Reluctant Adept: Book Three of A Clairvoyant's Complicated Life (49 page)

I smiled and scoffed, "Yeah, yeah. Strigoi are fickle and unpredictable. Yadda, yadda, yadda." I rolled my eyes. "Can we go get my friends now?"

Between my sidestepping ability and Michael's Subaru, we made it to the small hotel Nathan had mentioned, less than thirty minutes later. As the strigoi had professed, my friends were enjoying the facilities as though it was a continuation of Julie and Steven's party. They were blind to the fact that they'd been there for nearly twenty-four hours with no luggage, no clean clothes, and no memory of any real world responsibilities. I was greeted with enthusiasm and a call to join in the festivities, which, at the moment, seemed to include billiards, reading in the library, or hanging near the backyard hot tub, fully clothed, favored drink in hand. The hotel staff, too, seemed oblivious to all of it, not even raising an eyebrow about their odd guests who hadn't brought their swimsuits, nor even a toothbrush between them.

Alex released them from their compulsion. I don't know if he had this ability because he was the domn, or Nathan's maker, or both. With Michael and the telepaths in tow, they helped reinsert each of the party-goers back into their lives, managing their family members, friends, or coworkers when necessary, as though their ordeal never happened.

Julie and Steven were a different story. Their coffee shop was a burned out shell, but Michael had worked his magic so that in less than a day, the fire inspector had issued his report declaring the fire the result of faulty electrical wiring and Glen, an unlucky good Samaritan who'd died trying to put out the fire. The insurance adjustors had also come and gone, leaving a letter for Julie and Steven, informing them that the full replacement cost of rebuilding would be covered with no deductible and no change in their yearly rates. In the meantime, while the rebuilding took place, Julie and Steven were booked for a two week cruise of the Caribbean and a month long stay in the Caymans, paid for by the phony electrical company whose faulty wiring was supposedly at fault.

Magic, indeed.

By the time we'd finished getting everyone's car out of the city's impound lot and returned, it was close to dinnertime, and since lunch had come and gone without so much as a cracker, I was starved. All I wanted to do was go home, make a grilled cheese sandwich, eat it in bed, and then sleep for a week. When Michael volunteered to drop Alex and Diedra off at their hotel, I begged off joining them for dinner, even though I was mildly curious whether Alex would eat something or merely sit and watch.

Since Fisk's car was still parked in my apartment building's lot, I sidestepped him and Tíer back home with me.

In my building's lobby, I bid them adieu. "Guys, thanks for the memories. I guess I'll hear from you when it's time for the convocation thing. You'll have to let me know what I'm supposed to wear, and if you can give me more than an hour's notice, that would be spectacular. If you tell me the night before, I'll bake you cookies."

As I turned toward the elevators, Tíereachán growled, "Aren't you forgetting something?"

I turned, eyebrows raised.

He glowered at me. "The vampire in your bed."

Nathan.
I'd forgotten about him.

"Oh, right." I shrugged. "I'll call a taxi and send him over to Alex's hotel." When he continued to stare at me, I frowned. "Is there something else?"

"Yes. There's the little matter of our protection."

"Our protection?"

"Earth may be safer than staying in the Otherworld, but it's not devoid of those who would risk much to capture you. And with all that hangs in the balance, you are especially at risk," he paused and then acknowledged, "As am I."

"What are you saying?" I blinked at him. "Are you suggesting that … you stay
here
… with
me
?" If my voice rose any higher, I'd sound like a pixie.

"Our mutual oaths are ineffective if I am across town."

His tone was reasonable enough that I couldn't decide whether he was being facetious or not. I might have been able to read him, if our connection had been open, but I'd kept my psychic shield firmly in place ever since Brassal's announcement for fear of him hearing some of my more irrational thoughts.

Fisk, ignoring the fact that neither of them had been invited upstairs, hit the elevator button.

"Isn't your
intended
going to be a little upset about you living with another woman?" 'Intended' came out a little more snarky than I'd expected, and I wished I hadn't bothered to open my mouth. I seriously needed to get a grip.

He smirked, clearly enjoying the thought. "I'm thinking she might, at that."

I scowled at him. "Great. That's all I need. An elf princess with an axe to grind. As if I haven't had enough of those already."

Never mind the fact that, in spite of myself, I hated her guts with all the fervor of an angsty teen and about as much common sense. Although, when it came to the power of attraction, I didn't think common sense entered into the equation, nor did previous disastrous relationships that were a mere twenty-four hours dead. Otherwise, I would have talked my way out of my illogical jealousy hours ago, instead of wheeling from yet another tiring round of mental tug of war.

But the truth of it was I'd been attracted to Tíereachán from the first, no matter how hard I worked to deny it. And it had me wondering what might have happened if I hadn't been ensnared by Kieran's doleful eyes and ruinous magic.

Of course, ultimately, it didn't matter. Tíer was promised to someone else.

Maybe I could catch food poisoning just in time for the convocation.

When the elevator doors opened, both men wandered inside while I continued to frown. "Don't you care at all what she thinks? She won't necessarily know you're on the couch."

He leaned against the back wall of the elevator, looking more satisfied than a bobcat locked inside a tropical aviary. He folded his arms and grinned at me. "Jealousy has its uses."

Excuse me?

What happened to the man who'd been so supportive? The friend who, when I'd needed it, held me like he cared about me? Now, less than eight hours later, I was a handy tool he could use to make his 'intended' jealous?

I stomped into the elevator. "So glad I could be of service," I said caustically and stabbed the button for my floor. "By all means, move in with me. It's not like I have any reputation to uphold, right? One sidhe moves out and the next moves in. Boy, I guess I better get busy lining up the next one, huh? Or maybe you plan on picking your successor once you and your
intended
tie the knot and move back home."

Ooooh
. Now
that
elicited a response.

He came away from the wall, his expression stormy, jaw stiff. "Not bloody likely."

"Oh really? Not bloody likely, is it?" I folded my arms, glaring at him. "Now you're in charge of my life? I can't wait to see what your future bride has to say about that one."

Before Tíereachán could come up with a reply, Fisk turned on him, his amber eyes narrowed in frank disapproval, and uttered something in Silven.

Tíer's belligerent-sounding response was concise. Something along the lines of
shut the fuck up
was my guess, because Fisk's jaw clamped shut, his lips forming a thin, angry line, and he turned back toward the elevator doors, folding his arms.

When I looked back to Tíereachán, his angry expression had yielded to one of intense annoyance, but it wasn't necessarily directed at Fisk, nor at me. And when he raked his hand through his hair, muttering in Silven, Fisk rolled his eyes, unimpressed.

Whatever.

The elevator doors couldn't open fast enough, and when they did, I strode through them like a woman on a mission. With my TK, I no longer needed a key to my front door. I flipped the dead bolt, but before I could head inside, Fisk called out from Jackie and Kim's doorway, "If you want me on your couch instead, let Jackie know." With a scathing eye over my shoulder at you-know-who, he added, "My mate and I don't need to play games. She knows well where my loyalties lie." He gave me a sympathetic smile and then added, "Ask the ass the name of his intended. You deserve to know."

With that parting remark, he strode into Jackie and Kim's apartment as if he owned the place, shutting the door crisply behind him.

I walked into my apartment, frowning as something like alarm rocketed through me, jolting me alert and driving away my hunger. Fisk thought the name of Tíer's intended would mean something to me. Since I knew very few female sidhe by name, and all of those were unquestionably non-mate-material, a potent combination of fear and excitement churned inside of me. Biting my lip hard enough to leave temporary marks, I drifted to my family room couch, dropping my backpack in its usual spot so Red could climb out, and continued into the kitchen, all while I ignored the man whose presence behind me had expanded to elephantine proportions. In fact, his closeness seemed to pervade the room so entirely that I could scarcely draw breath or even
think
.

"Is my company so distasteful that now you can't even stomach to look at me, nor even speak to me?" he asked.

I stopped at my kitchen table, grasping the back of a chair. "I don't think it's me that needs to do the talking." I turned to look at him, taking in his forbidding scowl. "Apparently, there's something I deserve to know."

"Yes, and so you
would
if you hadn't cut our connection."

"Ah. I see. So it's my fault." Matching his irksome expression, I folded my arms. "Well then, I guess you'll have to use actual words," I said, steeling myself, in case my suspicion was wrong. Or right. Either way, I'd be upset, for opposing reasons, and the stress of it had me feeling brittle, which I instinctively covered with a shield of bravado.

"Out with it," I ordered, twirling my hand impatiently. "Chop, chop."

After brief consideration, his narrowed-eyed gaze softened.

"You're afraid of hearing a name other than your own," he said, sounding just as astonished as he looked, and then a smile, the likes of which I hadn't seen since he'd invaded my dreams weeks ago, crept across his mouth. "Aren't you?" he asked, his voice pitching to seductive depths, matching the intensity of his gaze.

My scowl magnified. Somebody needed to get over himself. "Don't be ridiculous," I sputtered.

"Ridiculous, am I?" His grin flattened to something more serious but didn't wholly disappear. "Then you'll have no issue with taking my hand and telling me
with your actual words
that you feel nothing beyond a … a charitable regard for me."

He stalked closer, crossing into the kitchen and extending his hand as though he wished to partake in a friendly shake, but the fervor of his gaze and the challenge in his voice spoke of something far more profound. "Open our bond and show me that you feel absolutely no spark, no thrill—that I am
alone
in feeling the breathless zing of attraction and the flush of desire whenever we touch. That the mere thought of another woman sharing my affections doesn't spur a surge of jealousy in precisely the same way the thought of that vampire, sleeping in your bed, stirs in me
right now
."

With my thighs backed up to my kitchen table and twenty-four inches of stifling, electrically charged air between us, he pierced me with a smoldering, breath-catching stare that had my heart beating triple-time and my body riveted in place. Leaning close, he said softly but no less passionately, "Take my hand and tell me you don't want it to be
your
name that my mother proclaimed as the only woman I've ever desired to have as my mate."

As I stared at him, doe-eyed and mute, reading fervency in his pale-blue eyes and the fierce set of his brows, I could hardly breathe, much less speak, but it was just as well, because if I admitted to any of those things, I'd be lying and there was no way he wouldn't know it.

"No?" he asked, brows lifting in sanguine query as he straightened. "Very well. Then this is what we're going to do. We're going to give each other the benefit of three months. Call it … a trial period, in which you allow me the privilege of courting you. You'll go with me to the convocation as my intended,
but
—if after our three months is up, you decide that I'm a conceited blowhard who cares little for anything but himself and kisses you like a dead fish, then we'll call off the engagement and go our separate ways. However, if after three months, you still want me as much as I want you"—he looked at me meaningfully— "then perhaps we might renegotiate our sleeping arrangements."

Finding my breath, I croaked, "Are you saying you want … to date me?"

He gave me a lopsided, decidedly wicked grin. "I think I've tacitly established that I want to do a great deal more than date you, but in a word: Yes."

Blinking, I shook my head, trying to get this newest development straight in my mind. "You're going to date me while living with me and sleeping on my couch."

"Yes."

The proposition was bonkers and, yet, so totally in keeping with my absurdly complicated life.

He smirked at me. "Come on,
mionngáel
. Embrace the chaos. I double dog dare you."

I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it. Hearing him turn my own words against me and then topping it off with something so utterly human, it tickled the mirth right out of me.

Blowing out a breath, I relaxed against the table behind me and folded my arms. After a moment of consideration, I tipped my chin at him in acquiescence. "Three months. But we're keeping things platonic until I say otherwise." I narrowed my eyes. "And you're not sleeping here. You can take the couch across the way." This probably meant Fisk would be sleeping on my couch instead, but I didn't care.

He frowned, likely realizing the same thing.

"As you wish," he finally replied, his voice as calm as you please, but his heated gaze told me he was contemplating ways to tempt me into saying 'otherwise' sooner rather than later.

To my chagrin, my stomach tilted and and I flushed, no doubt an embarrassing shade of pink, from that
one
pointed look.