by K. F. Breene
My mouth worked, but nothing came out. He was here because he was stalking me, and he’d done a lot of homework in a very short period.
His steady gaze never shifted from my eyes, as though we were the only two people in the room, and nothing short of the world ending could tear his focus away. I wished he were a little more easily distracted.
“How do you know all that?” I finally uttered.
His eyebrows lowered marginally. “We keep records on magical people. You must know that. For those with a larger-than-average power level, we usually keep extensive records, and the subject is strongly encouraged to live within the magical zones, at least part-time. But in your case…it seems there are varying reports in regards to your ability and the magnitude of your power. None of the reports are accurate. Not even remotely. What they have on file for your magical talent is ridiculous. Laughable, even. The bad reporting is another…perplexing aspect of you.”
It wasn’t perplexing at all. I just didn’t like people sticking their noses in my business, so whenever the low-level magical governing body employees brought me in for routine testing, I fluctuated my magic to mess with their equipment.
My magic wasn’t useful to society at large, but it was plenty useful to me.
I palmed my chest and took a step away. “I don’t have an above-average magnitude of power—this non-magical place has clearly bamboozled you. I don’t strive for more because all the jobs I could do are already being done by those with a lot more experience. Find someone else to stalk. I’m good right where I am.” I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders. Throwing my weight around worked a lot better when I could keep up the facade of confidence. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, get out of my chair.”
Our eyes met, and locked, the distance between us reducing until it was just him and me, his power and intensity washing over my body like a physical presence. Silence descended on the bar, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see more than a few people looking our way.
My legs shook, but I held my ground and his stare. Finally, slowly, a tiny smile tickled his lips. His eyes sparked fire.
“Sure, if that’s what you want.” He took his time lifting the Guinness to his mouth before draining it. The glass thunked softly as it hit the wood of the bar. He stood, still in no hurry, unfolding to his full height, which, as predicted, topped mine by at least five inches.
He stepped closer. His body came within inches of mine. Heat and electricity sizzled across my skin and fire pounded in my core. His sweet breath fell across my face, and it took everything in me not to back away. It took even more willpower not to close the distance and run my hands up his chest, exploring those defined pecs his shirt merely hinted at.
I couldn’t seem to get enough air. Swimming in that sexy magic was slowly turning to drowning, only I didn’t want a life raft. Something about him called to me. Something smooth and silky. Decadent. Like a rich, complex chocolate made with the finest ingredients. I wanted to taste. To experience.
To let him take me home, strip off my clothes, and show me how powerful he really was.
“Until next time, Alexis.” He bent, slowly, and suddenly I worried he’d try to kiss me.
I worried I’d let him.
He turned, and all too soon, though not soon enough, he was slipping by me and striding to the door.
“Arrogant prick,” the grizzled old man said as he reached for his drink.
“Yeah.” I put out a hand and braced myself against the bar. “He was, right? You don’t say those things to people you barely know. Even if you have the kind of magic that makes them want to hear those things…”
“He’s dangerous. You ought to steer clear,” said a wispy-haired man on the other side of my recently vacated chair, nothing in front of him. “Nothing good can come from tangoing with a man like that. I should know; I was like him once. Young and strong, with the whole world in front of me…”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” the grizzled man said, and turned back to face the bar.
“Women wanted me and men wanted to be me. I was in my element. Nothing could tear me down…”
“And yet here you are,” I said, grabbing my chair. “Clearly you took a wrong turn somewhere.”
The grizzled man snickered, and Liam stared at me from the other end of the bar.
I pressed my lips closed and hefted my chair, walking it back to its rightful place.
“Good for you,” Liam said as I set down my chair. Once I switched it for the wobbly one, I scooted in and sat down with a sigh.
“Good for you,” Liam said again. “Don’t let that bastard try to intimidate you.”
“Don’t show that he does intimidate me, at any rate, huh?” I took a big sip of the Guinness that had been waiting for me.
Mick growled something and reached for his beer. A moment later, he said, “Get me a whiskey, will ya, Liam?”
Liam ignored Mick. “All those powerful magical types do is throw their weight around,” he said. “They don’t care that this isn’t their territory. They come in here and bark commands like they own the place. Well, they don’t.”
“No, they do not. I’ll drink to that.” I raised my drink in the air before lifting it to my lips, trying not to gulp the whole thing down. I only half succeeded.
“And next time you see him, you just keep putting him in his place, Alexis,” Liam went on, quite chatty this evening. “You have the law on your side. If he tries to do anything you don’t like, you just go ahead and find the nearest cop. They’ll sort him out.”
“That’s…great, thanks,” I mumbled. I doubted any underpaid dual-society cop would want to mess with a guy like that.
“Because once those types get a whiff of something they want, they keep going until they get it. I’ve seen it before,” Liam said. “They leave young girls like you in a wake a mile long.”
“Feck sakes, what did someone do, pull your string?” Mick grumbled.
“But not with you, Alexis.” Liam nodded knowingly. “He’s met his match with you. You just keep on sticking up for yourself. You’ll give his royal highness a run for his money, you will.”
The sarcasm rang out loud and clear. There was obviously a reason Liam worked in a place like this, where he never had to meet influential or powerful people. Usually.
“It doesn’t matter.” I waved the whole thing away, hoping Liam would get the hint and bugger off. “I won’t be seeing him again. His curiosity has been satisfied. He had some misperceptions about me. This should be the end of it.”
I did a terrible job of selling that lie, not least of all because I still had to get that blanket back to the confusingly sexy yet clearly unhinged stranger, lest he think I’d changed my mind on which blankets would be keeping me warm…
14
Kieran
Kieran turned the corner outside of the bar and stopped in the shadows, his whole body tense and his fingers curled into fists. He sucked in deep breaths and tried to clear his head.
He had completely lost control.
Completely.
And without any warning.
His mother’s selkie magic throbbed within him. The ocean, only a mile away, sang to him softly. Sweetly. But, pulsing within that compulsion, he could also feel the power of the tides, the might of the currents.
His parents’ magic came from the same place, the ocean, but it manifested in entirely different forms. He’d only used his mother’s magic once.
Once had been plenty.
For a selkie, the ability to inspire lust and passion was more of a suggestion. A lure. The weak might succumb, but the strong rarely did, unless by choice.
That was, unless the wielder was also a Demigod. Then, the selkie magic was amplified. Boosted. No longer just a lure, it became a command. A drug.
He’d tried using it exactly one time, when he hadn’t understood the difference. His lover at the time had become a robot. Nothing more than a plaything, eager to do his bidding without c
ontrol of herself or independent thought. She couldn’t have said no if she’d wanted to.
The very idea disgusted him. It had turned a strong woman into mush. Continuing to use the magic would’ve turned him into a monster.
He’d never done so again.
Until now.
He leaned his head back against the wall, fighting the lingering feeling of Alexis’s magic. Trying to cut out the throbbing ache.
What the hell had happened?
Needing movement, he pushed away from the wall and walked to the edge of the darkened parking lot to retrieve his car.
He hadn’t meant to call up the selkie magic. He hadn’t even consciously realized it was happening. One moment he’d been watching the erotic sway of Alexis’s hips, and the next he was lost in a tide of lust and need, his cock so hard he couldn’t think straight. He wanted her with a ferocity he’d never experienced. Wanted to unlock her mind and get all her secrets in between bouts of worshiping her perfect body.
Why was she affecting him like this? Her magic was provocative and enticing, but it wasn’t anything like the sexual compulsion he’d just thrown at her. And even if it had been, he was a Demigod. Her magic shouldn’t affect him like this, especially since the assessment had judged her power level to be fairly weak.
“Bullshit,” he said softly.
He shook his head as he opened his car door, still uncomfortably hard.
There was no way he was wrong in his assessment of her magic’s potency. No way. She’d somehow withstood his boosted version of selkie magic, for fuck’s sake. She’d drunk it in, coasted with it for a moment, and then rejected it with a smile.
He wasn’t wrong. And there was no way someone with her magical potency and ability could’ve simply slipped through the cracks. She was hiding something. She had to be. And he intended to find out what.
15
Alexis
I toweled off my hair as I sauntered into my bedroom to check the time. Three in the afternoon. I needed to get my stuff in the car and go pick out my spot. Tonight, I’d be taking to the streets and selling my wares. Time to prove the moneymaker my magic was not.
Dressed in my best blouse and my only pair of slacks that actually made the journey all the way to my ankles, I grabbed the oversized sack I used as a purse for these ventures and stuffed in a tie-dyed square of fabric, a few dingy crystals, and my tarot deck. The cracked crystal ball without a base weighed down the very bottom.
Rolling my eyes at myself, I slung the strap over my shoulder and grabbed my jacket from its hook.
In the living room, Mordecai was leaning over Daisy, looking at the laptop on her lap. Both kids had scrunched-up expressions.
“What’s up?” I asked, stepping into the kitchen and grabbing my filled water bottle.
“Gandalf is trying to remember algebra,” Daisy said, glancing up from the couch. “He should stick to fire beasts.”
“Do you want help or not?” Mordecai demanded. I smiled at the strength in his voice and the turquoise blanket draped loosely over his shoulders. I suspected he didn’t actually need it; he just wanted the comfort. That was a good sign, and pretty amazing, since his close call had been only a little more than twenty-four hours ago.
Daisy whistled at me. “Look at you. I didn’t know you had it in you. Makeup and everything. Though the blue eyeshadow is…off-putting.” She slapped the cheap Black-Friday-special laptop shut and set it on the coffee table.
Mordecai looked over, and the knot between his eyebrows cleared. He smiled. “I think it looks good. The black eyeliner makes her eyes look really big.”
“That’ll do.” I pushed a loose curl over my shoulder. “I figure I should try to look a little more approachable at these things.”
Mordecai nodded, straightening without any stiffness. That medicine was a miracle. “I think it’ll work.”
A part of me hoped it wouldn’t. That wasn’t the part that realized we needed money, though.
I draped my jacket over my arm. “All right, you guys, keep the door locked and—”
“Wait, wait. I’m almost ready. Just have to grab my…” Daisy’s voice trailed away as she disappeared into her and Mordecai’s bedroom. As she bustled out with a new handbag that I hadn’t seen before, and a cute little hat with a pompom that only she could get away with, Mordecai slipped past me and headed for the front door.
“What’s going on?” I asked, putting my hand out to stop Mordecai. “And where did you get that handbag, Daisy?”
Daisy lifted her arm to look at the handbag. “Oh, Denny gave me this. And hey, his dad still wants me to work for the family business. I mean, I’ll say I can’t for a couple weeks because…you know. But after that…I might just do it. I’m positive Denny has kept his word—”
“Wait, wait…” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why is Denny buying you handbags? And I thought you said he didn’t have any money?”
She looked at me with those almond-shaped eyes in her thin, doll-like face. I would kill to swap my ordinary brown peepers for her beautiful blue ones. Then again, she always lamented that I had thick, long eyelashes, and she needed falsies. We always wanted what we didn’t have.
“He helped serve food and clean up at some luncheon his mom threw for a charity. She gave him forty bucks for it. He bought me a purse because he’s into me. Anything else, inspector?”
“Right. Yes.” I shook my head in disbelief as I adjusted the purse strap on my shoulder. “But you just blackmailed him with gay porn so you could rob his dad. Isn’t he horror-struck that you are a bad person?”
She huffed. “Obviously I told him why I did it. He’s totally fine with it. And I’m a serious catch.”
“He’s too dumb to know that she is bad news,” Mordecai said as he leaned against the wall. “He’s thinking with his…eyes, not his head.”
Daisy flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I’m not bad news. I’m just trying to survive. If he wants to buy me things so I’ll stick around, who am I to say no?”
“To the parents of a little rich kid, that’s bad news,” Mordecai responded.
“I have to agree with Mordecai on that one,” I said. “Plus, you recently committed a crime that Denny helped you cover up. He’s an accomplice. It’s probably best for you to steer clear in case he wants to confess his sins.”
“Using people to buy you things is wrong,” Mordecai said patiently.
I paused at the front door. “Right. Yes. That’s what I meant. You shouldn’t hang around him because you obviously don’t respect him, and using people for new handbags is wrong.” I didn’t remind him of how I’d come by my phone. “And also, you don’t want him tattling on you. The second he feels like a scorned lover, he’ll sing like a canary.”
“I should just take over as the guardian,” Mordecai mumbled.
“That’s probably true.” I turned the handle. “Okay—why are you two following me?”
“You’re certainly a helluva lot quicker to notice the obvious,” Daisy said to Mordecai.
“We’re going with you.” Mordecai adjusted his blanket.
I studied their faces to see if they were kidding. They weren’t, which meant they were just dense. “I don’t need a peanut gallery.”
“Um, hello?” Daisy put a hand to her hip. “A large and crazy lunatic is stalking you, or were you too drunk last night to remember telling us about your altercation at the bar?”
“I was not too drunk”—I was a little too drunk, because I only now remembered filling them in—“and it wasn’t an altercation. It was a calm conversation between an arrogant jerk—”
“Who thought he could use his magic to influence you,” Mordecai interrupted.
I put out my finger. “Whose magic can’t coerce me.”
“No. You don’t remember the conversation from last night,” Daisy said, looking skyward.
I blinked, trying to dig through my extremely foggy memory. Looked like she was mostly right, after all—I’d done a g
reat job drowning my sorrows.
“He practically knew your life story,” Daisy said, adjusting her shirt in preparation for people seeing her. Which they wouldn’t. “He clearly has the wrong idea about you and is trying to push the envelope. He’s dangerous. You’re not safe out there on your own.”
“Oh really?” I asked. “And what are you guys going to do? Throw your blanket at him, Mordecai? How about you, Daisy? Are you going to threaten to raid his porn collection in search of blackmail? Honestly, you guys, you’re teenagers. Stay here, learn stuff, and figure out how to dig yourself out of this hole I’ve dragged you into.”
“I like this hole, thank you very much,” Daisy said primly, “and now it’s time I return the favor. My scream is extreme. People can hear it for miles—”
“We really need to work on your understanding of distance,” Mordecai said.
“With three of us, not even a deliciously large, unbelievably attractive, and dangerously charismatic stranger—those were your words, were they not, Alexis?—who knows too much will try to kidnap you,” Daisy said before stepping forward.
I grimaced. “I didn’t actually say all that, did I?”
Daisy gave me a flat look that told me all I needed to know.