Wilder Mage (22 page)

And he thought she had merely a strong will? How about steel bars, adamant will, with a force of character to match.

“What a team we would make, the pair of us. Enough to give even the Imperium pause, I think,” he said. Under his hand, he felt her shrug, but her eyes smiled at him.

“Together?” Sable’s smile lasted only a second longer, then vanished. She moved from under his hand to stand away from him, the light no longer in her eyes. “Kind of an impossible dream, isn’t it? My first day’s assignment will be rounding up wilders like you, no doubt. That is a good start for relationships.”

She started to move to the door.

“Wait.” He slashed his hand through the air and stopped her. “Listen. Someone’s walking around the shop.”

Her head cocked slightly and she frowned, as if trying to hear. Justus flicked his fingers and extended his magic outside his rooms. Someone with a heavy foot, he decided, not Bert or the McIntyres, he was sure. A man’s tread, but not a mage. The office door opened.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “No one, not even another wizard, can touch the door. It is warded.” He eased to the door.

“What are you doing?”

He turned back. “I’m gonna surprise the hell out of a robber, that’s what.”

Her brows lowered and she grabbed his arm. “No, wait. See if it is…wait, he’s leaving. Hear that?”

The footsteps faded, crossing the front room. Then the squeak of the shop’s door closing. Sable rushed to the window.

“Don’t touch the curtains,” he said.

She nodded. A man with dark curly hair walked across the street and stood looking the way he had come.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s Wesley.”

“Wesley? Who’s Wesley?”

“Maggie’s nephew. He’s staying with them now. He’s the one that gave them such a turn.”

The man dithered for a bit, then quickly walked away.

“I do feel other mages now,” she said. “They don’t come close enough that I can see them, but they are keeping tabs on me.”

Justus rubbed his chin and wondered absently how he could get her close again. He sighed. Not a
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making his senses come alive, he thought. What a revelation that was.

“Yeah, I think shielding you is over. That ship has sailed. They probably have pictures, a description, and someone’s boot on their neck to keep them in line.”

“I’m on their radar.”

“Most definitely.”

Another figure moved into their line of sight across the street, a lanky teenager who seemed to watch Wesley’s retreat.

“I’ll be right back,” Bert said to the seemingly empty street. Then he muttered, “If you’re listening, that is. Hope I’m not talking to myself.” Bert disappeared down the street, following Wesley.

“Checking to make sure he’s gone, I guess,” she said.

The teen returned, trotting back down the street, and they heard the door open.

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” Bert said softly from the office room.

Justus chuckled and waved one hand. A creak of a door, and then the thud of a teenager leaping the steps two at a time.

“Hey, it worked, my newly made-up password,” he said as he came into the room. He looked around and laughed again when his eyes fell on the bed.

“More Fourth of July, people? Or did you all practice safe s—”

“Bert,” Justus said with a threat in his voice. “You are such a little kid.”

“And you are such a wiener,” Bert said. He flipped his hand at Justus. “So all back to normal, huh? No more drooling, stumbling around?”

“Normal is such a subjective word,” Justus said.

“Thanks for not turning me into a toad.”

“There’s still time.”

Bert snickered. “I gotta be hopping along—got ball practice this morning—but I wanted to stop and see how things were shakin’. We figured you’d come out of your beauty sleep this morning.” He gestured at a well-used notebook at one end of the small counter. “Your instructions made that pretty clear. Anyway, I’m off.”

He started for the front entrance, but stopped. “Oh, wait. Don’t open it yet, Justus. I saw Weasel snoopin’ around. Is he still gone?”

“Hey. His name is Wesley.” Sable was frowning at Bert.

“Oh, yeah, yeah. I keep forgetting, what with his supreme imitation of a rodent.”

Justus bit the inside of this cheek to keep from laughing. “He’s gone.”

“Good enough, then.” Bert took a step to the entrance. “Little pig, little pig, get me the hell out of here,” he said dramatically and spread his arms wide. When the door opened—with Justus’s help—the teenager blurted, “Cool.”

“He’s a good kid,” Sable said quietly after Bert left.

“Yes, he is. One of a kind.”

She brushed the top of the table with her fingertips and hesitated.

“I’ll tidy up here,” Justus said. He noticed how long and graceful her fingers were. Strange he had never noticed this before.

She glanced at him with a small smile and nodded. “So, what’s the plan? You are coming back to the shop, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I went away, and now I have returned from an unproductive buying trip. Don’t worry; I’ll come up with something to cover my time away.”

Sable dropped her hand to her side and looked down at the red-topped table. “But you are staying. Right? They aren’t driving you away now that I am in their crosshairs?”

“No. I’ll stay.”

She gave him a hard look. “Okay. Well. I guess that’s settled, then,” she said briskly. She started for the door and stopped abruptly when it didn’t open for her as it had for Bert. She threw a startled look at him.

“You forgot the magic words.” Her magical smile rewarded him and made the muscles in his belly tighten again.

“Little pig, little pig…”

Justus opened the door with a flick of his hand, and the cool morning air sifted through the entrance.

Chapter Sixteen

A
fter cleaning the essentials of his apartment—the bed sheets, the refrigerator, and sweeping, always the sweeping—Justus released the fixed magic covering the door and dressed for a run. He needed the exercise and to think of a plan. Decisions and sorting the resulting consequences meant some alone time was in order. Besides, stretching his unused muscles left his mind free and felt good. It made the shower afterwards even better.

Several phone calls later, his story was set and he felt he could relax. First thing on the list—after he followed his mom’s strict order to show up at her house within the hour—was adjusting another warding stone to shield him from another attack by the Imperium’s locating device.

The magic used on unbonded adepts tasted mostly of Air and Spirit, with a small amount of Earth and Water. All of those plus a bit of Fire for armor should do the trick for his fixed shield. But he would need to go outside the city; somewhere the hunters couldn’t feel his use of magic. That was the problem with his plans, the meddling adepts—too close for comfort and security. Touching Spirit without the confines of his ward stone created its own problems.

The Weasel’s…using Bert’s nickname for Wesley could be habit forming…presence at the McIntyres’ might be a good thing, someone to keep him from making a mistake with her. It set his teeth on edge to think of it, but it was better that she forge a relationship with someone else. And he needed to find a way to leave. Despite what he had told her, he decided he would leave as soon as he could find the means to do it. Simple as that.

He didn’t understand the effect she had on him without the
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aura as an excuse. There was no explanation for the strange yearnings, the happiness he felt when she was near, and the need to see her smile. He wanted to see her now, just to see if she was happy, to hear her speak, if only to scold him. It made no sense. There was no magic pulling him to her.

Justus flexed his hand and looked at his palm, remembering the way her cheek felt under his fingertips, the soft skin like velvet. Her reactions to his touch. When she had leaned into his hand and it had cupped her face. Her soft moan when his mouth covered hers…

He made a harsh sound and shook his head. No more idiocy. He wouldn’t let his foolish thoughts carry him away into Crazy Land. When she came into her full potential, he could not be near her. That was the danger he had to avoid.

Tiarra would own Sable’s magic, control her body and soul. His freedom would end when Sable became a full wizard, and he had to leave before that happened.

Justus gritted his teeth when he found himself reaching for the phone, glared at the cell as if it was the problem. He jumped when it rang.

Idiot.

He answered and felt disappointed when his mother began talking, her voice anxious.

“Yeah, Mom, I’m headed that way now,” he said.

His mom’s irritation had come through during the visit, annoyed that he didn’t call her as he usually did during and after a road trip. She’d seemed worried by his disappearance and had brushed off his apologies.

“You need to be safe, dear,” she had said. “I just need to know you are safe.”

The mantra: be safe, stay safe, check in. She was such a worrywart when he wasn’t close.

The lines in her creased face had smoothed with his words of apology and his promise to try to do better in the future.

He pulled his car into the McIntyres’ drive, turned the engine off, and sat for a moment, wondering how he had managed to break his pledge to himself already. Here he was, trying to think of an excuse for seeing her. The roses hid his car from the entrance leading to the front room of the house, but Justus could see the lights glimmering through curtained windows. He could hear them talking in the living room, the McIntyres and Sable, her voice sweet with laughter. He augmented his hearing with the fixed magic of his ward stone and recognized her familiar footfall in the hallway leading to the kitchen at the other end of the house and then her return to the front room. The sound of her voice and her movements filled him with an incomprehensible yearning to be near her, to touch her and see her react.

It was not
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and its surrounding aura that pulled him to her. It was something more powerful, an emotion he never wanted or thought he would feel.

He never wanted to fall in love.

He used to think everything was fine, that his life was complete. He thought he was resolved to his existence, alone, maybe, but without complications.

But then she had smiled that first day in his shop, and the fire she created inside him had nothing to do with magic. Unless it was that most ancient of magic, a force more powerful than any wizard’s talents that now pulled him in.

He never dreamed he would meet someone who could light that ancient fire inside him. And now he dreamed of her. Every moment of every day, his thoughts were of her.

Another voice filtered through the curtains, a male voice. Sable answered in a light tone. A different emotion kindled inside him for a moment, having nothing to do with his desire for her. Jealousy made its own fire, a conflagration that begged for release. To him, it was another uniquely new sense and just as ancient as the first. With some effort, he forced his will onto that new emotion and broke the need to release his rage. At the same time, Justus absently smoothed the chill that crawled over his forearm, a familiar and unsurprising sensation.

Desire, such a strange word. It pushed him to go to her and ask her to run with him. A foolish wish that died as it was born. The Imperium had plans for her. They would not make the same mistake as before and lose track of her again.

Eventually, her emotions would give the sentient magic inside her the opening it needed. It would emerge and bring her into her full potential.

It was better that she have what happiness she could find with Maggie’s nephew. Rather than on the run with a man who could give her nothing but broken dreams and promises and the life of the hunted.

The crunch of gravel and footsteps did not surprise him. A flashlight tapped his car window. He rolled it down.

“Sir, is there a problem?” the man asked. A dark form peered at him, light reflecting off the edge of a badge.

“No, officer, there’s no problem.” His laugh sounded harsh in his ears.

He heard Sable stop and stutter in her conversation with the McIntyres. Her forced laugh came a moment later. The breeze filtered through his car windows, and he thought he could smell the scent of the soap she used.

The cop rapped the doorframe of the car with the flashlight. “Well, you need to move on.”

Justus started the car and the officer stepped back.

“Yes,” Justus said. “I need to move on.”

He glanced at the rearview mirror as he pulled away. The cop still had a frown on his face, looking from the departing vehicle to the house, then shrugged and walked away. Justus felt the cop/mage release the gathered Fire element and move back into the deep shadows across the street from Sable.

They were watching now. Always watching.

He needed to move on.

Chapter Seventeen

T
he preparations were nearly complete. The transfer records, signed and notarized, lay on the table in front of him, ready for delivery. The business he would leave to the McIntyres, with a request to keep Sable as an employee for as long as she wanted the position. Bert would help with business decisions, smoothing over any problems. He knew enough about running the shop to be the owner someday if he wanted it. After he left, Justus hoped that with the McIntyres’ encouragement, Bert’s business sense would continue to develop.