“Sure.”
They were friends.
Delphi shut down her bear-were research and felt around for the high heels she’d kicked off. Losing her shoes was a bad habit. It meant she’d often faced unexpected visitors to her office in stockinged feet.
Heels on, she wandered down to the evidence bunker to sign out the sword labelled “Excalibur 5”. Other swords claimed to be Excalibur had also been presented to the Collegium over the years.
Milbourne, the mage in charge of the evidence bunker, handed her the sword. “Don’t cut yourself.”
“Ha ha.” Delphi smiled obligingly at the lame joke. She couldn’t resist swinging the sword as she returned to her office. Wielding a sword felt powerful and the balance on this one was perfect. The sword wasn’t too long. It was designed for combat. En garde.
She rounded the corner and walked into Jet.
Jet had been following his nose since entering the Collegium, but even though his nose had never lied to him yet, he was still shocked to actually see Delphi in front of him—and carrying a sword. She looked fierce and sexy in those killer high heels and short skirt, and she obviously knew how to use the sword.
“Jet?”
“What are you doing here?” they said together.
He shook his head. “I thought I smelled your scent in the foyer.”
“You tracked me by scent?” Her eyes widened. Then she stared beyond him, evidently noticing their growing audience of her curious colleagues. She scowled, gripped his arm and tugged him into a tiny office that smelled of her, of woman, chocolate and roses. She shut the door on their audience with a sharp bang.
With shelves on both walls and under the window, the tiny space was narrow, but he didn’t mind being crowded with Delphi.
She put the sword she held down on her desk and folded her arms. “What are you doing here?”
Since the many shelves in the office were crowded with huge old leather books that were likely grimoires, as well as crystals, scrying bowls, masks, figurines and more objects that his recent cramming on arcane lore enabled him to recognize as magic, he decided it was safe to tell her the truth. It wasn’t like she’d disbelieve in magic. “I work here.”
“Horse apples,” she snapped.
He laughed.
She unfolded her arms and gripped the edge of her desk. “You’re a bear-were, Jet. You don’t work for the Collegium.”
“You know what I am?” In his shock, he took a step toward her. In the small space, that meant he was less than arm’s length from her.
She tipped her head back to keep her gaze locked with his. “I recognized you as a were, so I investigated a little.”
“But you didn’t know I worked here?” Half-question, half-statement.
Her mouth compressed a moment. “I didn’t investigate you as a person. I’m not my over-protective mom or brother. I mean I used a spell to determine what kind of were you and the children are.”
Mention of Tony and Grace gave him pause. “Who else knows we’re bear-weres?”
“I haven’t told anyone.” She stopped frowning. “It’s your secret, Jet. Yours to keep. I just wanted to know who’d be living next door to me.”
And in her house. She’d known he was a bear-were and she’d welcomed him and the kids anyway. He liked that. He liked that a lot. Then a thought struck him and he scowled. “Is that why you ruled out a relationship between us, because I’m a were?”
She kind of stared at him.
Yeah, they had bigger issues to deal with. Maybe. He still wanted an answer.
She must have realized he’d wait till he got one, too. “No.” But she didn’t elaborate.
He decided he’d pushed his luck on that topic about as far as it would stretch. For now. “So.” He glanced around the tiny office. “You’re a magic talent?”
“I am.” Delphi struggled to process the facts. Fact one, her bear-were neighbor was in her office in the Collegium. Fact two, and just as mind-boggling, it felt right to have him here. He was standing close, inside her personal space, exactly in the right place for her to straighten from perching her butt against her desk and be in his arms. She stayed where she was, but it was a struggle. In his dark gray suit and sharp red tie, Jet was all kinds of handsome.
No, not handsome. Compelling.
“I’m an alchemist, hence my office in the alchemists’ department.”
Her sarcasm won her a faint grin. “I worked that out. You’re a research mage, but you must have a specialty.”
“I study legendary objects or those that claim to be.” She glanced at the sword on her desk. “My magic is general, like a guardian’s, but not for combat. How did you get past the guardians? They’re not big fans of weres.”
“Because we can’t be directly affected by magic? I’ve gathered that. But they’re not the worst magic snobs.”
She winced but couldn’t argue. Some of her colleagues were dismissive of those who couldn’t wield magic.
“I’ve worked with some guardians before,” Jet said. “We got along. That’s partly why I was chosen for the new position of were liaison.”
“The Collegium has a were liaison?” She hadn’t heard of it.
“Lewis is letting the information filter through rather than making a big announcement. And I haven’t been at headquarters much. I have my own office a block away, and mostly, I’ve been after Emma’s killer. Steve understands family commitments, and Emma’s death is a magic as well as a were problem.”
“It is?” Delphi’s head was whirling. Steve who? And is Jet working his cousin’s case with the Collegium?
“Emma was flayed because her skin had a spell tattooed on it and because the killer needed a sacrifice. Courier and victim all in one. Someone is running a banned spells trade that supplies the human life along with the spell.” The words were uttered evenly, but the look in his eyes was feral. “The mastermind ought to choose his customers more carefully. In flaying Emma, her killer overlooked a trace of the spell. We found two more victims when I tracked back through Interpol’s database. No one else had recognized the magic element.”
What he described was so horrible it was like spiders crawling over her skin.
As for Jet, the man who was so reassuring and caring with Tony and Grace, looked lethal now. When he discovered the villain who’d arranged their mom’s death, he mightn’t wait for outside justice.
Delphi tried to comprehend the cascade of information and emotion. “But…what…who…how do you come to be a were liaison?”
“Steve and Fay,” he said.
Oh, that Steve. Delphi knew who Steve and Fay were. After the dramas a few months ago, everyone associated with the Collegium recognized their names.
Fay Olwen was the direct descendant of the Collegium’s founders, and until she’d revealed his unwitting connection to a demon (who she went on to defeat and banish), her father had been the president of the Collegium. She was rumored to be the most powerful mage alive. However, she’d left the Collegium behind to start a new life with her fiancé, Steve.
“Steve is the new Suzerain.” Jet paused. “Do you know what that means?”
“I have some idea.” Many in the Collegium had been curious about who Fay—who’d always been so alone—had fallen in love with. “He rules on matters of justice in the were community.”
“Yes.” Jet crossed the couple of steps to the window. “I’m a marshal, one of the weres appointed and trained to investigate and deliver for judgment those weres who commit serious crimes, particularly where mundane justice might struggle to contain them.”
Delphi translated that into her terms. “You’re like a Collegium guardian.”
He faced her, the light from the window silhouetting his broad shoulders. “That’s how Fay advises I present my role to the Collegium.”
His response made her curious. “How do you see your role?”
“Active investigation and alliance building. Lewis agrees with me. He understands that
weres and mages mightn’t be natural allies, but where we agree on protecting mundanes and our paths cross, we should work together.”
The Lewis he so casually referred to was the Collegium’s current president, former guardian, austere master of a new form of magic, and a man who frankly scared Delphi. That he obviously didn’t scare Jet impressed her.
“I think they picked the right person for the role,” she said.
Jet shook his head. “I’d have refused it, except that it matched my need to provide a stable home for Tony and Grace. This gives me regular hours, more or less, and I stay in the country.”
“And you get to pursue their mom’s murderer.”
“I’d have done that, regardless.” He paused. “So, now we know each other’s secrets. Do all your family have magic?”
“Not to speak of. What they do have is minor and urban-based. I’d swear magic is evolving in the twenty first century. Uma has some magical immunity to electric shocks, which helps in her work as an electrician. And there’s a strong predictive streak in the family. We tend to be lucky when we gamble. Me having magic powerful enough to warrant Collegium training was a bit of a fluke. It hasn’t happened for anyone else in my generation.”
“It’s fading?”
“More like hiding. My dad’s family claims they can trace their lineage back to a priestess of the Oracle at Delphi. Hence my name. Magic in our family dips, but has always returned. Around puberty we might find my niece or nephew levitating furniture or setting it on fire.”
He laughed ruefully. “And I thought two bear-were cubs would be tough to raise. If they had magic, I’d be truly lost.”
“Not you.” She was sure of it. “Tell me about the spell tattooed onto your cousin’s skin.”
Jet lost all humor. “Stay out of this, Delphi.”
“I’m a research mage. I’m not about to go out into the field and put myself in danger.”
Her reassurance as to her cowardice didn’t noticeably reassure him. His expression was grim, his eyebrows drawing down. “There are some things that once you’ve seen, you can’t unsee them. I appreciate the offer of assistance, but two guardians are working the case with me. They’re looking into the magical side of things.”
And they’d have more experience than her. “All right. But if you need any magical questions answered or any help…”
“I’ll ask my neighbor.” He smiled. “I should go. I’m here to discuss the discovery of the child’s body with my guardian contacts, but your scent distracted me. I thought I was imagining your presence in the foyer.”
“Dreaming of me?” she teased.
He had a hand on the door, ready to leave, but the look he sent her way seared her. He left without another word. But really, what words were needed?
She sank into her chair, her knees wobbly.
Her colleagues stampeded in. “Who is he?”
“My neighbor.”
Jet’s meeting with the two Collegium guardians generated a plan of action, but no results. The guardians were frustrated by their inability to locate the murdering scum mutilating bodies in their city, but Jet was furious. Only with Delphi did he feel calm. Otherwise, the rage that he locked down and hid from the world, simmered.
He strode into his own office and slung his jacket and tie vaguely in the direction of his chair. He needed to run. Best of all would be to run as a bear, but in bear-were form he was ten feet tall and more than a tad noticeable.
He changed into exercise gear and headed for Central Park, veering away from the main paths and deep into the park. He opened his senses to the cool green scent of grass and trees. His nostrils flared. He really was losing it. He thought he scented Delphi, again.
Then he pounded round a curve in the path and there she was, seated on a bench with another woman her age, eating a salad. A sparrow pecked near their feet, jaunty and unafraid.
He stopped.
Delphi stared at him.
The woman beside her squealed. “Is this him? Oh wow.” The woman’s gaze drifted over him. “Why is my neighbor seventy six years old and a miserable grump?”
“Bad karma,” Delphi said briefly.
Which had her friend laughing and choking on her salad.
Jet forced himself to resume running and to leave Delphi’s enticing scent behind. He ran and as he did so, his thoughts returned to the investigation.
Someone was selling forbidden spells.
These were spells so vile that the Collegium had forbidden them and had destroyed every copy of them bar two written-in-blood grimoires locked in the Collegium and Vatican’s vaults. As far as double and triple checking could ascertain, no one had viewed those grimoires in over a year. Yet someone had at least one death spell, the tattered remnant of which had clung to Emma.
Spells so evil and powerful had to be contained during transfer. That was why grimoires were heavily enchanted. But the other way to contain a spell was to tattoo or brand it into flesh. The living body held the magic in. And the murdering scum engaged in this trade had found another benefit. The victim who’d been tattooed was carefully selected to become part of the spell they carried, by being sacrificed in its enactment.
Thus, Emma’s death far from her children in London. Her killer must have believed that no one would care about the fate of a drug addict.
Wrong. So wrong. Jet ran faster through Central Park, running past a waterfall and wishing he could stand under the cold, pounding water.
The person trading in the banned spells had made his biggest mistake when he selected Emma for sacrifice. If he’d understood that she was a bear-were, he’d have stayed away, but Emma hadn’t been able to shift form. She’d been locked away from her bear-nature. She’d hated, resented and been ashamed of her human-only form. Other weres accepted the restriction and got on with their lives. But Emma had, instead, escaped into addiction.
I should have checked on her.
Too late for regrets. But Jet could change the future.
The person responsible for Emma’s death had to live in New York. She’d been sent from New York to London. The person who’d sent her from New York ought to have realized there was something different about Emma. Weres had accelerated healing and she would have healed faster than an ordinary human from her tattoo. Unless Emma’s drug addiction had worn out her body? If the rogue mage had realized that Emma was a were, would he have killed her himself, here in New York?
The child found on Saturday had been found in New York, dead but not sacrificed. When something had gone wrong, the rogue mage had cut his losses. The Collegium guardians speculated that the spell had wrought some change in the child that threatened the killer and the killer had reacted.
The killer cleaned up his mess. There were no clues for Jet to follow. But the rogue mage’s London customer had been careless in leaving that remnant of tattooed spell on Emma’s body and leaving her where she could be found. The guardians hypothesized that Emma being a were had affected the spell she’d been sacrificed to and that this had panicked her killer into a less than scrupulous tidy up.
But most mages wouldn’t have panicked and it was doubtful that any others had faced the complication of having to deal with a were sacrifice. So, how many bodies haven’t we found? How many more people have been sacrificed to evil?
Jet focused abruptly as Delphi’s scent returned. Damn. In his preoccupation, he’d run a circular route, and now, he confronted her again.
However, her friend had gone.
Delphi patted the bench beside her.
He dropped onto it. Then winced. Fortunately, the bench didn’t break, though it shook from his heavy landing.
“Did you manage to outrun your thoughts?” Delphi’s question was wryly sympathetic.
“No.” Her scent filled his lungs. He ached to kiss her. That would stop him thinking. If he could fill his senses with her, nothing else would exist. He edged away from her on the bench, wary of his clamoring instincts to lose himself in making love t
o her. Claiming her. His bear-nature was close to the surface, primitive and aroused. Annoyed with himself, he spoke too abruptly. “Are you able to look after Tony and Grace tonight? I can arrange my schedule around when you’ll be home.”
“You’re going hunting?” She looked at him with soft brown eyes, serious but not startled.
“I’ll be following up a couple of leads after dark.”
She finished her coffee. “I’ll be home.” She stood up to walk away. She got as far as the trash can, dumping her rubbish, and he was there.
He could move fast when he wanted to—and he didn’t want to watch her walk away.
She bumped into him, her nose against his throat, and jerked back.
He had to grind his teeth to stop from reaching for her. This attraction he felt for her was one-sided. She might occasionally flirt or show a feminine awareness of him, but she’d said she didn’t want a relationship with him. This was his problem. He had to deal with it.
Until she put a hand in his hair, pulled his head down, and kissed him.
Chapter 4
Delphi had set clear boundaries for herself and her gorgeous neighbor. They were sensible boundaries. A romantic entanglement between them could be disastrous. If things didn’t work out it would be beyond awkward. He lived next door, so she would see him all the time. More importantly, he was responsible for two cute kids who’d get attached to her and confused if something went wrong between her and Jet and they separated. Then there was the fact that she had magic and he was a were, and weres were notoriously dubious of magic.
Except—he wasn’t!
He knew who she was and he still wanted her. The look he’d given her as he left her office had made that clear, and now he was standing in front of her, all reined-in masculine power, and she wanted him.
She wasn’t the only one.
As Arlee, who’d had lunch with her said. “Wowsa.” Arlee had also added, “Not that I have a chance. The man was locked onto you like a sex-seeking guided missile.”
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