by Sonya Clark
That was about the last thing she’d expected him to say. Damn it, it made her want him all the more. Her defensiveness melting, she lowered her arms, resting her hands on the counter. “Well then.” She didn’t know what to say, but it felt wrong to leave his words hanging in the air between them without some response.
“I’m gonna kick myself for this later,” he said ruefully.
She laughed. “I’d kinda like to kick you now. Get a girl all revved up and then tell her you’re not that kind of boy.”
The tension broke between them. Grinning, he said, “I gotta keep you coming back for more.”
“We’ll see who shows up on whose door next.” She made to leave the kitchen.
“You going back to bed?”
“I thought I’d go home.”
Rising, he reached for her hand. “I’d rather you stay as long as you can. I don’t want you caught up in the sweep.”
She’d forgotten about that. He was right; it was safer to stay put until morning. “Yeah, okay. Guess I will go back to bed then.”
She was in the doorway when he spoke again. “You want your snack?”
“I’m not hungry anymore.” She looked him up and down, a slow and thorough examination meant to make him feel keenly what he was passing up, even if it was for a noble reason. “Not for food, anyway.”
It worked. He shifted uncomfortably. She couldn’t tell if he was blushing in the relative darkness, but oh she really hoped so.
“Good night, Calla.”
“Sweet dreams, Nate,” she said with her best evil grin.
He groaned, the sound turning into a choked laugh. She left the kitchen smiling.
* * *
There was a kind of sweetness to denial, an unexpected playfulness that came with keeping passion at bay. Soft touches and teasing kisses were the order of the morning as Nate made breakfast for two while Calla hovered close.
Pushing up the sleeve of his T-shirt, she rubbed a thumb over his tattoo before planting a quick kiss on it. “What’s this mean to you?”
The press of her lips sent a frisson of sensation straight to parts he was trying to keep under control. He forced himself to focus on scrambling the eggs. “Uh, my unit. I was in the Marines in Africa. The tat’s an African painted dog. They’re pretty badass and we thought we were too, so we adopted them as a sort of mascot.”
“How long were you over there?”
“Three tours. Two in the Congo, one in Kenya. Can you get the plates?”
Calla retrieved the plates from where he’d already set them on the counter. He dumped eggs on each one, then added toast from the toaster oven. She carried the plates to the breakfast nook while he poured orange juice in two glasses.
“Three tours sounds like a lot. I thought most people only did one.” She took a hesitant bite of eggs.
“I liked it over there.” He took his plate and moved it so they sat next to each other instead of across, then waved at her to scoot over. She did so with a knowing look. He sat closer than strictly necessary, but he didn’t figure she would complain. “Except for the fighting. And the heat. And the bugs. God, the bugs. You’d wake up covered in them, on your netting or if you forgot that all over your body. The malaria drugs and the water purification tablets were a bitch to put up with. The food was terrible, but you had to eat a lot of it to carry around all your gear.”
They ate in silence for several minutes. Nate hadn’t talked about Africa much since moving, beyond a few words here and there upon meeting other veterans. After coming home he hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all, and then he’d gone through a phase where he sought out other veterans to talk with. He’d tried talking to his ex-wife, but she’d always been too busy, too distracted, too repulsed by the stark reality of his experiences. Ultimately he’d had to seek out other people to talk to about it.
“We’d go into a village looking for a target. Sometimes we’d be hunting one person, usually a group. There’d be people in the village missing limbs. Ears cut off, noses cut off. What they’d do to the women...” He shook his head, trying to get the old images out of his thoughts. “But the villagers wouldn’t help us find them. These groups would come in and round people up. Some of them they’d hurt, some they’d take with them and sell them to work in the unlicensed coltan mines. Some they’d sell to the sex slavers. It didn’t matter. The villagers were always too scared of them, or maybe hated us more, just for being there I guess. They’d tell us lies to get us to move on.”
Calla pushed her empty plate away. “Why the hell did you like it there?”
He shrugged. “I guess it felt like it gave me a purpose, even if it was a fucked-up one.” He picked up both plates and dumped them in the sink, then slid back into the seat and reached for his tablet. “It messed with my head for a while to know the minerals to make this and every other piece of electronics I own, every piece I see every day, came out of those mines. The licensed ones we protect are better but still not great. Nobody gets raped or beaten, but they still put kids to work. Make people work hellish hours in terrible conditions for very little pay. People would riot if they had to work here like they do over there.”
Propping her chin in one hand, Calla raised an eyebrow. “Too bad there’s nothing the government could do to get the sanctions lifted and be able to do business with other countries.”
That was a subject he didn’t want to touch. It led to serious things he didn’t want to think about on a Sunday morning. Wishing he’d never talked about Africa at all, he looked for a way to change the subject and keep the mood from being totally spoiled. “I got to take leave in Hong Kong. That’s gotta count for something.”
Her face darkened, and he knew what she was thinking without asking. She would spend her entire life bound by the city limits. He lifted her chin with his forefinger. “Hey.” Blue-gray eyes with a touch of silver met his, an almost visible wall shining in them. What he would give to gain entrance there...
He leaned in for a kiss, half expecting her to refuse. She didn’t move. Barely touching his lips to hers, he waited for some sign, anything, that she welcomed him. Seconds ticked by, and a wave of fear built in him. Finally she swept it away with a bite and a giggle, scooting away from him quickly. Cornering her in the back of the nook, he tried to say with kisses what he didn’t know how to say with words.
Chapter Seventeen
Nate insisted on escorting Calla back to FreakTown. There were still a lot of uniforms on the streets so she relented, not in the mood to be hassled. He left her at the gate. From the looks of things, the night before had brought a particularly nasty raid. People were cleaning up, picking up belongings that had been scattered in the streets by DMS agents and fixing broken outdoor furniture and planters. Calla kept her head down, guilt churning in her guts. No one knew she was the cause of this destruction. Every time someone called a greeting shame made her quicken her step.
She returned home to find her door kicked in. Not much of a surprise since she hadn’t been home during the raid. The sofa cushions and mattress had been thrown on the floor but mercifully not cut open. Same with her clothes and everything else in the closet. The kitchen cabinets were standing open but the contents left inside. In another small mercy, the fridge was undisturbed. The bookcase was tipped over, books and papers in a pile. It didn’t look like anything there had been destroyed. The worst was her jewelry-making supplies, all dumped in the middle of the floor in a colorful mess. Beads were scattered everywhere, some of them having rolled to the far corners of the apartment, some smashed under heavy boots, leaving tiny clumps of glass. Everything else would take minutes to straighten, but the beads would take hours to collect and sort.
Avoiding the worst of the mess, she entered the apartment and made for the kitchen. Both of her hiding spots were in the cabinets, warded with spells she strengthened ev
ery week. They were intact. Slumping to the floor, she surveyed the damage again. At least as much as she deserved, she figured.
Another, surprising voice spoke up to war with the guilt. She’d be dead if she hadn’t defended herself. It sucked, and it was freaking overkill that the authorities had reacted with a citywide sweep and a middle-of-the-night raid in the zone, but she honestly couldn’t say she would do anything different if she had to do it over again.
After a quick shower and change of clothes, Calla started a pot of coffee and began to tackle the cleanup. She did the back of the apartment first, fixing the bed and the bookcase. She had replaced the cushions on the sofa and was staring at the mess of jewelry supplies when a shadow fell through the open door.
“Mind if I come in?” Vadim entered without waiting for a response. The left side of his face sported two impressive bruises, one at the corner of his mouth and the other on the side of his eye.
Calla grimaced, the guilt returning. “What happened to your face?”
“Apparently the routine of shutting a business down during a raid now includes a rifle butt to the face.” He took a seat on the couch.
“Want some coffee?”
“Please.”
She busied herself with that while trying to figure out what to tell him. If anyone suspected her involvement with the chaos of the previous night, it would be Vadim. How would he react if she told him the truth? Or at least part of it. Knowing she couldn’t lie to him, she was about to find out.
She brought the coffee and sat on the floor, righting the boxes she kept her supplies in and looking over the mess to decide how to start.
“Where were you last night?”
“In the city.” She kept her eyes on the floor, separating out types of beads and returning them to their storage spaces. The weight of Vadim’s stare was going to make her twitch if they didn’t get this over with, but she couldn’t bring herself to volunteer anything.
“I heard the reports about the incident that caused the raid. Did you know they did a complete sweep of the city? I guess you do if that’s where you were. You know what I think happened?”
Just tell him and he’ll stop needling you. But for some reason she couldn’t.
“I think someone called on neon right out in the open, in the middle of a crowd.” He took a drink. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? Since you were in the city.”
She threw a handful of beads in the bottom of a box and raised her head to look at him. “I had no choice!”
He slammed the cup on the end table, coffee slopping over the side, then stood. “The hell you didn’t! We’re damned lucky nobody was killed last night! And that you weren’t caught! You could be strung up in a lab right now, the new favorite experiment. They could be going through the zone looking for more like you.”
“I wasn’t caught! I did it to get away.” She had to crane her neck to look up at him.
“Away from what? What the hell happened? As much risk as you took, this better be damn good.” He stalked from one end of the couch to the other as he spoke, taking up all the space and all the air in the small area.
“Stop looming over me like I’m some flunky you can scare,” she snapped.
He continued to loom and glare for a long moment. She rolled her eyes as he returned to the couch.
Calla had known Vadim since childhood. He’d always been the only person who could make her feel like an idiot, smaller than a bug. The worst part of it was that he only did it when they both knew she had it coming. This time, though, he was wrong. She told him everything, and watched his face change from anger to confusion, maybe even a little fear.
Well, she didn’t tell him everything. She left out the part about where she’d spent the night. That was hers.
“Describe the kid to me.”
She did so, then said, “It doesn’t matter, though. I could tell it was a glamour and not a very good one. Like he wasn’t very good at casting them.”
“And the one who took a shot at you? You think he was DMS?”
She shook her head. “Wouldn’t he have badged me? I mean, I know they don’t have to but they usually do, the way they like to throw that authority around.”
Looking thoughtful, Vadim murmured, “What the hell is going on?” He fingered the edges of the bruise near his eye. “Where’d you hide out for the night? I’m surprised they didn’t detain you at the gate if you weren’t in the system as being accounted for.”
Now for the part of the conversation she very much did not want to have. “I was accounted for.” Fighting to keep any telltale sign of embarrassment from showing, she all but glared at him in challenge.
He closed his eyes briefly, shaking his head. “You were with your cop.” It wasn’t a question.
“He’s not my cop.” Focusing on the mess of beads seemed like a good idea.
“Did you run into him somewhere?”
That question didn’t merit an answer, and besides, there was a tangle of bead wire to fight with.
“So you knew where he lived and went to him? What was your excuse?”
Swallowing a lump of guilt, she ignored the question and kept at the wire.
“Damn it, talk to me! This is too important—you know what’s at stake!”
She snapped her head up. “Yes, I do! Can’t you just trust me on this?”
“No, sweetheart, I can’t. As much as I’d like to, I can’t. What did you tell him?”
“That I saw something I shouldn’t have and someone tried to kill me for it. I hedged the details and he didn’t push.”
“How were you accounted for?”
“The sweep. Uniforms came to his place. I let them think...” She paused, heat burning her cheeks. “I let them think I was there for sex.”
That seemed to amuse Vadim. “And he went along with it?”
She nodded.
“So he covered for you? That is interesting. That is very interesting, indeed.”
“Whatever you’re thinking, just forget it.”
“Oh, no. Because you see, I’m thinking about a previous conversation in which I told you to find out what he knows about unregistered Magic Born. Have you done that?”
“No,” she said begrudgingly.
“Well I suggest you do it! We need to know if the tunnels are still safe. I don’t care if you have to drug him or fuck him or both. Just find out!”
Vadim was right; they needed to know. If she wouldn’t do it, he’d find someone who would, whether that meant drugging Nate or sleeping with him. Calla’s hands itched with angry energy. There had to be a way to question Nate without compromising herself. Without compromising him and whatever he might feel for her. Whatever this was between them—simple attraction or something else—might have been pointless, but she still wanted it. Even if they never acted on it beyond the kisses they’d already shared, she wanted that delicate, ephemeral desire to hold its shape in both their memories, like a flower never given the chance to wilt.
“I’ll figure something out,” she said. “Just back off a little.”
Vadim gave her one of his rare paternal looks. “I’m sorry to ask you to do this, but he’s fascinated with you. That makes you the surest bet for getting anything out of him.” He leaned over and placed a hand on the top of her head. “I didn’t know you cared for him too.”
Trying to sneer as much as possible, she said, “What are you talking about?”
He swept his hand down the length of her hair and chucked her under the chin. “Can’t remember the last time you let your real hair show.”
“That’s got nothing to do with him.” She pushed from her mind the memory of telling Nate he’d earned it.
Vadim rose. “We need to know something soon.”
“Okay.”
> As he left, he pointed at the door. “I’ll send someone by to take care of this.”
“Thank you.”
She spent the rest of the afternoon trying to sort out her jewelry supplies and ignore the tumult of emotions swirling inside her.
* * *
Nate had two things on his mind Monday morning: finding out as much as he could about the disturbance Saturday night and seeing if he could learn anything about the darknet Henry had spoken of and its rumors of unregistered Magic Born. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe there was such a group. Most likely it was urban legend blown out of proportion. Still, there might be something there leading to something that was real. Forbes’ murder niggled at his thoughts, a rock lodged in the tread of his shoe that wouldn’t let him walk quite right until dealt with. Despite the DNA evidence, every instinct in him said Nelson Santo was no murderer.
Reading the incident report about Saturday night made him wish he’d gotten Calla to tell more specifics about what she’d done. All he found were vague descriptions of blinding red light, three unidentified men suffering minor injuries, and an order for a full citywide sweep for the suspect coming from DMS regional headquarters. So Lewis had been bypassed, though he had organized a raid inside FreakTown. The only report on that was a terse “no suspect found.” In a breach of procedure, no statements were taken from the three injured men. Getting their names was unlikely, but he’d been hoping for something—any indication of who they were, who they worked for, and why they’d target someone just for witnessing the wrong thing. It didn’t make sense that they were essentially protecting someone using magic off zone, yet had the connections to call someone who could order a search across the entire city.
“Hey, golden boy. Ready for your big day?” Mullins approached with two cups of coffee.
Nate logged out of the weekend reports and clicked the button to bring up his home page. “I’d just as soon skip it if I had a choice.” Today was the commendation ceremony. He took the offered coffee with a nod of thanks.
Mullins pulled an empty chair over from a nearby desk and sat. “Enjoy the spotlight. It doesn’t happen often.” Putting on a fake avuncular air, he said, “Just make sure your fly is zipped and you don’t say fuck or shit in front of the wrong person. Or a microphone.” He laughed.