I touched his face. Leo flinched from the unexpected contact, then relaxed. I wanted to hug him but didn’t. I had to let him go, and quickly. “Good-bye, Leo. Take care of yourself.”
“You, too, Evy Stone.” He gave my invisible form a wide berth, then shook Wyatt’s hand. “You take good care of her.”
“I will if she lets me,” Wyatt said.
This time I did swat him on the shoulder. The blow rustled the fabric of his shirt. Somehow he caught my hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. The way his fingers curled around air, even though I felt the warmth of his touch, looked a bit ridiculous.
Leo’s mouth quirked in a wistful smile. His plan was to leave the city and drive north, past the mountains. There were some nice towns up there. I hoped he found the fresh start he wanted. He climbed into his car. The engine gurgled to life a moment later. We watched him navigate the narrow road that wound through the cemetery, until his car was out of sight.
“That wasn’t an earthquake, was it?” I asked.
“Not a normal one, no.” Wyatt squeezed my hand again, let it go, and then unlocked the car door. “That wasn’t from the ground, Evy, not the tremor I felt. It came from deeper than that.”
“What do you mean?” I slid across the bench into the passenger seat.
He climbed in and slammed the door shut, mouth drawn and face pinched. I hated that look. “It wasn’t external. It was an internal tremor that only you and I felt—two Gifted people, Evy. I think something’s happening at First Break.”
Chapter Two
Besides being an enormous underground community of faeries, sprites, gnomes, pixies, dryads, and sylphs— creatures more commonly referred to as Fey or Fair Ones—First Break is also a doorway of sorts. I don’t know exactly what’s on the other side, besides banished demons and the source of magic in our world, but I do know that the Fair Ones protect it. They keep the demons—the Tainted Ones—from crossing over, and have been human allies for … well, at least for the ten years the Triads have been in operation.
Wyatt and I had both felt the tremor, which meant it had something to do with the Break and our connection to its magic. Only we had no way of contacting First Break to find out what was going on. It was miles outside the city and deep underground; I knew of only one way in that didn’t include being swallowed by a troll, and we didn’t have time to make that trek. It wasn’t like Amalie, the sprite Queen, had installed a phone after our last visit. She appeared when she wished, via her human avatar, then disappeared when her task was finished.
As soon as we returned to our shared apartment in Mercy’s Lot, Wyatt was on his cell phone. It was the same apartment I’d once shared with my old Triad partners and as close to a real home as I’d ever known, even if it was kind of a hole.
I realized I was still very invisible and pulled the slim crystal out of my pocket. It was due to lose its potency in a few hours anyway, so there was no sense sitting around like a ghost. I repeated the foreign words I’d used to activate the crystal and its spell—spells are cast in the native language of the person creating them—and felt the same stomach-churning sense of being flipped inside out. It wasn’t painful, just uncomfortable.
I blinked back into existence, once again able to see flesh and fingernails and clothing. Part of me expected something to go wrong—because, seriously, how often had things gone my way lately?—and for there to be a hole left someplace. But, no, a quick inspection showed everything was visible.
Wyatt was pacing in and out of the narrow kitchenette, lips pressed together, eyebrows furrowed. He dialed another number, then listened. He had to be getting a lot of voice mails, but he wasn’t leaving messages. Unless they were ignoring him, which was also entirely possible. Apparently, while I was unconscious and recovering from my dive out a four-story window, Wyatt had said some pretty cruel things to both of his former fellow Handlers Gina Kismet and Adrian Baylor.
I perched on the arm of the apartment’s faded sofa and watched him dial again.
His face brightened. “Morgan, it’s Truman. Look, has anyone else reported a minor earthquake this morning?” He listened. “Claudia’s Gifted, right? Yeah, thought so. I felt it, too.” Another pause. “No idea what it could be, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. If you hear anything … Yeah, thanks.”
He snapped his cell phone shut and dropped it on the narrow counter.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
He started, gazing at me with surprise. As if he’d forgotten he
“How do you figure?”
“Come on, Evy. Anything strong enough to affect the entirety of the Break like that isn’t going to just go away.”
“Doesn’t mean we’ll automatically get swept up into it.” But even as I said the words, I knew how ridiculous they sounded. Ever since my resurrection, I’d been at the center of every major event affecting the city and its nonhuman inhabitants. Factor in my training-born need to protect the innocents of the city, and I’d probably get myself sucked into it anyway. “Dead” or alive.
“We’ve put up with so much these last few weeks,” he said, almost sulking. “I just want a couple of days of peace and quiet.” He didn’t have to say “with you.” The words were in his tone and in the way he was looking at me.
Three days ago, after waking up from a brief coma, I’d finally told him I loved him and hadn’t repeated it since. He didn’t push. I didn’t want the inevitable discussion that would come with a revelation of feelings. I didn’t want to talk about it or us, or anything else. Avoiding it meant avoiding any potential “next steps” in our burgeoning relationship.
It wasn’t like we’d never had sex. Well, that was half-true. We’d slept together once, two weeks ago, right before I died and left my old body behind. We hadn’t had sex since my resurrection—although we’d come close once—mostly due to my inability to figure out my own emotional chaos.
Before I’d died, I hadn’t been in love with Wyatt. I’d loved him, sure, as a coworker and a man I respected. But being born again into the body of Chalice Frost came not only with handy teleporting powers but also with a powerful physical attraction to Wyatt. My head and my heart were on two different wavelengths, and I just didn’t know how to reconcile them.
Sex with Wyatt now, as the people we’d both become, was a step I both craved and feared. I wanted him; I also didn’t think I deserved him.
“Peace and quiet don’t come with the job description,” I said.
“Need I remind you we’re both unemployed?”
I slid off the arm of the sofa and sank into the springy cushions. It was the same sofa from when I’d lived here before; nothing had changed except the inhabitants. The apartment had always been a haven of sorts, a place away from the chaos and bloodshed of our daily (and nightly) lives. It still felt like that sanctuary. But with the ghosts of my old life so firmly entrenched in each piece of furniture and carpet stain, it also felt like a prison.
Wyatt sat next to me, sinking the old cushions toward the middle. I let gravity tilt me sideways and rested my head on his chest. He draped his right arm over my shoulders in a gentle embrace. His familiar scent—spice and cinnamon and male musk—filled my senses. Relaxing and safe.
“Five gets you twenty your phone rings in the next ten minutes,” I said, “and shatters the mood.”
He chuckled, the sound rumbling through his chest, against my ear. He didn’t laugh nearly enough. Neither of us did. “You do realize you’ve jinxed us by saying that?”
“Oops.” I picked at a lint pill on the front of his shirt. “So about that earthquake—”
“It wasn’t an earthquake.”
“Yeah, okay, so about that Break-quake … any thoughts? You’ve been Gifted a hell of a lot longer than me.” Over a decade longer; he’d discovered his Gift as a teenager. Mine had technically belonged to Chalice, the woman whose body I’d inherited and who was also a part of me now. Even my healing ability was new, cleverly gifted to me by a gnome name Horzt. “Has it happened before?”
