Speak in Fever (Haven Chronicles #3)

Chapter 1

The witch is going to blow them both to pieces over an amulet the size of a coin.

Malik watches from across the spell circle, legs crossed, hands resting on his knees, the picture of patience that comes easily to him after so many years of practice.

He has been patient through summonings that bored him, and contracts that insulted him, and partners who thought an incubus on a leash was a fun party trick rather than a vampire without a gag reflex or morals.

Patience is not a virtue for Malik. It is a tool, honed and sharpened, and he wields it the way other demons wield claws.

Good things come to those who wait, and so on and so forth.

Newt is sitting opposite him in that way he always does, folded up on his legs with his hands pressed flat to his thighs, spine so rigid it looks like someone threaded iron through it.

His jaw is set. His eyes are squeezed shut.

The concentration on his face looks uncomfortable, like he's trying to move the earth through sheer stubbornness, and knowing what Malik knows about Newt's magical output, that might not be far off.

Between them on the hardwood floor sits a diagram Newt drew himself in white chalk.

It's surprisingly precise, actually, for someone whose magical control could charitably be described as nonexistent.

The lines are steady, the angles clean, the proportions correct.

Newt knows what he's doing in theory. The knowledge is there.

The understanding is there. The gap between what Newt knows and what Newt can execute is simply wide enough to drive a train through.

In the center of the diagram sits the amulet: a dull brass disc no bigger than a thumbprint, etched with a channeling sigil that should, by all accounts, be glowing by now.

It is not glowing.

This is a remedial task. Malik had chosen it deliberately, pulling from the most basic exercises in foundational spellcraft, the kind of thing coven children learn before they learn to read.

Channel your intent through a focus object.

Infuse the sigil. Charm the amulet. A witch with even modest training could do this blindfolded, half drunk, in a thunderstorm.

Malik had thought they'd start here, build a baseline, establish the floor of Newt's capabilities so they could work upward from solid ground.

The problem, he is beginning to understand, is that Newt Hargrove does not have a floor.

What Newt has is a ceiling so high Malik can't see the top of it, and absolutely nothing in between.

The spell coils in the air between them, visible to Malik's eyes as a threadbare shimmer of raw power, undirected, purposeless, bleeding off Newt in waves that have nowhere to go.

It's not flowing toward the amulet. It's not flowing toward anything.

It's just... there. Suspended. Waiting for instructions that Newt doesn't know how to give.

A river with no banks, spreading in every direction at once, soaking into everything and filling nothing.

He tips his head slightly, watching Newt across the circle.

It's a luxury, having him like this with his eyes shut, because when Newt's eyes are open he is always watching Malik back, always tracking him across whatever room they're sharing, and every time their gazes catch Newt flushes so deeply it looks painful and jerks his attention somewhere else. It makes observation difficult.

Newt's brow is furrowed so deeply it looks like it hurts.

His lips are moving, barely, mouthing the incantation Malik taught him twenty minutes ago.

He's got it right. Every syllable, every inflection, committed to memory after hearing it twice, because Newt is smart.

That's the thing people seem to miss about him, or maybe they just don't care.

The boy is brilliant. The spellwork theory, the sigil construction, the way he'd drawn that diagram from memory after Malik described it once, all of it speaks to an intellect that should have been nurtured by people who gave a damn about him.

Instead, the Hargrove Coven treats him the way you'd treat an unstable weapon: keep it in a box, don't touch it, and hope it doesn't go off.

Newt is earnest. He is kind. He is freckled and bright-eyed and so sincere it borders on a medical condition.

He looks at Malik with those wide, guileless eyes and the trust in them is so naked, so completely unearned, that it reminds Malik constantly that no one ever taught this young man the way the world works.

The way the world breaks you apart. The way creatures like Malik use you up and leave the husk of you behind.

He is also incredibly easy to overlook.

That had been the first thing that made Malik dismiss him in the library when the coven summoned him to take over the contract.

The Hargrove witches had arranged themselves in their usual configuration of smug self-importance, and somewhere among them, half-hidden, barely visible behind Knox’s shoulder, was Newt.

Slight. Red-haired. Practically vibrating with nervous energy.

A witch who barely comes up to Malik's chin and can't look him in the eye without going scarlet does not summon an incubus. Not him, at least.

It takes a great deal to summon Malik. Power on a scale that most covens can't produce collectively, let alone one scrawny twenty-year-old with shaking hands and a pulse that kicks visibly in his throat every time Malik stands within arm's reach.

But it had been Newt, hadn't it? When the summoning circle flared and the magic reached out to pull him from Mathilde’s grasp, it had been Newt's power that touched him.

Newt's power that wrapped around him and pulled.

No one has been able to summon him since Mathilde got her wrinkled hag fingers around him.

Even though their contract is technically complete, Malik has been in limbo because “technically complete” is not good enough when your clause states “until death” and your all-powerful witch is apparently deathless.

He had expected her to kick the bucket forty years ago, but here she is still going strong.

So how strange it was when he felt Newt calling him.

He's the strongest Malik has felt since Mathilde.

Possibly stronger.

That thought sits in the back of his mind, a stone he keeps turning over, examining from different angles, never quite able to see all the way through.

Mathilde has been at this for over a hundred years.

She is refined and ancient and ruthless in her craft.

Newt is twenty years old and can't light a candle without setting the curtains on fire.

And yet.

Newt exhales sharply through his nose. His fingers twitch on his thighs.

The spell in the air thickens, curling in on itself, and Malik can feel the frustration building through the bond between them, that thin contractual tether that connects familiar to summoner.

It's not a soulbind. Not what Knox and Dimitri share, that deep and permanent fusion that neither of them had asked for and both of them seem incapable of surviving without.

This is a standard contract. Professional.

Transactional. It connects them the way a leash connects a handler to a hound, and Malik is aware of the irony that in this particular arrangement, the hound is an eight-hundred-year-old incubus with the body count to match.

The bond pulses with Newt's irritation. Warm. Jagged. The amulet sits there, unchanged, dull, indifferent.

Malik considers his options. He could let Newt struggle.

There's a school of thought that says frustration is a teacher, that hitting the wall enough times eventually shows you where the door is.

But Newt has been hitting walls his entire life and no one has ever shown him a door, and something about that makes Malik's jaw tighten in a way he doesn't bother to examine.

"Focus on the amulet," he says. His voice is low.

Unhurried. He keeps it that way on purpose, because raising his voice around Newt is counterproductive for reasons that have less to do with magic and more to do with the way Newt flinches when people shout at him, and Malik has noticed.

He has noticed a lot of things about the way Newt responds to volume, to sharpness, to sudden movements, and he's filed all of it away in the part of his mind where he keeps information he doesn't want to think about but can't quite let go of.

"Not on the spell," he continues. "The spell knows what it is. It needs to know where to go. Guide it. Think of the sigil. Think of the brass beneath the chalk. Push the magic into it the way you'd push water through a funnel."

Newt's jaw tightens. His nostrils flare.

Malik watches him internalize the instruction, watches him turn it over and process it and try, genuinely try, to apply it.

The effort is palpable. It radiates off him through the bond, this enormous, exhausting force of will thrown at a task that should not require this much of him.

He inhales through his nose, slow and deliberate, and Malik can feel him reaching.

Pulling the magic inward, gathering it, compressing it, and then pressing it forward with everything he has.

The intent is correct. The direction is correct.

The execution, for one shining, improbable moment, is correct.

The amulet trembles on the floor between them.

Malik leans forward, just slightly. A tremor is progress. A tremor means the magic found its target, even briefly, even glancingly. If Newt can hold it, sustain the connection for just a few seconds longer...

The windows rattle.