Night Magic

by Susan Squires

  “I’m feeling very, very dirty.” He reached a hand around to the back of her dress and found the tiny, invisible zipper unerringly. The hiss as it opened was like the snake of desire that was uncoiling inside her.

  “You are a very, very bad boy,” she breathed as her breasts came free of the dress.

  “Yup,” he agreed, unrepentant. “I think you should punish me by making me bring you to orgasm in the shower, and on your nice bedspread, and on that rug over there by the fireplace.”

  “I might at that. Or I might just punish you by making you come until you’re dry.”

  “Or both,” he said, hoisting her out of the dress pooled now at her feet with two of his big hands on her waist. He didn’t set her down, but swung her over his shoulder. “We’d better get started. That sounds like a full agenda.”

  Dear Michael. She couldn’t help but get the giggles as he bounced her into the bathroom.

  *****

  “They’ve found the Talisman,” Hardwick said, barely suppressed excitement in his dry and rumbling voice. “They’re going to get it tomorrow night.”

  Morgan surged to her feet. “Your contact came through?”

  Hardwick nodded, a gleam in his eye and a sly grin turning up one side his mouth. “There was never any doubt.”

  “Now all we need to hope is that they can break in and get it out.”

  “We’ll soon know. Who do you want to take with us to L.A.?”

  “Leave the newbies here. Everybody else comes with us.”

  “Talismans?” Hardwick raised his brows in question.

  “Hmmm.” She’d need the firepower. But she could only wield one. She had more affinity for the Wand. Did she want to give the Sword to Hardwick, or Rhiannon? “We’ll take the Wand.” Of course that left the Sword here with the newbies. Not good. Who to leave to guard it? Jason had always had designs. She didn’t want to leave Hardwick or Rhiannon behind. They were too useful. “No. We’ll bring them both.” At least the Sword would be closer at hand. She’d decide who would guard it in the hotel room later.

  He nodded. “I’ll prepare.”

  “How frustrating for that breeding pack,” she cackled. “To get their hands on Talisman after Talisman only to have it stolen from them every time. And how satisfying to make them do all the work for us.”

  “What about our source?”

  Morgan hesitated, thinking. “He can’t do us any harm, and he might not yet have outlived his usefulness if they don’t suspect him. And why would they?”

  “If they do. . . .”

  “He knows nothing about us that the Tremaines don’t already know, except where Phillip is at the moment. And there’s nothing they can do about that in time to stop the inevitable. No, even if they tortured him they wouldn’t get that out of him.”

  “Which they won’t anyway.”

  “Prissy little do-gooders,” Morgan spat. “Even when he’s betrayed them, they wouldn’t torture him.”

  Rhiannon poked her magenta-coiffed head in to Morgan’s bedroom. “Jason says the Tremaines have found a Talisman.”

  “We’re going to L.A.” Morgan barked. “See if you can get along with one overnight bag, will you?”

  *****

  Kemble was into Knight’s main servers. It hadn’t been as hard as he thought it would be. He stared at the screen, scrolling data as though it were a living creature. And in some ways it was. His eyes glazed as he took in the code. Where could he hook in that they wouldn’t see him? They mustn’t know they’d been hacked. He had to somehow conceal the damage he was doing to the security at the museum. He had to fool everyone who looked at the website, so they’d think it was still intact.

  Impossible. He started to panic. What to do? His hands hovered over the keyboard. The room was dark except for the glow of the monitors. It must be just before dawn now. He’d been at this for hours. Jane had brought him sandwiches and coffee, but otherwise everyone was leaving him alone. The door to the rest of the office wing was shut. He’d hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign he’d lifted from the Intercontinental Hotel at Hyde Park Corner in London years ago on the knob. No one could help him now. They were all in bed, asleep. It was just him and this impossible, scrolling demon code. He wanted to yell, or beat on the keyboard.

  Steady. You got this far. Even that was unexpected. His brain seemed to sputter as the code scrolled by too fast to even recognize what it might portend.

  He blinked. Wait. There was something there. He wasn’t sure what. How to stop the damn scrolling? It was getting away from him. Damn, damn, damn! He hit several random keys. He was that desperate.

  It was gone. What had it been? Why had he thought he could use that little section of code that wasn’t even imprinted on his brain enough to know what it was?

  Ridiculous. The whole idea that he could help the family was ridiculous. Get Senior in here. He’d figure it out in nothing flat. Why the hell hadn’t he? Why did he think Kemble would be able to do anything with an impossible project like this anyway?

  Kemble pounded the desk, just missing the keyboard. Even mad, he wasn’t stupid. And then that made him madder. He picked up a big green paperweight shaped like a jewel that Tamsen had given him and flung it against the wall. The point left a gash in the paint and the old plaster beneath, but the wall survived. The Breakers always survived.

  But would the Tremaines? If they couldn’t keep Morgan and the Clan from getting all four Talismans, he had a feeling even Senior couldn’t keep them safe. The Talismans would magnify the Clan’s powers, and Morgan would start causing havoc with the world until it met her conditions. She’d caused the failure of Lehman Brothers, which plunged the world economy into recession, after all. And her Weather Girl was behind many of the monster tornadoes and hurricanes that had devastated whole swaths of the country lately, he was sure. Who knew what Morgan’s conditions would be?

  Kemble gazed helplessly at the scrolling screen. Just the family’s future and the world’s as well hung on his ability to do what he was obviously incapable of doing tonight. No pressure.

  He thought of Jane. Her fate hung in the balance too, now that she’d made the mistake of marrying him. It occurred to him that marrying her hadn’t been a mistake for him. It might be the best thing he’d ever done. He’d vowed to stand by her no matter what in front of a judge at the courthouse just a few days ago.

  And he damn well wasn’t going to let her down now.

  He squinched his eyes together and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Easier said than done. But he wasn’t getting anywhere just bitching and moaning.

  He took a breath, opened his eyes, and put his hands gently on the keyboard. The keys felt so smooth, except for the f and the j, which had those little raised dashes on them to help you place your hands. His thumbs caressed the space bar and slid over the track pad. He’d always disdained using a mouse. Track pad was faster. Funny how the keys actually fit the shape of his fingers. They were very slightly indented in the middle. The lights behind the keyboard made them seem like a runway at night, or a highway leading him on into the dark. He closed his eyes against the scrolling, but he didn’t squinch them shut this time. The feel of the keys under his fingers was so seductive, almost like . . . like listening for something, something just out of hearing, but you knew that if you could just understand what was behind those keys, why, then you’d know everything.

  His fingers stroked the keys, so lightly. He wasn’t pounding them, demanding anything. He didn’t even push them down. He just stroked them, as though he was asking for their secrets.

  It almost seemed like his fingers were sinking into the keys, becoming the keys. They were a part of him and he was a part of them. In his mind’s eye the scrolling data stopped and began to run backwards slowly, so slowly and he could see everything: all the data, every little piece of code, just as though his eyes weren’t closed.

  There you are, you precious thing. The code that had escaped him a moment ago was the firewall that preve
nted outside manipulation of the data. He stroked it with his mind, bending it. It seemed to flex and preen. Then it changed. Just one little section flipped and he was in, cruising through the data, seeing everything, understanding everything. Down corridors lined with snapping jaws of security, through elegant grids of code into spaces alive with swirling ones and zeroes. He could feel his way down through that code, avoiding the guard dogs, sliding unerringly toward the haze of living code coiled in the center, as though waiting for a big bang. As he passed through the fog of code, he reached out to caress it, changing it.

  Then he was enveloped by the haze of code, immersed in the soup of its life. He’d never felt so at one with anything. It pulsed around him like a living being, embracing him. And he wanted to embrace it back, be part of it—never to leave this place where he knew who he was, where he belonged. The code tightened around him, like a lover clinging a little too hard. Kemble felt constricted. Some small part of his mind registered that there was a danger here. It was too comfortable, too beautiful, too perfectly in tune with him. The code was only a phantom lover after all, and he already had a lover. Jane.

  He had to get back to Jane.

  He pulled away and backed out, around the helix spirals, through the bars of security. The haze of code drifted after him like fingers of fog, but he was determined. He pushed himself back into the little piece of code that had opened for him and popped out through the other side, as though he had never been through the looking glass.

  He knew he was sitting at his desk. He could feel his fingers moving over the keyboard. He took a gasping breath. When he realized tears were streaming down his cheeks, he opened his eyes. The office around him seemed flat and ordinary. Gray colors, dust in the corner because he never let the cleaning service in here, his favorite pen made of wood on the desk—it all seemed unbearably heavy and tangible compared to the wonderland of swirling code.

  He blinked at the knock on the door. It sounded so loud and crude.

  “You in there?”

  Jane. Jane was why he came back. He tried to say “Yeah,” but nothing came out but a croak. He cleared his throat. “Yes.”

  Jane pushed in through the door, carrying a tray. Light haloed her figure. He squinted.

  “I thought you might like some lunch. I knocked earlier with breakfast, but I didn’t like to disturb you.” She set down the tray.

  “What . . . what time is it?” he asked, like that really mattered.

  “About noon.” She was dressed in a khaki-colored skirt and vest and a white blouse. “You need some light.” She bustled over to the draperies and pulled them back. The May sun slashed across the room. He held up his hand against it.

  Jane herself was squinting as she turned around and stopped still. “You look a little peaked. Are you okay?” she asked, hurrying over to him.

  He nodded. Yeah. He was okay. Probably.

  “I brought you a sandwich,” she said, touching his shoulder. Ah, Jane’s touch. It shot a charge through his circuits that jolted him more firmly into the here and now.

  “Thank you. Just what I needed.”

  His mind started to work again. What the hell had just happened to him? And how had he been dead to the world for probably seven or eight hours? He glanced to his computer screen. It showed a performance dashboard of various security operations Knight was running. Kemble knew exactly which graph represented the museum. And he knew that while it looked like all was green for go, there was actually no security at all behind the graph. Over at the museum the right lights would blink on the access pads, and the right cameras would be shifting their eyes across the terrain. At the moment they’d even be sending pictures back to Knight, though he could stop that whenever he chose. The lasers would look ready to catch an intruder unawares and sound the alarm. But in reality, anyone could just walk right in and take whatever they wanted from that exhibit.

  “How’s it going?” she asked, frowning at him.

  “It’s done,” he said simply.

  “You got in?”

  “We’re a go for tonight.”

  “Oh, Kemble. I knew you could do it.” She bent over him and gave him a hug and a big kiss on the cheek. He smiled. The world of swirling code beyond the computer screen faded a little bit more.

  “You were the only one,” he said.

  “Your father knew too. But that doesn’t matter. The fact is you did it.”

  He had. And he wasn’t sure how.

  *****

  Jane watched as Kemble’s eyes drooped. “You are exhausted,” she said, clucking. “We’re getting you right over to your old room so you can get some rest.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “I’ll need that, I guess.”

  Jane took his biceps, feeling that surge of life and sexual fervor leap through her body, and helped him out of his chair. He was actually staggering as he made his way out the office door. They took the shortcut across the small courtyard between the office wing and the main house.

  “You’re good to me, Jane,” he said, looking down at her. His face was lined and drawn with fatigue. And to think he’d propositioned her for a quick bout of sex to keep him going. The only thing that was going to keep him going was a good long nap.

  Brian was hurrying down the stairs as they passed the living room on their way to the Bay of Pigs. He looked wired and anxious. As well he might. The looming expedition had them all worried, and the fact that Drew was having disturbing visions wasn’t helping, even though they might not be related to tonight. Everyone knew that with Drew’s visions, nothing was certain.

  “How’s it going?” Brian barked to Kemble. Couldn’t he see that Kemble was dead on his feet? He didn’t mean to be unkind, but that tone of voice his children called his “Captain-of-Industry” voice was part of the reason Kemble always felt like second best. She should leave it to Kemble to answer, but he was just beat.

  “He’s done,” she said. “And exhausted.”

  That brought Brian up short. “You breached the security?”

  Kemble nodded. “I’ll have to disable the lasers on site, or they’ll know they’ve got a problem. And of course, deal with the door locking mechanisms. The guards would test that as they make their rounds. But I’ve left myself a path through Knight’s defenses. There’s no reporting link back to their dashboard so they’ll think everything’s fine. The local guards can still call in the police directly, of course, but they won’t be able to contact Knight Central.”

  Brian whistled. Then he shrugged sheepishly. “Good job, son.”

  Jane took great satisfaction in that reaction. “Now, he needs a nap.”

  To her surprise, Kemble agreed. “Yeah. Because I need to go with you tonight. Not only for the lasers and the door locks. But if they notice something today and try to put a patch on it, I’ll need to launch counter measures.”

  “All right, son.” Brian nodded thinking. “You and your laptop are on the team.”

  He was going tonight? Jane felt her stomach knot. The only way she’d gotten through last night and this morning was because she knew Kemble wasn’t going to be there. She looked up at him, her heart in her mouth.

  He put his arm around her and squeezed. “It’ll be okay.” He managed a cheeky grin. “I’m not going to leave you a widow just yet.”

  “You . . . you better not,” she sputtered. “Or I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Wouldn’t know it,” he muttered. “I’d be dead.” The man was swaying on his feet.

  “Okay, smart aleck. Too much talk. More napping.”

  Kemble was asleep before his head officially hit the pillow. Jane settled a throw that had been tossed over the big chair in the corner over him and just watched as his breathing grew regular and he settled into sleep. She loved the smell of him. She’d never really noticed smells that much until just lately. Oh, sure, the smell of bread baking, and the scent of Devin’s surfboard wax had always been evocative. But now she was aware of more subtle scents, like Kemble’s. He
smelled like man, and something uniquely him. Maybe this was what good sex did to you—made you more aware of your surroundings.

  She could survive anything if he was okay. If the family got caught tonight and he went to jail, she’d visit him every day until he got out. If he were hurt, she (and Brina) would nurse him back to health. It seemed ominous that he was the only one without magic going. And they were the only pair that would be separated tonight.

  Why did she have such a bad feeling about this whole plan?

  She’d go to Drew. Maybe she could make sense of Drew’s vision when Drew herself couldn’t. Maybe not knowing what disturbing image Drew was seeing was what had her on edge. If she could just rule out the fact that Kemble was in danger, then she’d feel better about the whole thing. She let herself out of Kemble’s room quietly.

  Where was Drew? Jane stalked through the house. Tamsen had gone out to ride her horse earlier, thank God. That girl was a bundle of nervous energy. Jane admired her for not whining about not getting to go tonight though. She could hear Lanyon playing something entirely too mournful on his flute up in the music room. He’d been moping all day. Jane couldn’t blame him. His search for female companionship had not only been cut short, but been forgotten entirely by the rest of the family in view of the new crisis. Poor Lanyon. Tristram and Maggie were in the kitchen, along with Brian, making sandwiches.

  A knock at the door sounded and Mr. Edwards let in Dr. Farley. Devin was still seeing him, though only once every couple of weeks now. Devin had made good progress, but Jane knew that the effects of what had happened to him when they lost the Wand would be with him in one form or another for the rest of his life. She just hoped that sooner or later it would be more a distant curiosity than a raw wound.

  “Dr. Farley,” she greeted him. “Good to see you. We’re in a bit of a tither here this morning and I’d forgotten this was your day.”

  “No worries, Jane. I’ll wait down in the sitting room in the Bay of Pigs.” The phlegmatic-looking psychiatrist, with his small goatee, was actually anything but. He was the perfect person to help Devin, surfer dude extraordinaire, with his issues. Jane couldn’t even think about what poor Devin had suffered without shuddering. But Brina had Healed his body and Dr. Farley had been a Godsend. They were all grateful to him. He was enough of a family member to know that the boy’s wing (which housed only Lanyon on most days now) was traditionally called the Bay of Pigs. He and Devin used the sitting room at the end of the hall there for their weekly sessions because it was isolated from the rest of the house and therefore private.