Kindling the Moon (20 page)

“I don't think so. I just noticed it on the last couple of retrieval ones.”

“Uh, maybe I could just get myself, you know, privately …?” I suggested. I regretted it immediately, and felt my face flush with warmth. What the hell was I going to do? Ask Lon if he had any porn I could borrow and hole up in his library's washroom?

“Did you read this part?” He pointed. I read.

The spell instructions claimed that “shared sexual arousal” between the participants was required so that a tight “energy link” is formed. Otherwise, the process would be too jarring and “memory leak, further loss, or permanent damage” could occur.

“Oh, well,” I said, “it was worth a try.”

He looked at me challengingly with his arms crossed over his chest. “Don't think I can arouse you?” I froze. Maybe he was joking. “Or is it that you're afraid you can't arouse me?”

“Uh …” The word
arouse
coming out of his mouth made my nostrils widen. I took a long step backward. Must get out of range ASAP.

“Too late,” he said with a dark smile.

I gritted my teeth and made a face. “Goddammit,” I mumbled under my breath.

“It's not a sex spell that requires … completion,” he said. “We don't need to have sex, just stimulation.” At that moment, I truthfully wasn't opposed to either, but I didn't want him to know that. I stepped back again. “And we just need your fluids, not mine.” He moved forward again, thwarting my attempt at retreat. “It's up to you.”

“Why is it up to me?”

“Because … your memories, not mine.”

“Oh, that's right.”

“Your sexual fluids, not mine.”

For the love of God, would he please stop saying that?

“Don't find me attractive?” he challenged playfully. “Not young and hip enough for you?”

“I … uh …” My heart hammered. “Jupe told me that you thought I was too young for
you
.”

He stepped forward again, dragging the open book along the edge of the desk. “Hmm … I don't recall saying that.”

“Memory loss is the first sign of aging.”

“I'm not the one with memory problems, am I?”

I laughed nervously.

“Come here.”

“No.”

“Come here … please?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

I took a hesitant step toward him.

“Closer.”

Again.

“Closer,” he commanded in a low voice.

Screw it,
I thought, and complied, this time boldly positioning myself so close, a piece of paper couldn't slide between us. I lifted my face toward him, daring. He put two fingers on the side of my chin and gently tilted my face sideways and down to the desk.

“Here's the spell. It's in Latin,” he said in an even, professional tone.

I glanced down at the book, eyes scanning over the page but not reading. His hand came into view as he pointed to the incantation words, tapping on the page.

“Yep,” I said, discreetly licking my lips.

“You need to be thinking about that memory you're missing when I say the spell.”

“All right.”

“As for the mutual arousal, a kiss would be easiest,” he suggested. “Have you ever kissed a demon?”

“Yeah …” A couple, actually. Same as kissing a human, in my experience. Humans dated and married Earthbounds every day, with or without the human half of the pair realizing exactly whom they were dating. As I said before, Human-Earthbound unions produced human children, so unless their demon mate had an exceptional knack that was impossible to ignore, they could live out their entire lives thinking that they were in love with another human. Myself, I dated an Earthbound once; before anything juicy happened between us, I found out that his knack was the ability to seduce. Umm, no thanks. At least the guy had been honest about it.
I remembered this, then told Lon the first honest thing that came to mind, “I've kissed an Earthbound, but I've never kissed a man with a mustache.”

Lon found this extremely amusing, and we both fought back laughter. A quick joy spread over me. It was so pleasant to be enjoying his mood, no grunting or growling or trying to guess what his motives were. And it was exhilarating, being so close to him; my heart kicked wildly inside my chest.

Then he stopped smiling, and his eyes slowly blinked and drooped lower. He gingerly brushed my hair away from my face with the tips of his fingers.

I craned my neck to meet him halfway. Warmth flooded between my thighs before our mouths even made contact.

His lips were much softer than I expected, and he tasted like valrivia smoke. I don't remember closing my eyes, but I must have. His mustache grazed my skin, but I quickly became accustomed to it; either that, or I was distracted by the way his tongue filled my mouth and rolled with mine in slow waves. Or the way goose bumps rushed over my arms. Or maybe even how warm his skin felt under my fingers as they mysteriously found their way under his T-shirt to trace the line of golden hair that ran down his stomach.

Somewhere in the back of my head I knew we'd long ago accomplished our goal, but I was genuinely surprised when my knees gave out, and a small moan escaped my mouth as I slipped away from him. He made a quick grab and steadied me, hands circling my waist. That had never happened to me before, and I sure as hell didn't want him to know that, but he probably sensed my surprise so it didn't really matter.

By that point, I'd forgotten all about the memory spell. He began kissing me again, then forced himself back with a groan and spun me around to face away from him. He pinned
me between his chest and the desk, slinging an arm around my shoulders to hold me tight as his erection pressed against my lower back.

He pushed my hair away from my shoulders and settled his chin in the crook of my neck.

“So …” he whispered huskily in my ear, “we've discovered that you can arouse me.” He demonstrated this fact by pressing harder against me, just in case I'd forgotten. “However, we don't know about you. And there is the small matter of Heka.”

His free hand moved to the button of my jeans, which he deftly maneuvered open with a quick flick. My zipper followed. Then his hand slid into my jeans, under my panties, and kept going until his fingers slid unexpectedly and we both breathed in sharply. When he found the right spot, I moaned, and he made a small noise of happy discovery. He flattened two stroking fingers against my sensitive flesh. My hips couldn't make up their mind whether they wanted to move forward on his fingers or backward to arch against him, so they alternated repetitively between the two.

Then he unexpectedly broke away, deserting his efforts between my legs and withdrawing his hand. I moaned again, this time in disappointment.

He cleared his throat. “All right. Ready?”

“Oh, yes,” I chirped with great enthusiasm, temporarily mistaken about what I was agreeing to. My brain was having trouble adjusting.

His fingers glistened as they swept over the sigil, leaving behind the Heka needed to charge the spell; so much for the pristine edition of his rare grimoire. When he spoke the incantation, his voice cracked, then settled. His Latin was flawless—as good as mine, if not better. I scrambled to focus
on the lost memory that I was trying to recapture, and when the last of his Latin tumbled out, I realized why the spell was called The Wheel.

His energy poured into me in a steady torrent. I felt it, recognized it as his. Such a strange feeling, almost as intimate as sex, and something I'd never experienced. It mixed with my Heka, then left me in a rush, just as if I'd pushed it out intentionally. The energy link. That was what the instructions for the spell had meant. Our combined energy moved in a circle, gathering strength and speed as magick circulated between us. His arms wrapped around me, and mine around them, and we held on to each other like we were in the middle of a tornado, trying to ride out the spinning storm.

A flood of jagged, partial memories surfaced and faded, each one vying for attention. Flashes of faces. Fragments of sentences. My old life returning after years of sitting idle under a layer of dust. Streams of hot, silent tears spilled over my cheeks, but I wasn't sure why.

Then it became painful. Wrenching. The magical wheel was off-track. Colors blurred into blackness and my mind felt as if it were being bulldozed from the inside out. I strained to break away and heard Lon groaning to do the same. Without warning, the spell derailed completely, and the shock of it threw us backward together. The room reappeared in my bleary vision as I slammed against him. We hit the shelves behind us so hard, a row of books flew out and rained down on our heads as we tumbled to the floor.

I gasped for air and struggled to untangle myself from Lon as someone called in the distance. Three loud knocks pounded on the locked library door. Apparently now home from school, Jupe spoke in a muffled voice from the other side.

“Dad? What was that loud noise? Is Cady here? Her rental car is outside.” He pounded on the door again. “Are you guys okay? What just happened?”

I wondered the same thing as I zipped up my jeans with shaking hands.

“Well, Mr. Piggy, it looks like I'm going to be your second mommy for a few days.” Kar Yee bent down to open the door to my hedgie's crate and reached inside to pull him out. The two long locks of hair on either side of her face were a little messy. It was early; she hadn't tweaked them into points yet.

“You sure you don't mind?” I asked, plopping down on the white couch in her living room. Everything in her apartment was white, cream, or gold. Not my taste, but her stuff was way nicer and cleaner than mine, so I couldn't really complain.

She held Mr. Piggy up to her face and inspected him critically, one eye squinting. I was a little worried that he would take a nip at her for doing that, but he behaved. He obviously knew he needed to make a good impression.

“He can stay in his crate while I'm at work. I'll put up his pen in the kitchen and let him get some exercise while I'm at home.” She tucked him under her arm and lazily plodded over to an armchair. “If he pisses on anything, he's getting locked up in the bathroom.”

It wasn't the piss she had to worry about; he was a poop
machine, but I didn't want to remind her about this or she might change her mind. “There's plenty of dry food in that clear container, and he can go without crickets for a week, so you don't have to feed him those.”

“Good, because I wouldn't.”

“But give him a little fruit once a day. I already cut it up into cubes for you.”

“Yes, yes. Quit being a worrywart. He's a hedgehog, not a baby. I'll manage.”

I sat cross-legged on the couch but unfolded my legs when she gave me a disapproving look. “My shoes aren't dirty, you know.”

She clearly disagreed. “So you need a week off from work. Go ahead and tell me what to expect.”

“Huh?”

“The trouble you're in. Is it boy trouble or family? Or did you steal something?”

I laughed. “No stealing. I guess it's … family trouble.”

“How can a woman whose parents are dead have so much family trouble?”

When I first met Kar Yee, I told her my parents had died in a plane crash, a hard lie to maintain when you're continually worried about two people whom you should have buried and mourned years before; but as the years went by, it became second nature.

“It's trouble with my godfather,” I said. Not completely a lie. “And trouble involving magick.”

Lon had gotten us a meeting with an evidence tech who worked for the Portland police department. When Lon had called earlier that morning to tell me this, he'd carefully avoided discussing the sex magick we'd done in his library yesterday afternoon, just asked me if everything was “okay”
on my end. I took that to mean that he was curious if the spell had awakened any buried memories (which it hadn't). After telling him this, he bluntly informed me what time he'd pick me up to drive to the airport, then hung up.

It was a quick flight to Portland—just a couple of hours—so we were going up and back today. But there were now only five days left before the Luxe deadline, and I didn't feel I could spare anything for work. I wanted to use every bit of my time to help Lon research the albino demon. Even if we were somehow able to persuade the evidence technician to let us borrow the glass talon, we still couldn't do anything without the demon's summoning name.

Kar Yee drew up her mouth as she stroked Mr. Piggy. “You are the most guarded person I've ever met, Cady. I think you have some black luck following you around.”

“You have no idea,” I muttered.

“You might be unlucky, but I don't think you're a bad seed, or I wouldn't be in business with you, no matter how long we've known each other.”

That was true. Money was a very serious matter to her.

“But I think you need to get rid of what's dragging you down,” she said. “Tear it out by the roots and be done with it. You should be happy, enjoying life.” She held up her hand and began holding up fingers. “One, you have a good job—”

“I don't know if I'd call it good, exactly.”

“It's good, trust me. And two, you are a smart and fair sorcerer—”

“Sometimes.”

“—and three, you are very pretty, for a white American.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Your life should be better than it is.”

Kar Yee always had a way of cutting something down to
its simplest form. She was right: my life should be better. And I was unlucky. It wasn't my fault, but it wouldn't get cleared up by itself.

“Kar Yee,” I argued.

“Don't ‘Kar Yee' me. Just listen and make the right changes. When you come back to get Mr. Piggy and return to work, I expect to see you smiling.”

I sighed and watched her run her nails through Mr. Piggy's spiny coat. “I hope I come back smiling too.” I mainly just hoped I came back.