Skykeepers (56 page)

“Oh.” She tried not to let that rattle her, even though when she’d pictured what was going to happen, she’d always envisioned being in the safely familiar three-room suite a few doors down from her own.
Not a big deal
, she told herself.
It’s just a change of scenery
. Experience, both as a woman and as a therapist, had taught her that people didn’t fundamentally change; only peripherals did. Human, Nightkeeper—it didn’t matter. Some people were good, some bad, most a mixture of the two. She knew Lucius, trusted him. Wasn’t scared of him. She could do this.

“Problem?” Strike asked, the darkness making his voice seem to come from the air around them rather than from the man himself.

Shaking off the thought—and the quiver of nerves it brought—she said, “Of course not. Which cottage?” There were thirteen of them in two rows of six, with lucky thirteen on the far end, off by itself.

“The very last one; you’ll see the lights. Nate and Alexis are spending the night in the mansion. With Rabbit and Myrinne at school, you’ll have privacy.” He pressed something into her hand. “Take this.”

Feeling the outlines of one of the earpiece-throat mike combos the warriors used during ops, she didn’t ask why. “Who’s going to be on the other end?” Even knowing that the mike would only transmit if she keyed it on, she couldn’t help picturing a voyeuristic tableau in the great room.

“Either me or Jox. Unless you’d prefer Leah.”

The king was doing his best, she realized, to maintain the illusion of privacy while keeping her safe, letting her know the warriors stood ready to come to her defense if the sex magic went awry and Lucius’s dark tendencies once again drew the attention of the
Banol Kax
, or even opened him up once again to
makol
possession. Which had been just one of the numerous daunting possibilities that had been thrown around, only to be set aside because the Nightkeepers were running out of options.

“Whatever you think is best,” Jade said, just barely managing not to tack on “sire” at the end.
I’m not following orders this time
.
This was my idea. My choice
. Raising her chin, she said, “Don’t worry about me. I know Lucius.”

The king’s answer was slow in coming. “You know, becoming the Prophet has . . . changed him.”

Anna had said something along those same lines earlier, when Jade let her know the booty call had come through on schedule. Now, as then, Jade waved off the concern. “He’s not the Prophet yet. If he were, you wouldn’t need me. Would you?”

Strike didn’t have an answer for that one, and that fact pinched somewhere in the region of her heart. With the information in the archive virtually exhausted, her value as a librarian was almost nil. Given her inability to tap her scribe’s talent, she didn’t bring much in the way of a unique skill set to the Nightkeepers . . . except in the matter at hand. She and Lucius had a history, and she was the only female mage who remained yet unmated. More, in the wake of her and Michael’s failed affair, she’d proven that she could be sexually involved with a man and not lose her heart. She and Lucius ought to be able to return to the friends-with-benefits arrangement they’d had previously, and use the generated sex magic to trigger the Prophet’s powers.

That was the theory, anyway.

Realizing that Strike was waiting for her to make her move, she inhaled to settle a sudden flutter of nerves, and said, “Okay. Wish me luck.”

She halfway expected him to come back with something about getting lucky. Instead, he said, “Remember, you can bail at any point. I wouldn’t have called you today if you hadn’t volunteered, and if I didn’t think this might be our answer. Still, I want you to promise me that you’ll stop if it doesn’t feel right.”

Pulling back in surprise, she glanced at his dark silhouette. “But the writs say—”

“Fuck the writs,” he interrupted. “They might be a good rule of thumb, but they’re not perfect by a long shot, and over the past couple of years we’ve certainly proved that they’re not immutable. So now I’m telling you—hell, I’m
ordering
you—to make your own decision on this one. Take me and the others out of it. This is between you and Lucius.”

Jade drew breath to
Whatever you say, sire
him, but then stopped herself, thought a moment, and said, “With all due respect, that’s bullshit. There’s no way I can possibly take out all the other variables. I’m here right now because we’re out of other options. If we don’t get our hands on the library soon, we might not even make it to 2012, and we sure as shit won’t have enough firepower to defend the barrier. So you don’t get to tell me to take all that out of the equation, just so you can feel better about what I’m about to do. If it doesn’t bother me, then it shouldn’t bother you. And if it does, that’s not my problem.”

There was a moment of startled silence; then Strike said, “Huh.”

Jade didn’t know if that meant he was offended, taken aback, or what, but told herself she didn’t care. “What? You didn’t know I have a spine?”

“I knew. I wasn’t sure you did.” He made a move like he was going to touch her, but then stopped himself. Letting his hand fall, he said only, “Good luck, then. And remember the radio in case . . . well, just in case.”

Without another word, he spun the red-gold magic and disappeared in a
pop
of collapsing air, leaving her standing there thinking that the ’port talent was a hell of a way to get the last word in an argument. Not that they had been arguing, really, because they were both right: She couldn’t separate the act from the situation, but it
was
her choice. Strike had called only to tell her that the other magi and their
winikin
were out of ideas, and that a midday blood sacrifice channeling nearly the power of the full equinox had failed to trigger the Prophet’s power. Her response to the information was her responsibility. “So why are you still standing here?” she asked herself aloud.

“Perhaps because you’re wondering whether Strike and Anna were right to try to talk you out of this,” a familiar voice said from the doorway of the training hall, which was a pitch-black square against the building’s dark silhouette.

Jade’s pulse skittered at the sound, then started pounding hard and heavy as she heard the rasp of clothing, the pad of approaching footsteps. Swallowing to wet her suddenly dry mouth, she said, “Eavesdropping, Lucius?”

“Considering that you’ve been discussing my sex life, or lack thereof, with the royal council, I’m not feeling very guilt-ridden.” The timbre of his voice was deeper and richer than she remembered, as though experience had lent new layers to the tone. The difference sent a fine shiver racing along the back of her neck.

It’s just Lucius
, she told herself, as she’d been doing since she’d initially broached the sex magic idea to the royal council. For the first time, though, she wondered whether she’d sold herself on a lie. Granted, human beings didn’t fundamentally change, not at their core. But what if the human being wasn’t entirely human anymore? Did the same rules apply? And what if he truly wasn’t interested in her any longer? Some of the things he’d said to her the night before she left for the university had dug in and taken root, continuing to sting long after the fact. She’d told herself he’d been lashing out, confused from the Prophet’s spell and stressed over the new pressures . . . but what if he’d meant every word?

Reminding herself that she could do this, that she
had
to do this, she said, “Part of me is glad you overheard. It saves me from explaining why I’m back. Although I can’t imagine the idea comes as a surprise.”

“I’d certainly prefer trying sex before ritual sacrifice,” he said, his tone carrying a very un-Luciuslike bite. “And I understand the math. So, what does that make you . . . the Nightkeepers’ sacrificial victim?”

“Don’t be a dick. I’m a volunteer, not a victim.” But heat rushed to her face, and she was grateful that he couldn’t see her blush in the darkness. “I’m trying to help here, Lucius. If you want to turn me down, do it. But don’t make me into the bad guy because I’m offering.”

There was a long beat of silence before he exhaled, long and low. “I don’t think badly of you. And . . . I don’t want to turn you down.”

Heat curled in her chest, then moved lower as her body awakened, seeming to suddenly realize what she’d been talking about all along. Sex. With Lucius. Although subsequent events hadn’t allowed her to dwell on the memories, their one spontaneous, somewhat rushed coupling in the archive had lit her up like nothing had done before, not even being with the far more polished Michael when the two of them had both been running hot with transitional hormones and their first taste of sex magic. Where Michael had been skilled and considerate, Lucius had been raw, teetering on the borderline of control. Where Michael had held a portion of himself apart out of necessity, Lucius had been entirely
there
with her, making her feel as if there hadn’t ever been anybody else for him, never would be; that he didn’t see her as support staff, a backup, or a fill-in for what he’d really wanted.

Would it feel that way again?
Only one way to find out
, she told herself, blood humming suddenly in her veins. “Well . . . if I’m offering, and you’re not turning me down, why are we still standing here?”

Clothing rustled again as he closed the distance between them. His body heat caressed her lightly, bringing an answering stir of warmth within her.
Touch me like you did that day in the archive
, she wanted to say, but was afraid to because he’d told her flat out that his feelings for her had changed. Tonight wasn’t about them; it was about the Prophet.

“Light a fox fire,” he said. “Just a small one.”

It was one of the few small magics she commanded, and one that had fascinated him, especially when she had sent it dancing from her hand to his and back again. Thinking that was what he wanted, that this was foreplay of a sort, she cupped one hand and used the power of the equinox to call the magic. A tiny light kindled, starting pinpoint-small and then expanding outward to a ball of cool blue flame that lit just her and Lucius. She looked up at him, smiling, expecting to see his remembered joy in the minor spell.

Instead, serious eyes looked at her out of a stranger’s face.

“
Gods!
” Jade jerked back, shock hammering through her. “Who . . . ? What the—” She broke off, realizing that he wasn’t a stranger, not really.

The man standing opposite her resembled Lucius, but he wasn’t for an instant the man she’d known. He was perhaps what Lucius would have been if he’d gotten the big-and-burly genes of his brothers and father along with the tall-and-borderline-willowy set he’d inherited from his mother’s side. Combined, they had yielded a frame that was only maybe an inch taller than that of the man she’d known, but carried twice the mass in muscle, all of it layered onto bone and sinew as though sculpted there. He was wearing new-looking jeans; she doubted his newly powerful thighs would’ve fit into the old ones. The T-shirt with the bar logo was familiar, but there was nothing familiar about the way the shirt stretched across his chest and arms, and hinted at a ripple of muscle along his flat abs.

And his face . . . gods, his face. Features that had been pleasantly regular before were sharper and broader now; his jaw was aggressively square, his formerly borderline-too-large nose had come into perfect proportion, and high cheekbones and broad eyebrows framed hazel eyes that she knew, yet didn’t. He watched her with an unfamiliar level of intensity as he held out his right hand, palm up, so the fox fire lit the dual marks on his right forearm: the black Nightkeeper slave mark and the red quatrefoil hellmark of the Xibalbans. She’d seen them before, of course, but back then the marks had seemed out of place, magic unwittingly imposed on a mere human. Now, though, they looked . . . right. As though they belonged.

Jade didn’t know why the sight made her want to break and run.

“Well?” he asked her softly.

“You look . . .” She trailed off, not sure he’d be flattered by her first few responses, which involved steroids and testosterone poisoning, clear evidence that her scientific, analytical side was trying to buffer the shock. So she went with, “different.”

In fact, he looked amazing, reminding her of the long lunches she’d spent at the Met on her student pass, wandering through the Greek and Roman art galleries and imagining the carved marble and cast bronze coming to life in a raucous stampede down Fifth Avenue. He was that perfectly imperfect—human, yet something more now. And that
more
had her nerves skimming beneath her suddenly too-sensitive skin.

It’s just Lucius
, she told herself. Only it wasn’t. He’d broken the rule that said people didn’t fundamentally change. And—oh, gods—she’d offered herself to him. More, she’d fought the whole damn royal council long distance for the opportunity, and she’d brushed aside Strike’s and Anna’s concerns when they had tried to tell her that he wasn’t himself. In her rush to finally escape from her backup role, she’d thrown herself headlong at . . . what? What was he now? He didn’t command the Prophet’s ability to reach the library, yet there was clearly magic at work, changing him into something more than himself.

“Not exactly what you were expecting when you volunteered for sex-magic duty, was it?” he asked, his eyes dark and inscrutable.

“I . . .” What was wrong with her? Where had her words gone? She was the one with the answers, the cool-blooded scribe who didn’t get rattled. But right now her body was saying one thing, her spinning brain another, and her verbal skills had gotten lost in the cross fire.

His not-quite-familiar mouth curved in a humor-less smile. “That’s about what I figured. I wish they had warned you.”

That, at least, she could respond to. “They tried. I wasn’t listening. But . . . you could’ve called me, or e-mailed.” She’d posted her contact info in the mansion’s kitchen, just in case. “I hate thinking of you going through all this alone.”