Feral Magic: An Urban Fantasy Romance-Thriller

  * * *

  Lilly roused me a few hours later with all the vigor and enthusiasm that four cups of coffee, several dashes of sugar, and a heap of chocolate combined gave her. I tossed a shoe at her when she flung herself on the bed and yanked the covers off me. While I was still wondering how I happened to have had a shoe handy in bed, Lilly caught said shoe midair then presented me with a pair of silk loafers.

  “Wear this today,” Lilly ordered, tossing a red dress at me. “You can't have return customers seeing you in the same thing twice.”

  Once I fought back the urge to snarl, I examined her from head to toe, thinking. “What are you up to?”

  She blushed and looked down at her nails. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “The last couple of days you've been…absent mentally.” I hadn't paid it any real attention earlier. I'd been preoccupied. But today she had dressed in a slinky skirt and blouse, and wore lipstick and false lashes.

  Lilly wrung out her hands, then burst, “Put on your shoes. I'll work on your hair—you never do anything with it!…well, I met someone. He's such a romantic!”

  I paused while working a shoe over my heel, wincing as Lilly tugged a hair out. I asked, cautiously, “Anyone I know?”

  She gave my hair a yank that could not have been accidental. “No. I'm keeping mum until I'm good and ready.”

  “Fine by me.” If it was no one I knew, her odds of success were pretty decent.

  “There, done,” Lilly said. “You'd better get moving. I hear half the customers are lining up to see you.”

  “Ha!” I shouted after her, then I saw her hurt expression and I wondered if she was being serious. “Lilly?”

  She crossed her arms. “You've always been this oblivious, haven't you?”

  “What?”

  “Griff. Boys at school. Now you've only known Mordon a couple weeks and you have him trailing after you, too.”

  I frowned at her. “Lilly. You're not jealous of me, are you?”

  “Of course not!” Lilly shook her head in amazement. “You don't do a thing with your hair, your cuticles are horrid, and half the time you don't wash your face before appearing in public. Yet they're drawn to you so effortlessly. You don't even try, and here I am, admired like a statue and just as loved.”

  I tried to think of something to say. Did I deny her statements? Promise to at least wash my face every morning? Tell her that she was loved? Ask if her new beau didn't respect her, after all?

  Lilly pressed on before I could form words. “It's your mystery. Men love a mystery. They want to solve you. I can mimic beauty from across time and place, but I can't mimic that. I'm just not the same type of woman as you.”

  “Don't try to be.”

  “I'm not. But I am jealous of it. You're so free.”

  A harsh laugh burst from my lips. “I'm so free, even as I'm quarantined and told I can't go anywhere or do anything without an escort.”

  Her eyes turned cold and angry. I felt her magic in her words as she hissed, “Yes. Even when you are fettered the way I am, you are still free to do just as you please. I've been doing this my entire life, and I have yet to learn your devil-may-care flippancy.”

  “What brought all this up?” I asked, confused beyond all measure.

  “Nothing,” Lilly said. The crystalline edge to her words were gone. She tried to smile. “It's been stressful the last few days. That's all.”

  “Right.”

  Lilly said, “I'll see you around today.”

  “See ya.”

  Confused, I trailed her to the door, tapping my fingers on the wall as the french doors shut behind her. Shaking my head, I turned around, and saw that there was the unmistakeable clutter of spell-making all over my floor, and an acrid hint of gray magic still clinging in the air.