by Ashley Meira
“Admit it, the Habitat for Humanity thing is nice.”
“Pretty sure that’s the point of—”
“Sophia.” She pinched me.
“Ow.” I rubbed my arm. “Fairies are supposed to be nice.”
“No, they’re supposed to steal children.” Her face dropped at the words.
I hugged her. We might be adults, but our past made us regress. “Yes, it’s very sweet of them to help build homes. Slightly less sweet that they sold the pictures to Witch Mode—”
She slapped my back.
“Anyway,” I said, “my point is: you don’t give a crap about art and artifacts. You just want to meet Damien. I don’t get it. He’s just some hot dude.”
“Hot and rich.”
“And dangerous.” I pulled away. “Almost as much as Adam.”
“You mean his dad.”
“Adam is the older brother, meant to succeed his father on the Council.” I chewed my lip. “And he knows about my magic.”
The blood drained from Fiona’s face. Her hands trembled around my arms. “What?”
I told her everything that happened between me and Adam. By the time I finished, I was a sweaty, hyperventilating mess. “This is bad.”
Fiona’s magic had been zinging around since I started telling my story, but now it was fizzling down to a low thrum. She was calculating what to do. “Okay, he doesn’t seem to be pushing the issue. I think you need to finish the job as quickly as possible. What does he want you to find again? Gaia’s heart?”
“The Heart of Gaia,” I said. “Cyrus sold it off before we found him.”
“At least we managed to recover everything else. I wonder why he sold it off first.”
“First offer? He could’ve had buyers lined up for the other stuff too. We just caught him before he could deliver.”
“I guess. It’s kind of ironic the one item missing belongs to—”
I shot her a dirty look.
“What?” She shrugged. “Ironic, not funny.”
“Could you ask Adrienne about it?” Adrienne was our other friend. She ran an antique store downtown that picked up rare finds. “The Heart was kept in a demonic temple, and I don’t want to grab it only to have it steal my soul.”
“What soul? Ow!” She swiped at me. “Don’t pinch me.”
“You started it.”
“I’ll go ask Adrienne,” she said, but didn’t stop glaring. “What are you going to do?”
“Adam’s taking me to the gallery. Cyrus left the box behind. He wants to see if I can trace the magic.”
“Okay,” she said. “Just pretend to be a tracker mage. As long as that’s all you do, he has no reason to think you’re anything but that.”
“He said my magic was special, exotic.”
“Maybe he’s hitting on you. Like when guys say you have the prettiest eyes they’ve ever seen.”
“No one has ever said that to me.” I guess dirt brown wasn’t as pretty as emerald green.
“You know what I mean. Get in, get out. This job will be over before you know it, and Adam will be out of our lives.”
I nodded slowly, trying to ignore the tugging in my chest. Adam being gone was supposed to be a good thing.
Chapter Seven
Damien’s gallery was around the corner from Ollie’s cafe, which made getting coffee during its opening week a giant pain in the ass. The hoards of screeching women and reporters with blinding camera flashes blocked the streets from morning to night.
“I thought of something,” I said as we parked in front of the gallery. “About you.”
“And what would that be?” he asked, coming over to open my door.
“You claimed to sense my magic.”
He chuckled. “More claims you’re not magical?”
“I’m not—” I cut off. Habit. “You can sense magic.”
He smirked, his magic reaching for me.
“Stop that.” I frowned. “Why can’t you track the Heart’s magic?”
“Would you believe me if I said this was all a ruse to meet you?”
“Maybe, but I’d lose all respect for you and leave.”
“Can’t have that. Come in.” He nodded toward the door. “I tried to track it. Didn’t work. Something powerful is blocking the Heart from me. But Symeon says you can get anything.”
I froze, heart rioting in my chest. Symeon knew I had magic? My breathing sped up as I thought back to every interaction between us. The information he provided was detailed, but there were times when I had to continue my search for his desired artifact by tracking the magic. And—
And he only told Adam I could “get anything.”
Relief rushed over me, and colors came back to my world. If that was the case, Symeon didn’t know anything about my magic — or my being Fireborn. But why mention it to Adam at all?
“Oh. Duh.” I smacked my forehead. “You were supposed to guard him.”
Adam nodded. “Is that where all the vampires bits were from?”
“Maybe.” I kept my eyes on the pavement. I wasn’t ready to face him yet. “What did Symeon tell you?”
“That you were the best recovery expert he’d ever seen.”
“Recovery expert?”
“Grave robber?”
I glared at him. Crap. He’d gotten close enough for his pine-fresh magic to tickle my nose. “They’re not all graves.”
“That’s why I said recovery expert,” he said, leading me through the spacious gallery. “He told me to hire you if I ever needed something ‘recovered’ and couldn’t get it on my own. I figured it would be easier to approach you through official channels.”
Easy? I’d known him less than two hours, and he’d already given me six near-heart attacks. “You could’ve asked Symeon to introduce us.”
Symeon was going to need a lot more than a nice jacket to stop me from killing him for ever saying my name near Adam. Until then, I would play along. Being a mage wasn’t a crime. As long as he thought I was nothing more than a tracker, we’d be fine.
I hoped.
“If I asked him to do that, I’d owe him a favor. And I—”
“Hate owing people. I’ve heard that before,” I said with a groan. “If someone like you can’t find it, what makes you think I can?”
“Someone like me?” he said with a glint in his eye.
“One of the most powerful mages in the world,” I said flatly. Like the egomaniac didn’t already know.
The corners of his lips turned up. “Mhm.”
“Maybe you should’ve tried harder.” If he had, we never would have met — and I wouldn’t have lost ten years off my life.
“Every mage has their limits.”
“Even you?”
“Sure.” We reached a door in the back that opened into a staircase leading down. “How about you?”
We had to go down the stairs one at a time, and walking in front of him made me nervous. “I’m not a mage.”
“I wasn’t talking about magic.”
“Let’s keep things professional.”
We reached the bottom of the stairs. “I guess I could always ask Symeon. He’s never been shy discussing his sexual conquests.”
I stopped, and he ran into me. My sword came out of its sheath without a sound as I whipped around. It was like facing down a bull with a piece of paper, but I wasn’t afraid of a challenge.
“First of all, I am not a conquest,” I said, tightening my grip. “Second of all, fuck you. Who the hell do you think you are? I ought—”
He held his hands up and took a step back. “Let’s keep things civil—”
“You implied I was—”
“You’re not?”
I shoved the sword in his face. I had to stretch my arm to do it. It was almost insulting how big our height difference was. “He likes me because I’m good at my job, not because I’m fucking him.”
Symeon went through people like candy. The majority of recurring people in his life were either cli
ents or lovers, so I understood his thinking. That didn’t make me want to rip his head off any less.
“I wasn’t doubting your abilities.”
“No, you just think I sleep around.” What he thought shouldn’t have mattered to me. But it did.
“Not around….” he stammered, which caught me by surprise. “You were wearing his jacket.”
“It was a gift.”
“It’s a man’s jacket.”
“I’m manly.”
His eyes panned down my body, the look in them almost indecent. “I disagree.”
I sighed and sheathed my sword, ignoring the heat in my cheeks. “He didn’t want me walking around half naked and bloody.”
“So you’re just friends?”
“Yes,” I ground out.
He nodded. “Good.”
“Did you want to sleep with him?”
“Not him.”
I stared at him, mouth ajar, and tried to think of a witty response. All I had was, “You were hitting on me while thinking I was dating Symeon?”
“No. Symeon doesn’t date. But I do,” he added with that devastating smile.
I didn’t date either. But now I wanted to. “I’m surprised you don’t understand what professional means. I thought you were supposed to be some corporate bigwig.”
He shrugged. “I’m on my lunch break.”
“It’s almost six.”
“Dinner break.”
I bit back a scream. The man was infuriating. My Fire crackled at the challenge. Part of me liked that about him, and it worried me.
“I don’t like you.” I was trying to convince myself more than him.
He tilted his head, and I refused to find it adorable. “Why?”
“You’re not likable.”
“Are you sure? Plenty of people seem to like me.”
“Then go annoy them.”
He stepped toward me. “I don’t want them.”
“Why? Because they want you? That’s the rich boy thing, right? Always gotta have the things you can’t have.”
He froze mid-step and frowned, the lines of his face hardening. Silence slammed into us like a steel fist. His magic wasn’t pressed as closely as usual. It churned, contemplative and unhappy. Did I…hurt his feelings?
“Vault?” I said when the silence had stretched too long.
“This way.”
I’d felt the protective enchantments around the first floor. They were powerful, but they were nothing compared to the enchantments down here. If these things were a person, they’d give even Adam a challenge. His magic swirled around him in a displeased cloud.
A small challenge.
“Heavy duty security.”
He didn’t look at me. “That’s my thing.”
“So, ‘security chose me, I didn’t choose it’?” I tried to lower my voice to mimic his, but all I got was a sore throat.
“No, I chose it.”
A few hours ago, I’d have loved his stand-offish attitude. But this didn’t feel right. “Why? Do they force you to wear a suit in the fine foods division?”
He scoffed, but I saw his lips twitch. “My family is important to me. Their safety is paramount.”
How sweet. But what about the innocent people the Council wanted to lock up? Who’s going to keep them, keep me, safe while your family persecuted them from their golden thrones? I rubbed my shoulder but couldn’t seem to get the chip off.
“How noble,” I said as he opened the vault.
Damien’s vault could house a family of six. The left side of the room was filled with wooden crates covered in preservative enchantments. Their magic hadn’t fully settled in here, so they were recent additions. Artifacts for a new exhibit, maybe. There were a few more crates littered around. Some sealed, some not.
“I fought Cyrus,” I said, stepping inside. “He wasn’t that tough. How the hell did he break in here?”
“After the exhibit, artifacts are transferred to Damien’s home to make room for new items. Cyrus ambushed the transport. He did not break into our vault,” Adam stressed.
I did a mental dance over getting under his skin. “Your brother’s home is filled with all the treasure he’s displayed? Must be cramped.”
“Not the one here,” he said. “He keeps a place in Munich for his collection.”
I raised a brow. “He has a home just for artifacts?”
“I have one for clothes too,” a male voice called from the doorway.
“Last season’s?” I asked while turning to face the speaker.
“Of course. I only keep the new stuff here.” Damien had his brother’s grin, though he wore it like a smirk.
He’d been shirtless on his Witch Mode cover, and I’d seen it enough times to have it memorized. It seemed impossible, but he was even more handsome in person. Unlike Adam’s tousled dark hair, Damien had short blond hair. His eyes weren’t as intense, but they were more mischievous.
Magic crackled around him. In addition to being gorgeous, both brothers also had powerful magic in common. I couldn’t catch a break today.
Damien’s smirk screamed trouble. “You’ve seen my Witch Mode cover.”
I stiffened. “What?”
“I can tell by the way you’re undressing me with your eyes.”
“I’m not,” I stammered, shaking my head. “I’m not. Not at all doing that. I’m not. At all.”
“Your magic’s flaring.” His smirk turned into a full-fledged grin, and he licked the air. “It’s like cinnamon and chocolate lava cake, but it’s got another kind of kick to it too, a heat. Can’t quite put my finger on it. You sure she’s just a tracker?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. In one day, I’d met two people who could destroy everything I’d worked to build. Not to mention the nine months I spent taking back alleys to get to Ollie’s cafe without passing this gallery.
“Sophia.” Adam reached for me. I flinched, and he reeled back like I’d slapped him. “It’s okay.”
There were a lot of words for this situation. “Okay” wasn’t one of them.
“Sophia,” Adam said firmly. “Calm down. Damien is the best tracker mage in the world.”
“Literally,” Damien said. “Check the rankings. Or breathe. I recommend breathing first.”
Magic wrapped tight, Adam reached for me again. His hand was warm on my shoulder, and his breath was soft against my ear. “He’s the best. That’s why he sensed your magic. But he’s not going to say anything. I’ll talk to him.”
I hugged myself, trying to replace his touch. All I wanted was reassuring contact, right? I could get that on my own. So why did the thumb rubbing circles on my back feel a million times more comforting?
“At least reign your magic in.” I felt his lips quirk up against my ear. “My brother is enjoying it too much. It’s making me territorial.”
I stepped away and glared at him. “I am not your territory.”
He grinned. “Better, but you’ll need to pull it in more if you want to be like before.”
“Hey.” Damien frowned. “What did I ever do to you? Stop telling her to hide her magic.”
“Stop licking it,” Adam said. “Just because you’re the best tracker in the world doesn’t mean you need to be a lech about it.”
I wanted to remind him he molested me with his magic within an hour of us meeting, but that’d just open up another can of worms.
“Can you blame me? Don’t tell me you haven’t felt her magic,” Damien said. “You are the second best tracker in the world after all.”
“And you’re the second best elemental mage in the world,” Adam said. “Do you really want to piss off the best?”
Within a second, the vault had turned into a magical frat house. Adam released me, his magic coming out to meet his brother’s. Damien’s magic smelled like jasmine and tasted like mint. Much lighter than his brother’s magic, but just as potent. Like soft rain that quickly turned into a hurricane.
My Fire blazed, delighted at all the deliciou
s magic in the room. I did what was probably the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life and stepped between the two magical lightning rods.
“So, you two are the most powerful tracker mages in the world.” And elemental mages. Holy freakin’ shit, we should never have moved to California. Tibet — no one would’ve bothered us there.
“And shifters,” Damien added with a smirk. “I don’t know if we’re the best, but we are among them.”
There was no God.
“You’re getting cocky,” Adam said. “Remember what happened when you mouthed off in Ibiza?”
“That was three years ago, and I won.”
“One day you won’t.”
Damien turned to me. “He’s just jealous he didn’t get the dragon.”
My brows leapt into my hairline, and I whimpered, “Dragon?”
Shifting was a very difficult magic to learn. And ten times more difficult to master, according to shifters. The bigger and more powerful the animal, the harder it was. To be able to shift into a dragon….
Suddenly my cell from eight years ago didn’t sound so bad.
“Why are you here, Damien?” Adam asked.
Damien swept his arms around the room. “This is my vault. In my gallery. It’s my artifact you hired her to find. Though if I’d known she was so—”
“Damien,” Adam warned.
“—charming, I’d have gone to the Guild myself.”
“Am I still charming if I think it’s weird you’re doing all this for a trade?”
“Sure.” He didn’t miss a beat. “I’m a business man, first and foremost. Reputation is everything. As such, I take my agreements very seriously, whether they’re with friends or work contacts.”
Wow. Professional. I liked it. “Adam didn’t tell me what the Heart does. Should I be worried about touching it?”
“You should always wear gloves when handling these sort of things,” he said. “But I didn’t feel any adverse effects. The book containing the map to its location didn’t reveal much. All I could find was the Heart used to serve as a catalyst in the cultists’ rituals. Normally, the chamber where the artifact is kept gives details and information about it. A scroll, carvings, the usual stuff. But my people couldn’t find anything. The temple was pretty rundown.”
“We’re not expecting you to work a miracle,” Adam said. “But since we couldn’t trace anything, we hope you might be able to.”