‘‘Good,’’ Violet said. ‘‘Why don’t you stay here tonight? There is still a bed in your old room. Or the guest suite is available if you’d rather.’’
Oh, hells, no.
I said good riddance to this place years ago. I had never come running home when things had gotten tough in the last seven years. I was not going to come running home now.
‘‘Thanks, but I have somewhere else to be.’’
‘‘Where?’’ She took a drink of wine. She didn’t look like she believed me.
‘‘I don’t think I’ll say. That way if you’re asked you won’t have to lie when you say you don’t know.’’
‘‘I don’t like you going off alone, Allie. You do understand you’re being
hunted,
don’t you?’’
‘‘Oh, yeah. I have the bruises to show for it.’’ I stood. ‘‘Thanks for worrying, but I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine.’’
Zayvion stood too.
‘‘Where are you going?’’ I asked.
‘‘Thought I’d see you to the door.’’ He put his beer on the table. ‘‘Good night, Mrs. Beckstrom.’’
‘‘Take care, Zayvion. Be careful, Allie. And if you change your mind, the door is always open.’’
‘‘Thanks,’’ I said. And I meant it.
Kevin walked to the doorway and released the spell with a flick of his fingers, the sort of subtle motion that looked like he was adjusting the ring on his middle finger with his thumb. Oh, this guy was good. Very good.
Kevin allowed us through the door, then followed us to the elevator. He used the remote to open the doors, and I felt my shoulders crawl up to my ears at the small, mirrored space.
‘‘Take it easy, Zay,’’ he said.
‘‘You too,’’ Zayvion said. ‘‘And next time the drinks are on me.’’
They shook hands, and I stood there and broke into a cold sweat. How had the elevator gotten smaller? I’d just been in there. With two men. There had to be enough room for me to step in. But try as I might, and I mighted my best, I could not force my foot to lift and take me one step closer to that mirrored coffin.
Kevin turned and walked back down the wide,
spacious,
marble hall, toward the
spacious
great room.
‘‘Allie?’’ Zay said.
‘‘What?’’
He didn’t answer, so I looked over at him. He put one hand on the unmarked, left side of my sweaty face and kissed me. Hard.
Oh. The prickly spikes of panic in my chest melted and a whole bunch of other pleasant feelings took their place. Oh. Yes.
I kissed him back just as hard.
‘‘Elevators can be fun,’’ he murmured against my lips.
I bit at his bottom lip and pulled away. ‘‘Over my dead body,’’ I said.
But that kiss had broken my panic and put me in another mood entirely.
I strode into the elevator and punched the button. Zayvion stepped in too, then stood directly behind me. The door closed. In the mirror I watched his hands wrap around my waist, saw the slight smile as he pressed his body against my back, then pressed his mouth against the side of my neck.
It was too small here for this. Too small for him to be so close. And I was going crazy for him to be closer.
His hand slipped down the front of my hip, my thigh, then rubbed up beneath the heavy coat I still wore, up the side of my hip, and pressed flat against my stomach. The heat from his palm pooled at my navel and dripped lower. He bit gently at my neck.
Tingles of pleasure poured out from where he touched me. I closed my eyes, and all I felt were his fingers brushing the curve of my breast, his lips on my skin, and his body, hard and hot, pressed against me.
A soft chime rang out and I opened my eyes. Zayvion was smiling, his gaze on the camera I knew was hidden in the corner of the ceiling. Cameras. I had totally forgotten.
Great. Wouldn’t Kevin and Violet get a kick out of watching that?
The elevator door slid open, revealing the concrete parking garage.
‘‘This is our floor,’’ Zayvion said.
‘‘Uh-huh.’’
He held me a moment more and neither of us moved even though we both knew the cameras were watching us. Then the idea of the doors closing on me again, closing me in, got me moving.
I pulled away from the warmth and comfort of his arms, and strode out into the cold garage. The marks up my arm and neck began to tingle, then itch, like thousands of millipedes were crawling from my temple to my fingers. I rubbed my palm up and down my arm, trying to make the itch stop. I heard Zay’s footsteps behind me, and noticed it because he was usually silent as a cat walking on marshmallows.
‘‘So where are you going to stay tonight, and how are you going to get there?’’ he asked.
Ah. I’d forgotten to let him in on my little plan.
I stopped halfway to the car and clasped my hands together in front of me to keep from scratching.
‘‘Do you mind taking me home tonight?’’ I asked.
Zay strolled over, his hands tucked in that ratty ski jacket he had loaned me. Nola had washed it along with my clothes, and had done a good job getting the bloodstains out of the fabric. I’d have to ask her sometime how she did it. The way my life was going, I’d probably need to do a lot more of that kind of stain removal in the future.
‘‘That depends,’’ Zay said. ‘‘Your home, no. My home, yes.’’
It was my turn to be surprised. ‘‘The mysterious Zayvion Jones is actually going to show me something about his personal life? Are you feeling all right? How many beers did you drink? Maybe you should give me the keys.’’
‘‘Get in the car, Beckstrom,’’ he said with a smile. ‘‘I’m driving.’’
He had closed the distance between us, and I took a second to really look at him. He walked sober, he talked sober, he looked sober. He even smelled sober.
‘‘How much of that beer did you really drink?’’ I asked.
‘‘You saw me.’’
‘‘I saw you take maybe two drinks.’’
‘‘There you go.’’
‘‘Don’t you trust Violet?’’
He shrugged. ‘‘Who says I was staying sober because of her?’’
I knew that had something to do with me. I even thought it might be something nice, something thoughtful.
‘‘Thanks,’’ I said.
‘‘You’re welcome.’’ He continued past me to the driver’s-side door, and I walked around to the passenger side of the car and got in.
Zayvion started the engine and put the car in gear. ‘‘But if I am taking you to my private residence, for privacy’s sake, I’d like you to wear a blindfold while we’re driving around the city.’’
‘‘Won’t work,’’ I said. ‘‘I can see through walls, you know.’’
Zayvion shook his head. But he was smiling, and better yet, he was driving. I sat on my hands so I wouldn’t scratch my arm to a bloody stump and tried to breathe away the itching. I also worked hard on dimming the glow of magic Zayvion said I’d acquired.
I leaned back in the chair and watched streetlights soldier by, lights tinged with yellow, blue, or pink indicating the kind of auxiliary spells placed upon them. There were some things worth the cost of Offloads, low-level magics that created a huge amount of good for the entire city. And making sure that there was never a chance for a blackout was one of those things.
From the spacing of the streetlights, and eventually the control towers we drove past, I knew we were on the Burnside Bridge, moving across the river from my apartment and into East Portland. After wandering through a few neighborhoods, he pulled his car into a parking garage beneath what I assumed was an apartment building, and I watched the lights of the garage go by until he parked.
‘‘So are there elevators?’’
‘‘Yes. And stairs.’’ He got out of the car, opened the back doors, and dug out the remaining food Nola had packed for us. ‘‘This way.’’ He shut the door with his heel and, once I was out of the car, he hit a remote to lock it.
This garage was big enough for maybe a dozen cars, concrete, like the one beneath my father’s—I mean Violet’s—condo, but unlike Violet’s place, where the concrete was smooth as marble, this concrete was buttressed with lead rods that webbed the walls and ceiling. Magic collectors. Which meant this was a newer building, or maybe retrofitted.
‘‘How many apartments here?’’ I asked as I followed Zay over to two doors, one that had an elevator behind it, and the other that had a symbol of stairs on it.
‘‘A few.’’ He paused to shift his hands around the box he carried, then pulled the door to the stairs open. ‘‘I’m on the second floor.’’
The stairs were also concrete, so too the walls. There were no windows, which I found extremely comforting because, although I couldn’t see anyone out there, no one out there could see me either. I wondered if Zay had considered those sorts of security measures when he moved in here.
Four levels of stairs later we were at the door to the second floor. This door had a small window in it, just enough that you could look into the stairwell, or from the stairs could look down the long hall. Another nice feature if you were concerned about running into people.
He pulled the door open and we stepped out of the cool cold-stone smell of old concrete, and into a softly lit hall with a carpet so plush that I lost two inches in height as soon as I stepped on it. Unlike my apartment building, this place did not stink of old magic. I caught a whiff of curry and the hickory of wood burning, and the thick spice of incense covered by an antiseptic lemon detergent.
To the left of the stairs was the elevator, to the right an umbrella stand. The hall stretched between six apartment doors, and Zay walked to the end, then turned left, down a hall that I hadn’t noticed because of the false half wall that made it look like the main hall dead-ended.
Zay walked ahead of me and paused in front of his door.
I’d said before that I didn’t think there was a spell worth paying for that could keep a burglar out of your house if they were determined to break in. But I had never seen a spell so artfully cast as the one that covered Zay’s door. The great hulking ward was so good, it was hard to actually see the thing. If I weren’t trying to keep a low profile, I’d pull on magic and Hound that glyph to find out who made it, then I’d go buy one for myself. This had to be the strongest lock-ward I’d ever seen.
So Zay was more wizard than he seemed. He did the finger-wave bit—similar to Kevin’s trick—and the spell unraveled. I could sense the strands of the spell pulling in on itself, like eels backing into rock nooks, so that the way through the door was clear. Zay pulled his keys out of his pocket and unlocked what seemed to be an average lock and dead bolt.
‘‘Come on in,’’ he said. The lights flicked on as soon as he crossed the threshold, and with the magical trappings outside his apartment, I was expecting maybe some superintense magic-user stuff inside the apartment. Maybe an old distillery, crystal, and glass rods people used to try to store magic in. Maybe a potted Honey Spurge, which people used to think was so sensitive to impending magic Offloads that it force-bloomed and withered away minutes before an Offload could actually reach you. Or maybe that all his lights would be glowing in the soft pastels of magic.