by Shona Husk
Julian shuddered. “Have you seen some of the torture instruments they used?”
Leira nodded. “But they weren’t just for us. They were for anyone who didn’t obey.”
“Not comforting.”
“It kind of is. Humans are assholes, even to other humans. We aren’t that special.” She smiled and this time it stuck. She was talking about something she understood. The uncertainty that had clouded her face on the beach was gone.
And he found himself smiling for the first time since finding the tacks. “Do all those factions still exist?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. The truce was drawn up and then everything went quiet on both sides. But even if Emily took the breakup badly, and we assume she isn’t Guardian because it doesn’t fit, her choice of retaliation is odd.”
“I know. She could have killed me in my sleep.” He’d held her close, shared a bed with her. Trusted her. “She could have…” He didn’t have a car to vandalize. “Smashed up my TV and laptop while she was at my place. Not that she had a key.”
“Why did you break up with her?” That was no casual question. Leira’s gaze had sharpened and the blue of her eyes shimmered.
He took a drink of water to stall. He was being grilled about his ex all over again, but unlike the cops, Leira had more right to know. “Because the hassle had started to outweigh the convenience.”
That was the unvarnished truth. It wasn’t pretty. What he and Emily had had never been pretty, and it didn’t paint him in a good light. He knew that, but what else could he say? It hadn’t been a relationship that he’d expected to go places.
Leira stabbed a tomato, her gaze on him. She ate it slowly making him wait. Just when he was about to elaborate she spoke. “Is that how you think of all your relationships? Like they are there for your convenience?”
Julian glanced away and stared out the window. His heart clenched. Was that Emily in the crowd? But when he tried to find her again, she was gone. He was imagining it. Would it be better if it was her hunting him? Someone he could recognize?
“No.” He looked back at Leira. She was asking questions that weren’t related to magic or the Guardians. He remembered the way she’d looked at him when he’d walked into his father’s lounge room. She had been shocked to see him, as if she knew him. Maybe she did. Maybe she’d made a list of eligible Albah men and his name had been at the top. Or maybe she’d known he was a fire user but had believed him to be still in Sydney. Or maybe she’d seen him in a reading. He wanted to ask but couldn’t.
Maybe he should get a reading to find out what was going to happen next. But he didn’t want to know what his future held. If he knew, he might screw it up. If he saw that he lived through this and then he celebrated too early that might change everything. He’d rather take each day as it came and make the best of it. Given that he may be running out of days, that seemed like a really good idea.
“Not every relationship is going to go somewhere. We’d both gone in knowing it was a short-term thing.” He frowned. “But she’d been getting clingy and wanting to meet my family.”
Leira made a noise in her throat. “Maybe it is her. She wanted to know how many others live here.” Her words became even softer.
“We can’t hunt her.” They didn’t even know for sure it was her. He didn’t even know her real name. He knew that Emily was the most obvious choice, even if she didn’t fit the profile of a Guardian of Adam.
“I know, because then we’d be breaking the law.” Leira didn’t look convinced that not hunting her was a good idea.
Waiting for Emily to attack again—if it was her—didn’t seem like the right thing to do either. He couldn’t imagine Emily being violent. She couldn’t even kill a spider. “Were there female Guardians?”
“Apparently, but they were the most secretive. I guess if they were too obvious they could be accused of being witches themselves by a hysterical public.”
“A hysterical population is easy to control. They’ll report others to keep themselves safe.” History was full of people that had created the fear and then used it to put themselves in positions of power. It was still happening. This time the targets weren’t witches.
Leira nodded and pushed her plate of half-eaten salad aside. “You need to get a reading done.”
“No.” He shook his head. He’d gotten this far through his life without getting one done and he had no plans to change that.
She drew in a breath. “Yes, because ever since I saw you for the first time my life has gone off course and I all I get is smoke and flames.”
He stared at her. Had he brought her death? “Why did you agree to meet me today?”
“Because it’s already there. Having lunch might take it away, although I doubt it. I need to work out a way to change my future, and since you are involved, you will get a reading. Bring something of hers and I’ll do one for her too.” It wasn’t a question. She was giving him an order. There was that push in his gut that he should obey even if he didn’t want to.
“Isn’t that a bit…wrong?” He was pretty sure that in his mother’s diary she had mentioned not scrying for someone else without their permission. He hadn’t paid close attention to that bit as men didn’t have that ability.
“Yes, however in this situation I’m happy to break that rule. It’s more of an ethical guideline anyway.” She didn’t seem the least bit concerned about looking into Emily’s future.
He drew in a breath, realizing why the guideline was there. A female Albah could sneak a peek into so many lives. Something else she’d said snagged in his brain. “What makes you think I am involved in your future?”
Leira pressed her lips together. “Let’s just say you were in a much more pleasant version of my future, but I didn’t know it was you until you walked into the meeting.”
Chapter 8
Julian blinked. His eyebrows lifted. He opened his mouth, closed it, and glanced out the window. Yep. He couldn’t have been less interested in what she was saying if he’d been trying. What difference would it have made if she’d met him a few weeks or a few months later? If he wasn’t into her, then it wasn’t going to happen. Clearly she was boring him with her talk of scrying and her fiery future.
Leira had been enjoying his company up to that point. With him she didn’t have to pretend to be something that she wasn’t. She was able to talk about the things that were important to the Albah, things that she’d never been able to share with anyone but her sister. Saba didn’t get excited about six-hundred-year-old history. Even her mother had just smiled, glad that her daughter had found something to do with her like that she liked. Julian had seemed interested.
Maybe she was too young for Julian and that was the problem. Six years could be a lot—she’d asked Saba how old he was, since Saba knew everything about the Ryder family. Julian had a house and his degree and a career and she was still studying.
Julian shook his head, frowning. Clearly her happy vision of them together was disturbing him. “I’m not going to ask, not because I don’t want to know, but because it’s already screwed up and I might make it worse if I know what you saw.”
Nice save. But it wasn’t quite enough. He’d mucked up her future and she wasn’t going to let that go. At the moment, it wasn’t even about regaining the life she’d seen with him. It was simply about not dying in the fire she’d seen in her future, and she was convinced that it was her death that she was feeling. She could almost taste the ash in her mouth when she checked on her future. “You might be able to fix it.”
“How, when I don’t know what went wrong in the first place?” He was frowning more; deep lines had formed between his eyebrows.
Leira drew in a breath and decided to jump off the cliff without a parachute. “Would you even be interested in fixing it, or trying to fix it, or is a future with me in it too much?”
His lips twitched, but the frown remained. “That’s…I…” He laughed and shook his h
ead. “Are you asking me out in a roundabout way?”
“No. I thought I was clear. I don’t want what I am heading toward. It doesn’t mean what I saw has to happen.” It might be too late for that to ever happen now. “But we have to fix it so I don’t die.”
She had his full attention now. Whatever had caught his eye out the window was forgotten. “Do you want me in your future?”
Leira leaned back and crossed her arms. “I haven’t decided yet.” He wasn’t allowed to know those things. And she hadn’t decided yet because none of this was the way it should’ve been. She’d expected their meeting to sweep her off her feet. A whirlwind romance. Something amazing. An Albanex and a Guardian showing up might be some people’s definition of amazing, but not hers. “You have dangerous baggage.”
And she wasn’t sure that she liked the way he talked about his relationship with Emily. There was something dismissive about it. She almost felt sorry for Emily. One minute she was his girlfriend the next she was yesterday’s leftovers.
Julian was quiet for a moment as he studied his half-eaten lunch. “I’ve never had a reading done.”
“What? Really?” It was one of those things that had been done frequently when she was growing up. Either her mother teaching Saba and using Dad or Leira as the guinea pig, or later when she and Saba had returned to Perth, Leira begging for a reading for some small high school problem until she’d mastered the ability to do it on her own.
Julian sighed and lifted his gaze. “Who was going to do it? I was six when Mum died. When your mother left and took you and Saba with her, there were no female Albah around.”
“You never saw any in Sydney?” The Ryder and Venn families couldn’t be the only ones in Australia. He’d gone his whole life without a reading. Was he scared of what she might see?
“None in Sydney. There is a family in Melbourne.”
Had they been online the other night? “Has your father called to make sure they are still alive?”
“They aren’t the kind of family that takes calls from the cops.” He lifted an eyebrow and gave her a look.
It took a moment for his words to sink in. She gave up on playing cool and leaned forward again. “Oh… You mean they’re criminals?”
“Big time. Next time there’s a flare up in Melbourne, watch the news very carefully.”
“And they use magic?” She couldn’t imagine how Quinn would react to a criminal family of Albah using magic openly to get away with whatever they wanted. But what could he do from here? And who in the police force was going to listen if he started to talk about magic?
“I don’t know, I assume so. Dad told me how they avoided police raids. It’s why he wouldn’t let me study in Melbourne and one reason he was worried about me being in Sydney. It was too close.” The smile was back on his lips. He had nice lips.
“Was he worried they’d recruit you? Did they try?”
“Dad’s a cop and the king.” He wrinkled his nose just a little as he said it. “I think they would’ve avoided me even if I’d knocked on their door.”
His dad was the king of the Albah, yet he didn’t get around in a crown and rarely pulled rank. “So, Prince Julian, are you brave enough to let me do your first reading?”
“I swear if you call me that one more time, I will never talk to you again.” It was the first time she’d heard a bite in his words.
She’d hit a nerve. “I was just teasing.” She brushed the back of his hand with her fingertips, half expecting him to pull away. He didn’t.
“If Finley decides he’s never going to step up, who do you think is going to end up running the meetings and trying to keep track of a few hundred people spread over the globe? Me.”
From what she’d read about Finley on the gossip sites, she didn’t like Julian’s chances on not taking that responsibility. Julian would be the next king. Something tugged at the edge of her mind. “Do you think the Guardians know that we have a leader? Or were you a random choice. the only one they’d seen here? Maybe they were here to hunt the Albanex.”
“I don’t know. You’re the expert.”
She laughed. Then realized he was being serious. “Don’t tell me I am the only person who has been studying the Guardians.” He remained silent. She was totally the only Albah who had been studying the Guardians. How could that be? “Do we have any historical information squirreled away?”
She’d stuck with very human sources for her thesis research, but this was no longer history or theory. This was real. Maybe there was an Albah out there who knew more about Guardians than she did. She hoped so.
“You’d have to ask Dad. I’ve been out of the loop. I didn’t exactly keep in contact while in Sydney. I didn’t even join the online meetings. The other night was the first one I’ve been to in a long while.” He lowered his gaze as though ashamed of that fact.
“Why did you come home?”
He exhaled and looked at her. “Gut instinct.”
Gut instinct, had he came back because of some invisible pull between them? Or had it been more about needing to be with family because something bad was coming? “If the Guardian had caught you over there, you would’ve been on your own.”
“But my family would have been safe.”
* * * *
Leira made it to the shop just in time for the start of her shift. She’d convinced Julian to let her do a reading—at least for Emily, if not himself. He was still wavering on that one. Was he scared about what she’d see? If he hated the future he was on the path toward, he could change it. That was a good thing. Not that changing the future was easy. She was still trying to get rid of the smoke. Anything would be better than smoke.
Saba was big on the ability to change, though she also said most people never made changes because changes were hard.
Nothing Leira was doing was changing the smoke in her vision. She could taste it now. Thick and choking. Fire may not burn her, but she could still die from smoke inhalation and that didn’t sound like a fun way to go.
“Hey.” Leira dropped her bag behind the counter, still a little out of breath from her jog from the multi-story car park.
“I’m starving. I have a few errands to run too, but I’ll be back in time for my appointment.” Saba tapped the diary. She had a full schedule of readings this afternoon. She could only do them when someone else was behind the counter watching the shop. That had been Leira’s job for the last six years.
Saba always had a full appointment book. She always knew what to say to people even if she’d seen something bad. Leira would never be able to read for other people the way her sister did. She didn’t have the people skills. Maybe Julian would be better off seeing Saba. She’d be able to take the nerves away. Saba had convinced Dale to get a reading and he hadn’t even believed in magic when Saba had first met him.
No. She didn’t want Saba and Julian to share that moment. It was Leira’s future that was tangled with his and they would deal with it. There was no need to drag other Albah into the mess.
The after-lunch lull was always peaceful and Leira used the time to do some research and reading. She didn’t have what she really wanted on hand, but she had enough of the websites flagged that she could search for references to female Guardians. There was no reason that there couldn’t be these days. Six hundred years ago, or even two hundred years ago they would have been trussed up in corsets and petticoats, trapped into marriage and wifely duties simply because they were women. If finding a secret society of men was hard, finding one made up of women was harder.
A dark-haired woman walked into the shop.
Leira smiled and put aside what she was doing. The woman didn’t smile back, but walked around touching things and looking at books as though interested. Leira kept an eye on her. There was something not quite right, almost as though the woman didn’t want to be here.
Leira eased out from behind the counter. “Hi, can I help you?”
The woman st
udied her for a couple of heartbeats. A little taller than Leira, her dark eyes were completely unreadable. Leira resisted the urge to step back. There was definitely something about this woman that wasn’t safe, but nothing that she could point to if someone had asked.
Her mind immediately started leaping to deadly conclusions.
The woman’s face softened for a moment. “I think my boyfriend is being unfaithful. Do you have a spell to bring him back to me?”
Did this woman really want a man who obviously didn’t care about her? But that wasn’t what she’d want to hear. Saba would be much more tactful, so Leira tried to be like her sister. “Are you sure he is cheating?”
“He had lunch with the other woman today.” Again that look. It was as though she expected Leira to know all about it.
Oh. Cold filled her belly. This was Emily. Emily, who Julian had broken up with. He wasn’t cheating. Hell she wasn’t even dating him. It was lunch. They hadn’t even kissed. Was Emily here to make a point? Or leave some more tacks?
“Friends can have lunch.” Leira moved to the other side of the shop and picked up a small pre-prepared spell bag. “We do have love charms. However, you cannot mess with another’s free will.”
“What is the point of a love charm if I don’t get who I want?” Emily was pretty. It was easy to see why Julian had got with her. But it was also easy to see why he’d broken up with her if she thought using magic to make someone want her was an okay thing to do.
“Who you think you want and who is right for you are often two different things.” Only an Albanex’s magic could bend a person’s free will, and even then, it was easier to bend a mind that was already interested in death and murder.
“And who are you to decide who I love and who loves me? Why should I put my trust in a witch?”
You walked into my store. But she didn’t say that. Her heart was beating a little too fast now. Saba wouldn’t be back for at least half an hour. Maybe this wasn’t Emily. Yeah, but nothing was this coincidental.