by DB Reynolds
“It was necessary that I understand magic,” he said quietly. “How else could I serve and defend the Dark Witch?”
Grace was appalled, but she refused to compound his embarrassment by letting it show. It was bad enough that he’d had a total bitch for a mother. She rested one hand on his chest, her fingers automatically stroking the firm muscles beneath the soft T-shirt. Goodness, he was warm. She wondered idly if his body heat was a function of all of that magic he had stored up. Then she thought about everything he’d just said, and everything she already knew.
“But you left her.”
He drew a deep, long breath. “I did. The Dark Witch was powerful, but Nico was much more than that. He wasn’t just powerful, he was a power. He was battling the greatest evil the world had known, and he needed the greatest warriors to help him. He cast a spell into the four corners of the earth, seeking.”
“And he found you.” For some reason, she was very pleased about that, as if she’d had a personal stake in Nico’s recognition of Kato’s worth.
He settled his hand more firmly on her hip, his long, strong fingers stretching down to touch the very top of her ass cheek. “He found me,” he confirmed. “I left that same day, though the journey itself took more than a year. The world was a different place, then.” He paused, then said, “Actually, I think my reality was probably a different dimension than this one. The same world, the same planet, but parallel. Everything here is similar, and yet it deviates from what I knew. I don’t mean surface changes, like the buildings or technology. It’s the land masses . . .” He gestured at the antique globe sitting on her mother’s bookshelf. “I look at that, and I don’t recognize anything.”
She patted his chest in a gesture meant to soothe. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “This must be so awful for you.”
He shrugged, powerful shoulders moving up and down. “It is . . . disorienting. But I much prefer it to the alternative.”
That made her smile. “There is that,” she agreed. “Will you eat something?”
He straightened slightly, his head turning to where she’d set the tray down, as if seeing it for the first time. “I am hungry, but not in here. Sit with me on your balcony, and we’ll watch the ocean together.”
Grace figured as romantic offers went, it didn’t get much better than that. Even if he hadn’t meant it that way. Never mind the hand he’d casually draped over her ass. She wasn’t sure he was even aware of what he was doing.
Almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, he straightened in his chair and put some distance between their bodies, his hand sliding away from her hip. She frowned. Not at the loss of his hand, which was sad, but at the idea that he could read her mind. He couldn’t do that, could he? She focused hard and aimed an ordinary question at him. I hope you like beer. And then she waited. When there was no response, she tried again. Can I get you something to drink? Something stronger than water? Nothing.
Okay, so he probably couldn’t read thoughts—or at least her thoughts—which was a relief. Not wanting to embarrass herself by clinging to his manly body, she braced herself on the desk and stood, freeing him to do the same.
KATO GUIDED GRACE to her feet, his hands loose on her hips and arms, feeling the loss of her warmth when she stood, which made little sense. His body burned far hotter than hers. Her minimal heat should have been barely detectable.
“It’ll be cold outside,” she was saying. “You go ahead and carry the tray out to the deck, and I’ll grab one of my brother’s jackets for you. Your shoulders are bigger, but his winter jackets are baggy, so they should fit well enough.”
“I don’t require—”
“I know, but humor me, okay? It’ll make me cold to see you sitting there in your T-shirt and jeans.”
He smiled. She might remind him of the Dark Witch in some ways, but in others, she couldn’t be more different. His mother had never cared if he was cold. The thought of fetching him a jacket wasn’t even in her realm of existence.
But Grace was also unlike the other women he’d known in his previous life. The women of his time had wanted him in their beds, but too often he’d detected an undercurrent of fear in the way they related to him. It had always made him wonder if the fear was what they found attractive. Bedding the beast. Or if it wasn’t fear, maybe it was avarice. Fucking him to gain favor with the Dark Witch. Which was far worse.
Grace wasn’t afraid of him. He’d told her the worst truths of his life, and she’d asked if he wanted food. She’d stroked his chest, soothing him, when she’d been the one who’d needed comforting after the way he’d reacted to her touch. It had been her fault for interrupting his work with the scrolls, but it was even more his for not warning her.
He couldn’t complain at the outcome, however. She’d been soft and womanly, all sweet curves and warm swells of flesh. His cock had hardened instantly. It was still hard, but he couldn’t be judged for that. It had been a couple of thousand years since he’d sheathed himself in the delicious heat of a woman’s body.
He stood abruptly. Thoughts of Grace’s slick heat around his cock weren’t exactly helping him get the erection under control. He waited until she’d hustled off to find him a jacket he didn’t need, and then picked up the tray and carried it out to the balcony. No, not the “balcony.” Grace had called it a “deck.” A curious word for a structure attached to a house on dry land, but language was eminently flexible. He’d learned that lesson during the long journey from his farmland village to the far rougher lands of Nico’s empire.
Setting the loaded tray onto the round table, he pulled out two chairs, and had just used a miniscule amount of his power to light the several candles there, when Grace’s gasp of indrawn breath had him spinning around and searching the beach below for danger. Finding nothing amiss, he slid his attention back to Grace, who was staring at the cluster of burning candles.
“Are they not to be used?” he asked, confused because the candles had clearly been lit before.
“How did you do that?” she whispered.
He looked from her to the table and back again. “What?”
“The candles.”
He turned and studied the six, fat pillars of wax, but still had no idea what was wrong.
“You lit them without matches!” Her voice was squeaky, as if she had to squeeze out the words from a throat gone tight with . . . Oh.
“I used magic,” he explained, seeing the understanding in her eyes. This was what had upset her, although, she seemed more excited than afraid.
She rushed closer to the table, all but knocking him aside in her urgency. Not that she could actually knock him anywhere, given their difference in size.
“Magic,” she breathed, then held her hand over the open flames, as if testing their warmth.
“The fire is real,” he cautioned.
She laughed delightedly, her hand getting closer to the flames until she had to snatch it back. “How do you do that? You said I have magic. Can I do that, too? Will you teach me?”
Kato grinned, stretching facial muscles long unused. He reached for her hand, ostensibly to check the skin for burns, but mostly to keep her from shoving her hand into the flame again. And because he liked touching her.
“It’s a child’s trick,” he said, chuckling.
“Assuming the child has magic,” she clarified.
He nodded. “I’ll teach you, but not tonight.”
She sobered abruptly. “Right. More important stuff to do.” She reclaimed her hand and began unloading the tray. “Sit,” she commanded him. “Do you like beer? You should taste it. It’s probably different than yours. But I brought water, too, just in case. Have you figured out anything about the scrolls yet?”
Kato raised his eyebrows at her rapid shifts of topic, but he was beginning to understand Grace. Or if not to understand her, then at least to anticipate her reactions. She had an extremely facile mind that was capable of running several ideas at once, and jumping between them at will. Some migh
t have mistaken it for flightiness, but he wasn’t one of those. He’d been raised in a strongly maternal society, and his first instinct when it came to women was to take them very seriously.
She picked up an empty plate, piled it with meats and cheeses, and placed it in front of him, as he sat down. Then she shoved a basket of rolls his way and pointed to several jars, saying, “Mustard, mayo, ketchup, creamed horseradish, if you want it.”
He didn’t understand all of the words. But, as with breakfast, the food was recognizable, while of a better quality than he was accustomed to. These rolls were of a stronger grain than the ones at breakfast, and more to his liking. And he was definitely hungry. They hadn’t eaten since this morning, and his body was trying to make up for the thousands of years that he’d had no sustenance at all. He hadn’t needed it, but now that he was free, his body felt the lack.
Grace’s “beer” turned out to be this society’s version of ale, but after one taste of the weak brew, he opted for the water instead. It was icy cold, and as clear and fresh as the sweetest spring water back home. Home. If it even existed anymore, it was no longer his home. He doubted that even Nico’s sorcery could magic him back to the world of his birth, assuming he’d ever want to return. His brothers were no longer there, and neither was Nico. Kato was convinced of this, though he couldn’t have said how or why. On the other hand, he didn’t know where they were now, and that was his main concern.
He glanced up to find Grace watching him, and realized unexpectedly that Nico and the others weren’t his main concern, after all. His first priority had to be ensuring Grace’s safety, and that meant he had to track down and destroy the demons she’d unleashed upon her world through the two remaining scrolls. Unwittingly to be sure, but now that he’d had a chance to study the original documents, and to compare them to her copies, there was no question of what she’d done. To make it even more complicated, with both of the remaining scrolls, she’d made errors that would have seemed minor to the untrained eye. But, in both cases, she’d altered the original curse in such a way as to make it much more difficult to banish or kill the summoned demons. And he had absolutely no doubt that both remaining demons had already manifested and now walked free on this amazingly unsuspecting and unprepared world.
“Will you talk to me now?”
Kato met Grace’s gaze with pretended surprise. “Have we not been talking?”
She scrunched her face up in irritation. “Smart ass. I mean, will you tell me what you discovered about the scrolls.”
He smiled. He’d known what she meant. “All right, but not here under the stars and moon where anything could be listening.”
Grace twisted in her chair, searching all around as if she could find their listeners by looking. She turned back, leaned toward him, and whispered, “Did you see someone?”
He shook his head. “The ones I worry about aren’t lurking on your beaches. They’re far from here, listening idly to the ethereal winds, hoping for some tidbit of information or a stray wisp of power that they can steal. You must always be cautious, Grace.”
“You know, you keep saying stuff like that, and you tell me I have magic. But you won’t even teach me how to light a fucking candle.”
She had a point. “Very well.” He stood abruptly. “Come inside, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.”
He scowled briefly as Grace began clearing the table, piling the dishes and leftover food onto the tray, until it hit him that there were no servants in this house. No one to follow silently after him, cleaning and freshening, so that he could concentrate on winning Nico’s wars.
He brushed her aside when she would have lifted the tray. “Get the door,” he said, lifting his chin in that direction. She gave him a brilliant smile that seemed out of proportion with the help he’d offered. The tray wasn’t heavy, and there was no danger for him to protect her against. But he wasn’t going to refuse any of her smiles.
Once she’d emptied the tray—putting the leftover food in the refrigerator and the dishes in a device under the counter, which, she informed him, would wash and dry them—she grabbed two fresh bottles of water and gestured in the direction of her mother’s study, where he’d been working earlier.
“After you, master,” she said grandly, but he scowled.
“I am no one’s master, Grace.”
She clicked her tongue impatiently. “I know that. It’s just a turn of phrase. It means, lead the way, let’s go. Stuff like that.”
Kato shook his head, wondering if he’d ever fully adapt to this world. But close on that thought was another. He’d have to, wouldn’t he? It was either that or lie down and die. And that was something he would never do.
GRACE WAS EXCITED. Kato was finally going to teach her something about magic, the kind he claimed she possessed. Well, okay, so he hadn’t said he was going to do that specifically, but even if all he did was lecture her about magic in general and how it worked, it would be more than she knew now.
Her excitement sparked higher when she followed him into her mom’s study and caught her first good look at the pages he’d been working on when she’d interrupted him earlier. The original scrolls were there—and, boy, was she going to be in trouble when it got out that she’d stolen them from the museum. That wasn’t what she’d done exactly, but it sure as hell was how the museum would see it.
But that was a problem for another day. Right now, she eyed the documents with avid curiosity. Kato spread the originals out first. A bold, black symbol had been added to each page, covering the text, but in a way that it slid between the original characters without actually touching any of them. The symbol was fairly elaborate and looked as if it had been written with a calligraphy pen.
She frowned and pointed at the symbol. “How’d you do that?”
Kato gave her a puzzled look, except it was more of a “what the hell kind of question is that?” look, than a puzzled one. As if she’d asked a stupid question, but he was too polite to say so.
“The pen,” she clarified as she searched the desk. “Ah ha!” She slid what she thought was a calligraphy pen out from under some papers he’d shoved aside, but could only stare at it. It wasn’t a pen at all. It was a decorative letter opener that she didn’t think her mom had ever used, one of those things that sits on your desk and looks quaint and pretty. But now, the wedge shaped tip was black with drying ink.
“How the hell did you make that,” she pointed at the graceful symbol, “with this. And where’d you get the ink?”
He slid her a sideways glance, then reached down and picked up the small trashcan, which had a pile of deconstructed roller ball pen refills in the bottom of it. He’d cracked open the plastic tubes and combined the bits of ink until he had enough for what he wanted. Lucky for him, roller balls were her mom’s favorite pen, which meant she’d had a couple of boxes in her desk. It also meant he’d been snooping in her mom’s desk drawers, but somehow she doubted he’d be too concerned about the privacy of desk supplies.
Actually, if her mom saw what he’d managed to draw with her letter opener and repurposed ink, she’d be so thrilled that she’d probably turn the discarded pens into a shadow box for her office wall.
“Nice artistic touch,” she said, letting all of her sincere appreciation show.
“It’s not art,” he said, dropping the trashcan back to the floor. “It’s a nullifying glyph. It can’t call back whatever you’ve already summoned, but it douses any magic that remains in the spell.”
“What if someone whited out the glyph? Covered it with white paint,” she explained, at his puzzled look. “What if the glyph was painted over?”
“That would have no effect at all. The glyph would still be there, whether we could see it or not.”
Grace nodded. “Interesting. What else?” She glanced over and saw a smile flirting around his lips. “What?”
“You ask ‘what else’ as if I can teach you the entire theory of magic in a few minutes.”
“No,
I—”
“It’s refreshing.”
Oh. Well, then. Her protest died unspoken.
“In my time, magic was treated as if it was unholy, the work of demons themselves, rather than the means to defeat them. Those of us who were born with the power to control such forces were revered as a necessary evil, and too often viewed with fear and hatred.”
“What about your friend Nico?”
A smile did lift his lips then, full of fond remembrance, and she suddenly realized that the loss of his friends must be an ever-present ache. She vowed, in that moment, to help him find his people. They had to be somewhere in this world. It was just a matter of digging out the right piece of information. And she was damn good at that. She had connections all over the world through her research and her work in the museum. But she also had an “in” with private collections through her parents and their friends, many of whom were major patrons of the art world. And if that failed, she could always start Googling.
“Nico was far more than an acolyte of magic,” Kato was saying. “He was the most powerful sorcerer ever seen in this world or any other. He could have been a tyrant, like so many of his enemies, but he was a good man, which made some people hate him. His own people, however, those he conquered and liberated, they loved him.”
She reached out and rested her hand on the bare skin of Kato’s forearm. “We’ll find him,” she promised. “When this is all over, we’ll find your Nico, and the others, too.”
He nodded solemnly. “I’ll never stop searching.” He drew a deep breath and let it out. “But first, we must deal with these.” He slid the originals back into the folder, and pulled out the copies, which bore the same nullifying glyphs as the originals. “Your first lesson in magic,” he said, “is that everything matters. When the power of magic lies within you, you must be constantly aware.”
“You mean like when I’m walking down the street, or ordering a coffee?”
“This,” he tapped the pages, “is not walking down the street. This was a deliberate act of magic.” He cut off her protest, saying, “What I mean is . . . but let me show you, instead.” He picked up one copied page, then set aside the others, before opening the folder and pulling out the corresponding original.