by M. J. Scott
"That's not good," Lizzie said. "You'd better show me."
Damon looked at her, shot me one inscrutable look, then turned on his heel and stalked off. Toward the house, not back to the shed.
I took one step forward to follow him and then stopped myself. If he wanted to run from magic again, he wouldn't change his mind because a witch followed him.
"Is he okay?" Lizzie asked.
"He's not hurt, if that's what you're asking." The memory of the imp arcing over my head, claws stretched, aiming for Damon flashed, and I had to stop and swallow.
"Are you okay?" Lizzie came to stand next to me. "Hold out your hand."
The first time I'd called fire, I'd burned my arm. This time, my hand was red and tingling, but otherwise, I felt fine. She studied my palm, fingers gentle on the back of my hand as she supported it.
When we heard the sound of a car, both of us turned to watch. Damon guided a sleek black sedan out of the garage and turned down his drive. I flinched as his front gate slid open. He really was leaving. Again. My knees wobbled, and I sucked in a breath that was close to a gasp as the realization stabbed though me.
"We should go back to the house. You need to sit down."
"D-Don't we have to watch this, make sure nothing else catches on fire?" The first word came out half choked. I didn't think it had anything to do with the stinking smoke rising from the burning imp.
"We'll sit on the steps," Lizzie said. "Come on. Breathing in this smoke won't help us."
Chapter Fifteen
"So your powers seem to be back," Lizzie said, perching beside me on Damon's front steps. We stared at the patch of scorched earth at the edge of the lawn. The imp was nothing more than ashes now. Not even a wisp of smoke.
"Apparently so," I said. Possibly a normal person would have been happier about it. My life wasn't normal anymore. Maybe I wasn't either. "Was that an imp? It didn't look like the others. It was white. Sort of." Picturing it made my stomach roll uneasily.
"They don't all look the same. But given it fried like an imp, we'll call it an imp for now. Speaking of frying, you did magic." She frowned at my hand. "Are you sure that feels okay? I can give you a jolt until we can get a better healer to check you out."
I flexed my hand. The redness on the palm was fading, but my fingers still tingled. All of me tingled, in fact, but I couldn't tell if it was adrenaline or something else running through my veins. "I think it's fine." Other than the fact that once again I was freaked out that I'd thrown fire with my bare hands.
"You should try to use your magic straight away."
"No more imps to fry," I said. I was scared to try again. Though I wasn't sure if I was scared of my powers being back or of them not. “Unless there could be another one?” Now that was a horrifying thought. “Is that likely? Could there be another one?”
“There could be more trigger spells, sure, but I’ve never heard of one that had enough juice to summon multiple imps. So we’re probably safe for now. ”
“So if that was a summoning spell, to bring the imp, is that the same kind of thing the email messages were trying to do?”
Lizzie shrugged. “Maybe. It’s hard to say, other than it seems likely they’re connected. But stop changing the subject. You need to try your magic again.” She hitched one hip up to dig in the back pocket of her jeans. She pulled out a battered pack of matches.
"Why do you have matches?" She didn't mess around with any of the drugs that people smoked these days like Sandman or hyperhemp. At least she never had anywhere near me, and I'd never smelled it on her clothes. And she definitely wasn't rich enough to get her hands on illegal tobacco.
"I like to be prepared," she quipped. She tore a match off and passed it to me. "Light it."
There was no way she was going to let me get away with not even trying. I stared at the match, trying not to pinch it too hard between my fingers. Sure enough, it glittered faintly around the edges. See the energy field, change the energy field. I concentrated a moment. The match flared obediently into life. I blinked at it, not quite believing what I'd done. The flame burned down quickly. The heat began to sting my fingertips, helping connect me to the fact that it was real. I blew it out.
"Do it again," Lizzie said and passed me another.
After I'd ignited three more, she relented and put the matches away, grinning. "I guess it was psychological after all."
"How do you know?"
Lizzie nudged my shoulder with hers. "Dude. You used magic because you needed to save Damon."
Ugh. No. That was something I definitely didn't want to be true. Embarrassing. "I needed to save myself."
"I saw. Your magic didn't work until the imp went for him."
I could hear the laughter in her voice and dropped my head onto my knees with a groan. "Shut up."
"Didn't Radha say something about strong emotions getting you past the block?"
"No," I muttered.
"Yeah she did," Lizzie said. I couldn't see her stupid face, but I knew she was grinning. "So, I guess you still feel something for old billionaire boy after all, huh?"
"No I don't," I said. It was a lie. But I was sticking to it. Acknowledging I might still have feelings for the man who had left us sitting here while he drove to safety was not going to happen.
"Yes you do. And I can't help noticing that for a guy who wants nothing to do with magic, he seems to have made an effort to get back into your life."
I raised my head, fixed her with a death glare. "Because someone is trying to curse him."
"Or because you're not the only one with feelings."
"He has feelings about witches. He hates them."
Lizzie shook her head. "He doesn't seem to hate you. He's always been civil to me."
It was a long way from civil to allowing himself to have feelings for one. "Do you see him here right now?" I waved my hand at the grass and ashes. "One dead imp and he's out of here. His feelings about magic definitely trump whatever imaginary feelings you think he might have for me. So that kind of makes it a moot point how I feel. So please shut up before I have to kill you, too. Which I will do if you mention any of this to Damon."
She snorted. "You don't have enough control yet to kill me."
"I don't know," I countered. "I'm feeling some pretty strong emotion toward you right now. Not the good kind."
"Shut up. You lu-u-rve me."
"According to you, I love a lot of people," I said, then snapped my jaw shut.
Lizzie laughed out loud. She almost fell off the step, she laughed so hard. "Maggie Diana Lachlan, you are so screwed," she wheezed when she regained control.
"I hate you," I said.
"Wrong again."
"Again?"
Lizzie pointed down to the road, where a familiar car was heading back up the hill. "He came back."
The lurch of hope in my stomach was also humiliating. I told my brain to stop being stupid. "He kind of had to. It's his house," I pointed out.
"I'm sure he has other places he can be."
"Maybe he's back to kick us both out."
"Well, if he does, he's an idiot. We still have to clean that up"—she pointed at the pile of ash—“then you have to show me where he touched whatever it was, and we still have to see if there are any more hexes in this garden." She looked at me. "We need to tell Cassandra what just happened."
"This day just keeps getting better and better," I said.
"Well, look at this way. She'll probably stop making you try to light candles twenty-four seven."
"Yeah, but I'm fairly sure she'll replace it with something else." Having seen the library had only cemented my view that Cassandra wasn't the kind to let resources go underused. If I had my powers back, then she'd be trying to make sure I damn well knew how to use them so the Cestis had another witch at their disposal.
"You're probably right about that." Lizzie stood as Damon's car pulled to a halt. "You know, I think I'll go inside and call Cassandra now. She might want to com
e and see that"—she waved her hand at the ash—"for herself."
I reached for her arm. "Do not leave me alone with him," I hissed as Damon climbed out of the car.
"Oh no, you two need to talk." Lizzie grinned, yanked her arm free, and then waved at Damon, who still stood by the car not moving. He wore sunglasses, so I couldn't tell if he was looking at her or me. I didn't want to know. I looked away, hugging my knees again.
Lizzie patted my shoulder.
"I hate you," I muttered as she retreated up the stairs.
"No you don't," she said cheerfully. "And, pro tip, I don't think you hate him either. So stop being a wimp."
What was wrong with being a wimp? Wimps lived to wimp another day. But Lizzie was right. I didn't hate Damon. Even if I did, it didn't look like I could avoid him until we figured out what the hell was going on and the Cestis put a stop to it.
So I was just going to have to deal with him.
I sighed, flexed my still tingling hand, climbed to my feet, and began to walk toward him.
After a few seconds, he moved, too. We met in the middle of his lawn and I hesitated, not sure what to say. My hand curled again as the tingles flared stronger for a moment, as though being close to Damon made the memory of fire and magic stronger somehow.
"Are you all right?" he asked. He still wore sunglasses, hiding his eyes from me. I was tempted to reach out and take them so I could at least have some chance of guessing what he might be thinking. But that move would be too...intimate. Too close.
"I'm fine," I said, fighting not to flex my fingers again. "How are you?"
It seemed a reasonable question. He'd reacted to the imp's death by running. We'd been in tight spots before with magical creatures. His instinct then had never been to retreat.
Maybe he was as messed up by all of this as I was.
The thought made my brain stutter for a moment.
"I'm—" He paused, mouth twisting. "Sorry, that was dumb of me."
I hitched a shoulder. "If Lizzie and I had any sense, we would have joined you." Running from a magical creature possibly being controlled by a demon seemed like a sensible response to me. More sensible than trying to burn it to ash.
"I don't even know where I was going," he said. "I only got to the end of the street before I turned around."
"You don't owe me any explanations," I said.
His mouth twisted again. "It kind of feels like I do. I left you and Lizzie to deal with my mess."
"Well, Lizzie is the one who's actually qualified to deal with it," I said. "She's inside calling Cassandra. So I'm sure more help will be arriving soon." I tilted my head at him. "I'm kind of surprised there haven't been an army of Riley security people appearing from all corners. You know, with the gunshots and all."
"I called them from the car," he said. "Told them I had a close encounter with a snake and to deal with the police if there were any reports of gunfire."
"And they believed you? I thought best practice would be for them to come investigate in case you were being...you know, coerced at gunpoint or something."
"I have code words for that kind of thing. We practice. And they can tap into any part of the house feed or my car if they need to."
"The perks of wealth," I said. Then I realized what he'd said. He practiced being kidnapped?
"Would you rather I let them arrive and we had to explain that?" He jerked his head in the direction of the ash which I assumed was still smoking slightly behind me.
"No." I wasn’t volunteering to explain imps to Damon's security team. They already didn't like me. Telling them he was definitely under magical threat was a job I'd delegate to him or Lizzie.
"Speaking of that," he said, "you told me you couldn't do magic."
"Seems like I can," I said. "Maybe these things come and go." No way was I going to tell him Lizzie's theory of why I'd gotten over my block. Time to change the subject back to him. "Your security guys didn't wonder why you had a gun in your garden?" He hadn't routinely carried a gun when we'd been involved.
"No. They'd prefer me to have actual guards inside the property line most of the time, so I'm sure they're happy to know that I'm following their suggestions about taking precautions. Mitch makes me practice with the gun, too."
He'd certainly seemed to know what he was doing. "Okay. Good. It’s probably better if they stay out of this for now."
"I figured the Cestis would want to look around first."
He was right about that. Plus, the garden wasn't safe for anyone who didn't have magic to be poking around in yet. Not until we knew if there were more trigger spells. Someone must have set them during the power glitch. A fast worker, if there was more than one. The question was who. And why? Which made it two questions.
"I know it's been a rough time for Riley Arts," I said, "but have you been getting other threats?"
"Some," he said.
"Enough that you've started carrying a gun?"
"Maggie, we were searching my garden for magical curses. I thought bringing a gun might be sensible."
"Bullets didn't really seem to stop it," I said.
"Yeah, that was a flaw in my plan."
"I'm not sure an imp attack is something anyone knows how to plan for," I said. "Well, maybe the Cestis."
Damon laughed. "You think I should ask Cassandra if there are magic bullets?"
"That seems awfully close to you being interested in magic," I said. "I didn't think that was your thing."
His smile died. "I guess I deserve that. But I'm a realist. If magic wants to mess with me again, then I want to be as prepared as I can be. So I'll ask Cassandra what I need to do."
My hand curled, and I winced. He was prepared to embrace magic to save himself but not when it came to accepting me. That hurt, I couldn't deny it. Which kind of pissed me off.
"Is your hand okay?" he asked. "You burned yourself the last time you did that." He tilted his head. "I mean, the last time you did that when I was with you. I guess I have no idea how many times you've done it since."
"Are you asking if I've become a demon hunter of some kind, slaying magical creatures with a single flame at every turn?"
One side of his mouth curved up. "That sounds more like something out of a game than something the Cestis might do. I can't really imagine Cassandra in black leather, wielding a knife."
"I wouldn't want to mess with her," I said, deliberately ignoring that he'd avoided answering my question. "And I'd imagine she was pretty kickass when she was younger."
"I wouldn't argue with that," he said. "So, have you? Been...Cestis-ing?"
"Cestis-ing is not a word," I said. "But no. I haven't. I'm still mostly in the dark about all of this, just like you." I didn't volunteer that Cassandra wanted me to know more. And fast.
"You didn't burn your hand though."
"Not like last time,” I said. "It still feels...weird. Like I said, clueless."
"Lack of knowledge can be fixed. I would think they'd be interested in someone with your...ability."
"Doesn't mean I'm interested in them," I said. "Right now we have more pressing problems. Like who sent that imp and why they've got it in for you. So why don't we go inside, and you can start thinking who that might be?"
I turned to the patch of still faintly smoking ground, the back of my neck prickling again. Damon, despite the noise around the recall of the game and the hit Righteous had taken, seemed like a kind of obscure target for a magical attack. Kidnap, sure. He was rich as a whole barrel of sin and no doubt had insurance to cover ransom demands. But I wasn't sure who would want him physically harmed. Something was nagging at the back of my brain.
I turned back to him. "Lizzie said not all the Archangel beta testers were found."
He grimaced. "No. There were a couple we never traced. But everyone else is accounted for. We offered them all counseling and all the families support and covered any medical bills for anyone who required more serious help. But that wasn't many, thank God."
; That matched what Lizzie had told me. "Counseling?" I said. "With regular counselors?"
He coughed. "Cassandra may have suggested a few names." He finally took off the sunglasses. "She probably suggested the same ones to you."
"Did she suggest some names to you?"
"Yes," he said matter-of-factly.
"And did you actually do it?"
"Some. Things have been pretty crazy. But enough to help in the initial...aftermath." He pressed his lips together. "I guess you probably did the same?"
"Some," I said. I didn't think I owed him more of an explanation than that. Though I was still surprised by his admission that he'd seen a magical therapist. Maybe I should have stuck with it. But no point lingering in regrets about what I had or hadn't done when I'd been trying just to survive.
"But that's sort of beside the point—" I paused as something started beeping.
Damon reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a datapad. Not the one he'd had at UC. This one barely filled his palm. One of the latest holo models. "This is me," he said.
I couldn't hear anything of the conversation as he listened to whoever it was on the other end.
"Yes, that's fine. Let her through." He stashed the datapad again. "Cassandra is here."
"I'll tell Lizzie she's arrived," I said, seizing my opportunity to bring our little chat to an end. "You stay and show her in." I didn't wait for him to argue with me, just pivoted and headed for the house at as fast a walk as I could manage without actually breaking into a run.
"Where's the fire?" Lizzie said as I came around the corner into Damon's kitchen, almost skidding on the highly polished floorboards about a minute later.
"Isn't it a little soon for fire jokes?" I said, then waved off her apologetic grimace. "Cassandra just arrived. I know we have to tell her I did magic, but can you hold off on the comments about Damon motivating me while he's around?"
"You two didn't kiss and make up, then?" she asked. "You were talking for quite a while out there."