Marley wanted to nip him in direct contradiction to Lissa’s instruction, but he would have taken it the wrong way. “Maybe. We’ll see.” Then she pulled away, and hurried out the front door.
Chapter Two
Marley
Before Marley could meet Penny and Branwyn, she had to take Neath home. Too-big tagalong cats made the wait staff nervous, even if they stayed on patio seating. Neath was never, ever a fan of being left at home, though. Marley had read that cats didn’t like leaving their territories, and it was clear Neath regarded Marley as her territory. And locking her in the bathroom didn’t really help.
“I promise not to pet any other cats while I’m out,” Marley told her, as she carried the cat into the house. Neath purred, and Marley rubbed her cheek against the cat’s. Neath was strange and magical, but she was always willing to cuddle and never left Marley’s side for long. There was something to be said for that.
But, of course, she was still a cat. And after a moment she meowed plaintively, letting Marley know cuddling and protecting her turf took a lot of energy and she was going to starve to death soon. So Marley put her on the couch and went to open a can of cat food. If all went well, Neath would eat and then nap, instead of getting bored or worried and showing up to check on Marley. It had worked before. Sometimes.
As Neath settled into eating, Marley should have slipped out. Instead, she looked around the apartment she shared with Branwyn. It was messy and increasingly cluttered as their lives got busier, but it was also, to Marley, warm and homelike. She didn’t want to leave it, even if everything else had been great with Zachariah. She liked having all her stuff where she wanted it to be. Zachariah was organized to a fault, in Marley’s opinion. She thought he’d go nuts, too, if she was there all the time, messing up his stuff and not giving him any time to put things back the way he liked them. He couldn’t be thinking it through properly, not on any level except protecting the twins.
Neath looked up, giving Marley a speculative look, which reminded Marley that she had someplace she was supposed to be. Hastily, she backed out the door and shut it before Neath could get out.
On her way down to her car, her phone chimed again. This time, it was a call from her mother: the human mother who had raised and loved her, not the celestial mother who had birthed her and abandoned her, save for possibly sending a magical cat. Madeline Claviger was her real mother, in every sense that mattered.
Except Madeline Claviger still didn’t know that her daughter wasn’t quite human, that her daughter took after her birth mother more than anybody could have imagined. Marley hadn’t worked out how exactly to explain that, because she didn’t really want to. The whole world was changing rapidly with the return of the faeries, but her relationship with her mother was precious and powerful and she didn’t want to risk it.
Marley frowned and let the call go to voicemail. She’d call her back later, when she wasn’t driving somewhere. She could never talk to her mother while driving. She needed room to pace and twist things in her fingers and run her hands through her hair. Even when Marley wasn’t keeping secrets, talking to her mother was distracting.
Instead she drove to Old Pasadena. Les Sirenes, the restaurant Penny had picked out, was chic and expensive looking. The scents of fish and fresh bread wafted through an airy interior. A low decorative fence divided a large patio from the shopping alley so diners could show off exactly what the shoppers were missing.
Penny was already seated on the patio, drinking something tall and iced and staring off into space instead of reading the magazine she’d brought. When Marley sat down across from her, she came back to herself with a start.
“Hi! I hope my text didn’t interrupt anything good?” She smoothed her hair, already perfect, back from her face.
“No, it came at exactly the right time. Just like I expected. Thanks.” Marley squinted at her friend.
Penny was both Latina and Persian by descent, but there’d often been a pallor under her dark skin in recent months, ever since she’d recovered from a magical attack with a huge dose of magical help. The magic that had saved her had made it hard for Marley to read her aura. Marley’s magic seemed to think Penny was safe no matter what happened, without consideration for all the emotional trauma and mild physical harm that Marley could read in others’ futures.
It was annoying, but Marley reluctantly accepted that it was possible her magic was right, at least about the physical safety. What had been done to Penny had changed her in ways that nobody yet understood. Marley had personally done a lot of research in the early days, after Penny woke up and couldn’t stop crying all the time. And as far as her research told her, nobody had ever had a prosthetic anything made from a Machine stolen from Heaven before, let alone a prosthetic soul.
Then again, it was just as likely that the prosthetic soul was confusing her magic senses. Who knew? Nobody really wanted to experiment with grievous harm in order to find out.
“How are you doing?” Marley asked.
Penny gave her a dazzling smile. “Oh, I’m fine.”
“Were you fine five minutes ago?” Marley knew better than to trust Penny’s smiles. Penny could smile the stern frown off a stone general on command.
“Well, you know,” said Penny airily. “Just thinking about my particular boy problems. And yours, too.” She frowned. “I’d rather think about yours. Marley, it worries me that you had to put together this kind of planned escape just to have a serious talk with that man.”
Marley sighed and picked up the menu. “Can we save the intervention until Branwyn gets here? You know she’ll sulk if you start without her.”
Penny gave a little smile and spread her hands, her mouth closed: an invitation to talk without being interrupted. She remained silent while Marley looked over the menu, and while Marley ordered something with rum in it. After that, the quiet became too much to bear, and the words started tumbling out of Marley.
“He asked me to move in with him. Directly. Right before you called.”
Penny raised her eyebrows, bringing her hands to her mouth. Silently.
“Every time I think we’re beyond this, I’m so happy, Penny. I want what’s best for the girls, and I really like him, but I love the ability to get away. I’m still figuring out who I am after last year. I haven’t even told my Mom what I am yet. And he—” Marley closed her mouth. She wasn’t ready to admit to her friends her suspicion that he didn’t care who she was, so much as who she’d inherited her magic from. That any daughter of her birth mother would have attracted him. That he only wanted more protection for his very special children.
“Let’s just talk about something else for a while, until Branwyn gets here?”
Penny stretched her fingers. “All right. I got an official letter today banning me from the faerie convention.”
“You mean the Extraworlder Conference,” corrected Marley, smiling at the name. “Why in the world would they ban you? You weren’t planning on going, were you? The Senyaza gala is this weekend too.” She knew several faeries had visited Penny since her recovery, curious about the capacities of her new soul; she suspected one of them might be the ‘boy problem’ Penny had mentioned. At least, she hoped if it was anything supernatural, it was one of the faeries. A faerie was better than the angel who had almost killed her. Penny could defend herself against faeries now.
With a touch of irritation, Penny said, “No, I wasn’t planning on it. I’ve seen enough faeries already to last me a lifetime.”
Marley suggested, “Maybe they want you to come and it’s reverse psychology?”
“Hah. No, they think that banishing faeries is… a calling for me or something, not just… who I am now. I didn’t exactly choose my shiny new soul’s faerie-banishing power. But they’re afraid I’ll show up and wreck the party.”
“Tell them you’re going to the Senyaza party instead. They’ll love that. And then you could hold a party of your own and ban them.”
“And have to spe
nd all my time enforcing the ban? No thanks,” Penny said sourly. “Maybe I’ll get out of town after the Senyaza thing. I’ve got a few invitations I could take up. DC, New York….” She flipped idly through her magazine until she got to a photo spread showing a few reckless Congressional Representatives posing for photos with faeries. Even when the faeries had dressed appropriately for visiting Congress, they were easy to identify; each and every one of them looked like they’d been digitally enhanced far, far more than their photo buddy. Even the texture of the light on their skin looked different.
“Not much escape there,” Marley pointed out.
“No. The invitation to DC isn’t a compelling one. Signing up for civil service never interested me.”
Her magazine gave a muffled beep, and Penny moved it aside to look at her phone. “Yes, Branwyn, we see that you’re late. We saw that ten minutes ago,” she said to the message displayed on the screen.
“What’s she doing? Can we order without her?”
“Caught by her family somehow. Go ahead. I suppose you probably have to get back to nannying.”
Marley shrugged, and caught a waiter’s attention. After she ordered her lunch and Penny ordered an appetizer, they talked about television for a few moments. Then as Marley started eating her sandwich, Penny leaned back, finishing her drink and watching the pedestrians. Abruptly she said, “What happened to that one guy? Corbin? He’s the one who tried teaching Branwyn magic, right? You used to talk about him all the time last year. Where is he these days?”
Marley stopped eating. She shook out her napkin and then folded it into a square, concentrating on making each edge sharp and clean. “I have no idea. He was doing some work for Senyaza in Japan or Europe somewhere and then he dropped off the radar.”
“Japan or Europe,” said Penny dryly. “What a narrowly pinned down location. So you two weren’t close? I was kind of out of it when I first woke up, but I got the impression—”
“We used to talk a lot,” said Marley hastily, one of her corners slipping awry. “Then we kind of drifted apart.” But she still thought of him almost every day. She still reassured herself he was alive because she had his charms. He had a good reason for not talking to her. But she hoped that someday, once the rest of her life had been sorted out, they’d talk again.
As she habitually did each time she thought of him, she turned on the magical sight he’d given her and looked down at her torso, where the life-support charm was affixed to her magical core.
She blinked. The charms were self-contained spells woven from the Geometry, the massive lines and whirls of magical energy that underlay everything in Creation. All humans started with seven looped nodes along the thick line that ran through their bodies: knots of energy that spells could be affixed to. Wizards constructed and placed charms, but once placed, the charms drew on the bearer’s strength and responded to the bearer’s will.
Marley had been studying magic since she discovered it existed, first under Corbin’s tutelage, and then on her own. She hardly qualified as a wizard, but she knew a lot more than Penny and Branwyn did. For example, she knew that it was almost impossible for anybody but the creator to casually remove a charm from a node. It took time, and a wizard’s workshop. Marley had heard that a Queen of Faerie could do it with a wave of her hand, but she didn’t know anybody else with that degree of control over the Geometry.
And yet: the life-support charm Corbin had given her was unraveling. She stared at it for a heartbeat. Then she tried to gather up the strands of the Geometry and hold the charm in place. It didn’t work, and only a moment after she looked at herself, the charm was gone.
“What’s going on?” asked Penny, alarmed. “Why are you muttering ‘no, no, no, no?’”
Marley didn’t answer, looking around wildly. A black bird flew down from the roof. Faeries could be almost everywhere these days, but not the Queens, which meant if somebody was removing Corbin’s charms, it had to be—
A tall, lean man in blue jeans, a plain white t-shirt and sunglasses was walking down the alley away from the restaurant. He had dark hair. She stared hard at his back, and then she was sure. Corbin.
“Hey,” she called, standing up. He didn’t stop, didn’t turn around. He was walking away. She lunged forward, as if she could catch him, and only succeeded in tangling herself in the decorative fence around the patio’s edge.
Penny said, “Whoa, are you all right? Is that—? Let me just— ” but Marley barely heard her. She seized Penny’s hand, pulled herself to her feet and plunged over the fallen fence. Then she raced down the sidewalk. “Corbin, wait!”
“Oh my God, Marley, don’t just run off and leave your—”
Marley collided with somebody. It wasn’t Corbin, so she pushed past them, looking around wildly. At the end of the alley, she emerged into the crowds of shoppers on the sidewalk and paused. She tried to think past the buzzing of panic and confusion. Then she fumbled for her phone and realized it was in her purse, which she’d left in the restaurant.
A black bird swooped overhead and she saw Corbin crossing the street down at the crosswalk. She hesitated, staring at the distant profile.
“Is that really him?” inquired Penny, shoving Marley’s purse into her ribs. “I saw him watching us and I thought of your friend, but I’ve never met him before… have I?”
“Once, briefly, when you were sick,” said Marley, and fought her way through the crowds to the crosswalk. “You’re taller, please don’t take your eyes off him!” She kept her own eyes on the sky, watching for ravens.
“He went down the other alley,” Penny reported. Marley pulled out her phone and tapped three buttons to call Corbin. It rang twice before being disconnected.
Hurt and anger battled for space. She pushed both reactions away and focused on activating several of the charms she had remaining: a charm to enhance her reflexes so she wouldn’t trip again, and a charm to give luck a little nudge in her favor.
The light changed as soon as the luck charm activated. She charged across the street, cutting across the corner. Weaving around the people on the street, she turned into the alley. It was much less crowded and in the distance, halfway down the alley, she once again made out the white t-shirt.
Penny caught up with her again. “Are you sure chasing him is a good idea? Most guys who run like that aren’t worth the effort of catching.”
“He stole something from me,” said Marley, and ran. People cleared out of her way, some because they saw her coming and some because they coincidentally—luckily—decided to head into one of the buildings.
He turned to look back at her, the long line of his nose achingly familiar. Then he stepped out of sight around the corner.
Penny grabbed her arm, hauling her to a stop. “Marley, don’t do something stupid. Or if you must, stop leaving me behind. There are so many ways this could go wrong, especially if you keep running off!”
“Fine,” Marley muttered. She grabbed Penny by the hand and power-walked her to the end of the alley.
“This empty alley is creepy enough. If he leaps out at us, somebody’s getting hurt. And I know maybe you want to be alone with him after so long, but I’m not very comfortable with that. I’d be sad if something happened to you because I let you outrun me. Although, God, I’ve got to ramp up the jogging, when did you get so fast? You don’t even exercise—”
There was nobody around the corner, no Corbin anywhere on the street. Marley hesitated, Penny’s nervous babbling trickling in past her distraction. She looked at Penny with her danger-sight. The other woman’s steady untouchable glow hadn’t changed. Not exactly reassuring given Penny’s special situation, but Marley’s magic didn’t work on herself at all: not her danger-sight and not her shields.
“Did we lose him?” asked Penny.
Marley turned her magic sight onto the street, looking at both the tangles of the Geometry and the auras her natural danger-sight provided. The Geometry sight wasn’t one of her intrinsic powers. Corbin h
ad built it for her: a custom charm that integrated her danger-sight and a few other visual perks. She didn’t usually use her danger-sight on large groups of people because it was extremely upsetting to see all the possible ways strangers might hurt themselves in the next few hours. But she didn’t want to waste time focusing if she caught a glimpse of Corbin. She wanted to know anything she could, right away.
The city street was a jumble of Geometry lines, nodes, matrices and loops, all crashing into each other. At the end of the street was a park. The Geometry there was less chaotic, the points of life fitting together into constellations that hovered on the edge of recognition.
Something strange was moving down there, she realized. Somebody who didn’t have an aura. Dread uncurled in her gut as she recognized Corbin. She ran toward the park, towing Penny after her. When he moved deeper into the green area, past the playground, Marley had to shut down her danger-sight. Looking at all the children playing dangerous games was simply too much for her. But she couldn’t give up the chase. Not yet. Not until she knew why. And how.
She paused to look again on the other side of the playground, in a stand of enormous old trees.
“Enough, Marley. Stop.” It was Corbin, his voice rusty and barely recognizable.
Penny jumped and then laughed nervously, squeezing Marley’s hand tightly. Marley spotted Corbin’s profile leaning against the side of the tree. He’d taken his sunglasses off.
“What’s going on, Corbin?” She furrowed her brow, studying him, trying to understand. His face was drawn, almost gaunt, and there were lines around his eyes that she didn’t recognize. He looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for weeks. His clothes didn’t quite fit, as if he’d shopped in a hurry.
And to magic Sight, it was worse. His eyes glowed, one blue and one black. That was familiar. But the black webbing that clung to him, veiling his charms, was not. Red flared along his spine, as if his magic was cracking open, and something churned beyond it. It was like nothing she’d seen before.
Divinity Circuit (Senyaza Series Book 5) Page 2