PHENOMENAL GIRL 5 (25 page)

“Um, yeah,” I said, the wind taken out of my sails. I walked over to where Wesley sat and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hi, Wes.”

He dragged his glance away from the screen and gave me an almost awkward smile. “Oh, good morning. Did you, um, sleep well?”

“Fine!” I blushed, wincing at how shrill that came out.

“That’s…good.” He cleared his throat and looked back to the screen. “Ben and I are making progress on Jihad’s spell. It’s an ancient chaos spell, and part of a series of spells and events—that’s deed magic—to somehow bring the Ancient Ones back. We’re still trying to work that out. And it all ties into that Likghardt prophecy Fantazia was babbling about.” He turned again to look at me, and I realized that the way I was standing, my chest was right at his eye level.

He turned quickly back to the screen and I could see the back of his neck turn red. He cleared his throat. “Um, Ben and I are trying to translate a book that mentions the prophecy right now.”

“Sounds very mysterious,” I said, leaning over his shoulder under the pretense of studying the screen more. Why was he acting so twitchy? “Anything I can do to help?”

“N-no, I think we have it in hand.”

“Are you sure?” Doctor Rath said. “I know she knows nothing of ancient languages, but maybe—”

“But there is something you can do for me,” Wesley said,
interrupting. “If you can call that antiquities dealer in my Rolodex and see if he has any of these books.” He handed me a piece of paper. I took it, brushing his fingers in the process. I swear I saw his face flush before he turned away. “And there’s some correspondence upstairs that needs attending, if you don’t mind.”

“But can’t we let that go while all of this is going on…?”

“It’ll only stack up.”

Okay
. “Anything else?” I asked.

“No, that should be it.” His attention was back on the screen again.

“Do you want to show me where the correspondence is that you want me to respond to?” I asked.
So I can lock you in the library…

“It’s where it normally is.” He looked at me as if I were crazy. “If you have any questions, ask Mayhew.”

“Okay,” I said, defeated. There was no getting through to him when he was in one of these moods.

Over the next couple of days, Wesley and Doctor Rath kept busy in research-mode. I tried to help but had been reduced to errand girl: going to online bidding sites and calling obscure booksellers for even more obscure books. I was always the minion, never the partner—something that really irritated me, despite any developing feelings I might have for Wesley.

And even more frustrating, I didn’t have much time alone with Wesley. When he was awake, Rath was over at the house. They worked around the clock, barely stopping to eat. Our conversations had become very short and businesslike: “Do you need help with that?” “Will you e-mail Master Mage and ask him if he has the Volumes of Ghilyse?” or even “Run upstairs and see if the book on Sumerian dialects is in the library.” Even patrol—a chore that at least one of us had done nightly since I arrived—had ceased. Something was up, but I wasn’t in the loop to know what it was.

The first moment I had alone with Wesley finally occurred in the pool. I was swimming laps, rap music blaring on the speakers: it was my favorite type of music for working out. I had hit my stride when the door opened and Wesley walked in. I touched the wall and continued my lap. I was half-expecting Rath to pop up in his wake.

Finishing the lap, I stopped at the shallow end, whipped off my goggles and swim cap, and leaned back against the
wall, breathing heavy. I glanced over in Wesley’s direction to see him getting into the pool. Shirtless, of course.

I knew I was staring, but I couldn’t help it. His frame was less bulky than Robert’s, leaner, with muscles that were very well defined, though not in a body-sculpted way. He had nicely broad shoulders and a flat stomach.

As much as I was checking him out, he was doing the same. I was glad I’d gone with the two-piece swimsuit instead of my standard black one-piece.

“I like the blue,” he said, as I caught him staring at my chest. He averted his gaze. I smiled at that and started toward the stairs. “Don’t leave on my account, unless you’re sick of me. I know we’ve been nothing but work, work, work lately.”

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure you were even aware of my presence,” I said. “You and Rath have been like a two-man show lately, with me fading off into the background.”

He winced. “I’ve been an awful teacher, I’m sorry. I should be showing you about cross-referencing spell incantations and dialects, not using you like an assistant. This is your fight, too, you’ve been in it from the beginning. And I mustn’t forget that you’re my student. You’re supposed to be learning.”

I didn’t like the student reference. It was as if he was trying to distance us, which was a trick that had made more sense with Robert, not him. “Yes, I’m your assistant and your student, but I’m also supposed to be your partner while I’m training. So I’ll be ready to join the big leagues soon.”

“Not too soon, I hope,” Wesley said, with a slight smile. “I’ve gotten used to having you around.”

“Nice. I’m a familiar piece of furniture.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“I know. You just have absolutely no tact. It’s one of the first things I learned about you—the second being not to mess with you when you’re in the zone,” I said, moving closer to him.

“The what?”

“The zone. When you’re concentrating on solving something, you tune everything else out. An earthquake could happen, fire could break out, I could walk in the room naked and you wouldn’t notice.” I was purposely baiting him to see how he’d react.

Desire sparked in his eyes. “I’d notice that last bit, I’m quite sure.”

“You know what I mean, Wes.”

“I notice a lot of things about you,” he said, and this time he moved closer to me.

Jackpot
. “Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“You like to flirt with me.”

I laughed. “Maybe I’m just a big flirt.”

“You don’t do it with anyone else.”

“What ‘anyone else’? It’s you, me, Mayhew, and Rath, and you’re the only one who’s not over fifty.” I punctuated this with a flirty grin as I moved closer.

He returned it. “No, you like me.”

“Wow, Mister Detective, that’s the sum of your keen detection skills? That I
like
you? That seems obvious—we are friends after all.” I moved so that our bodies were barely inches apart. “Or did you mean that I’ve been waiting to catch you alone in a room since the night you kissed me?” I brought my lips to his in a way that was anything but friendly; it was all heat and passion. He crushed me against him, and I ran my hands down the plane of his chest and around to his back, even as I felt his hands stray down to my butt. I ground my hips into his, nipping his lower lip as I did so. He made a masculine noise into my mouth and his tongue tangled with mine. I thought the water would turn to steam around us.

“Does the door here lock?” I asked against his mouth.

And, of course, that’s when the alarms went off.

“What the hell is that?” he asked.

“Damn it!” I swore, breaking away from him to fly out of the pool and going to the intercom system on the nearby wall.

“Why does this seem oddly familiar?”

I punched the intercom button. “Mayhew, what’s going on?”

A moment later, the system crackled to life and the alarms silenced. “Sorry, Miss Lainey. The new maid tripped the security system.”

I restrained myself from punching a hole in the wall. “I thought World War Three was breaking out.”

“Sorry, Miss Lainey. Is Mister Charles with you? Doctor Rath is here about the visit to the Other Realms.”

“Surprise, surprise. Yeah, I’ll tell him.” I depressed the button and turned to Wesley. “Your other half is here.”

“I forgot about that. Ben’s going to help me ascend to the astral plane to ask the Eternals if they know about this prophecy we’ve uncovered. We think we’ve translated it, but it doesn’t make one-hundred percent sense, so…”

Short answer: Wesley was leaving me, going back to detective work.

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Not really. The monks are kind of particular about who visits. They have a strict celibacy vow and don’t even want women on the grounds, so you’ll have to stay behind.”

“But you’ll be able to tell if we’ve averted the apocalypse or how to stop it?”

“I hope so.”

“Well”—I picked up my towel and wrapped it around myself—“I guess that trumps fooling around in the pool.”

That comment snapped him out of his reflection. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Isn’t that the luck? And just when it was starting to get interesting.”

He walked close and looked at me for a long time, and I could tell he was weighing ditching Rath and staying.

“Wes, it’s okay. Go. Avert the apocalypse,” I said, tossing him a towel. “I’ll go take a cold shower.”

“Not too cold,” he said, running a hand down my waist to
finger the ties on my bikini bottoms, like he was contemplating loosening them. He turned to brush a kiss against my neck, right against my pulse point. I shivered, wanting to throw him against the wall and have at it. He grinned at me, as if he sensed my thought, or more likely had been thinking along similar lines. “I’ll probably not be back until late. We have to travel to holy ground for me to ascend and…”

“I’ll be seeing you sometime tomorrow, is what you’re saying.”

“Likely, yes.”

“Okay, tomorrow it is.” I gave him a sexy smile. “It’s a date.”

His eyes burned again. “I’ll make sure to turn off every alarm in the house.”

“Have fun tripping the cosmos.”

“There’s nothing to do around here, so take a day off and go have some fun. God knows we haven’t had a lot of that.” The way he continued to look at me made me want to grab him and go at it again, but I knew there wasn’t time. That was all I needed, Doctor Rath walking in to find me doing something very inappropriate with my boss. And it wouldn’t be the first time I’d done it.

The first time
. A stab of guilt reminded me that Wesley didn’t know about what had happened when he was Robert. I had told Robert I would remind him, and then Wesley had shown up and we had gotten off to a very bad start. But it didn’t seem right to start something with him we technically had never finished.

“Wes, wait,” I said, reaching out to grab his arm. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“As long as you make it quick.” He brushed a strand of wet hair from my cheek, seeing the look on my face. “Lainey, what’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath. “You remember the night you were reincarnated?”

He nodded. “As best as I can.”

“Well, right before—”

Rath came bursting into the room. “There you are! Are you ready to go?”

I let go of Wesley’s arm and moved away quickly, and got a questioning look from him in return. I waved him on.

“It’s okay, never mind. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Go avert the apocalypse.”

He kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I watched him go, then leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. My hormones were in a crazy state of flux, wanting Wesley but being terrified about springing the history between me and Robert on him.

Tomorrow was going to be interesting, to say the least.

I took my cold shower, which helped somewhat, and went about my daily business.

“Miss Lainey,” Mayhew said, entering the library with a package. “This just came in for Mister Charles.”

I took it and read the label. “It’s one of those odd books he ordered. I’ll take it to the lair.”

I hurried downstairs, my thoughts absent, but when I reached the lair I happened to glance at the computer screen, at what Wes and Rath had been studying. There was something in a language I couldn’t understand, and then a few sentences in Italian:
L’anima pura sarà consumata dalla mano del drago. L’anima impura lo ristabilirà con se e un sacrificio. Ciò condurrà il senso affinchè il drago apra il portal a quei antichi.

My newfound Italian skills worked out the translation.
The pure soul will be consumed by the hand of the Dragon. The impure soul will restore it with itself as a sacrifice. This shall lead the way for the Dragon to open the portal to the Ancient Ones.

It was the apocalypse spell! It sounded like my soul being eaten and Robert’s sacrifice weren’t coincidence!

Another mention of the pure and impure soul, then more
unknown language, then:
La lucescura trasporterà il mondo a nerezza
. Translation:
The Darklight will deliver the world to darkness.
And then there was more of the same crazy foreign language.

I gasped. Were Wesley and I going to somehow bring about the apocalypse? It certainly sounded so. But how? Maybe that was what he was trying to find out on this trip.

Another phrase I could translate caught my eye.
L’alimen-tazione del drago sarà indebolita da un sacrificio nobile.
Or:
The Dragon’s power will be weakened by a noble sacrifice
. Was someone going to have to die to stop what Wesley and I were unwittingly starting?

I dropped the book on the table and hurried back upstairs, my thoughts in a whirl. Was one of us going to have to sacrifice ourselves to stop the Dragon? I knew with Wes-ley’s powers, he would suggest himself, but God, I didn’t know if I could go through that again. And, as he had said before, there was no guarantee this wouldn’t be his last life. Dying as part of a noble sacrifice to stop the apocalypse sounded pretty permanent.

But we were heroes; surely we could find a way to stop this before it go that far, right? And if we couldn’t figure out what we were supposed to be doing that would bring the apocalypse, then maybe…

Maybe we shouldn’t be together.

His mouth trailed delicate kisses down my body. I sighed with pleasure.

“Don’t stop.”

He laughed. “Your wish is my command,
cara
.”