Harlequin Dreams_A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy

by Tansey Morgan

  “This is really tense,” I said.

  “Open it,” Logan said, “That’s what we’re waiting for.”

  “You realize, when I open this, I’m going to fixate a little… right? I’m like that.”

  “I think we’ve all learned that about you,” Damon said, “What I want to know is why you’re still hesitating.”

  “Because… this feels like pandora’s box. Once I open it, there’s no telling what’s going to come out.”

  “It’s a case file,” Eli said, “There’s gonna be some words in there, not demons.”

  I took a deep breath and pulled the case file open. There were a number of pages in there, each had the picture of a person clipped to it. Two women, one man. Already my heart was starting to pound, and I hadn’t even read a single word written on the pages. My hand shook as I flipped between pages, staring first at the picture of one of the women, then the other woman, then the man, then back to the second woman, then back to the man, as if I didn’t know who to focus on. They each had their eyes closed and looked to be asleep, but they weren’t asleep. I’d have had to be an idiot to believe that.

  “Well?” Damon asked.

  My attention snapped like a brittle twig, and I looked up at him. “Well, what?” I asked.

  “What’s in the file?”

  I handed each of the guys one of the pictures in the file, leaving me with a single page covered in typed print. Reading it line by line, concentrating on the words instead of skimming, I was able to determine that each of these people was, in fact, dead, that they were all found during the last week or so, and that the cause of death was always the same.

  Heart attack.

  “Heart attacks?” I asked myself. “They all look so young, though?”

  “That’s because they are,” Damon said, comparing his page with Eli’s and Logan’s. “These people were in their mid-twenties, they shouldn’t be having heart attacks.”

  “And if they did, three of them during the same week is pretty suspicious,” Eli said, “This the reason why the case landed at the DPA’s lap.”

  “Because it’s paranormal?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Probably. But you know what? This is your case, so how about we let you make the connections between the victims?”

  “Uh, because you’re all better than me at this?”

  “How are you supposed to learn if you don’t try?” Logan asked.

  I sighed. “Okay, fine. What are you guys gonna do, then? Watch me figure this out?”

  “And grade you,” Damon said, turning to look at the other guys. “Right? We’re going to judge her, grade her?”

  “Oh,” Eli said, catching on, “Uh, yeah, that’s what we’ve been asked to do. Y’know, assess your performance and all that.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “That’s a load of bullshit and you know it.”

  “Maybe,” Damon said, “But you should pretend like we’re telling you the truth here. Put the pressure on. You’ll work better that way; I know you will.”

  “You think you know me pretty well, huh?”

  “I don’t think; I know.”

  Damon’s words sent shivers racing along my spine. How could he know anything about me with as much certainty as he was suggesting? We’d spent time together in the past week, sure, but besides that first night when we shared a bed, we’d almost kept each other at arm’s length. I didn’t know why he hadn’t gotten much closer to me, but I knew, at least on my part, it was because he… did… something to me, something I didn’t want him to know he was doing.

  I couldn’t pin down the reason why, but with a look he could get me to… improve myself. He had done it earlier on, back at the precinct. I remembered clearly how I’d asked if it was too late to get one of them to be with me while I spoke to the chief, and Damon had just looked at me, and straight away I’d changed my tone. I would never admit it to him, but it was the fear of disappointing him that had made me toughen up on the spot.

  Damon stood, taking my attention with him. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, “You’re going to read the case notes. Twice. When you’re done, you’re going to step outside and Logan is going to show you a thing or two about what your Mage body can do, and how to defend yourself. Then Eli is going to give you a run-down on how to use your most basic of abilities. When you’re done with him, you’re going to come to me and I’m going to show you how an agent of the Department of Paranormal Affairs is supposed to behave.”

  “Jesus… is that all we’re doing today?”

  “No,” Eli said, standing, “After that, we’ll go for a drink.”

  “You were serious about that drink?”

  “Of course. We’ve gotta celebrate you getting your first case. Besides, after what we’re gonna put you through today you’ll need something to help you relax.”

  I couldn’t help it. My mind took what Eli had said and took it somewhere dirty and forbidden, and my cheeks flushed. “Alright,” I said, “One drink…”

  Déjà vu hit swiftly and suddenly, but I shook the thought away as best I could, picked my file up, and I took it to my room where I would spend the next two hours reading, and memorizing. I’d never heard of anything like what I had just read. Three people, all in their late twenties, all of relatively good health, none of them with any medical histories which would give a reason as to why they’d have suffered a heart attack out of the blue.

  The first person’s name was, Kelly Moor, she was twenty-six years old, worked as a teller at a First National branch downtown. On Tuesday morning, at seven am, her boyfriend woke up for work to find her cold and dead in bed next to him. The coroner pronounced her time of death at around three in the morning, the cause being a heart attack.

  The second person, Howard Watkins, twenty-eight years old, didn’t show up for work on Wednesday. His boss, the owner of the shoe store Howard worked at, concerned that the only employee of his never to have taken a day off sick just suddenly didn’t show up that morning, tried calling a few times before deciding to go over during lunch. When he couldn’t get an answer at the door he called the neighbor who, having her own key to the apartment, went inside only to find him dead, also in bed, also from a heart attack in the early hours of the morning. Like Kelly, he had no significant previous medical history.

  The third person to die, Michelle Bates, twenty-three, was found by her room-mate. She’d fallen asleep on the couch and just hadn’t woken up the next morning. Her roommate had started screaming so hard, it was the neighbor who had called the police and alerted them to the situation. Again, no noteworthy medical history.

  Jesus, those poor people.

  As far as the New Orleans police were concerned, these incidents were all entirely separate and totally unrelated. There were no newscasts made, nothing put into the paper except for the usual obituaries, no fuss of any kind was created. Unofficially, the case was handed to the DPA by the chief of police on Friday morning—today—as a matter of curiosity more than pressing importance; this was the kind of language used in the file.

  On the one hand, it was pretty cool that the government had a sanctioned, recognized branch of paranormal investigators with real authority. Before now, whenever I’d heard the words paranormal investigator, my mind always summoned up images of those shows you’d see on late night TV, where a “medium”, shown only from her good angle and through the lens of a camera on its night-vision setting, would claim that, yes, there was a spirit here, and yes, it was truly angry. They were always angry spirits, they would always “move” things off camera, but would never do anything on command.

  There was a knock at my door, and I was thankful for the distraction. I stepped off the bed and padded over to the door. It was Logan, he was wearing a short sleeved black top that clung to the contours of his muscles like film, a pair of black basketball shorts, and sneakers. Power, raw, animalistic power seemed to curl off him in intoxicating waves.

  His arms were huge and covered in tattoos. From
his right shoulder, an ultra-realistic great-white shark seemed to try and come up and bite my head off. Underneath the shark was another incredibly realistic cobra, then a wolf further down his arm, a raven, and then a spider. These animals and insects were all wrapped around his right arm, each of them a colorful masterpiece.

  I felt almost embarrassed that the only tattoo I had was a small butterfly, and not even a great one, on my left shoulder.

  “Oh, hi,” I said, blood flushing to my cheeks as I recalled the day he had stood stark naked in front of me. I’d seen everything that day. Everything.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “Ready for… oh, shit, already?”

  He glanced over my shoulder at the mess of papers on the bed, then examined what I was wearing. I hadn’t gotten out of the blouse and pencil skirt I’d been wearing.

  “I’ll come back in a few minutes,” he said.

  “No, it’s fine, I’ll change quickly. Come in.”

  Logan stepped through and I shut the door behind him. Then, hurrying, I grabbed my backpack which I was certain had my work out clothes in it and took it into the bathroom where, heart pounding, I started to change.

  “You learn anything useful?” Logan called out.

  “Not really,” I said, tugging off my pencil skirt. The door was ajar, and I could see one of Logan’s arms through the gap. I wondered if that meant he could see me too, but I was too concerned with getting changed in a hurry to close the door further. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

  “You’re probably gonna say that every single day of your life from now on, so get used to it.”

  “I don’t know if I ever will. Everything’s just so surreal.”

  “And it’s about to get weirder, believe me. It didn’t take me long to adapt, but I never got used to any of it. Every day is a new challenge.”

  “Even for you?”

  “Anyone who says being a Mage is easy is doing it wrong or lying.”

  I was out of my skirt and blouse now and standing there wearing only a black bra and matching panties, searching through my backpack, when my blood turned cold; my workout gear wasn’t in that bag. I double and then triple checked, but it was nowhere to be seen. I had only packed one other backpack when I went to my apartment, and it was laying on the floor next to Logan’s feet.

  “Uh, Logan?” I asked, almost hesitating.

  I saw his posture shift from where I was standing, as if ready to react to a threat. “Yeah?”

  “I need a little help.”

  “With what?”

  I couldn’t believe I was about to ask him for help, but I didn’t have a choice. “Do you see the bag with my clothes in it?”

  A pause. “I do.”

  “I need you to do me a favor…”

  “Sure?”

  “Could you please look inside for my workout stuff?”

  Another pause. “Did you forget?”

  “I picked up the wrong bag…”

  “I don’t know if I… how about I just bring you the bag?”

  Why didn’t I think of that? “Yeah, you know what, that’s a better idea. Let’s do that.”

  I opened up the bathroom door and he froze in his tracks. I’d never felt comfortable in my own skin—who the hell did, anyway—but when Logan saw me, didn’t just see me, in fact, took a moment to drink in the sight of me, it was as if some of his confidence, those waves of power I had felt, attached themselves to me. I swallowed, staring at him, and let my hands fall away from where I had them. Logan didn’t flinch, didn’t suddenly yank the door shut, excusing himself. He just kept staring at me, eyes moving from my eyes, to my toes, then up to my eyes again.

  He handed the bag to me, and I took it. “Here you go,” he said, “We should get moving, we’re burning daylight.”

  I nodded. “I’ll only be a second.”

  Logan pulled the door until it was properly shut this time, leaving me alone to ponder what had just happened. I then got changed in a daze.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Logan led me out of the house and into the yard. The sun was bearing down on us, locusts were buzzing somewhere nearby. I wondered if we’d get any privacy outside, if it would be better to do our physical training indoors, but the hedge separating Eli’s property from the one beside and behind it was tall, dotted with palm-trees like columns. The house itself also blocked the view from Chestnut Street, so as it turned out, yes, we had plenty of privacy out here.

  Eli was there by the time we arrived. He had a hose in his hand and he was spraying his large, black Rottweiler—Cleo—who was loving the water. Eli waved over at us, and Cleo immediately lost interest in the hose and came running over to Logan, wagging her stump of a tail as she jumped and barked at Logan, excited to see him.

  She came up to me, wagging her tail, and sniffed my fingers, then she licked my hand and ran off again, shaking her short fur and sending droplets of water in all directions.

  “How’s it going?” Eli called out.

  “We haven’t started yet,” I said, “I’ll let you know in a few minutes when Logan’s run me ragged.”

  “I’m sure you’ll last more than a few minutes with Logan.”

  We’ll see about that. “Yeah, sure, alright. Just be ready with that hose, I might need it.”

  Logan found a good spot in a clear area, then turned around to look at me and cracked his neck. I walked up in front of him but stood a few paces away like he’d asked me to do as we were stepping outside.

  “Okay,” Logan said, “You’re a Mage. Do you know what that means?”

  “I, uh… I can do magic?”

  Logan nodded. “But it also means you’re stronger, faster, and tougher than most people. More agile. Your body can take punishment, recover from it, and dish it out with equal ease.”

  “I can believe that. I pulled some catlike stunts the night those guys chased me out of the French Quarter. I used to be a gymnast in my school days, but that felt like something else.”

  “It happens when you come into your powers, the day your energy is first triggered. For you it was the moment you were hit with a curse. Your body needed to defend itself from the magic, so it unlocked its potential.”

  “Are you saying I wouldn’t be a Harlequin if not for that Hexer?”

  He shook his head. “It would have happened sometime. Fate has a hand in who becomes a Mage and who doesn’t. If it hadn’t happened that night, it would have happened some other night, probably within the week. But I’m not going to talk to you about magic. All I want you to do, is avoid my attacks.”

  “Your… wait, what?”

  Logan didn’t give me a moment to think about what he had just said, to prepare myself. In an instant he was moving, and moving fast, almost like a blur. It was as if I had blinked, and he was already three feet away from me, but my body was already moving, even before my mind had been given a chance to react, like it had a mind of its own.

  He swung his brick of a fist at me, grunting as he came, and I moved to the left, ducking my head underneath the arc of his attack and throwing myself into a forward-roll to get away from the second attack. On my knees, I turned my head around and looked at him. He was coming again, ready to crack my head open with the tip of his foot. I sprang to my feet, and using the same momentum, launched myself high into the air and into an honest-to-god backflip that put me up and over his foot. I hadn’t done anything like that in a few years, but damn did it feel good.

  When I landed, I threw myself into a run across the length of the yard. Logan gave chase, again moving like a bullet, but I was fast too—fast enough to stay a few paces ahead of him. Then an idea crossed my mind like a flash of creative inspiration. I leapt, like a ballerina, twisted around in the air and, stretching my hand out toward him, birthed a flash of prismatic light into the world bright enough to make him stop and shield his eyes—a phantasm-, that’s what my power to create something out of nothing was called. But I didn’t land properly this
time; I landed flat on my ass, and Logan recovered before I could get back up.

  He thrust his fist out and grabbed my arm, then he spun me around and tucked my arm behind my back, immobilizing me.

  “Stop,” I groaned, “Stop!”

  Logan let me go, then stepped back. “You fought dirty,” he growled.

  The pain of having my arm pinned behind my back released in a rush, and I was glad that it did. “You told me to avoid getting hit.”

  “She’s got you there!” Eli yelled from across the yard.

  Logan scowled. “Next time, I’ll be clearer on the rules.”

  “Do you really think there will be rules when people, not you, are trying to kill me?”

  “No, but I’m trying to help you learn how to protect yourself without magic. There are people out there, mostly Hexers, who can temporarily stop you from using your magic. And then what?”

  “They can what?”

  “You heard me.” He approached, turned my chin up with his fingers and looked at my neck. “Did I hurt you?”

  I stared up at his big, green eyes—eyes flecked with gold, sparkling in the afternoon sun—and shook my head. “No,” I said, “I’m tougher than your average cookie, remember?”

  Logan nodded, then smiled warmly. “Okay,” he said, “Let’s go again, but this time, no magic… I’ll give you a head start.”

  “A… what?”

  When he didn’t answer, I started running again, twisting around his body and rushing back in the direction I’d come. Cleo started barking excitedly as I approached, but Eli kept her entertained with the hose. Behind me, I could sense Logan gaining this time. I knew I wouldn’t be able to outrun him—I was running out of backyard—so instead I made a sharp right turn, bolted toward the side of the house, and leapt toward it. When my foot touched the side of the house, I sprang back, flipping into the air in a way I had never, ever, ever, been able to do, not in my 8 years of gymnastic training, all the way from ages eight to sixteen.