“Yeah, about that,” Jack said. “We have no way back home. Both of us ended up here without using our cars.”
Nadira laughed. “Alright, well I guess I have to teach you one last trick.” She faced Miriam, suddenly serious. “This is hard, and dangerous, so pay attention. We can location-shift, when we have to. If you don’t do it right, you can end up literally anywhere, and if you try it with a normal, like Jack here, and you don’t keep your destination clearly in your mind, you can kill him.”
“Location-shift?” Miriam asked.
“Yeah, like teleporting, I guess. It takes a huge amount of power to accomplish, so when you arrive, you’ll probably be in elemental form, which is why you can’t just do it whenever you want. You won’t have any control over your form until you’ve rested a bit, so it only really works if your destination is somewhere private. Basically, you’re just ripping open a hole in the fabric of reality between where you are and where you want to be. This realm is fragile and delicate, and easily manipulated, but that’s as much a danger as anything else. Again, you have to be intentional, and careful, or things can go seriously wrong. Location-shifting is something I only use if I have no other option.” Nadira took a few steps back, “I’ll show you how it works, just because explaining it is damn near impossible.”
Miriam watched Nadira summon her magic, pulling until she was all but obscured by the blinding glow of magic roiling around her. Jack seemed able to see the magic glow as well, for he was squinting and shielding his eyes. Miriam was watching carefully, studying Nadira’s movements and the way she performed the manipulation. Nadira placed her palms together in front of her chest to form a knife and lunged forward as if spearing the air with her hands; in the moments before her lunge, Nadira had gathered the magic together into a single column grasped between her palms to make a kind of spear in truth. When she lunged, the magic pierced the air and vanished; as Nadira had explained, the magic had ripped a hole in reality itself, it seemed, or in the fabric of this realm, so that when Nadira’s hands followed the magic into the created gap, she spread her palms apart to enlarge the rip enough to allow her to step through. The moment her body was through, the hole closed silently behind her and Nadira was gone.
The bathroom door opened and Nadira reappeared in full elemental form, a woman made from living water, each motion sending ripples throughout her body. “You can go anywhere you can visualize,” Nadira said. “But you have to have a mental image of your destination and you can’t let it go, no matter what. Did you catch how I did that, Miriam?”
“I think so,” Miriam answered. Nadira had made it look easy, but Miriam had a feeling it wasn’t. “Should I try it on my own before trying to bring Jack with me?”
Nadira nodded, “Yeah, you wouldn’t want to vaporize the new boyfriend.”
Miriam took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and holding her hands as she’d seen Nadira do, pulled deeply from the magic boiling ever just beneath the surface. She felt the magic respond, billowing out of her in a cloud around her body; Miriam brought the raw power together into her hands, again mimicking the way she’d seen Nadira do it, and then held an image of her apartment in her mind, her living room with the faded couch, the small, little-used TV, the half-counter separating the living room from the kitchen.
When she had the image firmly centered in her mind, Miriam stabbed forward with her hands and the magic simultaneously, picturing the magic as a sword slicing open a curtain. She felt a resistance, which dissipated as she thrust forward even harder, realizing how much force it took to fully pierce through. She felt the gap widen, saw it in front of her, a tiny speck of darkness and distortion a few feet in front of her face.
With one last push, Miriam was through and grabbing the edges of the hole she had made; it was a strange sensation, holding in her hands something invisible yet tangible, slippery and hard and flexible and cold. The gap wanted to close, and she had to shove her hands apart using all her strength. She saw her apartment beyond the gap, and she contorted her body through the hole and found her self in her dark, cold, and empty apartment. Jack and Nadira were watching her, Nadira with approval, Jack with mixed amounts of pride and a kind of absurd sadness that she was gone.
When the portal closed, Miriam’s body burst into flame, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t force herself back into human form. It was several minutes before she had enough control over her power to reassume her human form.
Miriam decided to make use of the fact that she was home, and packed a backpack with a few changes of clothes, her phone and charger and some make-up. She would return eventually to pack up properly, but for now, Miriam didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be alone in her apartment. She’d spent so long alone, sitting by herself in her living room, waiting to fall asleep, waiting to go to work.
She didn’t want to be alone. She wanted to be with Jack. It might be presumptuous, but she had no intention of spending another night alone in her bed.
Miriam reopened the portal to Nadira’s apartment and stepped through, finding it much easier the second time. Jack and Nadira were waiting, sitting side by side on the couch, chatting. As she stepped through, Miriam felt a pang of jealousy at the sight of them talking together. It was stupid, she told herself. But telling herself to be reasonable didn’t get rid of the feeling, the unreasoning desire to tell Nadira that Jack was hers. Miriam forced the emotion away, forced herself to be logical. They were just talking.
The moment the rip opened and Jack saw Miriam appear, he jumped up and went to her, taking her hand and helping her step through.
“You packed a bag,” he remarked, taking it from her and slinging it on his shoulder. Miriam let him take it from her. She felt possessive, wanted to snatch it back, but she forced herself to let him have it, to trust him. It started in the little things.
“I went to my apartment because it was the first place that I could see clearly in my head,” Miriam said. “But once I was there, I…I just didn’t want to be there. I’ve got so many memories of that apartment, and not all of them are bad, but I just don’t want to relive them, you know?”
“Yeah, I totally understand,” Jack said.
Miriam turned to Nadira and hugged her. “Thank you so much…for everything,” Miriam said. “I don’t want to think what would’ve happened if you hadn’t have helped us.”
Nadira waved her hand dismissively. “I couldn’t not help you. When I saw you in the casino, terrified and running for your life, I just had this feeling. Our lives are joined, now.”
“Good.” Miriam had always wanted a sister, and now she had one. Nadira seemed as flushed with suppressed emotion as Miriam, holding it in, keeping it down, under control. Nadira squeezed Miriam’s hand and hugged her again.
Miriam gathered the magic one more time, calling up a memory of Jack’s apartment: stacks of paintings, a canvas on an easel, the smell of paint and turpentine and engine grease. She opened the portal and pushed it wide as it would go, wrapped her arm around Jack’s waist and ducked through. When the rip closed and Nadira was gone from sight, Miriam felt the flames escaping to consume her and felt suddenly exhausted, unable to stand.
The weight of memory crashed down on her. She felt herself swaying in place, felt Jack’s arms around her, felt the magic reaching out to Jack and enveloping him, protecting him from the flames.
He carried her to his bed, set her down and covered her with a blanket.
Miriam felt peace mixing with the exhaustion. Sleep stole over her, and she let it take her, feeling Jack’s arms wrap around her and pull her close.
Chapter 21: Ending
She woke fully clothed, the sun streaming in, peeking above the window sill to limn everything in the room with a soft yellow glow. The light fell across Jack, who lay on his back, an arm flung across his face, his mouth slack. She smiled as she looked at him, admiring the planes of his face, the stubble on his face, and his oft-broken nose.
A memory thrust itself i
nto her mind, brief and sharp, an image of Ben above her, madness in his eyes, his knife cutting away her dress. She remembered the fear and helplessness, all too well. Then she remembered Jack, showing up in the nick of time, fearless in the face of Ben’s violent rage. He’d faced Ben down without flinching, without hesitation. He’d kept his vow, too. To the letter.
“Ben will kill me before he ever hurts you again,” Jack had said, and in that parking garage, Jack would have died, shot twice in the chest. He’d come for her, and he’d saved her. She’d always felt safe with him, but it had been an emotional thing, a feeling of security that she got from being in his presence. But now, having seen him literally risk his life to protect her…that changed things. She knew she was safe with him, and that was a new feeling. Miriam snuggled close to him, and he automatically wrapped his arm around her, which struck her as funny, somehow. He held her close, even in his sleep.
She’d never felt safe before, not really. There’d always been the threat of danger, of someone out there being able to hurt her. But Jack…she trusted him, which was also a new feeling for her. So many new feelings, she didn’t know what to do with them all. She searched herself, and found her walls completely gone, at least in terms of Jack.
They’d never be truly gone, not completely but Miriam discovered that at some point she’d let Jack in to the innermost places of her soul, and she wasn’t afraid of his presence there. He would protect her, and love her. That was the feather that tipped the scales. She felt a butterfly in her stomach, the whisper of wings inside her, the breath of desire stirring within her. She’d resisted him for so long, it seemed. In terms of actual time, it was only a matter of weeks, but to her, with all that had occurred, it felt like a lifetime.
He was still sleeping, but he was stirring a little, waking up. He cracked an eyelid, glanced at her sideways through slitted eyes, and smiled groggily. He groaned, stretching, and Miriam’s hunger for him ignited as she watched him, his powerful arms stretching and descending to pull her against him, his arms that had carried her bleeding to a hospital, his arms that had held her as she slept and had never let her go. She pressed herself against the length of his body, finally giving herself permission to have what she’d wanted since the moment she met him.
Jack was awake now, his hands exploring her body, running from her shoulders down her back to cup her backside, sliding up her side along the soft curve of her hip, along her arm to her elbow and fingers; his lips were brushing her cheek, featherlight, then her forehead, then her chin, then the corner of her mouth and her neck and just above her breasts. She wanted to feel his lips on her breasts, his hands between her thighs. The fluttering of desire in her belly was quickening, no longer the gentle beat of sparrow wings but a wild winging and soaring of something more powerful, a predator hungry for him, this man that had somehow become so important to her.
She kissed Jack’s jaw, his neck, his cheekbone, and last his lips, touching his teeth with her tongue, pushing up his shirt and pressing her palms against his soft skin and hard muscles. Jack responded with fervor, ripping his shirt off and tugging at hers, lifting it over her head, unclasping her bra and slipped the straps off her shoulders, brushing her breasts with eager hands. Her nipples hardened, and she arched her back to press her breast into his hands. Jack was kissing her with desperate desire, leaving her breathless.
Miriam lay back, watching Jack with glittering eyes as he unbuttoned her pants and rolled them off, ran his lips down her body, kissed her ribs, her belly, her hips, looping his fingers through the band of her panties and pulling them off. She was bare against him then, the heat of his skin igniting sparks in her soul and fire in her belly, making her delirious with hunger for all of him. Miriam guided his fingers to slip inside her, breathing in quick panting breaths as he stirred the fires even hotter with his touch. She reached down and unbuttoned his pants, slipped them off and tossed them aside, kissing him all the way down as she went. She wrapped her fingers around his hard silken length; Jack gasped at her touch, pulled her up and crushed his lips against hers with an intensity of passion that stole her breath. Miriam writhed her body against his, reveling in the delirium of being at last naked against him.
Jack’s hands were all over her, cupping her breasts, and tracing the knobs of her spine, the curves of her ass. She pressed her hips against his, felt him hard and throbbing against her. Miriam needed to feel him inside her, pressed her face against the flesh of his shoulder; she lifted up and pressed herself down onto him, slid his length deep inside her, slowly, so slowly, savoring the hardness of him inside her, gasping against his panting mouth, scraping her nails against his shoulders. Jack moved his hips in slowly at first. Miriam had waited so long for him, needed him, wanted him, and now she had him and couldn’t get enough. She matched his rhythm, then rocked her hips to push him deeper, pulled him against her, needing more of him, all of him. Her own desperation surprised her, feeling a driving hunger, a crazed passion awoken within her that she hadn’t known was there.
Jack whispered her name, a breath in the stillness. She loved the way he said it, as if the taste of it was sweet in his mouth, pronouncing each syllable with a clarity of affection that bound her heart a little closer to his.
They were moving together now, synced in a rhythm of passion, breath coming in quick gasps, kissing gently with trembling mouths, his hands in her hair and on her hips, pulling her against him harder and harder as their passion rose to a climax. She felt the magic within her exploding and roiling around them, rushing through them both, enveloping them, consuming them. She felt her skin heating up, burning, becoming fire; runnels of flame licked out from her skin and ran up Jack’s arms and down his chest and across his legs and back to her, and then more tongues of fire arced from Miriam to Jack until they were both torches of living fire. Jack seemed unafraid. He rolled over, holding her against him, and then she was beneath him. He didn’t put his weight on her, but held himself aloft, pulled back and pushed himself back in, eliciting a gasp from her. She felt secure there with Jack above her, not hemmed in, not trapped, but held tight and close exactly where she wanted to be.
Miriam wrapped her legs around his back, pulled him down and writhed her hips up against his to press him deeper, clutched him with shaking hands, bit his shoulder, rocked with him, moaning and gasping his name. They were both afire but unconsumed, and the flames didn’t spread, stayed contained to them; as they neared orgasm together, the fire that was the combined entity of Jack and Miriam roared hotter and higher with every motion, billowed stronger with every wave of ecstasy washing through them.
They exploded together, and time stopped.
In that moment Miriam felt a portion of her soul reach out and span the molecules between them, tracing along the path of magic binding her to Jack, felt that bit of her heart, that fragment of her identity collide with Jack, delve into him, into the secret core of him. Miriam, eyes closed and mind merging with her magic, watched the detached part of herself glowing like an ember, like a star, as it neared the sun of Jack’s soul and combined with him, their merged brilliance going nova, brightening in exponential increments until Miriam had to retreat back into her physical self.
When she opened her eyes, she and Jack were laying on her bed twined together, sweat mingling, breath still coming in long gasps; her fire was still wrapped around Jack like snakes, flitting and flicking, jumping and tangling together.
“This is so cool,” Jack said, watching the fire play on his arm. His voice was strangely loud, deafening, ringing in her ears and in her mind. Miriam found that odd, the way she could hear his words in her mind.
She decided to try something, as foolish as she felt thinking about it. She spoke Jack’s name, not out loud with her physical voice, but in her head. Jack? Do you hear me? She focused the thought at Jack, who seemed startled, confused.
“What the hell was that?” He said, out loud, making Miriam cringe again.
“Try it,” Miriam said. Jack see
med to feel the same strange, painful volume and confusing echo of mental and physical words. Try it, Miriam said, mentally. Think the words at me.
Jack seemed skeptical, but he tried it anyway, frowning as he focused on her. Miriam? Can you hear me now?
Jack was grinning as if he’d told a joke, and Miriam seemed to remember seeing a commercial for cellphones with that tagline. She rolled her eyes at him. What is this? How is this happening? Jack asked.
I don’t know, Miriam said. I think it’s the connection between us, the way the magic reaches out for you and protects you from the fire. When we made love, I felt–I actually watched a part of myself become part of you.
Jack nodded. I think I felt that too. Like a second orgasm, but inside both of us…or not inside both of us, but between us? Jack shook his head, not satisfied with that explanation. That’s not right either. It was…we were one entity, for a moment. I don’t know, I can’t explain it any better than that.
Miriam ran her toes up and down his leg, rubbed his chest with her hands, loving the feel of his muscles, the comfort of his presence, the desire for him now as much a presence just beneath her skin as the magic was.
I don’t think the explanation matters, she said, as long as we both understand it. I think what it means is that we belong together. She twisted her head to look into Jack’s eyes, watching for his response.
That’s because we do, he said, tangling his fingers in her hair.
They were silent for a while, drowsing in the quiet and the stillness of the morning.
Why didn’t I make your wishes come true? Always with–Miriam cut herself off, not willing to even speak the name in this sacred place–always before, the magic granted the wish at climax. But just now, with you, the magic didn’t make your wish come true. I felt the magic reach for you, I saw it wrapping all around you, so it should have granted your wishes…
Jack smiled, kissed her gently, and said, You did make my wish come true: my heart’s desire is for YOU. My only wish has always been for you, just you. The magic can’t give me something I already have.
Jack and Djinn Page 21