The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4) Page 8

  “I expected you to have a little more self-control.”

  “Without knowing what I apparently can’t do? Hey, you have no right to be pissed at me about this, because you never explained what these damn side effects actually were. Or that I’d be jumping through hours in the blink of an eye. Or that if I tried to touch this rune I never asked for, it would set the whole thing off again!”

  The lobby fell silent as they glared at each other.

  ‘Yeah, Jessica. Really let him have it.’

  If you say another word right now, I’ll tell Ben he’s off the hook.

  That shut the bank up nice and tight.

  Leandras sighed and strolled past her across the lobby.

  “Um...hello? You don’t have anything to say to that?”

  When he reached the desk, a bright flash of silver light rose from his hand to conjure a heavy-looking metal box. He set it down with a clink but didn’t look at her. “I apologize for not being a scryer.”

  “I’m not asking for an apology, Leandras. Not that that was even a real apology in the first place. I want an explanation.”

  “Then here is the only explanation I can give you.” His hand flashed again, and wooden box materialized there before he set it beside the first. “It’s impossible to predict the side effects of a warded rune bound to living flesh. Its purpose? Absolutely. But not the product of activating it. Even if one were to replicate the same rune ten times on the same body, there is no telling what may come of it.”

  Jessica huffed out an unamused laugh. “That sounds a lot like a catch-all for ‘I don’t wanna talk about it.’”

  Leandras conjured one more box, this one carved from pure marble, and set it on the desk before turning around to face her. His raised eyebrows were completely at odds with his previously superior attitude. “When are you going to finally believe me when I tell you I have absolutely no intention of lying to you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe when you cut it out with all the secrets and half-truths. Multiple times in a row. That’d be a nice start.”

  “I’m not lying or hiding anything. Honestly, Jessica, I really don’t know why that rune on your neck chose to skip you through time. Out of thousands of possible effects, that one is rather interesting, don’t you think?”

  “No, it’s been a pain in my ass. So have you, actually.”

  “Ooh.” Leandras pursed his lips in mock insult. “After everything we’ve been through? That’s a little harsh.”

  Jessica stood there in the center of the lobby and unfolded her arms.

  ‘Yeah, I might have to agree with him on that one.’

  Well, stop.

  But her conscience—the one she’d had before the bank had taken over that position in her head—wouldn’t let up. She gazed around the lobby and shook her head. “Fine. You’re right. Sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.” Leandras grinned before turning back to the desk. “No explanation necessary.”

  Great. Her own words coming back to haunt her through a fae’s pouty lips.

  She ran a hand through her hair and headed toward him. “So you have no idea why this thing on my neck made me lose almost a whole day?”

  “Wondering why is a waste of time, Jessica. Take it from someone who has already wasted an unconscionable amount of time doing just that.”

  “Wait, you had the same thing?” She stopped beside him at the desk and watched Leandras open each of the three five-inch-long boxes, letting their lids hang back on the hinges.

  “You’ve seen my own runes.” He shot her a sidelong glance and a twitch of a smile. “Most of them, at least.”

  ‘Ooh. That sounded like an invitation to explore. Too bad he didn’t leave the door open when he borrowed your shower, right?’

  Jessica ignored the bank echoing the thoughts she hadn’t let herself fully form and peered into the boxes instead. “What did yours do? The side effects, I mean. Not sure I want to know why you put them there in the first place.”

  “Yes, that would be a conversation best tabled for another day. A day when the fate of two inexorably linked worlds no longer hangs in the balance.”

  “I get that we’re on a time crunch here. You don’t have to remind me.”

  With a low chuckle, Leandras pulled a black velvet drawstring bag from the metal box and set it on the table. “I have come to learn the side effects could be anything. Within the realm of imagination and far, far beyond it.”

  He withdrew a bundle of sticks from the wooden box and a thick lock of shiny black hair from the stone box.

  Jessica tried not to think about who the hair had belonged to or why he’d needed an entire day to gather it with the rest of his reagents.

  “The most entertaining of them eliminated the feeling in my left leg from the hip down.”

  She looked sharply up at him frowned. “Entertaining?”

  “In hindsight.” His lips flickered into another smile. “I was quite the bumbling display for at least two weeks.”

  “Jesus.”

  “But it faded.”

  Studying his profile, Jessica tried to imagine how freaked out she would have been if the rune he’d slapped on her neck had made any part of her go numb and useless.

  ‘Forget bumbling. We would’ve had to lock you up in the looney bin. Hey, maybe that’s what he did.’

  No, if Leandras wasn’t already locked up, no way would a numb leg be enough to check himself in anywhere.

  “That sounds pretty shitty.”

  Leandras turned his head to briefly meet her gaze before sliding a hand into his pocket and returning his attention to the reagents laid out on the desk. “Compared to others, it was merely inconvenient.”

  “Like what others?”

  “As illuminating as this conversation is, Jessica, it’s eating up more time than we have.”

  “Okay, that. Right there.”

  “What?”

  She pointed at him. “That’s what I’m talking about. If you want me to believe you won’t keep lying to me about literally whatever strikes you in the moment, cutting off a chat right when it’s getting good is exactly how to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “Hmm.” He raised an eyebrow at her and leaned a little closer. “Are you certain this curiosity doesn’t stem from a desire to vividly imagine my past discomforts?”

  Jessica snorted.

  Now that he’d mentioned it, the idea wasn’t exactly unpleasant.

  She let herself smile back at him and replied, “No.”

  ‘Listen to you two. If this turns into some kind of BDSM experiment with the Gateway on the line, I’m out of here.’

  Nobody’s begging you to stay...

  Cocking her head, Jessica stared right back at the fae and briefly considered how much she must have looked just like Leandras in the moment. “But I’m more interested in understanding just how bad it could get.”

  “Ah. Preparation by worst-case scenario.” Leandras leaned even closer, and that alluring scent of ozone and oncoming rain seeped out of him to go straight to Jessica’s head. “I promise you it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.”

  “Then illuminate me.” Jessica set a hand on the desk and leaned on it as she turned to face him.

  Yeah, this felt like some kind of invitation. She just couldn’t quite figure out if she was the one offering it or on the verge of accepting.

  “The worst of it was the rune on my lower back. You’ve seen that one.” Leandras’ silver-tinted gaze drifted slowly to her lips, then he sucked in a sharp breath and returned his attention to the reagents on the desk. Just like that, the moment was broken.

  ‘You call that a moment? Ha! You’ve spent way too long by yourself, witch.’

  Jessica blinked furiously and tried to act casual about removing her hand from the desk and leaning away again. “What did it do?”

  “It stole pieces of myself, just as yours has apparently stolen moments of time.”

  “What, like a finger?” S
he looked down at his hands working open the drawstring bag. “Doesn’t look to me like you’re missing anything.”

  “My memories, Jessica. My...sanity. For a time.”

  “Oh.” Her small smile disappeared.

  Way to go. She’d just pried into a deep dark place both of them knew intimately well. Except Leandras didn’t know about her missing memories she’d ended up calling right back to her at the worst possible moment.

  “I managed to recover the majority of them,” he continued as he dumped the velvet bag upside down. A pile of razor-thin metal shavings grew on the desk, each of them glowing a deep red with their own inner light. “Unfortunately, you won’t be able to say the same with your missing blocks of time.”

  “Yeah, I know. Time only moves one way.”

  Leandras grew rigid, then turned toward her with another of his infuriating smirks. “I would love to know how you came to that conclusion.”

  “What?”

  The bank cackled in her mind. ‘Listen to this guy. First, he apologizes for not being a scryer, then he starts going on about time like he actually knows what he’s talking about. This is killing me!’

  The fae nodded slightly toward the back hallway. “Would you be so kind as to fetch me a—”

  “I’m not fetching you anything. And you just said time doesn’t actually move in only one direction, so now you need to tell me what the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

  “I said nothing of the sort.”

  “Well you implied it. Seriously, Leandras, if you stuck a time-machine rune on my neck yesterday, I’d say that’s something I definitely need to know about.”

  The fae dipped his head. “I had no intention of getting your hopes up, Jessica—”

  “My hopes?” She let out a scathingly unamused laugh. “No, I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to keep getting sucked up into this mess you started. I’d hoped we might actually have a conversation where the crap spewing out of your mouth really means something for once. Hearing you question the entire world’s perception of time moving forward doesn’t even remotely make it onto my fucking hope list.”

  He swallowed, his smile fading as he searched her gaze. Then he lifted his long, slender hand and placed it over his heart with a dip of his head. All put together, it looked like as much of a genuine bow as she was ever going to get from him. Not that being bowed to by a fae man with more secrets than the damn bank was ever something she’d wanted in the first place.

  “Truly. I apologize.”

  Jessica blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “After all my time spent on Earth, I still occasionally forget the differences between here and my home.”

  She stepped away from him, her eyes wide. “Magicals can time-travel in this other world we’re walking into the day after tomorrow?”

  “No. At least, not the way you understand the term. Time is simply more...fluid.”

  “Oh, sure. Fluid like losing huge chunks of it without even realizing? ’Cause that’s happening over here too.”

  “Only for you.” With a concerned frown, he glanced at the purple glowing rune on the side of her neck. His hand rose from his chest toward her, but he stopped himself. “That rune will only present those side effects for a finite period, Jessica. If you can withstand the dwindling effects a little longer, you’ll find them practically nonexistent.”

  “Practically. Great.”

  The fight went out of her then as she glared at the fae showing nothing but concern. Leandras fixed her with the same intently open gaze as when he’d knelt beside her on the couch in her bedroom and taken her hands. The same pleading look and the same deeply buried pain brought on by having to plead with anyone in the first place.

  ‘Oh, now you’re psycho-analyzing a psycho, huh? If I were you, witch, I wouldn’t trust your eyeballs. You can’t possibly know any of this is real.’

  No, she couldn’t. But after yesterday—which honestly felt a lot less than twenty-four hours ago, because this damn rune had stripped away so much of it already—Jessica had already chosen to trust Leandras. At least until they finished this mess with the Gateway and the Dalu’Rázj and keeping two worlds from imploding on themselves. Or whatever.

  ‘Shit. You are falling hard.’

  No I’m not.

  Jessica cleared her throat and pulled herself away from Leandras’ gaze. “Anything else you can tell me about this thing on my neck now that we know what it does?”

  “Other than that it preserved the integrity of this establishment and saved your life? No.” He slowly shook his head. “But I find it difficult to think of anything more important than that.”

  Okay, now he was making this weirdly personal.

  She folded her arms and couldn’t look at him, afraid that if she did, she’d find herself drawn into that silver-tinted gaze and sucked up into something neither of them had time for right now. That oddly alluring ozone smell washed over her anyway, which only made her that much more convinced she couldn’t give in to it.

  If this was Leandras’ way of trying to seduce her before they stepped into another world—by telling her that her life was the most important thing they had on her plate—it wasn’t going to work.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  No. She really wasn’t.

  Chapter 9

  Jessica cleared her throat and stepped away from Leandras, shaking her head. Whatever he was doing had to stop.

  ‘You ever heard of magical pheromones, witch?’

  That’s not a real thing.

  ‘If you insist.’

  “Stop.”

  She hadn’t meant to say it out loud to the bank, but the second the word left her lips, the scent of coming rain and the heat flaring in her cheeks immediately lessened.

  Leandras widened his eyes. “Stop what, Jessica?”

  “Just... We’re changing the subject.”

  ‘Ha. Nice coverup.’

  Jessica clenched her eyes shut and took a deep breath. “What did you need me to...get for you?”

  His close-lipped smile was tight and disappeared just as quickly as it had flashed across his face. “Just a bowl from the kitchen. Preferably glass, but metal will also serve. And milk. If you have it.”

  “Milk?” She barked out a laugh but quickly forced it back down again when she saw he was serious. “Okay... I would’ve expected you to ask for bourbon or something. Maybe even a martini.”

  “Hmm. As much as I am a fan of Earth liquors, imbibing them now would serve no purpose but a temporary distraction.” Leandras waved a finger toward the reagents resting in piles on the desk. “It’s for the spell.”

  “Oh. Right. A bowl and...milk.”

  “Yes.” His all-knowing smirk returned—the one that made Jessica want to simultaneously lean in closer and run away as far and as fast as she could. “But the notion of drinking with you sounds particularly enjoyable. Perhaps once all this is finished.”

  “Yeah, trust me. That’s a really bad idea.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because whatever you’re imagining is nothing like the real thing.”

  “Oh, I doubt that very much.”

  Biting her lip, she tore away from him to stalk toward the hall.

  ‘Ha! He wants a drunken vestrohím and a little extra playtime.’

  Yeah, well, he’s not getting it.

  ‘Oh, come on. He likes what you are. Might even go so far as to say he’s infatuated.’

  Still a bad idea. The last three magicals who thought they were infatuated with Jessica Northwood had gotten a lot more than they’d bargained for.

  ‘Except for Mel.’

  Mel was different. And we’re past that now, okay?

  Because Mel and Cedrick were together. Because Jessica had taken the fall for all of them—twice now, if she included the stain on her conscience after killing Mickey to fuel the return of her own magic. Because Jessica had promised herself she wouldn’t be the same witch from before who took what she wante
d and didn’t give a shit about the consequences for anyone else involved.

  ‘Wait, wait, wait. You’re not giving into the fae who makes you shudder because you don’t want consequences for him?’

  Jessica stormed into the kitchen and jerked open the cabinet under the counter to pull out a glass mixing bowl.

  Different kind of shudder, bank. Not the good kind.

  ‘Yeah, you can keep lying to yourself all you want.’

  She turned toward the fridge and pulled out the quart of milk only about a quarter full. It was impossible to fully ignore the little voice in her head that actually belonged to a sentient building, but she could at least pretend.

  The bank sniggered. ‘Oh, this is way too good. You don’t actually want to hurt him.’

  “Wrong.”

  The fridge door slammed shut, and she turned toward the hall again with a glass bowl and the last of her milk that would have gone to waste anyway once she and Leandras stepped through the Gateway.

  Jessica didn’t want to give into any of Leandras’ tricks. She didn’t want to let her guard down, especially now. And she was done playing the dangerous game of getting too close to anyone she actually...

  The unfinished thought made her pause in the doorway. She couldn’t let herself finish it.

  ‘If you won’t, I will.’

  Don’t.

  ‘Getting too close to anyone means you actually care about them.’ The bank gasped in mock surprise. ‘You care about that slippery little fae man.’

  “I swear,” she muttered under her breath as she forced herself to keep walking toward the lobby, “if you try to twist this around into anything other than what it is, I will step through that goddamn door in two days without even saying goodbye.”

  ‘No you won’t. And I’m not twisting anything, Jessica. I can literally see everything in your head.’

  Gritting her teeth, she picked up the pace down the hall, her fingers clenched tightly around the carton of milk and the glass bowl.

  Fine. The bank could see every thought flickering through her mind. That had its benefits sometimes, sure. Now was definitely not one of those times.

  She and Leandras had two worlds to save and a hell of a lot more ahead of them before it was finished. Anything else would just have to stay in her mind where it belonged.