by Brea Viragh
“You can’t think?” Leo steepled his hands and urged her to open up, looking intrigued by her outburst.
“You do something to me and my mind goes blank. I hate it.” She hid her expression in the empty cup in front of her.
“You hate it?”
“Yes, I hate it.”
“Because you’re attracted to me.”
“Yes!” She blurted the word before her mind warned her to censure. “I mean, no. I mean…aw, shit.”
This was a much better turn of conversation than the one his father had probably planned. Leo pushed the man to the farthest regions of his subconscious and focused on the gorgeous woman in front of him. And the little nugget of info she’d obviously not meant to give up. “It’s all right, I understand. And I’ll let you in on a secret.”
“I don’t want to hear your secret,” she said.
“I’m attracted to you, too,” Leo told her in a conspirator’s whisper. “You know, in case the lip-lock the other night didn’t make it clear to you.”
A blush stole up her neck at the recollection of their kiss. “Shut your mouth.”
“I should, or you might stick your tongue in it again. But let’s table that conversation for another day. Back to the topic at hand.” Like a sea captain at the helm of his vessel, Leo steered the subject of discussion around to where it first began. “Your doorstep omens and awesomely amazing power surge today.”
Astix ran a hand through her hair. “Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that you know. It should. It should surprise me and scare the hell out of me at the same time. I must be losing my mind.” She closed her eyes.
“Does it?”
“What?”
“Surprise you,” Leo said.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I know this doesn’t make sense to you. It hardly makes sense to me. But I’m…invested. In you. In wanting to help you.” All mocking light left his face as his mouth turned down. “I want to help you. If you want me to leave, I will, but I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.” She refrained from licking the rim of her empty cup. Something had to give, to get her attention away from Leo. Tension filled the air between them in a neat little bubble she couldn’t burst.
“What do you need from me?” Leo asked. “I’m here to do your bidding.”
“My…bidding? You’re joking.”
“Say the word and anything within my power is yours.”
“I’ve got it covered,” she assured him.
“Doesn’t look that way to me, or you would have shielded your signature instead of broadcasting so loudly even I felt it.”
Her spoon fell against the saucer with a clatter. Any discomfort she felt she channeled into a more manageable emotion: frustration. “I don’t see why you’re invested, anyway. Or do you go to these great lengths for every woman you want to bed?”
If her outburst surprised him, he kept the reaction to himself. “Not every woman. You. I don’t take lovers lightly.”
“No one said anything about being lovers. You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough to want to protect you.”
“Better if you leave.”
“It would be better?” he asked. “Better for whom?”
“Everyone.”
“Give me one reason why I should listen to you. After all, you’re still sitting here talking to me. In broad daylight. I’d wager your instincts are good from all your years of running. What do your instincts say about me?”
Her instincts? They said she was crazy for sitting there, in broad daylight, talking to him. She cast her eyes down at the table and didn’t answer.
“So when I ask if you need help, I offer it sincerely,” he continued. “Not as an employee of the Claddium, not as Orestes Voltaire’s son, and not as a stud looking for his next mare.”
“A man with a woman he desires,” Astix corrected for him. “Otherwise that’s just base animal instinct.” When he reached across the table to lay his hand over hers, she didn’t shy from the contact.
“Yes. My mistake. It’s more than that with you, Astix.”
The gravity in his voice had her feeling ashamed she’d jumped the gun. The pain in his eyes was unexpected. It was a sentiment she connected with on a basic level.
“Now tell me what’s going on. You’re hiding something from me.”
“And you’re a bloodhound for secrets?”
“You look scared,” he insisted.
She sighed. “Something…happened to me. Has been happening to me.”
His gaze hardened. “Tell me.”
“Come home with me.” She made the decision to trust him on the fly, before she could second-guess herself. “You’re so good at picking up on energy signatures. Look around and see if you can find something. No funny business.” She pointed her finger at him to emphasize her condition.
Leo smiled slowly. “I thought you would never ask.”
Their conversation drifted into other areas after several seconds of silence. More pleasant areas. And damn if she wasn’t pleasant company when she wasn’t giving in to her panic. The coffee added an intriguing sparkle to her eyes and a heated glow to her cheeks. Leo leaned back in his seat to watch her. Astix had a quick mind and a subtle, dry wit. At least, she did when she forgot who he was. Forgot to be nervous around him.
He followed her in his car and made sure to keep a careful distance behind the bike. To help her feel at ease, less pressured.
Orestes had assigned his only son to this case years ago as a way of dipping his toes in the proverbial work pool. A spark to jumpstart what was sure to be an illustrious career resulting in Leo one day stepping up to head the Great Lakes chapter of the Claddium Earth Elementals.
It wasn’t his dream. Not really a part of his five-year plan. There were other places to go, and people to see. He’d been roped into his current position through the nature of his blood and nothing more. Once long ago, he’d dreamed of being an athlete, making good on his naturally sporty physique.
He drove along streets lined in frozen husks of decaying leaves with an alternate aim planting itself alongside his career goals. Taming Astix, seeing the pain and low self-esteem replaced by happiness and passion and fire. It was a charming prospect. He didn’t know what it was about her. She was special, he thought as he parked the car at the curb.
He walked up to the front doorsteps with her keeping close behind, always close, hoping she would get used to the contact. “Whoa.” He let out a whistle, feeling the negative energy circling the outside of her home. He held up a hand and extended his senses. “They really did a number on you. What the fuck?”
Astix waved a hand at the crystals and ordered them to stand down and allow Leo entry. He had no quarrel with them or her.
“I got rid of the crows. I, uh, had a bonfire in the backyard.”
“You got rid of the crows, but not the message. Wow. This is one nasty message.” She kept her concerns to herself as Leo reached out farther, his magic a deep blue nimbus around his hands. “It’s not just the birds. There’s more.”
“Y…yes.”
“What?”
“Voices in the dark. Doors opening and closing on their own. A bad smell.”
Thunder rumbled suddenly, presaging a storm that hadn’t even been a blip on the radar moments earlier. Leo squinted at the clouds. Damn the veil. Damn his father. There was a serious leak going on and they were doing nothing about it.
“There’s a taint behind this,” Leo murmured. He refocused and closed his eyes. His senses reached out. “Something not quite right.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook himself. “I’m not sure. I’ll keep an eye on it. This was done to scare you.”
“Yeah, I realize that. I’m not as stupid as I look.”
Leo slowly opened his eyes. “You don’t look stupid. Nervous, maybe, and a little high-strung, but not stupid.”
“Gee, thanks for t
he glowing commendations there, Golden Boy.” She let out a puff of air that ruffled her bangs and made her look like a disgruntled fairy.
“At least you’re not freaking out,” he said.
“Right. Although it’s not off the table. I can’t guarantee I’ll hold it together.”
“They didn’t get past your defenses, at least. Beautiful gems, by the way.” He gestured toward the door. “Remarkable handling. They respond inherently to you.”
“You feel them?” she asked as she led him inside the house.
“They get the job done. I’ll probe a little deeper, if you’re okay with it.”
“Probe?” When Astix failed to move, he shooed her away. She placed her hands on her hips and shot him a cynical look. “What are you going to do?”
“Find out what happened here. Go on and give me some space.”
“Why? Planning on blowing up the joint?”
“Anything is possible.”
Astix skeptically removed herself from the room and left Leo standing in the center of a beam of sunlight.
The moment she turned the corner, he closed his eyes again. His gift, similar to hers, had to do with the fundamentals of the earth. He could tap into the properties of the world around him, manipulating carbon and silica elements. Glass turned back to sand under his touch. An emerald necklace sighed and gave up secrets of a time long past. Walls and wood shared their memory of violence or pain, happiness and joy, any strong sentiment written in the atoms there.
Therefore, he did what he did best, what he had been born to do. He drew on the power lying beneath the surface and got to work.
His magic permeated the structure of her home. Images swam behind his closed lids like heat waves above asphalt in the height of summer. It only took a moment to fine tune before the scene became clear. He saw the tall man, dressed in black with his face obscured, releasing the depths of his rage on the live crows he held. They hadn’t just been a message. They’d been a sacrifice. Blood magic came with a stronger intent than anything else.
Leo relived the moment and winced, listening to the snapping of necks and feeling the moment the birds died. Their deaths were painful and needless.
The man was slim, his bearing like a prince with rigid back and wide shoulders. Everything about him screamed entitlement. Attitude. Darkness coalesced around the edges of his aura and sank tendrils in deep. He carried something inside of him that had leached into his skin and clasped tight. The two were nearly interchangeable. It hovered beneath the surface and controlled his hands, his movements.
Leo shook himself as the inky remembrance reached out to him. He felt the taint of it. This was not an amateur, not a dabbler in the shadow arts. This was someone completely entrenched in the shadow. This made him dangerous and upped the threat level to orange.
Fuck.
Unable to stop himself, Leo rewound farther. An escape, partly. More for curiosity’s sake. Astix would hate the invasion of her privacy, but he wanted to make sure there was nothing else. Nothing she might have missed. Kinda.
What he saw had his heart thudding against his ribs. Poor darling, he thought. Why do you do this to yourself?
There were nights she stayed awake sobbing, so lost in her own misery she couldn’t see the sky. He watched her drag herself back from a show, mentally and physically drained, barely making it to her bed for recuperation. He saw days and nights on end of solitude until the loneliness dulled and became commonplace. Routine. Something she no longer recognized at times. It was a part of her, as much as her hair color or lines of ink on her skin. Her music kept her alive. It kept her sane.
She moved from room to room mixing her songs, experimenting with different beats and tunes to show off her skills. She drew lines of notes in the air and smiled at something only she could see. He saw her shying away from anything to do with her magic. Never giving herself permission to test the limits and rise to her full potential. It was a shame, really. If she’d been anyone else, in another time, another life, she could have had the world readily available.
He empathized with the sad young girl the house remembered and felt closer to the closed-off woman in front of him. With a concentrated effort, he pulled himself out of the past and shuddered, trying to ground himself in the present.
“You there, Golden Boy?”
When he came back to reality, Leo found Astix leaning against the wall, staring at him. “Yeah, I’m fine. I took a peek,” he told her. He cleared his throat when his mouth refused to cooperate.
“Looked like more than a peek. You were out of it for a good forty minutes. I almost had to call your daddy to come and get you.”
The heels of his hands pressed into his lower back. “Oh, sure you would. Detective work takes time. I can get a little lost sometimes.”
She peered up at him. “Did you see him? What did he look like?”
“It was the same man from Constance. He never revealed his face to me, and nothing looked familiar. But he’s dark, and he’s angry.”
“Why is he targeting me?”
“I’m not sure.”
She sighed. “It doesn’t make me feel any better. But thanks for coming over, anyway.”
“Anytime.” Against his judgment, he went to her. Grasping her elbows in his hands, he drew Astix away from the wall and brought her close. “You can run from me, from this, if you want.” He skimmed her hair away from her cheeks and left his fingers resting there. “I have a feeling no matter how far you run, it will still be there. It’s always going to be there. I’m going to be there. There’s a spark between us. I’m going to see it through.”
“What if I don’t want you there?”
“I’ll be there when you’re ready, watching your back in case you get into trouble again.”
“I don’t—”
He bent to kiss her. It wasn’t fast, giving her plenty of time to turn. She told herself to move. To turn so that the kiss fell on her cheek instead of her lips. Her body had other ideas.
His arms came around her and slid her closer, chest to chest so that without any effort, she molded to him.
She gave in to the spark he spoke of and felt it snap to life inside of her, all bright heat. It was a test for herself when she let him part her lips. When she let his grasp drop to her waist. They took their time, as much for themselves as for each other. He dipped her back and a jolt of intimacy took her by surprise. Her head caught in a dizzy spin.
Leo waited until she had melted against him before dropping his big news. “You didn’t tell me about the magic you unleashed today.”
Astix stiffened, breaking the kiss and staring at him. “Maybe because I wanted you to drop it.”
“I can’t. I felt it.”
He watched thoughts move across her face as she struggled through something beyond his knowledge. “It’s complicated.”
“You went to see your parents?” It was the only logical conclusion.
“I did,” she began slowly. “There are a lot of things for me to think about. Please don’t push me any further. I’m not ready for it.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
Whatever she hid was too personal, and he refused to pry any more than he already had. At least now he could tell his father he’d asked. It didn’t matter that he came up with zilch.
Leo eased away and let his arms fall to his sides, down her wrists before breaking the contact. She didn’t complain.
“I guess I’d better go. Are you sure you don’t want me to help with anything else?”
Astix was rarely speechless, but it took her a good fifteen seconds to find her voice again. “You would stay to help?”
“Of course. I’m quite handy around the house. My mother tells me all the time. Never my father. He would prefer the work be done by housekeepers instead of by me.”
“I’ll be fine, thank you. I don’t want to inconvenience you on what is surely a busy workday. If I come across any other bad omens, I’ll know who to call.”
Yeah, Ghostbusters. Leo wanted to tell her that it would be no inconvenience. He would relish the opportunity to spend more time with her, get to know her better. To see if he could catch whatever slimy bastard was terrorizing her and beat the shit out of him. Seeing the way she fidgeted, the paleness of her cheeks, he knew he’d almost pushed her too far. Almost.
“Well then, good day to you.” A single kiss to her forehead punctuated the farewell. “Until we meet again.”
“Yeah.” She turned her cheek to him, embarrassed. “Sure.”
There would be other days for them. Best to let her work through things in her own time. She would come around, he knew.
He would have to wait and be patient. Keep his eyes open. And tell his father he’d found nothing.
CHAPTER 10
Astix dreamed of fire. Flames burning into eternity. The heat blistered her skin until pain became her world, and inside the inferno were the faces of her family. They screamed at her to save them. To put out the fire before they turned to ash. She woke screaming, sweat beading down her face and dampening her pillow. It was minutes later before her heart stilled and she managed to catch her breath.
“This has got to stop!” she yelled at the ceiling, peeling off the sheets when the sweat tried to keep her glued down. It was the third night she’d had the same dream and woken to screams still echoing in her ears. Lifelike enough to have her want to drive to her parents’ house to check on them.
Her nerves were on edge as several days went by without incident. She’d prefer action. The over-and-done kind where she met her goal and moved past it speedily. Instead, research bogged her down in a mire of dust and blurry words. She devoured whatever texts she could get her hands on regarding curses and omens, spells to react and counteract.
What she came up with was a fat load of diddly. Everything she found seemed to lead to the lunar eclipse, the biggest omen. The owls in the trees, the crows on her doorstep, even the curse rune was ancient magic, ancient symbols. Not used by anyone today.
She slapped the latest book shut and coughed when a cloud of dust rose.
The turntables beckoned, and she managed to pass some pleasant hours at the keyboard, notepad in hand and computer recording. It helped to take her mind off the problems by focusing on something familiar. Something she could control. Something belonging solely to her. Her frayed nerves soothed when the melody unfolded. She thought about the lines of the poem. Correction: the prophecy. No matter how Varvara wanted to spin it, Astix knew a prophecy when she heard one.