by Karen Ranney
I just needed to quell my imagination for a little while, be patient and let Dan tell his story.
When he didn't speak, I couldn't stand it anymore.
"What are you?"
He turned his head. His smile had disappeared and there was no twinkle in his eyes. They were serious and somber as he looked at me.
"I'm a wizard."
Well, hell, what did I know about wizards? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I knew more about crocodile hybrids that I knew about wizards.
“I remember wanting to be a policeman,” he said. “If I couldn't be a policeman, then I wanted to be a soldier."
I was grasping at verbal straws here, since I didn't know what else to say. "And so you became a Ranger."
"I wanted to become a Ranger," he corrected. "But I wanted to do it on my terms. I didn't want any special favors or powers. I wanted to be treated just like any other guy."
"The cloaking," I said, understanding.
He nodded. "My mother objected, but she finally agreed. The ceremony is long and drawn out and is supposed to last a lifetime. I had to be sure that it was something I fervently wished."
“Was it?”
"Yes. But I was in my twenties. I’ve found that age and experience give me a different perspective."
"So now you wish you were a wizard again."
"Not necessarily," he said. "But it seems as if I have no choice in the matter. Being near you has affected the cloaking. It's wearing off, even though it's not supposed to.”
"And I did that?"
"My mother thinks you have," he said. "I don't know. I don't think it matters how."
Was that why Janet had such an antipathy toward me?
“What does that mean, if the cloaking is wearing off? You’ll be exposed as a wizard, or a once upon a time wizard? Will it put you in danger?”
He smiled, a curious self-deprecating smile that had the effect of annoying the hell out of me.
“My powers were never supposed to return, but it seems as if they have, even stronger than before.”
There was a lot he wasn’t saying, like wizards are dangerous. Wizards scared people. Wizards were probably the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the paranormal world.
He didn't explain further which didn't do a whole lot for my impatience.
“Oh come on, you’re not going to leave it at that, are you? You can’t tell me half the story. What is a wizard? A male witch? Are you happy or sad about your cloaking disintegrating? How many wizards are there?”
He studied me for a minute and I wanted to ask him what he saw. A woman with an insatiable curiosity? One who had a little too much interest in him? Of course I was interested and not only as a woman. Just what genetic traits had he passed on, presuming that he was my son or daughter’s father?
He couldn’t stop now, not after the big reveal.
I stared right back until his bottom lip curved a little and the twinkle was back in his eyes. Evidently, my stubbornness amused him. Whatever worked.
“A wizard isn’t a male witch,” he said. “But they are born into a witch family, primarily a powerful family with a history of practicing witches. Like yours, for example.”
“Mine isn’t a powerful family. My mother isn’t a witch. Only my grandmother.” And me, if Janet was right.
“Your great-grandmother was a witch as well as twelve prior generations in a direct line. There are more practicing witches in your family than in mine.”
Two thoughts immediately occurred to me: was that another reason Janet didn’t like me, because I outranked her in some way? And was my child, if he was a son, going to be a wizard?
When would the damn questions stop?
Nobody had ever told me about witches in my family. Nor had I ever asked. Until I was turned into a vampire, I didn’t have a clue that my grandmother was a witch, and now I was learning that I was probably witch royalty.
Oh, goodie.
“There aren’t that many of us. Only fifty currently.”
“Fifty in the country?”
“Fifty in the world.”
That shut me up.
“When a wizard is born, it’s always in a witch family. We’re imbued with the powers of the witches in our family. We also have some ingrained abilities, like mastery of the elements. Each wizard also has an affinity as well as personal talents.”
“Are you always males? No female wizards?”
Again, he studied me. “No. But there are stories of an occasional witch who can match our powers.”
“That isn’t me,” I said, before he could.
“It would take a very powerful witch to strip me of my cloaking.”
“I don’t even know how I could do that.”
He smiled again and I wished he wouldn’t do that. He had the greatest smile in the world. A little charming, a little sexy, a little mocking, it could do jumpy things to my insides.
"What are your personal talents?"
“Empathy," he said. "I seem to be able to feel people."
I didn't want to ask the next question, but I had to. He’d given me no choice.
"To feel people? Or to feel me?"
"People," he said. "But you the most. It's more powerful with you. I seem to know when you're unhappy. Or angry. But it's not limited to strong emotions. I can almost hear you chuckle sometimes. Or feel your smile."
He could open up a hole in my chest with a few words. I wanted to leap over the table and land in his lap, wind my arms around his neck and kiss him until dawn arrived.
I managed to subdue my libido - no easy task - and return to our conversation.
"There was no GPS on my phone when you followed me to the grocery store, was there?"
"I don't seem to need one where you're concerned."
"Has it been that way from the beginning?"
He didn't answer, only turned his head to look at me. I love cheesecake. I like the anticipation of eating cheesecake. I like the feeling I get when I'm eating it. Looking at Dan in that moment was like eating a thousand cheesecakes. I felt the warmth all the way down to my toes.
Was that what he meant by destiny?
Was I important to him in a way I didn’t understand? I’d always felt a pull toward Dan, but I thought it was because he was kind and noble and a damn good looking guy, not to mention a great lover.
Was it more than that?
Chapter Twenty-Two
You're A What?
“And your grandmother knew what you were,” I said. “Did your grandfather?”
“No. My mother was very careful to conceal the knowledge. She was afraid he’d take advantage of the situation, compel me to act against the family in some way.”
Had I ever met a wizard before? Did they normally associate with humans?
As if he’d heard my question, he smiled.
“If you’d met a wizard, you would know it. You would have felt his power. I won’t look different when my cloaking is gone. But anyone meeting me would know that I was.”
I’d been around a few men like that. Not many, but some. They had immediately impressed me with their charm and something else, a certain magnetism. Maybe they were relatives of wizards.
“What’s your affinity? Empathy?”
“I’m a warrior.”
That made sense in a scary kind of way. A warrior wizard: the title alone was impressive.
I had a dozen, or a hundred, questions for Dan, but he stood at that moment and walked toward the railing on the edge of the roof. Here was where he took flight, soaring over the castle grounds. That's what I needed, to fall in love with someone who turned into a bird.
Could wizards transform themselves? What, exactly, could they do?
He didn't change, thank God. He just stood there, watching the distant light, master of probably everything he surveyed. I didn't know how many acres around the castle belonged to him, but I suspected it was a lot.
He never spoke about his wealth, which I thought was a combination of what he'd inh
erited and what he'd amassed through his own skills. He didn't boast about anything and he had more reason then most men I knew. He was, and the word felt odd even as I thought it, humble. Or maybe simply aware. He knew himself and his place in the world, but he didn't think himself better than other men. Yet he was.
If he had an empathetic bond with me, did that mean he knew how I felt about him? Did he know how much I wanted to go to him right now and ease him in some way? I wanted to tell him that I wouldn't harm him, that I wouldn't deliberately expose him to the world.
For the first time, I understood why Janet felt the way she did about me. I represented danger to her child and she’d already lost her daughter. She wasn't going to let anything happen to Dan.
Would his newly uncloaked abilities help him find his sister? Would they aid or hinder the meetings with the witches and the other Brethren? I imagine that the witches would welcome him, because he was born into one of their families. What about the werewolves, the shape shifters, the fairies, the elves, and all the other Brethren that I didn't know about?
And I needed to get the answer about zombies once and for all.
I was so damn grateful that he wasn’t something weird - weirder than a wizard - that I wanted to burst into song. I didn’t care if he had to wear a tall hat, or long robes embroidered with moons and suns. I didn’t care if he set the broomstick to dancing and pails of water sloshing along the castle corridors. Who was I to quibble if he had a laboratory and shelves of small glass jars filled with potions like wing of bat and eye of newt? Was he going to grow a long gray beard? We’d have to seriously talk about that.
The good news was that he wasn’t going to transform into anything furry at the first sign of the moon. He wasn’t going to get scales or a tail. He was a wizard, which probably meant that he had more powers then I did. That didn’t bother me in the least.
“How do you become fully uncloaked?” I asked.
He turned, far enough away from the light that he remained in shadow. Any other woman might have been a little cautious of him. After all, he had just confessed to being a powerful wizard. But I’d been in his bed and in his arms and I knew that whatever happened, he would never hurt me.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s never been done. The ceremony to cloak a wizard is meant to strip him of his powers. It’s permanent. To the best of my knowledge, it’s never been reversed.”
“How do you know you are? Do you feel different? Do you have some of your powers back?”
“It’s chilly tonight,” he said, walking toward me. “Are you cold?”
“No.”
He smiled.
“I thought you had heaters up here,” I said. “You mean it’s you?”
He sat beside me again.
“As a child, I was able to make it cool when I was hot. My mother never had to worry about me playing outside in hundred degree weather.”
“Can you make it rain?”
“In small patches,” he said. “It’s not a good idea to do it over a wide area.”
“How do vampires feel about wizards?”
“I can’t answer that,” he said, sitting back. “There’s no documentation on wizards and vampires interacting. I can’t imagine Maddock would be happy about it, though.”
“Your Archivist wasn’t able to find anything? An odd man, Mr. Hattington,” I said, which was an understatement. “You really are an equal opportunity employer, aren’t you?”
“He’s good at his job.”
“Does he know the Librarian?”
He looked up at the night sky. “I imagine he does.”
“Is she just a human or is she a fairy, too?”
He turned his head to look at me. “If she was, would it bother you?”
“No. As long as she isn’t prejudiced against Pranic vampires. Or goddesses.”
I didn’t dislike anyone who left me alone. You only got on my blacklist when you made it clear that you wanted to wipe me off the face of the earth.
“If you were a full fledged wizard with all your powers, could you save Mike?”
“No,” he said. “We can modify the natural laws, but we can’t obliterate them.” He reached out his hand and grabbed one of mine. “You might be the only one who can save him, Marcie.”
“Why tell me now? I’ve been asking for ages what you were. Why now?”
“I had a choice. Limit my contact with you or bend to the inevitable. The longer I’m around you, the more the cloaking disintegrates.”
His hand was large and warm, making me feel delicate in comparison. I was almost girly around Dan. I wanted to giggle, for the love of God. I preened. I gave him my best profile.
In other words, I was goofy.
I was also - and this would set feminism back a few decades - horny as hell. I wanted to jump his bones, invite him to my bed which was, at the moment, his bed. I wanted to purr and I’ve never been the type to purr around a man.
With Bill, sex had been a duty, almost a chore. It was something to check off my To Do list. I thought of sex like a heating pad. It was enough to warm me up, soothe the ache for a little while but only good for a small area. Sex was also a joining, a coming together, a sharing and it didn’t matter if the earth didn’t move every time. With Bill it didn’t move all that much. Just a tremor here and there.
With Dan, I felt like the Saint Andreas fault.
Sex wasn’t a chore with Dan. Nor was it a checkbox. It was dark chocolate and cherry cheesecake, soft rain on a winter’s day, puppies and kittens, fireworks, a giant raise and an awesome title, a hefty bank balance, goals achieved, the love of friends and family - in other words, all the good and precious things we want in life.
Or, in my case, stasis.
I wanted him in a way that wasn’t the least bit ladylike. I wanted to wrap myself around him, breathe in the scent of his skin, kiss him everywhere, and do things to him that might get me arrested in several states.
Most of all, I wanted to show how I felt about him without using words. I couldn’t come out and tell him that I loved him. Those words were too filled with jeopardy considering my current condition. I would have to leave the castle if Maddock was the father of my child. If I didn’t, I’d bring down the entire vampire population onto Arthur’s Folly. I doubted that even being a wizard would be enough to protect Dan.
I stood, stretching out my hand for him. I didn’t care if I was being foolish. A goddess and a wizard - we weren’t a normal pair, were we? We were oddities, the two of us, but that was okay.
Together, we walked back to his suite on the third floor. At the door, he bent and kissed me softly.
“I have to check on a few things,” he said. “Will you be all right?”
I nodded, feeling silly and foolish and younger than I could ever remember being.
Standing there, I watched him walk away. He didn’t head for the elevators, but then I thought he probably used the stairs most of the time.
I would take a shower or maybe a bath, indulge in some of the contents of those pretty crystal containers on the shelves beside the tub. I would put my hair up, maybe dab on a little mascara and a faint trace of lipstick. I’d wear my prettiest nightgown, the sheer silk one with the pattern of Japanese flowers on a branch.
I’d wait for him in his giant bed like a lady he’d won in a Medieval tournament. I was more than willing to put aside my twenty-first century mores and values for a few hours and be his trophy.
In fact, I was anxious for the sacrifice to begin.
No one had ever anticipated being ravished as much as I had and been as bitterly disappointed.
Dan didn’t return to his room for two hours. That’s how long I lasted before I fell asleep.
This pregnancy business wasn’t for the faint of heart. First, you lost your appetite and your sense of well-being in the mornings, not to mention your breakfast if you were foolish enough to forget to eat only crackers and tea. Then, you were tired all the time. I could sleep standing u
p, I swear. But the great thing about being preggers was that once past those symptoms, I felt better than I ever had. I was seriously in a wonderful mood despite my circumstances. I was also desirous of Dan’s company in bed, which was a classy way to describe my current state of arousal.
I wanted to play around, but my playmate was missing.
When I woke in the morning to find the ceiling disappearing, I freaked.
I gripped the sheets and comforter with both hands, chin level, staring up as the sky was revealed in all its dawn glory, streaks of pink and pale blue greeting me. What was this, a football stadium? Evidently, the roof thing was an automatic occurrence. Did it happen when it was raining, too? Surely there was some sort of sensor operating it. Why the hell didn’t he have a setting for: stranger in my bed?
A bird flew over and for a second I thought it was going to gift me with a morning wake up present, but it didn’t. The sky lightened. I could hear the birds in the nearby trees calling out to each other.
Once I calmed down, I realized it was a pretty great way to start the day. You didn’t remember problems or concerns. You were concentrating on the sky and the beauty of dawn.
My communion with nature lasted about fifteen minutes. Then the roof began to slowly roll back into place and I was left in the shadowy dark to contemplate why Dan hadn’t returned to his room last night.
Maybe he hadn’t wanted to make love.
Yeah, like that was ever going to fly as an excuse for any guy. Warm body equals opportunity. No red blooded man - wizard or not - has ever turned down an opportunity. Trust me on this.
One thing I was not going to do was to begin to list my flaws and compare them to anyone else. I was so past that. I had matured. I had grown up. I was a damn goddess. I was not going to think of Diane - aren’t I a bitch? - Trenton and wonder if she offered up tea and sympathy at all hours and if she lived at the castle. Nope, not going to do it. I had evolved.
After my breakfast of tea and crackers, I made the sitting room my own little bailiwick. I wasn’t going to use the intercom to find out where Dan was. If he hadn’t returned to his own room I wasn’t going to alert everyone in the castle. Nor was I going to let anyone know I was a roommate. I figured most people knew, but if Janet didn’t, I wasn’t going to volunteer that fact.