Promises to Keep

CHAPTER 27

JAY COULD NOT rest until he had made several phone calls ensuring that those he loved were still alive. Some were in critical condition, but if there was a spark of life left within them, he trusted the elementals to save them.

For their own purposes, perhaps, but the elementals would save them nonetheless.

Next, he decided to sleep for a week. Unfortunately, the rest of the world insisted on getting in the way of this triumphant hero’s nap—including Brina, who he had thought would be on his side.

She shook him and demanded he stand up because she wanted a model right now. He had no idea where she had found the materials. When he looked up with every intention of telling her to come back in another seven days, he had the irresistible desire to kiss her instead. So he did. And then he modeled.

Brina painted in a new way. She used her brushes and her oils—with windows open despite the frigid winter air—but occasionally she reached for the canvas and caressed it, sliding fingers over wet or dry paint. The image would shift, lines and tones responding to the pictures in her head in a way that normal paint could not.

Strangely, she was neither disturbed by this development nor delighted. She merely considered it a new tool, one she was happy to get to know, but she never questioned it. Jay would say that she took it for granted, but he might as well have said that she took everything for granted.

For Brina, each moment was new, as it is, and perfect.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one asking for his time. Some of the people who insisted on bothering him brought good things, like food. Others wanted things from him.

Jay, what’s going on? Jay, our magic is doing odd things. Jay, so-and-so has recovered from the flu but now keeps shapeshifting into a chicken.

Okay, he hadn’t heard the bit about the chicken specifically, but there had been reports of unexpected shapeshifting, especially among those who had been in the circle when the elementals had been summoned. Powers that people had long controlled were gone, but others spontaneously manifested. Some of those new powers were gifts. Some were darker, ranging from empathy like Jay’s—but without a lifetime to learn how to use it or control it—to power over life and death, healing’s inverse.

Individuals who before had only needed to eat as humans did found themselves needing to feed, while others who had fed on blood or power for centuries now had entirely different hungers.

The world had changed. Jay still didn’t know how many of Midnight’s trainers and traders had survived. Most of the vampires he knew had no interest in updating him, and having just barely saved the world from his last series of best intentions, Jay believed that it might be best to let this sleeping dog lie. For now.

He had other priorities.

Jay stood next to Jeremy as the groom waited, struggling not to fidget or wipe his sweaty palms on his tuxedo pants. Something to do with saving the world, or at least Caryn’s life, or maybe just the super-flu leaving much of the original wedding party feeling under the weather, had caused them to promote Jay from usher to groomsman.

The human looked good—though, these days, human might not have been the most accurate word. Jeremy had been born human, but he had also been in the circle when the Shantel elemental had been summoned. No one knew quite what had touched the doctor-in-training, but Jay knew Jeremy’s eyes had a phosphorescence visible when the room was dark, and he tended not to notice anymore when no lights were on. So far, that was the extent of his manifested power; maybe that was all there would be.

Whatever he was, Jeremy could still sweat. He looked to Jay anxiously. He had all the faith in the world that Caryn would appear and walk down that aisle … but what if she didn’t? What if she had changed her mind? What if she was …

The music rose. Caryn had chosen “Colors of the Wind” as her wedding march.

It was beautiful; the bride was beautiful.

Jay barely managed not to laugh out loud as Brina’s idle thought reached him: So provincial, so traditional. Nothing original. Beautiful dress, but portraits of brides in their beautiful dresses are a dime a dozen.

Her mind went back to wandering more interesting paths. In the last days, Brina had not regained her vampirism. Jay knew she had considered contacting Kaleo, the one who had changed her nearly four hundred years ago, though she had not spoken of it out loud. She hadn’t decided what she planned to do. At Jay’s prompting, she had called Nikolas and officially given him permission to take charge of all her “property,” to do with as he saw fit. SingleEarth had accepted several of the slaves into their psychiatric rehabilitation program.

She was getting used to taking care of herself, and being independent, just as she was getting used to her heartbeat, and her breath.

Jay was getting used to her primal, childlike joy. They had taken a break from painting once when Brina had needed fresh air, and she had followed him, running through the forest, delighted by the falling dust of snow. With Lynx by their side, they had leapt, tumbled into snowbanks, and reveled in the crispness of nature.

Jay fervently hoped she didn’t choose to become a vampire again.

Especially since he was pretty sure she had the makings of a powerful witch.

It had taken Jay’s kind many millennia to develop their powers into what they were these days—the Vidas with their ability to manipulate raw power, the Smoke line’s ability to heal, and all the other specialties Jay knew only a little of. Now they were all back at the beginning again. None of them knew what they were or who they might be in coming generations.

Jeremy and Caryn—would they be the parents of a new line of witches? Or of something else entirely? For that matter, what might Jay’s children be, if he chose to have children?

At that moment, all that mattered was the way the crystals on Caryn’s gown sparkled in the light, wreathing her in rainbows. It wasn’t a strange new power that gave her such a glow—no, it was love, and hope, and relief, and joy.

She smiled up at her husband-to-be with absolutely no concern about what Jeremy might be or might become. It didn’t matter to her. She knew who he was. Who cared what he was?

His parents cared, more than a little. A few people in the audience were simmering with resentment and built-up anger that Jay suspected might lead to a fistfight in the lobby during the reception.

Jay tried to come up with a plan to defuse the potential mayhem. After all, Jeremy had given him this job because he had unique talents that were supposed to help him avoid bloodshed over the wedding cake.

“Do you have the rings?”

Oh—and that!

Jay did have the rings. He passed them to Jeremy, and then there wasn’t much more for Jay to do except stand there and look interested while letting his mind wander across the thoughts of all those assembled.

It was amazing how few of them were thinking about the recent illness, or all the loss, or their fears of the future. All their thoughts were on this day, this moment, as Jeremy and Caryn leaned toward each other to kiss. …

Meanwhile, in a small but elite penthouse bar in New York City …

Kaleo and Theron leaned back and watched fireworks from the balcony. No disaster could keep humans down long, it seemed.

“I knew a Malinalxochitl witch once, but I never had the magic myself,” Theron commented. “The Azteka were mostly after my time. So why do I suddenly find myself doing things like this?”

He glanced at the candle flickering at the center of the table. Theron held up a hand, and the tiny ball of flame came to his palm like an obedient puppy. With a flick of his wrist he juggled it to the other hand, and then sent it back to the candle, where it flared at least three feet high before settling back to its normal and natural state.

Kaleo watched the display and shook his head. “I’m sure you will make good use of this new talent. It is