Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies (5 page)

Everything else would just have to wait.

This was my third session in the pool. The first time had been a total fail, with some hilarious in retrospect almost-suffocation. Nothing like trying to figure out a water-breathing spell and accidentally making it so you can’t breathe air normally anymore.

I was better now. Magic for sorcerers is something we are, not just something we do. Unlike a witch or warlock or other human spell-user, we own the raw power—we
are
the raw power. Which meant if I could conceive of it and channel enough power into it, whatever
it
was, I could make it happen.

The mental game was the issue. We’re raised with laws. Laws of physics. Laws of nature. Laws about how we can move, what we can do, say, act. Some of these things are flimsy, like human laws about not killing or cheating on your wife or whatever. Some things, like the law of gravity, are pretty strong and without some kind of other force acting on them can’t be broken by just anyone.

I can break the rules, but only if I can convince myself I can and summon enough power to do so. That’s where my upbringing as a teen with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons had come in handy. As I came into my power, my adoptive family had used the only things available to make sense of what I could do, the only real manual we knew of that talked about magic. DnD is fake, of course. It’s a game, like many I love and play. In the hands of most people, the spells contained in it are useless. You got to have magic to make magic.

I
am
magic. It’s like an extra muscle only I, and others like me, are born with. The more I work with it, use it, the stronger I become.

Which is why I was spending my Friday morning sitting at the bottom of the Juniper College pool, my hair tucked uncomfortably into a swim cap, breathing chlorinated water like it was air, and practicing turning the top of the pool into ice lances and melting them again. Keeping the water-breathing spell and the ice spells going at the same time felt good—a challenge, but not as bad as it had been last week. I was making progress. How this would help against Samir, I had no idea, but I figured the more power I used, the more control I developed, the better.

The trick hadn’t been figuring out how to breathe in water. That proved pretty simple, just an act of channeling the power into my lungs, bringing my will in line with the magic. It’s magic, after all. It’s supposed to do crazy shit without scientific, detailed explanations. No, the real issue had been convincing my body that breathing in water wasn’t the worst idea ever. Biological conditioning of tens of thousands of years of evolution said that human lungs breathing in water was a terrible idea. Once I convinced my body that it wasn’t going to die horribly, once I forced myself to take that first awful, scary, wet breath, it got a lot easier.

Morpheus was totally right.
There is no spoon
.

I was feeling pleased with myself until a twelve-foot white tiger dropped into the pool. He splashed heavily into the water and swam down, staring at me with open eyes and his nostrils pinched shut like a seal’s. I would have freaked out more, but I recognized Alek’s tiger form.

With as much dignity as I could summon while sitting at the bottom of a pool in a swimsuit and cap, I let myself rise to the surface, clearing the water from my lungs before I transitioned out of the spell and back to breathing air. Reluctantly I let go of my magic and climbed out onto the side of the pool.

Tiger-Alek leapt out of the water and shook himself before shifting in less than a blink back to his human form. He wasn’t even damp, his blond hair loose and fluffy, his black sweater and cargo pants clean and dry.

“I could have accidentally speared you with ice,” I said, glaring to make sure he knew I was still mad.

“I’d live,” he said with a shrug.

“Ezee still out there? He just let you in, didn’t he?” I grabbed my towel from off the bleachers and wrapped it around myself, aware of how nearly naked I was.

“Yes,” Alek said. “He wisely did not argue.”

He’s a shifter
, I wanted to say.
He wouldn’t argue with a Justice anyway
. Those words sounded petty to me, and I held them back. Looking around, I noticed a silvery shimmer on the walls. Alek was shielding the room, so at least Ezee wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on whatever we said to each other. Small blessings.

I pulled on a green thermal long-sleeved teeshirt over my damp suit and then struggled into my jeans. I didn’t want to talk to Alek without a proper amount of clothing on. I couldn’t trust my hormones around him and we really needed to figure shit out before we just jumped back into bed.

If we jumped into bed again. My libido was making a lot of assumptions.

“Is Wolf here?” Alek asked, moving over to sit beside me on the bleachers.

He was talking about my spirit protector, one of the Undying, a guardian of the old gods. I had named her Wolf when I was four after she showed up and carried me to safety out of a mineshaft where my cousins had abandoned me.

“She’s around,” I said. She was usually around, though I couldn’t see her at the moment. In the days following the disaster at Three Feathers, I’d worried that Wolf would abandon me, but she hadn’t. As I’d lain in bed despondent and unhappy, she’d crashed on the floor, a huge black presence that occasionally sighed and looked at me with eyes full of stars. She’d disappeared about an hour before Harper showed up, gave me the pep talk, and dragged me out of bed. I hadn’t asked Harper, but I had a feeling that Wolf might have fetched her.

Alek just nodded, not explaining why he had even asked. I pulled my swim cap off, shook out my hair, and moved into a cross-legged position facing him. I snagged a braid tie from my pocket and started finger-combing and braiding my waist-length hair into some semblance of order.

“So,” I said. “You didn’t call.”

“So,” he said. “You didn’t call.”

We both cracked weak smiles. I started to speak but he reached out with one hand, as though to touch my cheek, but he stopped short and withdrew it, curling his fingers into a fist in his lap.

“I do not like being away from you,” he said. I raised an eyebrow at that but let him go on. “I have been with women before but never for long. Always, I had to leave. I am a Justice first. I cannot let attachments to people or place interfere.” His tone implied old hurt, old pains. I wondered who else, or where else, he’d left that he regretted.

“Did I ask you to stay? Did I ever tell you not to do your job?” I asked, unable to stay silent.

“You did last night,” he said.

“That’s isn’t fair, Alek. You covered up a crime. You basically said that the potential death of a shifter is more important than the actual pain and suffering of a human family.”

“Because it is,” he said, his voice so soft it was nearly lost in the plink and shush of water in the pool. “I am a Justice. This is what I do, who I am. I serve the Council. I protect shifters. I keep them safe, alive, hidden. Unless they cross the line. Then I kill them.” His eyes were hard chips of blue ice, his mouth tight and drawn as he stared at me. “Last night, those bodies, the death. It shocked you. Upset you, no?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“It doesn’t upset me anymore,” he said, looking away from me, eyes fixed on the water. “I saw that dead child and all I can see are problems that require solutions. The need to find the killer is there, yes, but all I see is that I will have to kill again. Take another life for a life, and in the end there will be only death. My job is not a matter of how many die, only a balance of how many I can save.”

“That’s…” I said, then hesitated. “Awful.” It made a strange sense to me and that feeling twisted me up inside. Part of me understood what he meant. Part of me was horrified by this.

He reached into his shirt and fingered the silver feather. “This is the feather of Maat—do you know the legend?”

I nodded. Maat was an Egyptian goddess of justice and truth. Lore had it that when you died your heart was weighed against her ostrich feather. If your heart was lighter than the feather or the scales balanced, you were good and could go on to whatever reward awaited. I’d forgotten what that reward or place was supposed to be. If you were bad, another god would eat your heart and your soul would be stuck in limbo.

Thinking about it, there were some creepy parallels to sorcerers. I thought about Bernie’s memories and power, which I’d gained by eating his heart. Had I consumed his soul? Trapped him in some weird limbo? Ick. Definitely wasn’t going to dwell on that right then.

“I look at it,” Alek said, still turning the silver talisman over and over in his long fingers. “And I wonder if my heart would balance the scale. Then I look at you, and I wonder if there could be more to life than killing, if I could be both man and Justice.” Deep sorrow and confusion lined his face for a moment as he looked up from the feather and met my gaze.

There were things he wasn’t telling me, words I could almost hear in between the ones he spoke, but what he had said resonated. I was afraid of the same things. I was used to being alone, to doing what I thought was best for me and me only. Doing whatever I thought would keep me safe from hurt, any kind of hurt. And I worried about killing, worried about how it didn’t bother me like I felt it should.

“It wasn’t Sky Heart’s death that bothers me,” I said. “It was the collateral, the mistakes I made.” I knew I wasn’t explaining my leap in logic and topic well, or really at all, but Alek slid his hands over mine.

“There are many choices we must make,” he said. “Things we have to try to balance. You saved them. Without you, many more would have died. Without you, your sister would have been thrown from that cliff by her grandfather, as so many others were before her.”

“But better than worst isn’t good enough,” I said. “Fuck, I’m talking in tongue-twisters. I really wanted to just yell at you, you know. I had a speech planned.”

“Liar,” he murmured, his mouth creeping into a smile as though against his will.

“We’re a mess.” I turned my hands beneath his, touching his palm to palm. He felt so warm, so alive. Even through the chlorinated vapors coming off the pool, I smelled him—vanilla and that Alek-specific musk that was wild, comforting, and all him.

“I am not good at relationships,” he said. “But I want to try. I want to stay, as long as I can.”

“I suck at this, too,” I said. “I mean, the last guy I was with is currently treating me like his emotional chew toy in prep for smacking me down and nomming my heart.”

“I will strive to set a better example,” Alek said, his smile stronger, enough so that I could almost forget the deep sadness and confusion he had shown only moments before. Almost.

“Next time, call,” I said, squeezing his hands. “Or email. I’m not picky.”

“I promise,” he said. He leaned forward and brushed his lips over mine. The kiss was a promise too, but it ended quickly, and I bit back a groan. It was good we didn’t start making out, I suppose. My mouth still tasted like pool water.

There were so many things that I didn’t know yet about him. But maybe this was a real beginning—maybe even someone as fucked up as I was could make a relationship. I guess I shouldn’t have expected it to be uncomplicated.

“So,” I said after a far too comfortable moment just holding hands and staring at each other. “Where is your gun?” I had noticed he wasn’t wearing it the night before, but hadn’t had time to ask. It seemed odd to me he wouldn’t have it.

“That is a long story,” he said, his tone making it clear he had no desire to tell the story at the moment. “I have not replaced it yet.”

Hint taken, I changed the topic somewhat. “Any news on the latest psycho killing people in my town?”

“No.” The way he said the word made it clear how much that frustrated him. “There are many wolves to talk to, spread out all over. I will go and continue questioning them, but I have to be careful. No one knows yet what has happened and the knowledge getting out in the wrong way could jeopardize the Peace.”

“What about the other Justice in town?” I asked. “She know anything?”

Alek’s hands tightened on mine and his eyes widened slightly. “Justice?” he said, tipping his head sideways.

“You didn’t know.” It wasn’t a question. It was pretty clear he hadn’t. I reached up and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. “Doesn’t your Council tell you guys when they send more than one of you?”

“The Council does not speak to us in so direct a way,” Alek said. “What did this Justice look like?”

“Reddish-brown hair, dark blue eyes, about my height, sharp features, and wearing typical hiker gear. Feather around the neck, and a bad attitude. Know her?”

“Eva Phillips,” he said, nodding. He didn’t look happy about it. “She’s a wolf, been around a long time. She was one of the Justices sent to witness the original Peace at Ulfr’s Althing.”

“I take it you two aren’t close?”

“We all mostly work alone. Sometimes, when things are very bad, the Council will send more than one. I have worked with Eva once. It did not suit me. She has no mercy in her.”