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Authors: Devon Monk

Magic on the Storm (9 page)

BOOK: Magic on the Storm
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I rubbed my hands over my arms, needing contact, needing his touch, but firmly
staying right where I was. Zay could make jokes. I’d just do what I always
did—endure.
Zay had been staying with me enough lately that he had a spare change of
clothes and a dresser drawer of his own.
“I’ve always thought if the magic thing didn’t work out,” he called from the
bedroom, “I could give comedy a try.”
Comedy. Right. The last thing Zay had on his mind was a career in stand-up. “I
thought you had the whole ice-polo thing to fall back on.” I dug in the drawer
beneath the sink and pulled out my brush.
I could do this. I could be just me. See me being just me? I was hella good at
it.
“I like to keep my options open,” he said. “You know how the girls love an
athlete with a good sense of humor.”
I left the brush on the sink and put on the void stone necklace again. Magic
settled in me, taking the edge off my discomfort. I walked into my bedroom. Zay
had already put on his boxers and jeans. He was half bent, digging through the
laundry basket for a T-shirt.
I was done pretending. “So this magic and Soul Complement thing. You think
we’ll be okay?” I asked.
He stood, the T-shirt in his hand. “I have never once doubted us. Not once.”
I walked over to him. He had slipped back into expressionless Zay, Zen Zay. He
wasn’t giving off much in the way of body language except for patience, and I
was trying my best not to listen in to his emotions. “Not even when you wrote
me that Dear John note?”
He grimaced. “That was me doubting myself. Doubting if I could keep you safe.”
“How about if you let me keep me safe?” I gingerly placed my fingertips over
his heart, felt the soft rhythm there, felt the rise and fall of his chest. But
nothing more. No emotions, no thoughts.
“Are you blocking your thoughts and feelings?” I asked.
“Just trying not to project. You?”
I shook my head. “So this is okay?” I dragged my hand down and around his rib
cage, my fingers sliding along the waistband of his pants. I wrapped my arm
around his back, leaned into him. Still had my towel on too. Go, me.
I felt the tension drain out of him as he exhaled. “This is very okay.” He put
his arms around me, pulled me close.
I tucked my head, resting it against his smooth, hard chest. He tipped his head
down, not far, and kissed my hair. “Good?” he asked.
I nodded, and rubbed my hand down his spine, massaging the muscles of his wide
back as I went, until I finally slid my fingers into the back pocket of his
jeans, to keep my hands off any other tempting part of him.
He smiled. My hair caught in the stubble along his jaw.
“Very nice,” I mumbled.
I stood there and savored the sound of his heartbeat, of his breathing. Stood
there longer than I should have, and still didn’t want to part. But I didn’t
feel trapped with him, and didn’t feel apart from him. I felt like I belonged
here. Felt like I was home.
I yawned, and finally pulled away. I didn’t know if it was the whole magic
thing, or just the long day, but I was tired. “I need a short nap before the
meeting.” I tugged off my towel and let it drop to the floor as I walked over
to the bed.
Zayvion inhaled behind me. Oh, right. Naked me, plus half-naked him, plus bed
equaled one thing.
I looked over my shoulder.
From the fire in his gaze, I knew exactly what he was thinking.
“A nap,” I repeated, crawling under the covers quick. “I’m tired. You should be
tired too.”
Zayvion stalked over to the bed. “Maybe I’ll make it worth your while to stay
awake.”
“No. No way. You said we should be careful, remember? You said we might get too
close and mixed-up and stuff, remember? Sleep, Jones. Sleep is good.”
He grabbed a fistful of my comforter and tugged. “Promise I’ll be good.”
“Zay . . .”
“Or, if you’d rather, I’ll be bad. Either way works for me.” He tugged a little
harder on the blanket, exposing my shoulders and chest. I was losing ground
quickly. I scooted down the bed a little and tugged back.
“Here’s an idea,” I said, shifting tactics. “Why don’t you take a nap with me?
Nice warm blankets. Nice soft pillow. We could get some sleep. Rest up before
the big storm meeting tonight . . .”
His smile faded and all the sexy on-the-prowl was gone. I shouldn’t have
brought up the meeting, shouldn’t have let the real world back into this small
moment we were sharing.
“I’m sorry—”
“No, you’re right.”
He let go of the comforter and rubbed at the back of his neck. A sound of
something falling in the living room made us both glance out into the hall. It
was just Stone stacking the alphabet blocks I’d bought him. I knew Stone wasn’t
a child, but I was tired of coming home to find all the cups dragged out of my
kitchen and stacked in precarious pyramids in the living room. Plus he liked
the blocks enough I’d bought him three sets of the things.
They kept him busy.
Stone usually stayed in the apartment during the day. But at night, he came and
went as he pleased—opposable thumbs meant doors and windows were not a problem
for him. I didn’t know what magical statuary did at night, but since I hadn’t
heard of any gargoyle sightings in the news, whatever it was he did, the big
lug was discreet about it.
When Zay looked back at me, some of the seriousness was gone. “Move over,
woman.”
He crawled under the blankets and hogged the bed.
Note to self: explain that the bed was mine, and I should get more than half of
it just on principle alone.
He hadn’t put on his shirt, but still wore his jeans, as if knowing we’d be out
of bed soon. I shifted closer to him, and judiciously placed a sheet between
us, because a half-naked man in my bed—especially if that man was Zayvion
Jones—was going to ruin my control.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“Forever,” he said.
I savored that thought. It was a nice fantasy, anyway.
“Maeve’s at ten, right?”
“Mmm.” He shifted so I could throw my leg over his, and rest my head on his
shoulder, his arm snug down my back. “An hour or so.”
“Need the alarm?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll be awake.”
I was going to ask him about that. Ask him why. But I really was tired, and it
took only a few breaths before I slipped off into deep, blissful darkness.

Chapter Seven
Z
ay didn’t have to wake me up. The cold air coming in from the window
did the trick.
I shifted away and elbowed up. “Stone,” I groaned. “Go out or stay in. Don’t
just stand there with the window open. You’re killing my heating bill.”
Stone stood on his hind legs, half his body out the open window, backlit by the
streetlights below. His head was tipped upward. He seemed to be watching the
sky. Probably fascinated by the moon. He was smart like that.
He made that bag-of-rocks happy sound, and pulled back into the room, dropping
on all fours. He, of course, did not shut the window behind him.
He clacked some more, his ears perked up, his wings tucked tight against his
back. He seemed happy I was awake. So happy he trotted over to my side of the
bed and stuck his big freezing-cold head in the middle of my chest.
I yelped. “Too cold, you dummy.” I pushed at his face and he just ducked under
my hand, begging for a scratch.
Zay chuckled.
“You’re no help,” I said.
“He’s your yard ornament.”
Fine.
“One scratch.” I rubbed the ridges of Stone’s eyes. He pulled his lips back in
what I could only guess was a smile, even though there were a dozen too many
sharp teeth involved.
“Now go. Shut. Window.” I gave him a little shove, and he rubbed the side of
his head over my hand for one last scratch, then tromped back to the window,
cooing a sort of out-of-tune hum.
“All engines ready to go?” I asked.
Stone clacked.
“Runway clear for takeoff?”
Stone stuck his head out the window again. Cooed, vacuum cleaner-style. His
ears were straight up, and his wings quivered. This was a little game we
played. I liked it much better than the chew-on-the-chair-legs game.
Zay snorted. “You think he understands you?”
“I’d sing him show tunes if it would make him shut the window. Ready?” I said.
“Five, four, three, two, one. Blast off! Go, go, go!”
Stone gathered himself, his back legs dropping, his arms braced outside on
either side of the window. He had gotten pretty good at launching himself out
the window, his wings tucked tight. With one big push, he shoved out into the
night air, his wings catching like a parachute, then beating, stronger than
they looked. Yes, they were made of stone and didn’t look aerodynamic, but
somehow, he did it—the big lunk of rock and magic really could fly.
And the big lunk of rock and magic did just that.
But the big lunk of rock and magic did not close the window.
Hells.
I groaned. Zay just snorted.
Dragging the comforter with me, I scooted off the bottom of the bed, and shoved
the window shut. I thought about setting the lock so the beast wouldn’t be able
to get in, but decided against it. I was pretty sure Stone would find a way
into my apartment, lock or no lock. And I didn’t want to have to pay for
repairs.
Zay stood, stretched, and shook out his arm and hand.
“Arm asleep?” I dug through my closet looking for a sweater. It was freezing in
here. How long had Stone had that window open?
“Can’t feel it from my elbow down. You never moved.”
I pulled one of my favorite sweaters off a hanger. With the blanket still
wrapped around my legs, I shuffled to the dresser, found panties, bra, and
jeans. Didn’t take me long to get into all of them, plus a nice thick pair of
socks.
“You could have shoved me off if you didn’t like it.” I found my boots, put
them on too, and strode to the bathroom to fix my hair.
“True,” he murmured.
For once, fortune was on my side. My hair wasn’t sticking straight up. I
brushed it back, tucked it behind my ears, and took a look at my eyes. Green,
but too dark to be just my own. Someone else was looking back at me.
“Dad?” I whispered.
A weight shifted in my head and the entire room slid downhill sideways. I
grabbed the sink, braced my feet, and tried not to fall down or throw up as
dizziness tumbled through my head.
The storm
, my father’s voice said, quietly, as if he were speaking from
far away. He sounded concerned, but calm. The same way he had sounded when I
was seven and broke my wrist and he’d told me going to the doctor was going to
hurt a little. The same way he’d sounded when he told me my mother had left me,
left us, for good, but everything would be fine.
Nothing they say will change it; nothing they do will stop it.
I was on my knees now, still holding on to the sink, still trying not to fall
down while the room spun and spun. I wondered where Zayvion was, if he was
sliding down this dizzying slant too.
They will try to use it. Madness.
What?
I thought.
Who?
I must have said it out loud, because Zayvion was suddenly there, in the
doorway to my bathroom, his smile quickly gone.
He reached for me. The moment he touched my shoulder, the world snapped back
into place.
I was sitting on my normal bathroom floor. With my normal dead father silent
and distant in the back of my mind.
I looked up at Zayvion. “Did you feel that? The dizziness?”
“I felt magic flux. Not hard, though.”
“Dad pushed at me.”
He exhaled, and knelt in front of me. Even though he took up too much room, I
didn’t feel claustrophobic. I wanted him near.
“He must have tried to use magic’s fluctuation to shove me out of the way.
Started talking.”
I rubbed at my arms, trying to scrub away the cold. Zay placed his hands over
mine and I realized I wasn’t rubbing—I was digging. Like somehow I could dig
the cold wrongness of magic out of me, out of my bones. Long red scratches
lined my arms, but didn’t ease the magic gone to ice in my blood, biting,
stinging, burning.
I leaned the back of my head against the sink.
“What did he say?” Zay asked.
“He said they can’t stop the storm. And that they’ll try to use it, but it’s
madness, and that they’ll fail.”
Zay straightened and offered me both hands. “Huh.”
I took his hands and he helped me up on my feet. “You cannot be calm about
this.”
He walked out of the bathroom, still holding my hand.
“It’s not the first time in my life someone’s told me I’m going to fail. I
decided a long time ago not to believe them. Worked pretty good so far.”
The living room table was taken over by an alphabet-block sculpture. Stone had
stacked the blocks in a decent replica of the dual-spired convention center,
with something that looked like fork tines stuck up out of the top two blocks.
If that big lug was de-tining my cutlery, I was going to take a belt sander to
his claws.
I tugged Zayvion off toward the kitchen. I needed coffee.
“Do you think Dad knows something we don’t?” I filled the coffeepot with water
while Zayvion pulled the bag of fresh grind—straight from Get Mugged—off the
shelf.
“As far as I know, your father couldn’t tell the future when he was alive.” Zay
scooped coffee into the filter, and the warm, earthy smell of the grind blended
with his pine scent. I loved this, small things like this that reminded me we
were a part of each other’s lives, moving like we belonged in the same space,
sharing simple things, like we’d been doing this together for years.
With the coffee brewing, I leaned back against the counter. “So you think my
dad’s just trying to scare me? I would be perfectly fine if your answer was
yes.”
“No.”
Great.
“But we should tell Jingo Jingo about it,” he said. “About you hearing him now,
and about you hearing him near Greyson.”
I shuddered. Jingo Jingo was one of my teachers and had been Shamus’s teacher
for years. He taught the ways of Death magic just beneath Liddy Salberg, who
was the mousy woman I’d first met at my dad’s funeral. I didn’t mind learning
about Death magic, but I did not like Jingo Jingo. Sometimes, when I cast the
spell for Sight, I saw other things clinging to his heavy body, to his
bones—the ghosts of children. And every time that happened, it creeped me the
hell out.
“I’ve already told Jingo Jingo about my dad.”
“And you’ll tell him again.”
“Sure I will.” Rock, meet stubborn place.
He just stood there, quiet. Finally, “You’ll do what’s right. Even if you don’t
like it.”
“Don’t be too surprised when you find out you’re wrong. Jingo gives me the
creeps.”
I pulled a couple mugs out of the cupboard, peered inside them to make sure
there wasn’t rock dust in there. Not that Stone shed or anything, but he was
getting sneaky about putting away the things he played with while I was gone.
I poured us both coffee.
“Allie—”
“Yes, fine. I’ll tell him. Again.”
Not that it will do me a damn bit of good
,
I thought. “And it’s time for us to go.”
I grabbed my heavy coat off the back of the door, because it was obviously
freezing out there, and took the time to stuff my journal in the pocket. With
coffee cups in hand, we left the apartment, locked the door, and were down the
stairs and outside in short order.
We ducked inside Zay’s car and headed off. We both held on to our coffee cups
tucked against our palms. It was cold, February still dipping below freezing,
but not quite cold enough for ice. There was something about the cold in Oregon
that sank in deep and didn’t let go.
“Maybe I’ll just talk to Shamus instead,” I said, carrying on the conversation
from the kitchen.
“Shame can’t look in your head as well as Jingo Jingo can.”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “We haven’t tried.”
“True.” Zay took a drink of coffee.
I thought it over. Shamus was good. I had a hunch he was a lot better at Death
magic than he liked people to know. The first time my dad, through my eyes, had
seen Shamus, he’d said he was a master. I think the slouchy goth bit was just
so he could get out of doing work. Stay beneath his mother’s notice, maybe, or
stay beneath his teacher Jingo’s notice.
Shame could probably do the job, but he might not want to.
“Jingo Jingo is a good teacher,” Zay said.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t.” I drank coffee and stared at the wet city lights
through the window. “I just don’t like him in my head.”
Zay nodded. “He is . . . thorough.”
I would have said
creepy
,
dangerous
, maybe even
disturbed
, but I still hadn’t figured out why Zayvion felt the need to defend him.
Shamus willingly admitted to thinking Jingo Jingo was a freak. Zay kept any
strong opinions about Jingo Jingo to himself. Of course, Zayvion kept most of
his strong opinions to himself.
“I don’t think I can do much to help with the storm,” I said, switching
subjects. “I’m probably the least trained out of everyone.”
“It isn’t just training that makes a person good with magic.”
“True. Blind stupidity and a high pain tolerance helps. Still don’t think I’m
going to be all that useful.”
We were on the other side of the river at Maeve’s inn. The drizzle had let up,
and the sky was covered by clouds turned webby and gray by the city lights. Zay
parked near the tree line by the river.
He didn’t look at me, just stared out the window into the darkness. “You
channeled the last wild storm. You tapped into its magic, and used it to heal
me. And you didn’t die.”
Oh. Right. That. Magic had taken all my memories of that storm, but Nola—and
later, Zayvion—had sort of filled me in on the basics. I may not have died, but
I very nearly did. A month in a coma is not a successful magical event, though.
I’d paid for that like hell.
“They’re not going to ask me to do that again, are they?”
He breathed in, his nostrils flaring. He still didn’t look at me, didn’t move.
“I’m asking you not to do that again.”
I laughed, one hard choke. “Like I would.”
That wasn’t enough for him. He finally looked at me. “I’m asking you to not
step in. Not to help. Even if you think you have to.”
I raised an eyebrow and opened my mouth, but he kept going.
“I know you’ll do whatever you want. But there will be many storms in the
future. This is the first time you’ll be involved. The first time you’ll see
what we can do when we all work together and what damage the storm can do, even
if we’re at our best. I am asking—” He paused, thought it over. Maybe he
noticed the challenge in my gaze. People didn’t tell me what to do. He of all
people should know that by now. “I am asking you, Allie. Don’t be a hero.”
Hero. Was that what he was worried about? “Trust me, I’m the last person in the
world who will put on the tights and cape.”
The muscle at his jaw clenched. And I don’t think he was trying to hold back a
smile.
“I will,” he said.
“Put on the tights and cape?” I thought about that. With a body like his, he’d
look damn fine. “How about leather instead?”
“No. I’ll trust you.”
Oh. That was nice too. I nodded. I wouldn’t promise to stand by and do nothing.
But I wouldn’t be stupid. I knew how dangerous magic could be. After a couple
months of learning with the Authority, it was clear just how much more I still
had to learn.
A tap at Zay’s window made me jump. Shame’s pale face bent into view. “You two
kids done bumping boots?”
Zayvion hadn’t turned to look out his window. He didn’t even twitch. What he
did was smile. Then he opened the door so quickly, I thought for sure Shame
would land flat on his back. Shame sidestepped the move, and made a little
tsk-tsk sound.
“So slow,” he said. “You’re getting soft, Z.”
“Want to try it again?” Zay asked.
They, apparently, had done this before.
Zay got out of the car and I did the same.
“You won’t believe who’s at this thing,” Shame said.
“Try me,” Zay said.
The two of them walked around the car, shoes grinding in the wet, loud gravel.
Well, Shame’s shoes, anyway. Zay moved like he always moved. Silent as an
assassin’s shadow.
“Okay, so, Sedra, Mom, Victor, Jingo, Liddy, you know, the regulars.” Shame
nodded at me. “How you feeling?”
“Why?”
“After the well-Hounding bit earlier today. You still look a little . . .
tense.” Without waiting for my answer, he turned to Zay. “Jones, this woman is
tense. I thought you were supposed to take care of that for her. Getting soft
in more than one way, buddy?”
“Shut up, Shame.”
“Just trying to be helpful. I’m here for you. To talk it out, if you need. Or
to get you pills for what ails you.”
“Done telling me who’s here?” Zayvion asked. We were at the porch now. My
bootheels made a solid thunk as I climbed the stairs and walked to the door.

BOOK: Magic on the Storm
11.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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