Chapter 14

14

EVANGELINE

I woke up that morning tangled together with Gabriel, feeling lazy and rested. He'd been in a weird mood the night before, and, given everything that had happened, I didn't blame him. The conversation he'd snuck off to have with his mom had rattled him, but when I'd asked, he'd shaken his head and tugged me down to the bed. We'd curled up together, trading the occasional sleepy kiss, but mostly we enjoyed holding each other. But we couldn't stay in bed forever, not with everything that was at stake. Plus, as tempting as Gabriel was, ancient and powerful magic was tempting, too, and it required practice.

As much as I hated to admit it, being rested did make it easier to handle the magic. I didn't want a repeat of the clumsy series of jumps it had taken me to get Gabriel out of the citadel, so I decided to practice my teleportation. To keep it as low-risk as possible I was only taking us around the forest, but it was still exhilarating even when the sights that greeted us were pretty much the same. Power crackled through me as I dipped into the flow of the ley lines over and over again, flickering in and out of existence. Every time we slipped back into the material world, Lissa whooped and cheered.

I'd been working on my newfound skills solo for most of the morning, trying to improve my control, but then Lissa made big, sad eyes at me every time I stopped back in at the safe house. Finally, I relented and agreed that I should be practicing with a passenger.

"That's amazing," Lissa told me when we stopped for a break. We'd found a rocky spot halfway up a mountain and were sitting on the sunbaked stone. "So exhilarating! If I were you, I'd never go anywhere the old-fashioned way."

I decided not to ask what ‘the old-fashioned way' meant for someone who was almost two hundred years old. "I am kinda limited by where the ley lines cross. It's gonna make it a lot easier to get around a city as magical as Eldoria, but it's not like I can use it to zip down to the kitchen when I want a snack."

"Still, it's great fun," Lissa said. "And it's nice to get out into the fresh air and relax. I don't know what it is, but whenever I sleep in an unfamiliar place, I have the strangest dreams. This is an absolute delight after the night I had. What about you, Evangeline? Have you been having any unusual dreams?" She watched me with a lazily contented expression. Any minute now, she was going to whip out a bottle of nail polish and give me a manicure while we talked about boys.

She was angling for something, but I had no goddamn idea what. "Uh, I guess," I said. "C'mon, I bet I could do it with another passenger."

With her hand tucked into the crook of my elbow, I slipped us into the flow of wild magic and took us back to Marcus's place.

"You couldn't have landed us a little closer?" Lissa asked, peering at the old mill through the trees.

"The intersection is here." I shrugged. "Blame magic, not me."

She huffed, then pouted. "But it would take a human ages to walk all that way."

I eyed the distance. It wasn't more than a three-minute walk. Before I could point that out, she shifted her grip on me. The world abruptly went sideways as Lissa hoisted me up over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes and ran to the house with vampiric speed. I let out a startled shriek, but by the time I'd processed what was happening, she was already setting me down at the front door and dusting off my jacket.

"Uh," I managed, blinking rapidly. "Thanks?"

"Don't mention it," Lissa said cheerfully, like she hadn't just deadlifted me with no warning. "Come along. Let's find a new victim to whisk around with us."

"Let's maybe not phrase it like that when we're looking for volunteers," I said, swept along in Hurricane Lissa's wake.

Inside, a few of the tables on the first floor had been pushed together in the middle of the room. The white paint was scratched away in places where runes were etched, leaving the battered wood of the tabletop visible.

Marcus was bent over the table fiddling with pieces of silver wire, and Isabella stood on an ottoman that floated several feet above the table. She was stretched up on her toes, drilling holes into the ceiling. Sawdust drifted downward, but the small bucket zipping around Isabella caught the dust before it could hit the table. Every time she finished screwing something in, she hung a colorful bit of string off it. Each one had a small pendulum at the bottom, metal or stone or wood. If there was any logic behind which ones went where, it was lost on me. The strings were long enough that the pendulums hung a foot or so above the surface of the table. She didn't stop working when Lissa and I came in, but Marcus glanced up, sliding his glasses back up his nose.

"You need a victim?" he asked mildly. "What sort?"

"Not a victim," I insisted. "Victim makes it sound nefarious."

"Is it nefarious?" He turned to Lissa. "Is she being nefarious?"

"No!" I said.

"No," Lissa reported. "She's practicing her teleportation."

There was a loud thump as Isabella jumped down from the floating ottoman, her heavy boots slamming onto the tabletop. Marcus tsked at her under his breath and was ignored by everyone involved.

"I can help," Isabella said shortly.

I blinked up at her. "Are you sure?" Things were still weird between us, and I was afraid they might stay that way.

"Yeah," she said. "Call it academic curiosity. I'm pretty much done here anyway." She looked down at Marcus, who nodded.

"Thank you for your help," he said. "I should have this up and running in no time."

"What are you working on?" I asked. Crafting artifacts was not my strong suit. I could make some standard utility things, but technical work like what Marcus was doing was so far beyond me, I couldn't even figure out the shape of what he was trying to do.

"It's a secret," Marcus said.

I rolled my eyes, and was surprised when Isabella chuckled. She hopped down from the tabletop, careful of the wires Marcus had set up.

"So, what do I need to do, exactly?" she asked.

"We need to be touching," I said, and it came out sounding apologetic. "Doesn't have to be skin to skin as long as you're grabbed on, and then you just walk with us. I'll do the rest."

Isabella hesitated for a moment, then grabbed my upper arm in an awkward death grip. It felt less like we were going to be walking together and more like I was a prisoner she was about to frog-march. On my other side, Lissa tucked her hand into the crook of my arm delicately, like a fine lady going for a constitutional through the botanical garden or something. I started to walk, and there were a few awkward steps as they tried to match my tempo. As soon as we were all in sync, I slipped us into the flow.

There was that familiar swoop and jolt, then we were in a clearing. One massive, dead oak stood in the middle, completely charred black but somehow still standing. Moss climbed up the trunk to the bare branches, and tiny purple flowers crowded the floor of the clearing.

Isabella stumbled to a stop, but I was already slowing us down, not wanting to jar her too much by making multiple jumps her first time. My chest ached oddly.

"Holy shit," she breathed.

"It's intense, I know," I said.

"We were inside magic," Isabella said. "I mean, actually inside of it. Not part of it, but…" She shook her head, speechless. After a second, she let out the angry sniffle that I knew meant she was starting to tear up.

"I'm going to gather some flowers," Lissa said, all faux-casual. "Over on the other side of the clearing. I may even hum to myself in an idyllic manner, so I probably wouldn't hear any conversations that may happen."

It amazed me how sometimes vampires were so subtle that you couldn't even recognize what they were working toward, and sometimes they were as delicate as a bowling ball to the nose.

Isabella still had a death grip on my arm, so when I headed for the opposite end of the clearing, she drifted along behind me. I found a fallen log and steered her toward it.

"It isn't the same for the vampires," I said as we sat. Other side of the clearing or no, vampiric hearing was uncannily strong. "They're not used to magic the same way we are. It's part of them, sure, but they don't know how to use it."

"It was so…"

"Overwhelming?" I offered.

Isabella nodded.

"The first time was horrible," I admitted. "Kind of like… Have you ever been pushed into a pool when you weren't expecting it?"

"Yeah," Isabella said, a little wetly. "Amy B's birthday party in the eighth grade. I didn't have time to take a breath before I hit the water. Gulped in a big lungful of pool water."

I had a pretty good mental list of the recurring players in Isabella's stories about her childhood, but that took me a second. "Was that rich Amy or racist Amy?"

"Rich Amy," Isabella said. "She was also kinda racist." Her death grip on my arm eased.

"You went to school with way too many Amys."

She laughed. "Yeah, tell me about it." We were quiet for a moment, then Isabella cleared her throat. "Does it still feel like that?"

I shot her a questioning look.

"The ley line travel," she clarified. "Does it still feel like thinking you're gonna drown?"

I thought about it for a moment, which probably wasn't reassuring. "No," I said finally. "It still feels dangerous, though. I've gotta be careful with it so I don't get lost."

"Marcus is making you a map," Isabella told me. "That's his surprise project."

"I'll act really surprised when he tells me," I promised. "But I don't mean that sort of lost."

Isabella nodded. She didn't look at me, just stared at the charred tree. "Back when I was doing dark magic, it was really… Fuck, I dunno, easy sometimes. It was easier to use it than not use it." She seemed to realize that she was still holding my arm and let go, twisting her hands together in her lap. "You know I've lost people to dark magic."

I nodded.

"I was… scared," she said, struggling to get the words out. "Scared for you when you were cursed, but also scared of what you could do. I hated seeing you lose control like that, and then… you know, with Theo…"

"I know," I said, barely louder than a whisper. "And I know it doesn't change anything, but I was scared, too."

Isabella turned and looked me squarely in the eye for the first time in a long time. "Good," she said fiercely. "You have a terrifying amount of power, Evangeline. It should scare you, you hear me? It should. Don't start getting complacent about it. You don't create it, you just channel it, and it can turn on you no matter how strong you are. Especially if you're strong sometimes. Stay alert."

"I will," I promised her, a little taken aback. "I will."

She inspected my face, then nodded sharply. We sat side by side and watched Lissa pick flowers. She'd gotten a pretty massive armful by that point.

"Are you up for another jump?" I asked after a little while.

"Back to the house, yes. More sightseeing? Absolutely not." Isabella sounded warm and wry, so much closer to the woman I was used to.

I laughed. "Back home it is," I said. "Lissa! C'mon! We're headed back!"

When we got back to the safe house, Lissa went straight in, but Isabella stopped me before I could follow.

"Hey. Do you maybe want to spar? Or just, you know, run through some forms? I wanna see what your new magic can do."

"Yeah," I said. "I'd really like that."

It wasn't actual sparring, more like tai chi, with slow moves that could turn deadly if needed. We could read each other well enough that even with my new strength, Isabella more or less held her own, although in a real fight, I would've beaten her easily.

After a while, Lissa came back out, dragging an old lawn chair. She set it up on the grass a safe distance away, lounged on it, then pulled a synth-blood pouch out of her bra. She cheered for both of us, swapping who she was supporting at random.

That was how Gabriel found us.

"Perhaps we should be focusing our attention elsewhere," he called when we paused. "On Morgana, for instance."

Lissa booed enthusiastically, but I dropped my stance. He was probably right. Besides, we'd been going for ages, and I was sweaty, out of breath, and sore. I rubbed at my chest absently; it was aching again. He sauntered over and slung an arm around my waist, even though I was all gross, and I stretched up for a kiss.

"Just making sure I don't get rusty," I said. "Plus, if I keep practicing my teleportation, I'm gonna get motion sick, and I don't want to sit around the safe house."

"About that," Gabriel said. "I thought we could make a trip into town."

"Seriously?" I asked, delighted.

"Heavily disguised," he hedged.

"Yeah, no. Disguises, totally," I said. "I've been wanting to go into town and check on Chanel and Pothos. Chanel can keep Pothos fed and everything, but when he's bored he gets… well, let's just say I usually try not to let him get too bored. Lemme get cleaned up first, okay?"

Gabriel nodded. He looked like he was somewhere else. Was he stressed about his mother leaving?

In our room, I grabbed a change of clothes and went to the tiny bathroom. I considered a real shower, but I was too eager to get going, so I wet a washcloth, planning to scrub down quickly. I managed to get out of my shirt without slamming my elbow into anything, which, in a bathroom that small, was a real achievement. As I looked myself over in the mirror, I spotted a thread hanging down from the band of my bra, right at the center. I swiped at it absently, then frowned.

It wasn't a thread. It was a hairline crack in my chest.

I yanked the bra off, smashing my elbow into the towel rack, but I didn't care. Tiny cracks radiated from a spot between my breasts. Fuck, was the curse back?

No, this didn't feel like the curse. The curse had been black and sludgy, and these were faint gold cracks, light enough to almost blend into my skin. I'd only noticed the first one because the metallic lines that cut across my chest reflected in the light. I blew out a slow breath. I wouldn't panic. I didn't have time to panic.

Quickly, I threw my mind back to when I'd felt that ache. After teleporting. After sparring. A hypothesis was forming, and I didn't like it.

"Okay," I said to my reflection. "Let's be practical about this."

I cast the first spell that came to mind, and a dozen little lights bobbed above my head. It was a simple piece of work, pretty much a baby's first spell. Nothing. I slowly added more power into the spell. Nothing. I'd reached what used to be my limit before I took on my parents' magic. Taking a breath, I pushed. More power, and I had to close my eyes as the lights flared so bright that the inside of my eyelids turned a hot orangey-pink. My chest prickled and stung. I dropped the spell instantly, and even though I'd had my eyes closed, the room felt incredibly dim. Was it just my imagination or had the cracks gotten longer? The longest was the length of my hand, but I hadn't thought far enough ahead to measure it before I'd test my theory.

I gripped the edges of the tiny sink and stared at myself in the mirror. All right. So, I could use my old amount of power without causing any issues. Anything more than that was an issue.

I washed quickly and got dressed again, then practically stormed out. Downstairs, I found Gabriel holding a pair of hats. One was a green wool beret, the other a black fedora—the proper wide-brimmed ones, not the type that had haunted my junior high experience.

"We need to go to my apartment."

To his credit, Gabriel didn't question it and fell into step beside me. He held out the hats, and I grabbed the beret. The tingle of someone else's magic crept down my neck as I put it on. Gabriel put on the fedora, and I was gearing up to make fun of him about it, even though the few times I'd tried to pull off a beret in the past I'd looked like the worst kind of former foreign exchange student.

As soon as Gabriel put the hat on, his features shifted. His angular jaw became squarer, and his cheekbones flattened out. His nose now looked like it had been broken at least once, and there were dark circles under his eyes. A blond five o'clock shadow sprang up, and his hair went pale and straight. The illusion didn't stop with his face, either. His body was bulkier, his hands wide and scarred. His eyes were narrower but least his irises were the same familiar shade of purple-grey.

"Marcus made these disguises, didn't he?" I asked. My voice came out higher pitched than I expected, and I put a hand to my throat, my nose wrinkling.

"He pulled them out of a very large box labeled ‘dress-up supplies'," Gabriel said in a gravelly voice that had dropped an octave.

"You look like Dick Tracy," I told him. Given how on-the-nose the fedora transformation was, I was a little worried I'd see someone with a pencil-thin mustache and a baguette if I looked in the mirror.

"I suspected I might," Gabriel said. He nodded at a small mirror on the wall, and I took a peek. I didn't look cartoonishly French, which was a great start. I had flawless waves of black hair, an oval face, and a wide mouth with perfectly applied red lipstick. A glance down confirmed I'd wound up with hourglass curves, mostly hidden under a fur coat. I tried to meet Gabriel's eyes in the mirror, but of course, he didn't have a reflection, so instead I glanced at him.

"Well, at least we match," I said. "But I do feel like I've gotta point out that I'm the private investigator between the two of us, which makes you the femme fatale ."

"We could swap if you would feel more comfortable?" Gabriel offered without any enthusiasm at all.

"I think I'm good," I told him.

" Homme fatal ," he said. "Or if you want to be technical, homme mort ."

I frowned, trying to parse that, then rolled my eyes. " Homme mort-vivant ," I said, doing my best with my high school French.

Gabriel laughed. "Shall we?" He offered me his arm, gentlemanly in a way that made me want to make fun of him to distract myself from the treacherous fluttering in my stomach.

"I was thinking we could walk, actually," I said, thinking of the cracks spreading across my chest. "Don't wanna get burnt out."

"If you'd like." Gabriel didn't move his arm, and it took me a second to realize he wasn't offering just for the utility of being able to teleport with me. He wanted to touch me. Heat rose in my cheeks, and I only hoped my blush wouldn't be visible through the disguise. I tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow, and we set off.

It was a gorgeous day for a walk. It had that late-fall crispness, just cold enough for me to be comfortable in the fur coat without getting the dreaded transitional season ‘oh God, I'm wearing the wrong number of layers' back sweat. Soon, we were out of the scraggly edges of the forest, and the buildings of Eldoria became denser and denser. The streets were eerily quiet. Every time the wind blew, it tossed eddies of crispy fallen leaves across the pavement.

It was nice, if you could ignore the looming sense of doom in the air. Gabriel and I stayed in step, and he'd put his hand on top of mine where it rested in his elbow. His disguise's hands looked coarse, but I could still feel the cool smoothness of his real fingers against mine. We talked about nothing in particular as we walked.

"Lissa was being kind of weird earlier," I told him. "Asking about my dreams. She was all casual about it, but she was definitely fishing for something."

"Oh, she does that sometimes," Gabriel told me. "Her particular skill is sensing dreams. She can't see or hear their actual contents. From the way she's described it, it's more like synesthesia. A nightmare might be purple and sound like breaking glass while a dream about childhood might smell like buttercups and taste of shortbread. That sort of thing."

"Weird," I said. "But kinda cool. Wait. Oh, my God." I abruptly remembered the types of dreams I'd been having lately. "Can she tell if a dream is… you know?"

Gabriel quirked an eyebrow. I was good enough at reading his expressions that, even though he was wearing a different face, I could tell he knew exactly what I meant but wanted to make me say it.

"I'm not sure that I do know," he said innocently.

I pinched his arm. "A sex dream."

"I've never worked up the courage to ask outright," Gabriel admitted. "But that woman can do alarming things with a smirk, so I assumed that either she can, or she's excellent at bluffing. Why, have you been having a lot of those dreams lately?" The fake innocent tone was back.

"If you must know," I said primly, "I've been having them about you." It felt weird talking about this out in the middle of the street, but it's not like anyone was around to listen in on us. "I had one about you drinking from me, actually."

Gabriel missed a step, and I stumbled. "When was this?"

"A little bit after the citadel thing. Why?"

Gabriel stopped walking and turned to face me. "We kissed. I was above you. Inside you. And then I drank from you."

I could feel my face going red again. "What?"

He lifted a hand and touched the side of my neck, right where I could feel my pulse pounding. "I bit you right here," he said. "In the dream."

"We had the same dream?"

We stared at each other, Gabriel's hand cool and gentle on my neck.

"We should get to my place," I said finally. "I think I might have a book about this." I was pretty sure I knew where it was, and it would make it easier to grab the slim book I had about magical burnout without Gabriel asking questions.

It sounded like we both had research to do.