DAE
The house was scattering by the time I came downstairs after our scare with Elias.
Kenya was in the front room pulling on her coat, keys already in her hand to head to the club. I stilled as I heard Alex down the hall, his voice low and clipped, telling Judy he was on his way. He was going to see Alice, because Alice was his twin and his person to worry over.
Not mine.
Lizzy was still at the shop and would be home soon. Angel and Jamal were gods knew where, doing gods knew what, which was the norm for those two.
Killian stood at the bottom of the stairs and his eyes moved to the back door as he listened for any sounds coming from Jamal's guest house across the courtyard.
I watched him do it, and I watched something quiet and grieving move under the surface of him that he'd never in a hundred years say out loud when he realized they weren't there.
I wanted to say something to reassure him, but nothing worth saying came to mind.
"I'll walk Kenya to the club," I said instead, and Killian gave me a nod.
"I'll check in after Lizzy gets home," he told me.
The cold outside was the wet kind, river-damp and windy, finding anywhere it could to get inside your clothes.
It was late winter in the Quarter, and the streets were still loud with people, though not as many as when the weather warmed up.
Still, music leaked out of every open door, and neon lights smeared in the puddles.
Kenya set a fast pace, and I matched it, hands in my pockets.
"You look better," I told her, and meant it.
There'd been a few weeks while Alex was gone when she'd gotten so drawn and tired, she barely looked like herself.
When I'd catch her at the club running numbers at two in the morning and know she hadn't fed, hadn't done anything but grieve around the empty place where her mate should have been.
"I feel better." She cut me a sideways look through her glasses, and her bright smile dimmed. "You, on the other hand, look like hell."
"What are you talking about? I'm absolutely devastating in low light. Look at these cheekbones. It's a whole thing."
"Mm." She didn't buy it.
We turned onto Bourbon, into the crush and the light, and she let me have the silence that followed for half a block before she got into my business.
"So what's going on with you?"
I kept walking and let the noises of the city do the talking for a minute.
A brass band was tearing it up on the corner, a trumpet blaring over everything, and a knot of tourists spilled out of a bar laughing too loud and stumbling over their own feet.
Kenya moved through all of it with her spine straight and her eyes forward, and she waited.
She was good at waiting. It's a thing she and Killian had in common, that patience to wait until you feel the need to fill the silence yourself.
"It's Alice," I said.
"I know it's Alice." Her mouth twitched. "The whole coven knows it's Alice, Dae. You look at her like she personally invented the stars."
I frowned down at her. "I don't —" I started, then didn't bother.
There's no lying to Kenya, and, honestly, there was no lying to myself about it anymore, so I just released a long breath and let it all spill out.
"There is something there. Between me and Alice.
I mean, there's always been an attraction.
At least on my end. But now I can feel it," — I searched for the right word but could only come up with one — "pulling at me.
You know what I mean? Like something's always drawing me to her.
And even when I'm standing right in front of her, I want to be closer.
" I paused. "I guess it's started, and I didn't decide to start it, but I can't seem to stop it either. "
"She's yours," she said.
"Yeah," I responded after a pause.
She nodded thoughtfully, like I'd confirmed something she'd already suspected. "And you're scared of it."
"I'm not scared of anything. Except maybe a G-string snapping while I'm on stage. And that's only because I don't want to put any of these guys to shame…" I waved a hand toward a group of rambunctious young guys wandering our way.
"Dae."
I laughed at the look she was giving me, but the sound was hollow. The trumpet hit a high note and held it, and my chest pulled tight as though it were me playing.
"Yeah," I admitted quietly. "I'm scared of it."
There. It was out. I waited to feel some kind of relief, a weight lifting off my shoulders that my burden was shared. Instead, it just felt heavier. Because now it was real.
We'd come far enough that I could see the Purple Fang's sign up ahead, and I realized I was running out of time. So I asked the thing I really wanted to know.
"Can I ask you something kinda personal?"
"Of course."
"Alex." I watched my breath fog and vanish.
"His magic. You know, the djinn thing. How do you deal with that?
How do you love somebody who's so dark inside?
" Not that Alice could ever be anything but a bright, shining light.
But the question had crossed my mind a few times.
"It doesn't scare you at all that he'll…
I don't know…go all the way to the dark side? "
"The dark side?" she laughed. "Like Luke Skywalker?"
I frowned down at her. "I'm actually being serious here."
She glanced over at me and tried hard to stifle her grin. "I know. I'm sorry."
"No, you're not."
"No, I am! I am," she insisted. She shoved her hands in her jacket pocket and looked down at the sidewalk for a few steps before she answered my original question.
"I'm not scared of Alex. At least, not when it comes to me.
Now, your question about him giving in to his dark side completely?
" She gave me a half-hearted shrug. "That's a battle he fights every day.
And he probably always will. I just have to have faith that he'll continue to win.
And I think the connection we have helps him with that fight. "
"That's your final answer?"
"The answer is that I'd choose it again.
Knowing all of it. Knowing what it cost and what it might still cost, I would pick him and his terrifying ancestor blood over a life without him every single time.
" She looked up at me, her brown eyes fierce behind her black-rimmed glasses.
"I'm sorry if that's not the answer you wanted.
I think you wanted me to tell you to run, or to tell you it's easy.
But it's neither. When you love someone like Alex, you know it's dangerous, and you stay anyway.
That's all there is to it. At least for me. "
I let that sink in, because she was right. I don't know what I was expecting to hear. And no, that wasn't the answer I wanted, but it was the only one.
"You're bad at pep talks," I said.
"I'm excellent at pep talks. I just don't give them to people who need to hear the truth more." She started walking again. "Now tell me the rest. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one where there's more to this story than you're telling me."
"Her aura's changing," I admitted after a long pause.
"Alice's." It wasn't a question.
I nodded. We were nearly at the club. "It used to be a pure silver-white.
So bright I almost couldn't stand to look at it.
And now there's this warm gold threading through the white.
" My voice went soft, and I couldn't stop it.
"It's beautiful, Kenya. But I think it's the djinn side of her waking up.
The thing she's been so afraid of her whole life. "
Kenya didn't say anything.
I looked over. She'd slowed her pace, and there was a small wrinkle between her brows, and she was chewing on the inside of her cheek the way she did when the numbers didn't add up and she was checking her math in her head before she said so.
"What?" I asked, even though I definitely didn't want to hear the answer this time.
"Threading through it," she repeated. "You said threading through."
"Yeah. Like woven in between her normal colors. Why?"
She went quiet again, and when she finally spoke she was careful, feeling out her words.
"When Alex's magic went into me," she said slowly.
"That night when Killian asked the witches if they'd come see if they could cure me.
When it was the only thing that could pull me back.
" She touched the center of her chest as her eyes caught mine.
"It didn't feel like something added to him, Dae.
It didn't sit on top. It came up from underneath, from all the way down, from the marrow of his bones.
It was Alex, the whole way through. You couldn't have found the seam where his magic stopped and he started, because there wasn't one.
Native magic, the real thing, the thing that belongs to a person — it's not intertwined like good magic and dark magic.
It's all one. It's all mixed together. Does that make sense? "
The band behind us reached the end of its song and the street went strangely quiet.
"The sickness the djinn put inside of me?
" she continued. "It was different. Like something had been forced down into me that my body was trying to reject and kept flinching away from.
Every cell I have knew it wasn't supposed to be there.
It didn't sink into my bones. That's why Alex could tear it out," she said.
"Because there was a seam to find. He got his fingers under the edge of it and pulled, and it came loose.
You can only rip out what doesn't belong.
No one can rip out Alex's djinn magic. It's a part of him.
It's always been there." She frowned and looked away.
"I don't know if this is making any sense. "
Something cold coiled in my chest.
"So when you tell me the gold in Alice's aura is threading through the white," Kenya said, meeting my eyes, steady and unafraid, "it just makes me wonder." She gave a little shrug. "That's all."
"I understand what you're saying, but I think you're wrong." I heard how sure I made it sound, and how much I needed it to be true. "You'd understand if you could see it."
She held my eyes a moment longer. Then she let it go. "Okay," she said. But I saw her file what I'd told her away in that lockbox of a memory she had.
We'd arrived at the club, and she stopped with her hand on the door, the bass thudding through the wood into my chest, and looked back at me.
"For what it's worth. The bond with Alice." She stared me down. "You know you can only fight it for so long, right? It will win."
"I know," I said. And gods help me, some worn-out part of me hoped she was right.