As soon as we'd stepped beyond the curtain, fresh and clean air greeted us.
"What the hell?" Brody asked and sucked in a lungful of the clean air.
"It's an illusion," I said softly, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the space.
"Well, is this the illusion, or was that?" Brody asked pointing behind him.
"I think this is real. The front of the store was a facade to keep out the uninitiated."
"What is this place?" Brody whispered
The space was spectacular. Lots of air and sunlight filtered in through gauzy white drapes. In fact, the whole space was done in white. Walls, thick plush carpeting, light fixtures, even the furniture was all white. "No clue. But doesn't it remind you of a temple?" I couldn't put my finger on why but somehow the space seemed sacred.
"It's my temple. Of sorts," Soraya said from behind one of the billowing white curtains separating the space. She wore the same type of billowy fabric for a dress, which drew contrast to her golden brown skin and dark hair. It made her look like she was born of her surroundings, a goddess in her own shrine.
I tugged my shirt back in place.
"What kind of temple?" Brody asked.
"Oh, I think you know," Soraya lightly teased as she seated herself on one of the large, overstuffed pillows on the floor. "Please," she said, inviting us to do the same. Brody tried to sit cross-legged on a giant white pillow just as Soraya and I had, but he couldn't make his legs cooperate. His knees stuck up at a ridiculous angle.
"For as trim as you are, you're remarkably inflexible," Soraya said.
Brody just nodded and kept trying to coerce his legs into submission before finally giving up and sitting with them straight out in front of him.
"Well, now that we're all settled, what kind of temple do you think this is, Brody?" False sweetness dripped from Soraya's tone.
"I don't know; that's why I asked," Brody said, unaffected.
Just as I was going to insist she stop playing games, a breeze caught one of the dividing curtains, allowing me the briefest glimpse of what was behind it. A chill spread across my shoulders as I realized exactly what kind of temple this was.
"You're a whore," I said softly.
Soraya smiled at me, full and bright—but the width of her grin didn't hide the dark delight behind it. "Oh, such harsh words. What gave it away? The ceremonial altar bed, maybe?"
31
"We should go," I said, trying to pull Brody off the floor.
"I don't know, Zora. I'm interested in exactly what she does. Aren't you?"
I pulled my shirt back into place again. "She sells her body for money and magic. It's not that hard to understand, Brody. Come on."
"That not entirely accurate," Soraya said with a calm tone, still seated on the floor.
Brody carefully detached me from his wrist. "I want to hear what she has to say. What could it hurt?"
Soraya's dark eyes filled with lust in reaction to my rising emotions. I tried harder than I ever had to stuff it all away. I couldn't stand the idea of her enjoying my darker emotions.
"Burying it only makes it grow stronger, Zorastria. Bring it into the light," Soraya said, motioning around her. "Let it be what it was meant to be. Then it can't consume you."
"I don't know what that means."
"I mean, feel your emotions. Sit with them—feel them fully and exactly as they are."
"Why, so you can get off on them?" I asked.
"I don't 'get off' on emotions."
"What do you call, it then?" I spat the question at her. The more the heat within me built the more I stowed it away.
"Zora, take it easy. Why don't you sit back down?" Brody said.
"I don't want to sit down! You expect me to be calm and rational when I find out the mother who abandoned me because she wanted to initiate turned into a sex worker? I think my reaction is perfectly acceptable."
"So close-minded. You always were."
"I’m NOT being close-minded!" The corked heat exploded out, rolling off me in waves. So much poured out, it disturbed the curtains and raised the ambient temperature in the space. But as much heat as I pumped into the room, I was still boiling inside.
"She always hated being called that," Soraya said to Brody. "Even when it was true."
Brody sat statue-still, feeling everything I did. I hated that I was so open to him. I hated that I couldn't control myself, and I REALLY hated that my mother still knew all the ways to make me crazy.
It was the tipping point. I grabbed a pillow, sucked in all the hot air my lungs could take, and screamed. I screamed until my voice was hoarse until my abs hurt until my knees buckled. I screamed until there was no more scream.
"There, was that so hard?" Soraya asked.
I yanked my shirt back where it belonged. "You're such a bitch," I panted into the pillow that caught my tantrum. To that, Soraya only smiled.
"You always make it harder than it has to be."
I tried to rearrange my curls and compose myself. "I'm not here so you can poke fun at me or try to push my buttons. I'm here for answers. Now you've goaded me into a tantrum, presumably so you can feed off it, so let's cut the bullshit and get down to business."
"Stupid girl! Do I look like I'm feeding? You've always assumed the worst of me."
"Can you blame me?"
"This isn't getting us anywhere," Brody said.
"Clearly!" Soraya and I snapped in unison.
"Everybody up," Brody said and stood up. Soraya and I stayed still, looking at him like he'd suddenly become a Cyclops. "I'm serious. Both of you. Stand up." Brody waited, patient as always until we conceded. "Good," he said as we got off the floor. "Now, take a few really big breaths."
"Breathing is not going to help shovel the lifetime of history and pain away, Brody," I said.
"Just shut up and do it," he ordered.
Soraya and I begrudgingly started deep-belly breathing. We both knew how to do it, and that it did actually clear funky headspace and center energy. But when it's needed the most, it's always the hardest to do.
Brody stopped us after I'd breathed so much that I was lightheaded. "Imagine I'm taking all of the history between you two and putting it away. OK?" He pantomimed his words. "I just scooped it up and put it over there," he said and pointed to the far corner of the temple. "It will have no effect on what we're going to talk about. Zora, you and I are here for information. Soraya, you're here to give it. That's all."
Soraya and I shared a "Is he serious?" look.
"Nope. None of that. Both of you are only to look at me. Got it?"
I nodded. I assumed Soraya did too.
"OK, now we're getting somewhere. Soraya, first and foremost, if you don't feed off negative emotion, what do you do with it?"
"I transmute it."
"Into what?" Brody asked.
"Sexual energy."
"And that's how you make a living?"
"No," she said.
"Liar!" I yelled.
"Zora, speak only to me."
"Fine.” I folded my arms. “She's lying."
"Noted," Brody said to me. To Soraya, he said, "Tell me what you do for a living."
"I offer practitioners a peek into themselves, into their divinity and power, through sacred sex."
"What the hell does that even mean?" I asked.
"It means, what you call ‘practitioner sex’ is only the tip of the iceberg." Soraya gently brushed an errant ringlet off her forehead. "You must have experienced something that wasn't quite normal for you and Amari, right?" she asked me directly.
I nodded. "Recently."
"As is the way with most halflings. Until now, you've only had access to your cool magic, your Nordic influence. It was only after you'd initiated someone that your Roma magic could surface."
Fantastic. So what did that mean?
"So easy to read those icy-blue eyes," Soraya mused. "You have to decide for yourself what it means. I chose to help people find themselv
es in sacred and holy congress."
"So the heat that builds when I touch Amari and the heat that poured off of me just now—"
"They're the same thing. Emotions must have a release. If you don't choose to work through them, to release them on your own, they will manifest as sexual energy."
Weird.
"This will get easier, Zorastria," she said with the first hint of compassion I'd ever seen on her. I almost didn't recognize it on her face. "Remember, you're getting compound interest on everything you're feeling. As soon as Brody is weaned, you'll have much more control."
It sounded sincere, but I didn't believe for a second that Soraya wasn't working an angle.
32
"Is it so hard to believe she just wants to help?" Brody asked on the drive back to his office. I'd planned on going back to my condo after meeting with Soraya, but Brody needed to take care of some things at work.
"Yes," I said, tugging on my damn shirt.
"She's your mother, Zora. Of course she wants to help you."
"She made it clear that I was nothing but an inconvenience to her.”
"I'm sure that's not true."
"I don't want to drudge up ancient history, Brody."
"I think we should since it's affecting the present."
I did not want to share my screwed-up childhood with Brody.
"Zora, I don't know if she's working an agenda or not, and I'm not saying you have to trust her. But, all the information she's given us seems to be accurate. Right?"
"Yeah."
"Then any ulterior motives don't matter, do they?"
I couldn't disagree more.
"Here's something else to think about: You were so open and kind with me and Pilar about our sexual—um—stuff, yet you can't do the same for your mother."
"There's a huge difference between accepting prostitution as my mother’s profession and doling out sex advice."
"No, there really isn't. Sex is sex." Brody took his eyes off the road a moment to gauge my expression. "Look, the way I see it, as long as all parties are adults and consenting, then who am I to judge?"
That hit a nerve. He had a point. A tiny one. "It's illegal."
Brody rolled his eyes at me. I had a feeling I was in for another silent car ride. But Brody’s curiosity got the better of him, ending his silent sulk.
“What did your mother mean by ‘halfling’?”
“I’m only half Roma. The other half is Nordic.”
“No, I knew that. I meant how does that affect how your magic develops?”
“I’m not sure. She said before I’d become an initiator, I only had access to my cold, Nordic magic. Lie detection,” I said, wiggling my hand at him, “and general spell-casting, I suppose, are both Nordic-ly fueled. The newer stuff, like the pregnancy detection, which only started about a week before I met you, and weird, albeit hot, sex stuff is Roma fueled.”
“But isn’t that how everyone’s magic develops? They learn more after they’ve become an initiator?”
“No. Well, yes but not exactly. Someone with a single magical bloodline will develop and grow regardless of whether they initiate. Initiation speeds the process along. But I couldn’t get to my Roma magic until I had.”
Brody took a minute. “I wonder what new skills I’ll learn when I initiate someone.”
“Let’s get you out of the newling stage first.”
Brody smiled at me and we drove the rest of the way in pleasant, comfortable silence.
Brody's mother greeted him as we stepped off the elevator, and I quickly put a wall around myself. "Brody, glad you could come in today. You've been keeping strange hours, haven't you?"
"I've had some things to deal with, Mom."
"I see that," she said and gave me a quick up-and-down.
"Mrs. Alexander, I wanted to apologize for the other day. I wasn't feeling well, and sometimes that can make me cranky," I said with a genuine smile.
Brody's way really was better.
"So thoughtful of you to apologize. We all have our bad days, don't we?" she replied sincerely, and flitted off in the opposite direction.
"I didn't know you could be so charming," Brody said as he headed toward his fishbowl office. I ignored him and walked in the opposite direction. I had something to check on.
"Hey, Peter. How's my machine?" I asked, leaning into his office and walling my energy again.
"Hey! I was hoping you'd stop by! You're not going to believe what I found!" Excitement plastered his features into a goofy grin.
"My manuscript?"
"Oh, no. Not that, sorry. But the program on your machine was incredible. Truly, it was a work of art. Concise and lean, but so elegant in execution. I'd love to meet the person who wrote it. Uh, never mind, sorry," he said when he saw how uninterested I was in his passion for code.
"Were you able to get it all?"
"Oh, yeah. And I was able to salvage enough of the degraded code to keep a copy of it to study! Um, but here," he said quickly, catching himself. Peter handed me my laptop.
"Thank you," I said, and pointed myself at Brody's office.
Blaire was perched on the edge of Brody's desk when I entered his office.
"Zora!" she yelled and hopped off the desk to hug me. I'd been so lost plotting my rewrites, I didn’t have time to snap a wall up until the very last second. Blaire gave me the warmest rib-crushing bear hug I'd ever had.
"Hey," I said when I'd mostly recovered. "Nice to see you too. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to pick up the author copies for you."
"Oh, that's OK. I don't need them anyway. I loaded the series on my e-reader as soon as I left work that day."
"Really?"
"Yup! I'm only halfway through the first book, but I'm really loving it so far."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome," she said, and followed me to the couch, parking herself right next to me. "Ya know, they're all the same."
"What are all the same?"
"All the books in that genre, they all follow the same basic pattern."
"True, but you'll find that in all genre fiction."
"Oh no, I wasn't saying it as an insult. I love it. Besides, I don't read it for its literary brilliance or intensive character studies. I read it for the different takes on the lore and mythos; I think that part is fascinating."
"Oh, yeah? And how does mine rank?"
"Eh, about average," she said honestly and without thought to my ego. "But I think what you're working on next will really blow everyone out of the water," Blaire said. She gave me a wink and a pat on the knee before she flitted, just like her mother, out of Brody's office.
"I didn't tell her anything," Brody said as soon as the glass door shut itself behind her.
"Then why would she say something like that?"
Brody shrugged. "Blaire has always been freakishly intuitive."
Maybe she was. Maybe she was magically inclined like her brother. It wasn’t too far of a stretch. All of his siblings could be.
Or, maybe she was part of the minority at the Corporation that wanted to see me succeed.
"Well, freaky or not, I like her." I smiled at him and pushed the tiniest bit of energy to him. In it, I laced my gratitude for showing me a different, better way of dealing with people.
"You're welcome," he said and went back to work.
I did the same and opened both my laptop and Amari's. My finger hovered over the delete button after I'd transferred the manuscript from Amari's to my own machine. I wanted it off Amari's computer, but a tiny piece of me thought it was a good idea to keep a rough copy where no one would look for it.
I changed the name of the file, hid it among Amari's finance reports, and got to work on edits.
It was an exhausting, painful way to edit, going back through the entire manuscript, looking for all the bold writing, then cross-referencing it with my research data to find the exact chunk meant for that space. It took hours to work through, and by the end of it, I was sick of my
research, but I had my rough draft finished. I closed the laptop and sank bonelessly into the sofa. My shirt twisted. I didn't bother tugging it back.
"That didn't look like it was fun," said Brody from behind his desk. Cleared of all the shipping-route charts and maps, the beautiful clean lines of the enormous desk were on display.
"How long ago did you finish?" I asked.
"About an hour ago, but you looked so intense, I didn't want to break your train of thought."
I smiled my appreciation at him, packed up my things, and we headed out together.
"Run interference for me if you see Lucy," I said when we arrived at my condo. I'd been spending more time at Amari's than at home, and needed some things Brody and Pilar hadn't thought to put in the duffle.
Plus I had to change this ridiculous shirt.
"She's usually waiting for you, right? I don't see anyone," Brody said as he quickly scanned the vestibule.
"Just in case, OK?"
Brody nodded. I had the strangest mix of feelings toward Lucy, but I couldn't be bothered to unravel them now, especially not face to face with her.
"Stay here," I said when we made it to my living room with no sign of Lucy. "I'm just going to grab a few things." I changed my shirt, then shoved a few more into the duffle along with some socks, panties, and my phone charger. On the way out of my bedroom, I snagged my favorite pillow off the bed and tossed the shirt from hell at the trash can. I missed, of course.
"Brody, what are you doing?!" I screeched when I saw him in my kitchen. Gods, he was cleaning it!
"The dishes."
"I can see that, but why?”
He shrugged. "They were dirty."
"Come on, we don't have time for this. I don't want to be here any longer than necessary."
"This is totally necessary," he said without looking up from the pile of dishes.
If he had, he would have seen the best glare in my repertoire.
"Don't do my dishes for me."
"It's gross, Zora. And I'm doing it whether you like it or not."
I couldn't very well watch while someone else did my dishes. I put the duffle bag down, rolled up my sleeves, and started rinsing plates.
"Happy now?" I asked when I'd wiped the counter clean.
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