“Because I’m freezing my balls off, and I need an Uber.”
Both of my eyebrows arched upwards, like the damn golden arches. “You should’ve thought of that before you stepped through a portal to London wearing a t-shirt. What did you expect, beach weather?”
“Yeah, okay, I didn’t plan that very well.”
“How you’re able to do what you do for a living, when you lack such basic common sense, escapes me.”
He paused, almost seeming to consider my question with all seriousness, but I knew there was nothing there—just more cockiness. “How you’re able to resist me wearing this shirt escapes me.”
I narrowed my eyes, then turned around and started walking. “I’m leaving,” I said, “Do what you have to do in London, and then do the same.”
“Well, that’s not confusing at all,” he called out.
“Go home, Mason.”
“You look good!”
I shook my head, refusing to dignify that last comment with an answer. When I realized I was smiling, even slightly, I pursed my lips so hard I could have sworn they wrinkled. I had prepared myself, mentally, to talk to Mason over the phone, but hadn’t expected to be standing in front of him. The word blindsided came to mind, and that wasn’t something I was used to, nor was it something I appreciated. I was always one step ahead of the game, and three steps ahead of most people. I had to shake this off.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and as I headed into the Underground, and out of cell coverage, I peered at it. The message was from Levi.
Tell me you’re ok.
I smiled again, only this time I held it. I’m fine, I wrote back before I lost coverage for good, Heading back now.
This time you bring dinner?
Prepare to feast. I just got paid.
Can’t wait.
Me either.
Unable to send message. Retry? The red text sitting next to my message glared at me from the screen like a virtual slap of the wrist, like, good thing I was here to stop you from sending a stupid text, huh?
I shrugged, deleted the message instead, slipped my phone into my pocket, and got on the next tube.
CHAPTER THREE
I couldn’t go back to my place. From the moment I found myself knee-deep in demonic entanglements I knew, my house was no longer safe. Maybe it was being watched, maybe the entrance had been cursed, or maybe there were Brutes squatting inside, waiting for me to show up unawares, and unprepared, ready to slice me into a hundred pieces.
Of course, I was never one to listen to my own advice, so I had gone back to my place anyway, though not because I wanted to stay there. The Eyes, the cabal of rookies who got the drop on me, stunned me, and stood by me when they really didn’t have to, were good enough to provide me with temporary accommodation, so I had a place to stay. The problem was, I didn’t have new or even clean clothes to wear, and while I could buy new clothes, there were things in my apartment I couldn’t just replace.
In ten minutes flat, with Levi and Ivy’s help, I had packed as many of my things as I could into a single suitcase, realizing when the ten minutes were up that the bag itself was feeling kinda light. I’d been living in London for almost two years, and I hadn’t been able to fill a single case worth of stuff I’d accumulated in that time—if you didn’t count clothes.
Of course, there was always the lockup. That was where I kept my weapons, my documents, my tools of the trade. That place was safe, but that wasn’t the point; in the almost two years of living here, I hadn’t tried turning my apartment into a home. In many ways the flat was transient, fleeting, like I’d never intended on staying there for long. That would explain why I didn’t spend much time in the place, choosing to hang out mostly at the library, returning home only to eat dinner, shower, and sleep most nights.
Now I was officially homeless, having terminated my lease as soon as I left my place with a single suitcase in hand. I was also jobless, and that hurt a lot more than losing my apartment, but I knew I couldn’t go back there, either. While I had no proof my apartment was being watched, the demon had come to my place of work and he had found me there.
I had worked so hard to make that place my own, spent many countless hours getting to know every inch of that library, inside and out, cataloguing and streamlining and updating so the students who used it could be as efficient as possible. I hadn’t wanted to leave it, but what choice did I have? When you were dealing with stuff like this, it was important to rid yourself of your weakest links; the library was one of those links because I cared about it, and as much as the staff got on my nerves, I cared about them too.
Lucky for them, the person who had just quit with such short notice happened to be a Warlock. A little manipulation of personnel records coupled with a dash of magic and presto, as far as anyone was concerned, I’d handed my notice in last month and was clear to leave. I would miss it, but I had done what I could for this library; there were many, many more libraries out there that would need someone like me when this was over.
I let myself into the apartment with a bag full of Chinese take-out. This place was smaller than mine, if that was possible; no L-shaped corridor here, only a front door that led directly into a tiny living room-slash-kitchen, and two doors on the far wall—one leading to the bathroom, another to a bedroom just big enough for a double bed and a wardrobe. It was cozy, and tight, but there was a TV, a sofa large enough for Levi and I to sit without being too close to each other.
Among the things I’d taken from my apartment was the air-bed, which I slept on, because it was mine, and because I wasn’t going to make Levi sleep on it no matter how much he insisted. It was also, selfishly, the more comfortable than the actual bed, but I hadn’t told him that, and I didn’t think he much cared. This was a guy who could sleep on a concrete slab and not complain, if he was tired enough.
Stepping through the door I could hear the hiss of the shower coming from the bathroom. The door was ajar, and puffs of steam were slipping through into the living room. I set the food down on the table in front of the sofa, took my jacket off, hung it behind the door, and when I turned around again, I saw them.
The first thing was Levi’s t-shirt. He had clearly taken it off before stepping into the bathroom and had tossed it over the back of the couch. Okay, that I could… abide. Then there were his jeans, sitting in a crumpled heap on the couch itself. That was unpleasant, to put things lightly. But the thing my eyes fixated on, honed in on, were his boxers. He’d just slipped out of them before entering the bathroom and had let them fall to the floor, just outside the door.
How difficult was it for him to pick them up and shove them into the washing machine with the rest of the laundry like we’d discussed, preferably before stepping into the shower? I wasn’t a snob or anything, don’t get me twisted. I had been known to leave my clothes lying around from time to time, but never for long, never if I was in someone else’s apartment, and never if I was living with someone else.
The shower faucets squeaked, and the steady stream of water died down to a spattering of droplets. I waited, standing with my butt rested on the back of the couch, staring at the bathroom door. I couldn’t see him moving on the other side of it as he went about the business of drying off and eventually slipping into a clean set of boxers. I could have sworn I heard him humming to himself as he went, though I couldn’t identify the song.
Is that… Taylor Swift?
It took everything I had to stifle the smirk itching to override the frown I was currently wearing. When he pulled the bathroom door all the way open, saw me there, and jumped out of his skin, my composure almost cracked right down the middle, but the way he staggered back and looked away allowed me a second long enough to gather myself again.
“Fuck me,” he said, clutching his chest, “How long have you been there?”
“What did we say about leaving underwear lying around?” I asked, arms folded.
The slight smile that had formed on his face suddenly deflated like someone had l
et all of the air out of a balloon. “Oh,” he said, glancing down at the offending item of clothing and scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t sure you’d be back so quick.”
He was only wearing a pair of tight black boxers, and I would have been lying if I said my eyes hadn’t been wandering the bumpy landscape of his toned body. He wasn’t incredibly muscular, but he was toned, his abdomen defined, his chest, pectorals, his thighs were all formidable. He worked out, I knew that much, but I had never seen him without his shirt off, and I couldn’t help but sample, and enjoy, the goods.
But I kept my eyes on the prize. “Holy shit,” I said, eyes widening.
“What is it?”
“Your underwear is on fire!”
“It’s—what?”
Levi looked down, and immediately started to panic. Laughing my ass off, I watched him bat at his underwear with his hands, wincing and hissing from the heat and the pain. When that wasn’t working, he hopped around on the spot and quickly started to remove them, tossing them aside as if—well, as if they were on fire, which they certainly weren’t, but I’d done a good job at making him think they were. It had been easy, too; I hadn’t even needed to draw blood to make the magic work on him.
Panting, cupping his man-parts with one hand and glowering at the now no-longer-on-fire underwear lying on the floor, he swore loudly. “Fuck!” Then he turned to look at me. “That was a dirty trick you pulled there.”
“Maybe that’ll teach you to put your dirty underwear where it belongs?”
“Fine, whatever, point taken. Turn around while I put them back on, yeah?”
Still smiling, I turned around and waited until I heard the snap of the waistband. It had taken a little while before he had decided to put them on, though. Maybe he was trying to figure out if they would combust again and set his pubic hair on fire—not that the hair would be his primary concern. I turned around when he was done and headed for the coffee table, graciously setting the Chinese food I had bought out on the table.
Levi grabbed his jeans from the sofa, slipped into them, and then pulled a shirt out of a small, rolling suitcase he kept off to the side of the room. Everything that ever meant anything to him was in that suitcase, and the same was true for me. A question suddenly popped into my head that begged to be answered, one I hadn’t asked, and couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked, after knowing this man for almost 10 days.
“Is Levi your real name?” I asked.
“My… what?” Levi said, slipping his head into a plain, black t-shirt and pulling it down over his beautiful body.
“Your real name. I mean, I know Ivy, and Tank, and Morpheus are codenames. I’m guessing yours is a codename too, but you know what my name is.”
He came around the couch and sat down. “You want to know my real name?”
I shrugged. “You’re stalling. Give it to me or don’t, but when you inevitably run afoul of a demon or a Brute and get yourself killed, someone’s gonna have to figure out what to write on your headstone, and it’d suck if I didn’t know what your name was.”
“Who says you’d be the one in charge of that? Who says you wouldn’t be dead too if I were gone?”
“There’s no conceivable universe where you’re dead, and I’ve already been dead. If I’m dead, then all of you have been dead for a long time.”
“Little full of yourself, aren’t you?”
I passed an egg-roll over to him. “And you’re still deflecting. Don’t you want me to know your name?”
“Won’t it get confusing if I tell you?”
“I promise to only refer to you as Levi no matter what you say to me right now.”
Levi scowled, then reached into his jeans, pulled out his wallet, and from inside, retrieved an ID card. He handed it over, and I found myself staring at a younger version of him, five years younger according to the date of registration on the card. His hair was longer, his eyes were dull and unimpressed, and…
“Oh my God… you had a soul patch,” I said, trying to contain the laughing fit about to burst out of me.
“Yeah, whatever, it was a different time.”
“It was five years ago! What on earth possessed you to wear a soul patch?”
He yanked his wallet away. “Yeah, alright, that’s enough.”
I tapped the side of my nose, grinning. “Don’t worry, James Levingston, your secret is safe with me.”
Levi pocketed his wallet. “Yeah, well, I hope so. Part of the Eyes way of working is using secret codenames. We know there’s power in a person’s real name, and clever mages can use that power to hurt us.”
“I know.” I let my voice lower. “I’m not one of those mages… I promise.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Which is exactly what you would say if you were…”
“Just because I don’t trust easily doesn’t mean you can’t trust me. I’ve got a track record for being one of the good guys.”
Levi took a crunchy bite out of an egg-roll. Chewed. Swallowed. “Good guys, bad guys, it’s all relative, all perspective.”
“Wow, that’s pretty philosophical for an Elemancer.”
“Just what are you trying to say?”
“I’m messing with you.”
“Yeah, damn right.”
We continued eating our meal in silence, each of us tucking away at our individual plates of sweet and sour chicken, egg-fried rice, and vegetables while the TV went on in the background. The news was usually on in the apartment, all the better to keep track of London at large and listen out for anything that may potentially stand out to a mage. I knew the vast majority of magical events went undocumented by the mainstream media, but sometimes you just got lucky.
Somewhere toward the end of his meal, Levi decided to finally ask. “So, how did tonight go?”
At the exact same moment my phone buzzed on the table, displaying a name that hadn’t flashed on my screen in a long time. Mason—or Mace as his friends, and I once upon a time, called him. The message preview read “London’s pretty lit.” If Levi had noticed the message he’d decided to keep quiet about it, so I turned the phone on its screen to avoid further messages from flashing.
“No one got killed,” I said, “Well, except for the demon I was hunting.”
“You got him?”
“I did. Not to toot my own horn, but if I want to kill a demon, it dies. It’s kind of my thing.”
“I’m still shocked there was one to begin with.”
“I am too, but it makes sense. The demon that came for me at the library had to have come from somewhere, and they can’t go far from the places they crawled out of. If they venture too far for too long, they die.”
“How far is far?”
“Don’t get excited, we’re talking maybe forty or fifty square miles.”
“That… that’d cover an entire district.”
“Then expand the search radius to about one hundred square miles, considering they can move away from their Hell Hole for a limited time. Tracking them down is tough, though. Really tough. They’re usually underground, and London has a ton of occupied real estate underground that would make finding one even more difficult.”
“Fuck. What are we supposed to do?”
“About the Hell Hole? Nothing. That’s not our concern right now. The concern is figuring out where Delilah has gone with that book, and we have to do it fast. The lunar eclipse is happening in a week, and we have no idea where to even start.”
“Isn’t there something we could do with magic to help track her down?”
“Not that I know of. I was hoping to be able to extract a little information out of the demon I killed tonight, but he was pretty tight lipped.”
“That’s not the only reason you went hunting though, is it?”
I narrowed my eyes. “No, it isn’t. Why do you ask?”
“Well… it’s just, Ivy sent me a message after you two parted ways…”
“Fucking asshole, really?”
“W
as she not supposed to?”
“No. She wasn’t, and that’s the last time I’ll trust her with a secret. What did she tell you?”
“She wanted to know if I had any idea what your plan was, you know, considering we’re temporary flat-mates.”
“Did you tell her we pillow talk?”
“No, that’s not—”
“Relax.” I sighed. “I had three reasons for wanting to hunt a demon down. Number one, I thought finding one would help us find Delilah. Number two, demons need to be hunted wherever they live, wherever they breed. They just have to. And number three, I… needed its blood.”
Levi swallowed, his displeasure at what I’d had to do tonight visible on his face. “Ivy did say something about that… did you really need all of it?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated, okay? There are things mages can do with demon blood if they know how to use it properly.”
“How is that possible?”
I shrugged. “How is it that an Elemancer can unlock doors? How is it some Primals can call the elements? Mages instinctively use the magic their souls are aligned to; Warlocks have power over the mind, Elemancers over the elements, Scions over raw magic itself. But all mages can also instinctively do some magic their souls aren’t aligned to, and some mages can do totally outlandish magic you can only do through learning. Blood magic is one of those ones.”
“I… can’t believe I don’t know any of that. So, you’re saying, even though you’re a Warlock you can maybe create fireballs?”
“No, but I can fling objects around with my mind and using blood magic makes it easier for me to do that. Look, I really don’t want to have to go into it, that’s why I asked Ivy to keep her mouth shut. The important thing that you need to know is, I did what I had to do… and I got paid for it.”
Realization dawned across Levi’s face. “That’s what you meant when you said you’d been paid.”
I nodded. “First time I’ve taken up a contract in a long time. I had to, we’re technically homeless and literally jobless, and as I’m grateful we’ve been given this place to crash in for a while, we needed money in a big way.”
Mages and Masquerades: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Magic Blood: The Warlock Book 2) Page 3