Moonlight Magic

by Alexander, K. R.

  I turned off all but a lamp and sat back, cross-legged on the sheet against the pillows, watching and thinking how big the world was.

  They couldn’t all be gone, the faie, even from the UK. We’d seen that green flicker. They had to still be out there. They just wouldn’t come to us again. This had kept happening to them and it could only happen when they presented themselves for whatever tricks or lures were being used. Zar knew about summoning them. These people did too, in a bigger way, a more powerful way.

  Crippled, they wouldn’t come back. Nor should they. I could only hope they were able to do the same for their enemies—flee and not succumb to any summons. Then there would be no help from faie. No more than I could check those voicemails or get in touch with anyone who’s number had been lost on my phone—Si, Gavin, Rowan…

  I could call Stefan at his bar, but even his number I didn’t know—that was only Melanie’s. World closing in, cutting off, sinking below that dark surface. Eight, yet so alone.

  Zar soon joined me, smelling of baking soda from his mint-free toothpaste. He wore briefs and a T-shirt, long hair also toweled and brushed back. He sat on the door-side of the bed with his back to me, feet still on the floor.

  “They’re in Tashkent,” I told him as he rubbed his shoulder and looked at the screen.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Oh … southeast of us…”

  He glanced at me, expression wry, and I’m sure he almost smiled.

  “Zar—?”

  He started speaking also. “You didn’t have to stay with me.”

  I’d been about to say I was sorry if he was feeling pressured—didn’t have to stay with me right now. I paused, almost spoke, and instead slit across the bed to him. I kissed his shoulder and wrapped my arms around him to lean there in silence for several minutes.

  Zar, after a time of only gazing at the hushed TV, relaxed, returning my lean, eventually turning his head to kiss me—so I knew he understood.

  Chapter 35

  I had to dry my hair a bit so as not to sleep on a soggy mess, but wasn’t troubling much about it—just enjoying the hairdryer and thinking how I could go wild and shower again in the morning if I liked. I didn’t linger, hurrying to return to Zar with the TV, which he turned off, then extended his hand as I walked back to the bed.

  I stood before him, our fingers twined and knees touching, and he kissed me. I had left my ring and moon necklace on the bathroom counter, putting only the cuff bracelet with the vow inscription back on.

  Zar stroked my hair, drew a finger to my lips, gaze traveling over my face. “I should have asked what you wanted from the start.” A whisper, watching my lips. “I wanted to be with you, show you, prove to you, bring you … everything. I still do. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Zar.” I mirrored his touch. His skin was warm and coppery and inviting. Another soft kiss. “I’ve been growing fonder of breakfast these days. I need something to take the place of coffee if I’m cutting back. Anyway, aside from seven-day-a-week breakfasts in bed, you’ve never offered me anything I didn’t want. Sometimes timing might be a bit off. That’s all.”

  “Cass? Are you sure you’re all human?”

  “Excuse me?” I pulled back to meet his eyes.

  “After that with Isaac, I’ve wondered … you could be a little bit … elf or nymph.”

  “Elves and fairies and leprechauns, and all that, are faie—the kindred. You know that. Different ways they manifest.”

  “Nowadays. There might have been elves once. Some sources say so.”

  “You and your sources.”

  He smiled. “This is not something my aunt told me…” Trailing off. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” But that smile, showing his dimples for the first time in ages, had brought tears to my eyes.

  “What do you want?” Expression intense all of a sudden, looking up at me. “If I’d asked all along?”

  I took his face in both hands. “I want you. And I want to find the balance in myself to help this pack be strong and give time to each of these relationships. You can’t imagine the joy it gives me to see you all working together, having compassion for each other and cooperating, allowing an unnatural, off-balance pack to find harmony after all.”

  I moved to sit beside him, taking his hand once more while Zar watched me. “From you personally … I want you to talk to me when you’re upset, to believe in how much I love you, even when we can’t be together, and be patient with me for a little longer about those beach walks and breakfasts in bed. We’ll get there. Know that I am never too busy to listen when you have something to say. I want to be interrupted if someone is bothering you. I want to know you feel safe enough with me to share how you’re feeling.”

  Zar wrapped one arm around my back while we leaned our heads together.

  “I’m so sorry for all you’re having to deal with, Zar. What do you want from me?”

  “To let me make you happy. Your safety. To … be with me…” He kissed my neck, his nose in my hair. His thumb rubbed the soft strap of my tank top. “I wish I could run with you changed, Cass. I’ve dreamed of you. How you are in fur. Yet I’ve hardly even seen your skin.”

  “At least we have yesterday freezing by the river to look back on fondly.” I smiled but he wasn’t looking at my face. “It’s okay,” I added, softer. “You can take it off.”

  Zar slid the strap down my arm. He kissed the spot it had been, hesitant or only very gentle. Did he still have doubts? Was he thinking of us, what he wanted, or something else?

  “Would you be willing to share what that’s like? Your dreams?”

  He breathed against my skin, lips on my collarbone. “A golden wolf, lighting paths in darkness. She takes the hidden places that even silver Moon-glow cannot kiss, then warms them with each step as she moves like a sunbeam. Her steps are silent, her eyes are leaping flames.” He kissed the point of my shoulder and pulled the hem of the tank up. I lifted my arms, helping him slip it off over my head.

  “She speaks with her eyes, inside my head. She says this is the way. Then we run like sparks down paper, like a storm off the sea. We run like light and sound and never tire. In fact … we laugh. We sing as we run. It’s no effort, no strain. We run as easily as our hearts beat, our paws light as eight dancing flames.” As he spoke he folded the white cotton tank and set it on the bedside table, always looking at me, as if picturing his story in tattoos across my skin, from lips to breasts and hand to hand.

  “What makes you think she’s me?” I asked quietly. “She could be a spirit guide.” I touched his black T-shirt and he also pulled that off—and folded it.

  “She’s both. We can know people in the waking world who guide us just as we may be guided by those confined to spirit realm.” He set the roll of shirt beside the tank top, still never looking away. “When we’re together in the dream I know who you are by how you make me feel. It’s truer even than relying on smell. I might know other people who smell like ginger and pink. I’ve never known anyone who makes me feel how you do.”

  “Did you say pink? The smell of the color pink?”

  “All colors have an odor. In the dreams you’re always coming to find me. I’ll just be hunting alone, or singing to Moon, or with Mum or Dad, or tracking masked humans in circles until my paws ache. Then … there you are.”

  He looked up, lifting his hands at the same time to trace details of my face with his fingertips. “You have gold markings like this: under your eyes, down your muzzle, across the top of your head, darkening there—but never more than rich honey with sunlight streaming through the jar. Right here you’re almost white. Just a tinge of yellow, until your chest is white hot. You smell like sunlight at the end of the day, when it’s deepest, when it’s been there soaking in, all comfortable. Your fur is soft as a rabbit’s, yet thick as an otter’s. It ripples with Sun, the light always moving, even when you’re standing still.”

  He kissed my lips. “I want everything for you, and
with you, when I first see you. Hunt for you, protect you, dig you a den, mount you and raise pups with you and be a part of your light, a part of your spirit and body. We don’t do any of those things. We just run. Run and never tire, never need more because running together, singing together, is perfect.”

  “When did you start having dreams about me in fur?” I asked when he paused.

  “Oh … in Germany…?”

  “Germany? That’s almost since we met.”

  Zar nodded, gaze drifting to my breasts again.

  “And you still have them?”

  “Last night. I woke and I wanted to go to you. Only … Isaac was on the outside of the bed. Anyway, it wasn’t the same you. Not the fur you who I wanted to curl around and run beside. Gabriel was awake. Maybe he didn’t sleep at all last night. He was so uncomfortable with the floor and cold and his leg hurting. There was a hint of dawn light so I got up and we went out. He worked off some of the limp but it might be infected soon if he doesn’t change.”

  “‘If’ he doesn’t? You think there’s some chance he will?”

  “No.”

  “He’ll have to go to a doctor. I’ll talk to him. He doesn’t want to do that either.”

  “It’s a fraught business, a wolf going to a human doctor. Anyway, he doesn’t want to go because he doesn’t want special attention, or to take up time.”

  “Help us, go home, don’t rock the boat?”

  Another nod.

  “But he growled at you…”

  Very slowly Zar looked up. As he did, an almost shy smile crept across his face. Those smooth teeth and sparkling eyes and soft dimples made my heart melt all over again, as he had more than once before.

  “He did,” Zar murmured. “I never thought I’d hear that. We’ll have so much to rebuild. I wish he’d come home with us, even to visit. Even…” Shaking his head, the smile gone. “But it’s not like he would approve of anything we did…”

  “You don’t know that.” I kissed his lips and moved to climb around him so we could lie down. “People change, first of all. Years from now, maybe he’ll still be in London but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t take an interest—wouldn’t come to visit wherever you are. Or… I don’t know…” I lay on my side, head on the pillow, while Zar turned to follow me, mirroring my position—sheet and blanket coming up only to our knees as we pushed them back. “Maybe he will leave London one day and return to his pack. You never know. A lot has changed for the Sables in the past month—in ways that will never go back. Diana was a good silver, she did her best by all of you. She didn’t forget anyone—not even strangers. But more good things, even stronger silvers, merging the best of modern ideas and tradition, can grow out of profound upheaval if you let it.”

  “Atarah is wise too…” Zar watched me slide out of my pajama bottoms and underwear and toss them to the foot of the bed—so I wore nothing but the bracelet he’d made for me. “Gabriel always liked her. She’ll know the proper directions to go next. How to keep us moving forward. She’ll already have known that September would be a month of change and challenges from her studies.”

  “I’m glad she’s there. She’ll be the one right now holding them together in London while they’re scared. She’ll be the first we call when we … whatever it is…”

  “When we win.” He pulled off his own briefs.

  “We’ll call and say…”

  “Lunae Vu benekset.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Moon has blessed us.”

  “Yes…” I cupped his chin, stroking his cheek with my thumb. “She has. Zar? Please stay with us.”

  “I wasn’t going to run out on the pack—”

  “I mean you and I. You were running out on yourself. You didn’t want to break things off. It was hurting you so much even to think about it. But you decided you had to. Next time you feel you have to do something unbearably painful … you’ll talk to me?”

  He kissed my palm and nodded. The tip of his tongue tracing the lines of my hand made me shiver.

  “I’m sorry … again. I guess we’ve never really slept together—just the two of us…”

  “In Wyoming.” He glanced up. Our faces were a foot apart, able to see one another’s bodies. “The hotel? With the waffle-maker? The last time you had a swim? Even that was with Isaac and Jed in the room.”

  “Oh…” A new sort of heat rising in my face. “Sorry about that too. I don’t remember. I was asleep by the time I hit the pillow. When I woke up your brother was in bed with me.”

  “Was he? Is that why he was under the table when I got back?”

  “He wasn’t listening to me. I didn’t mean to upset him.”

  “It’s ironic what a bad listener he is, actually.”

  “Not all the time. He can be really sweet too, and pay attention. You all don’t see that side of him. He’s endlessly on guard in this pack. That’s why he’s so tense all the time.”

  “He’s tense because he’s in skin. If he lived a life in fur he’d let sterk roll off him. Instead he starts out angry, hating himself, then Kage or Andrew have a go at him, or Jason just … shows up, and that’s it. The fuse was already burning—lit the minute he put on skin.”

  “He didn’t have on skin when he tried to throttle Jason a couple days ago. But he’s dealing with so many other emotional trials—like you. He lashes out while you turn inward.”

  Zar was inching his fingers around thick strands of my hair. “He misses you. Being out in fur… Remember how he kept watching you? He still doesn’t know what to do with you. You don’t want him in fur and he doesn’t know how to express himself in skin.”

  “He’s talked to you about this?”

  “He doesn’t have to. He loves you and he’s stymied by the idea of dealing with an intimate relationship in skin—and by you rejecting him in fur for anything more than a ball game or quick cuddle. Like he’s a worm pet—sorry.” Biting his lip.

  “You can say worm. It’s okay. I didn’t know ‘glowworm’ until he told me.”

  “Oh … you don’t hear that a lot. A worm’s a worm and all…” He ducked his head, even more embarrassed.

  “Well, I prefer glowworm.”

  “All right… Sorry…” He looked up from marveling at my hair in his fingers. “You didn’t even want to be a witch when we met you.”

  “Didn’t I? Seasons change. And I’m not the one getting him to act like a pet. You guys all play with all sorts of stuff and get in my face and lick and wag. I don’t make you behave like golden retrievers.”

  “All wolves are playful. Have you ever read about total wolves?”

  “Hardly at all, but I’m going to take it up.”

  “Total wild wolf packs are terribly playful. They collect toys they make from bones or sticks or feathers. They play games with pups and other adults, and even other species like ravens. Some wild total wolves have been known to play games with domestic dogs. That’s how much they love to play. It’s the first thing we do when we go through transition and learn our fur. Run, play, sniff out a bone.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. If it’s not just you guys being playful with me, how is it Jed had never heard of fetch?”

  Zar shrugged a little on his side, tracing a finger from my hair along the curve of my breast. The lamp was on behind me, making his skin glow warmly as I faced him, while casting me in shadow.

  “It’s not often a wolf in skin plays with one in fur,” he said. “Unless he’s minding pups or something like that. Skin games and fur games aren’t the same.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. Judgmental, but that’s silly. Jed loves playing fetch. You could kick a soccer ball—I mean football—around together while he’s in fur and you’re in skin, throw a Frisbee, hide stuff for him to sniff out. I don’t know… If games are such a part of your lives, why not?”

  “Why try?” His eyes flicked to mine. “What would Jed do if I kicked a football to him? Either take it away to shred it, or ignore me and walk off.
He doesn’t play with you because he was waiting all is life for someone to show him fetch. He plays games with you on two feet because it’s you. He won’t sniff twice at anyone else in skin.”

  “Then he’s making progress. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to spend more time with him lately also. He’s trying to be a good packmate.”

  “Again, only for your sake.”

  “I don’t believe that. Jed wants to be a total wolf. That would mean being a supportive member of a pack. He’s only up against so many issues. He said being around me makes it easier to be in skin. Skin finally has some value to him. But that’s still a long way from comfortable, isn’t it?”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  Zar frowned a little.

  “Zar?”

  “None of us were ever worth that to him.” Speaking softly. “He wouldn’t put on skin to say a word to Mum or me for months after Dad died. Even when he did change, and they put him in lockdown for what he’d done to Zacharias—crushing his leg—so he was next trapped in skin for ages, he still wouldn’t talk or interact with us.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s nothing to do with you. He loves you. I think he just doesn’t know … how to.”

  “He loves you too.”

  Zar didn’t answer.

  “Want to bring him down here?”

  “Do what?” He met my eyes.

  “Bring him down here? Show him some pointers? He kept watching us in Colorado and … you know. The night by the river. Maybe it would be a conversation-starter for you two.”

  Zar only stared at me. He looked so tormented, so torn about how to answer, so incapable of the jesting banter I’d grown used to with Andrew, or even Isaac, I wriggled closer to kiss him.

  “Zar? I’m teasing you.”

  “Oh…”

  “But if I weren’t, or if you were just concerned I was serious, you don’t have to be afraid to come back with any number of appropriate responses to clear the matter up. It’s not healthy to go along with everything the other person says when you’re upset. This is our night. Just the two of us.”