Things such as they were, though, I was starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, I was happy for the help. Sometimes. Not all the time. Ivy, though the most experienced of them, was a loose cannon, and I didn’t enjoy having to divide my focus between the task at hand and reining her ass in. Morpheus was woefully inexperienced on the field, and I didn’t think he’d be of much use if it came down to a firefight. Tank meant well, but I could sense just how fine his trigger was, and I knew it was only by sheer miracle that I hadn’t seen him toe over the line yet.
Of all of them, Levi’s head was the one most tightly screwed on, but he was too tightly wound all the time, too anxious to know the next move, to enact the next part of the plan and make sure it was done correctly. I had never met an Elemancer like him before; they were like fire, wind, and water—fluid in their movements, graceful, quick to adapt. Levi was about as rigid as they came, and it had only gotten worse ever since Mason made his entrance.
Part of me understood, the other part of me wanted not to because understanding meant acknowledging a simple, but dangerous truth; Levi had something invested in me. Maybe I was being premature, maybe I was misreading the situation, but considering reading people was my bread and butter, I was pretty sure I wasn’t wrong. Mason had arrived, and now Levi was tense, and stiff, and a little distant.
I thought I’d try to change that.
We were sharing a late dinner—or an early breakfast, whichever you wanted to call it—again, both of us sitting on the couch, our feet draped across the air-bed in the middle of the room. Levi set what was left of his food aside and relaxed into the couch. When I saw that he was done, I turned to look at him, pulling my feet up to my knees and staring, trying to figure him out.
“Are you…” he watched me, tentatively, “Are you reading my mind?”
I shook my head, and I could smell the shampoo in my freshly washed and dried hair. Mint. “No,” I said, “But I want to.”
“Why?”
“Because. I don’t know much about you… I feel like I should know more given what we’ve been through, no?”
Levi’s eyebrow arched. “I didn’t think you wanted to get to know me.”
“Really? How come?”
“You’d said it… or at least, you’d implied the less you knew about all of us, the more easily you’d be able to go back to your normal life after this was all done.”
“Oh… right.” My gaze fell away from him. “Yeah, sorry. God, it feels like that was a lifetime ago.”
“It’s been a week.”
“I know it’s only been a week.”
“No, I mean, it’s been a week of being together all day, every day… that’s a lifetime to a lot of people.”
“Oh. Yeah, I hadn’t looked at it that way.” I ran my hand through my hair. “If you’d told me a week ago we would be doing this, in this room, dealing with this situation, I’d have laughed at you and told you to go fuck yourself. But… anyway, I guess what I meant to say was, I’ve changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“About wanting to get to know you. I don’t think that would be a bad thing anymore.”
Levi’s eyes scanned the tiny apartment. “Why, because we’re sharing a living space?”
I shrugged. “Yeah… and because we may have to save each other’s lives at some point in the coming days, or weeks. It’d be nice to know who you are before that time comes.”
“Well, to be fair, you do know who I am.”
“I know your name, I know you’re an Elemancer, I know you were a contract mage, but I don’t know much about you, the person. Likes, dislikes, hobbies, movies, hobbies?”
He considered the question carefully, thoughtfully, as if he were trying to figure out some quadratic equation without the use of a calculator except for the one sitting between his ears. “I don’t have many, as it goes.”
“That’s strike one. Care to try again?”
“Strike one? Why?”
“Because you just hesitated.”
“I didn’t…”
“Okay, don’t forget you’re talking to a Warlock, and a skilled one at that. I may not be actively trying to read your thoughts, but let me give you a little inside information about how we work. Ready?”
“Sure.”
“So, sensing someone else’s thoughts is like hearing another voice, only it’s distant, and quiet—really quiet. That’s why Warlocks don’t just go around listening to everyone’s thoughts all the time; picking the thoughts of another person out during the day, when there are cars, construction, other people around, it’s usually impossible. It requires concentration.”
“Alright?”
“It’s quiet now. It’s just you and me. You talk, and I hear you. You think, and I can hear… some of it. I know you’re hiding something.”
“I’m not hiding anything from you.”
“Strike two… are you gonna tell me what the name of that hobby sitting on the tip of your tongue is or not?”
Levi’s eyes narrowed. “Alright, fine,” he said. “I… crochet.”
“You… what?”
“My grandmother got me into it when I was very young. I was about thirteen when I moved in with her.”
“Moved in with her?”
“She raised me, pretty much. My mother died when I was young, and my father left me a few years after.”
“Fuck. That’s really shit.”
“The shittest part wasn’t even my dad leaving. They tracked him down in Greece about, oh, maybe six months later? He’d run off with some woman, the dick. I didn’t even know her. Fast forward a few years, and he shows up with her and a half-sister of mine, says he wants to be a family again. I go and tell him to fuck right off. My grandfather almost beat him with a rake, would have if there hadn’t been ladies present. Always a gentleman, that one.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. “Let me guess, he’s the one who taught you how to treat a woman?”
“He was always too awkward to have the talk, the one all boys are supposed to have, but I saw the way he treated my grandmother. They had been through the fucking muck over the years, but there they were, seventy years old, and still they went on dates, held hands, swore at the TV whenever EastEnders or Big Brother was on.”
“They sound awesome. Nothing like mine.” I was smiling, then, but I felt my stomach slowly sink through the floor. The way he was talking about them, I knew they were both dead. He didn’t have to say it, and I didn’t want to ask.
“Tell me about yours, then.”
“Mine?”
“Yes? I just confessed to knowing how to crochet—not just knowing how to, I’m actually pretty good at it. I have a blanket I made in my suitcase.”
“No fucking way. Can I see it?”
“Depends on you.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Tell me something about yourself.”
I paused, thinking, eyes glancing to the bedroom door. If I got up and ran, I could make it to the door, shut it, and find the blanket for myself. He wouldn’t catch me, but that would be a dick move. “You’ll have to make something for me someday,” I said.
“Maybe, if we make it through this alive. But anyway, don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not. And if I recall, I’ve told you a few things about myself already, so this little chat actually makes us even.”
“Does it? That’s not how I remember things.”
I pulled my knees in closer to my chest and grinned. “Good thing I’m here to keep score, then, isn’t it?”
Levi considered me, studied me, and for an instant—a fleeting moment—I found myself holding my breath as he stared at me. When my breathing returned to normal, my heartbeat started to race, making me feel just the slightest bit faint. Calm yourself there, Hailey. “Alright, how about you tell me about Mason, then, instead?” he asked.
“Oh, God no. Ask me anything but that.”
“Why?”
I s
tared at the dark TV, catching us both in the faint reflection. “Mason’s a complicated part of my past.”
Levi pursed his lips. “Okay, tit for tat. You talk about him, and I’ll talk about whatever you want to hear about.”
I cocked an eyebrow, mulling over his proposition. It had merit, because I did have something I wanted to ask him about, but it meant I would need to open up to him, make myself vulnerable. That wasn’t something I was in the business of doing. Vulnerability meant death, in my world. In here, though, with just Levi for company…
“I wanna know about Delilah,” I said.
Levi stretched his hand over to me. “Deal.”
I took his hand and shook it with intent. It was warm against mine, his fingers smooth—an artist’s hands. “So,” I said, retrieving my hand. “Who goes first?”
“We could fight for it?”
“Pretty sure that would be pretty unfair on you if we did.”
“Oh, would it?”
“Yeah… so, how about we just assume I won, and you go first?”
Levi tried to hide the smile, but failed. He had a winner’s smile, nice teeth, kind eyes. I didn’t think he was the type to let himself be vulnerable either, not even with the women he involved himself with. It was hard to shake the image of him making out with Jenny at the library the first time we’d met, it had made me think of him as some kind of playboy that he’d been able to romance one of the students at the university almost on a whim, but now that the curtain was being pulled open, I was starting to notice something about him that I could relate to.
He had layers, like me, and often put on an act.
“Okay,” he said, “So, Delilah… that’s one hell of a subject.”
“Start at the beginning?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure where the beginning is. We’ve known each other for a few years, met through her father. He had hired me to do a job for him, my first milk run in fact, only he didn’t want me to drop the item off for him, he wanted me to drop it off for her. That’s the how we met. As for how things progressed, or even why… she was different, then. Charming, fun, full of herself in the way Scions are, y’know?”
“Yep, I totally do.”
He nodded. “She was the one who asked me out on a date. I’d never experienced that before. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a way with girls, I always have, but the difference was, I didn’t have to chase her for attention; she came at me with no bullshit, a simple take-it-or-leave-it offer. The choice was, accept and see how things go, or refuse and we would stop being friends.”
“I take it you accepted.”
“I respected the honesty, the confidence. Like I said, she was different, then. She’s always been pretty, but she was also an intellectually strong person, someone who could meet me on the same level…” He took a pause to breathe deeply. “We were together for about a year, maybe a little over. It took me that long to understand her capacity to lie, to realize I wasn’t special in any way—just another person to use and manipulate.”
“Could you tell me why? I mean, I know I’m prying, here…”
He shrugged, tried to play it off, but it was there, the betrayal, the pain. It was remembered pain, but pain nonetheless. “She’d been fucking my best friend the whole time.”
I shook my head. “Mother fucker.”
“I’d had a feeling for a while, a thought that something was off. When we’d first hooked up, there was a newness about us that made it easy to dismiss the days where we wouldn’t speak as just life, you know? But then as time went on and the novelty of us died off, I started noticing more; the texts at night, the times she’d work late… he wasn’t just fucking him, either, they had a whole thing going, like they were a couple, we were a couple, and the three of us were all some fucked up love-triangle.”
“I… okay, I’m just gonna be blunt with this—how the hell didn’t I pick any of this up when we met her together for the first time? I mean, I thought… you’d hugged each other, it looked normal.”
He shrugged. “I’m British, we’re taught since birth how to repress our emotions.”
“Repress is one thing, but this… what she did to you was disgusting.”
“It hurt at the time. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, thought maybe I could have changed things. But I’m glad it happened.”
“Glad?”
“I learned who she was. Who he was. I never spoke to him again.”
“Why are you still civil with her?”
He looked at me. “She’s the one who told me, then she ended it. Until tonight I thought… better of her than I might have otherwise. But what she did to her father… I’ll never forgive that.” There was a pause, then, one full of reflection and introspection. I could tell he was reminiscing, possibly remembering good times, but also remembering bad times. “Anyway,” he said, exhaling. “Your turn.”
I nodded. “A deal is a deal,” I said.
“That’s right. So… how long ago was it?”
“How long ago was what?”
“You know what… I’m not very good at asking personal questions, so you’re going to have to just volunteer whatever you feel like volunteering.”
“Oh… yeah, so, the last time I saw him before tonight was almost two years ago. Before I left for London.”
“I gathered that.”
“We were good friends, then. Maybe a little more than friends. I was a hunter, he had connections, I was a Warlock, he was a Scion, so our powers complimented each other while our similar, self-obsessed personalities caused constant friction that kept things interesting.”
“He’s a Scion, too? I should have known.”
“How?”
“He’s… arrogant. Like Delilah.” Like you too, a little bit.
I had caught that thought of his. I hadn’t wanted to, but there was nothing I could do about it now except react, or not. I decided not to. “Yeah… well, anyway, Mason and I… we were never really a thing. Like I said, we were good friends, a little more than that, but never quite boyfriend and girlfriend. There was always something that kept me at arm’s length. At the time I wasn’t sure if it was him, his attitude, or my work that kept me from diving deeper into what we could have had, but as it was, I just hung out at the shallow end. Then came the night he told me he wanted a little more.”
“Oh…”
“Yeah… I couldn’t give it to him. My sister had just died, I had gone to him for comfort, he let me crash at his place for a few days while I shut the world out and recharged. Then when I decided it was time to get up and start moving forward, he told me he wanted more, wanted to know we were exclusive. We were, of course. I wasn’t with anyone else, but we’d never had that conversation.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him the truth—my sister had just died, I couldn’t commit any more time or attention than I was already giving him. He took it pretty hard. We didn’t talk for almost a week after that.”
“And when you did talk?”
“A quick phone call… I was already at the airport, waiting for my flight to London. I asked him to come with me.”
“Wow… that’s…”
“Serious? I know. I remember sitting there, after going through security, and thinking about him. It wasn’t, like, I was crazy about him or anything, I think I just got scared. The hugeness of what I was about to do had hit home, I was about to leave the country, go somewhere where I had no friends, no family, no one to help me. The thought of being alone on top of all of that was overwhelming. But he said no, and then… I don’t know, I guess that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I shut down, sucked it up, and did what I had to do.”
Levi didn’t know what to say, and if he did, he was in two minds about saying anything at all. I could see the indecision brewing behind his eyes, that feeling of wanting to say the right thing but not knowing if what you were going to say next was in fact the right thing, or just some cliched platitude that would
only make things worse.
I wasn’t looking for platitudes, or words of comfort, or… anything, in fact, so there wasn’t anything he could say that would have made the situation worse. I wasn’t, however, numb to it all. Mason had come back into my life, and he had found the zipper in the suit of rocks I was wearing, and he had pulled it down just enough to let emotions strike at the soft flesh underneath, and I was feeling each and every blow.
“Well, shit,” Levi finally said, “I can see why you guys are always snapping.”
“We were like that before, too,” I said, “Mason was always a cocky little wanker.”
A twinkle of a smile in Levi’s eyes. “Yeah, well… we should probably get some rest. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day.”
“And an even longer night. Do you think you’re up for this?”
“What, infiltrating a black-tie event that’s gonna be attended to by mages, demons, and the Gods only know what else? Sounds like fun to me.”
“It’s probably not gonna be fun, you know that, right? There’s gonna be a lot of stress, and anxiety, and—”
“That was a joke…”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. I guess my hackles are already up.”
Levi went to stand, avoiding stepping on the airbed. “Thanks for tonight,” he said, “I needed a good chin-wag.”
He started moving around the couch, but I turned on my seat to look at him. “Hey…”
He stopped, looked at me. “Yeah?”
“I’m tired, but I don’t know if I could sleep right now… do you wanna… watch a movie?”
Levi’s eyes scanned the room as if somewhere, maybe written on the walls, was the answer to my question. “Right now?”
“Good a time as any?”
He thought about it for another second, then shrugged. “Alright,” he said, then he disappeared into the bedroom, returning a moment later with the big, woolen blanket from his bed and something else tucked in his hands. He dropped the woolen blanket on the sofa, then unfurled the other one he was carrying. It was long, and wide—king sized—made with warm-toned greens, yellows, reds, the colors of autumn.
“No way,” I said, “You made that?”
Levi draped it over me, and I couldn’t help but notice it… smelled like him. Like the quintessential James. It was warm, warmer than it looked, and soft as all hell. I hugged it tightly around me. “I did,” he said, “Pretty proud of it, too.”
Mages and Masquerades: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Magic Blood: The Warlock Book 2) Page 9