Lucas’s tone was honey smooth and gentle as he addressed her, his arms spread out over the back of the sofa, somehow finding a place of ease with the situation and Savannah castigating him. “You are correct, we did take Humans First too lightly, and that is something that we need to address.”
Savannah relaxed some, but tension remained over her lips, still pulled into a small frown. Gareth looked even more confused as Lucas, the Master of the city, attempted to appease her. I doubt he was any more intimidated by her rant than Gareth was; he was trying to assuage her anger and frustration at her friend being placed in a dangerous situation. She’d assigned some of the culpability to us in some way. I realized that it had to be unnerving for Savannah to go from rooming with a woman she’d met through an ad to finding out that the woman she’d lived with for three years and become best friends with was a Legacy. And then to find out she was a ignesco. She would never openly have admitted that it might be a lot for her to deal with, however.
I followed Lucas’s example. “I’m sorry. I should have let you know even if I didn’t think it was a dangerous situation. It had the potential to be, and it was terrible of me to make you wait.”
She nodded into a sigh, and the frown gave way to a small smile.
Gareth’s gaze bounced from me to Lucas and then to me again. Submission, even pseudo-submission, was a problem for him. After a few more moments of strained silence, he finally spoke, his voice a deep, low rasp. “Savannah, this was a situation that I wish could have been avoided. I agree Humans First is becoming a situation that needs to be addressed.”
That seemed to be the final thing she needed to hear. She was better, or as good as I thought she could have been at that moment. Relaxing into a plaintive smile, she unfolded her arms and took a seat next to Lucas. He moved closer to her and then rested his hand on her leg. If she was trying to get out of the supernatural world, whatever she had going on with Lucas was heading in the wrong direction.
“Have you called someone to change the locks?” Gareth asked.
She nodded. After I came in the house, she’d interrogated me. By the time I’d come out of the shower, and before Gareth arrived, she had called a locksmith and had my phone turned off and the number changed, all the while stewing in her anger. I’d come in the living room to find that she had relegated Lucas to the sofa and Gareth to the wall.
“What exactly did Conner say? What exactly is his endgame? It is only him now?”
I shrugged. I had no idea. Thirty Legacy or more. I didn’t want him to get to them first. I needed to get to them.
“What will you do with the others?”
“Harrah has made several attempts to communicate with them, but they aren’t very open now that they have been moved and braced.”
Braced. Rendered powerless using the iridium cuffs. Being magically neutered wasn’t a good feeling, and I wondered how they were handling that. I guessed they had to move them; they couldn’t manage the manpower to constantly watch them, especially since Conner knew where they were.
“And the triplets? Have you found the third?”
Gareth shook his head. I was sure it wasn’t a priority. Without the power of the three of them together they weren’t that dangerous. Just bad-tempered mages—nothing more.
“We were able to get the Necro-spears. Now I want Conner,” Gareth finally stated. It was a relief that at least something good had come out of this disaster. But I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the problem was Conner. Humans First was just as bad and militant now. Conner seemed more calculating in his dealings than I had given him credit for. He’d orchestrated a situation that forced me out of the Legacy closet. I assumed he thought it would cause an alliance between us. All it did was cause problems. The SG knew of my existence and so did the Magic Council; it was only a matter of time before it became common knowledge that we weren’t the rantings of the crazy Guardians of Order.
“Humans First will be easier to address. It is being handled by the human police after their attack on me.” Gareth made a face. It was obvious he would have preferred to handle it himself. He didn’t seem like the type of person who could let something like that go.
“I don’t know if I can find Conner again. In the past, he wanted to be found. I don’t think he wants me to find him again. You try to kill someone one too many times and they start to take it personally,” I said with a shrug. Dismissing Conner’s threat was hard to do. He’d released several dangerous supernaturals just to get me to out myself. Now that I wasn’t on his short list of potential consorts, I could only imagine what he had in store for me. Anticipating it was futile because I couldn’t get into the mindset of someone like him.
I hated the “wait and see” plan, but that was pretty much what we were left with.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked Gareth once we went somewhere to speak privately. Lucas was in the living room, trying to get back in Savannah’s good graces, which I suspected she was milking for all it was worth. If he gave it a day or two, she’d be right back on Team Hot Zombie. She was his number-one fangirl. I still wasn’t sure there was anything I or anyone else could do to cure her of her odd fascination with vampires. I often wondered if it was the immortality thing. Most shapeshifters physically didn’t disappoint, and if you could look past the aversion to clothing, narcissism, and overconfidence that had them on the very narrow line between jerk and complete jackass, it was easy to become a fangirl of theirs, too. But for some reason Savannah only seemed enthralled by Gareth—or rather oddly invested in me becoming enthralled by him.
“I was about to ask you the same question.” He took a seat in the small chair across from my bed.
“Confused?” I said.
“By HF, Conner, or the Magic Council?”
“The Magic Council.”
“What confuses you about the Council?”
I expected to be tired but I was on high alert. Instead of sitting, I paced the floor. “What happens next with me and the others?”
His teeth gripped his lips as he considered my question for longer than I expected. Was he coming up with a palatable way to say things?
“With you—nothing. I will make sure of that. There isn’t a reason not to trust you. But there are others that aren’t like you, Anya.”
“Don’t call me that. Are you ever going to tell me how you found out that an attempt was made on me? How is the information about me so thorough, and yet they didn’t have Conner?”
“They did have him, they had his human pseudonym. He and his compatriots seem to have done quite a good job of hiding who they really are.”
I didn’t show any signs of being disturbed by how much information he had about us. “Is his family still alive?”
He shook his head, and I stopped my line of questioning because the more I identified with Conner the harder it would be to do what was necessary. But it was too late—I knew my only goal was to catch him, let him have a trial with the Magic Council, and get him put away, not kill him. Without the help of others he wasn’t a big threat. Okay, that was a huge understatement—Conner was as dangerous as hell. But he was still a person who had been in hiding all his life. I wondered at what point he had woken up and thought it was a good idea to turn his tragedy to wrath against others.
“I’m sure when the original Legacy and Vertu were floating the idea around about the Cleanse, there were people who dismissed it as improbable. When do you think they decided to take them seriously? I’m sure it was too late then,” Gareth said in a gentle voice. “I don’t think you can give him the benefit of the doubt.”
I nodded. “He won’t be able to be found until he wants to be. For now, I think we need to find the others before he does.”
“At least we have the Necro-spears, and the magic from those can’t be used.” Knowing that only higher-level mages could use them to do the Cleanse didn’t bring comfort because we’d already seen that some would betray their own for the right price. Even if that price wa
s just more power.
“We have them now and they will be destroyed.”
We were on the same page. Why risk them being stolen again?
Gareth clasped his hands behind his head and slumped back in the chair, eying my room again.
“What?”
“I’ve been in here a lot,” he said with a sly smile.
“Are you counting the times you were uninvited?”
“It’s just an observation. Seems like you should have tried to seduce me by now.”
He might have said it with a hint of amusement, but I had a feeling he wasn’t often invited into bedrooms to just talk. “That didn’t last long.”
“What?”
“You know, the whole ‘you’re going to have to work hard for it’ plan.”
“I just wanted you to know you still have a chance. Don’t give up so easily.”
He stood and stretched, quite possibly for the visual effect. He didn’t need to—his shirt molded over the muscles of his chest and the delineation along his abdominals, and since I’d seen him wearing less far too many times, I didn’t need to use my imagination to know what was underneath. But I refused to stroke his ego by ogling him, so I found things in my room to focus on.
His light chuckle floated throughout the room. “Am I distracting?”
I nodded. “I feel smothered by your humility. I rarely find myself in the presence of shifters as humble as you are. I’m sure it’s quite the task to maintain it.” He’d stepped closer and I took a few steps back to keep the distance I needed from him. There was an attraction, but I was going to stick with the tried and true statement: it was primal attraction and I’d be feeling the same way if there were a different shifter in the room.
He started for the door. I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but he hadn’t answered my question about the Trackers. Was he hiding something?
“You never answered my question.” I dropped my voice, rougher, more serious. I didn’t want him to flirt with me to try to redirect me.
His lips were still lifted into an amused smile as he turned toward me. It faltered and then quickly vanished.
“What question?”
“How do you still know so much about us and the attempts on us? Who was killed by the Guardians—I mean Trackers.” I refused to make what they did seem as elite and dignified as the title they had given themselves. They tracked people down and killed them.
His fingers scrubbed over the light beard that had started to form. “I’d like you to trust me, and I think I’ve given you enough reason to do so.”
This is the introduction to something dreadful. I simply nodded but couldn’t make any promises.
“I’m still in contact with two people in the Guardians. One is a cousin.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as the anger sparked inside me. I’d known that he was still in contact with them, but it still hurt to hear him say it, and having an active Tracker for a cousin made it worse. I closed my eyes briefly and tried to grasp what he was telling me. He was in contact with one and related to the other.
The last one that had come after me was a shifter. I assumed a wolf, but he hadn’t shifted. Was it his cousin? I didn’t need to speculate—I could get the answer right there. “I had one come after me a couple of weeks ago, I guess it’s safe to assume you knew him, right?”
He barely moved into his nod, and his usually vibrant blue eyes seemed dulled by regret and intense thought.
When he took a step closer, I moved back to maintain the distance between us. The warmth from my rising anger was becoming an inferno that was difficult to manage. My gaze flitted to the left, where I kept my sai sheathed, and so did his. His stance changed. It quickly went from something casual to something dangerous. Really dangerous.
“Let’s not have a repeat of the other day,” he said in a gentle but warning voice that didn’t have the desired effect. Instead of calming me down it just added fuel to the fire. The familiar prick of magic laced around my fingers. Defensive magic worked pretty much like the autonomic nervous system and awakened when I felt the fight or fight impulse. But it was only reasonable that it did. As in other supernaturals who wielded magic it was ingrained into our existence and biology. I didn’t like that I felt like I needed to protect myself from Gareth.
“Why are you hanging out with these people and not arresting them?” I snapped.
“It’s not that simple, Anya….”
“Don’t call me that!”
“It’s not that simple, Levy.” His voice was softer, gentle and a direct contrast to mine. “We start to arrest them, then it pretty much gives credibility to their claims that Legacy exist. You are out right now. Savannah, the Magic Council, and the SG are the only ones who know that others exist. Can you imagine the panic when people know that there are more? Enough to possibly do another Cleanse? At least I know the Trackers and I’m familiar with their ways. There would be mass pandemonium if I arrested them and it gets out why I’m doing so. You think you’re being tracked now? Imagine when scared citizens are doing it. The organization considers me a friend, which works. I’m able to feed them false information, and I’ve been able to prevent some attacks on Legacy. I can’t do that if we arrest them. Some of them have been arrested and stopped, but for things unrelated, mostly possessing illegal magical objects.”
The uncomfortable tension between us didn’t end. I’d questioned whether I could trust Gareth, and this didn’t help things. “What happens next, with me? I can’t be blamed for what the others have chosen to do, and it’s not like I can untell people what I am. Conner is getting bolder.” I wasn’t sure if he was more desperate or just indifferent about being discovered. Either way he needed to be stopped.
“Do you think Conner will lie low now?” he inquired.
“Apparently his goal is to have a fitting end for me,” I offered, referring to his departing words. I had no idea how to figure out the inner workings of a crazy person’s mind.
Gareth’s brow furrowed. Good, at least I’m not the only one confused about things.
“You do have a way of getting into men’s heads, don’t you?”
Once again, he’d closed the distance between us, and I let him. With the anger gone, I felt other things I wasn’t entirely comfortable with around Gareth.
“I need your dossier,” I said.
He nodded.
“I’ll bring it to you tomorrow.” Moments passed before either of us moved. He didn’t seem nearly as uncomfortable with the proximity as I was. A hint of a smile demonstrated that he was enjoying my dilemma a little too much.
“You keep looking at my lips, is there a reason why?”
I nodded. “Just wondering how long it would take for something egotistical to come out. It took a little longer than I guessed.”
He stepped back. “Yeah, that’s the story you should go with. And if you actually believe it, then at least one of us does.” A haughty smile over took his appearance. After a few minutes, he turned and left.
Gareth wasn’t gone too long before Lucas followed and I had the opportunity to tell Savannah about Gareth and his link to the Trackers. The bridge of her nose was still a ruddy color, which meant she was still frustrated, but I wasn’t sure if it was just the situation or if some of it was directed at me. When she took a seat on the couch, scooted to the end, and patted the side next to her, I knew all was forgiven.
“Why don’t you feel like you can trust him? He could have told you any story, but he told the truth, right?” I considered Savannah biased when it came to Gareth. She’d decided he was a good guy after her one-person protest to get me released from the Haven several weeks ago. She had been asked to leave and given ultimatums that were just nicely worded threats. She said that Gareth was the only one who was polite to her, which had earned him a place on her favorites list. She was Team Gareth for more reasons than I would ever understand. It was as if she turned a blind eye to his other qualities, like his conceitedness and narciss
ism, which didn’t seem to bother her.
She was gazing out of the window behind us. The moonlight streamed in through the trees, and things didn’t seem so bad, but they were.
“If Conner is ever successful at this, you know I’ll die,” she said in a low voice.
“So will I.” I knew it wasn’t much solace, but it was the truth. I was now his enemy and would have the same fate as everyone else with magic.
I told her about my concerns regarding the Magic Council knowing what I was.
“I don’t trust Harrah,” she admitted. Which made me trust Harrah even less. When Savannah didn’t like someone there was usually a reason.
For a long time she sat in thoughtful silence. “Just be careful with her. Don’t ever be alone with her if you can help it. I watched her at Devour, after the incident with the mages. She was able to do magic with such ease that it was scary. She walked in and everyone who came in contact with her for a moment had a glazed look in their eyes. I know she was doing the memory thing, but every time I’ve seen others do magic there was some effort. Their hand moves or their mouth; their eyes widen or they show some hint that they’re doing something. Not with her.”
“How did she not get to you?”
“I slipped out the moment I noticed it and didn’t come back until she was on the other side of the room near Gareth.”
“Please just stay away from her.”
Harrah was the one person on the Council I planned to avoid the most. I really needed to fix things, too many things. Keeping Conner from being successful with his goal was a priority. Compounding the difficulty of that was the need to do it as quietly as possible, and Conner was bolder now and didn’t seem concerned about being discovered. That would become a problem for Harrah.
“I need to find the others. Make sure they never side with him. He’s still dangerous even without his followers. And it needs to be done discreetly.”
Savannah added plaintively, “Yes, we need to.” Before I could correct her she added, “The Shapeshifter Council called earlier. I’m going to meet with them on Tuesday.”
Obsidian Magic (Legacy Series Book 2) Page 22