“That’s okay,” he said softly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” I sat in the coatless chair. “It was just—maybe—a memory or something. It’s gone.” I tried to keep the frustration and embarrassment out of my voice.
He sat in the chair across from me silently, even though that chair usually creaked, and turned in his seat so he could see both the front door and the window. “Was it about me?”
I fished a piece of pizza out of the box, pulled it up until the strings of cheese broke. “Yes.”
“Was I naked?”
I couldn’t help it—I laughed. “I can’t believe you asked me that. No comment.”
He smiled, laugh lines curving at the corners of his eyes. “So I was naked.”
“Shut up and eat your pizza,” I said around a mouthful. And that was the end of my side of the conversation. I wiped out two pieces of pizza before coming up for air. Zayvion paced me, piece for piece. He got up, found the apple juice, and refilled our cups.
After the fourth slice I felt like I could think again. Hounding always made me hungry; drawing on magic always made me hungry. I’d been doing a lot of both of those things on nothing but a scone, coffee, and french fries, most of which I’d lost in the parking garage.
“How did the job with Stotts go?” he asked.
I tore the crust off another piece of pizza, leaving the topping portion still in the box. “I didn’t tell you I was working for Stotts.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Were you spying on me?”
“Define spying.”
“Were you on the street watching me Hound for him?”
“No. I was . . . working.”
“And that involved keeping an eye on me?”
“In a roundabout way. I noticed you were with him. How did it go?”
“My Hounding jobs are between me and my clients,” I said. “And this is police business. Confidential.” I did not want to tell him about Pike. Didn’t want to tell him I had ratted Pike out and that he would be charged with kidnapping—or more, if the girls were found injured, or dead.
Time for a subject change.
“So what was up with that chanting and light show you put on earlier today?” I asked.
“That?” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and nodded. “That was magic.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out under the table like he was used to being comfortable around me and in my apartment.
“Genius. What kind of magic? What did you use against those things? The watercolor people things?”
He considered me for a second then. “What is the first rule of magic?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Zayvion did not look like he was kidding. As a matter of fact, if I had to describe how Zayvion looked, I would use the word intense. Something important was riding on this conversation. Or maybe riding on my response.
“The first rule of magic is if you use magic, it uses you.”
“Yes,” he said. “There is always a price to pay for using magic. Always. And when you spend a lifetime using it, it spends a lifetime using you. It leaves its mark on you”—he motioned toward my hands—“and you leave your mark on it.”
“What do you mean, you leave a mark on magic? It’s hard enough just to touch magic. Magic isn’t solid.”
“Neither are the Veiled.”
“The who?”
“This doesn’t apply to the casual magic user. This doesn’t even apply to someone who uses magic once a day. But for those of . . . us . . . who use magic constantly, it is believed that our minds, our souls, our life essence, can impress upon the flow of magic. Like an image on film. Or maybe more. Some people believe that if you use magic too much, you will impress certain parts of your life into the flow of magic permanently. You can lose bits of yourself to it.”
I suddenly wasn’t hungry.
“But they’re wrong, right? Because I have magic in me. Inside me. Tell me there aren’t . . . parts of people’s spirits and lives in the magic. Tell me I’m not full of dead people.” It came out just as horrified as I felt.
I suddenly wanted to crawl back into the shower and scrub myself again.
Zayvion straightened and leaned forward without making a sound in my creaky chair. He reached across the table and put both of his hands over mine.
His hands were warm, wide, heavy like a blanket. “You are not full of dead people. But there are theories that magic is. And that sometimes when the gates between life and death are opened, those bits of dead magic users—the watercolor people, the Veiled—can rise.”
“Like ghosts?” I could handle ghosts. There were people who got rid of ghosts. Exorcists and such.
“No, not like ghosts.”
Well, that was just fantastic.
“Then what are the . . . what are the Veiled?”
“They are parts of dead magic users who don’t know they’re dead because they are still tied to—fed, if you will—by the flow of magic.”
“That’s the theory?” I asked.
“That’s the theory.”
“And the gates between life and death?” I asked.
“Theory.”
Right.
“What happens if they touch you?”
Zayvion shook his head. “They can’t see most people.”
“They can see me.”
“What?” Zayvion’s hands tightened on mine. He tipped his head down, catching my gaze. “Did they see you? Did they touch you?”
I nodded.
“Where? When?” He was still calm, but his breathing was quicker, and I could smell the peppery edge of his fear. Theory, my ass.
I pulled my hands away from his and unbuttoned the top buttons on my shirt. His eyes flickered with another kind of light—desire—down to my collar-bones before he schooled his face into that calm Zen expression that gave nothing away. I pushed one shoulder of the shirt down, revealing a patch of old and new burns.
He held his breath and sat there like I’d just slapped him.
I squirmed, really uncomfortable with the look in his eyes.
“Oh, baby,” he breathed.
“It’s nothing. Forget it.” I tugged the shirt back up over my skin, hiding my wounds, hiding my pain. But Zayvion stood, walked around the table, and knelt in front of me.
“May I see it closer? Please?”
My heart was beating too fast. I didn’t know why, but I felt like crying. Okay, it was probably because I’d had a shitty day. Or maybe it was because I felt like I’d been touched, violated in ways I didn’t understand and couldn’t guard against. I wasn’t even sure I should trust Zayvion, if I should trust in the intimacy he assumed was between us.
“I might be able to ease the pain,” he said gently. “Does it still hurt?”
I nodded.
And he just waited. Didn’t touch me, didn’t push, didn’t ask again. He just knelt there on my carpet, in the pose a man would take to offer a diamond ring and the rest of his life. Except Zayvion wasn’t asking me for forever. He was asking me to trust him. Just for now.
Sweet hells.
I unbuttoned the top button again and pushed the material aside to reveal my shoulder. I gave him a level gaze.
Zayvion leaned in a little closer and studied the marks without touching them. “Some of these marks look older than others. Have you been touched by them more than once?”
“Once outside the coffee shop. Once in the parking garage with Stotts, and once on the street. In that order.”
“So you’ve seen them three times today?”
“Four. With you.”
Zayvion nodded, very Zen, although I could still smell the fear on him. “Did you put anything on the wounds?”
“Nothing but soap, water, and Bactine, Doctor.” Zayvion glanced up, smiled. “Okay. That’s good. I can ease the pain some too. Help speed the healing a little. Is that okay with you?”
“How?”
“I’ll need to touch one o
f the marks. I can soothe them with . . . magic.”
“Nice hesitation there,” I noted.
He took a deep breath. “It probably isn’t the kind of magic you were taught in school.”
“Does it involve chanting?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“You don’t like my chanting?”
“I don’t get your chanting. The unknown plus magic always equals dangerous in my life.”
“Hmm. So am I known or unknown?” he asked.
I held his gaze and remembered the black flames and silver glyphs that covered his body. There was more to Mr. Jones than met the eye. “Unknown. Especially when you are mixed with magic.”
He smiled, and heat of a very pleasant sort stirred deep in my belly. “Fair enough,” he said. “Maybe we can do something about that. Get to know one another better.”
“Maybe we can.”
This close, it would be easy to touch him, to kiss him. And even though I didn’t remember us, my body responded to him like fire to oxygen. Zayvion could stir emotions in me with a soft word, a sideways glance. Sweet loves, he did such things to me.
“May I?” he asked.
I blinked, trying to remember what we were talking about. Oh, yes. The burns.
“Touch one of the marks?” I asked to make sure.
A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “Yes.” “Will it make any difference? They’ll heal on their own, right?”
He leaned back and tipped his head to the side. “They should. But if you continue to use magic, it could take a very long time for that to happen.”
“Why? They’re just burns.”
He stared at me, waiting.
“Okay, fine,” I conceded. “They’re not just burns. They’re dead-magic-user-ghost-finger-burn things.”
“Death magic,” Zayvion said, “is nothing to mess with. If you don’t want me touching you, I could call a doctor I know—”
“No,” I said a little too quickly. The idea of a doctor creeped me out right now. “It’s fine. You can do it.”
He leaned forward again and placed the fingertips of his right hand next to the marks on my shoulder. Whisper soft, he traced a glyph against my skin. Mint flowed out from his finger, warming in small circular motions as he retraced the glyph again, guiding the mint and magic to spread a pleasant heat up my neck, across my skull, and then down my other shoulder.
Oh. Nice.
“Mmmm,” I said.
Mint flowed deeper, trickling and then pouring down my body, my bones, my blood, soothing, stroking the pain away, leaving warm waves of pleasure behind. The fevered ache inside me eased. The catch in my heartbeat eased. The tight sunburn sting of my skin eased. Even though he touched me with only one finger, it felt like his hands were everywhere, drawing gently across my skin, touching me, holding me. Making me clean, whole, and myself again.
Finally he drew his hand away. “Better?” he asked.
“Please don’t stop.” It came out smaller than I wanted it to. “Don’t go. Yet.” I put my hand on his left arm, keeping him from going away.
Instead of pulling away farther, Zayvion gathered me into his arms and held me. His palm softly rubbed the center of my back and I breathed in the pine of his cologne, the sharp male bite of his sweat.
I put my arms around him and relaxed into him. Touch, human touch, felt so good. It had been a long time since anyone had touched me like this.
“What aren’t you telling me, Allie?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“My dad’s dead.”
Okay, that was a stupid way to start, but my brain was losing ground to the emotions I’d kept in check all day. Zayvion nodded, the stubble from his jaw rubbing against my cheek.
“I’ve seen him,” I said. “In my bathroom when the electricity went out. Out on the street with you, and then after I Hounded. My dad was there. But he didn’t look like the Veiled. He looked like himself but transparent. He spoke to me.”
“Do you remember what he said?”
“That I always forget to set Disbursements, and ‘the gates, seek the dead,’ or something like that. Do you think he meant the gates between life and death? In theory?”
Zayvion stiffened and then relaxed again, like a string being plucked. He pulled back just enough so I could look into his eyes. Gold eyes burning tiger bright.
“Did he say anything else?”
“No?”
“Did he do anything else?”
The memory of his hand sinking into my chest and squeezing, flickered behind my eyes.
“He touched me.”
“Did it burn like the Veiled?”
“No. But it hurt.”
The line of his lips tightened. He did not look away from me. “I’d like it very much if I could stay here tonight.”
“Why?”
“If your father comes back . . . comes to see you . . . I might be able to communicate with him.”
“And why do you want to do that?”
“Your father was a powerful man. A very powerful user of magic. I am worried he may have . . . planned for his death.”
“You’re not talking funeral arrangements and wills, are you?”
“No. I’m talking magic. You father may not want to stay dead. And I don’t want him hurting you.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Yes.”
And he was so not joking.
“So by ‘communicate’ with my dad, do you mean casting a Shield spell and then sucking him down a black hole like you did to the watercolor—the Veiled?”
“If I have to, yes.”
Great. My ex-maybe-still-current boyfriend was going to get into a magical battle with my dead-maybe-still-kicking dad.
“And that’s the only reason you want to stay? To protect me from my father? Because let me tell you, Jones, I can deal with my father.”
He blinked, and his gaze softened. “When he was alive, yes. But he’s dead now, Allie. And I’m worried about you. I know what it’s like to try to sleep with all the lights on because you’re too afraid to turn them off.”
“Calling me a sissy isn’t winning you any points.”
“I’m not looking for points. This isn’t a competition; this is real. This is life. And I know what it’s like to be afraid of the dark and all the things inside it.”
“I’m not afraid of the dark,” I said.
“You should be.”
Silence stretched out between us. He meant it. He believed it. And if Zayvion Jones said I should be afraid of something, I’d be stupid to not at least consider the validity of that.
“Just for the night,” I said.
He visibly relaxed, his shoulders lowering and loosening. He had been really worried I’d say no.
“Thank you,” he said. He stood and so did I.
“I’ll get you a blanket for the couch.” I walked to my hall closet and found a spare blanket and a pillow. “I’m going to leave my bedroom door open, but it isn’t an invitation.” When I turned around, he was next to my couch, watching me.
“Here.” I walked over and handed him the blanket. “What? What’s that funny smile?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “This just seems familiar.” “Does it?”
He looked at me, looked for something I apparently didn’t have. Then he became very interested in slowly unfolding the blanket and spreading it across the couch. I’ve seen that kind of reaction before from people who knew a part of my life, who had experienced something with me that I’d forgotten.
“I’ve slept on a lot of couches in my day; that’s all,” he said.
“That’s not going to work for me,” I said.
“What?”
“Lying. If you’re in my house, I want honesty. Hells, I want it when you’re not in my house too.”
“Honesty,” he said, tasting the word. “When you and I went to Nola’s farm, she made me sleep on the couch. I could see the open door to the room you slept in. I
could hear you breathing, moving, dreaming. And when you cried out, I came to you. So this”—he held his hand toward the couch and then my bedroom—“and this”—he pointed to me and then himself—“feels very familiar.”