by K. F. Breene
He stood like a snake uncoiling, smooth and graceful. His hand dipped into his pocket, but before I could tell him not to pay, he nodded and turned. He stalked off through the crowd without a word. His men peeled off after him, a well-oiled machine.
“What the…” Daisy hopped up. “Did he just take off without paying?” She scoffed and stamped her foot. “What a cheap… After you did all that?” She shook her head. “Bitch better give us our money. I’ll knock on his damn door if I have to.”
“Leave it,” I said softly, ignoring the people pushing toward me. Clearly the stranger was an attraction all his own, and now they’d want in on it. No, thank you. “Let him go.”
I rolled up my rug, a very bad feeling lodging in the pit of my stomach.
“Unfortunately,” I muttered, “I have a feeling he’ll be back.”
23
Kieran
Kieran could hardly speak. He’d given powerful Ghost Whisperers ten times as much information as he’d just given Alexis. Uttering one word would’ve been more than he’d just given her. And yet she’d read the situation perfectly.
The others had tried to send his mother beyond the Line. They’d chimed their bells and fanned their candles, but in the end, he’d received only their condolences. They couldn’t force a spirit that did not want to go.
Alexis hadn’t even tried. She’d listened to the problem, directly from the source, and immediately tried to problem-solve. His stomach exploded in fireworks.
“She’s legit,” Zorn said, voicing Kieran’s thought. Zorn caught up to Kieran and kept pace. They walked along the sidewalk to a distant parking lot. People stopped to gawk, recognizing Kieran’s face. “I had my suspicions, but…”
“I’ve had people testing her all night. She has left them in complete awe.” Kieran shook his head and threw out his hand. Fog blasted down from the sky before swirling through the street, creating a thick white wall.
Drivers slammed on their brakes, squealing to a stop. He was already walking, crossing in front of them before waving his hand again and dissipating the weather effect.
“I’m in complete awe.” He stepped up onto the far curb. “Make sure she gets home okay.”
“Donovan is on it.”
“Tear down that fair. Make sure those beasts are placed in the magical reserves, and ensure the slaves have enough resources to start an independent life. Let the mayor know that I can be reasonable with regards to a magical fair, but it must be run correctly. What he allowed is appalling.”
“Of course, sir.” Zorn climbed the stairs of the parking garage behind him. “The standard letter, then?”
“Yes.” Kieran reached his car and paused, his mind and body both buzzing. “She didn’t slice down my chest once tonight.”
“Progress.”
“Was it? Or are there different magics at work?” He pulled his wallet from his pocket so he wouldn’t be sitting on it, then opened the car door. “Bring her in to be tested. I need to see what’s under the hood.”
“And the boy?”
Kieran stopped, having descended halfway into his car. He eyed Zorn in confusion. “What about him?”
“He has incredible potential, and he is one of the two things she cares about most in the world.”
Kieran had been so blinded by her incredible beauty, and the rich feel of her delicious magic, that he hadn’t noticed much else. She was becoming a weakness. A distraction. Something he craved when having spent too long without her quick wit and sparkling eyes.
Something he should cut out of his life immediately so as not to be consumed by her. But he needed her. He needed her magic.
He stilled for a moment, letting the rush of feeling course through him. Heavens, he wanted her. Like he’d never wanted any other woman. She was exciting and mysterious. The things she did for those kids would inspire saints, and she’d stood up to those beast handlers with unbelievable courage. She was strong and fierce, but soft-hearted. Utterly unique. If he wasn’t careful, she would become an obsession.
He gritted his teeth, forcing his thoughts away from her and focusing on the boy. The power within him was raw and mighty, throbbing with the need to break free. He was probably a class four now, but he’d see a huge power boost as he continued to go through puberty. He’d be a class five, easily, like his father before him.
“He should be dead,” Kieran said. “How has she kept him alive?”
“I think that is a mutual achievement. She and the girl ward fight to keep him alive as much as he fights through the pain out of his fear of hurting them, even in death.”
Guilt, sharp and hot, rose through him, riding the coattails of more memories of those sick kids in the hospital in Galway. Of their struggle to keep going, even though their bodies were riddled with cancer. Of the way he’d watched them, day after day, and done nothing. Not until the end, when half of them had been lost.
“Get him tested. See if he can be cured,” Kieran said, getting into his car.
Zorn nodded and turned away.
Kieran shut his door but didn’t turn on the car just yet. Guilt still tore at him.
Because he knew he wasn’t just doing this for the kid’s sake.
If he helped the boy, he’d reel in the woman. When it came to manipulating a situation, Demigods were in a league of their own, and he was better than most.
Of course, Alexis didn’t seem like a woman to let a stranger dictate her future.
A smile, unbidden, curled his lips. He looked forward to the fireworks.
24
Alexis
“Mail,” Daisy called from the front of the house.
I heard paper slap against wood and knew she’d thrown it down on the kitchen table.
I straightened up from the laptop and worked my knuckles into the knots in my back. I’d been bent over the thing all day, researching the situation regarding a selkie unable to obtain his or her skin in death. I hated not knowing things, and a part of me did feel bad for the stranger’s mom. Being stuck in the world of the living had to feel like purgatory. It was a crappy existence.
There wasn’t a whole lot of information, though. Apparently, it was widely known that if the holder of the selkie’s skin had any sort of respect for the selkie at all, he or she would return said skin to the selkie on their deathbed so that he or she might slip into the eternal waters upon their demise. In fact, in many places, it was regulated by law.
That failing, the holder of the skin would burn it so that the selkie could easily find the skin on the other side. That failing—because let’s face it, only an asshole would imprison another creature for their own benefit, and assholes didn’t give two shits about what was moral, in death or otherwise—it was widely believed the selkie could call the skin as a spirit, thus making it disappear.
Well, the stranger’s mom had clearly been calling the skin, and nothing was happening.
So what the fuck?
“Did you—”
I jumped at the sudden sound as Daisy poked her head into my room.
“Wow. Jumpy much?” She grinned. “Did you hear me? Mail.”
“Yes. Thank you for that pressing news. I haven’t been able to sit still out of anticipation. Now I can rest. Finally.”
“Ew.” She turned her eyes to the ceiling and disappeared. “One’s official looking, though.”
“Is it a bill?” I called.
“The house isn’t that big, you guys,” Mordecai said from his bedroom next door. “You don’t have to shout.”
“Go back to your trees, Treebeard,” Daisy shouted. “And I don’t know if it’s a bill. It’s from a magical committee of something-such.”
Frowning, I shut the laptop and pushed up from the bed. I stopped in Mordecai’s room and handed off the computer. “I’m finished.”
He looked up from his book before reaching for it. “Find out anything?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Did you hear from that guy?”
I le
aned against his doorframe, thinking back two nights. After the stranger disappeared into the crowd, the kids and I had cleaned up as best we could and lugged all our stuff to the car, continually telling the onlookers that we were closed for business. One of the men who’d been on crowd control stood by the car, strong and stoic, his glare making everyone give the car a wide berth.
He’d gotten there a bit late, though, since a new key scratch adorned the right side. It had a few friends.
“No,” I said, “but it’s only been a couple days.”
“Yesterday was the only day he hasn’t stalked you since you two met,” Mordecai said, his eyes somber. He had not been taking this situation well. I couldn’t tell if it was his shifter traits coming through more strongly now, or just plain ol’ sense. “Something is up.”
I shrugged. “I told him I couldn’t help, while letting him see my life in all its poor splendor. He probably recognized a bad bet when he saw one.”
Mordecai studied me for a moment before bending back to his book. “I can see you don’t believe that.”
He was right. I didn’t. But there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about the situation.
“What’d you get up to today, Daisy?” I asked as I walked into the living room.
She had just grabbed a badly used textbook from the coffee table before sitting down. “Had an interview with Denny’s dad, let Denny take me out to lunch, and read with him in the park. All in all, a pretty nice little day.”
I paused on my way to the kitchen, because it was time to be a parent, no matter how much I didn’t want to. “I thought we talked about you spending time with Denny, and about you getting a job for his dad.”
“We did.” She flipped open the hardcover. “But we also discussed what that mobster’s ghost said. I knew we shouldn’t send that kind of letter from here, so I grabbed an envelope from Denny’s dad’s office on the sly. I told him the job wasn’t for me. It’s fine.”
I stared at her with a gaping mouth.
She licked her thumb and turned the pages, hunting for a specific section.
“I was just going to call it in,” I said.
“There’s no way they would have let you leave an anonymous message.” She flicked a page. “At best, they would have only taken your name. Then, if the lead checked out, they would have come searching for the source of the information. Hello? Don’t you read detective stories?”
“No, I don’t. And also, I’ve called in loads of anonymous messages. It’s always been fine.”
“Have any of those tips been incriminating to a mobster who may or may not have people on the inside?”
“We don’t even know if that guy was a mobster.”
“Don’t we?” She lifted her brows before flicking another page.
I sighed, giving up. “Stay away from that family,” I said as I turned. “I mean it, Daisy.”
“I will, I will. But Denny is pretty good company.”
“Stay away!”
“Fine.” She huffed.
At the kitchen table, I separated the mail into a large pile (the trash) and a tiny pile (stuff that mattered). I pushed aside a water bill that I could blessedly pay because I’d helped a criminal and probably upset my karma, and picked up the letter Daisy had alluded to.
“SF’s Magical Governing Committee,” I read, slipping my finger into the end as apprehension wiggled my gut.
The SFMGC, comprised of officials chosen by the Demigod’s office, didn’t have anything to do with the freak show, so it couldn’t be a notice that my permit had been revoked. With the large haul I’d taken in a couple nights ago, and the trouble I’d caused, I’d decided to take the rest of the week off. But I hadn’t been looking very hard for a job. I’d need to go back to the fair on Monday, after the hubbub died down, and see if I could stay under the radar a little better. I’d even leave the choice parking spaces to the big dogs.
Why else would they have written to me? I’d only ever received letters from these guys when they’d wanted to test me…
My thought trailed away as my ire rose.
I ripped the rest of the way into the letter and scanned the contents.
“That filthy bastard,” I said too loudly.
“What?” The couch protested in a series of squeals before Daisy jogged in. “What happened? Is it the insanely hot guy with the unbelievably banging bod that we all hate? What did he do?”
“He wants me to be retested for magic, which is fine. I don’t know why this is necessary, since he clearly thinks he knows everything, but whatever. It’s an annoying afternoon followed by too much Guinness. But he also wants Mordecai tested again, which…” I crunched the letter in my fist. “Which is not going to happen.”
“Why? Aren’t you curious?”
“No. Do you know why?”
“Obviously.”
“Because when Mordecai was tested last, he was young, in bad shape, and everyone thought he didn’t have much longer to live. Well, he’s still alive, he is definitely going to be a powerhouse, and he’s almost at the age where the alpha of his old pack can challenge and kill him.” Hot tears blurred my eyes. “I have busted my ass to keep Mordecai under the radar. People thought he was dead, which meant he was safe. And now this asshole thinks he can waltz into my life and endanger my kids?”
I slammed the paper down on the table.
“Over my dead fucking body.” I swatted hair out of my face and wondered if I could call the stranger’s mother. I mean, I could. Once I’d met a spirit, I could almost always summon them. I could get that woman in here so fast she’d wonder who’d ripped the water out from under her. And I’d give her a good talking to on how she’d raised her entitled, arrogant, life-endangering son.
But what would that do? He couldn’t see her or hear her. I’d be badgering a dead woman. Though she kind of deserved it, considering the monstrosity of a man she’d cultivated.
No. No, I was better than that. Slightly.
But I wasn’t better than tracking that bastard down and giving him a piece of my mind.
“I’m going to the pub.” I stalked to the counter and snatched up my handbag. “I’m going to summon up a little liquid courage while I take to Google, and this time, I’m actually going to find him. No more letting a bunch of celebrity gossip crap deter me. I’ll do it, and then I’m going to bring the fight to him.”
I wasn’t awesome at stalking people, online or otherwise, which had proved a huge stumbling block in my attempt to unmask the handsome stranger. With my burning curiosity about his mom weighing on me, I’d given up before I’d found anything.
“Oh my God. Wait.” Daisy stood in the entryway of the kitchen with her hands out.
“You’re not going.”
“Of course I’m not going! It’s a bar and he’s dangerous. But…you need…something.”
She dashed out of the kitchen.
“I need an army of large men, and probably an Uzi. That’s what I need. But I have my mouth, and I can stoop to foul play. I know stuff about Mommy dearest, after all. And you know what? Since he decided to fight dirty, I will make him rue the day he challenged me in a battle of ‘who will punch below the belt the hardest.’”
Daisy’s feet thundered back down the hall and she appeared in the kitchen holding an ankle brace fitted with a dagger. “Use this.”
“Oh.” I’d forgotten I had it. She’d clearly been rooting around in my stuff again.
That discussion could wait until later.
“Great, thanks.” I strapped it on and practiced pulling it out. “For reachability’s sake, it would be better on my thigh.”
“Your thigh is too fat.”
“It’s muscle, you twit.” Ish.
I draped my purse across my body and took a deep breath. I was about to go out in search of a fight with a giant, super-fast, super-strong, super-magical, super-rich, super-handsome dude.
What was I thinking?
“I’m thinking that Mordecai will not be pu
shed around, that’s what I’m thinking.” I balled my fists in determination.
“Okay.” Daisy nodded at me and braced like she was about to lift something. “Good thinking. You are strong. You are powerful. You can. You can.”
“What?”
“That’s a mantra. I am strong. I am powerful. I can. I can!”
I could get my butt beaten up. The other two were just wishful thinking.
“I am good in a pinch,” I corrected, making up my own mantra. “I am good at surprise-hitting powerful people in vulnerable places. I will. I fucking will!”
“Yes. Okay. Go with that!” Daisy followed closely behind me to the front door. “Call the house if anything happens. I’ve driven before. I can run a bitch over, no sweat.”
“That’s good to know.”
I opened the door to Frank standing outside, wringing his hands.
“Not now, Frank,” I said without stopping.
“Ew. Just send that poltergeist to the other side,” Daisy said, her bravado fading quickly.
“It’s not nice when they don’t want to go,” I called, power-walking to the sidewalk. “Besides, Ms. Merlin is a real jerk and could use some haunting.”
“Where are you going?” Frank caught up with me quickly, and because I needed something to keep my mind off what I was doing, I didn’t chase him away.
“I am going to protect my homestead, Frank, in a brash and possibly crazy way.”
“Oh. So how was your day?”
“It was lovely, Frank. A real nice time.”
“Oh. That’s good.” And Frank, taking one of his few opportunities to talk to someone who could hear him, launched into a series of annoying and mostly boring stories about how he was nearly positive he had a ghost in his house.
He’d died with Alzheimer’s, and half the time, he forgot he was the ghost.