Espionage #3
Ofelia’s lips twitched so sharply a tiny waterfall of sand cascaded down. “I’ve found foolishness can be entertaining, of late. But it is your choice.” A sigh sent a puff of sand into the air. “I suppose it was too much work to retrieve your cell phone?”
“I haven’t charged it for…” Mara frowned, thinking. “It is possible my contract has expired. But regardless, there is no phone service here. That is why I chose to come here. To be alone.”
“Yes,” Ofelia said gently. “I know.”
“I need to be alone,” Mara repeated, her voice going higher.
“And so you are.”
“But I am not.”
Ofelia’s sand-cast eyelids narrowed. “Who is there?”
“A man,” Mara said. There was more she wanted to say—an intruder, a thief, an invader—but her friend knew her too well, knew the tone of her voice, and did not wait for her to continue.
“A man,” Ofelia repeated, her voice pregnant with understanding. “Well, it is about time.”
“It is not—” Her voice cracked on the denial, the denial she knew was a lie.
“Is it not?” It was as gentle as anything Ofelia had said to her for the past five years, but that tenderness made it slice deeper.
“I am not ready,” Mara whispered instead. “I still grieve. I still… I am not ready.”
“But your body is.” It wasn’t a question. Ofelia let the pronouncement hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “I must admit, I fail to see the problem. It would do you good to have a moment’s surcease from your pain. And you know Tristan would want—”
“I know what he would want,” Mara said doggedly. “And I know… I know I cannot do this forever. One more summer. That is all I wanted. One summer for every ten we had, for every hundred we should have had.”
Ofelia remained silent for a long time, the sandy relief of her face serene and enigmatic. “I did not realize,” she said at last, “that your time with the humans had inhibited you so.”
“I am not inhibited,” Mara said. “Nor was Tristan. We loved as the fae love, fully and freely.”
“And yet you wish to remain… Is chaste the word they use?”
“That is not it at all.” The feelings in Mara’s stomach were beyond words, beyond expression. They felt only like danger. Danger and heat. “It is… I do not remember how.”
Ofelia’s eyebrows shot so high the sand started to tumble back into the scrying pool. “That is not something one can forget. But I am happy to find you a book—”
Mara growled in frustration. “No. That is not—”
“I am sorry,” Ofelia said quickly, her voice gentling again. “I am teasing you too much.”
“I do not remember,” Mara said carefully, “what it is like. What it was like, before my body and my heart were shared together. How it is without lo— Without Tristan. And I am…”
“Afraid.”
“Yes.”
Ofelia’s sand lips curved into a gentle smile. “There is nothing for you to fear, you know.”
Mara gazed at her friend’s countenance carved in sand, wondering if her own face at the other end of their magical communication looked as conflicted as she felt.
“I do not want this man here. He is a scientist. He’s here to find the science behind my…
But there is no science. And he will not leave.
He is stubborn, and arrogant, and— I do not like him. ”
“That,” Ofelia said firmly, “is probably why you want him.”
It was something she should deny. Something that shouldn’t be true. But she could not lie to her friend. “Perhaps,” Mara said instead.
“You should bed him, then. Get him out of your system and send him on his way.”
“Should I?” Mara bit her lip. “I do not think he will leave. Not if I bed him, and…and not if I don’t. He won’t leave without what he came for.” Which is not me, she reminded herself. He came for the garden. I am only an obstacle. The thought made her wince.
“You can leave,” Ofelia said. “You can return to your home. I am not the only one who has missed you. ”
Mara’s back straightened as if a jolt of electricity had gone up her spine. “I am not leaving Tristan’s garden because some…some brute of a man wants to investigate it. I belong here. He does not.”
Ofelia’s eyes seemed to sharpen, the sand falling into the twin whirlpools of her irises. “So what will you do?”
“The only thing I can do,” Mara said dully. “Protect what is mine.”
“Hmm.” Ofelia’s head turned then, as if she were looking down into the earth.
The curve of her cheek and the contours of her braided hair rose into the scrying sand.
“One moment,” she said as if to someone behind her before turning back to face Mara.
“I am being called away. Have I been of assistance?”
“No…and yes.” Mara sighed, raking her hair back from her face again. “You did not tell me anything I did not expect. But I… I needed to hear it in your voice.”
“Well, I am glad my voice is yet welcome,” Ofelia said archly, though her smile beamed genuine pleasure. “You will call me again if you need me?”
“Yes,” Mara said, though she was distracted. There were vibrations, echoing seductively along that tiny thread of attention she had not been able to draw back. He was coming. Done with waiting.
Well, so was she. She would evict him from her territory once and for all. And when he was gone, it would not matter how much she wanted to lick drops of water from his skin. To feel his big, brutish hands on her body. To hear what his mocking voice sounded like when…
Ofelia’s face had vanished while Mara had been thinking, the sand now a featureless flat circle. She impatiently dashed a hand across it, dispelling her magic and allowing the desert to take back its shape.
Just as she would return to herself soon.
She rose to her feet and turned toward the drum of her enemy’s footsteps.