Free Fall (3 page)

“One of us is an idiot.” A tiny smile curved her mouth then faded. “We both know it’s not me.”

He laughed, relieved to see a glimmer of her usual self. He leaned closer and made sure his voice was too low for anyone to overhear. “What the hell has you so scared you can’t think straight?”

She bit her lower lip, and even someone like him could see she was scared to death. Up to now, he’d have said nothing frightened Lys Fensic. “I broke things off with Michael.”

Funny how he felt like he knew her but, in fact, knew almost nothing about her personal life. He knew things like she had a sense of humor, she was smart, hard-working, and liked Thai food. He knew she’d learned a lot about computer security because of her job. She wore a lot of high-heeled pumps that showed off her first class legs. She didn’t wear bright colors or a wedding ring.

“Husband or boyfriend?”

“Neither.”

“Really?”

She shook her head ruefully. “It’s complicated.”

All right then. He was jealous. Disappointed to find out she was in a relationship. Then again, there was something off about the way she felt to him. She wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t telling him everything. “Were you sleeping with him?”

She raised shocked eyes to his, and he met them straight on. Her gaze veered off.

“If I’m going to help you out, and I am, it makes a difference if there’s a pissed off ex at your house.”

“Sometimes.” She stirred the pile of tiny cardboard bits. “About sleeping with him, I mean.” She tossed back the rest of her coffee. “He’s…It turns out he’s not a very nice person.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I don’t put up with shit from anyone.” Her expression hardened, and she was the ice queen he’d known and admired all this time. Hard as diamonds. “Ever. I don’t have much tolerance for hypocrites either, and that’s what he is.”

He slouched on his chair. There were no other magekind in the café. Just her. No demons either, or at least not any of the free kin. A mageheld? He wouldn’t be able to sense a demon that was enslaved to a mage. Demons who got taken were cut off from their own kind.

Lys kept talking, hunched over, fingers tearing at the remains of the cardboard sleeve. She appeared oblivious when he pulled enough magic through him that a trained mage would want to be prepared for trouble. “He’s supposed to be out of town until tomorrow, so chances are I can get what I need, no problem. But if he’s there” —briefly, she met his gaze—“or one of his…friends are there, I want someone like you with me.”

He rubbed his chin. “Someone like me, huh?”

A bit of color showed up in her cheeks. It’d be cute if this weren’t so serious. “Yes.”

“Good with computers? A guy who knows the difference between TCP and UDP?” She had bone structure like you wouldn’t believe. Maybe not perfect, but damn close.

“Someone who can get rough if need be.”

“That’s it?” He wanted her to say exactly what she thought he might walk into. “I drive you to your house, you get whatever, and if there’s someone there, I do what? Defrag his hard drive? Install a key logger and steal all his money?”

“No.”

“Scare the crap out of him? Push him around? Or something else?”

“Yes.” She wilted under his stare. “I mean, no.” She ran both her hands over her hair. “Look, Michael is…he’s…different.”

“Takes all kinds.”

“He’s different.” She blew out a breath, and he thought,
Here it comes
. “The way you’re different.”

He cocked his head again. They were now officially in the dangerous territory of talking about the truth. Holy. Shit. This Michael asshat was one of the kin? One of the kin was fucking with her mind without her knowing what she was? “I’m not an abusive bastard.”

Exasperation flashed over her face. “Of course not. I know that.”

“Spell it out.”

“He has certain abilities.” She gave a wry laugh that told him a lot.

He didn’t need to be in her head to know what she was thinking. “You’re not crazy.”

“No?” She was getting better about looking him in the face.

“No.”

“He doesn’t use his powers for good.”

“You think I do?”

There was just the slightest hesitation before she said, “Yes.”

He wasn’t about to use words that confirmed what he was, not without knowing for a fact it was safe for him if she knew. Like she wasn’t telling him straight out about Michael and what he was. “Are you saying he’s not following the rules?”

“Rules?” Her confusion about that was rock solid. “If there are rules, I don’t think he’s following them, no.”

“Probably not.” He felt sick for her. Outraged and ready to kill the motherfucker that had sent her over the edge like this. He felt guilty, too, because someone like him had obviously, obviously, been fucking her over. Oh, he understood the temptation, but the days when the kin routinely didn’t give a damn about the consequences of that sort of thing were over. “There’s people who can help with this kind of problem. Rule following problems.”

She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture, and he had to restrain himself from consoling her. “I don’t about any rules. And I don’t know about any of those people.”

“If he’s breaking the rules, it’s no surprise he didn’t mention the rest.”

“Not that it matters.” Her mouth twisted, and he didn’t need a connection with her to guess her mental state right now. Right there on the edge of panic. “Even if I knew, what if I asked for help and Michael found out? Accidentally or on purpose? I’d never have risked it.” Her long, pale fingers curled around her empty coffee cup. “He has poor impulse control.”

“You should have contacted Nikodemus before now. His name had to have come up.” She shook her head. Even closed off the way he was, and with her as unstable as she was, he believed the name meant nothing to her. “Or Carson Phillips.”

Nikodemus was the local warlord, a demon whose significant other was the human witch Carson. How the two of them ended up together, he had no idea, but the warlord kept tight control over his territory and that included magekind and demonkind both. More to the point, Nikodemus forbade the demonkind from harming humans. Just like he had a rule about the magekind fucking over the kin. From everything he’d heard, transgressors paid. He wasn’t at all surprised Michael hadn’t mentioned any of that.

“If you want my advice, get in contact with Nikodemus or Carson. If Michael is breaking the rules, one of them will help you out.”

She closed her eyes, then opened them right away. Her pupils were huge. She went opaque again. She grabbed her purse, threw a ten on the table, and stood. While she picked up her box, the skin along his arms prickled. More cracks appeared in her control, and magic leaked from her. At least two people in his line of sight rubbed their arms. “Thanks.” She gave a tight nod. ”Good advice, I’m sure. I appreciate you listening to me.”

“Sit down.” He shoved her ten into one of the outside pockets of her purse.

She didn’t. “Why?”

He took out his phone. “I’ll text you a number. When you call, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep my name out of it.” He forwarded the contact to her, and a moment later her purse beeped. He frowned as his skin rippled again. One of the humans from before turned around and stared at Lys. He grabbed the strap of her purse and pulled until she sat down with the box on her lap. He leaned in. “Fensic, how poor, exactly, is your boyfriend’s impulse control?”

She didn’t answer.

“Did he try to kill you?”

“I think so.”

“What the hell is at your house that’s worth your life?” He waited out her decision about what she was going to tell him.

“A talisman.”

And,
boom
. There it was. “Yours or Michael’s?”

“Mine. Sort of.” Her lips parted, and he got another ripple of magic from her. “Michael gave it to me. God, I hate that thing. Touching it gives me the creeps. I don’t want it near me.”

“Did he tell you what it is?”

“He told me the magic in it would help stabilize my condition. But he was lying.” She let out a breath. “He lied to me about everything.” She leaned across the box and as much of the table as she could and pitched her voice low. “That thing is alive, and I swear to you, it wants out.”

“And?” He maintained eye contact with her. The thought of one of his own kind using a talisman like that made him ill.

“Michael kept asking me why I wasn’t wearing it. Three days ago, just to get him off my back about it, I told him I lost it. He went ballistic, and that’s when I left.”

Telos swirled the cooling contents of his cup. “It’s still at your house?”

She nodded.

“And he’s not home?”

“Not supposed to be.”

He glanced out the window. “Let’s go then.”

Lys’s knees shook the entire time she followed Khunbish to his car. She carried the box from her office, but she was tempted to throw it into the nearest Dumpster or put down it on the street and leave it there. Nothing in there mattered. The damn frog stapler, which she’d loved more than she ought to, was broken.

Back on Front Street, a meter maid puttered past the BMW and didn’t even look at the car. Khunbish went around to the passenger side door and opened it for her. While she got in and sat with her purse on her lap, he put her cardboard box in the trunk.

This was a high-end model with plenty of leg room. Newer than her white one, but other than that, more or less the same car. Hers had a black interior, too. In the ambulance after her accident, one of the paramedics had told her she was lucky she hadn’t been killed. He’d been more right than he could possibly have imagined.

Khunbish had a hand on the roof of his car and was leaning down at the passenger door side, staring at her with his black, black eyes. A frown put a crease between his eyebrows. She couldn’t tell his pupils from his irises. She set her purse on the floorboard and gave him a cool look.

“I won’t drive like a maniac,” he said, as if he’d read her thoughts. Maybe he had. In her current condition, her state of mind couldn’t be that hard to guess.

“I appreciate that.” She gave him a businesslike smile because she had enough to deal with right now without adding in the problem of the physical attraction between them. Nothing could ever happen between them. Ever.

“No problem.” He reached in to fasten her seat belt for her. His hair, dark as night, spilled over one shoulder as he did. Khunbish was big and rough, and a bit more than normal. Here they’d been talking about talismans without any discussion about whether something like that even existed. He hadn’t asked a single question when she said he was like Michael, either. He was exactly what she needed right now. Someone who didn’t set her off. Someone she trusted.

She closed her eyes. In her head, she heard the sound of breaking glass and the hollow thump of metal against metal. Her body actually jerked and her eyes popped open. The metallic tang came back, coating her mouth and tongue, but she stayed in the here and now. Traffic moved with the usual controlled chaos, and she was in Khunbish’s BMW, not hers. The car was still parked.

“You okay, Fensic?”

Their gazes locked again, and she got overwhelmed by all the ways he appealed to her. He seemed to know what was happening to her, too. Smug bastard. “Yes. Of course. Just tired.”

He stayed bent over. There was the tiniest suggestion of a very male smirk at the edges of his mouth. “That’s all?”

“Yes.” His skin was fine-grained, smooth. No scars, no fading zits, not a single imperfection. She liked that he hadn’t shaved in a while. He’d once told her he only shaved once a week because he was a descendant of Genghis Khan on his father’s side, and back in the day the Mongol horde didn’t have much facial hair. He’d said that with a straight face. He must be the tallest Mongolian on record, because he was over six feet. Taller than Michael. How good a mage did he have to be to achieve that sort of perfection? God knows Michael worked at it.

While Khunbish was still at the passenger-side door, a disheveled woman pushed her shopping cart piled with bulging plastic bags in front of his car and continued into traffic. She didn’t care about anything, did she? Bent over and shuffling, she looked sixty. She was probably half that age. Drugs would do that to you.

Cars slammed on their brakes or swerved around the woman and her shopping cart, and that broke into her fragile calm. The vise-grip of her headache made her queasy again. The taste of iron got stronger. She breathed through her mouth, but right now she was wide open to anyone. Dangerous. Potentially fatal. The inside of her skull burned, and she could swear her head was fracturing. She imagined tiny fragments of bone driving into her brain.

Her vision blanked out. Front Street disappeared.

In front of a brick building that isn’t being maintained, she hands over grimy bills and in return accepts a dirty, much folded glassine paper. Deftly exchanged with a man whose job it is to peddle poison. The unbelievably intense craving that lives in her is about to kill her
.

With a nauseating jolt, she came back to the present.

She could see Khunbish. The inside of his car. The street. God, the noise was going to shatter her. Their eyes met again, and she couldn’t look away. She wasn’t sure she heard him speak, but if he hadn’t, he was about to. Same difference, really. His mouth moved, forming the word
Fensic
?

“Fensic?”

She blinked a few times, waiting for his future to slam into her. There was this odd click between her ears, like a door closing. Nothing happened. Her surroundings stayed in place. God, what a relief. “Fine,” she said. She would not throw up in his car. Would. Not. “I’m fine.”

He straightened from his lean over her and closed her door. When he was behind the wheel and he’d merged into the madness of downtown traffic, she stared into the side view mirror, watching for cars coming up too fast. After a bit that made her dizzy, so she looked straight ahead.

Reflection through the windshield made his eyes appear to flicker between black, bronze and gold. Eerie. She wondered if she was hallucinating that. She turned her head to the passenger-side window, but then she was staring into cars, taxis, and buses full of people, and that was worse than staring forward and seeing him and that weird eye-color flicker in her peripheral vision. She concentrated on remaining disconnected from the world outside. It had been years since she’d had to work this hard at staying alone in her head.