“Three times now,” Jamie whispered.
Brad’s eyebrows danced up his forehead. “Three times?”
“Is that healthy?” Niko asked.
Gavin shrugged. “I don’t think there’s a precedent to cross-check against.”
Pamela didn’t react, but the cage tightened around Jamie, brushing his shoulders. He flinched, then flinched again when the slight movement pressed his knees against bars of lux lucis, zapping jagged lines through his soul. A tiny squeak escaped his throat, and I thrust my hand through the prism’s energy to steady him. Lux lucis crackled against my flesh, biting into my skin as if it had an electric current. Hissing, I jerked my hand back and shook it. The white energy shouldn’t have affected me. It definitely shouldn’t have hurt.
“I have no control over Jamie because we’re partners,” I said, resuming my argument but gathering myself to act. The moment the inspector let her guard down, I would rip the prism from her grasp and free Jamie myself. “I’d no more try to control him than I would attempt to control you or Niko.”
“Are you saying the pooka outranks you?”
My nails bit into my palms. “I’m saying he’s a friend and an ally. Hasn’t he earned the same respect and consideration as the CIA’s other allies? Would you cage a prajurit?”
“A prajurit doesn’t have a soul composed half of atrum. He’s evil—”
“Enough! You’re letting your eyes and your prejudice blind you. So Jamie has atrum in his soul. He also holds more lux lucis within him than you do. You’re punishing him based on what he could do, not what he has done. Look at his actions. He’s been nothing but genuine.” The inspector tried to interrupt, but I overrode her. “When he felt hurt, he lashed out. When he felt loved, he protected and defended. He doesn’t need to be controlled. He needs to be loved.” I sucked in a harsh breath and let it out, lowering my voice and sinking sincerity into my words. “Jamie chose me. He and I will determine how he lives, not you.”
I swept my gaze over the others, looking for objections. Niko’s impassive expression told me nothing and Gavin watched me warily, but Brad gave me an infinitesimal nod of support.
The inspector studied me as if seeing me for the first time.
“You can’t take him from me,” I said.
“I don’t have to stay in here?” Jamie asked.
“Of course not,” I said.
Before I could demand Pamela release Jamie, the pooka flexed his soul. Jagged blades of inky atrum sliced through the powerful lux lucis bars. The light of the cage intensified, but Jamie’s atrum countered it, burrowing into the cracks he’d created. His dark energy spiraled up the rigid white lines of power, peeling back the lux lucis. A backlash of mixed energy whipped toward the prism, and Pamela chucked it into the street. Atrum and lux lucis imploded inside the weapon, and when the crystal clattered to the pavement, the glossy prism transformed into a cracked gray rod. The inspector backpedaled, eyes wide with shock, hands fumbling for the knife at her waist. Jamie retracted his soul and reached for my hand with a blazing-white palm. I squeezed his cold fingers in mine. None of the others had moved.
Schooling my expression, I pretended I’d known all along that Jamie—even at half strength and bone tired—could break her cage.
“I appreciate your concern, Pamela,” I said, “but I can take it from here. Good night.”
30
Some Cause Happiness Wherever They Go, Others Whenever They Go
Pamela allowed us to walk away that night, but she showed up on our doorstep the next morning, and she didn’t leave our sides for the rest of the week. I shouldn’t have been surprised. If Jamie’s heroic battle against the tyv and nearly dying to save me and my region hadn’t proven to the inspector that he had a good heart, then destroying her torturous cage and thumbing our noses at her authority certainly wouldn’t have convinced her, either.
As much as I didn’t want to care about her opinion, I couldn’t afford not to. Pamela outranked me and my boss, and if she decided to, she could still strip me of my title as an enforcer, or transfer me away from my region, or . . . There were too many ways she could make my life miserable, and so I ungraciously allowed her to shadow our every move. While Pamela studied us, judged us, and waited for Jamie to swamp me with evil, I did my best to treat her the same way I wanted her to treat Jamie: with respect and as an ally.
Telling myself I was being the bigger person helped. Venting my frustration on straggler drones helped more.
I reinstated the old rules with Jamie: He promised not to alter anyone’s soul—human or otherwise—and we both agreed neither metaphysical energies belonged on inanimate objects. Jamie tested me repeatedly, going out of his way to exterminate all traces of lux lucis from inanimate objects wherever we were, including at home. I didn’t object, and my lack of reaction gave him the reassurance he needed that I would stick to my word this time. I never asked him to use lux lucis, letting him choose when he wanted to help me clean up atrum, and though he didn’t assist with the extermination of any imps or vervet, he didn’t try to stop or dissuade me.
After three days of fervent use of his atrum to wipe out all inanimate traces of lux lucis, Jamie left the rest alone. I didn’t comment on that, either.
Surprisingly, Pamela didn’t interfere. Some of my words must have penetrated past her preconceived beliefs about pookas, because she didn’t attempt to tell either of us how to behave—and judging by her scowls and occasional white-knuckle grip on the hilt of her knife, not speaking up cost her. I wished I could have gotten a picture of her horrified expression the first time she witnessed Jamie’s unrestrained play with imps. Pamela had seen him interact with the chinchilla-like evil fluff balls that first night at the high school, but I’d killed the imps quickly, afraid of her potential retaliation against Jamie. Now I took my time, in no hurry to suppress Jamie’s fun. Even after the extreme control Pamela had seen Jamie exert over the dual energies of his soul, I think she still expected his frolicking to transition into an atrum-spewing rampage. Instead, he laughed and cavorted with the enemy until the last imp willingly leapt to my glowing fist and died. His great evil act afterward? Convincing me to stop at In-N-Out for milkshakes we didn’t need in the cold weather.
As the days passed and Jamie and I worked in peaceful accord, performing normal cleanup around the region, Pamela’s suspicious body language gradually softened, even if she never fully relaxed. To be fair, I never could shake my stiffness in her presence. I respected her lux lucis skills and strength, and I respected her position, but too much had transpired for me to like her. Trusting Pamela remained elusive, too, though I told myself she’d made her decisions with the best intentions. She had attempted to take Jamie away from me; no matter how hard I tried, no matter how professional I wanted to be, I couldn’t look past that.
Fortunately, Pamela’s other duties prevented her from following us around forever. When we were finally granted our first unchaperoned, work-free day, I already knew exactly what we were going to do. In keeping with my unspoken vow to introduce Jamie to more fun, I’d decided to go all out for Christmas this year, starting with a tree squeezed in among the jungle of plants in our front room.
“So, there’s a man in a red suit who is flown around by slave reindeer at night every winter solstice, and he drops presents down chimneys?” Jamie asked after my broad-strokes explanation of the holiday during the drive to the tree lot.
“That’s the myth of Santa.” More or less.
“Is he related to tyver?”
“Uh. Maybe,” I hedged. We hadn’t discussed how he felt about tyver since one had nearly killed him, and I didn’t want to needlessly disparage one of his forms. “Santa’s presents aren’t eggs. They’re things people want, like toys and games, and he delivers them all on the night before Christmas.”
“To everyone? In one night?”
“Yep.”
Jamie narrowed his eyes at me. “Is Santa a real creature?”
“W
ell, I’ve never seen Santa.”
Jamie frowned. I should have known he was too smart to be fooled, even if he technically was young enough to believe.
“But I’ll let you in on a secret: Adults have been pretending Santa exists for centuries. It’s a global conspiracy, and we all sneak around getting presents for our loved ones; then we wrap them up and put them under the tree to be opened on Christmas morning. That way, everyone gets to play Santa.”
Jamie’s eyes lit up. “Even me?”
“Even you.”
I let Jamie select the tree—which involved a meticulous inspection of every single pine in the lot before he picked a small Douglas fir. To assuage Val’s jealousy, the handbook got to pick the tree topper. I received a lot of strange looks, walking around Target holding an open book up to the shelves of glitter-encrusted stars and gauzy angels. Val chose a gaudy light-up winged chipmunk holding a hymnal book that bore a striking resemblance to a certain sentient handbook. I also gave them both free rein in selecting ornaments, and Jamie and I staggered from the store, our arms loaded with bags and our hearts full of good cheer.
Bridget came over to help decorate the Christmas tree, and we cranked up the holiday tunes, propped Val out of reach of the cats on a high bookshelf where he could be part of the conversation—if disjointedly—and turned our plain tree into a glistening jewel. Bridget’s initial acute embarrassment around Jamie transformed into avid fascination, and the pooka soaked up her attention. I marveled anew at my friend’s adaptability, feeling blessed to have someone so understanding in my life.
“He’s really sweet,” Bridget whispered to me when Jamie was out of hearing range. “I can see why you’re besotted with him.”
“‘Besotted’? Ew. That makes it sound flirty.”
“You do realize he’s absolutely gorgeous, right?”
“He’s less than a month old, so put your eyes back in their sockets.”
“Easy, mama bear. It was just an observation.”
Bridget wasn’t the only woman to notice Jamie. Everywhere we went, he turned heads. Objectively, I could acknowledge that he was strikingly handsome. He also exuded unchecked confidence and curiosity, a combination that worked like catnip on teenage girls and drew the eyes of older women. But to me he was just Jamie, my pooka. As of yet, he remained oblivious to the attention he garnered, and I hoped he retained his innocence for a long, long time. I wasn’t prepared to have the interspecies sex talk with him.
Dame Zilla waited until the tree was fully decked before scrambling up the slender trunk. The Douglas fir’s quivering limbs and the chime of disturbed ornaments sent the kitten into a frenzy, and she leapt to the carpet and tore through the house, every hair on her body standing on end. When Mr. Bond deigned to rise from his prized position on the recliner to sniff fallen ornaments, the kitten charged him, only to scare herself before getting within reach and tearing away again. Tail puffed, Mr. Bond slunk back to his chair, giving us baleful looks when we dared laugh.
Though I had plenty of opportunities to mention it to Bridget, I didn’t bring up Niko’s kiss. I’d given it a lot of thought. Every time I tried dismissing it as a spur-of-the-moment, we-both-survived-a-near-death-experience impulse, I would remember the almost-kiss on the wildfire-ravaged hillside. I had proof now that it had been more than frost moths prompting him that day. Mr. Dark and Deadly was genuinely attracted to me—a thought that sent nervous butterflies through my midsection and a giddy flush to my cheeks every time I contemplated it.
However, since I hadn’t seen or heard from Niko since that night, I wasn’t sure anything between us had changed—nor could I decide if I wanted it to. So I kept the kiss to myself. If I told Bridget, she would want to dissect it from every angle, and then I’d be forced to define my feelings. Plus, the last thing I needed was to spend more time reliving the tantalizing memory of Niko’s lips and lux lucis.
But, damn, the man knew how to kiss.
Instead, I told Bridget about my public sexual mauling of Alex—which she wholeheartedly approved of, even if she did make fun of me for it—and of our promised hiking date after the holidays.
“I get to go as a Great Dane, and Madison says Alex has a dog, so I get to meet another friend,” Jamie chimed in.
“That should be . . . interesting?” Bridget shot me a bewildered look.
Nerve-racking and potentially disastrous were how I described it to myself, but I would make it work.
Fingers crossed.
After Bridget left that evening, Jamie, Val, and I settled around the dining table to decorate Christmas stockings. Jamie had finished a whimsical, paint-and-glitter portrait of Dame Zilla on the kitten’s new stocking and I was in the midst of attempting to use a tube of glitter glue to re-create Val’s finicky artistic design atop his stocking when a familiar pounding knock drowned out the music. Mood souring, I answered the door.
“Hi, Pamela.”
“May I come in?”
Grudgingly, I opened the door wider than a crack and allowed the inspector into my home. A familiar nausea churned in my stomach as I ran through the possible reasons for her presence, and a subconscious impulse lifted my hand to cover my heart. During the last week working together, Pamela had never once asked to test my purity, and if she thought to do so now, I’d assist her right back over the threshold.
She stepped inside, eyes darting from the decorated tree to Jamie, surrounded by art supplies at the table, a glitter smear across his chin. Her eyes widened at the sight of his yellow polka dot and pink bunny pajamas, then bounced to me, taking in my identical outfit. Using a clean finger, Jamie slid Val, open, across the table so the inspector could more easily see the huge Hi, Pamela! splashed across his page.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
Pamela started and focused on me. “I’m leaving town.”
“Really?” My face stiffened as I attempted to mask my relief and happiness behind a professional facade. “That’s, ah . . .” What was the polite response here? Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you? No, that couldn’t be right.
“I’m not here for a hug,” Pamela assured me. “I’m here in an official capacity. Unless you have a valid objection, I’m granting the expansion of your region.”
My breath whooshed out in shock. “You are?”
“Brad has the skills. His deft negotiations of the prajurit peace talks and his coolheaded leadership during the tyver invasion proved he hasn’t lost the edge that once made him one of California’s top wardens. But I didn’t think he had an enforcer to back him up.”
“What changed your mind?”
“When I first read Brad’s reports about you, I thought he had exaggerated them to make his region look better. When I met you, I was sure of it.”
Ouch. But she wouldn’t be Pamela if she wasn’t brutally honest.
“You’re inexperienced, and from an outsider’s perspective, dangerously rash. But I mistook your compassionate nature”—Pamela’s eyes flicked to Jamie, making her meaning unmistakable—“as a weakness. I see now the truth of Brad’s assessment. You’re fast becoming an enforcer to be reckoned with. But if you feel overburdened with your current responsibilities—”
“No. Definitely not. I want the larger region.” Did she honestly think I would stand between my boss and his fondest wish? Besides, I had gotten used to the extra territory. To go back to our former region would feel cramped, especially with Jamie at my side. We needed more space to explore together.
“Very well. I’ll let Brad know.” Pamela reached for the doorknob, splitting her parting words between me and Jamie. “I’ll be keeping an eye on your progress. Best of luck.”
I didn’t need luck; I had Jamie, and together, we could do anything.
The End
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