Blood Spells

He started getting dressed, but by the time she got to the part about Anna and Mendez being the second and third Triad magi, he was sitting on the side of the mattress in his jeans, with a T-shirt wadded in one hand, forgotten, while she described her card-sparked hunch on the etznab spell, and using it to put them both into the vision of their first night together.

“I don’t know why we didn’t stay through to the end,” she finished. “I didn’t see anything that had to do with owing anybody anything.” She paused. “Or am I on the wrong track? Do you think there’s something else you’re supposed to remember?”

How am I supposed to know if I’ve forgotten it? He stifled the sarcasm, though. It wasn’t her fault he’d lost twelve hours that felt like days, just like it wasn’t her fault that he couldn’t wrap his head around the way she was acting.

He’d spent the past two and a half years wishing she would let them concentrate on being Nightkeepers. Now that she was doing exactly that, he found himself wanting to hash out the sex, and why it’d felt the way it had. What they could do to keep that connection.

He really was a dick sometimes.

Focus. Exhaling, he pulled on the T-shirt, then stood to tuck it in. He caught a hint of her scent — their scent—but didn’t let himself acknowledge the tug it brought. “I don’t know what debt the nahwal was talking about, but I think you’re right. It makes sense that it’d be something about that night.” He paused. “The thing is . . . when I was stuck in the Triad magic, I kept looping through a different memory.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Something you had forgotten?”

He shook his head. “No. It was there all along, just not in the front of my brain. But the thing is, there were debts owed. I thought I handled it right . . . but maybe not.”

“Was it—” She held up a hand, cutting herself off. “Wait. This shouldn’t be just the two of us. Let’s go get Jade and Lucius, and see if the others are back yet. And you should get some real food into you.”

Part of Brandt wanted it to just be the two of them, the perfect team they had once been. He didn’t understand why a relationship that had worked so right out in the human world had gone so wrong inside Skywatch. It didn’t make sense.

And he had to get his head back in the game. “Yeah. I could go for a breakfast meeting.”

But as they left the suite and the last dregs of warmth from the vision-memory drained away, he found himself wishing he could go back to being the man he’d been on the beach that night, hunting down the blonde he’d glimpsed earlier in the day because somehow, deep down inside, he had known that she was meant to be his mate.

“Shit.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Headache.”

Keeping her tattered version of a warrior ’s detachment wrapped tightly around her heart, Patience led the way to the main mansion.

When they came through the arched doorway leading to the great room, her steps hitched slightly at the sight of the packed kitchen. Strike, Leah, and Jox sat at one end of the breakfast bar, looking tired and strung out. Lucius, Jade, Rabbit, and Myrinne were at the other end, deep in conversation, while Izzy, Shandi, and Tomas moved around the kitchen.

At the sound of Patience’s and Brandt’s footsteps, Strike’s head came up and his cobalt eyes lit briefly. “Brandt. Thank the gods.”

“Hold that thought. I don’t have the magic yet.”

The king’s expression flattened, but he said only, “You’re still better off than the other two.”

Patience’s stomach clutched. “Is Anna . . . ?”

“She’s alive.” Strike scrubbed both hands over his face, which did nothing to erase the strain etched in the deep lines beside his mouth and the dark circles beneath his eyes. “The neurosurgeons relieved the pressure and repaired what they could, but . . .” When he trailed off, Leah reached over and took his hand; their fingers interlaced, caught, and held. “If Sasha hadn’t been there, I don’t think she would’ve made it through surgery. She and Michael stayed behind to keep an eye on things.” His lips twitched. “Rabbit did a little mind-bending on Anna’s husband, retroactively intro-ing him to the family. He thinks he’s known Sasha and me for years.” The smile drained. “He was psyched to leave Sasha with waiting-room duty and bugger off.”

“Dick.” The word came from Lucius, and was both the man’s name and a comment on his character.

Oh, Anna. Sometimes Patience had envied the other woman for having an outside life, a choice to make, and the guts to make it. Sometimes she had resented her for it. But she had never, even in the deepest depths of her blackest moods, wished for something like this. “The etznab spell helped me bring Brandt around. It might be worth trying on Anna.”

Strike shook his head. “We can’t do anything until she’s medically stable. Magic can only go so far

. . . at least within our tenets.” His lips twisted in a bitter smile as he quoted from one of the codices Lucius had recently finished translating. “‘A Nightkeeper shall not raise the dead, lest the barrier rift asunder.’” Leah tightened her grip on him. “She’s not going to die. Sasha’s going to help her find her way back.”

“Gods, I hope so.” Strike nodded to Carlos as the stocky ex-wrangler winikin slid him a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. While the others dug into their breakfasts, he continued: “As for Mendez, Nate and Alexis found him unconscious in his flop. They’re bringing him back now. There’s still no sign of his winikin.”

“So the Triad spell not only didn’t give us any Triad magi—it hurt Anna and is forcing us to bring Mendez into the compound,” Brandt said sourly. “If that was the will of the gods, then the gods are—”

“Sit your butt down and eat,” Carlos interrupted, fixing Brandt with a look.

Brandt exhaled and sat. After a moment, Patience took her place beside him. The breakfast bar wasn’t designed for so many people, which meant that the two of them had to sit very close together, bumping at hip and thigh.

Seeming unaware of the warmth that gathered at those points of contact, Brandt said, “After the firebird’s ghost nailed me and the nahwal did its overlapping thing, I blacked out. When I woke up, I was eighteen years old, and I was trapped inside a crashed BMW with a busted leg, screaming my fucking head off as the car sank in Pine Bend River.”

Patience frowned at him. “When I asked you about the scars on your leg, and why you limp when you’re really tired, you said you were in an accident in college, that it was no big deal.”

He didn’t meet her eyes. “I might’ve downplayed it. Wasn’t something I liked remembering.”

Another lie, she thought. There had been so many of them back then, when they had both been playing human. “Go on.”

“It was my freshman year at Dartmouth. Joe and I stayed with Dewey and his parents during winter break, because they were local and we could get back to campus from his house. Joe and Dewey were both on the football team and wanted to get in some extra workouts, play a little hockey, and I . . .” He paused. “I guess I just wasn’t ready to go home yet. College was . . . different.”

That part Patience got. She remembered the freedom of being on her own for a change, with no winikin telling her to be better, to try harder, that her parents had died saving the world.

Brandt continued: “Dewey’s dad let us use his Beemer—it was sweet, borderline vintage, and could go like hell on the straightaways. Dewey was a good driver, though. The accident wasn’t his fault. The bridge was fine when we went out, and it wasn’t even that cold . . . but there was a slick spot at exactly the wrong place. The car spun out, went over the railing, and we ended up in the river. I must’ve blacked out for a minute, because I don’t remember going over or hitting the water. Everything cut out after we hit the pylon. Anyway, I woke up alone, headed downstream in the Beemer, saw the other guys in the water and started yelling for help.”

He described using the hockey stick to hit the horn, then the ensuing race between his rescuers and the water level in the car while he fought to free himself, nearly ripping his leg off in the process. “I blacked out again, and the next thing I remember is waking up, lying near a boat landing. Alone.” His voice was flat, his expression unreadable. “I was so fucking cold, and my leg hurt so bad, that I wanted to curl up right there and go to sleep. But I heard Wood’s voice in my head, telling me to get my ass up, that I was too damned important to die like that. So I busted a branch off a piece of deadfall to use as a crutch, and hauled myself up to the road, where I flagged