“Just put it in the living room,” I said. “We can eat there.”
I didn’t hear him walk across the floor, but I did hear him put the pizza down and lift the box lid. I strolled out of the kitchen, napkins and two glasses of apple juice-the only beverage in the house besides water and coffee- in my hand. “All I have is apple juice. Hope that’s okay.”
He moved away from the window. He had taken off his ratty coat and black beanie, hanging the coat on the back of one of the chairs at the round table. He wore jeans and a dark gray sweater that looked like cashmere. The flex and movement of his chest and torso beneath that thin fabric made my heartbeat quicken.
I remembered him, remembered his body. An image flashed behind my eyes. He stood in a doorway, naked except for his boxers, his dark skin tiger-striped with yellow light, his eyes burning gold with passion. He had waited. Waited for me to say yes.
I blinked. And the memory was gone. A sad hunger lingered at the back of my mind and echoed through my body. I wondered if I’d said yes.
I realized Zayvion was silent, his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, watching me, waiting.
I blushed. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” he said softly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” I sat in the coatless chair. “It was just-maybe-a memory or something. It’s gone.” I tried to keep the frustration and embarrassment out of my voice.
He sat in the chair across from me silently, even though that chair usually creaked, and turned in his seat so he could see both the front door and the window. “Was it about me?”
I fished a piece of pizza out of the box, pulled it up until the strings of cheese broke. “Yes.”
“Was I naked?”
I couldn’t help it-I laughed. “I can’t believe you asked me that. No comment.”
He smiled, laugh lines curving at the corners of his eyes. “So I was naked.”
“Shut up and eat your pizza,” I said around a mouthful. And that was the end of my side of the conversation. I wiped out two pieces of pizza before coming up for air. Zayvion paced me, piece for piece. He got up, found the apple juice, and refilled our cups.
After the fourth slice I felt like I could think again. Hounding always made me hungry; drawing on magic always made me hungry. I’d been doing a lot of both of those things on nothing but a scone, coffee, and french fries, most of which I’d lost in the parking garage.
“How did the job with Stotts go?” he asked.
I tore the crust off another piece of pizza, leaving the topping portion still in the box. “I didn’t tell you I was working for Stotts.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Were you spying on me?”
“Define spying.”
“Were you on the street watching me Hound for him?”
“No. I was… working.”
“And that involved keeping an eye on me?”
“In a roundabout way. I noticed you were with him. How did it go?”
“My Hounding jobs are between me and my clients,” I said. “And this is police business. Confidential.” I did not want to tell him about Pike. Didn’t want to tell him I had ratted Pike out and that he would be charged with kidnapping-or more, if the girls were found injured, or dead.
Time for a subject change.
“So what was up with that chanting and light show you put on earlier today?” I asked.
“That?” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and nodded. “That was magic.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out under the table like he was used to being comfortable around me and in my apartment.
“Genius. What kind of magic? What did you use against those things? The watercolor people things?”
He considered me for a second then. “What is the first rule of magic?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Zayvion did not look like he was kidding. As a matter of fact, if I had to describe how Zayvion looked, I would use the word
“The first rule of magic is if you use magic, it uses you.”
“Yes,” he said. “There is always a price to pay for using magic. Always. And when you spend a lifetime using it, it spends a lifetime using you. It leaves its mark on you”-he motioned toward my hands-“and you leave your mark on it.”
“What do you mean, you leave a mark on magic? It’s hard enough just to touch magic. Magic isn’t solid.”
“Neither are the Veiled.”
“The who?”
“This doesn’t apply to the casual magic user. This doesn’t even apply to someone who uses magic once a day. But for those of… us… who use magic constantly, it is believed that our minds, our souls, our life essence, can impress upon the flow of magic. Like an image on film. Or maybe more. Some people believe that if you use magic too much, you will impress certain parts of your life into the flow of magic permanently. You can lose bits of yourself to it.”
I suddenly wasn’t hungry.
“But they’re wrong, right? Because
I suddenly wanted to crawl back into the shower and scrub myself again.
Zayvion straightened and leaned forward without making a sound in my creaky chair. He reached across the table and put both of his hands over mine.
His hands were warm, wide, heavy like a blanket. “You are not full of dead people. But there are theories that magic is. And that sometimes when the gates between life and death are opened, those bits of dead magic users-the watercolor people, the Veiled-can rise.”
“Like ghosts?” I could handle ghosts. There were people who got rid of ghosts. Exorcists and such.
“No, not like ghosts.”
Well, that was just fantastic.
“Then what are the… what are the Veiled?”
“They are parts of dead magic users who don’t know they’re dead because they are still tied to-fed, if you will-by the flow of magic.”
“That’s the theory?” I asked.
“That’s the theory.”
“And the gates between life and death?” I asked.
“Theory.”
Right.
“What happens if they touch you?”
Zayvion shook his head. “They can’t see most people.”
“They can see me.”
“What?” Zayvion’s hands tightened on mine. He tipped his head down, catching my gaze. “Did they see you? Did they touch you?”
I nodded.
“Where? When?” He was still calm, but his breathing was quicker, and I could smell the peppery edge of his fear. Theory, my ass.
I pulled my hands away from his and unbuttoned the top buttons on my shirt. His eyes flickered with another kind of light-desire-down to my collar-bones before he schooled his face into that calm Zen expression that gave nothing away. I pushed one shoulder of the shirt down, revealing a patch of old and new burns.
He held his breath and sat there like I’d just slapped him.
I squirmed, really uncomfortable with the look in his eyes.
“Oh, baby,” he breathed.
