Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
I shivered, feeling everything in my body tense as I realized exactly how much I wanted to see what Cassander was capable of.
“Sure. Show me your magic.” I pulled back, raising my eyebrow. “Unless that’s a European way of saying you want to Netflix and chill.”
Cassander’s nostrils flared, and he cupped his hands between us. At first, I thought he had caught a firefly, even though I had never seen a firefly in the desert. I had never seen a firefly in California.
Until I had joined the SPA, I thought fireflies were as mythical as dragons or the tooth fairy.
But the flickering light in his hand gained strength until he was holding in his palms a thousand flickering lights, each floating up and falling back down to his hands.
I took a step back, stumbling into the wall of the bar. I was drunk. I was about to get alcohol poisoning from whatever hooch Betty had in that glass bottle with a serpent on it.
Or… No. I had seen tricks like this before. My mother had managed something like this, convincing people that her predictions were true, that she could talk to the dead.
But that had all been fake, research into the marks and their past and getting very, very good at reading someone. Only a few times had she ever had to stoop to something like this.
But I could see how it would be done, a small light source hidden in the crease between Cassander’s cupped palms. Shaking off my wonder, I stepped forward, grabbing at his hands, searching for the light.
As soon as we touched, I felt a flash of something, electricity crackling up my arms. Then I was glowing, fingers to forearms covered in sparkles of light that exploded off my skin like miniature fireworks.
I gaped, turning to him with wide eyes.
He looked at me, lips twisted in an amused expression.
“How are you doing this?” I asked, staring at my arms, where I could see sparkles of magic, feel the shift of it on my skin like it was a tangible touch.
“Magic.” Cassander reached out, running his fingertips down from my elbows to my fingers. The golden flickers of light followed his touch, dripping off my fingertips into his cupped palms. “I told you.”
I shook my head, although what I was denying I wasn’t sure. “No. You must have an artifact. Or a light.”
“Where do you think artifacts come from?” Cassander asked. He tilted his hand, and the light wrapped itself together, forming a ball that he tilted back and forth on his palm, twisting it until the ball rested on the back of his fingers.
He rolled it up his arm, then all the way back down until the ball of light fell off his fingertips, and he caught it with his other hand. Then, he closed his fist around the gleaming light, opening both palms with a flourish to reveal that the light was gone.
Stumbling back, my heel caught on the curb and I started to fall, but Cassander reached out, grabbing hold of my wrist. He pulled me back, tugging me until our faces were close together. Then, he pushed up onto his tiptoes and pressed our lips together.
Kissing him was like swallowing that ball of light and feeling it sparkle in my stomach. Every nerve ending came alive, and I immediately reached up, cupping his face in my hands, desperately sweeping my tongue inside, feeling him surrender to me.
He moaned, melting into me, grabbing my shirt with both hands and pulling me close. I felt every inch where he pressed against me, our skin fiery. I let one hand drop, pushing into his lower back, my fingertips tracing the delicate skin revealed when his shirt hitched up.
I traced over it before tightening my grip, pulling him even closer, feeling the taut muscles of his stomach touch against mine. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say with the kiss, other than that we were two magnets brought together by the situation we were in. Now that we were caught by each other’s magnetic fields, it was impossible for us to pull away.
Wheels crunched over gravel, and headlights lit us. I raised my hand, shielding my eyes as Cassander took a step back, sliding out of my grip.
“Hey! Go home before Officer Choi shows back up and arrests you for public indecency!” Betty laughed when I shot her a dirty look, pulling her truck onto the main road and speeding off.
“So that was magic.” I raised both eyebrows, part of me still not quite believing, but I had seen stranger on the job.
“Where do you think magical artifacts come from?” Cassander asked.
“What?” I blinked, trying to drag myself back to my training. “They’re naturally occurring.”
“Naturally occurring.” Cassander looked at me, both eyebrows up. “Do you believe that?”
His lips were pink, plump from our kiss, and I wanted to dive back in, lose myself in the press of our skin. If I did that, I wouldn’t have to think about how my entire life was imploding, how I was back home after so many years away, how nothing seemed to be working out.
I shrugged, turning back to Mom’s car. As I led the way, I could hear the crunch of gravel under his feet as Cassander followed.
“I don’t know.” Unlocking the car, I got in the driver’s seat, the cabin lights giving Cassander an odd glow. His brown hair looked lighter, almost golden. “I’m not a scientist.”
But I knew that was a weak excuse. I wasn’t a scientist, but I was smart enough to put together that naturally occurring things shouldn’t attach themselves to objects made by human hands. I had found magical artifacts that ranged from the knife I had given to Green Scales earlier to a small ring that looked like the prize you might win from a gumball machine.
Blinking, I put the key in the ignition, turning it and listening to the car as it hummed awake. The cabin light went out, so I only saw Cassander in the reflection of the lights on the dashboard. I pulled my gaze back to the road.
He didn’t say anything for the longest time until I finally broke out with a “So how are they made?”
“Artifacts are created when magical creatures do great works.” Cassander spoke as though he was reading out of a textbook or explaining something simple to a toddler.
I slammed on the brakes, turning to him with wide eyes.
“Are you saying we left behind a magical artifact back there?” I demanded, my hand dropping down to the gearshift to put the car in reverse.
“ Great works. Not a small cantrip that they teach to children.” Cassander shook his head, the smile on his face amused. “ Really .”
I stared at him, the pale tone of his skin, the plush curve of his lip.
“But you are a ‘magical creature’?” I asked slowly.
Cassander crossed his arms in front of his chest, tilting his head away. “Why? Are you planning on locking me up? Killing me?”
He spoke toward the darkness beyond the passenger window, distant headlights driving down the highway.
I blinked, not sure what to say, not sure what to do. The SPA would love to study him. It was designed to keep the world safe.
But other than teaching my niece the best way to torture her brother, I couldn’t see what harm Cassander was doing. In fact, he seemed almost as lost as I was.
“I’m not going to kill you.” Even as I said the words, I realized how true they were. I wasn’t going to kill him, but I also wasn’t going to turn him over to the SPA.
At least not yet. Not until I had just cause to, not until I had seen more than a man who had my back, had saved me from a traumatic head injury, had used whatever magic he had to get me medical attention and sweet-talk a hotel clerk into a better room.
Cassander inhaled deeply before letting out a long breath. He nodded, and I started the car moving again.
“Is that what we were running from in Paris? Some European version of the Strange Phenomenon Agency trying to capture you?” I frowned, thinking of the tactical gear and weapons. “Is that who the gunmen were?”
But even that didn’t quite track. Why would gunmen be so quick to find him in Canada? The only people who had known we were there were SPA agents.
I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the uncomfortable sensation that there was a chance the organization I had been working for since they plucked me out of basic training wasn’t who I thought they were.
“I have no idea who they were. And, no, no human governmental organization was after me.” The careful wording made me suspicious.
“No human governmental organization.” I raised my eyebrow, turning my head to gaze at him when we pulled up to a stoplight.
“My kind has its own governance.” Cassander stopped talking, lips tight.
“Your kind being…” I waited.
Cassander tilted his chin. “The light.”
I blinked back at the stoplight, which was now green. Pulling forward, I drove the rest of the way home in silence, turning over everything that had happened. I could see the flicker of television in the front room, the light from the screen visible through the blinds.
“Whatever you are, is it going to be a danger to my family?” I asked.
“Not any more a danger than I was yesterday,” Cassander said. “I give you my word, Damian Reyes. When my presence here becomes a danger to your family, I will leave.”
It was the same formal kind of language he had used when giving me his name, and I wondered what that meant. Was it part of his culture?
My head began twisting with the possibilities, but Cassander got out of the car before I could follow them.
In the house, I began to realize the implications. Cassander greeted my mother and headed down the hall to the bedroom we were sharing.
“Come, Damian,” my mother said before I could follow him and ask the thousand questions that were burning in my chest. “Come sit with me.”
On the TV, a sitcom was muted, the candy-colored furniture of someone’s fake living room bright underneath studio lights. Two people were arguing on-screen, and I could read their body language like the sound was on and they were actually shouting.
“Damian,” my mother said more sharply.
I sat down.
She didn’t turn the sound on, and both of us watched in silence, unwilling to break the stretch. I didn’t look over, not sure I wanted to read what was on her face.
“The kids still here?” I asked.
“Candace picked them up.” My mother leaned forward, lifting a water glass, the decorative painted flowers half chipped off.
“She’s working late,” I said.
“She owns the salon now and wants to see some customers after they get off work.” My mother put the water glass down with a decisive click. “Your sister has her life arranged how she likes it. What do you plan to do?”
“I…” I trailed off. What did I plan to do? Lying low until Twenty-one contacted me was a plan, a pretty good one, except that it left me stuck in Desert Flower with a powerful magical artifact, a guy who wasn’t human, and my family.
My family being the scariest thing on that list.
“Come back and work with me.” My mother spoke firmly. My mother was a hurricane, and saying no to her was shouting at the lightning and expecting it to make a difference. “I need a second pair of hands.”
“Ma—”
“What? Are you going to wait around for the CIA or whatever to come back knocking? They aren’t going to come.” She looked me over. “All that work, all that time, all that effort, and you won’t even get your pension? You can’t even touch the money that they gave you? Ay, mijo.”
The words were almost a sigh.
She clicked her tongue on her teeth. “No. Tomorrow, you can come in with me, and I’ll show you what leads I have.”
I stood up. “No. Tomorrow, I’m going to start figuring out what happened. I’m going to find out why I’m here.”
“And then what?” my mother challenged. “You’ll leave again, and your sister will get a check when Junior and Riley graduate high school?”
“I don’t know.” I fisted my hands. “But I want my life back.”
“You have your life back.” My mother frowned, the TV light reflecting off her face. “You have your life for the first time since you disappeared on us.”
“I don’t want the life you’re offering!” I said sharply. “I want the life that I made for myself!”
“You don’t want the life I’m offering?” My mother stood, and she was too good at what she did, too perfect, because she was slightly unstable, and I wanted to reach out and help her. I wanted to hold her elbow to make sure she didn’t fall.
Her eyes caught mine. “You don’t want the life that kept us all fed and clothed when your father left us?”
“Dad died! He never would have wanted this for us!” My voice dropped low. “He never would have wanted me and Candy to have to do what you did.”
“Your father left us all when he got himself killed, and I had to be the one to pick up the pieces and make sure you got to school and Candace got fed, and I was the one who stayed!” There she was, twisting the problem, making me feel sympathetic for her, making me feel like I was in the wrong. I was the one who’d grown up like this, but I was supposed to feel bad for her ?
“You’re so angry about everything I did,” she said. She turned away. “Maybe you’re right, but you know what? I didn’t have any choice either, and whatever your dad would have said about it, he died and left us all here. He knew what he was doing, and he did it anyway, and I was the one who had two kids and a mortgage.”
My heart clenched. “Ma, what do you mean?”
She waved me off, shuffling down the hall, her steps uneven. It had to be a show. She was purposefully phrasing things, making me feel like I was in the wrong. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
“Mom,” I said sharply, but she didn’t even look at me. Instead, I was left alone in the living room, the TV reflecting colors on the couch, my questions making something in me twist.
No.
I needed to use this as a reminder to focus. My mother could make anyone believe anything. She could convince a meteorologist that rain was God spitting on them. I needed to focus on my real goal: getting back to my life. If that meant leaving Candy and her two kids, that was a cost I could pay. If that meant figuring out how to get rid of a powerful artifact, I had done more difficult things. If that meant turning in Cassander…
I would figure everything out in the morning. Everything always looked better in the morning.