Seraphs

Chapter 22

Before dusk, I had shaped and carved all the green aventurine stones for the leaf necklace, and had taken them through the first polishing, most by hand. I didn’t stop for lunch, or breaks, or time to think. I didn’t stop for anything, and though it was Monday, and I assumed the sign was still on the back door, no one came to me for charms or favors.

By nightfall, my body had stiffened into the hunch-backed curve of an old crone. I had taken off my one-piece work jumpsuit and was stretching cramped muscles when Rupert, shooting me glances, came to the back. He put away stock, chattered about repairs on the town, about new items that had sold online, about orders from shops that carried our more pricey items. He shared an amusing tidbit about a dog that wandered in while the front glass was being replaced, and that a moose herd had been spotted to the south. He told me that Marla was back and Ciana had gone home with her, revealed the safeguards the town fathers had ordered for the night—el-cars loaded with well-armed guards, and elders praying in shifts.

My best friend was far too chatty, and after ten minutes of nattering on, during which he studied me with concerned eyes, I held up a hand to stem the flow. “What do you really want?” I asked, watching his face.

Rupert put a hand on his hip, all queenly indignation, something he did when he was uncomfortable. “You’re too quiet. You haven’t said a word all day. I want to know if you’re all right. No, that’s not quite it. I want to know what in Habbiel’s pearly citadel is wrong with you,” he said baldly.

I tested the words on my tongue, watching my hands as they hefted a fist of quartz. When I thought I could say them out loud, I set the quartz down and leaned against the workbench, bracing myself with my palms. “I made a mistake. I slept with Lucas last night.”

“Oh,” Rupert said, his face falling, his indignation collapsing. He slid his hand into his pocket, opened his mouth, and closed it with a click before speaking again. “Well. I see,” he said. Without another word, he turned and left the room.

“That went just dandy,” I said into the silence. I wasn’t completely certain what Rupert’s expressions had meant when I told him—all sorts of feelings had flitted across his face—but the final one had been dismay. Which pretty well summed up my own feelings.

Alone, I finished my stretching and cleaned up the stone-dust-and-water mess that accumulated when I worked stone. Feeling better having spent the day with my first love, I turned off the heat and went upstairs, my feet ringing on the old boards.

Oddly, Rupert had gone up without me. I had sort of hoped he would speak again, maybe invite me to have supper with Audric and him. I assumed they were arguing about Audric leaving town, but I was at loose ends. And out of food. I still hadn’t made it to the grocery store. Too busy fighting Darkness, saving the town, and getting smeared by vandals. Unhappily, I remembered I had dirty sheets on the bed and on the porch. Those were probably frozen to the wood, stuck there until spring thaw. And no clean ones available.

I opened my door and stopped in the opening. A light was on, the heat was up, and candle flames flickered in the breeze of the overhead fans. The place smelled wonderfully of onions, garlic, potatoes frying, and seafood. Lucas was standing in the kitchen, flipping something in a skillet, a knack I had never learned.

After one flash of anger that left me empty, I wasn’t sure what I felt as I studied him at the stove. Hungry for the meal he was preparing. Violated that he had invaded my home. Hurt that he thought he could make a place for himself in my life after cheating on me. Certain he had no idea that kissing a clerk’s hand constituted cheating. Uncertainty as to whether or not it actually did. Absolute confidence that if I let him back in my life, I’d regret it. He would cheat again. Maybe not today. Maybe not with a clerk in a bakery. But with someone.

I was pretty sure Rupert had let him in and hadn’t known what to do after our little talk, hence the peculiar look earlier. Why did things have to be so complicated? I closed the door. Lucas looked up at the sound, a welcoming look on his face. “I brought your pretty dagger back, love. An elder found it in the street.” He held up the tanto.

Love. Right. I moved to the window across from the doorway and bent, blowing out the candle. Stalking clockwise through the loft, I blew out another candle. The smell of smoke and aromatic oils followed me.

“Thorn?” I heard the tanto clatter on the table.

Without speaking, I blew out another candle and another, until I reached the kitchen table and the tall tapers that were burning there. My beeswax candles, imported from Mississippi. He hadn’t asked if he could use them. He had gone through my pantry cabinet to find them. I wondered what else he had gone through, the thought unfair, as Lucas wasn’t snoopy. But he had walked in and taken over my home. My home. I should be furious. Instead, I was just drained and cold. On the way by, I blew the tall candles out too.

When they were all out, smoke swirled in the loft air and I walked back to the kitchen. Lucas had turned off the stove and stood against the counter, watching me, arms hanging limp, his expression guarded.

I crossed my arms over my middle, aware but uncaring that my body language looked protective, and leaned my butt against the kitchen table. Four feet separated us. It might have been a thousand miles.

“Last night was great,” I said. His face lightened slightly, his body unwinding fractionally. “But it shouldn’t have happened.” When he started to speak, I interrupted. “Flirting for you is as casual and unconscious as breathing. But it always hurt me. Always, every time. And you always knew it hurt, yet you still did it. And you cheated on me. And that hurt most of all.

“Stop,” I said when he tried to speak. “I’m not finished. And I need to say this.” I took a breath that pulled at my ribs, the air aching as it passed through my throat. “I know it didn’t mean anything to you; that kind of flirting never did. But I saw you today, with the pretty girl in the bakery across the street.”

“Are we going to go over this again?” he asked. “Every day for the rest of our lives? You know I love you. I’ve apologized for the one time—one time—I cheated on you. I told you I want you back. You, not some big-busted girl from a bakery.”

I laughed softly through my nose, breathing the amusement and the hurt out together with wry acceptance. He clearly had no idea how transparent his statement was.

“I had plans. Supper made—pasta Alfredo, and salad, wine, dessert, great sex,” he said, “and you have to go and—”

“Yes,” I said into his tirade. “I know you love me.”

“And I’ll never cheat on you again.”

“That I don’t know,” I said, tightening my arms around my waist. “I really don’t. And I never will. Our ideas about what constitutes cheating are different. Our concepts about the sanctity of marriage are different. We’re divorced, Lucas. And frankly, our marriage was probably over before it ever started.”

Incredulity crossed his face. “Sanctity of marriage? Sanctity? Death and plagues, Thorn, you’re a mage.” He picked up a pot lid and slammed it down on the skillet. “Under the right conditions, you’ll mate with anything that moves. In any combination. I’ve heard the stories.”

Shock spiraled through me. Anger built in his eyes. “I know what I’m facing, married to you,” he said, crossing the space between us, taking my shoulders in his hands, squeezing. I was bruised from the fighting and flinched, but he didn’t ease his grip, forcing me to look at him. “You lied to me about what you were. Who you were. You placed me in deadly danger for sleeping with you if you were ever discovered. You’re a mage. And I want you anyway.”

Anyway. In spite of my genetic signature. I didn’t know why that anyway hurt so much. I looked up at him, his blue eyes vivid, black hair falling over his brow, beard a black stubble on his lean cheeks. He was just as beautiful as the first time I saw him. Heartache tightened my chest. I had lied to him. In its own way that was an infidelity too.

“You will never be able to be faithful to me,” he said, shaking me slightly. “And I still love you.”

“You can’t possibly be afraid of my cheating on you,” I said. But he was. I saw it on his face and pushed my way out of his grasp. I placed the table between us, needing a clear head. This conversation was turning out entirely different from what I had expected.

“It’s true,” I said, “that when mage-heat hits us, we don’t have a choice what we do or with whom. We go pretty much mindless. But in Enclave, a mage makes certain she’s locked up with her intended partner on the proper date for the seraph flyover, the day our mage-heat is stimulated. Married partners make stringent plans to remain faithful, plans that involve locks and keys. If we had stayed married, I’d have made those plans.” Lucas’ eyes moved over my face, evaluating my words. “There’d have been no orgy in the streets.”

I could have added that it was usually only the unmarried who joined in group mating, and those who wanted to avoid having a litter while single placed themselves with champards for servicing—sterile half-breeds, the second-unforeseen. But I didn’t say it. When a woman chose a life partner, she no longer took part in the mass mating ceremonies. Usually.

And wasn’t it different when a human cheated? Humans had a choice. Maybe that was splitting hairs, to parse it so closely, but we all made choices that reflected how we wanted to live our lives, humans and mages. And Lucas hadn’t had to flirt with the big-busted girl. Yet he had.

Much like I hadn’t had to kiss Thadd under a porch during a battle, hadn’t had to because mage-heat hadn’t fully awakened. I’d still had a brain, had known what was happening. Yet I had kissed him. More than kissed him. My face heated uncomfortably.

“What?” Lucas asked.

I scrubbed my face, feeling the grit of stone on my skin. I needed a shower, followed by a long, hot, soaking bath to loosen my muscles. I needed Lucas. And I needed him out of my home and out of my life. “I’m too tired to make a decision tonight,” I said, dropping my hands. “Thanks for fixing dinner. We can eat. Then you go home.”

“You’re not kicking me out?” he asked, suspicion, and maybe a bit of hope, in his voice.

“I’m not sleeping with you, either.” An incredulous smile lit his features. “I’m not,” I said, making sure he heard me.

“Fine. It’s a start.”

I sighed, knowing I had made a mistake but not knowing exactly what it was. “I’ll wash up. Then we’ll eat. Then you will go home. Yes?” But Lucas didn’t answer. He was already dishing up the food, which smelled like a little bit of heaven, making my mouth water. I washed my face and joined my ex-husband for pasta Alfredo. How stupid was that?

Lucas didn’t want to leave, of course. He wanted to stay the night, hoping to convince me with his body that we were perfect for one another, and he was charming and totally absorbed in me throughout the meal, the conniving bastard. He was just as wonderful as he had been before we got married. Is that the way to a man’s heart? Refuse to sleep with him? Kick him out early? Refuse to marry him? Again.

My emotions were still raw even after a great meal, and I knew better than to let him near me, even for the shoulder rub he offered as temptation, and which I really needed. But I was wavering. So as soon as we finished cleaning up the kitchen and putting away the dishes, I went to the door, opened it, and stood back.

He sat down in a kitchen chair, straddling it, his hands on the tall back, his chin on his knuckles. He looked gorgeous, and he knew it. “You’re really going to make me leave.”

“Yes. Go.”

“Right now.”

I closed my eyes against the enticement he promised and rubbed my temples, my shoulders aching with the motion. If he touched me I was ruined. I’d capitulate. I knew it. “Please, Lucas.”

“You’re going to miss me,” he said, rising, the chair legs scraping on the floor. “You’re going to wish I had stayed,” he said, closer. “You’re going to think about me all night, wanting and longing.”

I couldn’t help the smile that pulled at my mouth. “I can live with that,” I said, opening my eyes. He was standing right in front of me, the rugs having muffled his footsteps. His blue eyes were only inches away, staring into mine, and I felt an intense craving to just touch his mouth. Once. I curled my fingers into claws and tucked them behind my back.

As if he knew the reason for the action, he gave me that smile, that blasted smile. Tears of Taharial. “I’m not sure I can,” he said. “But I guess I’ll have to.” He leaned in the six inches that separated us and kissed the corner of my mouth. One of those little feather-light kisses, like heated air brushing close. “I still have my key. I’ll see myself out. I’ll call you in the morning.” And he was gone.

He was smug, complacent, and self-satisfied. And he still had a key to the shop. As if that were significant of something intimate. I hadn’t bothered to get the key back, although I had changed the lock on the loft. Was it significant that he could get halfway to me? Had I deliberately left him with access to my life? Could I be that stupid?

Somehow I got the door closed and a bath going and my body stripped out of the dirty clothes. I set the ward, feeling and seeing the glow of the energies as they filled the walls and foundation. I added stones to the bathwater, for their restorative powers, then added a big helping of salt for the muscle aches and pains.

Just as I was about to step in, I heard something hit the back stained-glass window in the original hayloft door. Or rather, hit the ward over it. If the stone had hit the glass it would have made a simple tap. Instead it was a sizzle followed by a sharp snap, as the stone shattered. A bright light shocked through the windows. “Crap in a bucket!” someone cursed.

I chuckled and wrapped the worn robe around me before pushing open the functioning window beside the stained-glass one. I rested an elbow on the ledge and looked down at Eli. He stood hipshot on the crusty snow, feet spread, pointy-toed boots at angles, and a cowboy hat on his head. I was a slut. I had to be. Because he looked really good. But I had no desire to invite him up—well, not much of one—so maybe I was only half a slut.

“Shop’s closed.”

“Is he gone for the night?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s gone.”

“Want company?”

“I had company. I ran company off.”

“Well that’s good to know. Why would you want a slut-puppy like him anyway? I mean, when you could have me?” He spread his arms in display. “I’m clean, loyal, dependable, charming, and sweet.”

“You sound like a pet. Mages don’t do well with pets.” Something about all the energies surrounding a mage made them die young. Or go feral. Come to think of it, a high percentage of humans did the latter.

“I’m also great in bed. Or so I’ve been told.”

I laughed outright. Eli had offered to shake my world, in a variety of innovative and athletic ways, and he was a pretty thing. Amber-colored eyes had always been a favorite of mine. I cupped my chin and went with the flow of the conversation. “Why would I want a man who’s prettier than I am?”

“Why would I want a woman faster and more powerful than I? Speaking of which, did you ward the whole building?”

“Looks like.”

“Dang, woman. That’s impressive.”

Yes. It was. I liked him even better that he would know that. And that he could tell me so. I studied him in the snow as the cold air cleared my head. He was indeed attractive. And charming. And I was lonely. If mage-heat were a factor, I’d invite him up in a heartbeat. But with me as just me, I wasn’t ready, I decided. Not ready for any man.

Realizing that made me feel better. “Good night, Eli,” I said, closing the window.

“Wait!” he called. When I paused, the sash in hand, he said, “The EIH wants to talk. They think they can help you.”

“Do I need help?” I asked.

“You will. And when you do, remember the signal.”

A white cloth in the window. Or was it red? “Good night, Eli,” I said firmly, pulling on the glass.

“Good night, mage of my dreams.”

The window closed. I pulled the tapestry over it, and slid the robe off my shoulders and my body into the hot water. Heaven. Pure heaven. And suddenly my life looked okay. Weird how a little honest attention from a pretty man could make the difference between a totally terrible life and a much better one.