by Bast, Anya
“I would go so far as to say,” Thomas broke in, “that Stefan wants all control of Earth. He’s got a hell of a superiority complex. I saw it while he was in Gribben. He thinks that because witches have the power of magick we should rule over the non-magickals.”
“Yes, but the Atrika don’t seem to care about Earth,” Micah answered. “So Theo is correct. There’s no motive for them to form an alliance when their objectives are literally worlds away.”
“Stefan Faucheux is not a stupid man,” Thomas said, leaning forward in his chair. “I would never underestimate his ability to manipulate a situation to his advantage. I’m sure he could find something to entice the Atrika.”
“Like us? As in female witches?” Isabelle answered, eyebrows high into her hairline. “I hate to point this out. I mean, I really, really hate to point it out, but Boyle took an unhealthy interest in me and this Bai demon is taking an interest in Sarafina. Maybe female witches hold a fascination for them.”
“But none of the demons on Eudae took an interest in Claire,” Thomas answered. “None but one, right, Claire?”
“That’s right.” Claire cast her gaze downward. “It was forbidden for any of the daaeman, any of the breeds, to show such interest in an aeamon female.”
Isabelle gestured impatiently. “Yes, but those weren’t Atrika demons. Claire lived among the other three breeds. Not the Atrika.”
“Point taken,” answered Thomas.
“It’s a possibility.” Micah threw his hands up. “Anything’s a possibility at this point. Again we find ourselves playing a guessing game with the Duskoff, one step behind their agenda while we try to prevent whatever they’re planning from coming to fruition. It’s a familiar, exhausting dance.”
Mira moved toward the door. “I’m going in with air magick.” She meant projecting her consciousness from her body so she could travel incorporeally to another place. Strong air witches could do that. “I’ll try and find a crack in the warding around their headquarters in New York like I did when they were holding my aunt. Maybe I can find something out. Maybe they’re keeping the air witch Emily there.”
Thomas nodded. “Good. Let me know if you find something out.” He turned his attention to Sarafina. “Now we need to get you sorted out.”
Sarafina’s eyebrows rose. “I need sorting out?”
“You need instruction. Fire is a volatile element and you need to learn how to wield it with care. To boot, Theo tells me you have more power than most.”
Sarafina glanced at him and smiled a little. “I know you’re right. I mean, I saw firsthand what uncontrolled fire magick can do to a person.”
Thomas nodded as he shuffled some papers on his desk. “Claire and Adam have agreed to allow you to stay with them. They’ll train you. Adam is a fire witch, and Claire has control of all four elements. They’re the best equipped to help you.”
“No.”
Thomas jerked his gaze to Sarafina. Few witches talked to Thomas Monahan that way. There was a reason he headed the Coven; he had a way of compelling people to obey him.
Sarafina shifted, her hair moving over her shoulders. “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be trouble, but I don’t want to be with anyone but Theo. He’s the only one I trust.”
Theo stiffened in surprise. Considering the way things had started out between them, that declaration was unexpected.
Sarafina glanced at Claire. “I mean, oh, God, I just stuck my foot in my mouth, didn’t I? You’ve all been nothing but kind to me, and I’m sure you’re all great teachers and wonderful, trustworthy people—”
Claire smiled and touched Sarafina’s arm. “It’s okay. You didn’t offend me. I totally understand and I’m sure Adam does, too.”
“Of course,” answered Adam from across the room. He grinned. “Go ahead, reject us.”
“Adam!” Claire shot him a mock glare. “He’s just kidding. Adam is almost always kidding.”
Sarafina looked at Theo and spread her hands. “It’s just, you know, he fought a demon in my bedroom and won. That’s sort of . . . endeared him to me.” She colored a little and glanced away.
Adam opened his mouth and Theo shot him a look that promised much pain if the words poised on his tongue made it into the air.
Thomas nodded slowly, deep in thought. “That’s fine with me as long as it’s okay with Theo. Theo is well versed in all the elements, and he’s got a lot of control and knowledge. Still, I think you’ll learn more paired with witches of your own element.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care. I want Theo.”
“It’s okay with me,” Theo answered.
Thomas nodded. “It’s settled, then. You two can work out the living arrangements. Even though it would be safer for Sarafina to be close to a more experienced witch at all times, if you decide not to stay at Theo’s, Sarafina, we’ve got apartments free within the Coven.”
Theo answered, “She stays with me.”
Adam raised his eyebrows across the room and Theo shot him another quelling look.
Sarafina shrugged. “I guess my decision has been made for me.”
“I can’t protect you when you’re in a different apartment.”
Thomas nodded. “I agree. We don’t know if Bai will come back or not.” He paused. “You’re in danger, Sarafina.”
She gave him a sad smile. “It’s okay. I have some practice at that.”
Theo was certain she was referring to her mother. What hell had the early years of her life been? They’d probably been a lot like his.
“I HOPE THIS IS OKAY WITH YOU.” SARAFINA STUDIED Theo’s back while he stood in the kitchen, stirring a charm in a saucepan. “I mean, that I wanted you for a bodyguard or teacher or whatever you are.”
No response.
“I mean, it’s not that I have designs on your body or anything.” Her gaze slipped to his ass. Much.
His shoulders tightened a degree. “Now that’s a pity.”
She grinned and stabbed at a bit of random herb on the table with the pad of her index finger. “Did I detect a note of amusement in your voice? Could it be? Has hell frozen over and have pigs grown wings?”
He grunted and continued to stir his pot.
“Anyway, I’m sorry if I pushed you into doing something you don’t want.”
Theo replied without turning. “Do you really think I’d do something I didn’t want?” More silence.
Well, I guess that was as much of an answer as she was going to get.
“So you don’t mind the living arrangements?”
“You must stay with me. Bai might try and come after you again and it would be better if I were close. Wards don’t work on demons. Not even the kick-ass ones surrounding the Coven. Not much works on demons.”
“So you won’t mind the pink panties hanging over the towel rod in the bathroom?”
That made him turn. “There’s going to be pink panties hanging over the towel rod in the bathroom?”
She grinned. “Actually, I wear thongs. They take up less space.”
Theo’s grip tightened a degree on the wooden spoon he held.
“I’m joking, Theo, relax. Grosset won’t bother you?”
Theo diverted his gaze from her face to the dog in question, who sat on the floor near his feeding dish, panting. “No, but I guess we need to buy some Alpo. He can’t live on SPAM.”
“I’ll take care of that tomorrow. I have to run back to my place to pack a bag and run by the office to finalize paperwork for my leave of absence.”
Her vacation had turned into unpaid leave. It was the worst time ever for her to go unpaid, considering her financial problems. Luckily the Coven was helping her make rent and pay her bills. She’d gladly taken the money, though pride dictated she pay them back when she could.
“You’re not going alone.”
“I should be fine.”
“No way.”
“I don’t want to trouble you, Theo.”
“You’re not troubling me. I�
��ll just be doing my job. That job is you.”
The way he said it, so intensely, so protectively, made her heart miss a beat. She gave him a light smile to cover her reaction. “Wow, so you’ll be doing me. My, what will the neighbors say?”
He ignored her comment. “After we return to the Coven tomorrow, we’ll go straight to the training rooms.”
“Training rooms?”
Theo nodded. “About a year and a half ago the Coven came into some money via Rue, the leader of the Ytrayi. Thomas and the Coven’s advisors used it to make repairs to the buildings that were needed after we had a major battle with the Atrika. When they made the renovations, they added on training rooms for each of the elements.
She shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”
He turned back to his bubbling brew and flipped off the heat. “Who’s Alex?”
She stiffened. “How do you know who Alex is?”
“I don’t. That’s why I’m asking you. Your friend mentioned him at your apartment, said she wondered if you’d cheated on Alex.”
She studied the tabletop. “He’s my ex. We were together for about two years, but the fire was only a flicker at first and then it went out. We stayed together too long. Mostly out of fear of being alone, I think.”
“So you’re not nursing a broken heart on top of everything else?”
She swallowed hard, her eyes suddenly pricking with tears. “I am, but my broken heart is for my foster mother, not Alex. I’m still grieving for her.”
He set the pot to the side and stared down into it for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he murmured without turning around. “It’s hard losing your parents.” His mother had taken off when he’d been a teenager, but considering her brutal husband, Theo couldn’t really blame her much.
“Thanks. She was a good woman. I believe in an afterlife, though, and that gets me through.”
“Even now that you know all this about witches, daaeman , and other worlds?”
She smiled. “Especially now. What do you believe in?”
He shrugged. “Most witches take a patron goddess or god, but some of us are broader in our beliefs.”
“Let me guess, you’re broad.”
He looked down into the pot. “Yeah, but I believe in an afterlife.”
Theo reached over and pinched some herbs from a pot on the counter, then dropped them into the pot. The air popped with a burst of earth magick, teasing her nose with a whiff of freshly turned soil. Apparently, he’d just absorbed the charm he’d made.
He turned. “Don’t worry about the dog or your . . . thongs . . . hanging over the towel bar. Just go ahead and make yourself at home.” He paused, studying her with his intense eyes. “But, Sarafina, don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m not dangerous to you.”
A little thrill of alarm jolted through her veins. “What do you mean?”
He gave her a lingering, smoldering look that nearly singed off the fine hairs around her face and made a hot ribbon of want curl through her lower region. Her answer was in his dark eyes, on his face.
Oh. That.
Theo left the room, disappearing down the shadowed hallway.
Yes, she was beginning to realize just how dangerous he might be.
NINE
THEO SKATED HIS HANDS DOWN SARAFINA’S SMOOTH arms and decided immediately this was not a good idea. She needed someone else to help her learn to handle her fire magick. A witch of her own element, one who wasn’t attracted to her. God, she should have gone to stay with Adam and Claire.
Sarafina shivered a little and extended her arms the way he’d instructed. He set his palm on the seat of her magick, right between her breasts and tried to ignore just how much he enjoyed his hand there.
They stood in the center of fire’s brand-new training room. Thomas had spared no expense. Pads covered most of the floor, for practice in hand-to-hand combat. The walls and floor were all fire-resistant. Numerous tools were supplied for aiding new fire witches in learning the finer points of control . . . and Sarafina really needed to use them.
She had an incredible amount of raw talent in healing . . . but that’s where it stopped. Defensive fire magick seemed to be a skill beyond her grasp. It was a good thing she hadn’t tried to fight the demon in her apartment with magick; she’d have lost.
About ten feet away from them stood a large metal bowl on a pedestal. “Concentrate on hitting the bowl,” he said, using a little earth magick to help her draw her thread of power and keep it steady. “This will teach you control.”
Taking her time, she aimed a stream of fire toward the bowl . . . and hit the wall behind it with a radiant flash. The ball of fire burst into white-hot brilliance, then faded to a slow burn. The bowl still stood, completely unmolested.
Theo allowed his hands to drop away.
“Wow, I really suck at this, don’t I?” she asked, staring at the black spot on the wall.
Theo pushed a hand through his hair. “I think that’s a little harsh.”
It had been some variation of the same all day long. Anyone who came to their power so late in life should have trouble adjusting and controlling it, but Sarafina seemed . . . exceptional.
“Don’t try to sugarcoat it, Theo. I suck.”
He sighed. “Yeah, okay, you suck.”
She grimaced. “So no gold stars for me today?”
“You probably just need more practice. Look, your healing ability far surpasses anyone’s I’ve ever seen, and you have a lot of raw power. It’s learning to direct and control it. That’s your difficulty. You just need to train more.”
She raised an eyebrow and cocked her hip. “What about all that stuff you said about witches overtraining, and all we really had to do was tap into our seats and be one with the power?”
He studied her for a moment. “Yeah, well, in your case, you need to train.”
“Okay, let’s do it then. Let me try the candle thing again. I almost got that one.”
He pulled out a new taper and placed it in its holder. Then they stepped back away from it. She could light a candle close-up; that had been the first thing she’d learned to do. The objective here was to light the wick from a distance, something that took considerably more control.
She melted the entire thing, even the holder.
Together, they stared down at the bubbling mess. “That was even worse than the first time, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Last time you only melted half the stick.”
She sighed. “I’m not giving up. Let’s keep going.”
And he wasn’t giving up on her, either.
They practiced for the rest of the day with varying degrees of success. Sarafina was tireless in her efforts to learn what he was trying to teach her, and little by little she improved.
At the end of the day, Theo pulled her back ten feet in front of the bowl once more. “Try it again.”
Sarafina closed her eyes and concentrated on drawing power and wielding it. An arc of white-hot fire raced from her and exploded in the bowl in a brilliance of sparks, setting off the sprinkler above it. Perfect shot.
She did a little victory dance and then turned to him with shining eyes. “Good?”
Theo stared at the water hitting the faraway fire and smiled. “Much better. I think you’re finally getting it.”
The woman had so much untutored power it was mind-boggling. It was a miracle she’d managed to get this far in life without torching herself like her mother had. Sarafina was probably among the stronger fire witches in the Coven. Her only hang-up was control.
She stood with her hands hanging loosely at her sides, dressed in a pair of clingy gray cotton workout pants and a burgundy halter top.
“You’re improving, but you still need to work. I think I’ll have Jack come in to help you with some of the finer points of wielding fire. But this portion of your training is finished for the day. Your seat must be exhausted.”
She grinned, but it quickly faded. “This portion of my training? What’s
the other training I’ll have to do?”
“Claire will need to teach you how to use your magick against demons. They have effective shields against elemental magick, but there are techniques to get around them.”
She nodded. “Okay, that seems like a good thing to know.”
“Isabelle will work on training you to use a copper sword.”
She nodded. “I read about the sensitivity of the daaeman to copper in Micah’s book.”
Daaeman, all the breeds, had an allergy of sorts to copper. When the Coven had first learned of it, they’d had weapons made to take advantage of it. The daaeman could use a type of magickal inoculation against their reaction to copper called caplium, but it wasn’t completely effective. Copper, even though it wasn’t a surefire way to defeat a daaeman in a battle, was still better than nothing. It was one of their only weapons against them and they all trained diligently with the swords.
“And I’ll have to teach you self-defense,” Theo added. “The non-magickal kind.”
Her eyes widened a bit. “Oh. Like kung fu?”
“Something like that.” Theo couldn’t help but grin at the look on her face. “It’s necessary. Magick doesn’t always work.”
“Hey, if I had known how to kick Stefan’s ass back at the farmhouse, I would’ve tried my best to do it.”
“After I get through with you, you will.”
SARAFINA LANDED FLAT ON THE MAT, UNDER THEO’S big body. Her heart rate had ratcheted up, but it had little to do with the exertion she was putting forth and a whole lot to do with the man forcing her to exert it.
Theo’s breath teased the fine hair around her face. He stared down at her with such intensity it made her breath catch. “Give me more.”
More. She closed her eyes.
For the last week that’s all he, Claire, Isabelle, and Jack had demanded of her. Theo worked with her self-defense skills, Jack was helping her fine-tune her raw ability with fire, and Claire was teaching her how to use it effectively against demons. Lastly, Isabelle was helping her learn how to use a sword—something she never thought she’d have to do in her life.