Chapter Twenty-One
Dylan and I both realized at the same time that Brian and Adrian hadn’t returned from the front room.
“So the little women have to sit in a corner and be quiet?” Dylan asked, her eyes flashing. “I don’t fucking think so.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “So not happening.”
We made our way down the hall together, both of us spoiling for a fight. I walked into the living room a second or two ahead of Dylan, ready to tear into the first person who questioned my being there.
Two steps into the room, I froze in my tracks. Dylan and I weren’t the only ones spoiling for a fight. The air crackled with tension in a very literal sense. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Why would you even suggest that?” London demanded, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He glared at Quinn, his breath coming in short, ragged bursts.
“Because it could be useful,” Quinn replied.
“Useful? How the fuck could it be useful?”
“How could what be useful?” Dylan asked.
London whirled to face us, his eyes blazing. I couldn’t see magical auras like Adrian, but I swear I could feel the power radiating off of him. For the first time, he kind of scared me.
Brian laid a hand on London’s arm. “Quinn wants to know if London can do this sending thing now.”
I saw my own disbelief mirrored in Dylan’s face as she turned toward Quinn. “You want to know if he can make people see nightmares? What the fuck? How is that going to be helpful? Are you trying to give the crazy bitch another reason to want him on her side? Cause that’s what’s going to happen if he starts throwing visions at her.”
“I never suggested he try a sending on Julia,” Quinn said. “But we don’t have anyone here who can gauge London’s power without seeing what he can do and how fast he can pick it up. I just think it would be good to know these things since it could make a big difference in a fight.”
Ashe tried to talk, but London interrupted, his voice low and hard. It was scary and sexy all at the same time. “If you don’t want me to try the sending on Julia, then which one of my friends did you want me to torture?”
Quinn just stood there looking like a landed fish, at a total loss. I guess he hadn’t thought things through.
My mouth opened of its own volition, and I promptly shoved my foot in it. “Who says it has to be torture?” I heard myself ask. “Why couldn’t you send happy thoughts? Rainbows and kittens or something?”
London turned a little more, so he was facing me full-on. He didn’t even seem to notice when Brian’s hand tightened on his arm in a gesture of warning. “Whose side are you on?”
“Don’t you snap at me, London Dahlbeck,” I snapped right back. “All I did was ask a question.”
London shook off Brian’s hand—I guess he had noticed it after all—and lowered his head, every muscle in his body still tense with rage. I thought he was trying to get himself under control. Boy was I wrong.
As temper tantrums go, London’s was a unique one. It didn’t involve yelling, or hitting anyone, or breaking things. He struck out with his magic instead, and I never even saw the strike coming.
Between one breath and the next, I found myself sprawled, naked, on satin sheets. London, also naked, stood at the foot of the bed staring down at me with a predatory gleam in his eyes. He stalked forward like a jungle cat on the prowl to crawl onto the bed between my legs, his hands gliding over my bare skin as he moved forward. He paused with his hands on my spread thighs to look me in the eye. His tongue darted out to moisten his lips and my breath caught in my throat. His eyes never leaving mine, he slowly lowered his head...
…and then I was back in the living room of the safe house, head spinning and breath coming in short gasps. I think I would have been on the floor if Adrian and Brian hadn’t held me up. I leaned harder against Brian, and he wrapped his arm around me. I looked up at him and was startled by what I saw there: he was looking at London—his longtime friend and almost brother—like he wanted to punch him in the throat.
“I’m okay, Brian,” I managed to say. I hugged him a little tighter and forced myself to face London.
The rage had faded from London’s face, replaced by a strange combination of hunger and guilt. I pushed away from Brian and held a hand out toward London.
“Truce?”
London swallowed hard, nodded, and then stepped forward, ignoring my proffered hand in favor of wrapping me in his arms. I hugged him back, and I felt some of his tension ease.
“You’re a total bastard, you know that, right?”
London ran a hand over my hair. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Did you seriously have to stop right when things were getting interesting?”
That surprised a laugh out of him. “Blame Martine. Or Ashe, actually, since it was his idea. They stopped me.”
I turned in his arms to look at everyone else. “You all suck,” I said.
Ashe’s face broke into a smile, and he shook his head. “Trouble,” he said.
Everyone started asked questions then: asking if I was okay (Brian and Adrian), asking for details of the sending (Quinn), asking London what the hell he had been thinking (Brian, again). I ignored them all, waving away the questions with an impatient flap of my hand. Instead of answering them, I pulled London over to the sofa to cuddle. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it would do for now. At the moment, I had questions of my own.
“Okay, so.” I let everyone simmer down and settle into their own seats. “Long story short: I’m fine, and London proved he can handle that sending thing just fine—at least from across the room. Farther than that and who knows? That good enough for you Quinn?”
Quinn had the good grace to look ashamed of the furor he’d caused. “More than.”
“Good. Now maybe you boys covered this while I was exiled from the room, but there’s something that’s bugging me. London picked this thing up on the fly because he’s a special flavor of...what’s the word you guys use? Practictioner?” Quinn nodded, and I continued. “What I want to know is how did Julia learn to do it? Last night, Ashe said he didn’t think Julia had the ability to launch a psychic attack, but we know she’s behind this—or at least behind the attack on Brian.”
“That’s another thing,” Dylan added. “Why attack Brian in person if she could do this sending thing from a distance? Why take that kind of risk?”
Ashe and Quinn exchanged a look, and Quinn said, “There are a couple of theories on that.”
“Hypotheses,” Martine corrected with a roll of her eyes. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. “And you only need one hypothesis if it’s the correct one. In this case, that would be this: Julia wanted us to know that she has the ability to project visions as well as physical sensations and she wanted us to know that she was watching us very closely.”
“It’s also possible,” Quinn added, “that she doesn’t have enough metaphysical juice for long-distance sendings. She may have chosen a face-to-face attack to throw up a red herring so we wouldn’t know who was behind the long-distance attacks.”
“Even then the ability to cast visions isn’t something that should be in her repertoire,” Martine said. “And I do not believe in your red herring ‘theory’. She is behind it. I’m certain of it.”
“How can you—”
Martine cut off whatever Quinn had been in the process of asking. “London, did it feel like Julia?”
“What...” London trailed off, turning contemplative. After a minute or two he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah it did. And the attacks from before felt the same.”
“There,” Martine said. “This Julia is responsible for the attacks.”
“But how?” I asked.
“Now that is a good question,” Ashe said. “And one we’ve been tossing around for a couple days now. One possibility is that it was a latent ability. That happens sometimes, a practitioner has a skill lying dormant that they don’t realize is there until they’re a
little older and wiser—or until they end up between a rock and a hard place.”
“It isn’t likely, in this case,” Martine added.
“No, it isn’t,” Quinn agreed. “It’s pretty common for mainstream practitioners, but it’s extremely rare in agents because we undergo extensive testing.”
“Could it be she’s like London?” Dylan asked. “A mimic or whatever? And she somehow managed to hide it?”
“Again, not likely,” Quinn said. “If that’s the case, then her mentor would have known. Once he—or she—started training Julia, the mimic thing would have been obvious.”
I turned to look at London. Our eyes met and something just clicked inside my head. I saw in his eyes that he’d been similarly struck, but I was still surprised when we both responded with the same thought. I voiced that thought as a single word while London opted for complete sentences, but we were on the same track.
“What if Julia’s file is wrong?” he asked at the same time I said, “Misinformation.”
Ashe’s brow furrowed. “Wrong as in someone made a mistake and didn’t put down that she’s got the ability to send visions?”
I shook my head. “Wrong as in someone is covering up the extent of her abilities.”
“Not possible,” Quinn said.
Ashe snorted. “Sure it is. How many people have clearance to edit files in that computer system?”
“Not many,” Quinn said. “It’s limited to a handful of very senior...oh holy Mary, Mother of God.”
Martine’s eyes widened, and Ashe looked grim.
“If one of those guys is in on this, we’re all fucked,” Quinn said.
The room fell into an abrupt and utter silence as that pronouncement rattled around in all of our heads. I shook it off, though. I wasn’t giving up without a fight, and I wouldn’t let anyone else, either.
“Well, then, I guess we better hope its option C,” I said, moving to lounge against one arm of the sofa with my feet in London’s lap. “What is option C?”
Ashe leaned forward to rest his arms on his thighs. “Option C isn’t much better, princess. Hell, it might even be worse.”
“Maybe worse,” Quinn agreed. “Less predictable, sure. But not as scary as squaring off against someone who’s been an agent since before I hit puberty.”
“And what is option C?” London asked again.
“Magic,” Carmichael said from the doorway. “Real magic. Spellcasting. Rituals. What we like to call thaumaturgy.”