swung the car around the corner.
“Try.” She wanted to learn about what he was, what she might be if she let herself believe in magic and the Albah.
He stopped at another light and looked at her. “Millennia ago the Albah’s civilization was destroyed. The survivors tried to live among humans. Some were successful, others were feared. We’re the elves, witches and vampires of human mythology. While the world has forgotten us, there are some that haven’t and they want us erased from the world. They think they are protecting humans.”
That was concise. She tried to process what he’d said about witches and vampires. It was all too strange. Like some kind of other world, yet part of her world. She glanced out the window at the unfamiliar part of the city. Her face was reflected in the glass. That at least was familiar. Or was it? How well did she know herself? “Why would the people hunting Albah”—she couldn’t include herself in that. She didn’t want to be part of it if it meant being hunted—“think they are protecting humans? Did Albah do bad things?”
He shrugged. “Do humans do bad things?”
The car behind them honked. The light had turned green. Finley took off smoothly.
“What do vampires have to do with this?” Was she a vampire? She’d never once wanted to drink blood. She searched for signs that Finley was human, but he wasn’t. He was Albah, and she still wasn’t sure what that was. “Are you a vampire?”
He laughed. “I have a pulse. Vampires are very much dead, kept alive by blood magic. But any Albah could become one.”
Her hand covered her heart. She had a pulse and it was hammering. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Part of her wished she’d gone home and forgotten all about this. The rest of her wanted to know. This was what she’d been seeking her whole life. The gap that never felt full, the missing piece to the puzzle that was her. “How?”
“There is a ritual that was thought forgotten. It’s a banned magic.” He pressed his lips together then sighed. “Someone has been practicing and making vampires.”
“So there is magic and elves and vampires? And I’m part of that world. I’m not human.” She felt human. Didn’t she? But if she wasn’t human how would she know what being human felt like?
“Yeah, you are. We aren’t that different. We’re human plus magic.” He made it sound like a good thing.
“But those who hunt…us…don’t think we’re human.” That was a terrifying thought. Did she want to be part of a group of people who were actively hunted?
“They fear what we can become and there was a time, long ago, that we made vampires, Albanex, to keep our ways alive. Knowledge could be passed down over generations, but Albanex need feeding and too often they were allowed to decimate a human village. It happened so long ago, but the fear is imprinted in ancient memories. I don’t even know what is myth and what is truth. None of us do. Not really. They say that our civilization was destroyed because we discovered how to cheat death, but I don’t know. Mother Nature hasn’t risen up and destroyed anyone else and I’m sure there are some who deserve it.”
“How many Albah are there?” It wasn’t just her and her mother. She belonged to something bigger. That was exciting and terrifying.
He shrugged. “We don’t have exact numbers and some have chosen to fall away like your mother. How many live in secret instead of keeping in contact?”
“But you all have blond hair and blue eyes?”
“Yeah.” He pulled into an underground parking garage. “Still want to come up?”
“Are you going to show me magic?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “That depends on whether that was an honest question or a really bad pickup line.”
She grinned, not sure herself. Here was a guy who was so much more than she’d thought he was, and he was offering to show her who she was. The voice of warning that rattled in her skull was small, and sounded like her mother. Sure, there must be a reason her mother had never mentioned magic, but as Finley had said hiding one’s magic and not learning anything about it were different things. And she wanted to learn. She wanted to know what she was capable of.
And she wanted to know who he really was when there were no cameras.
Chapter 10
No odd presents waited outside or inside his apartment, which was a relief. Somehow his plans for a good night out had been spun around. Magic wasn’t a first date conversation. What had been simple was now a mess. Although the bag snatching had opened the door to talking about Albah and discovering what Alina was, he’d reacted rashly in a public place. He didn’t entirely regret using magic though. It felt good to unleash instead of keeping it contained.
Plus she’d gotten her bag back, and he was right about her. Alina was Albah.
His apartment was clean; he’d been hoping to bring her back and had made sure everything was put away. “Would you like a drink?”
“What do you have?”
“Beer, wine, possibly some vodka or tequila in the cupboard.” They were left over from a party he couldn’t really remember and didn’t want to think too hard about.
Her lips pressed together and her nose wrinkled. “Maybe I should just have water?”
“You can have water.” He smiled and got her a glass of water. He got himself a beer. “Are you sure you don’t want anything else?” He held up the beer bottle to show her the brand. It didn’t feel right to be drinking when she was opting for water.
“Maybe one of them too. Thanks.” She sat on the edge of his sofa and put the glass on the coffee table, not that she needed to be touching water to affect it.
He sat next to her and twisted the tops off both beers before handing one to her. He kept the caps in his hand, torn between putting them down and showing her some more of his magic. He didn’t want her to run for the door. It was one thing to muck around when he was alone, but another to share it with someone. Magic wasn’t something he’d shared with anyone in a very long time. It didn’t feel real that he was able to talk about it now.
But he wanted it to be real.
The idea that he didn’t have to fake being human with everyone was more tempting than it should’ve been. He’d sworn off all things Albah. That should’ve included dating an Albah woman, even one who didn’t know about her own people. Especially one who didn’t know. He wasn’t any kind of teacher and he didn’t want that responsibility.
The metal beer caps warmed in his hand, the edges pressing into his palm. He could put aside all talk of magic and move things back to where he was comfortable. Kiss her.
He did want to kiss her again. He’d been looking forward to dancing with her and getting close, now wasn’t the right time to try to recapture that moment.
Alina frowned. “Do I have something on my face?”
He hadn’t realized he’d been staring. He shook his head. “No, I was thinking.”
“About what?” Her hands were wrapped around the beer bottle and her gaze was wary.
He sighed. Yeah. Not the right time to kiss her when there was so much unsaid between them. “I fake being human every day. I don’t want to be caught out, even though to anyone who knows about the Albah I’m recognizable. I know how to hide my magic and I can use it carefully if I need to.” Usually. Tonight was an aberration. “How do you manage?” He tossed the bottle caps into the air. If he was at a party, his trick was to always catch them. He always won a coin toss. A slight push with the air was all that it took. It was a nothing trick that most people didn’t even realize was happening.
Most people didn’t recognize magic when it was being done in front of them. The beer caps spun, suspended in the air as he kept them moving, dancing to his command.
Alina watched them. “I don’t think I do. Bits slip out. I didn’t realize it was magic. My mother never called it that.”
“So you push it down all the time?”
“I guess.” She sipped her beer. “If I wasn’t taught or encouraged to use it, then maybe it’s never really been let out.” She grabbed one of the caps out of the air, turned it over, then tossed it up.
He caught it on a current and set it orbiting the other one.
“How do you do that?” She poked the cap and he kept it in place.
“Air. I can feel the pressure differences, the draft that slips under the door from the vent in the bathroom. The cooler air from the corridor sliding under my front door. Most people don’t notice, but I do. I feel it and I can manipulate it.”
“And that’s how you stopped the car?”
He gave a sharp laugh and let the caps drop to the coffee table. They bounced and one skidded off the edge. “If I’d been better, I’d have been able to guide the car away from the wall. Those things don’t come cheap. I’m out of practice at doing much more than spinning beer caps.” With a flick of a breeze he swept up the caps and sent them sailing into the trash.