by A. L. Tyler
The sound was magnificent up close. Without his jacket to cloak the magic, I could hear the quiet gongs clearly. There was an underlay of crickets and a breeze, and something that sounded awesomely like thunder.
I caught Nick smirking down at me.
“And now it’s weird.” I frowned.
“It was weird for me before that,” he muttered. “Did you try?”
I was torn between standing up and regaining my dignity or remaining by the circles. It was probably my only chance to ever see them up close.
Already regretting it, I rose. “Try?”
“To break it,” Nick said casually. He went back to shaving. “They’re said to be unbreakable. You’re the best. Try to break it.”
“Oh, I couldn’t...” I stammered.
Unbreakable. Those circles protected people from an incredible range of hexes and curses. They were probably a contributing factor to Nick’s success and survival as a handler. I could hardly wrap my head around the mastery required to put them on a vampire.
I had so many questions. I was fighting myself to play it cool.
Nick breathed a laugh. “It’s lasted this long. I have faith.”
My mouth fell open a little. “Seriously.”
Nick gave me a single nod.
My hand hesitated as I hovered it close to the marks. The sound of the wind picked up and the gongs rang out. Natural sounds were hard for my ear to grasp. There weren’t any defined edges—no starts or stops to the tune. Nothing to direct. I tried to quiet the crickets and they grew louder. I tried to stifle them with a new spell and the thunder overtook my efforts.
I closed my eyes to concentrate harder and let the sounds swim in my ears. I tried to master the spell, but it mastered me. I was lost in the noise of a spring storm by the temple. There was nothing I could do to stop the tempest.
I opened my eyes as a small, shuddering gasp escaped my lips. I drew my hand back.
Nick was standing completely still, watching me.
“I would try harder.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He smiled crookedly. “Bullshit.”
I smiled and looked down. Heat flashed in my cheeks. I wanted to touch the marks, to see if that helped—but I didn’t dare.
Did I?
I eyed Nick nervously. “Who—?”
“It’s a long story.”
I nodded. Of course it was. The Arcanthiens were notoriously secretive with their circles.
“And the werewolf?”
“Longer story.”
I grinned. “We’re going to have to start staying in separate rooms after this.”
He wiped his face clean and turned to me. I stood a little straighter.
“Because you won’t be able to keep your hands off of me?”
I crossed my arms, hardly able to suppress a nervous laugh. Nick didn’t flinch, and he didn’t look away.
He was flirting with me and trying to gauge my response.
I had no idea what to do, and all of my cool had evaporated. Gods help me, I knew it would all end in tears. I flirted right back.
“It’s an Arcanthien prayer circle.” I stepped closer, but kept my arms crossed. “It could very well be the last one in existence. I admit that I would have trouble not appreciating it when I see it.”
Nick held my stare. His eyes wandered my face playfully.
Having closed the distance between us, I waited for him to make a move. When he didn’t, I let my eyes wander back to the prayer circle, and then across his well-defined abs.
Another scar, just above his navel. “What about that one?”
His answer took too long, and I looked back up at him. Just like that, the spell was broken.
His eyes were dark. He turned back to the sink. “That one’s original.”
“Original?”
My stomach lurched in horror, because I realized too late what he meant.
“To the attack,” he said, reaching for his shirt. “The night I became a vampire.”
Nick lost his family that night. He survived, but his wife and children hadn’t. It wasn’t something he had openly discussed with me before.
I stepped back, raising a hand to cover my mouth. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” He replied too quickly.
He pulled on his white cotton undershirt as I went back to the bed and pretended to watch the news. He didn’t talk anymore, and neither did I.
With the way Nick looked, it was easy to forget the vast ocean of life experience that separated us. Loss was loss and we had both suffered unimaginable ones, but every loss was different. He would never understand mine, and I would never understand his.
We were alone together. It drew us together. It pushed us apart.
Attachments led to painful separations. Distance was my friend, and I needed to remember to keep my emotions—even minor flirtations—at bay.
“Ready?”
I looked over at Nick, now fully dressed in his well-armored jacket, and nodded.
The normalcy of the sliding into the car next to him was a welcome thing after the morning’s failed... whatever might have happened. I didn’t know how I had deluded myself into thinking that could ever be part of my life again.
“Maybe...” I hesitated.
Nick looked over with more impatience than I was used to. Yes, it needed to be said.
“Maybe you should drop me off first,” I said. The words came hard off my reluctant tongue. “You don’t need to sleep. You would already be there by now if you hadn’t had to stop for me—”
“I’m in no rush,” Nick said, frowning. “Millie has a plan. I’m slowing down on purpose because she probably intends for me to panic. Yes, I would move faster without you. No, I won’t be dropping you off. She drew you in to this case, and I’m not satisfied as to why yet. I need to keep you where I can reach you.” He paused, his fingers tightening on the wheel before he deliberately released his grip. He looked me in the eye. “I would suggest that we get separate rooms from now on, but that’s a bad idea. As I said, Millie intends to use you for some purpose, and until you’ve started with Angel, you’re a hazard when left alone.”
I nodded curtly. As much as it sucked to hear it, that about summed it up. Like me, he’d slipped into the crazy for a moment, and we were both glad to have recovered ourselves before anything unforgivable happened.
This was a business relationship, a workplace friendship, and nothing else.
Nick was the kind of sexy that made Hollywood vampire movies sell. He was smart, on the right side of the law...
And dangerous, the voice whispered in my mind. Couldn’t forget that.
And as his polar opposite, I was me. A hapless criminal, well into my twenties but still failing at adulthood. I needed a babysitter to make sure I didn’t burn the house down in my sleep and I still wasn’t sure how to do anything more than the most basic functions of laundry. Most of my stuff ended in an inferno long before it stained.
I couldn’t cook.
I didn’t wear makeup.
I bathed with the bathroom door open.
Gods. I was a full-grown toddler compared to Nick. He was sitting there in the driver’s seat, drinking from a flask that contained blood and preparing to hunt down a bank heist culprit before collecting the bounty on a serial killer.
He was more adult than most adults. How the hell did we ever have anything to talk about?
I cocked my head as the thought wandered in unbidden. “Alcohol inhibits blood clotting. I imagine that’s a problem on these overnight trips. That’s why your donors drink, and that’s why you keep the wine around. Am I right?”
He looked sharply over at me, and I was gratified by the look of surprise written on his face. His lips relaxed into a small smile as he pulled the keys from his pocket and started the car.
“That’s why I like you, Driftwood. You’re smart.”
Chapter 21
WHEN WE GOT TO THE bank, I noticed his s
wagger as he got out of the car. I noticed the pull and stretch of his shirt as he moved.
I hated myself for it. I hated myself even more when I realized I stared long enough for Nick to come around and open my door for me.
He kindly ignored me.
I got out and tugged my jacket straight, wishing I’d asked for a change of clothes. I’d been wearing the same clothes since Millie’s apartment, and I was weirdly self-conscious that people would know. Of course, Nick was in the same position.
But he was Nick, and he always looked great. Even in a wrinkled shirt.
Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting in Mr. Frazier’s ghoulish office once more.
“Did you find her?” He blinked.
Nick cast a glance at me. I sat up a little straighter.
“Mr. Frazier—” I started.
“Steve.”
“Steve. We need to see your security footage.”
Steve shifted in his chair. He shook his head. “I don’t understand. You’ve already seen it.”
I licked my lips, hoping I was right. “We need to see footage going back two weeks before the incident. Maybe longer. Do you have it?”
Steve glanced to Nick. He thought I was nuts.
“Of the bank vault?”
“Of everything,” I said with all the authority I could muster.
Steve’s eyes darted back to me. “We have it. It’s going to take you a while to watch it.”
I saw the amusement in Nick’s eyes. “We’ll manage.”
He took us to a small office used by their on-site security. A guard showed us how to sort through the footage, and then stood outside the office door to wait while Nick and I crammed in behind the desk.
Nick started the video files running at twenty times normal speed, four at a time. He kept his voice low. “What am I looking for, Driftwood?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” I said like a smart ass.
He cracked a smile. His vampire eyes and brain, capable of processing the high-speed images where a human could not, stayed glued to the screen.
The little office was warm, and I was once again uncomfortably aware that my clothes reeked of several days’ worth of wear.
It took an hour and a half for him to finally tap the pause button.
“There.”
I looked up from my phone. Nick relaxed back in his chair, looking relieved.
The face I saw when I looked at the grainy image taken from the teller’s counter didn’t have nearly the same effect on me, though.
“Play it back,” I said. It felt like ice water running down my spine, and the accompanying sound of breaking glass made me shoot to my feet in alarm.
I turned my back on the computer, focusing on the pounding magic in my core. Not now...
It was coming, though, and it wanted out.
“Jette.”
The urgency in his voice forced my eyes open. He kept his expression calm and steady as I clutched my hands in front of me. They were coated in ice crystals. I was holding a cascading bouquet of frost.
“Everything alright in here?”
Nick stepped toward the door, blocking the security guard’s view of me as he reached for one of his rings. “Everything’s fine.”
“What’s going on with your partner?”
“Mumoriae. She spilled a water bottle. You saw it. You’re going to get us some towels.”
Nick turned back to me as the guard left. He raised his eyebrows. “That’s better than the fire.”
“I hate it when you use memory spells.” I grimaced. “And ice is worse for me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It hurts more.”
His voice was amazingly calm. “I never would have guessed.”
Already, the sound was decreasing. The shattering fell and silenced, and my palms were left encased in ice.
I blinked away tears. “I’m going... to...”
I didn’t know why I felt like I needed his permission. I didn’t. I had this. This wasn’t a burn, after all. This was only my nerves getting the better of me.
Nick nodded, glancing toward the door again. “You’re clear.”
I watched as the fire licked away the ice, melting it from within. I imagined it as a small bird in my palm, hopping and pecking, and that’s exactly how it sounded. The quiet chirps were music to my ears and relief to my cold fingers. I watched the flames flicker and die before I looked back up.
Standing in front of me again, Nick was amazed. “That was controlled.”
I cocked my head and sighed. “I can use magic.”
“I’m aware,” Nick smirked. “Things usually explode when you use magic. That’s all I’m—”
“Shut up.”
“Ma’am?”
I had to awkwardly squeeze past Nick to get to the security guard and the handful of towels he offered me. “Thanks.”
The guard nodded and smiled, and I returned to the computer with Nick, shaking my head.
“You recognize him?” Nick asked quietly.
I stared at the man on the screen, handing over a stack of large bills to change for smaller ones. It had been a long time.
“Jake Smith,” I said, nodding.
Nick leaned back in his chair, analyzing me. I did a double take.
“You recognize him?” I blinked. “How the hell do you know Jake?”
“He’s an associate of your distinguished ex.” Nick’s lip curled and his eyes darkened. “I did my homework. I read up on everyone he might consider an asset after you told me he’s got a special brand of personal hatred for you.”
I nodded, looking down at my hands and biting my lip. More ice crystals were growing across my palms. Jake was a gofer. He wasn’t talented at much more than laying low and following people—exactly the kind of brown-noser that Alex liked ordering around.
Jake being in town wasn’t a coincidence, nor was the fact that he was using this bank.
A local bank. A bank that I might have used, because Fallvale wasn’t a huge metropolis.
As I had recently come to realize, money was one of the few things people touched very casually. It came and it went, touching bare hands as it circulated. In a small town, finding a bill that any particular person had touched was probably a lot easier than anyone knew.
That is, if they had magic and the wit to use a locater spell.
“He’s coming for me,” I said in a barely audible whisper.
The only reason Jake would want money that I had touched was to follow me. And the only reason I had to run right now was Alex Mordley.
“He was coming for you,” Nick said.
I gaped at him. I barely fought the urge to slap the smile off his face. He shrugged off my ire before rising to close the door, casting another whisper of a memory spell to convince the security guard we had authorization to do so.
“Do you know how I found you?” he asked me. “In the first place. How did I find you?”
“I really don’t care,” I said. “And if you don’t stop acting so fucking happy about this—”
“Jette.”
“Alex found me. He’s coming.”
“He’s not, though. Because I found you through an anonymous tip. Someone reported a potential minor infraction at your place of work. The tip came in about a day after the date stamp on that security footage.” He nodded at the computer screen where Jake’s face was still frozen on pause. He went back and played the footage again. “Watch. Look behind him.”
I watched. I waited. Jake left the lobby with his cash, probably off to ask someone with actual talent to tell him if he’d hit pay dirt yet. More people came in to the bank, talked with the tellers, made deposits and withdrawals...
And then Millie Corm walked in.
She strutted to a teller like she was on a catwalk, made a show of straightening her gloves, and then smiled directly at the camera.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. “She’s been here? This whole time, she’s been here? The whol
e damn time?”
Nick’s lips were still curled into a smile as he waited. He didn’t want to steal the discovery from me.
“She wanted to find Alex, but she knew she couldn’t.” My mind was racing. “She found out that Alex killed Mabe, and she knew she wouldn’t find him. He’s too good. But I had just started running. I was easier. She found me, and she watched me...”
Gods. How long had she been watching me? Weeks? Months? Longer?
“And she watched for Alex, because she knew he would come after me. Then Jake showed up.” I closed my eyes and rested my face in my hands. It all made sense now. “This was all about her, and him, and me. She waited until Alex found me just so she could blow his plan.”
Nick breathed a laugh as he sat back down in his chair to recline and stretch.
I shook my head. “She’s doing to Alex what he does to everyone else. She set a trap for his lackey and picked up a fifty dollar bill he touched so she can take her sweet time stalking him. And, she alerted me to the fact that he’d found me as an extra insult. I found traces of a memory spell here before—I thought it was related to the theft, but I will bet anything she falsified George’s records here. He doesn’t use this bank. She just picked a bank in the right jurisdiction to make sure I would see her smiling on the cameras after she robbed the place. And then she set up the kidnapping to be sure she’d be well on her way before we got back. She’s going after Alex, and she’s doing it Alex-style just to piss him off.”
“And she’s probably long gone by now.” I hated the way his eyes glittered. Millie had impressed him. “And you are surrounded by Bleak handlers, and Alex is raging somewhere because he had you and now he doesn’t dare. She is one hell of a criminal.” A frown flashed across his face. “We still have to go after her.”
I crossed my arms. I didn’t like being used. Millie had been using me as live bait. She’d single-handedly ruined my plans to free my father and could have gotten me killed by tipping off the Bleak to my location.
I didn’t owe her any favors, and the sooner she was crossed off my list, the sooner I could hunt down Louis Irvine. “Why? No one got hurt. As you’ve pointed out, she’s an expert.”