“Gerald Svenson saw sense?”
The tiny check in the other’s breathing told Marcus that on this point, Nelson hadn’t lied.
“Stag policy is not to divulge a client’s identity. I’d like to repeat my personal apology that one of our agents escalated events beyond acceptable parameters. I have apologized to your father in person.”
“Dad must have loved that,” Marcus said drily. Paul hated and feared magic.
“He asked me to leave.”
Marcus nodded. “Could you pass a message on for me, please? I could contact Gerald Svenson myself, but I don’t think he’d like it.”
The Stag boss’s voice went cold. But it also contained a tiny bit of curiosity. “Go on.”
And there was confirmation of Nelson’s information.
Marcus kept his message simple. “I spared Nelson’s life. The next time someone comes after me or mine, the person who hired them dies.”
“Understood.” The Stag boss cleared his throat. “And to be sure that we understand each other, Stag will no longer accept cases involving your family, unless we’re protecting them.”
“Good call,” Marcus said, cold but satisfied. He disconnected.
Sadie studied him from the bathroom doorway where she stood combing her hair. “You know who wants the amulet. This Gerald Svenson.”
“He won’t bother you again.” Marcus was sure of it. “He doesn’t want the amulet enough to cross me.”
Sadie smiled. “My talent wasn’t wrong. You’ve kept me safe.” She didn’t give him a chance to respond that if he’d kept her safe, she’d also saved him. His heart, at any rate. “Speaking of safe, what is this place?”
“The Jade Dragon House. The rumor about the Long family are that they’re guardian dragons. I thought that was a metaphor for the nature of their magic, but since I can now transform into a griffin…”
Her jaw dropped. “Barzillai is a dragon?”
“Possibly.”
“Wow.” She wandered back into the bathroom.
He checked his phone for other messages. He’d expected something from his dad, at least a text that he and Winona were safe in Boston. However, Paul had left reporting to the Stag mercenaries.
Nor was there a message from Sadie’s friend, Vanessa. That meant the 3:45pm meeting today was still on.
Walking beside Marcus, Sadie retraced their late night passage through the private hotel till they were nearly at the front entrance. Then they followed their noses. An enticing aroma of something spicy and hot made her stomach rumble.
“Hi, you must be Sadie and Marcus.” A friendly woman in her mid-thirties glanced up from paperwork spread over a coffee table. She sat on the floor with a toddler playing with blocks near her. “I’m Erica, Barzillai’s wife. Gran is making chicken and dumpling soup. You’re welcome to join us for lunch.”
“We’d love to,” Sadie said impulsively. “It smells heavenly.”
“You missed breakfast. You must be starving. Come on through.” Erica gathered up her paperwork and stood.
The toddler, dressed in a pink t-shirt and pink leggings with pink bows in her hair, bounced up and ran to Marcus. She hit him in the leg with the wooden block she held, but it didn’t seem a calculated assault. “Man!”
“He sure is, princess,” Sadie joked.
Erica laughed. “Judy has learned that male guests are more likely to spin her in a helicopter ride.”
Marcus looked appalled. His eyebrows rose and his mouth opened, perhaps to protest.
“Man! Fly!” The block hit his leg again.
“Hold her under the arms and spin in a circle,” Sadie advised.
Marcus gave her a disbelieving look and Erica a questioning one.
Erica shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
He stooped and lifted Judy cautiously.
The little girl dropped her block and began giggling. As he turned in a careful circle she began flapping her arms. He spun a fraction faster. The giggles increased.
Sadie felt her heart turn over as he slowed and Judy impulsively leaned in and hugged him.
His returning hug looked very natural and just as impulsive. In fact, he appeared enchanted, smiling as the little girl gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek.
“Judy’s magic strikes again,” Barzillai said from the doorway.
Marcus stiffened. “I had your wife’s permission.” He stooped to set the toddler on the floor, but she clung to him like a monkey. He shot a help me look at Sadie.
Sadie was dealing with her own problems. Marcus held Judy as if she was precious beyond belief, but he evidently feared that her father wouldn’t trust him with her at all.
“You have my permission, as well. You bring no harm to this house,” Barzillai said. “Detaching Miss Limpet isn’t easy. Would you mind carrying her into the dining room?”
Judy beamed. “Good daddy.”
Erica shook her head. “We all know who rules this house during the day, monster miss. Wait till your brother gets home from school.”
Judy ignored her mom with as much aplomb as a British duchess.
Lunch was delicious and included the matriarch of the family as well as three other guests. Conversation centered on the best mosquito repellant since one of the guests was on her way to the Amazon. Everyone had their own ideas.
“Just don’t eat bananas,” Erica said. “Mosquitos are attracted to something they do to your blood.”
“I like the Long family,” Sadie said as she and Marcus walked to the heart of Chinatown to find a cab.
“They seem a close family.”
Which reminded her. “Have you heard from your dad?”
Marcus hailed a cab.
One glimpse of the firm line of his mouth and Sadie didn’t push the question. The cab smelled dirty, especially after the freshness of the Jade Dragon House. She was glad to arrive at Venice Beach and step out into the air that smelled of the sea and of fried food.
The boardwalk was busy with the weekend crowd, some lunching, others exercising or people watching. The pier where she was to hand over the amulet to Caitlyn had people fishing from it.
Marcus clasped her hand and they strolled along, pausing to stare at a mime artist, then watching the skateboarders.
“Pet rocks? Seriously?” She resisted as he tugged her to a halt in front of a tourist store. The fist-sized pebbles had faces painted on them and glittery hair stuck haphazardly.
“You can use one as a paperweight to remember this day,” he said.
The stallholder nodded enthusiastic agreement. “Special day. Special rock.” The beads in the guy’s hair rattled.
Sadie rolled her eyes. But as she watched Marcus select the smallest of the rocks, she had a suspicion. It was only a fraction bigger than the amulet.
He turned away and shoved the rock into his jeans pocket, his t-shirt falling back down to hide the lump. If someone tried to pick his pocket to steal the amulet, they’d be disappointed. A pet rock definitely wasn’t the same.
The amulet hung around her neck. She wasn’t sure if she could unobtrusively remove it to pass it to Caitlyn. If people were watching…Marcus said the bounty had been lifted, but if people hadn’t heard, they might still be after the amulet. She and Marcus were sticking with their original plan, just to be sure Naomi would be safe.
“I’ll buy you an ice cream.”
Sadie looked around for an ice cream van, but he guided her into a café with a great view of Venice Beach and the pier. She sat down and leaned forward at the small table. “Can you sense many magicks? Is anyone following us?”
“Many magicks, but no one tail.”
The waitress arrived and Sadie ordered an ice cream sundae with everything.
“We’ll share,” Marcus said, eyes widening as another waitress carried past a giant sundae. “And two coffees.”
Sadie resisted the urge to check her watch. “What do we do, now?”
“We wait.”
Chapter 20
> “Want to stretch your legs before we go?” Marcus asked casually as he paid their bill at the Venice Beach café.
At least, he sounded casual, but Sadie recognized her cue. “I don’t get to the ocean often enough. I’d like to walk out along the pier.”
“Sounds good.” A few steps onto the pier, he draped his leather jacket over her shoulders. “The wind’s cold.”
“My fault for not bringing a jacket.” She spoke lightly as she attempted to control her breathlessness.
While Marcus apparently fiddled with draping his jacket around her, his strong fingers found and snapped the silver chain around her neck that held the amulet. Silver often resisted magic, so they hadn’t risked using his telekinesis to break the chain. However, his telekinesis did effectively transfer the amulet from beneath her sweater to lodge in the pocket of her jeans.
It was a weird sensation to feel the silver owl and its chain, both warm with her body heat, travel over her skin while both her and Marcus’s hands were innocently on display as they kissed briefly before, with a flick of the collar of his leather jacket, he released her.
They walked side by side, but not touching.
Sadie counted her breaths, worried that she might hyperventilate. She sure wasn’t the stuff spies were made of. But she did manage to identify Caitlyn.
As Vanessa had promised, Caitlyn was the third person fishing on the right side of the pier. Fortuitously, she was fishing next to an older man and his young grandson. The kid appeared to be about eight and seriously intent on his red fishing reel. The cute kid was also the perfect excuse to stop.
“Have you caught anything?” Sadie asked him.
“Not yet.” The boy didn’t take his eyes off the sea.
His grandfather did. The elderly man seated beside the boy smiled up at Sadie. “It’s not for lack of trying. Given his dedication, he should have caught a whale.”
“Granddad, there aren’t any whales at Venice Beach.”
Everyone laughed, including Caitlyn who turned naturally to join the conversation. “Would you like some tips?”
Since her cooler held two fish, Sadie understood why the boy nodded eagerly.
Caitlyn passed her fishing rod to Sadie. “Here, hold this a moment.”
“I can—” The boy’s grandfather seemed a bit appalled to have Sadie landed with the rod.
She smiled and shook her head, her smile widening as she looked at Marcus. Her nerves had eased. This was going so well.
He grinned back with the amused boredom of a man unwilling to wait around while a woman coached people on fishing. He wandered on, down the pier.
Perfect, perfect timing. Now she just had to get things right. Since he could move the amulet with telekinesis, she had to wait for him to jiggle it. That would be her sign.
He reached the end of the pier.
Caitlyn and her young fishing student were deep in a discussion of bait. It smelled.
The amulet in Sadie’s pocket jiggled. She jiggled the fishing rod. “I think there’s something on the line.” She and Caitlyn fumbled the rod’s handover. Sadie dropped it over the cooler. As she crouched to retrieve it, Marcus’s leather jacket, insecurely draped over her shoulders, slid off to land partly in the bait bucket. “Ew.” Now, that was unplanned. Stick to the plan! The containment box for the amulet was in the cooler beneath the slippery fish and a concealing layer of ice.
With one hand, Sadie snatched up Marcus’s jacket, dropping it over her knee and—actually this was better than the original plan—partly over the cooler. In the shelter of it and her and Caitlyn’s bodies, she quickly lifted the lid of the containment box and shoved in the amulet. The box clicked shut.
Sadie couldn’t sense magic, so she didn’t know if the box had worked. She just had to hope it had, and that she and Marcus had gotten their timing right.
“The fish got away,” Caitlyn said as she straightened holding the fishing rod.
The boy next to her gave Sadie a disapproving glare.
“Oops.” Sadie giggled.
Caitlyn smiled faintly.
The elderly man shook his head. “Son, all good fishing stories begin with the one that got away.”
Marcus returned to find them all—except the boy—laughing.
“I’m sorry about your jacket.” Sadie showed him the gunk on its arm. “It fell in the bait bucket.”
“Huh.” He took the jacket from her and as they left the pier, he balled it up and shoved it into a trashcan. “Problem solved.”
“In more ways than one?” she asked hopefully.
“You could say so.” He put an arm around her and they left the crowds of Venice Beach and the cool ocean wind behind. “I threw it in the ocean.”
To anyone listening and in the know, it would sound as if he’d thrown away the amulet. He’d planned to mime the action and splash the waves with his telekinesis, but he must have used the pet rock—probably with its glittery hair scraped off—instead. And since he was so relaxed, the containment box had worked. No one could sense the amulet now. Caitlyn, and then, Naomi, were safe.
“So it’s just us.” Sadie smiled up at him as they waited for a cab.
“Just us.” His answering smile was gloriously wicked and hot with desire.
She shivered and cuddled into him. “I can’t wait.”
Making love in their private room at the Jade Dragon House was nirvana. Marcus reduced her to a state of utter bliss. She seemed to have the same effect on him. They lay there in the afterglow, breathing fast and with hearts racing, cuddled into one another. She smoothed her hand over his chest, fingers lightly tracing his scars.
“It’s a safe house, so we can’t order in,” he said finally.
She laughed.
“What?” he asked, puzzled but willing to share her amusement.
“You’re so romantic,” she teased.
“Oh.” His eyebrows drew together fractionally.
She shook her head and kissed him. “It’s okay. I’m starving, too. We did exercise.”
He ran his hand down her back and along her hip. “I intend to exercise some more, later.”
“So we need to eat.” She bounced up from the bed, abruptly re-energized by sheer happiness. “It’s fantastic not to be worried about anything anymore.”
He watched her dress and she appreciated the view of him naked. He got up and pulled on jeans, but left them unzipped as he walked to her. His fingers tangled in her hair as he tilted her face up to his. “This is our time. We’re going to enjoy it.”
She smiled at him. He was so intense. But she agreed. They had nine years and a lifetime of heartache to make up for. This was a time for them, without thoughts of the past or future. She kissed him.
The next day, Marcus hired a car and they drove up the coast for a day by the sea before returning to the Jade Dragon House for a final night. Little Judy greeted them with shrieks of glee as Marcus spun her in a careful circle. They departed the next morning with an invitation to return any time.
“The dragon seal of approval,” Marcus murmured to Sadie as the cab drove them slowly—the Monday morning traffic was horrendous—to the airport. “The first visit is allowed unless the guest brings ill intent. It enables the scrutiny of hearts and magic. Future visits are by invitation only.”
“We passed. I’m sure your helicopter rides helped.” She was teasing.
He looked at her oddly and kept his voice low, inaudible to anyone else given the cab driver’s loud radio. “You didn’t sense Judy’s magic?”
“The little girl’s? I can’t sense magic, remember?”
Marcus ran his thumb over her knuckles. “I thought, maybe…Barzillai is powerful, but Judy hums with magic. She’ll be a force one day.”
“Good thing she adores you then.” Sadie grinned.
He shook his head at her response and blushed faintly.
“You are adorable.” Her voice went husky as she was shaken by a thought and the powerful emotion that went with it
. “If we have daughters, they’ll wrap their daddy around their little fingers.”
“God.” It was a prayer and a cry of near-anguish from him, for all that he spoke under his breath. They hadn’t spoken of their future. Now his hopes for it burst from him. “I love you, Sadie.”
“I love you, too.”
The back of a cab, stuck in Los Angeles traffic with the radio shouting about some horse race became a perfect moment as Sadie lost herself in Marcus’s kiss.
“You want the airport or a hotel?” their driver demanded.
Sadie blinked. They were at the airport.
Marcus paid as she got out of the cab. “You’re not as funny as you think you are,” he muttered to the driver.
“Envy does that to a guy.” The cab driver drove off.
Marcus put his arm around her. “If I saw us, I’d envy me, too.”
The flight to Albuquerque was without incident and a connecting flight to Santa Fe was conveniently timed. Everything was going so smoothly that a tiny bit of Marcus, a bit he wished he could disbelieve and squash, whispered that something was going to go wrong. Back in Los Angeles he’d booked the cabin near Taos that he and Sadie had made love in to be theirs for tonight. Nothing would go wrong.
“I’m sorry, sir. The SUV you booked has developed a problem with its engine. We have a family sedan?” The hire car company’s agent smiled hopefully.
Marcus nodded. “That’ll be fine.” He didn’t intend to go off-road. The sedan could handle the mountain roads as they drove out to the nexus to meet Karma. Nothing would go wrong.
“I’d like to stop at the cabin first,” Sadie said as they walked to the hire car. She put an arm around his waist. “Maybe spend a little time there?” She fluttered her eyelashes.
He laughed, his mood lifting. “Only a little time?”
“Well, that would be up to you.”
Her teasing won her a scorching kiss. “We’ll make time at the cabin.” He paused as she got into the passenger seat. “Or, at least, we’ll make out.” Her laughter followed him as he walked around the car. The sun had warmed it and the seat was hot. He pulled out his phone and switched it on. Message alerts beeped. He scrolled through them.
Phoenix Blood (Old School Book 1) Page 19