Demonkeepers (17 page)

I thought you did, once, but I feel like I don’t know you anymore. I knew Brandt the man, not the White-Eagle mage
. The man had loved their sons to the exclusion of everything else except her. The four of them had been a unit, a family. But he’d changed since their arrival at Skywatch, which had been followed by the revelation that they’d both been hiding their true natures, pretending to be human when their respective godparents—aka
winikin
—had raised them to be more. He was harder now, and had lost the playfulness she’d loved about him. And his sense of humor wasn’t the only thing that had disappeared; so had her belief that he put his family first, no matter what.

Even now, as he looked at her, those damned gorgeous brown eyes were pleading with her to play by the rules, to be part of the team. As far as she could tell, that was the deal. If she behaved herself and bought into the king’s paradigm, Brandt would be the guy he used to be. She’d seen flashes of that man even recently, though he seemed buried beneath the stifling weight of tradition, responsibility, and Brandt’s unwavering belief that the king’s word was law . . . to the point that she sometimes wondered whether he was using that paradigm to hide something else. More secrets.

She thought she saw a hint of those secrets now, as she looked into his eyes and tried to find the frat rat she’d met on spring break, the architecture student she’d married, or the man who’d been beside her as she’d given birth to the twins. When she couldn’t find any of those safe, familiar incarnations of her husband, she gently drew her hands from his. “I’m sorry I disappointed you.” Rising up on her tiptoes, she brushed her lips against his and felt tears sting as the familiar heat rose at the touch, then subsided when she eased away. “I’ve gotta go . . . you know. Do something.” She made a vague gesture in the direction of the main mansion and fled, afraid that if she said what was in her heart, she’d make things between them far worse than they already were.

At least, she usually did. Today she found it annoying.

There wasn’t even anything particularly wrong to put her in a snippy mood, either; at least, nothing new. That was the problem, though—she
wanted
to be somewhere new, wanted to do a different job. But what? She didn’t want to be stuck in the archive, didn’t want to be on the front lines. The work of a spell-casting scribe would be ideal . . . if she could figure out how the heck to use her talent. Sex magic apparently wasn’t the answer. So what was?

Scowling, she picked up the spell book she thought of as the
Idiot’s Guide to Nightkeeper Magic
: the one the prepubescent mage children had used to learn their magic in the years between their toddler-age bloodline ceremonies and their pubertal talent ceremonies. This particular copy was worn and smudged, and as she unfolded a dog-ear, her heart ached at the thought of the mage child who had marked the page, which was at the end of the last chapter, where the kids got their intro to the most basic of talent-level spells.

Always before, she’d focused her research farther back in time, trying to understand what was happening now based on what had happened hundreds, sometimes thousands of years ago. Now, though, her head filled with thoughts of the generation before hers. Had her mother touched this book? Her father? Had they been in class together, pretended not to look at each other? She could even picture them playing eye tag now, because that morning, when she had walk-of-shamed it—though technically she supposed there was zero shame involved—back to her suite from Lucius’s cottage, she had found an envelope slipped beneath her door. She had guessed what it would contain, and had opened it knowing it would only make some things harder than they already were. Sure enough, Shandi had left photographs of her mother and father, both separate and together.

Her father, Joshua, had been tall and broad shouldered, though he hadn’t filled out yet to the brawn of the typical full- blood. His face had been soft and sweet, especially in the pictures where he and Vennie had posed together. In those photos, though, he all but disappeared into the background, eclipsed by Vennie’s bright, sharp effervescence. Jade had suffered a pang at the thought of that shining, vivid teen reduced to a desiccated corpse in the library, a
nahwal
in the barrier. A second pang had come when she’d reached the bottom of the stack and found several pictures that had included not just Joshua and Vennie, but also a dark-haired, scowling baby who always seemed to be waving clenched fists in the air. Oddly, Jade had felt the least connected to that baby, who looked like she was ready to fight the world.

Now, she traced a finger over the glyph string of the fireball spell and its phonetic translation below, and deliberately turned her mind away from her parents. Instead, she imagined a rawboned, overlarge puppy of a boy, poring over the spell book she held, looking for his first taste of the loud, fiery destruction that fascinated men of all ages. Or maybe it had been a girl of eleven or twelve, a little rash, a little vain, daydreaming about becoming a warrior and making a difference. The children wouldn’t have been able to actually enact the spell, of course; fireball magic was reserved for those with the warrior’s mark. But they would have practiced, just in case. Talent sometimes broke through on its own schedule, after all.

Telling herself she was just practicing her translations, Jade ignored the phonetics and read the simple spell straight from the glyph string, using the techniques Anna had taught her at the university.

Nothing happened.

It wasn’t until disappointment spun through her that she admitted she’d been hoping for . . . what? She wasn’t a warrior. She was a scribe.

“At least, I’m supposed to be,” she muttered, dropping the book on the conference table and spinning to pace the suddenly small-feeling room. She forced herself to bypass the keypadded door that led to the second room of the archive, where the more valuable artifacts were tagged and stored under ruthless climate control, and from there to the inner archive, where the writs were displayed on the walls as a tangible reminder of a Nightkeeper’s duties and responsibilities. But it wasn’t the writs that drew her thoughts to the small sacred room. “Damn it, Lucius.” It was his fault she was so edgy, his fault she couldn’t settle to the work that usually soothed her.

Okay, that wasn’t strictly true either. He hadn’t done anything wrong;
she
had, or was in the process of doing so—getting in over her head when she
knew
better, damn it.

“You’re sleeping with him.”

For half a second, Jade thought that had come from her own subconscious, but her inner monologue had never achieved a tone of such frosty disapproval. Bracing herself against a fleeting wish that she’d locked the door, she turned and nodded to Shandi. “Good morning to you too.”

The
winikin
marched in, leaned back against the conference table, folded her arms, and scowled. “Don’t change the subject. You’re sleeping with him, as in, not just the once. You stayed with him last night.”

Jade just stared at her for a second. “Do you seriously want to do this?”

The
winikin
waited her out.

I don’t answer to you. You’re not my keeper.
But that was the human viewpoint, wasn’t it? The same wasn’t strictly true within the Nightkeeper mores. The
winikin
didn’t just serve and protect their Nightkeeper charges; they were also responsible for their morality and service to their bloodline duties. Granted, there wasn’t any sort of formal repercussion for a Nightkeeper who ignored, disobeyed, or otherwise pissed off her
winikin
. . . but social pressure could be a real bitch.

Breathing through her nose to stem the knee-jerk irritation that came as much from her own frustration as from Shandi, Jade said, “Last night was an experiment. We needed to see whether the sex would trigger the Prophet’s magic.” She paused. “Either that wasn’t the actual trigger, which doesn’t make sense, given the sequence of events, or the sex magic needed the boost of the new moon we had the other night . . . which by extension would mean we can’t use sex magic to put him into the library again until the solstice, which will be too late to help Kinich Ahau.”

Shandi’s frown went from a full- on scowl to a thoughtful expression. “If we’ve worked out the time line correctly, which I think we have, then Vennie made the transition into and out of the library at least twice over the seventy-two hours leading up to the summer solstice of ’eighty-four. Those weren’t days of barrier activity, which means there’s got to be another way to trigger the magic.”

“She used her mage talent. He’s not a mage.”

Unfortunately, that brought Shandi full circle and had her eyes narrowing. “No, he’s not. Yet you’ve taken him as your lover again, despite what the
nahwal
told you. Have you thought about what this could do to your magic?”

What magic?
Jade wanted to ask, but didn’t, because it would disrespect both of them, not to mention the harvester bloodline. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but her own that she couldn’t figure out how to be a true scribe. And besides, that wasn’t what this fight was about. “You mean because he’s human, and Vennie found that her powers dropped to match those of a harvester after she and Joshua were married.” Somehow it was easier to call them by their first names. “But if you’re saying that my powers are going to drop to those of a human—i.e., none—then you’re assuming that Lucius and I will become a mated pair. Do you really believe that was the gods’ intention?”

“I don’t believe your parents were destined mates, yet they wound up wearing the
jun tan
, and Vennie believed that her magic had decreased to that of a harvester. Are you willing to risk losing yours entirely?”

“Lucius can’t form the
jun tan
; he wears the hellmark.” Which was too easy an answer, given that Sasha and Michael were clearly mates despite their lack of the formal mark. Jade exhaled, shaking her head. “We’re not lovers. We’re just enjoying each other.” But the words caught a little in her throat and she felt a stir of the panic that had driven her to the archive and had her pacing rather than working.

Last night might’ve started hard and fast on the TV room floor, but after that first time, when it had become clear that the sex magic wasn’t theirs to invoke at will, they had transitioned to the bedroom without her even realizing that the decision had been made and acted on. There, the
get off and get gone
sex had morphed to soft touches and sighs, and slow, easy lovemaking that had gone way further than she’d meant to let it go. Then, this morning, she’d woken up curled against him, her hand over his heart, their legs twined together beneath the earth-toned quilt. More, where she’d expected the morning-after conversation to be uncomfortable, as both of them acknowledged they’d gotten in deeper than they’d meant to, and needed to pull it back, he’d been pure relaxed, satisfied male as he burned toast and made bad coffee wearing nothing but jeans and a smile.

She’d kept waiting for him to say something about how intense things had gotten. He didn’t. He’d just given her a friendly kiss and a, “Later,” on her way out the door, like they were just friends sharing damn good sex.

It was what she had wanted, what she had insisted on. So why did it make her want to scream?

“I’ve never before seen you ‘enjoy yourself’ with a man who didn’t make sense in the context of your life,” Shandi pointed out. “This one doesn’t. He’s different.”

That startled a strangled laugh out of Jade. “
Everything’s
different.
I’m
different.”

“No, you’re not. People don’t change, not that way. You’re just confused.”

“You can say that again.” Jade realized she was back to pacing , made herself stop. Leaning back against the conference table beside her
winikin
, she scrubbed both hands across her face and let out a sigh. “It’s like there are two different people inside me. One wants to be a good girl, quiet and obedient, the perfect harvester. The other just wants to make noise and blow shit up.”

“It wasn’t arbitrary that some bloodlines intermingled and some didn’t. There are traits that just don’t mix well.”

“No kidding. I think I’m starting to get an idea of what Rabbit’s going through.”

“
Don’t
say that.” Shandi gripped Jade’s wrists and yanked her hands down from where she’d been rubbing her eyes, trying to massage the encroaching headache away. “You’re a full- blood. Be proud of that if you’re proud of nothing else the harvesters have to offer.”

Jade stared at the raw, naked emotion on the face of a woman who didn’t do emotion, and her inner counselor suddenly spoke up when it had gone silent over the time away from her old world.
Here’s the way in
, her instincts chimed.
Follow it if you want to know her inner truth
. She hesitated fractionally, wondering whether she really wanted to know, or if it would be better to let the
winikin
have her privacy. The Skywatch community was too small for everyone to be tangled in one another’s business. But then again, this wasn’t just business. It was her life. She and Shandi were linked, despite whether either of them was happy with the pairing.

Jade shifted within the
winikin
’s grip, until they were holding hands in a rare moment of physical contact. “Listen to me, and please believe me. I’m proud of being a harvester. That’s one of my biggest problems right now. I feel like I should be doing more—my
nahwal
is telling me to be more, for gods’ sake—but I know that’s not the harvester way. It’s because of my respect for the bloodline, and for you, that I’m all screwed up right now.” At least in part. Great sex, a guy who was sticking to the friends-with-benefits arrangement she’d demanded, and the threat of her inner Edda weren’t helping. But the
winikin
’s stricken expression didn’t ease, even with the reassurance. Confused, Jade gave their joined hands a shake. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

The
winikin
’s voice broke. “Yesterday . . . all that talk about the day of the massacre brought it back. Not that it’s ever far away, but it was suddenly right
there
. They were there again, beside me, inside me. They’re why I need . . . I need you to be perfect. I need to know it was worth it.”

Jade nearly recoiled from the pleading in the older woman’s face.
I can’t be perfect. Nobody can!
But the counselor in her set that aside, pushed it deep beneath the shell, and said, “You need to know that
what
was worth it?”

Shandi’s eyes were wide and stark, not seeing the archive anymore. “Letting my husband and son die.”

“Your—” Jade’s breath left her in a rush. “Oh, Shandi.” Her heart twisted, shuddering in her chest. “Oh, gods.”
Oh, shit
.

The
winikin
chosen for binding to Nightkeeper children typically didn’t marry or have children of their own, as their first and foremost priority had to be their charges. There had been exceptions, of course, but those families had, of necessity, been loosely knit, with the children often raised crèche-style in extended networks of relatives. The system had evolved over generations and had been part of the fabric of Nightkeeper-
winikin
life. The chosen
winikin
focused on their charges; the unchosen fell in love, got married, and had families.