Risk (A Mageri World Novel) (13 page)

“Bloody hell! You can’t cheat and expect to win in life!” Simon gently gripped Knox’s hand and tried to pull it away. “Let it go, Knox.”

“No.”

“Put them back!”

Sunny cleared her throat. “Simon, he’s three. Let him win.”

Simon lurched to his feet. “Do you want him going through life thinking someone is always going to let him win? He’ll be a man someday; what kind of man do you want him to be? This is a cruel world, and I don’t give a fuck if he’s three.”

Knox grinned. “Fuck! Fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Simon made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “The prodigal son has spoken. I bet I can guess who he got that attitude from.”

Sunny took Knox by the hand. “Yes, his
Uncle Simon
. Come on, John. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

Knox went flying ahead of her through the door. “I’m Knox!”

Sunny leaned against the doorjamb, her voice softening. “He’s so much like his father it scares me.”

“He’s like all boys. They love toy guns, pretending they’re cowboys, getting the bad guys, and eating a kilo of sugar. It’s glued to our DNA.” Simon shoved the game back into the box. “Then we grow up to do exactly the same things, except replace the sugar with sex.”

“Maybe Novis will rub off on them.”

“As you said, he’s three.” Simon walked toward the door and leaned on the other side. “There’s nothing wrong with the kind of man Knox was, remember that. Sure, he was a bit of a caveman, but that bastard was a genius. Smart enough that HALO wanted him, and HALO doesn’t want anyone.” Simon touched the ring at the bottom of her necklace. “Maybe you should quit remembering how he died and think about how he lived.”

Simon excused himself from an increasingly sentimental conversation and gave the adjacent sitting room a cursory glance. “Has anyone seen Ella?”

Silver curled her legs up on the sofa. “No. Are you two heading out?”

“My carriage turns into a pumpkin soon.”

Rose napped in Justus’s arms, her body curled in a fetal position with her head resting on top of his forearm. He looked half-asleep himself, head back on the sofa, peering at Simon through heavy-lidded eyes.

“So what do you think of Hannah’s Learner?” Simon asked.

Silver twirled a chunk of her dark hair around a finger. “She seems nice. It’s just weird that Hannah doesn’t let her speak. How do you get to know a person if you can’t talk to them? I could be boring her to tears with my stories about Logan, and she can’t even change the topic. Although…”

Simon’s attention sharpened. “Although what?”

“There were a couple of times I was in the middle of a story when she’d suddenly motion toward the food and give me a look.”

“What kind of look?”

“Well, I don’t know how to explain it. She’d make a gesture at the sandwiches, and by her facial expression, I knew she wanted me to tell her how I made them or where I got them. If that’s how she changes the topic, she’s pretty damn smart. Maybe I need to brush up on my social skills and find something Mage-worthy to talk about with strangers. Like Mage law.” Silver gave Justus the side-eye, and he smiled, eyes still closed.

“Ella’s not an ancient,” Simon reminded her.

Silver stood up and stretched. “Yeah, but all these newbies are chosen by the Mageri, and they just love to talk about Breed this and Breed that. Nobody cares if Six Flags just opened a new location or what the last blockbuster movie was. I’m so used to hanging out with you guys that I sometimes forget how to be around strangers.”

Simon waltzed out of the room. “We’re all strangers, although some of us are stranger than others.”

He searched the lower level and passed by a window to see Logan and Knox out back on the new playground. When he couldn’t find Ella, he wandered upstairs with a thought niggling in his head that maybe she’d left without him. After years of neglect, there was a risk she could turn rogue.

Simon walked briskly down the hall. He passed an open door and stopped mid-stride. Inside the room, he’d glimpsed a long shadow stretched across the wood floor. He took a step back and pushed open the door, exposing a room full of collectibles and a bright window directly ahead. Ella was statuesque, gazing at a painting on the wall. She must have opened the heavy drapes, because tiny particles of dust were suspended in golden rays of light.

As he approached, that’s when his gift as a Feeler detected her energy. The immense sorrow weighted down the room like an anchor, pulling you to the bottomless depths of the ocean. He stood motionless for a few beats and then stepped to the left to see what she was looking at.

The painting looked hundreds of years old and depicted a family. Simon took a moment to study it and noticed how eerily similar the father was to Novis. He couldn’t place the era by the image, but what the artist had captured was timeless. The mother held a sleeping baby swaddled in a blanket, and the other child stood before the father. Their faces were nondescript and melancholy. Then again, people in those days rarely smiled for portraits.

He touched Ella on the shoulder, and she jumped in surprise. He was about to speak up when she turned, tears staining her cheeks.

Simon stepped back. He wasn’t adept at dealing with heavy emotions, and when he tried to touch her wrist to make a witty comment and break the tension, she retracted her hand and used it to wipe her face.

“Where’s your family?” he whispered. Her past was the very fiber of who she was and who she would one day become.

“Hey, you two shouldn’t be in here,” Silver said from the doorway. “
Oh my God
, look at all this.”

Simon whirled around with his hands behind his back. “Are you shocked your employer has a pretentious collection of expensive art?”

Her gaze roved around the room. “No, I’m shocked that he’s a hoarder. I think we need to have an intervention.”

H
annah was grating
on Simon’s last nerve. She’d called twice already—probably to scold him for kidnapping her precious Learner, but he didn’t answer the phone to find out. Despite the smashing success of immersing Ella into a social situation, he couldn’t shake the image of her unexpected breakdown. She could be his counterpart with the right training, but not unless she could control her emotions.

He let go of the steering wheel and took her hand. “Do you want to tell me what the flood of tears was all about?”

Not while speeding down the road
, she replied glumly.

Simon pulled the car to the side of the road and shut off the engine. He rolled down his manual window for some fresh air, and when he turned, Ella got out of the car.

Simon muttered, “I do believe I just opened up a can of worms, I did. Now we’re going to talk about
feelings
.”

He stepped out and crossed a patch of grass where Ella was sitting beneath a tree, her legs bent at the knee. The only thing in sight was a gas station farther down the road. Simon sat against the tree facing away from her so all he could see was her shoulder and arm. He took her right hand with his left and straightened his legs, crossing them at the ankle.

“All right. We’re all cozy now, sitting on muck and filth. I should warn you that you’ll have a time limit since there’s an ant mound about a foot away from me.”

He heard her soft laughter in his head, and then it went quiet.

Just when he thought she had changed her mind, her thoughts formed into clear words.

My parents had money, and I thought all those things were what mattered. I wasn’t rotten, but I didn’t appreciate my life as much as I should have. I was going through a rebellious phase at the time and couldn’t wait to leave home. Jasper, my little brother, was going to be ten, and we planned to go to the lake house for his birthday. But my mom was pregnant and didn’t feel well, so we stayed home instead. I was downstairs watching TV when the doorbell rang. The front door was across the room to my left, so I could see everything. She flipped the porch light on and mentioned something about changing a lightbulb. Whoever was there knocked and spoke in a friendly voice, but I couldn’t hear what he said over the TV. My mom must have felt safe enough to open the door. The next thing I knew, a man in a black mask walked in. My mom screamed for my dad.

Ella’s hand tightened, and Simon’s head flooded with sounds and words, like memories caught in a twister.

He stabbed my mother in the heart,
she choked out.

Simon reclined his head against the trunk and looked up. The leaves overhead made the soothing sound a mother would make to a weeping babe.
Shhh
.

Ella’s palm began to sweat as her thoughts quieted down.
It was over so fast. I wanted to run to her, but it was like one of those nightmares where you can’t move and you’re just standing there in terror. My elbow knocked a lamp over, and that’s when he looked at me. My dad rushed in and yelled for me to get out, but I couldn’t. They were standing near the hall that led to the back door, and I couldn’t leave without Jasper. I ran upstairs and heard my father fighting and yelling.

Simon couldn’t just sit there staring at the squirrel in front of him. He let go of her hand and then crouched beside her so he could see her face. Her blue eyes stared vacantly at the road. She’d switched something off inside her to get through the memories.

Simon knew all about that switch. It was a coping mechanism survivors used to get on with things. Channeling his anger into fighting had helped him in the beginning to develop his skills as a knifeman; he used the instruments to lash out when his voice could not. But experience had proved that fighting with emotions was an Achilles’ heel.

He took her hand, and Ella drew in a deep breath as if she were going to speak aloud.

Jasper didn’t know what was going on. I forced him under the bed and told him to stay quiet. I wish I could go back in time; I would have taken him into his room instead of mine.

“Why’s that?” Simon asked, feeling a swell of anger in her energy.

My room didn’t have a window or phone. That’s where I found him, and I just ran inside and slammed the door, sliding a heavy dresser in front of it. I was too big to fit under the bed, so I hid in the closet. Through the slats in the door, I watched the man push his way in. He had a blunt object in his hand—like a hammer—and I was actually relieved because it wasn’t the knife. I thought he’d scan the room and keep going, but he kicked the bed hard enough to move it. Jasper’s foot was sticking out.

She choked on her words, and Simon felt sick to his stomach.

I never thought anyone would hurt a kid,
she continued
. I wish I’d never told him to hide there. I thought he’d be safer there than I was, and Jasper was asking a lot of questions and I was afraid he’d make too much noise if he were in the closet with me.

Simon lightly shook her hand. “You don’t have to defend your decisions. You did what you thought was right.”

But Ella didn’t hear him. She was in a different place now.

When he pulled Jasper out from under the bed, I pushed open the door and screamed, but he’d already swung. He struck Jasper in the head and—and then he kept hitting him. I’ll never forget that sound.

Ella wrenched her arm away and stood up, stomping the dirt with the toe of her shoe.

Now he knew the demons she battled that made her so bloody fragile, but it didn’t fill in all the holes. Men didn’t break into homes to murder a family unless it was personal. A serial killer didn’t dress up in a ski mask only to knock on the front door. No wonder she wound up suicidal, but why would Hannah offer her a spot in their world? A girl who’d experienced that level of trauma was unfit to offer immortality; that kind of emotional damage made a candidate a liability in the eyes of the Mageri.

There was no sense in prodding her for more details, but Simon was going to get to the bottom of this Hannah situation.

He stood up and gripped her hands tightly. “Here’s how it’s going to go from now on. I’m not crawling into your head every time you want to share a thought. The lip-reading is fine, but you need to learn how to use your voice. And yes, you have one. Saying your name is not enough. You know how to speak; this isn’t rocket science. Fuck how you think you might sound. It’s about time you learn how to brave the critical eye of the world, because people will judge the ever-loving snot out of you, and there’s no escaping that no matter who you are. If you want to talk to me in secret, then go ahead and grab my hand. But anything else—whether we’re in private or public—you’re going to speak, for fuck’s sake.”

Her lips pressed tight, and she pulled her hands away. “You’re an asshole,” she said aloud in perfect, clear English.

Simon’s laughter pealed out. So much so that he bent over with a stitch in his side. He smiled at the stubborn woman. “A Mage after my own heart.”

“I can’t understand everything you say because of your accent.”

He stood upright. “Well then. Guess you better learn to speak my language.”

“Do I sound funny?” she asked.

Quite truthfully, she had the voice of an angel, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “No, but make it less monotone. You don’t need to be self-conscious. You’ve been speaking all your life, so you know how to control the inflections of your voice. Put some emotion into it.”

A gust of wind picked up from the east, and he marveled at the way it captured some of her silken hair that had loosened from her braid. He’d never seen hair so fetching, and he wasn’t the sort of bloke that ever used the word fetching… either verbally or mentally.

But there it was.

Simon spun on his heel and stalked back to the car. The feeling of protectiveness he had for her was unnerving.

“Get it together,” he muttered to himself. “Next thing you know, you’ll be opening doors and acting like a gentleman. You need to do your job, collect your money, and then…” His attention steered away when a flare from another Mage licked at his energy field.

Simon sharpened his light as a red car pulled up behind his GTO. Ella walked ahead of him, and he seized her wrist.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, using her voice.

Sharpen your light
, he replied in thought.
I don’t like the looks of these wankers
.

“Nice day for a walk,” the tall one said as he stepped out of the car. His white shirt stretched so tightly around his chest that it distressed the black lettering printed across the front.

“State your business, Mage,” Simon said, blocking the man’s view of Ella. He clenched his jaw when she sidestepped him to remain equal with his position.

The man pursed his lips and looked between them without really looking either in the eye. “She looks newly made,” he remarked, nodding at Ella. “Is she your Learner? You don’t look like a Creator.”

Simon raked his fingers through his hair so the messy strands weren’t in his eyes. “I suppose you think Creators go around with a special patch sewn on their jacket.”

“No, but they have money, and you’re dressed like you crawled out of a sewer.”

“Says the bloke who shops in the little boys’ department. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had nappies on beneath your trousers.”

He was three inches taller than Simon, unlike his Asian friend, who was closer to Ella’s height. But neither height nor muscle had anything to do with who had the advantage in a Mage fight. It had to do with how skilled you were at wielding your light, handling weapons, and using your gifts. Most avoided daytime fights because healing could take place continually, making it difficult to keep an opponent down. Both he and Ella had stunners, but a smart Mage never assumed his opponent was less armed than he was.

“We’ll be leaving now,” Simon announced. “You two have fun diddling behind the trees.”

The Mage flashed in front of him. “I’d like to take the girl for a walk.”

Ella’s middle finger flew up.

Simon lifted his chin. “Looks like she’s going to pass.”

The man kept staring at Ella, and Simon didn’t sense lust in his energy. This one had a hidden agenda.

Simon stalked toward the man and shoved him back. “Nothing worse than a low-life juicer.”

The man flashed him a crooked smile. “It’s not her light we want; it’s her life.”

Tension crackled in the air, and Simon looked at Ella and mouthed the word
fight
.

Simon exploded into action and thrust his palm into the man’s nose, breaking it. Blood gushed down the Mage’s face before he drew light from the sun, immediately healing his injury.

Ella rushed at the second man, attacking him with her bare hands. Her moves were brilliant, and it peeved Simon that he had to look away.

With alarming speed, the tall Mage lunged at Simon with a dagger, aiming for his heart, but luckily all it pierced was the fabric of his shirt. Simon spun out of reach and kicked him in the knee, breaking it.

“Fuck!” the man bellowed, drawing in healing light as quickly as he could.

If Simon didn’t get a dagger in him, this could go on forever. He reached down and freed his blade from the sheath, gripping it in his right hand as if a missing piece of him locked into place.

“You have appalling teeth,” Simon pointed out. “The English have a bad rap, but you’re giving us a run for our money. Couldn’t get braces before your first spark?”

The man’s cheek muscle twitched. Simon loved throwing off his opponents by uncovering their insecurities, and usually it was something trivial.

Simon twirled his knife and circled to the right, stepping over a fallen branch. “Your fashion sense is trite, your teeth are an abomination, your vocabulary infantile, and you hold your weapon like a sissy. I’m not sure whether you’re going to stab me or slather me up with cake frosting.”

“I’m gonna carve you up like a turkey!”

The man rushed forward, and when he began to fall to his knees, Simon realized he was two seconds away from getting impaled in the balls. He launched himself off the man’s shoulders and landed on the hood of his car. Now he had a good view of Ella and the other Mage. Without the long dress, she moved freely. In fact, when she did two backflips, Simon almost cheered.

Ella’s braid whipped behind her when she faced her opponent, blade in hand. Despite Simon’s complaints about her plaited hair, he realized the impediment she would face had it tangled in front of her eyes.

Simon looked down at the peon who was slashing the air with his dagger. He advanced toward the car with a burst of energy, but Simon was already five moves ahead of the game.

* * *

E
lla stumbled
into Simon’s apartment, giddy with laughter and dirty as hell. That unplanned encounter was just the sort of thing she would experience in real life, and she’d had fun fighting those men. It was a boost to her confidence because Simon hadn’t been sitting on the sidelines this time, waiting to step in if things got out of control.

Simon touched her fingers and drew near. “Well played,” he thought and said aloud. She could see pride shining in his eyes, the kind she’d once received from her own Creator.