by R. L. King
And here he was, walking right into a situation that could be every bit as deadly.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the way those green flames danced around Blake’s hand, though. He hadn’t just seen them across that table—he’d felt them. And he didn’t mean heat, either, because there wasn’t any. They licked around her, reaching hungrily upward, but her hand remained steady and no warmth issued from them. No, he’d felt them a different way—as a weird thrumming sensation in his body, almost as if some kind of energy were passing over him.
And what had she meant, “That ends today”?
She wouldn’t say anything else about it at the restaurant. “This is where you take the leap of faith,” she’d said. “You know, like that guy in The Matrix. Do you want to keep on like you are, or do you want to step out of your rut and take a chance on another world?”
He studied her, memorizing her features. She looked like she might be in her late twenties, slim and athletic with short, dark hair and an attractive face. She wasn’t the kind of supermodel beautiful Ian was used to seeing in Los Angeles—around here, everybody and their dog was trying to break into show business, and both men and women did everything they could to make themselves as hot as possible. Blake’s features were a little too angular, her eyes too hard, her figure too slim to be a typical Hollywood bimbo, but the look worked for her. She’d removed her leather jacket and stuffed it between them, revealing intricate tattoos running from her wrists and disappearing beneath her short sleeves. Ian found them fascinating; whenever he took his eyes off them for a second, he was half-convinced they moved around. That was ridiculous, though. Tattoos didn’t move. Probably too much to drink. Even so, he was sure she hadn’t spiked his drink; he’d kept a close eye on it throughout dinner.
“End of the line,” she said, opening her door and snatching her jacket. “Come on—we’ll talk inside.”
He followed her, taking the place in without appearing to be doing so. He’d seen plenty of places like this, sometimes while attending wild parties and sometimes when he was taken home by everything from up-and-coming movie executives to aging actors, so it was nothing new. He did notice, though, that the house had few personal touches: no framed photos, no frivolous throw pillows on the sofa or magazines on the coffee table, no welcoming call of a cheerful dog or cat excited its mistress had returned. In fact, the place had the quality of a movie set itself, with everything in its place. He wondered if she spent much time here, or if it was all part of whatever show she had planned for him.
“So, what’s this about?” he asked.
“Sit down.”
He waited for her to select a seat, on the end of one of the sofas facing a window that looked out on a panoramic view of the moonlit pool. He took the chair across from her, keeping his back to the wall and the room’s two doorways in sight.
If she noticed, she didn’t comment. “You want to know how I took out those guys.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you believe me if I told you it was magic?”
Seriously? I am an idiot tonight. What had he been thinking? Jose’s men must have spooked him more than he’d thought. Too bad he’d let her drag him all the way out here before he realized it. It would be a long walk back, since he didn’t have money for cab fare and he doubted the buses made it up this far. He let out a frustrated sigh and rose. “Come on. You brought me all the way out here to screw with me? That’s a pretty shitty thing to do, but okay, you got me. Good job. I’m out of here.” He rose and stalked toward the door.
The coffee table slid across the floor and blocked his path.
Ian skidded to a stop. “What the hell—?”
Blake remained where she was, leaning back on the sofa with an air of relaxed amusement.
Ian glared at the table, then back at her. “This is bullshit. You’ve got the place rigged somehow. What, did you rent one of David Copperfield’s old places or something? Very impressive. Wait, did I say impressive? I meant pathetic, that you’d go to all this trouble.”
“You are a cynical little shit, aren’t you?” Blake’s voice never rose from its sly drawl. “Just like your father. Okay, fine. Maybe a little more active demonstration will convince you.”
“Lady, just give it up. I—”
Ian’s feet rose from the floor. He floated up to the ceiling, a few feet away from the fan blowing the mild summer air around the room, and stuck there facing downward, his back pressed against it.
“Now,” Blake said, still with no change in her tone, “I can do a lot of things from here. I can move you around the room like an old toy. I could shove you into the fan blades—they’re not moving too fast, so I don’t think it’ll hurt much. I could even fling you through the plate-glass window into the pool. I don’t really want to do that—it would hurt, plus it’d be hell on the security deposit and the blood and glass would make a mess—but if you really do need an impressive demonstration—” She shrugged. “Up to you.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Ian flailed, trying to swim his way back toward the floor, but whatever held him fast didn’t yield. How was she doing that? The coffee table was a cute trick, but she could have used magnets or wires. This—the only metal he had on him was his belt buckle and his piercings, and nothing tugged on any of those. He felt like a solid cushion of air pressed him into the ceiling. “Put me down, damn it!”
“Your choice.”
The cushion of air vanished, and Ian couldn’t bite back a yelp as he tumbled toward the floor. At the last second, the chair he’d been sitting in streaked toward him and he landed with an undignified thump across it.
“I don’t have time to fuck around with you,” Blake said as Ian scrambled back to an upright position, puffing and glaring daggers at her. “I’m offering you something you’ll never get the chance to have again. One-time shot, kiddo. One offer per customer. Take it or leave it, but make up your mind, because I’m not wasting much more time on you.”
He swallowed hard, his body still coursing with anger and adrenaline. Who did this woman think she was, messing with him like this?
But then he got a good look at her.
The amusement was gone, replaced by a hard, flinty gaze that seemed to see into his soul. Suddenly, with a certainty he didn’t question, he knew she wasn’t messing with him.
“What do you mean, offering me?” he asked with suspicion. “So far, all you’ve shown me is your tricks.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said patiently. “They can be your tricks too. I can teach you to do them.”
“Do…what? Magic?” He spat out the word with contempt. “You’re crazy. I don’t believe in magic. That’s for kids and nutcases.”
“You will.” She sprawled back on the sofa, hooking one languid leg over the arm. “Tell me about your life, E. What’s your real name, by the way?”
“What’s yours?”
“I’ll find out, you know. It won’t be hard.”
“What do you mean, you can teach me magic?”
She smiled. “That’s why I tracked you down. I know things about you—about your past, anyway.”
“My past?” He narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“I knew your father. Your real father.”
“What?” He twisted, leaning forward in his chair. “When?”
“A few years ago.”
Something clenched inside Ian. “He’s an asshole. My mother wouldn’t admit it, but that’s the impression I always got.”
“Well, she was right about that. He is.”
“What’s his name? Is he still alive?”
“You still don’t get it, do you? This isn’t your show. It’s mine. I’ll tell you, but when I’m ready.”
Ian started to protest, but once again he got a look at her and knew he wouldn’t get anything out of her until she was ready. He sank back into the chair. “Fine. Tell it your way, then.”
“Smart boy.” She got up and wal
ked to the window, looking out over the pool. “Have you ever had anything strange happen to you? Maybe you could tell if somebody was lying, or things happened around you that you couldn’t explain?”
“How did you know that?”
She chuckled. “Enough dancing around the subject. I’m getting bored. Bottom line is: you’re like me. You’ve got magic, and I can teach you to use it.” Turning back around, she raised her hands. Bright purple lightning crackled around them, the reflections in her eyes making her look half-mad in the dim room. “When I’m done with you, you won’t have to run from guys like Jose anymore. You can have your way with them. You can do whatever you want, and nobody will be able to stop you. No mundanes, anyway.”
Ian shook his head, even as something stirred deep in his core. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the lightning. “You’re crazy, lady.” But his voice shook.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, I’m not lying to you. It’s power, E. That’s what I’m offering you. Nothing’s better, trust me. Nothing in the world. Money? You can get that any time you want. Sex? Same. Magic can open the kinds of doors you never knew existed. And I’m giving you the chance to grab it. Don’t you want that kind of power?”
She was crazy. She had to be.
But…what if she wasn’t?
What it if was true?
He thought about all the times he’d had to run, to hide, to kiss somebody’s ass to keep him happy, to give in to the demands of arrogant bullies so he could pay his rent.
Could she be right?
“Prove it,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed. The lightning still flickered around her fingertips. “This isn’t enough? I could still toss you through the window if you want.”
“No.” He shook his head with impatience, waving her off as he stood. “Maybe that’s real, maybe it isn’t. But either way, it’s you. You said you could teach me. So prove it.”
“Ah.” Something changed in her expression, and her smile widened. She looked as if his words had pleased her. “I can do that.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and fixed him with a penetrating gaze. “We’ll start with something easy. I want you to look at me—but not directly at me. Look past me.”
“What?”
“Have you ever seen one of those optical illusions? The ones where if you look one way it’s a young chick, but if you shift your perception, it turns into an old crone?”
“I guess…”
“Or even better, those ones where it just looks like a jumble of colored pieces until you look at it just right, and suddenly you see something else?”
Ian remembered a party a couple months ago where everybody had gotten high and somebody had brought those out. “Oh, yeah.”
“Think of it like that, then.”
“I don’t get it. How can looking at you be like one of those puzzles?”
“Trust me. Just do it.”
Ian got the impression Blake was neither suited for, nor enthusiastic about, patient teaching methods. Just humor her. If she’s crazy, maybe you can sneak out later.
He blinked a couple times, rubbed his eyes, and matched her forward-leaning pose. At first, his gaze settled directly on her, but then he let his vision fuzz out as he tried to keep her form in sight without focusing on details.
“That’s it…” she murmured. “Just keep doing that. Try not to think too hard about what you expect to see. Just let it happen.”
He had no idea what he was looking for. He forced himself not to blink, fixing his attention on a point on the stylish blue sofa just past her right shoulder. Slowly, her figure dissolved from sharp edges into fuzzy outlines: pale yellow for her hair, tawny for her tanned skin, black for her shirt—
He jumped, flinching back in his chair as something erupted around her. Suddenly, her body was wreathed in unnatural red, wild and glowing, brighter than the dance-floor lights back at the Calypso. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He blinked and the nimbus vanished, leaving her sitting there just like before, watching him with a narrow-eyed, calculating smile.
“What…was that?” he whispered.
“You saw it, then?” She nodded approval. “Pretty good. You learn fast.”
“But—what was it? You had this…weird red light around you.”
“It’s called an aura. Everybody has one, but only people like us can see them.”
He realized he was gripping the arms of the chair so tightly his fingers were leaving impressions. He loosened them and took a breath. “People like us. People who can do…”
“Magic. Yeah.”
He tried to make it happen again, but this time he couldn’t stop staring directly at her as his heart pounded.
She must have sensed it. “Calm down. It’ll get easier every time you do it, but the first few times it takes some work. Try taking a look at yours. Just hold out your arm and do the same thing.”
“Yeah…” Half-convinced he hadn’t really seen what he thought he’d seen—perhaps she had drugged his drink somehow—he lifted his arm and tried the same thing as before, focusing past it instead of at it and letting his vision go fuzzy.
It took a little longer this time, probably because his arm was shaking and he was trying too hard to force it, but eventually more colors shimmered into existence, limning his forearm and hand. He’d expected to see red, like hers; instead, his own glow was a shining silver, with a narrower band of intense violet riding its edges. It was even more beautiful than hers had been.
“Shit…” he whispered. This time he took care not to look away, but instead continued studying it as it danced and flowed around him.
“Pretty fucking cool, huh?” Blake sounded even more amused than before.
“Mine’s…different. It’s silver and purple, not red like yours. Why? Does that mean anything?”
“Everybody’s is different. You’ll see that when you start looking at other people.”
“Why is mine two colors?”
“That’s just the way some people are. Don’t get any ideas—you’re not special or anything. No more special than any other mage, anyway, but that still makes you better than the mundanes.”
“Mundanes?” He blinked—he couldn’t help it—and his aura faded. “People who don’t have magic, you mean.”
“Yeah.”
This was crazy. He was dreaming. He was high. There had to be a rational explanation. One that didn’t involve some kind of Lord of the Rings garbage. But yet—
“Why are you doing this?” he demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you hunt me down? Why are you offering to teach me? I don’t know you. You don’t know me. And nobody around here does anything for anybody for nothing. So what’s your angle? What do you get out of this?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yeah. I really do.”
Her smile widened even farther. Her eyes sparkled, turning the smile into a shark’s predatory grin. “Easy. I want to get back at your father. And trust me: after I tell you about him, you will too.”
7
Stone arrived at Valentino’s fifteen minutes early and took a seat in the bar where he had a good view of the host stand. He had no idea whether the boy or whoever might have put him up to this knew what he looked like, so he employed one of his disguise amulets to appear as a generic-looking, thirtyish man in a polo shirt and chinos, matching the small crowd of young techies and salesmen doing business over lunch. It was probably overkill, but better safe than sorry. Whoever was behind this clearly knew trying to convince him he had a son would put him off his guard.
As he sipped his pint, he surreptitiously examined the bar area for signs of other magically disguised people, or traces of arcane energy. He saw none. If they’d stationed anyone around here to keep an eye out for him, they were probably mundanes, and so far nobody seemed at all interested in him. He kept his own aura concealed, which was much easier now at his augmented power
level.
He wondered where Jessamy Woodward was these days. He didn’t remember where she’d said she was from—somewhere in the jumble of Midwestern states he could never keep straight—but people moved around in twenty years. She’d mentioned her parents were strict and conservative; that was why she’d gone so wild when she got out from under their thumbs. Had she resumed her oppressive lifestyle when she returned home, or had her taste of freedom given her the courage to break free and start her own life?
If the boy had been telling the truth—if he was Stone’s son—that would make him nineteen years old now. Stone had been barely twenty himself at the time, and Jessamy had been eighteen. Since they’d only been together for two months before she returned home at the end of the term, it was entirely possible she didn’t realize she was pregnant until she was already back in the States. Even so, surely she would have contacted him, if for no other reason than to get some financial support for the child. Her family had been of modest middle-class means—the only reason they could afford her semester abroad was because she’d earned a scholarship that covered most of the expenses. He hadn’t come out and told her he was wealthy, but it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out. He honestly didn’t know whether he’d have married her if she’d asked, but he certainly would have made sure any child he was responsible for never wanted for anything financially.
But then again, maybe she hadn’t even known who the child’s father was. She’d been a free spirit the whole time they’d dated, and he’d never deluded himself that he was the only man she was sleeping with. If she didn’t know the father’s identity, maybe she’d decided not to bring more trouble on herself by trying to pursue it. And if she did know it was him, she might have been afraid of the kind of problems he could bring down on her with his family’s wealth and influence—up to and including trying to take the child away from her.