Chapter 16
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
EMBER
Reasons Scrying will fail: the subject is already being Scried upon, the Mentalist loses focus, the subject enters a walled-in building or Scrying-restricted territory, the subject is dead.
— Helen Blackburn, Echelon to the
School of Mental Magic
Witches didn’t etherize. Corporeal Animal Ethereal were the three forms of the Goddess.
This shouldn’t be happening to me, a half witch.
But there I was, wedged between a brick wall and a dumpster, both of which I could probably slip through, etherizing.
If the Goddess didn’t vanquish me for it, the Echelons sure would.
If it even mattered. If there was even a way to return to my human, bodied, form.
My arms, or the projection-like image of them, were folded over my chest, only sometimes there when I glanced down.
I frowned at Leland’s hand, outstretched and waiting.
Then my eyes went to his mouth, his well-defined lips, unnaturally glossy and shining with a thin layer of Vyra’s lip gloss — and I disappeared entirely.
“You’re staring at my mouth,” he said, his face somber in the low torchlight of the dark alley structure.
“I know,” I said, sounding out of breath for some reason.
Leland wet his lips, then pressed them tight and rubbed them back and forth, taking off the sheen while his eyes stayed trained on me. When he was done, his lips were reddened and wet, but the lip gloss was gone.
“Better?” he asked.
“No,” I breathed, unable to look away, to hide my interest. My own lips burned like his had been on them. “I don’t think it is.” I closed my eyes and shook my head, my thoughts spinning as he stayed kneeling only a foot away from me.
“Ember. Look at me.”
I opened my eyes slowly, my muscles tense. If only he knew the things I saw when I looked at him.
Leland tried offering his hand again, but I clutched mine in my lap, my fingers tensing. I didn’t want his hand. I didn’t want to feel the warm swell of being close to him. My blood craved him, and its hunger to absorb his magic was what had landed me in this position.
“Did Vyra see?” I asked, looking down to take in the full extent of my ghostly image.
Leland’s hand fell to his side, for the moment giving up on me. “I took care of it,” he said. “Pitch Black took care of everyone else.”
“What about the scrying orb?”
“Disappeared the second you started flickering. Can’t Scry on an intangible.”
That’s hardly better, I thought. If the Echelons were watching, if it was a Mentalist as he’d said, and suddenly I’d disappeared . . .
“So they’ll know?” I asked, partly out of curiosity, but mostly, I was stalling.
“They’ll assume they lost focus. All day is a long time to Scry. People get tired. No one would guess this.”
I rubbed between my eyes. “Skye . . .”
Leland held up his transmitter. “Already messaged her. She’ll meet you at Helen’s.
” Putting his transmitter away, he held out his hand again.
“I don’t want to scare you. But if you go full ether, I have no idea how to get you back here.
The only thing that might keep you here is if you — right now — hold on to me. ”
“No.”
“Ember. It’s just a hand.”
“And that’s the problem,” I said. It wasn’t my hand. Leland was with Vyra, not me.
Of course, these weren’t rational feelings. This was my blood talking. My blood that had burned me up, forcing Leland into the alley with me.
“What is the problem?” he asked, not understanding.
“I ruined your date,” I said guiltily.
“I already said goodbye to her.”
“You’re stuck here with me. You wasted like twenty spells to build this.” I didn’t know the exact number, but I knew a regular witch would be depleted and sleeping by now. “Five of them on” — I winced at the far wall — “wall sconces?”
“Lighting’s important,” he said, looking at my hands impatiently.
“One light, centered,” I argued. “It’s a classic approach.” One that would be better suited to my current circumstance. I needed it dimmer, then I wouldn’t be able to see his lips so clearly. “Five is . . .”
“Ember. None of this is important. And my spell count is fifty.”
It was an effort to keep my mouth from gaping. A spell count of ten was fine, good. Twenty was a lot. Twenty-five was exceptional. Fifty?
Was Leland even a witch? Not that I knew what else he would be, but . . . no one . . . no one had more power than him.
The magnitude of it — he was unbeatable. Except he’d used half his spells to confine me in an alley. A waste, considering what else he could’ve built with them. “No wonder my blood wants you,” I said under my breath.
“That has nothing to do with my spell count,” he said. “It’s because you’re my Counterpart.”
That time, my mouth did fall open. “What?” I’d suspected, but . . . he’d given me every reason to believe he had no idea.
He turned his hand over and held it out to me with his palm facing up.
“I know, Ember. I know what you are to me. I’ve known it since the first time I saw you, and my blood hasn’t been calm since.
The closer we are, the worse it gets. Sometimes it’s a rip current.
Sometimes it’s a thing I can’t get out from under my skin.
I know every time I lie to you, you can hear it.
I know you’re my Counterpart. That’s why you wanted to tell me your gift. ”
“You knew?” I sat back, feeling deceived. “The whole time? You knew I could hear you lying, and . . . you kept doing it? What kind of game is this?”
“Not one I enjoy playing,” he said firmly.
“It doesn’t feel good — the shock I get — every time I feel you register I’m lying.
” He jerked his chin at his hand like this was the last time he was going to tell me to take it.
“Take my hand. You need a tether, and your blood wants me more than anything it’s going to find in the ether.
If you hold on to me, your blood won’t pull you away. ”
I reached for his hand, only because it couldn’t be worse than the prolonged eye contact he’d inflicted on me while he waited.
The touch when our hands came together was nothing I could have expected.
I’d thought it would feel like nothing. I thought I might go straight through him the same way my hand had slipped through the dumpster.
But I felt him, his broad hand, the firmness of it.
My breathing picked up as I watched the faded outline of my arm darken and solidify a bit.
We stared at each other until he broke the silence. “Would you like to sit somewhere that isn’t behind a dumpster?” he asked.
With him? No.
But I took in his clothing. A pair of light jeans that looked soft and vintage, an equally soft mushroom-colored T-shirt. They were nice, clean. Not dumpster clothing.
“Sure.” The edge in my voice couldn’t be helped.
He’d apparently touched this dumpster before because it Vanished in an instant, and where it once stood was now a three-seat sofa with a long chaise, its ivory color and soft corduroy texture in perfect contrast to the dark, rectangular room we were in.
Leland sat first, holding his arm outstretched to maintain contact with my illusory hand as I stood hesitating at the edge of the chaise. He shifted closer to the armrest to make room for me to sit next to him.
Nope.
I broke from his grip and watched my form get lighter again.
“Now what’s the matter?” he asked.
My eyes darted around to the wall-mounted torches, my feet planted firmly on the cobblestone. “Is this even okay? We took over an alley. What if someone needs to use it?”
“Creators do it all the time,” he responded. Calm and composed. “Would you like to tell me what other concerns you have?”
“You.”
“Does it help to know I can’t feel you? This doesn’t mean anything.”
“For you, maybe,” I blurted. “I mean. I can feel you. You feel real to me. Solid. Even though I’m” — big breath out — “whatever I am.”
He nodded, not saying anything, his hazel eyes patiently waiting for me to sit with him on the couch. But could I? I was spectral, like air. I didn’t even know how I was talking to him.
“How do you even know I can? My hand went through the dumpster. Won’t I just pass through it?”
“You were like this when you sat on the cobblestones,” he reminded me. “Try it?”
I tentatively prodded the leg of the couch with my foot. Straight through. As I’d thought.
“Just come here,” sighed Leland. “Sit, and I’ll explain why I kept lying to you.”
That time, I took his hand and let him guide me, albeit stubbornly. If he was offering me answers, I’d be stupid not to take them, so I sat, and didn’t fall through.
“I don’t like you right now,” I said, ignoring the tingling in the pit of my stomach as he made me come closer until our thighs touched. To blot out the places my mind was going, I stared up at the steel roof with my head dropped back on the couch.
“You’re the only one who knows,” he said quietly. “Case might’ve figured it out, but that’s it. Everyone else thinks Truth-Teller means I can’t lie to them.”
He felt like he looked. Hard, with lean muscle in some places, warm and yielding in others.
He dropped his head back, too, tilting so we faced each other.
His hazel eyes turned more and more reluctant with every passing second, while the majority of my thoughts revolved around my knees angling into his legs. And that needed to be fixed.
“So that’s your excuse? You lied to me because you’re lying to everyone?”
“I lied to you because I don’t want to bond,” he said.
“Yeah, me either.”
I shouldn’t have said that. Because as soon as I did, Forcing the Bond, the Counterpart text I ran out of Briary’s with, dropped out of his pocket realm and landed next to me on the couch, indenting the cushion. I felt a flash of panic, remembering I never paid for it.
“Leland,” I said, my voice faltering. “I think I stole that.”
“It’s fine.” He reached across my ghost to pick up the book. “I’ll pay them.”