by Lisa Plumley
That could only mean one thing.
“Oh my God. I’m married to that tracer?”
“No! No. Not yet,” Deuce rushed to assure her. “I’ve been reading up on it.” He seemed proud of himself for having learned some new cultural witchstory. “For that to happen, the two of you have to complete your bond before the next full moon.”
Rapidly, Dayna calculated. That gave them about two weeks.
“And ‘complete your bond’ means…?” She raised her brows.
Deuce’s seductive look made the situation plain. If she got a little down and dirty with T.J., it was as good as pledging her troth to him. Nookie equaled commitment in the witching world.
“I’m engaged then,” Dayna concluded. “I’m promised to T.J.”
“Well, in witching terms…” Deuce shrugged. “Kind of.”
This could not be happening. “I think I’m losing my mind.”
“No you’re not,” Deuce said in a soothing tone. “No.”
“Yes. Yes, I am,” Dayna insisted. Just to be clear, she laid it all out for him. “Two days ago, I was knee-deep in botanical research. I was hanging out with my friend Jill. I was biking to work and taking care of my goldfish. My biggest problem was fending off my credit-stealing piranha of a boss and her toady of an assistant.” She inhaled, frowning. “Now I’m going to witchy night school, I’m failing at magic all over again, and you’re telling me I’m somehow bonded to a know-it-all hard-bodied tracer who’s considering chewing off his own arm, coyote style, instead of sticking with me?”
“Umm…”
“Don’t bother making excuses.” Feeling overwhelmed, she snatched up the kitchen towel hanging nearby. She scrubbed the soapsuds from her arm with unnecessary vigor. “I don’t want to put you in an awkward spot. I know he’s your partner.”
“He’s my friend, too,” Deuce told her earnestly. “When everyone in the department was hassling me as a new recruit, T.J. stepped up to partner with me. He volunteered.”
Dayna groaned. “Great. Now he’s a nice guy, too?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” With a consoling grin, Deuce moved nearer, then enveloped her in an almost-hug. He patted her on the back. Gruffly. And briefly. For whatever reason, Deuce was clearly gun-shy with witches. “But look on the bright side! From what I read, there are definite perks to being bonded. For one thing, it turns out that you’re irresistible to your bonded partner.”
He waggled his eyebrows with devilish intimation.
She perked up. “Irresistible?”
“Yeah.” Eagerly, the tracer pressed on, apparently sensing that he’d stumbled on a potential game-changer. “And the sex is supposed to be mind blowing, too. The best in all the witch-world. Ordinary humans can’t even aspire to it. It’s legendary.”
“Legendary sex.” Mulling over the idea, Dayna found that she liked it. Granted, it was a little bizarre to be discussing it with someone like Deuce, but…why shouldn’t there be some magical compensation for all the difficult times she was going through right now? Besides, it wasn’t as though she and T.J. hadn’t already gotten pretty close during that encounter in her bedroom before they’d left for Covenhaven. “You don’t say?”
Appearing wary, Deuce stepped back. He held up both hands in a keep-away gesture. “No. No, I don’t say. And if you tell T.J. that I told you any of this, I’ll deny it, straight out.”
“Why would I tell him anything?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t like the look in your eyes.”
Dayna gave him a playful nudge. “You can trust me, Deuce.”
At that, the tracer’s expression hardened. Every evidence of camaraderie vanished. “I trust myself these days. Period.”
“Hang on. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“I’m out of here. Good luck at witch school tomorrow.”
With that, Deuce turned his back on her and left the apartment. The door slammed soundly behind him, leaving Dayna with the unmistakable feeling that she’d just kicked a puppy.
A big, menacing puppy with deadly sharp teeth…and every intention of using them on the very next witch who wronged him.
Chapter Thirteen
Shortly after sunrise, Dayna jolted awake. With her heart pounding, she lay alert in bed, straining to figure out what had awakened her. She was alone. Her bedroom—Deuce’s guest bedroom, decorated with Ikea insta-furniture, a comfortable double bed, and extra pillows—seemed still. Sunlight poked through the blinds in hazy shafts, illuminating her backpack and her zipped-up duffel bag. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn they were waiting patiently for her inevitable escape.
Judging by the angle of the sun, it was still early—maybe seven o’clock or so. Or even earlier. Squinting as she tried to gauge the time, Dayna gazed at the blinds covering the glass-paneled door that led to the patio outside her bedroom window.
Something moved outside.
The motion was silhouetted against the blinds. Clutching the coverlet, Dayna stared at it. It moved again in a bobbing shift. Then a side-to-side whoosh. The outline of the thing looked like arms, reaching…reaching for the doorknob?
Newly watchful, she sat up in bed. She scanned the room for a potential weapon. Her backpack! It still contained her plastic pencil case full of talismans and decoys and weapons.
Keeping her eyes trained on that movement outside, Dayna slipped stealthily from under the coverlet. She dropped to the wood-plank floor and started crawling, hoping to stay out of sight. The hard, cold floor struck her bare palms and pajama-covered knees, making her wince. She kept going.
Whatever was out there scraped against the window again. Jarred by the sound, Dayna halted. Balancing awkwardly on her hands and knees, she looked over her shoulder. The shadow was still visible, but it had quit moving. For now.
Not that she could do the same thing. Desperately, she wished she had enough magic to summon her backpack straight to her, rather than having to crawl to it herself. All it would take would be a simple spell—she grumbled the closest approximation she could think of under her breath—and then…
Whoosh. Right on cue, her backpack scuttled to her side.
Astonished, Dayna stared at it. Huh. That might have been the first truly successful spell she’d cast in months.
“Thanks.” Cynically, she eyed her backpack. It quivered on the floor beside her like an eager-to-please Labrador retriever waiting for a treat. “Why don’t you just unzip yourself and hand over my pencil case while you’re at it, smarty-pants?”
The zipper split itself open. Her pencil case shot out.
Truly awestruck now, Dayna gawked. It was true that spells weren’t necessarily needed to practice magic. Enchantments, hexes, charms, and the like were only amplifications of magical power. A witch’s true magical power came from her brain, with its many connections and extrasensory activity zones. But witchfolk, like everyone else, liked to feel they had a sure thing at the ready, just in case. Over the centuries, the theory and practice of magic had expanded to include several different forms of helping agents—like spoken incantations.
At one time, she knew, all beings had possessed the capacity to use their minds the way witchfolk did. Even humans had possessed the neural pathways and intuition necessary to practice magic. But they’d feared those things. They’d allowed their abilities to erode and had exulted in science instead, until their magical natures had been lost to them forever.
Just like, it had seemed, Dayna’s magic had been lost to her. But now…maybe things were starting to change.
With no time to waste, she grabbed a fat Magic Marker from her pencil case. Armed and confident with her newly awakened witchy sensibilities, she fisted her marker-weapon, then slowly got to her feet. Doing her best to remain out of sight of whoever—or whatever—was out there, she edged closer to the glass-paneled door. Keeping her gaze fixed on the shadow beyond it, she crouched with her marker at the ready. She held her breath, then used her finger to nudge one of th
e slats upward.
Through the slice of the outdoors she’d revealed, Dayna glimpsed blue sky, the concrete patio slab that spanned both her bedroom and Deuce’s, and the fuchsia bougainvillea that were planted along the patio’s edge and on a trellis near her door. One of the trailing bougainvillea vines bobbed gently in the autumn breeze, reaching from the trellis toward the sunshine.
And scraping against her door.
And causing a suspiciously moving shadow.
Ugh. She was an idiot. Sagging with relief, Dayna slumped against the door frame. She leaned her head on the cool wood and closed her eyes. She didn’t know who she’d thought would be lurking on her patio, waiting to…to what, exactly?
She didn’t know. All she knew was that Covenhaven felt dangerous to her—now more than ever. She couldn’t explain it. Still, as she stood there clutching her Magic Marker, the sense of menace she’d been so sure of a few seconds ago slowly ebbed.
It was a good thing Deuce wasn’t here to see this. Or Professor Reynolds. Or Francesca Woodberry and her ultrapop-ular friends. All through her teenage years, Dayna had yearned to belong to a clique like theirs. She’d yearned to be accepted and admired and proven, the way they were. To not jump at shadows, but to wield magic like a trueborn witch. She wasn’t proud of it, but it was the truth—the truth she’d never admitted to anyone. Now, it seemed, she would never be any of those things.
Unless she got moving and started training.
With a surge of determination, Dayna yanked the pull cord on the blinds. She was ready to greet the day. She was ready to get started. She was ready to take names and kick magical ass.
She was not ready to see the IAB tracer, T.J. McAllister, lying outside on one of Deuce’s patio lounge chairs, naked as the day he’d been born. But when the blinds zipped upward with a dusty snap, that was exactly what they revealed.
Startled, Dayna took a step backward. Her heartbeat surged all over again. Her breath turned shallow, too. This was wrong. This was weird. This was…what was the tracer doing out there?
Well. The only way to find out was to examine the situation in greater detail. After all, it was what the researcher in her demanded. Biting her lip, Dayna took another peek.
T.J. appeared to be sleeping. Soundly. And again, nakedly.
Intrigued despite herself, she sucked in a breath. She should not be seeing him this way. Especially when he wasn’t even awake to be aware of it. It was intrusive. It was…
Irresistible. Insanely curious, Dayna stepped back to the glass-paneled door. Mindlessly, she dropped her Magic Marker weapon and brought both hands to the glass. She splayed her fingers. Her mouth opened as she stole a more thorough look at T.J., just to be sure of what she was seeing.
After all, proper research required verification.
From here, she noted with an attempt at clinical detachment, most of him was visible. His streaky blond hair, angular jawline, and cleft chin. His pouty mouth, even more luscious when it wasn’t locked in a frown. His long, muscular torso, his myriad tattoos—she’d glimpsed only a few of them, it seemed, during his capture of her—and his multiple charms and amulets, all strung on cords around his neck. His bare arms and strong biceps, his powerful legs, his curiously vulnerable feet.
Swerving her gaze back to his biceps, Dayna frowned at his tattoos—the same tattoos that, according to Deuce, bound him to her with magical force. Would it really hurt his soul if T.J. removed them to end his bond? Would he really do it, if it did?
Probably, she concluded with a dour twist of her lips. T.J. McAllister was nothing if not contrary. But he was also damn fine, sprawling on that lounge chair like a sun-kissed lion, too tough to care if anyone saw him and too impervious to normal warlock concerns to bother with so much as a shielding charm. She might not have been able to conjure something like that herself, but she knew they existed. She knew most witchfolk were not so immodest—despite the undeservedly wanton reputations given to them by jealous humans—that they spent most of their time completely nude. Outdoors. Where anyone could see them.
Feeling a little…well, overheated, Dayna nudged closer to the glass dividing her from T.J. She could practically feel the warmth rising from his skin, could almost inhale the musky, manly scent she imagined emanated from him. And okay, so he wasn’t really out there bare-assed for the whole world to see. The border of bougainvillea shielded the patio from passersby.
In fact, it created a nicely private area. An intimate zone where almost anything could happen. Anything at all. Anything.
But still…did he do this often? she wondered. And what did Deuce think when he looked outside his patio door and spotted his IAB partner in the nude on his lounge chair?
Dayna didn’t care. Deuce was gone. She was here. And if what Deuce had told her was right, she was irresistible, too.
Contemplatively, she let her gaze rove over T.J. again. She got stuck on his beautifully wide shoulders, then made herself move on to his burly chest. Like the rest of him, it was nicked by scars. She wondered about them. She wondered about him, then moved her attention lower. Much lower. Naughtily lower.
Disappointed, Dayna let loose an obscenity under her breath. If only T.J. hadn’t brought out that stupid blanket with him! So what if the desert nights got cool in autumn? If not for that blanket’s cottony weave, she’d have been able to take the true measure of the man…warlock…Patayan. As it was, that blanket shielded his groin, revealing only an intriguing glimpse of finely honed abs and the indented hollow above his hipbone.
Mmmm. Her imagination filled in the rest, supplying her with an arresting image of T.J.’s…assets. If it was true what they said about warlocks, they were probably considerable. It had been a long time since Dayna had experienced a witchy union.
Probably too long, she decided just then. And if she was going to change that statistic, she had some preparation to do.
Leaving the blinds as they were, Dayna grabbed the towel she’d dropped before putting on her pajama pants last night, then headed for the shower to make herself truly irresistible.
On the patio, T.J. opened his eyes. He groaned, then reflexively reached under his blanket and grabbed his cock. It surged upward to meet his palm, huge and hard and ready.
What the hell had he been dreaming? This went beyond the usual morning hard-on. He hadn’t felt this urgent since…
Since meeting up with his bonded witch in her human world.
Muttering a swearword, he released himself with a final inadvertent stroke that made him shudder. Jesus. He’d hoped a dose of sunshine would heal his battered spirit, the way it always did for Patayan. He’d definitely needed something restorative after last night—and after the past few days. But this went beyond restorative…all the way to pornographic.
It was a good thing he knew Deuce had already gone. His partner had spied him on the patio and thrown him a blanket at some point early this morning, cursing T.J.’s “exhibitionist fetish” in no uncertain terms. But since Deuce was accustomed to T.J.’s occasional midnight visits, he’d left without further comment to continue his volunteer mission: shadowing Lily Abbot.
Along with Francesca Woodberry and Sumner Jacobs, Lily was one of the cusping witches who might be his magus’s prophesized juweel. And even though finding the juweel was a Patayan duty and not an IAB one, Deuce had still agreed to help T.J. during his off hours. T.J. had filled in Deuce about everything he knew—everything his magus had told him.
It still wasn’t enough, but it was all they had.
Knowing that was all the more reason to get on with his mission, T.J. threw off his blanket and stood. His muscles ached with reminders of yesterday’s encounter with Garmin’s foragers. His chest hurt, too, making it plain that the loss of trust he’d suffered was not without lasting consequences.
Last night, that pain had lingered long after he’d visited the res, checked up on the dead gardener’s family, then slipped past Deuce’s neighbors and taken refuge here. He had a feeling it would
be with him for a while.
Unless he could repair it. Unless he could heal that damage and emerge stronger than before.
He’d hoped sunbathing would be enough. Judging by his lingering pain, it wouldn’t be. At least not soon. Stymied by that realization, T.J. frowned. He needed to be strong enough to complete his promises to his magus. He needed to be tough enough to find the juweel and enlist her help. He needed…
He needed connectedness.
Swearing, T.J. resisted. The truth was, all witchfolk needed connectedness. In that regard, they stood in stark contrast to independence-prizing humans. Usually T.J. denied himself that necessary union with other witchfolk. Today, he couldn’t afford the luxury of solitude. Not when he’d already been wounded by his break with Leo Garmin and his lost alliance with the IAB.
Considering the problem, T.J. stretched. Then, with interest, he spied the upraised blinds on the glass-paneled door leading to Deuce’s guest room. Beyond it, a duffel bag and the outside edge of a rumpled bed were clearly visible.
Most likely, Deuce’s human sister was in town to visit him again. The last time Avery had come to Covenhaven, she and T.J. had struck up a flirtation that he—as a warlock—hadn’t been able to avoid, and she—as a human—hadn’t been able to resist. If not for Deuce’s staunch insistence that T.J. “lay off with the warlock routine,” things might have gone further between them.
It wasn’t as though Avery wasn’t willing. She was. Ever since learning about Deuce’s turning—and being sworn to secrecy about it—she’d been fascinated with witchfolk…with the magical world and all its inhabitants.
T.J. knew she was curious about warlocks. Especially about him. And with Deuce gone from the apartment—and T.J. in need of the connection and healing he craved—maybe it was time to satisfy that curiosity of hers, once and for all. A connection with a human wasn’t as powerful as a witchfolk connection. But that couldn’t be helped now. It would be better than nothing.
And all right, so using Deuce’s sister to forge the healing connection that T.J. needed wasn’t exactly honorable. Right now, he didn’t care. The Patayan part of him craved a warm touch. And warlocks had earned their bad reputations honestly. His bad reputation included—especially after his suspension from the IAB last night. It wasn’t as though Avery wouldn’t enjoy their encounter…thoroughly and completely. He’d make sure of it.