Entwined Destinies (8 page)

Which raises another question.

Is the vision controlling Mason? Or is there another version of Mason behind the vision? I’ve already lost track of what’s real and what’s not. If this
is
the real world, Mason can’t keep going for much longer. My spell will siphon his lust until he passes out. If this is purely a vision, then who knows how long it can keep going?

I close my eyes and focus on Mason in my mind. Not the robust, red-eyed stranger riding my ass behind me. He doesn’t matter.

All that matters is how I feel about the werewolf I welcomed into my life. The one I summoned back to me with a painting. The one who brought me huckleberries and water in the palms of his hands. The one who makes me lunch before I leave for work each day. The one who greets me at the door when I come home. The man who painted my body with his fingers and then washed it off so gently. Mason, the man I love.

I fix him in my mind. Hold on to everything about him that I crave when he’s with me and miss when he’s not. Only then do I take a deep breath and look over my shoulder again.

It’s Mason, and he’s human. The hybrid wolf is gone. The look on his face, however, is barely conscious. It’s like he’s trying to stay awake but fighting a losing battle. My spell has drained him again.

Mason teeters for a second, a little to the left, a little to the right, and then collapses on the bed, slipping out of my nethers.

So the ass-fucking was all in my head.

I spin around to take a closer look at him. Sure enough, he’s utterly spent. That should keep him out of commission for a little while. Still, that session will go a long ways toward filling up the quicksilver pool again. If nothing else, it was a good start.

I owe it to Candice and Saffron to replace what I spent. I’m good for it, even if that means
using
my werewolf to pay off the tab. Still, it’s not like he’s suffering. At least, that’s how I justify it to myself. That, and by placing a pillow under Mason’s head. Sleep well.

I walk to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. I need to make sense of this hallucination. I really couldn’t shake it off. I’ve never had a vision that was quite so stubborn before. I’m already dreading what my instincts are telling me it means.

A vision that won’t go away must be close to manifesting in the real world. All visions are subject to interpretation, of course, but a persistent vision usually means that something is going to happen soon. At the very least, I need to keep my guard up.

It felt like the red-eyed man was actually here. That I could feel his hands on me. I’m still trying to shake the feeling of having him inside me. My brain is half expecting him to walk up behind me, place his hands on my breasts, and bend me over the counter.

No, Jess, get a hold of yourself. Yes it felt real—very real—but none of it actually happened. It’s merely the product of your overactive imagination melding with a glimpse into the future. That’s all. Don’t make it anything more than it is. You certainly don’t need to be fantasizing about another man right now.

I look back at Mason sprawled out on my bed, mostly to assure myself that the vision is finally over. It’s him, all right. He hasn’t moved.

Mason will probably bounce back quickly, like he did the first time, but he’s also been awake all night, not to mention all the driving he did to get here. He may need to genuinely sleep. I could definitely use the time to put my life in order.

* * *

Mason’s claws definitely dug into my flank today. I never did get Maintain the Flesh up and running. My coven taught me how to heal myself, but not anybody else.

“
Mederi Ipsum
.”

Mend Self.

My flesh stitches back together again in no time. When the magic finishes working, there’s not even a scar left to show for it.

Candice and Saffron said it was too dangerous healing other people, even with magic, until I learned more about human anatomy. Sure, I get it now. It’s one thing to heal yourself, because you know exactly where the pain is located, but it’s quite another to heal somebody else with magic.

The patient might be able to tell you where they hurt, but that still leaves a lot of guesswork. There’s no telling how much damage needs repairing.

Hence the mandatory first-aid courses they insisted I take. Well, I’ve completed all the classes they suggested, and even bought an industrial first-aid kit, but they still haven’t taught me any more healing spells.

I hop in the shower and clean up. Mason wakes up after I’m done showering, but in a daze. I admire him through the bathroom mirror reflection. He puts on his pendant, a shirt, and pair of shorts, and then falls back on the bed without saying a word. He hasn’t moved since. Probably sleepwalking.

Poor guy. His stamina might be nearly inexhaustible, but he still needs to replenish his mental capacity, especially after gallivanting around as a wolf on the full moon. Thinking about it now, I wonder if draining him so soon after a full moon might knock him out longer than usual?

Not that I’m complaining. So much has happened lately that I’ve barely had a chance to deal with any of it myself.

I sit in front of
The Vision of Endymion
that I left out for Mason to see, staring at it silently and examining the details. It’s not quite an exact copy, like the one I’m hiding, but it’s pretty damn close. I would say it’s on par with the best copy I’ve ever done, albeit without magical help.

The painting I used to summon Mason, however, could easily pass for the original.

I turned that image into the focus of a spell. A ritual where not only was I unaware I could cast such spells, but I wasn’t even aware of casting at the time.
And
it worked perfectly! Mason turned his car around, wherever he was at that point, and blazed a trail all the way back to my apartment.

To hear Mason describe it, he made
the choice
to return. I know better.

He came back the moment I perfectly replicated his favorite painting. The spell must have been activated the moment it was completed. The timeline adds up, in any case. It certainly didn’t work for any of my previous canvases. None of those attempts had the same effect. Mason only described turning the car around once. Not multiple times.

Wanting Mason to return was my only thought for days. I obsessively repeated it over and over to myself, that if I could perfectly recreate his favorite painting, he would come back to me.

It sounds ridiculous, but it worked. I was delirious by the end, but kept that notion alive in my mind. It sustained me instead of food or sleep. I believed it was true and it came true, albeit after burning through a countless number of canvasses.

I look at Mason on my bed through the doorway, not a care in the world. He’s actually started growling in his sleep now, ever since he admitted to me that he’s a shifter. I’ve seen his hands and legs kick like a dog.

Mason is back in my life. I got what I wanted and couldn’t be happier about the outcome. Even if I cheated by using magic.

That surprises me most of all, the fact that I’m okay with the manipulation. Perhaps it would bother me more if I summoned him consciously. I can take some small comfort in knowing that I didn’t do it on purpose, but I wonder if I would have done it anyway had I known. Or even if I would do it again in the future, knowing what I do now.

No matter what, it all started with his twin sister.

Sylvia asked me to recreate this painting in particular. She said that if I did, her brother would stay in town, that it would have a powerful sedentary effect on him. It might even convince him to settle down permanently, especially if the idea came from me.

I thought that meant Mason had been drifting until this point in his life, wandering from place to place, keeping the wolf to himself and protecting people from his feral nature. But that’s not the case.

Candice found out in one afternoon what I failed to learn after knocking boots with Mason for two weeks. Mason never left the family business. He just doesn’t work locally. He travels with the paintings Sylvia ships around the world. He makes sure they get to where they need to go.

Not only that, but Mason said that he and his sister trade jobs. So if Mason is here right now, does that mean Sylvia is traveling abroad instead of him?

My vision did place her in Scandinavia, after all. Sure, she was in a burrow with a red-eyed wolf, but overseas nonetheless.

That makes me wonder about something else. Was this whole manipulation designed so that Sylvia could switch jobs with Mason? To make him stay in town so she could travel more and leave all the paperwork to her brother? Piper hasn’t been around the studio for a while now. Maybe she’s abroad with her mother.

I have so many questions, all of which Mason could answer, but I don’t have the heart to wake him up right now. Not while he’s sleeping so soundly. He needs to recover from all the turmoil as well.

I can’t help but shake my head at myself. I’ve been such a yo-yo lately.
I want you, Mason
.
I don’t want you, Mason
. I want you,
the person
Mason. Just not
Sylvia
there as well, feeling everything her twin does at the same time.

That was pretty much the most adolescently absurd stance I’ve taken in decades.

For all intents and purposes, Candice and Saffron can not only feel what I do when Mason’s having his way with me, but they can slake themselves on his lust as well. That’s right, Jess. You’re a walking bag of contradictions. Definitely more trouble than you’re worth.

Okay, to be fair, this is big for me too. I met a guy who snuck past all my usual seduction faces. A guy who sees me as I really am, and likes the person he finds. A guy I satisfy as well. A relationship in the truest sense of the word, which is a unique experience for me after all these years of using men strictly for their lust.

I feel like the rest of the world could stop existing for Mason and I, but we would still be completely happy. Shut in, but happy.
Except I don’t have him all to myself
. I have to share him with his sister. Which is to say, I have to share him with Sylvia if I want Mason to feel anything.

He can cut his sister off by wearing the pendant, but then he’s also cut off from his own feelings. I didn’t win either way, or so I thought, until I realized how foolish I was being.

It took not having Mason in my life for two weeks to see how selfish I was being. It took a summoning ritual to bring him back. It took the perfect reproduction of a painting to cast that spell. It took draining one-half of the quicksilver pool to make that possible. The same reservoir from which Candice and Saffron cast their spells.

It took almost losing Mason to change my mind, to finally stop caring whether his twin sister can feel everything he does. I’m over it now. Officially.

Which allows me to ask a new question I didn’t want to explore before. I wonder what’s it like for Sylvia?

She must have been piqued a few times recently, especially after the afternoon Mason and I just had. I imagine that as twins, they must have developed a way to cope over the years. It would be embarrassing otherwise.

You could be having a conversation one moment and an orgasm the next. What if you’re talking to your parents? Or in the middle of a meeting? What if you’re giving a speech in front of a room full of people? It could be mortifying.

They probably check in with each other, especially when there’s something important in their schedule. I can imagine the kinds of messages they must send to one another.
Trying to close a deal. Keep it in your pants until I’m done!

Come to think of it… I may have seen the aftermath already. The day Sylvia showed up at the studio was right after Mason and I had sex in the shower. She did look more disheveled than normal, and that was only a hint of his wolf coming out. I’ve had him twice since then as a half-man, half-wolf.

There’s a knock at my door. It completely breaks my train of thought.

I look over at Mason. He doesn’t stir. Good. I’m dressed enough to be presentable for whoever could be dropping by. Saffron? Kumi, perhaps? I close the bedroom door so that Mason can keep sleeping.

The knock comes again. Louder this time. It’s not my neighbors. They never knock that urgently, even when the matter is urgent. Could Candice have returned from her trip already?

One more time. Even more insistent. Okay, that’s kind of annoying. I don’t want Mason to wake up.

I swing the door open with an irritated look on my face. The person on the other side better have a good reason for being so forceful. Whom I see surprises me. I shouldn’t be caught off guard, but I am.

It’s Sylvia. She’s standing in front of me, but only barely.

Her eyes are bagged and her dress is wrinkled. Her buttons are completely misaligned. Not only is she put together badly, she’s utterly exhausted. There’s an overnight bag slung over one of her shoulders. A tag still dangling from the strap that I recognize. It’s a Scandinavian airline.

“Jess. I… I had to come here. I don’t know why, but I… needed to see you. To be here. To find…”

Sylvia trails off as her eyes roll back.

I manage to catch her as she slumps unconscious into my arms.

That’s when it sinks in. That’s when it makes complete sense what must have happened. This is going to take some getting used to.

“What am I supposed to do now?”

“There’s nothing you really can do. Just wait for them to wake up.”

After Sylvia passed out in my arms, I dragged her over to my bed and placed her next to Mason. Most people still manage to walk a little for you in their sleep. Nothing from Sylvia. She was utterly gone. Even Mason didn’t move when I flopped his sister on the bed beside him. The two of them just turned toward each other and kept sleeping.

Twins. They may as well be back in the womb.

That’s when I decide to call Saffron. I’ve bothered Candice enough today. Not only that, but she couldn’t have gotten far by this point. If I call Candice now, she’ll just turn around and come back. I don’t want to put her through that, so I walk outside and away from the house instead. Mostly to minimize the chance of being overheard by Mason’s wolf ears, even if he’s fast asleep.