Demonkeepers

footprint, she turned toward Lucius and crooked a finger. “Come here a minute.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Humor me. It’s an experiment.” Under other circumstances she might not have tried it, but she was all too aware that Strike was going to be furious over Anna’s decision. Fortunately for them, he wasn’t the sort to shoot the messenger. But the news they were bringing home was going to seriously taint the king’s perception of the trip . . . and potentially of her. More, she thought she and Lucius needed the same thing just then, albeit for different reasons.

He moved into her, going toe-to-toe, the spark in his eyes suggesting that he’d guessed her plan.

“This close enough?”

“Almost.” She closed the last little gap between them and, when his lips curved, moved in for the kiss. But whereas the taste and feel of him might have become familiar, what she put into the kiss now wasn’t. She leaned into him, offered herself to him, invited and then demanded a response that he gave readily, sliding his arms around her and crushing her up and into him. She felt deliciously feminine, almost overpowered, yet strong at the same time.

Then, deliberately, she sent her mind back to the previous spring, when he’d disappeared into the desert and they didn’t know where he’d gone, whether he was alive or dead. She remembered praying for him at the chac-mool altar back at Skywatch, remembered trying to bargain with the gods for his life. When those memories made her feel sad and small, she brought herself forward in time, to when he’d come back to Skywatch, hurt and angry. She thought of how she’d hoped their reunion would be.

And in doing so, she fell into the fantasy.

You’re back , her kiss said now. I missed you. I didn’t realize how much our time together meant to me until you were gone. And now you’re back. Did you miss me? Did you think of me? He made a noise at the back of his throat, surprise and desire mingled into a low growl that shot straight to her core and left her wet and wanting. His hands stilled on her body; he gripped her hips, holding her against him as he focused on the kiss. The feel of him against her shifted the memory to that of their first night together with him in his new body. Although she had told herself it was just sex, that they were together because of the library, she’d gone to him because of the reunion they had missed out on, and the heat they’d made together before. She’d been nervous and determined not to show it. And he’d been . . . himself. The outer shell might be different, but the man within was largely the same, with impulsivity offset by intelligence, a checkered history but a fierce focus on the future.

It was that man she kissed now.

“Jade.” He whispered her name against her mouth as she took him deep again, fisting her hands in his hair and giving herself over to the moment and the sensations. And within her, around her, red-

gold sparkled in the air. The world shifted on its axis and stayed shifted.

Easing back, she let her eyes open. And she saw the magic. It was gathered around her, formless red-gold power waiting to be harnessed. She didn’t see glyphs now; she saw the raw shape and flow of the energy that could be bound into a spell, just as she’d seen the barrier energy before, the code beneath the chatter.

Lucius said her name again, this time as a question.

“I’ve got the scribe’s magic,” she said, keeping her voice low, almost a whisper, as though she might somehow scare it away. “I’m going to check for spell structures.”

“You—Oh.”

She couldn’t read his expression, but couldn’t worry about that right now. She didn’t know how long the magic would stay with her, and needed to do her duty. They could deal with the rest of it later. Opening herself to the magic, she started moving around the apartment.

“What are you looking for, exactly?” Lucius followed, watching her scan the room.

“I’ll know it when I . . . Ah! Gotcha.” She ducked into the bedroom. “There’s a bright glow here, a place where the power flow is concentrated.”

“Power flow?”

“You know how Sasha senses life force? I think I’m doing something similar, only with the energy that can be shaped into a spell. Logically, sensing the magic and its structure is probably a requirement of creating a new spell that works structurally. At least, that’s my guess as to why this looks and feels different from the magic I used to tweak the existing fireball spell.”

He took a moment to digest that. “And you think there’s a spell at work in here? I thought Rabbit wasn’t supposed to be able to do magic outside of Skywatch.”

“I’m not sure what I’m seeing, exactly. There are two brighter spots under the bed, or maybe one bright spot and an echo? Let’s see what we’ve got.” She skirted the bed, got down on her hands and knees, and followed the magic sparks to a long cut slit into the underside of the box spring. Gingerly, she reached inside. Her fingers found a reinforced envelope. She drew it out and stared down at it for a moment, wondering whether she was about to do something she would regret.

“Maybe we should take it straight back to Strike,” Lucius suggested.

She was tempted, but shook her head. “I don’t want to bring him something that turns out to be nothing.” Taking a deep breath, she flipped open the envelope and dumped its contents. And stared at the pictures that landed in her palm, quelling an urge to let them fall to the floor. “Okay. Ew.”

She didn’t have anything fundamental against porn. But these photographs were . . . unattractive. It wasn’t just that the guy in them was pudgy and unfit, and had too much hair in some places and not enough in others, either. Her squick factor came more from the sheer lack of artistry as he posed his way through a variety of odd contortions, all of which managed to aim his startlingly erect member at a camera she thought—hoped?—was on autopilot. Even worse was the scanned printout of a paragraph that came off as so demented, it took her a moment to realize she was looking at a very unfortunate personal ad starring the apartment’s primary tenant. The face matched the pics out in the other room.

“He’s trying to get a date? With that?” Lucius sounded like he was caught between horror and laughter.

“Either that or he’s been asked to participate in a psych thesis on why women are staying single longer and longer as the Internet age progresses,” she said dryly. “Okay, that was disturbing.” Stuffing the pictures back in the envelope, she filed the whole mess back in the box spring. “Why in the hell did he hide the photos if he intended to put them online? And why is there a power hot spot?”

“Maybe Rabbit found them and had a good laugh?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“More likely, the magic was attracted to the highly sexualized resonance of the pictures.” He paused, frowning. “Except that the pictures themselves aren’t sexual, unless the guy actually looked at them while he—” He held up a hand. “Okay. Not going there.”

Jade thought it was more likely that the magic was pulled to things and places that carried a significant emotional charge for the user, but it wasn’t the right time for her and Lucius to go there, either. She might be buzzed from the magic and excited by the breakthrough, but she was achingly aware of what she’d given up to get there. She was raw and needy, all too conscious of his every move and breath, and the way his raspy-edged voice brought a long, liquid pull of desire regardless of what he was saying.

Even as nerves sparked at the realization that her defenses against him were far too low, the magic dimmed around her.

“What about the second place you saw? The one you said looked like an echo?”

She shook her head. “It’s gone now.” And so was the magic, which had disappeared when her inner barriers came back up. That was going to be the trade-off, she suspected, and hoped she could find a way to strike a balance between vulnerability and magic.

“Okay, so we do it the old-fashioned way.” They spent the next half hour searching the apartment, focusing on places where her training suggested addicts—and deviants—would hide things they didn’t want their friends, parents, and other authority figures to find. They came up with a big fat nothing, which gave them two positive results to report back to Strike. Although they hadn’t physically put eyes on Rabbit and Myrinne, the landlady said they were around, and the apartment didn’t show any evidence of magic or other misbehavior. And Jade had managed to tap into the scribe’s magic and make it useful.

On the theory that the landlady was guaranteed to say something to Rabbit, Jade pulled a blank sheet of