A knock sounded on his private apartment door. He set the two glasses of wine he’d just poured on a low table in the center of the sitting area and settled back onto the cushioned sofa. “Come in,” he called.
The heavy door swung open and Danielson, the night guard on duty, stepped in, followed by Fiona.
She came fully into the room, maneuvering around Danielson, and stood wordlessly in the doorway. The flickering light from the fire in the hearth and the two crystal lamps he’d activated, one on his desk on the other side of the room, and the other in the corner of the sitting area, offered enough light for him to see the damp spots on her shirt and the glistening sweat on her skin. Her hair was a mass of loose tendrils that had worked out of her crooked braid and floated around her head like a chaotic halo. Her appearance was as disheveled and unkempt as he’d ever seen, yet, at this moment, she was as beautiful to him as ever.
He cleared his throat to make sure the lust that had flooded his body didn’t show up in his voice, and said, “Thank you, Danielson. That will be all for the evening.”
Danielson didn’t blink. He clipped out a brisk, “Yes, sir,” and left the room quickly, shutting the door behind him.
“You have very efficient people,” Fiona said, nodding her head towards the door. “Does he wake you in the middle of the night every time a strange woman stands across the street for more than two minutes?”
Ian let out a bark of laughter. “Hardly. Actually, I was already awake. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Seems to be going around,” she said, noncommittally.
When she didn’t continue, Ian went on. “After a bit of tossing and turning, I got up to have a drink and watch the boats on the river. It helps me relax. I was at the window and saw you running alongside of the river. When you stopped just outside my doorway, it seemed polite to ask you in for a drink. I thought you might need one as much as I do.” He gestured towards the glasses on the table.
Fiona shrugged. “I am a bit thirsty.”
She crossed the room, sat in an upholstered armchair opposite the sofa, picked up one of the glasses, and took a tentative sip of the dark liquid. “Mmm,” she moaned, and then took another sip. “You got this from Pinky.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, I did, actually. He gave it to me tonight before I left.” He took a sip, his first, and let the fruity taste roll over his tongue. “Wow, that is strong.”
Fiona laughed. “I would say so. It’s his special Blackberry wine. It has a higher alcohol content than any other wine he makes, almost as high as whiskey. But it has a sweeter, fuller flavor. He makes only a few bottles a year and lets it age for several years before it’s ready to drink. He doesn’t sell it or serve it in the bar. He keeps it for special occasions and friends.”
Ian took another, larger drink. “It’s delicious. I can see why he saves it. He handed both Rangel and me a bottle as we left. I figured it was a thank you for having your back tonight.”
“Either that or he figured you guys would need something a little stronger than normal after what went down tonight. I’m sure Jarrett is back at the bar, being treated to some of Pinky’s finest whiskey.”
“No doubt. Why aren’t you there imbibing with him?” He let out a chuckle at her raised eyebrows. “Not that I’m not happy to share my wine with you, I just figured you would have already belted back a stiff drink or two.”
She sighed, settling back in the chair with her wine. “Too restless.”
“I imagine that is normal for you, considering the way you pull energy.” Ian drained his glass.
“It happens. Running usually helps,” Fiona replied. Then, as what he said sunk in, she sat up straighter, sliding to the edge of the chair. “Wait. What do you mean, with the way I pull energy?”
“You are a succubus,” Ian said, matter-of-factly.
“I’m a what? What do you know about how I pull power?” Fiona asked, her tone becoming higher pitched with every word.
“Calm down, Fiona. I’ve known you work your special brand of magic by pulling energy into your body since the first time I worked with you. I don’t blame you for keeping it close to the vest, though.”
Fiona eyed him suspiciously, but her voice was calmer when she spoke. “What makes you think I work magic differently than anyone else?”
“Clever ploy to get the information you want without actually admitting to anything. You might want to go into politics; you’d make a great magistrate, or even better, senator.” He laughed at Fiona’s glare. “Okay, I’ll play the game. I’m a necromancer. By definition, I see energy. Most necromancers only see life energy that has passed out of a body. It’s common for a mage to have a minor ability or two or three, in addition to their main power. I happen to be able to see currants of energy. It’s a minor power, and I can only see when large amounts of energy are being worked. Though I can usually feel the shift in energy when someone is about to perform magic very close by, with the exception of spell and crystal work.”
“Currents of energy? Like auras?” Fiona relaxed back into her chair, obviously intrigued.
Ian grinned. “No, auras are usually colored and denote specific types of energy. I only see pulses of white, a bit like the energy streams that you produce when you focus your energy with your hanbo, only not quite so rope like, and I have to focus my own magic to see it. But, I think you know that already.”
“Oh, so since you have told me something about yourself, now I’m supposed to spill all my secrets.” Her tone was flippant, but her eyes took on that suspicious look again.
Ian silently debated how much he should tease and bait her. Considering what she’d been through tonight, probably not much at all. But he had her here, in his apartment, and they were sitting and chatting, and that felt amazing. He didn’t want it to end. He knew if he pushed enough, he could get her talking, possibly even sharing some of her secrets, or what she thought were secrets. Then they’d be having an actual conversation. He couldn’t let an opportunity like that slip by.
“No,” he told her. “I don’t expect you to tell me anything. How about I tell you?”
Fiona’s lips tightened. He could tell she was desperately trying to hide a smile. “Okay, then. Enlighten me.”
“Okay, then. I don’t know the exact nature of your secondary ability, but I believe you can see energy patterns that tell you when someone is lying.”
Her face was impassive, her tone measured, giving away nothing. “What makes you say that?”
He had her. Any moment, she’d actually be contributing to the conversation. “You have an uncanny ability to tell when people are telling the truth. And, I’ve felt you pull energy during interrogations. It was simple deduction.”
“You are close, but not entirely accurate.” She paused for several minutes, but when Ian didn’t say anything, she seemed to make a decision. “I can see the energy waves of emotions. Unlike what you see, they aren’t bright, but more of a smoky gray. I can tell what they are by the patterns. It took me a long time to figure them out, but by my late teens, I was an old pro.”
Ian leaned over the table, picked up the bottle of wine, and offered it to her. Wordlessly, she held out her glass and let him refill it. Once he’d replenished his own drink, he sat back and thought a moment. “And you kept it a secret both because it was handy and because you thought it was unusual?”
Fiona took another long drink of her wine. “I was a hellion child raised by a vampire that slept all day. No matter what Pinky did to keep me inside, I found ways around it and around any babysitter he hired. Before my sisters came along, I spent my days roaming the streets. A kid that is good at finding hiding places can hear and learn a lot. Among the things I picked up was that having a very unusual power was not a good thing. I heard stories about people’s family and friends taken away by Science-Mages to be studied, or to be forced to work for the city-state in some way, whether they wanted to or not. At the time, I was too young to realize the stories came fro
m the very old, and those practices were no longer legal in Nash. But, by the time I got old enough to realize that, I was also old enough to know that illegal didn’t mean it couldn’t or wouldn’t happen.”
“Your ability to detect emotions isn’t that rare, but you wouldn’t know that unless you took advanced magical studies at the Academy,” Ian told her.
She let out a hoot of laughter. “No way. I barely made it through the two primary courses required of all mage agents. I learned the basic spell work needed in law enforcement, and I even bungle those upon occasion. My ability, my main ability, using energy as an offensive and defensive weapon, is more instinctive than intellectual. Training as a fighter helped me hone those skills more than any books or magical practice.”
Ian nodded. “I can understand that. You wouldn’t have learned about succubus powers in a primary course, either.”
“What the crap is a succubus?” Fiona asked, thoroughly curious now.
“In ancient times, succubi were believed to be demons that fed off the sexual energy of men. Hey. Stop.” He ducked as the two pillows he kept in the armchair Fiona was sitting in whizzed past his head.
“You just called me a soul-sucking demon. You’re lucky I haven’t finished my wine yet or I’d be throwing this glass.”
“Sex-sucking, not soul-sucking,” he said, and threw one of the pillows back, smacking her in the knee and eliciting a giggle out of her. A jolt of awareness zinged through him. Had he actually just made Miss Sourpuss Fiona laugh? Probably just the wine.
“Oh, well, that makes a huge difference. Carry on.”
Ian laughed. “Well, we now know that succubi aren’t demons; there are no such things. Succubi are actually mages, female mages if you want to be technical, that work magic by pulling energy into their bodies before expelling it. The types of energy they work with can be different, so I imagine there are some that pull sexual energy. How they work it is different, as well.”
“So, not all succubi have battle magic?” she asked.
“No. A succubus doesn't really denote a type of power as much as a unique way of working the power. Succubi are rare, but not unheard of. Like I said before, for hundreds of years, even in the magical community, succubi were touted as demons. Even in modern times, it makes people nervous.”
“Don’t worry; I don’t plan to start telling my secrets. I’m still a little freaked out that you figured it all out. I’m guessing that you’ve kept your mouth shut this long, I can trust you to keep doing so.” She smiled at him, making his heart jump.
“Mum’s the word.”
“I can’t believe I told you my deepest, darkest secrets. You now know almost as much about me as my family does,” she said as she leaned forward and refilled her glass and then his a third time, emptying the wine bottle.
Not likely. He could study her for a hundred years and still not know everything there was to know about her, and still not get bored of trying to learn. He took the full glass from her and leaned back. “Oh, I doubt that. There is more to you than you would like people to see. But would that really be that bad, me knowing more about you? Despite your preconceived notions of me, which I don’t completely understand, I’m not such a bad guy. You would know that if you let yourself get to know me a little.”
“Okay, then, I’ll bite.” A slow, mischievous grin spread across her full, kissable lips, and she leaned back again, this time crossing her legs so that the expanse of bare thigh below her shorts’ hem caught his eye. “You know two secrets about me, but you only told me one about you. Tell me something about Ian Barroes that isn’t common knowledge.”
“Okay, then, let’s see.” Ian tapped his finger to his mouth while he thought. There was so much he could tell her that she likely didn’t know about him. As a prominent member of the Nash City society and the head of one of the largest guilds in the city-state, there was a lot of public speculation about his life, not to mention the fact that the Barroes family was quite notorious. But very little of what the public knew about his life was accurate, and it was his guess that Fiona, in her ongoing quest to keep distance between them, hadn’t ever bothered to dig deeper than public opinion and rumor.
So, almost anything he told her would be new to her, but something told him he needed to choose his next words carefully. He finally had her engaged in a conversation—had her full, undivided attention. He could be light and flippant, or go the way of heavy innuendo. After all, it was the middle of the night, they were on their third glass of wine, his bed was just a few feet away, and his body had been on high alert since she’d walked through the door. He knew, deep down, she wanted him as much as he wanted her, yet she’d never admit it. He didn’t think that, if put his cards on the table, or the bed, so to speak, she would turn him down. But something told him that wasn’t the way to go. Not yet. She had very real reservations about getting involved with him. Whatever he said next, while it may not get her into his bed tonight, needed to break down some of the walls she’d built between them based on what she thought he was.
It only took seconds for all of that to race through his mind and for him to come to a decision. “Most of my wealth comes from my family,” he said, matter-of-factly.
A shadow passed over her face. “That’s not exactly news,” she clipped out.
“Perhaps not. It is popular misconception that my money comes from my father’s family.” He couldn’t help the rush of satisfaction that went through him at the raw curiosity that came into her eyes. Yes, this had been the right topic.
“Oh?” she asked, not quite aloofly.
“There is no debating the fact that the majority of the Barroes’ family wealth was accrued through manipulation, if not downright cheating. It is also no secret that I inherited a large amount from Father, including the family compound. A part of my inheritance is set aside to upkeep the compound so that my aunts, uncles, and cousins have somewhere to live. Their own coffers have dwindled since the enactment of the Necromancy laws, and it is seen as my family duty to care for them,” he told her.
“You don’t seem to see it that way. Yet, you do it anyway. Why?” Fiona’s tone and quizzical expression told him she was genuinely interested in knowing.
“Cheating and manipulating using their necromantic and clairvoyant powers was a way of life going back generations, centuries even. The fact is that using those powers is what got the Barroes family through the Cataclysm. Doesn’t make it right, just makes it fact. As much as I hold my father accountable for his own actions, I also know that it was how he was raised. There was no love lost between us. He made a lot of people’s lives hell with his lies and cheating, and taught me, forced me, to do the same from the moment he realized I had power and just how strong I was.
“When I was sixteen, there were charges against my family for fraud, theft, grave robbing, and smuggling. My father forced me to confess and take the rap. Sam Harrison offered me a deal. The deal was go to the Academy and work freelance with the Blades, or go to a work farm for ten years. I took the Academy. From that point, my father considered me a traitor to the family. He never spoke to me again.” Ian watched Fiona’s face carefully for signs of pity or sympathy; he wanted neither and saw neither. What he saw was a slow dawning of understanding.
“That sucks,” she said.
Ian grinned. “Yes, that is one way to put it. When my father died, I used a large portion of my inheritance to establish the Necromancer’s Guild as a way to give back to the community and to stop not just my family, but others as well. But, in doing so, I decimated their way of life. I have a couple of cousins that have taken on legal Necromancy work and have even registered with the guild, but for the most part, I’m considered the ruination of the Barroes family. So, I have an overseer that is in charge of the inheritance and is using it for the upkeep of the Barroes compound, and out of my own sense of familial duty, my cousins and their families have lifelong rights to live there, and I live miles away in the city.”
“
I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but, here goes. I was wrong to judge you by your family’s reputation. It doesn’t mean I’m pro-necromancer,” she said hastily. “But, I do concede that you’ve done a lot to make up for some of the bad seeds.”
Had he heard right? Had Fiona Moon just admitted to being wrong? He tried his best to make his tone nonchalant, but his heart was singing out. He’d just scored a minor victory. “I suppose that if that is as good as I can get, I’ll take it. A mage cannot control what powers they are born with, only how they choose to use them.”
“I will grant you that,” Fiona conceded. Then she swept her arm around to indicate the large studio apartment. “So, tell me, what pays for all of this luxury if not your inheritance from your father. Granted, this apartment is much smaller than what I would have thought, but it is comfortably furnished and you do own the entire building.”
“Along with a couple of others, several factories, and few farming compounds outside of the city,” Ian replied, a grin tilting his lips. “I do, like most people, have two sides to my family tree. Both my mother’s father and grandfather were inventors. Very successful inventors.”
Fiona let out a low whistle. “Wow, I didn’t know you were so well endowed.” She laughed. “So, what did they invent?”
Ian tried to focus on her question and not on the extreme rise in blood pressure, among other things, her innuendo had incited. He forced himself to breathe and answered her question. “Quite a few things, actually. They both worked a lot with Mateo Corsini.”
“I know Carly’s husband is an inventor and invented the printing press that is used by the newspapers and bookmakers. Your grandfathers helped with that?” Fiona asked, not even trying to hide her interest and curiosity.
“Among other things. Great-Grandpap was on the first senate council with both of the Corsinis back at the very beginning of the reconstruction. Though books are still expensive now, they are available. Back then, the only books that existed were in the private libraries of those families that had been able to hoard a few and keep them safe. That included the Corsinis. The City Archive Library was their home. They still live there now, in an apartment, but at the time, the entire building was their private home. It had been a public library before the Cataclysm, and the Corsinis lived there to protect the books from vandalism and to keep as much knowledge of the previous society intact as they could. They kept it private, not to keep the knowledge from the general public, but to preserve it until it could be reproduced.”
“Yeah, I do know that much. I spent a lot of time at the library as a kid. Carly is the closest thing to an aunt that Anya, River and I have. She tried to keep us out of trouble during the day while Pinky slept,” she told him.
“Ah, yet another thing I didn’t know about you, my mysterious Miss Moon.” He laughed and ducked to avoid the pillow she threw at him. “Okay, so no need to give you a history lesson. My great-grandfather and grandfather worked with Matt on several projects to help reconstruct some of the technological conveniences of the pre-Cataclysm era using crystal technology and renewable resources, including processes for making ink out of hemp and flax seed oils, paper making, the printing press, and other manufacturing machines.”
Fiona looked skeptical. “That’s great, but it doesn’t seem like you would get rich off that. Especially not since the Corsinis aren’t that rich.”
Ian laughed. “They do okay. But no, it was one of my grandfather’s individual inventions that built the empire. His only lone invention, actually. He spent almost his entire life on it.”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “The suspense is killing me. So tell me already.”
A silent debate on the prudence of this topic was sliding through Ian’s head. He had to tell her now, but he hated the thought of losing the progress they had made so far. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. “My grandfather was Russell Hughes, the inventor of the…”
Fiona cut him off with a laugh, “The crystal- and water-powered engine for magic-motorized vehicles. I’ll be damned! Well, that explains a lot.”
Not the reaction he’d expected, but he wasn’t complaining. “Like what?”
“Well…” She giggled, actually giggled. “For one, why you have so many magic vehicles.”
“I only have a two-seater rickshaw and a surrey,” he said defensively.
“Which is more than normal people—who don’t even have one rickshaw. I thought it was because you were pretentious and all along, you just own the company. Hell, if I owned the engine company, I’d probably have a magic vehicle of every color.” She let out another hoot of laughter.
Okay, her laughter was getting a little annoying, yet infectious. “I thought you disapproved of magic vehicles on principal.”
She took a deep breath and quit laughing, but was still smiling when she said, “No, I think magic motors are a great invention. Especially when they are put into freight carriages. Rickshaws and surreys are not practical for travel anywhere but inside the city, but they are great for that. My biggest problem is that they cost so damned much. Oh, and the snotty people who drive around in the surreys as if they are better than anyone who can’t afford the damned things.”
“I can agree with you on the cost. They are expensive to manufacture, and the factory is only capable of producing a couple of engines a week. I have science mages researching and working on the problem, but with the cost of some of the raw materials, a large price drop and increased availability is just not in the foreseeable future. And, unfortunately, there isn’t anything I can do about snotty people,” he said, flashing his most-charming grin.
“Damn it, Barroes, I don’t like this a bit,” she said. Her words had a serious edge, but her tone still light and joking.
“What?” he asked, a little confused.
She flashed a bright, shining smile at him. “I might actually have to start liking you.”
“Oh, the horror,” he mocked. Oh, yes, progress had been made. It might not be tonight, but he was definitely one step closer to having her in his bed.
Fiona lifted her glass for a drink and stopped short when she realized it was empty. “Crap,” she said, her eyes flitting from the glass to the empty wine bottle, then his empty glass and back to the bottle. “Who drank all the wine?”
“I think we did.” Ian laughed.
“Figures,” she said, flippantly. “I’d ask if you had a bottle of something else, but it probably wouldn’t be attractive if I had to crawl two miles home on my hands and knees.”
A vision of Fiona on her hands and knees flashed into his brain.
Before he could think of a coherent response, she asked, “Where’s your bathroom?”