You Only Spell Twic

by Paige Howland

  “You shouldn’t have come, Alexander.”

  “You shouldn’t have tried to murder my friends.”

  Ryerson grunted.

  “Friend,” Alec amended and then jerked his head at Ryerson. “And that guy.”

  “Wait,” I said, glancing from Isadora to Alec in surprise. “You two know each other?”

  “We met in Austria,” Isadora said, “when he was still trying to get his wolf under control.”

  There was clearly a lot more to that story, but a commotion in the hall preceded two new guards into the room, who paused just inside the door and glanced at each other as though in silent argument about which one had to break news to the already pissed-off witch.

  “Que?” she snapped.

  One of them gestured her away from us. He looked nervous. Her jaw clenched in irritation, but she followed them to the doorway, out of earshot. And why not? We were surrounded by heavily armed gangsters. It’s not like we were going anywhere.

  Alec straightened, though his back was still pressed against the wall.

  “What are you doing here?” I said quietly.

  “Rescuing you.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? How’s that working out for you?”

  His lip quirked. “Ask me in five minutes.”

  Yeah. If we were still alive in five minutes. Which I supposed was his point.

  “Speaking of rescues,” he said, “thanks for mine.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He glanced at me from under light-colored lashes, his eyes amused. “But ‘stop that’? Really?”

  I shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “This time. But you can’t rely on distractions in this business, dove.”

  My heart fluttered at his pet name for me, and Ryerson snapped us an irritated look.

  “Now is really not the time,” he said.

  “Actually, now is the perfect time,” Alec said. “We need to kill a few minutes anyway.”

  I frowned. Ryerson glanced at him, but anything he might have said was eclipsed by Isadora’s rising voice and the heavy rumble of car engines pulling up outside the house.

  Isadora whirled on us—no, on Alec—eyes blazing with anger. “What did you do, Alexander?”

  “I paid the Sousa Cartel a visit. Told them you’re a witch and that you plan to work a spell that will make your coke the most addictive product on the market, thus swallowing their client base, both here and in Rio.”

  Oh.

  The map behind the desk and the addiction study made sense now.

  “They do not know magic exists. Why would they believe you?” Isadora said, but there was fear in her voice.

  He shrugged. “They didn’t, until I showed them my pretty fur coat. People believe a lot after that.”

  I stared at Alec in awe. Even Ryerson looked grudgingly impressed. Isadora fumed and then sent two of her men a look laden with instruction. They hurried out of the room, probably to verify who the visitors were. A few seconds later, shouting and gunfire erupted from the hall.

  “You were saying something about not relying on distractions?” I murmured to Alec, who shrugged.

  “Distractions make for a shitty Plan A, but as a Plan C they’re not bad.”

  Before he’d even finished the sentence, more men had flooded into the room, guns drawn. For all their shared obsession with guns, violence, and scowling, the two groups were easy to tell apart. Where Isadora’s men were clean-shaven and wearing a uniform of jeans, boots, the occasional suit jacket, and sleek, matching holsters like Bergdorf’s had run a killer sale on gangster accessories, the Sousas looked … wilder. Untamed. Dirt-packed Nikes, chains instead of belts, and a disproportionate number of the world’s neck tattoos.

  I wasn’t sure which side looked more dangerous. But I was sure that the room was starting to feel very crowded. One shot and everyone would be shooting.

  Ryerson obliged.

  He shot one of the new gangsters in the arm, whose friends of course assumed Ryerson, in his khakis and only slightly wrinkled button-down, was one of Isadora’s men. Ryerson shoved me behind the desk and dove in after me as the room exploded in gunfire.

  “We have to go,” he said.

  No kidding.

  His gaze snapped to the door, and I followed it in time to watch Isadora slip out of the room. Alec pushed away from the wall and stumbled into the hall after her.

  “She’s going for the book,” Ryerson said. “Come on.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me after him, but the moment we stepped out from behind the desk, guns turned toward us. Ryerson shoved me behind him. He shot two of them and then the gun clicked empty. Without missing a beat, he ditched it and turned to the third, closest threat, pulling off a quick combination of moves that dropped him to the floor. There were two more eager to take his place.

  Ryerson shoved me toward the door. “Get the book!” he called as he spun to face the next threat. He moved through the room with a swift, lethal deliberation, ducking behind furniture and men, using them as shields, and sometimes, somehow, as weapons.

  I reached the door and hesitated, torn between leaving Ryerson to fight his way out and stopping Isadora from escaping with the Grimoire.

  “Go!” he shouted.

  One of the men turned and saw me. One of Isadora’s, I thought, but he was covered in blood and it was hard to tell anymore. He lunged at me, and I yelped and ran.

  His heavy footsteps followed me into the hall and then vanished. Instead of making me feel safer, it felt wrong. On instinct, I ducked and a gunshot exploded off the wall where my head had just been.

  I skidded around the corner and saw Alec up ahead and way ahead of him, Isadora. Alec still moved slower than usual—at full strength he would have caught up with her a dozen times over by now—but he moved faster with each step.

  Behind me, the gunman roared, and I skidded to a stop. Alec did, too, but Isadora didn’t even slow down.

  “Ainsley, down!” Alec yelled, but I was way ahead of him. I threw myself to the ground as a volley of gunshots sailed over my head, and Alec dove to the floor too. Then the gunman’s gaze, and his aim, shifted to Alec.

  If Alec were closer, I had no doubt he could defend himself. But he was too far away, and there were no doorways for either of us to duck into. I muttered an incantation and sketched a rune, flicking it at the gunman. His aim wavered, and then he glared up at the ceiling, like it had personally offended him. He turned in a circle, once, twice, and stopped facing a painting of a milk pitcher that must have cost a fortune. He loosed a battle cry and emptied his gun into the canvas.

  I pushed to my feet and ran down the hall, grabbing Alec’s arm as I came even with him. Together, we ran down the hall.

  “What did you do to him?” Alec said as we hit the corner at a dead sprint.

  “Confundium rune,” I explained. “It’s a confusion spell.”

  He looked impressed, and I tried to squash down the warm, tingling feeling that spread through me, only to realize that tingly, numb sensation wasn’t pride, it was my arms falling asleep from the magic backlash. Stupid spells.

  We skidded around the next corner and paused, not sure where to go. The hallway was a dead end, which meant Isadora must be behind one of the six doors stretched in front of us, but which one?

  Before we could decide, someone tapped my shoulder.

  Heart racing, I screamed and spun around to find the guard I had spelled, looking at us hopefully.

  “Voce viu meu sanduiche de queijo?” he asked.

  I blinked at him.

  “He wants to know if you’ve seen his cheese sandwich,” Alec translated and then took him out with a couple of moves that even Ryerson would have been impressed by. Then he reached for the guy’s belt. I thought he meant to steal his pants (he was still naked, after all), but instead he grabbed the gun off the guy’s hip holster. The necessary accessories. He checked the gun and then tossed it aside.

  “Out of bullets,” he exp
lained as he traded it for what looked like a Taser.

  I was about to suggest he take the rooms on the right while I take the left, but a cry of rage exploded from a room on the right, saving us the trouble.

  We followed the shouting and burst into a bedroom that could comfortably fit an entire coven with room left over. Near the window stood a short, wiry man wearing a cap and a dark blue uniform with what looked like a gas company logo. He clutched an enormous book to his chest. The Grimoire. He wasn’t moving.

  In the middle of the room stood a very pissed-off witch.

  “Isadora!” Alec said.

  Isadora spun around, and the freeze spell she’d cast on the little man snapped. He dove out the window, the Grimoire still clutched in his arms. Isadora growled in frustration, and her gaze landed on us and narrowed.

  “Shit,” Alec muttered a second before she raised her hands, and a wave of air exploded from them. It shook the room and hit us with the blast of a hurricane, knocking us and the furniture back into the walls.

  I slid to the ground, dazed and blinking.

  From somewhere to my left, Alec groaned.

  Still dazed, I blinked in time to watch Isadora pull a small satchel from the wall safe that was hanging open and then disappear out the window. Wincing, I pushed myself up and glanced around. The room was trashed, splinters of wood and furniture littering the room.

  Alec was half buried under a mattress. I grabbed his arm and helped pull him to his feet. He pressed his back into the wall, unsteady.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  He nodded, but he looked shaky and pale, something that had more to do with that stupid spell she’d used on him than being tossed into a wall, I was sure.

  “Alec? Talk to me. What’s wrong? What did she do to you?”

  “Nothing she hasn’t done before,” he muttered and then smiled shakily at my look of concern.

  I started to ask him more about it, but Ryerson burst into the room.

  His gaze swept the destruction and landed on me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  He looked at Alec, who was clearly the worse off of the two of us. His mouth tightened. “Where’s Isadora?”

  “Gone,” I said.

  “Did she take the book?”

  “No.”

  “Great. So it’s still here?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Ryerson waited impatiently. Alec and I exchanged a look, and I sighed. “Somebody else stole it first.”

  “That gang Alec brought with him?” He glared at Alec. “Do you know how much of a pain in the ass stealing it back from them is going to be?”

  Alec shrugged. Why wasn’t he correcting him?

  “It wasn’t the gang,” I said. “It was a thief. He was dressed in a gas company uniform.”

  Ryerson looked surprised. “Okay. We can probably still catch him.”

  “No.” Alec pushed off from the wall with a wince. He really needed to find some pants. “We go after Isadora first.”

  Ryerson’s glare darkened. “First, you are not part of this team, and you definitely do not get to make decisions. Second, just because you slept with her—”

  My head whipped toward Alec. “You slept with her?”

  “Yeah.” To Ryerson, he said, “How can you possibly know that?”

  “I know the look you get around a woman you’ve slept with.”

  “That’s … unsettling.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Alec scrubbed a hand over his face. “Look, we have to go after Isadora because, thanks to the CIA, even without the book she has all the ingredients she needs to complete her spell.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “I found the Chinese agents dead in the closet.”

  Ryerson’s glare shifted to me. “And why were you in the closet?”

  “Because I didn’t want to be caught snooping.”

  He shook his head.

  “Look,” Alec said, “I think I know where she’s going, and I know what she plans to do. She’s going to use the spell from the book to make their drugs the most addictive in the world. They’ll take over the drug trade in Brazil, then they’ll probably expand. People will die.”

  “Which is exactly what will happen if we lose that book.”

  Alec shook his head. “Just trust me on this, okay?”

  Ryerson grunted. “Never again.” As if to signal the end of the conversation, Ryerson turned away from Alec to face me. “Let’s go.”

  I hesitated.

  “What?” he said.

  “What if he’s right? What if we do nothing and people die?”

  Ryerson’s expression softened. “It’s the job. Our mission is to retrieve the Grimoire, not prevent Isadora from completing a spell. But I’ll call it in, okay? Maybe the CIA will send another team to stop her.”

  Alec snorted.

  Ryerson’s jaw ticked and his eyes narrowed. “Consider yourself lucky we don’t have time to deal with you. But come near Ainsley again, and I will kill you.”

  They glared at each other for a long moment, the tension thick. Ryerson stepped back first.

  “Come on,” he said to me. “Let’s go.”

  He turned toward the window. Torn, I didn’t move.

  He started to turn back and then seized up, shaking, and dropped to the floor. I blinked down at him, stunned. It took me a moment to notice the Taser wires lying underneath him.

  I whirled on Alec. “What the hex did you do that for?”

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Maybe not, but friends don’t electrocute friends!”

  “He started it.”

  I was sure Ryerson would find that debatable. Alec stripped the wires and aimed the Taser at Ryerson’s still-spasming form.

  So I tackled him.

  He was still weak, or I surprised him, or maybe he just let me. Whatever the reason, we wound up on the floor, me on my back, him on top of me.

  Did I mention he was still naked?

  He seemed to realize this at the same time I did and he grinned, his gaze flicking to my mouth. My heart rate sped up, and the world shrank down to the narrow strip of floor we occupied. He felt good. Too good. He didn’t get up right away, and goddess help me, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to.

  “I had to do it, dove.”

  The reminder of what he’d just done to Ryerson doused any warm feelings I had for him like a whole freaking iceberg had been wedged between us.

  “Get off me,” I said.

  “Stop tracing that rune and I will.”

  I thought about it and then stopped tracing a rubber rune with my thumb. Besides, making Alec’s arms go rubbery when they were the only things holding his naked body at least partly off of me suddenly seemed like a poor plan.

  He grinned and pushed off me, pulling me to my feet. He swayed, and I steadied him with a frown. Then we both looked down at Ryerson, who still wasn’t moving.

  “Is that normal?” I said.

  Alec frowned. “No.”

  He bent down and felt his pulse then loosed a small, almost imperceptible sigh of relief. “He’s fine. Just unconscious. But that Taser should have stunned him, not knocked him out.”

  “Let me see it,” I said. He eyed me warily, and I rolled my eyes and crouched next to Ryerson, gingerly picking up one of the wires and sniffing it. Licorice, clove, and a hint of peppermint. Strengthening agents.

  “Isadora spelled the Tasers. I guess to make them more effective.” I glanced up at Alec. “You’re lucky, you know. If Ryerson had recovered while we were fighting, he maybe would have killed you.”

  “It maybe would have been worth it.” Before I could react to that, he went on. “We need to stop Isadora from completing that spell. Ryerson’s help would have been useful, but we can do it without him.”

  “We?”

  He ignored that, sifting through the destroyed dresser until he found a pair of men’s pants and a sweater, which he pulled on. I watched the last g
limpse of hard-packed abs disappear beneath the cotton with a mixture of relief and regret. The pants were tight against his muscular thighs and a little short. He shifted uncomfortably, and then his eyes met mine. “Ready, dove?”

  I put my hands on my hips. “No. Not until you explain some things.” I waved a hand at Ryerson. “Like why tase him? Why not let him chase down that guy and recover the book while we stop the witch? I’m not saying I’m going to help you, mind you,” I added when he smiled triumphantly.

  “Sure you aren’t. And I had to stop Ryerson.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that thief is a friend of mine.”

  8

  I blinked at Alec. Opened my mouth. Closed it.

  Of course he knew the thief. Alec knew everyone. He’d always been that way. Now it was just on an international criminal sort of scale.

  “Did you tell him to steal the book?” I asked.

  Alec looked offended. “Of course not.”

  I wanted to believe him, but I still had questions. The occasional burst of gunfire from the other side of the house helped to put my priorities into perspective. We needed to get the hex out of here.

  We considered Ryerson some more.

  “We can’t leave him here,” I said.

  Alec rubbed his chin.

  “Alec!”

  He grimaced. “Okay, okay.” He knelt and fished in Ryerson’s pockets then tossed me his keys. “Get the car and pull it around back. We’ll meet you there.”

  I hesitated, not at all sure I wanted to leave Alec alone with an unconscious Ryerson. I mean, sure, Alec had probably saved his life back there, but there were only so many times Ryerson could try to kill him before a guy takes offense to that. Besides, they had a history. One so dark and tangled neither of them would tell me about it.

  “I swear, dove. I won’t hurt him.”

  “And you won’t leave him here?”

  He made the Boy Scout sign. “Cross my heart.”

  “You were never a Boy Scout.”

  He shrugged. “Would you rather I go get the car while you drag him out of here?”

  Ryerson was a few inches over six feet and all muscle. Alec had werewolf strength. I’d once watched him rip a handle clean off a steel door. I barely topped five-three and had a special shelf in my kitchen for too-hard-to-open jars.