“And you did give me permission, Socks.” Daniel straightened, his gaze still on Aiden, not me. “Many times. Over and over again. To touch you.”
“No,” I said. “Each time was an individual agreement.”
He nodded sagely. “I see. Well, then, I’ll wait with bated breath for my next invitation.”
Christopher strolled back into the kitchen, grinning at all of us as if Daniel and I hadn’t just been tussling. “Eggs?”
“I like mine hard boiled,” Daniel said, settling down on the stool Jenni Raymond had just vacated.
Christopher started bustling around the kitchen, making breakfast. But I didn’t bother stepping out of his way this time.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
Daniel glanced over at Aiden, sneering. “You’ve got a witch sniffing around. But I have a feeling you already knew that.”
Aiden stretched his hand across the island toward Daniel. A move that placed the chef’s knife just under his elbow. “Aiden Myers.”
Offering to shake the hand of an unknown Adept was a completely ballsy move, even if Aiden’s magic wasn’t still partially drained. I squashed the smile that rose at the sorcerer’s display of daring, tilting my chin into my chest.
Then I noticed that Aiden had inked a rune, in blood, on the blade of the knife. Sneaky.
Daniel gripped Aiden’s hand. “Daniel Jones. Your reputation precedes you.”
Aiden dropped the handshake. “Yours doesn’t.”
“Well, we like to keep it that way. Don’t we, Emma?” Daniel’s use of my name was pointed, deliberate.
“Yes,” I said agreeably. “Which is why you’re leaving. Now.”
“I’ve invited him to stay,” Christopher said quietly, setting a pot of water to boil on the stove.
Completely displeased but uncertain what to do about it, I looked at all three of them, one at a time. Then I turned and left the kitchen.
“She hasn’t changed a bit,” Daniel murmured behind me as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom.
“Look closer,” Christopher said.
Christopher found me watching an episode of Downton Abbey in my sitting room. He brought soft-boiled eggs smothered in cheese sauce, along with two wedges of sourdough and rye toast, glistening with butter and still warm. We finished the episode together in silence, Christopher on the floor with his back resting against the couch.
Paisley pushed open the door, wandered in, and collapsed over Christopher’s feet.
We stayed that way for a while, willfully suspended in that moment as if the large blank spot — Daniel’s nullifying magic — that I could feel in the kitchen wasn’t a relentless reminder of our past, of everything we’d run from.
Aiden had crossed out of the house only moments after I’d settled down enough to turn the TV on. I couldn’t feel his magic from this distance, but if I closed my eyes, I could visualize him in his pentagram in the loft, fueling his baseball bat.
My chest ached when I thought of the sorcerer like that, so close to being within reach. One touch and I could give him back everything he’d lost. Everything that had been taken from him.
But I wasn’t going to get the chance to invite him into my bed, to offer him my magic in exchange for mutual pleasure. Or to offer him anything more than that. Because I could also kill him with a single touch.
Daniel’s presence only underlined that, forcing me to truly acknowledge the reality of my life. I’d been building some vision of my future, piecing it together in my mind. But there was only the present. There was always only the present. Possibilities, dreams, desires didn’t exist for me. For people like me.
I was a killer, not a lover.
I set my cheese-smeared bowl down on the floor with a half-eaten piece of toast within it. A tentacle swept out, gently dragging the bowl along the fir flooring. Paisley, accepting my offering, licked the bowl clean.
Christopher suddenly leaned forward, elbows braced against his bent knees, face in his hands. “I’m sorry.”
I paused the show.
“For what?”
He sighed. “For Jenni. I could have … you were asleep by the time we got back to the house.”
“You didn’t have sex in the back of the Mustang, did you?”
“No.”
Good. “I want to be the first one to do that.”
Christopher laughed quietly, then rested his head against my leg. I didn’t push him away. We were beyond that now. Daniel’s appearance boded nothing but bad tidings, and the clairvoyant would see it all just moments before it collapsed around us, whether or not he sought comfort from me now.
“Even if I hadn’t gone back for Aiden … even if we’d run …” I didn’t finish my question.
Christopher nodded. “Even then, this was coming. The lavender card. The footsteps of fate.”
The past coming back to bite us, according to Christopher’s oracle cards. “Unfinished business is easier for me to accept.”
He snorted. “It’s the same thing, Socks.”
I sighed, gazing out at the backyard and feeling Daniel’s magic shifting around one level below as he slowly prowled through the house.
“You really couldn’t distract Jenni Raymond any other way? When she caught you dropping money into the mailbox?”
“She didn’t catch me.”
“Of course she didn’t.”
“You got the fight, the demon slaughter. The adrenaline surge, the pain, the victory. I … I just watched.”
“If they’d gotten past me, you were the only thing between the snatcher and Aiden. With his magic drained, he was vulnerable.”
“I know. But watching you was … stirring. Breathtaking. First in my mind, over and over, and then echoed in reality.”
I snorted. “So you propositioned the shifter.”
“Well, you would have kicked me out of your bed.”
His comment hung between us for a moment. I considered not addressing it. We hadn’t been raised as siblings. In fact, it wasn’t until the Collective recognized that we needed to socialize with each other, to function as the team they wanted to create, that they allowed us to spend time together for more than training and educational sessions.
I was almost fourteen when I first figured out how to break out of my room, exploiting weaknesses in the security system that the Collective quickly plugged, over and over. But it was Fish I’d gone to once freed. Not Bee or Zans or Christopher. Because I could touch Fish without being afraid of hurting him. And because I wanted to touch someone without killing them, so … desperately.
Then they’d given us the blood tattoos, tying us to each other so tightly that I could have taken all of Fish’s magic. I could have killed him. Instead, I got to feel his emotions through my empathy for the first time. I got to feel his desire rise under my hands, under my deadly touch. I got to sense the accumulation of the pleasure I gave him. And in those brief moments in the dark, I knew, I hoped, that I was more than just a killer. More than what the Collective had made me, what they’d made me do.
“You aren’t just Amp5, Socks,” Christopher whispered. Sometimes his glimpses of the future made it seem as though he was reading my mind. “You never were. None of us were. That was the flaw in their plans. They needed us to be able to make intelligent, informed decisions in the moment, but they hoped to play with us like puppets.”
I settled my hand on the back of his head. He leaned into my touch. I slid my hand down until it rested over his blood tattoos. Those tattoos were twins to mine, except it was my blood tied to his T1 vertebra, not Fish’s.
He sighed. “I love you, Socks. I’m not just here because you were always the strongest.”
“I know.”
He glanced over at me. The white of his magic ringed his irises. “I don’t think you do. I think that deep down, you believe that the only reason anyone wants you, wants to be with you, is your magic.”
I didn’t answer. But I didn’t drop my hand either. “If this is
some lead-up to telling me you’re leaving with Daniel, it isn’t necessary. It was always your choice. Daniel will keep you safe.”
He sighed. Again. This time as if I was insufferable. “Daniel isn’t going to let me into his bed either. He’s obviously grown beyond that.”
Fish hadn’t turned any of us away when we’d broken out of our rooms and into his. But as far as I knew, he’d never chosen to come to any of us of his own volition either. We’d all used him. He hadn’t complained. But none of us would have ever called him brother. And now that I knew a little more about relationships, about the human need to be connected, I felt a little sad for him.
“I’m not leaving with Fish,” Christopher said. “But he’s staying.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not going to screw up anything between you and Aiden.”
“That’s not the point.” And it really wasn’t. “The reasons we need to stay away from each other still hold.”
Daniel appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. I’d felt him move up the stairs and into the bedroom across from Christopher’s room at the front of the house. He was the same height as me, but somehow he filled the doorway.
“Exactly.” Daniel smirked at me. “And the two of you are about to expose us all.”
“Yeah,” Christopher said. “That.”
“And how do you know?” I asked. “Or am I just to take your word for it?”
Daniel grinned nastily. “No one is asking you to change, Emma. I have a couple of side projects going on right now. One of which brought me in contact with an old buddy of yours. I’m here to broker a meeting.”
I didn’t have ‘old buddies.’ “Kader Azar?”
Daniel tilted his head sharply. “The Collective’s esteemed sorcerer? What contact have you had with him?”
“None.”
He frowned. “Then why the assumption?”
I didn’t answer. Daniel would make the connection from Aiden to his father soon enough. “Why would you need to broker a meeting between me and anyone?”
He flashed his teeth at me. “I think your greeting tells the tale of why anyone wouldn’t wish to surprise you, darling. And few can survive your touch as well as I can.”
“Daniel.” Christopher sighed. “Be nice.”
“Don’t worry, brother. The hugs and kisses will come later.” He leered at me, but with more anger than desire. “After midnight, eh, Emma?”
I gave him a withering look. “I doubt you’ll survive nightfall, nullifier.”
He snorted, then pointed down the hall. “I take it the northwest room is mine? I could use a shower.”
“Who is the meeting with, Daniel?” I asked frostily.
“Oh, it’s lunch. At that diner you like, 2:00 p.m.”
My stomach twisted. Someone had been keeping tabs on my movements, my routine, and I hadn’t known it, hadn’t sensed it. “With who?”
“Mark Calhoun.” Daniel grinned at me nastily.
A flush of shock down my spine chilled me almost as effectively as Daniel’s nullifying power could. Mark Calhoun. The commanding officer of my extraction team, without whom none of us would have made it out of the compound alive.
The weapons specialist was the only other Adept I’d ever slept with.
“Yeah.” Daniel eyed me darkly. “Your boyfriend’s back. And he can’t wait to get reacquainted.”
“You brought him here?” I asked, my voice low and dark. “With who else?”
“Making a kill list, Socks?”
“If I was, your name would be at the top,” I spat.
Christopher brushed his fingers against my bare ankle, calling me away from the rage I was riding.
“And which name would that be?” Daniel asked mockingly. “Who would you be murdering when you drain me, amplifier? Nul5? Fish? Daniel Jones?”
“If you’re going to talk nonsense, get out of my sitting room,” I said, layering on as much dispassion as I could muster. “When you’re feeling more rational, we’ll discuss the specifics of your betrayal.”
It was an old argument between us — that I was the supremely rational one, better suited to lead. It was nasty for me to use our past as a weapon. Of course, Daniel had started that process the moment he’d laid eyes on me.
He opened his mouth, anger etched across his face.
I tilted my head, eyeing him coolly.
Then he shut down all his anger in a genuinely impressive display of control. “I would never betray us.”
“Not knowingly.”
He dropped his gaze to Christopher, looking for the clairvoyant to back him.
Christopher didn’t speak. Thick ropes of tension stretched between the three of us. Because we would always be bound together, never free of each other. Till death do us part.
Daniel stepped away, striding down the hall. A moment later, I heard the shower turn on in the main bathroom.
“He is such an asshole,” I said.
“Yeah,” Christopher agreed mildly. “But so are you, Socks.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. So I unpaused my show and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
Someone needed to be seriously interrogated — Aiden, Daniel, or Mark Calhoun — but I hated reacting angrily. It increased my body count, and I had too many souls on my hands already.
So instead, I would think over the questions that needed answers, then figure out who could answer them. That way, I’d know where to direct my anger.
And once I quashed whatever unknown forces were shifting into play around us, I could go back to building a life without expecting demons to show up in the backyard every evening.
If I was efficient, I’d be back by teatime.
Chapter 8
Lani Zachary was chatting with a strikingly familiar woman next to a blue convertible Corvette parked on the opposite side of the street from the diner. The ex-air force technician, wearing her typical jeans and a printed T-shirt, was grinning and gesturing toward the vehicle. The unknown woman’s black jeans and figure-hugging black leather jacket were way too warm for the weather, likely indicating she’d just arrived in town and had expected it to be cooler in Canada in mid-September.
I’d considered purchasing a similar model of Corvette — 1965, if I wasn’t mistaken — from the same seller I’d purchased the Mustang from, but the two-seater would have been too limiting when I had Christopher and Paisley. Yes, apparently I could be wooed into doing idiotic things by a bit of eye candy. Thankfully, that weakness had — thus far — been limited to a vehicle totally inappropriate for the weather, and one hell of a sexy sorcerer with a murky past.
I hesitated at the door to the Home Cafe, reaching out for the familiar woman’s magic but sensing none. Daniel, who had walked with me into town in silence, brushed his fingers against the back of my hand.
I flinched at the unaccustomed contact.
He frowned, then tipped his chin, indicating he was planning to cross the street. So the woman was familiar to him as well?
He looked both ways, then jogged out between a slow-moving green pickup truck and a white minivan. He had left his motorcycle and jacket at the house, and had changed into blue jeans and a black T-shirt that was too tight across his shoulders.
The dark-blond woman glanced over at Daniel’s approach, then she continued turning as she laid eyes on me.
Becca Jackson. Aka X3.
Sorcerer. Demolitions expert, specializing in rune spells. A former member of my extraction team.
She’d let her hair grow since I’d last seen her. It was wavy now, brushing her shoulders.
I remembered her watching me, watching the Five, through the security glass in the foyer of the compound — right before I demolished the entire building, its surrounding fortifications, and the rainforest it was hidden within for kilometers in every direction. Becca, along with Flynn and Calhoun, had helped us escape. She had also been the one who helped Be
e source passports and money for us.
A regular person would have been overjoyed to be reunited with someone who’d played such a pivotal role in their lives.
I wasn’t.
Maybe I was incapable of such feelings, of building such a connection with anyone whose blood wasn’t tattooed under my skin. But it was much more likely a reaction to the fact that Jackson was wearing some sort of warding spell that dampened her magic. So much so that even knowing who she was, I couldn’t feel her power. And that was disconcerting not so much because I cared about being able to sense her magic, but because of what it implied about the clandestine nature of her presence.
Why wear such a charm unless she had plans to sneak up on someone who could sense magic? Namely me. Or Christopher.
Jackson smiled, waving at me.
I didn’t wave back.
She dropped her hand, speaking to Daniel as he drew near. He glanced back at me, but then pointedly offered his hand to Lani Zachary instead of answering the demolitions expert.
I turned, pushing open the glass door of the diner. The disconcerted feeling stuck with me, along with the echoes of the memory of the day we’d fought for our freedom and won — and had sacrificed so much, so many souls, to do so.
For a moment, standing between the bulletin board and the back of the first red-vinyl booth, tucked into the normally comforting surroundings of the diner, I felt dampened. As if my emotions, my reactions, were trying to swallow me.
I paused, steadying myself. I had forced myself to calm down before I left the house. I’d acknowledged that things might be poised to happen, but was secure in the fact that I could handle anything thrown my way.
I just hadn’t expected my own mind, my own memories, to be the biggest hurdle.
I swept my gaze through the diner, taking in the long counter. Over half of its red-topped stools were occupied by locals enjoying their lunches. I caught a glimpse of Brian’s balding head in the kitchen through the heated stainless steel serving window. Melissa was making change for someone at the cash register.
And Mark Calhoun was seated in the farthest booth, facing me.
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