Blood Spells

“Bullshit.” He didn’t want to think their marriage had been nothing more than an extended case of pre-talent hornies.

“Is it? The timing fits.” Her expression was closed and sad. Resigned.

As part of their transition from childhood to full-fledged magehood, Nightkeeper youngsters experienced wild hormonal fluctuations in the weeks leading up to their talent ceremonies. Most of the current magi had gotten their bloodline marks as adults, followed two weeks later by their talent marks. During those two weeks, they had paired off in some serious sexual marathons, trying to burn off the horns.

All except for him and Patience, who had gotten a contact high off the others, but hadn’t really experienced the same sexual urges. Maybe because they’d been living with those urges for the the past four years and mistaking them for love?

No. Impossible. Closing the small distance between them, he took her hand in his, feeling the kick of warmth, the soft strength of her, and the faintest of tremors that told him she felt the heat too, despite all their problems.

Her eyes met his, darkening as he unbuttoned her cuff and pushed back her sleeve, trailing his fingers up the smooth skin of her inner wrist to touch the stark black jun tan glyph.

“This didn’t come from hormones, damn it.” His voice was low, rough. “It means that we’re gods-

destined mates. It wasn’t a coincidence that we met on that beach, and it sure as shit wasn’t by accident that we found our way into that cave. The gods chose us for a reason; they put us together for a reason.”

“Maybe this is it.” Eyes shadowed, expression unreadable, she linked their fingers, stepped away, and tugged him in the direction of “their” hotel, where Jox had reserved them a room. “Come on.

We’ve got a job to do.”

The hotel was way tackier than Brandt remembered. Way, way tackier.

The formerly understated mission style had been replaced with brightly patterned serapes, velveteen sombreros, and lacquered castanets tacked to the walls, along with drink advertisements and prominent signs pointing to the cantina, and some decent prints that leaned heavily on festival and mariachi themes.

It wasn’t until they got up to the desk and he saw a stand-up display of brochures that he realized the prints had something else in common: They all had brides and grooms in them. The place had been turned into a wedding factory.

“‘Mariachi wedding packages,’” Patience read, sliding him a look. “Seriously?”

Her expression invited him to lighten things back up. More, it practically begged him to. I’m trying to be strong, her look said. Help me out.

His chest tightened at the sight, and at the realization that for all the times he had wished she could be more like an eagle and focus on her duties, the change saddened him, and made him very aware of the souvenirs he was carrying.

But she’d had a point—they had a job to do. So he played along.

He flicked one of the brochures. “The economy’s in the crapper. If the shtick works, more power to them.” Still, it was disconcerting that their hotel had gone from three-star anonymity to a chapel-

slash-reception-hall that offered four different themes that he read off the brochure. “Sexy Spanish, Enduring Elvis, Beach Bash, and Mayan Adventure. Guess they couldn’t come up with anything alliterative to go with ‘Mayan.’”

“Mayhem?”

“Works for me. Not sure if that was quite what they were going for, though.”

Her relieved grin not only thanked him for following her lead; it quashed his fleeting urge to bag it and head for more romantically neutral territory. So when the couple in front of them moved aside, he exchanged plastic for a couple of key cards.

In the elevator, the Muzak was mariachi, the posters pimped the cantina, and the wall-to-wall was a muted tan with a pair of red footprints smack in the center in a faux-Mayan pattern. Brandt avoided standing on the prints, as did Patience. To the Maya, those woven footprints had symbolized leadership. When the king had stood on the footprints, it meant “Listen up. I’m about to say something important.” That the symbol had been transferred to an elevator seemed—

“Tacky,” commented Patience, finishing his thought as the doors opened on their floor and they headed for the end of the hall.

“No kidding. I’m almost afraid to see what the room looks like.” He stuck one of the key cards into its slot, and pushed open the door. “What do you think? Are we going to get a heart-shaped bed, a full champagne-and- strawberries spread, or maybe—?”

He flipped on the lights and broke off when their reflections blazed back at him. Swallowing hard at the noncoincidence of it all, he finished, “Or maybe mirrors.”

There were mirrors on three walls, windows on the fourth. The dressers were glossy black with mirrored edging, glass tops, and reflective knobs. Even the headboard was mirrored, though with beveling—to make a stab, he supposed, at taste. Neutral-colored drapes hung at the corners of the room, looped back with tasseled gold braid.

From the looks of the curtain rods, the drapes could be pulled across the walls, dampening the effect of the mirrors, which was pretty damned startling when his and Patience’s images were reflected back at them from what seemed like a hundred different surfaces.

As Brandt stared into his own eyes, the faint background hum of magic—the one that sounded different to him there than anywhere else in the Mayan territories—quivered slightly and increased in volume.

“Let me guess—they got the ceiling too,” she said from half a step behind him, her voice betraying a faint tremor, though he wasn’t sure if that came from nerves or half-hysterical laughter. Or both.

Overhead, mirrored ceiling tiles gave way to a huge mirror hung over the king-sized bed.

Swallowing at the thought of what the mirrors were meant to show, he nodded. “You know, we should probably be laughing about this. It is way tacky.”

But it wasn’t laughter that heated his blood as he turned to face Patience, and it wasn’t amusement that lit her eyes.

It was heat. Desire. Magic. And a certain sense of inevitability.

There was power in the air, in their reflections. And when she lifted her hands to frame his face, there was magic in her touch, and in the brush of her breasts against his chest when he gripped the curves of her hips to draw her closer still. Their bodies fit together perfectly, bringing an ache of memory. Yes, said something deep inside him as his blood fired and his body hardened. Oh, hell, yes.

Their images were reflected at dozens of different sizes and angles. She was light to his dark, lean to his bulk, but as he angled down and she rose up to meet him, their reflections merged and blended, becoming one intertwined blur of light and dark as they kissed.

The first touch of their lips drew him tight and sent flames rocketing through his body. The second kiss, coming with a gentle slide of tongue, eased some of the hollowness within him even as a new, far more demanding urge built. His fingers dug into her hips, latching her body to his as he went in for kiss number three, taking it blatantly carnal with a thrust of tongue and a slow grind that said: Here.

Now. Mine.

After that, he couldn’t count, couldn’t think. He could only feel and react, and take what she offered him, then demand more. He kissed her throat as she caught his earlobe in her teeth and sent heat hammering through him. His hands raced over her clothing, then under to find soft skin.

She hissed and tugged at his shirt, and then they were wrestling out of their clothes on their way to the bed, while his head spun with lust and the relief of finally being where he was supposed to be, there and then, with her.

Naked, he pressed her up against the bedpost, which ran all the way to the ceiling and was bolted firmly in place. Not letting himself think too hard about what acrobatics might have prompted that engineering decision, he cupped her breasts up against his face as he pressed butterfly kisses between them.

The past and present collided and then meshed, becoming a singular “now” composed of sensations and moves that were familiar yet not.