Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  Ana’s voice croaked. “I am so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Aderyn’s voice was cold and emotionless; broken. “It’s not like you’re wrong.” Then, with a sigh that Ana didn’t think she was supposed to hear, he added, “And it wasn’t you saying it, was it?”

  Lash looked over at her.

  Ana’s cheeks went hot with a combination of blush and tears. “No,” she confessed.

  The car was silent after that, save for the dark thoughts in Ana’s head.

  “So there may actually be more information somewhere about all of this?” Ana asked after the mage had finished a stream of chaotic chatter about “maybe”-this and “possibly”-that.

  “It certainly seems that way,” he answered.

  Lash thought that the mage’s tone sounded a bit apprehensive, and he wondered if maybe, since he had been banished from this awful non-world that his equally awful people called a home, he was hoping Ana would never be free of her curse out of spite.

  Cost you your home; cost her her life, is that it? he thought to himself, wondering once again what the likelihood of getting out of there alive would be if he simply sank his Bowie into the back of the mage’s neck.

  Then again, he had gone to great lengths discussing a “maybe,” “possibly” existing solution.

  What was this mage’s game?

  Then Lash wondered if there was a chance that this Aderyn fellow might actually have feelings for Ana.

  The urge to kill him rose once more.

  Around nonsensical thoughts of ownership that he had no claim to and traditions that, considering their situation, were pretty much irrelevant—who cared if a sibyl and a mage eloped if they were both banished from their respective people?—Lash found himself struggling to maintain a mindset of “for my people.” Because he wasn’t even certain if they were his people anymore. He doubted that he’d be welcomed back, but that was hardly a concern in the long run. Because Ana wasn’t welcome.

  But why should that…?

  He couldn’t even finish the question in his head.

  It had taken the old mage and Aderyn alike—what?—a glance to figure out what the bracelet around his wrist was made of. And with an observation like that there were bound to be any number of theories as to why. That old man had been all about why, hadn’t he?

  So why should it matter to Lash and his continued life with their people if Ana could never return?

  He couldn’t imagine going back to them without her.

  He wouldn’t.

  So, welcomed or not—banished or not—it didn’t matter what his standing with his own people was. Until Ana was rid of that curse and allowed to return, he would have no reason to.

  But that meant he had to admit things to himself that made his heart hurt and his body tremble.

  Why?

  Because he saw none of what he felt shown back to him in Ana’s eyes when she looked upon him. Because she likely felt none of what he was certain showed from him whenever he stood beside her. Because, despite every fantasy he recited to himself, reality seemed to move in a different direction.

  And because now there was Aderyn, who’d come into her life in the form of a possible blessing and, no matter how much reality seemed to deny him the title of “savior,” she hadn’t stopped looking at him in that way. It was the way in which he thought he looked at her. It was the way in which he’d caught Aderyn looking at her, as well, though the arrogant mage seemed oblivious to this.

  And, the more he thought on all of this, the more Lash found himself wanting an end to the silence and all the awkward thoughts that came with it. More and more Lash found himself eager to return to the chaotic chatter.

  “So why do you think your people chose to put out a book of lies?”

  Like a prayer answered by the deepest pits of Hell, Lash was given his chaotic chatter. But, while it had been Ana who’d chattered up the new chaos, it didn’t feel like Ana; not his Ana, anyway.

  Or, rather, not the Ana he’d known most of his life.

  That was what he’d meant, wasn’t it?

  Lash was startled by Ana’s words, but Aderyn…

  Aderyn seemed mortified.

  While Lash tried to decide whether or not he appreciated the words for what they’d done to the mage when weighed against the fact that it wasn’t the sort of thing Ana would ever say, the mage answered.

  “You said it yourself,” Aderyn said, steering the car onto a street that, had Lash not been watching to know they’d turned, he’d still have every reason to believe was the same street they’d been on. Same as the street before that. And the street before that.

  God, I hate this place, he thought.

  “Even though mages claim to be ready for any possibility,” Aderyn chattered on, and Lash found himself thankful for it, “they apparently like to blind themselves to the possibilities that they’d have no control over.”

  Anna trembled beside Lash, and he wondered for a moment if she was about to be sick. “I am so sorry,” she whimpered.

  “Don’t be,” Aderyn muttered. “It’s not like you’re wrong.” Then, as though to reaffirm himself as the blessing in Ana’s eyes, he said, “And it wasn’t you saying it, was it?”

  Concern welling within him, Lash turned his head toward her.

  “No,” she said, and Lash saw, in the limited light that came through the windows in the back of Aderyn’s car, that she had started crying.

  The car was silent after that, and Lash found himself craving the chaos of the chatter over the awkwardness of his thoughts.

  “So there may actually be more information somewhere about all of this?” she asked from his back seat.

  Something in the almaealij alkabir’s final words to him had gotten Aderyn to thinking. Granted, Aderyn was always thinking, but with everything that had transpired in the past few hours—By Merlin’s tangled beard, has it only been so long?—there was a great deal of new thoughts that needed to be had.

  And, with them, a few new things that needed to be said.

  Though he wasn’t ready to confess his theories about the ring he’d thrown out or the possibility that the inversion spell he’d removed from it might have been a possible solution all along—no point in upsetting Ana and getting the infatuated sibyl boy worked up about that now, right?—he was at least willing to think aloud about the possibility of maybe—and he worked very hard to stress that part, maybe—finding something pertaining to Ana’s situation.

  Whether or not she caught on to the unlikeliness of it all—Maybe! Maybe! Maybe! Aderyn kept thinking to himself—Ana seemed motivated by the news.

  But who was he to dash any positive thoughts she might be having?

  No reason they both needed to be miserable, right?

  “It certainly seems that way,” Aderyn said, trying to sound upbeat for her sake.

  He wasn’t confident that it worked.

  Though he hadn’t known Ana long, he felt a bizarre kinship with her. Bizarre, but not unpleasant. He wanted to help her, even from the very beginning, despite what he knew would be expected of him from his people. He’d seen in her a number of things that challenged and excited him—a new puzzle to solve, a new audience to show off to, a new rule to break; the list went on and on—and, as he always did, he acted with his heart first. It had never gotten him into this much trouble.

  Granted, he wasn’t dead.

  This much he was thankful for.

  He thought on that and fought the wave of inner conflict that came with it. He was lying to himself. He was, though he hated to admit it to even himself, thankful for... well, more than he was prepared to itemize. He hadn’t felt right with the other mages. He hadn’t felt kinship to them. He hadn’t been social or compelled to help others reach their full potential, though, by their very nature, that was how mages grew stronger.

  The weight of banishment still pulled him into a deep depression, but he wasn’t upset that he wouldn’t be welcome back. In many ways, this was the
freedom he’d always craved.

  And, of course, he wasn’t dead.

  All, in a very strange and very convoluted sense, thanks to Ana.

  Merely another aspect of her that challenged and excited him, he supposed.

  Lash, though he seemed to deny this as much to himself as he did to everybody else, had followed Ana into exile because he loved her. Ana certainly didn’t seem to see it, which spoke a great deal either to her naivety or Lash’s abilities as a liar, but it was obvious. Especially to mages, who could see Ana’s energy around the hair bracelet he wore.

  Lash could hide behind any number of excuses, tell the story that she’d been acting strangely and he’d only meant to bring her back, but again and again, his hand sought her hair at his wrist.

  Aderyn didn’t need to be a psychic to know that that wasn’t the hair he wanted to be touching.

  Whether she was worth banishment from their Sybii camp, however, and whether those feelings would be returned…and whether Aderyn would have something to say about it—

  “So why do you think your people chose to put out a book of lies?”

  The words that Ana spoke from the backseat hit Aderyn with more force than the spell she’d used against him upon their first formal meeting.

  The breath was gone from his lungs, the beat stolen from his heart, and the moisture robbed from his mouth. Every bit of hurt he’d been hiding from himself so he could drive himself and the Sybii out of the mages’ pocket city—laid bare in a single sentence.

  It took everything he had in him at that moment not to kill her.

  Or cry.

  But, somewhere deep inside of him, he knew that he could allow himself to do neither. The former because…well, he wasn’t ready to even think of that yet. But the latter because he needed to be strong. Not for Ana. Certainly not for Lash. Aderyn needed to be strong because, if he wasn’t, then he’d never have the focus to open the pocket and get them out of there.

  If he wasn’t strong, they’d all be found and killed.

  That’s all there was to it.

  “You said it yourself,” Aderyn said once he was sure he could speak without losing control of himself. He forced himself to take the turn that came up slowly and carefully so he wouldn’t suddenly change his mind and steer them into a building. “Even though mages claim to be ready for any possibility, they apparently like to blind themselves to the possibilities that they’d have no control over.”

  “I am so sorry,” Ana said, voice breaking around the apology.

  And Aderyn believed, as much as he’d believed in her since the beginning, that she was sincere. Though it had hurt him to hear, the words had hurt her that much more to say.

  And that told him a great deal.

  “Don’t be,” Aderyn once again tried, and failed, to sound upbeat for her sake. “It’s not like you’re wrong.” Then, swallowing a sob that threatened to take his control away from him, he added, “And it wasn’t you saying it, was it?”

  Ana took a long moment to answer, but finally said, “No.”

  The car was silent after that.

  Aderyn couldn’t have been more thankful for that fact.

  None of the three, wrapped up as they were in their own personal conflicts, noticed the car—headlights switched off and brake lights disabled—as it stalked after them like a jet-black shark through inky waters.

  The pocket city of the mages seemed to spit out the car that carried them.

  One moment they’d been traveling down a stretch of road that, as far as Ana could tell, was no different than any other—there didn’t even seem to be any street signs. Then, in an instant, the car was thrown into the world.

  The night-bathed desert and the stretch of road cutting through it came into view, skewing and tilting and making her wonder if they might land upside-down.

  The front passenger-side of Aderyn’s car took the bulk of the impact. The headlight burst, casting the road ahead of them into partial darkness, and the horrible, familiar shocks that Ana knew all too well screamed as the car righted itself on all four tires as though it were a cinderblock.

  wha-BLAM!

  She whimpered.

  Lash grunted and muttered.

  Aderyn cursed. A lot.

  Believe me, I’m glad to be out of there, as well, Ana thought, feeling a sense of rejection as the car violently slammed at an angle into the street.

  Should have let us burn the entire place into nothingness, the thoughts offered. Not like that place exists, anyway.

  Whether or not it exists, Ana argued, there were people—real people—living there.

  If a person dies in a city that doesn’t exist, does their death truly exist?

  Ana hated philosophy.

  And she hated those thoughts.

  The sooner they were gone from her life the better.

  “Goddamn,” he finished his stream of blush-inducing vocabulary before yanking his hands from the steering wheel long enough to make his recently learned gesture. With a slight lurch and a metallic pop, the damage reversed itself—the headlight mending and coming back to life, balancing out the one-sided illumination—and the car started to ride a little smoother. “Not cool. Very, very not cool.”

  “You botch the spell?” Lash asked, sounding like he was one breath away from laughing at the mage.

  Aderyn rolled his shoulder, and, though she thought he was shrugging at first, Ana realized that he was in pain. “I don’t botch spells,” he said in a flat, serious tone. “The pocket knew that I was no longer welcome within it.”

  “It knew?” Ana repeated, fighting the impulse to reach past his seat and rub his shoulder.

  Aderyn nodded, and she thought she saw him flinch at the simple gesture. “Yup. Magic is an extension of the person—or persons—that cast it. It carries”—he seemed unsure of that word, but went on with it anyway—“a bit of that consciousness with it.”

  “So whoever created that pocket city knows about you? About us?” Lash asked, leaning forward in his seat beside Ana.

  Aderyn shook his head with much the same effect as the nod.

  Ana was beginning to get nervous.

  “First of all, the almaealij alkabir was the one that created it, so it wouldn’t matter. Obviously he already knew. Secondly, the consciousnesses of spells aren’t linked back to the ones that cast them. Not unless that’s what the spell is meant to do, like a surveillance spell or a something like that. It’s a different sort of consciousness than our own; they only know and think based on the nature of their purpose. The pocket spell for the city no longer recognized me as being welcome there, and it’s not like you two were ever really supposed to be there—I’m sure it wasn’t thrilled that it was fooled by Ana in the first place. So, eager as it was to be rid of us…” he moved to raise his arm to finish his statement, but groaned and slouched as his shoulder sagged under its own weight.

  The car swerved as he reflexively moved to grab his pained shoulder with his opposite arm.

  “Son of a…” Lash dove between the divide and, grabbing the wheel, yanked it back to right the car before they rolled off the road. “What’s the matter with you, mage? You trying to kill us?”

  “He’s hurt,” Ana defended, reaching around the seat to cup Aderyn’s shoulder.

  Her hand met his own there and a strange spark seemed to pass between them.

  “Well,” Lash argued, struggling to keep the car going straight from his awkward angle, “we’re all about to be dead if he doesn’t start steering or at least stop this thing.”

  “Legs…locked,” Aderyn groaned, his voice muffled and hissed.

  It was a moment before Ana realized that he could barely move his mouth. His words were being forced through a clenched jaw.

  “Can we let it take us into the sands?” Ana asked. “I mean, it’ll be bumpy, but would we—”

  Aderyn grunted, “Too fast.”

  Lash nodded. “At this speed we’d be lucky to keep the tires under us. And t
hen there’s the risk of what all that kicked-up sand might do to the undercarriage. We could end up stranded in the desert with no transportation. C’mon, mage, don’t you have, like, a spell or something—”

  “He can barely talk, Lash,” Ana pointed out. “He can’t cast like this. You’re going to have to take control,” she called, already trying to figure out a way to get Aderyn out of the driver’s seat.

  “Are you kidding? We’re doing nearly…” his eyes widened as he caught sight of the speedometer. “Oh damn. Mage. Get off the accelerator. You’re gonna kill—”

  “Can’t…move,” Aderyn whimpered, the act of speaking seeming to hurt him, as well.

  “What in the hell?” Lash growled and shook his head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, mage,” he warned before vaulting over the divide and, planting himself in Aderyn’s lap, called back to Ana, “Move over!”

  Shifting to the other side of the backseat, Ana watched as Lash reached with his left arm between the seat while his right arm continued to work the steering wheel. The awkward dance was made even worse as he worked to simultaneously claim the pedals while trying to kick Aderyn’s legs away from them—an act that quickly proved itself as no easy feat.

  “What in the…why won’t your knees bend?” he demanded.

  “Can’t move,” Aderyn repeated.

  “Yeah, yeah. I heard that part,” Lash growled, finally finding the levers for the seat and reclining the back with a sharp push against Aderyn’s chest that hurt Ana to watch. The car swerved as both of the young men fell back and Lash lost both visibility and control. “But I didn’t realize that meant I couldn’t move you, either. Ana, Can you drag him back there with you? This is getting really weird for me.”

  “No…pic-nic here…sibyl.” Aderyn’s words were growls around his locked jaws; his eyes, the only parts of him not seeming paralyzed by whatever was happening, darted around in a panic.

  Nodding, Ana moved to grab Aderyn’s shoulders and pull him into the backseat. True to Lash’s words, though, his body didn’t seem to want to move like a human body should. It was like trying to drag a piece of furniture—arms and legs locked and held firm in the position they’d been in—across the limited space.