Spellfire n-8

by Jessica Andersen

She’d gotten it from Sasha early this morning, along with the basic recipe if more was needed. The healer had taken a tonic she’d had on hand, and infused it with a jolt of equinox magic and a potent mixture of cacao, maize and sacrificial blood. It couldn’t cure the xombi virus, but Sasha had thought that once the spell was lifted—if it lifted—the potion might help bring the patients back by strengthening their chu’ul, their life force.

  The xombis hadn’t needed it, luckily. But would it be enough to bring Rosa back? There was no telling why the child was still out, if it was because of the virus or the shock to her system, or if channeling Bastet’s message had changed her irrevocably, perhaps putting her mind partly in this world, partly in the next. Anna knew she had to try the potion, though, had to do anything in her power to break through the little girl’s coma. Even if what she did was guaranteed to increase David’s suspicions.

  Already, he was looking at her a little sideways, like he wanted to quiz her, but was afraid to. Instead, he took a big step back, making room for her. “Go ahead.”

  She tried for a smile. “It’s not FDA approved.”

  “This does not surprise me.” He held her eyes, though she wasn’t sure what he saw, or what he was thinking. He inhaled like he was going to say something more, but then waved her forward. “Do it. I trust you not to hurt her.”

  “I don’t want to.” But she whispered an inner prayer as she sat and leaned over the tiny form. Please, gods, let your messenger awaken safely.

  Holding her breath, she unstoppered the small bottle and squirted a healthy dose into Rosa’s mouth, then used a finger to close her jaw and tip her head back. “Come on, sweetie. Swallow.”

  Nothing happened. And for a good two minutes, nothing kept happening, leaving Anna sitting there, staring at Rosa, all too aware of the flop sweats starting on her palms and the man standing behind her, waiting for a miracle.

  Frustration welled. Come on, come on. Please.

  And, suddenly, it felt way too much like all the times she’d tried to call on her itza’at’s magic. Back then, it had been a blessing in disguise that she’d never been able to make her own magic work properly—that was what had let the true gods contact her, after all. Now, though . . . there was no blessing here, no upside. This had to work, she had to make it work.

  Wake up, damn it!

  Sweat prickled down her spine as she filled another stopper. Then she tugged at her chain and brought out the yellow quartz skull, which felt heavy as it swung free, glinting in the light.

  “What is . . .” David trailed off, exhaling. “Never mind. Sorry. Keep going.”

  He moved, but she wasn’t sure if he was leaning closer or edging away, and she was afraid to look, didn’t want to know which it was. Not when she would need all her concentration and confidence to pull this off. Already, she could feel the conjunction moving on, the magic starting to fade.

  “Fuck it,” she said under her breath, and went for her worn pocketknife. She heard his startled oath when she carved sharp slices across her palm scars on both sides, but she ignored it, ignored him, and focused on the child lying there, motionless. Helpless. She’s there because of me. I can get her back. “Pasaj och.”

  The magic came at her call, flaring through her veins and lighting the air red and gold. She hoped to hell he couldn’t see the glimmer—most humans couldn’t. But she couldn’t turn back now. Come on, come on.

  The power was sluggish, thick and syrupy, but it was there. More, it reached out to wrap around the dropper containing Sasha’s potion, which started to throb with a low yellow glow, just as it had when the healer had first mixed it together.

  “Please gods,” Anna whispered. And dripped it slowly into Rosa’s mouth.

  This time, incredibly, something started happening. First the yellow glow spread to the little girl’s face, which flushed and pinkened, looking healthier than it had since the child’s arrival. Then it moved down, flowing through Rosa, warming her. Her breathing changed, deepening and speeding up, and Anna’s pulse jumped in response. “That’s it. Come on back. You can do it.”

  “Jesus Christ,” David muttered. She thought he might even have crossed himself.

  Her stomach hollowed out, but she couldn’t worry about him right now; she had to focus. “Wake up, sweetie. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

  The girl stirred and straightened beneath the blanket, working her feet for a moment to kick free. Then she sighed, rubbed her cheek against the pillow, and opened her eyes.

  Holy gods. Anna stared, transfixed, as Rosa blinked up at her, puzzled. Then she focused, and there was acceptance in her eyes, not fear. “I know you,” she said drowsily in Spanish. “You’re the lady who sat with me at night and told me stories.”

  Anna’s breath left her in a soft whoosh. “You heard me,” she said in the same language.

  “Mostly just you and the nice doctor.” She didn’t seem to see David in the background. “And the cat-woman. But she wasn’t really here, was she?”

  “Only in your dreams.” Anna paused, wondering how much to say, and how. Not too much, she decided, as the little girl looked like she was already fading. “You’ve been sick, but you’re going to be okay now.”

  “I know. The cat-lady told me. She said . . . she said . . .” The child’s eyelids fluttered and eased shut. But this time her sleep was a more natural one, coming from her body issuing a shutdown command so it could have time to heal the physical damage.

  The emotional damage would take longer, Anna knew. Even the best support system in the world couldn’t undo the horrific loss of her entire family, or the trauma of watching it happen. Been there, done that. She had fought through it, though, and could help Rosa do the same, and do it better than she had. But although she could do that alone, could do all of it alone . . . she didn’t want to, damn it.

  And she couldn’t put off looking up at him any longer.

  She braced herself to see David all the way across the room, plastered to the back wall, staring at her like she was off her fucking rocker—or, worse, something he should be afraid of. Gods knew that most human scientists didn’t like the unknown.

  Already planning on hitting him with a sleep spell, bringing Rabbit back to do some mental remediation, and never seeing her doomsday crush ever again, she turned—

  And found him very close, practically breathing over her shoulder, his eyes full of awe, excitement and wonder. When their eyes met, his lips turned up in a perfectly approving smile. “You did it,” he said softly. “You . . . I don’t know what you just did, but you did it.”

  “I want her,” she said in English. All the other things she’d planned to say suddenly backed up in her lungs, trapped there by the look in his eyes and the knowledge that this moment, here and now, was as important to her as facing off opposite her parents’ spirits and sending them to the sky. That had brought the past full circle. Now she wanted to start the future of her choosing. “If her family won’t take her back—”

  “They won’t. Her uncle signed her over when she first came in.”

  “Then I want her. I can provide for her, love her. I know what it’s like to lose both parents the way she did, and I can help her through it.” She looked down at her wrists, with their crisscross scars and the line of tattoos, saw the gleam of yellow as the crystal skull swung into view, and wondered just how crazy this all sounded to him, how crazy she looked right now. “I know I may not seem like the stablest bet right now from your perspective, but I promise you—”

  “Stop,” he said. “Anna, stop. Christ, you don’t need to sell me. I’ve seen you with her. I’ve seen . . . well, what I’ve seen. Anyway. I can pull some strings, get the paperwork expedited.” He hesitated, searching her eyes. “Though I get the feeling you could handle that on your own, too.” And now he really did take a big step back.

  She reached out to him. “David. Don’t.”

  “I won’t. I don’t mean to. But . . . Christ, Anna. That was . . . it was . .
.”

  “An herbal remedy with a little bit of faith-based healing thrown in for good measure. It was the tonic that did the trick. The prayer just made me feel better.” She let her hand drift back to her side, unclaimed. “Don’t,” she said again, softer this time. Don’t look at me like you’re debating between a psych consult and an exorcism. “It wasn’t anything weird. I’m just me.”

  “You’re not ‘just’ anything, are you?” But his eyes were regaining some of the wonder she’d seen in them earlier.

  Hopefully not too much of it. The last thing she wanted was for him to put her on a magical pedestal of some sort. “You said it yourself: Even Western science is starting to recognize the validity of some native remedies.”

  “That was more than some herbs. And the things Rosa was saying . . .”

  “I snuck in to visit her sometimes when you weren’t here, that’s all.”

  “What about the cat-woman she mentioned?” He looked around as if searching for something hiding in the shadows.

  “It was nothing. Probably just a dream.” Or a god. It seemed that Bastet, too, hadn’t been able to leave the child to wander the darkness alone. Now there was a god Anna would be proud to serve, one she would be happy to pray to on the Cardinal Days. But oh, how she hoped she wouldn’t have to spend the other three hundred and sixty-something days of the year without the dream she’d just started allowing herself. The dream of a daughter and a lover. A family. “Please,” she said softly. “Don’t make what I did seem like more than it really was.”

  “I won’t. I’m not. It’s just . . .” He moved back toward her, and now it was his turn to lift a hand and let it fall, like he wanted to touch her but didn’t quite dare. “Who are you?”

  She didn’t let herself wince. “I’m exactly what you’ve seen, exactly what I’ve written to you. None of that has been a lie.”

  “But there’s more to you, isn’t there?”

  “Not anymore.”

  She expected him to push harder, was thrown a little off balance when he didn’t. Instead, he took the last step separating them, and lifted his hand to brush the back of one finger softly down her cheek. “I thought you might disappear after today.”

  The shiver that ran through her body wasn’t just from the caress. “Not unless you want me to.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s exactly what I don’t want you to do. In fact, I want you to stick around for a long, long time.”

  Something eased inside her. “Right here?”

  His eyes lit and he smiled a slow, sexy grin. “Actually, darlin’, I don’t give a shit where, as long as it’s with me.”

  They were both smiling when he cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her.

  His lips were warm and firm, his beard-shadow a bristly, masculine contrast as his mouth claimed hers, his tongue invaded, and heat pooled low in her belly. Anna leaned in, opened to him, and breathed the softest of moans.

  How long had it been since she’d been kissed? Had she ever been kissed like this? She didn’t think so, didn’t remember this kind of hunger, this kind of combustion. She caught his wrists, not to pull him away, but to hold him close. His pulse thudded beneath her thumbs, bringing an electrical charge that flared from him to her and back again. There was magic in the moment and the man, she thought, but of the purely human variety. And she was very okay with that.

  He eased the kiss, still cupping her face as he pulled back to take a long look around the room, as if suddenly seeing where she had hidden behind the shield, or the fading sparkle of magic in the air. “Seriously, though. What happened here?”

  “What if I say that I’ll tell you the whole story one day?” she said, and was surprised not to feel the slightest twinge from her conscience.

  She hadn’t ever told Dick the truth, hadn’t even considered it. And maybe that had been part of their problem, because as much as she had wanted to be truly human, it had been a lie. Now, though . . . yeah. Now, she thought she could talk about her childhood, the massacre, the magic, the war, all of it. And she thought David would believe it, even understand. He wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met before, not like anyone she could’ve imagined meeting.

  “Okay, I’ll take that.” His grin was a lightning flash of perfect teeth. “No rush, by the way. We’ve got time.” He paused, searching her eyes. “Right?”

  “Yes, we do.” Her smile felt like it lit her from within. “In fact, as of today, we’ve got all the time in the world.”

  * * *

  December 22

  Skywatch

  Myr came awake feeling warm, fuzzy, a little headachy, a lot dizzy, and so damn comfortable cuddled up with Rabbit on a wide, squishy couch that she didn’t ever want to move. But at the same time, there was a part of her that was buzzing with excitement and anticipation, telling her that something wonderful was coming, or had already arrived.

  Snuggling in, she cracked an eyelid, and for a moment thought she was still dreaming, or that she’d gone back to college or something. That was the last time she’d awakened borderline hungover, to the sight of a battlefield of a living room strewn with empties, plates, cups, streamers and other unidentifiables—and, hello, was that a blow-up doll in the corner?—along with bodies of both sexes lying asleep in a variety of positions ranging from comfortable to “oh, hell, that’s gonna hurt when he wakes up.”

  But as she came all the way back to consciousness, she recognized the bodies and the room, and knew this wasn’t college. It was Skywatch . . . and it was the Day After.

  “Holy crap.” Her voice cracked. “We saved the world.”

  “Yeah, we did, didn’t we?” Rabbit’s voice rumbled in her ear and his lips cruised the back of her neck. “And we capped it off with a hell of a party. Really wrecked this place.” His hand shifted from her hip to her stomach, where he spread his fingers and pressed, pulling her back against him so she could feel his morning wood through several layers of clothing. “Got a party going on in here, too.”

  A laugh bubbled up. “Classy.”

  “That’s me, baby. Classy, elegant and all yours.”

  She turned in his arms, rearranged her legs to dovetail intimately with his, and grinned into his sleep-fuzzed, beautiful, beloved face. “Yeah, you are. And I’m not gonna let you forget it again.”

  “Won’t happen.” His hand had migrated to her ass, and urged her close as his lips found her cheek, her ear. “I’m yours, Myr, and you’re mine.” And there was nothing sleep-fuzzed about the look in his eyes as he drew her in for a kiss that heated her blood and made her head spin in a very different way.

  “Love you,” she whispered against his lips, not afraid to say it now. Not afraid to feel it.

  “Love you back, Myr. Love you back.”

  “Hey, you two, get a freaking room,” called a voice from the other side of the sofa, down by the vicinity of the floor. “Trying to slip into a coma here.”

  Rabbit chuckled. “Sorry, Kev. Hey, that your doll over there?”

  “Bite me.” But there was a laugh in the winikin’s party-roughened voice.

  Heavy, shuffling footsteps sounded from the direction of the kitchen, and Strike called. “Coffee?”

  “Are you asking if we want some or if we’ll make you some?” Rabbit retorted. “That would be ‘yes’ and ‘no’, respectively, by the way. Black for me, warmed-over coffee ice cream–style for Myr.”

  “Lots of cream, lots of sugar. Got it.”

  As the smell of brewing coffee spread across the great room, the bodies started coming back to life. Rabbit and Myrinne got vertical and cuddled on the couch, not in any real hurry to do anything, even make pancakes. Some of the partiers grogged off to their beds, while others wandered into the big kitchen and started rummaging for leftovers. Pretty soon, there were a couple of different breakfasts going and a buzz of conversation, heavy on the good-natured ribbing.

  “Feels like Christmas morning a few days early,” Rabbit said. “Or pick the celebration of y
our choice. It’s that lull after the presents and before the big feast, you know?”

  Myr just nodded, but along with the satisfaction of a job very well done and the deep, warm happiness of being there with him, and knowing they were together for good this time, came a quiet sort of sadness as she looked around the party-blasted great room, and beyond the glass sliders to the tarped-over pool. “Everything’s going to change now. Isn’t it?”

  She had lived here with the Nightkeepers for almost three years. She had trained with them, fought with them, sometimes argued with them, and while she might not have appreciated all of them—or their rules—right off the bat, they had been far more of a family to her than she’d ever had before.

  Rabbit’s arm tightened around her. “We’ll still see each other on the Cardinal Days.”

  The mention brought another stab of regret. She almost didn’t want to try it, didn’t want to know, but she made herself cup her hand, palm up, and whisper, “Pasaj och.”

  There was a faint lift beneath her heart, but there was no magic.

  It was really gone.

  “Not gone,” Rabbit said, as if he could still read her thoughts. He rubbed his roughened cheek on the top of her head. “It’ll still be there if we need it.”

  “And different isn’t bad,” Strike said, setting down their coffees and taking the love seat opposite them with a gusty sigh. “It’s just different.”

  “Being waited on by the former king,” Rabbit said, reaching forward to hand Myr her coffee and then snag his own sludge-black brew. “Now that’s different.”

  Strike grinned. “I’d tell you to bite me, but it sounded like Kev got there first.”

  “He’s just pissed that his little secret floated out last night.” Rabbit nodded in the direction of the blow-up doll, who was deep-throating a beer bottle.

  They kept going like that, in an easy man-cave banter that flowed over Myr, smoothing the sharp edges and reminding her that this was why she didn’t party hard all that often—she got pretty damn melancholy when she was hungover.

  “Look at it this way,” Rabbit said into her ear. “Things could be a hell of a lot worse.”