She looked at him for a long moment, and something sparked in the air, making him very aware that they were alone again in his cottage, where the magic had begun. All she said, though, was, “Do you feel up to a general meeting?”
“That’d probably be best.” He might as well break the bad news en masse.
“I’ll go spread the word. But I don’t want to see you up at the mansion until you’ve finished eating, got it?”
“Got it.” A quick yank and he had the IV out, then had to fumble to shut the thing off when it peed on his foot. “Yeah. Smooth,” he muttered under his breath.
She flashed him a grin that looked far more natural than anything she’d managed up to that point.
“Glad to have you back.”
Looking up, he met her eyes. “Same goes.” They locked gazes for a three- count of heartbeats, and more passed between them than had been said. At least, it did for him, though he couldn’t have articulated what, exactly, he took away from the moment beyond a hot pressure in his chest and a more than fleeting thought of locking the door and saying, Fuck the general meeting; they can wait until tomorrow. But the problem was, he didn’t know if they could wait, really. He’d already lost a day, which put them at only eight to go until the summer solstice.
Jade broke the eye lock with a self-conscious head shake, then turned and headed for the door, scooping up the books and papers on her way past the coffee table. She paused at the archway leading to the kitchen, glancing back. “In the pit . . . in Xibalba. You were amazing. I don’t think I would’ve made it out of there if it hadn’t been for you.” Before he could say anything—not that he had a clue how to respond to something like that; it wasn’t like he’d had much practice being amazing—she continued: “I froze. Here I am, trying to tell everyone that I deserve to be in on the action, but when it came down to it, I just stood there. I wouldn’t have run if you hadn’t dragged me, and I wouldn’t have made it out if you hadn’t come after me. When that guard started marching me toward the fortress—” She broke off, shuddering, her eyes going stark and hollow in her face. “I panicked. I didn’t do anything.”
He stood, forcing his legs to hold him, and crossed to her. Without a word, he folded her into his arms, hoping that this was one of those times when the right action meant more than finding the right words.
Jade stiffened, and for a moment he thought she was going to push away, but then she let out a long, shaky sigh and melted into him. After a brief hesitation, she slid her arms around his waist and hung on. They stood that way for a long time. Finally, when he felt her coiled muscles ease, he said into her hair, “You couldn’t have done anything; neither of us could, unarmed and with no real fighting magic to speak of. We owe our lives to the companions. And besides, it was your magic that warned Kinich Ahau that there was a Nightkeeper nearby, in trouble.”
Shifting in his arms, she looked up at him, eyes gone very serious. “Maybe it was my magic at first, but at the end it wasn’t my magic that got us out. It was yours.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t know what to think about that yet, or how to process it in light of what the journalist had written about needing to use his talent to get inside the library. He didn’t have a clue how he’d gotten there in the first place. “Regardless, we got each other out of there. No apologies, no regrets, okay? Let’s just be grateful we’re both back where we belong.” Those words took on new meaning when he realized he was stroking her from nape to hip, that her hands had migrated from his waist to locked behind his neck. His body awoke, hard and fast, and he saw in her eyes that she’d felt the change. Welcomed it.
He eased down, giving her plenty of time and room to step back if she needed to, as she’d done before. Instead, she rose up on her toes to meet him halfway. We’re okay , the kiss seemed to say.
We’re home now. We’re safe . More, it suggested that their being together hadn’t been a one-shot deal designed only to test the effects of sex magic. It said she was into him, that she enjoyed touching him, kissing him. And when the kiss ended and they leaned a little apart to look into each other’s eyes, he saw a spark of heat that danced over his skin and made his body hard and ready in an instant.
“We could . . .” He trailed off with a suggestive head nod in the direction of the couch, or better yet, the wide-open floor below.
“We could . . . but we’re not going to. You’re going to eat, I’m going to collect the others, and we’re going to rendezvous up at the mansion for a powwow.” But she cocked an eyebrow. “As for the other . . . maybe later, if you’re still on your feet.”
“Count on it.”
She grinned and headed out. And as the door closed at her back, he realized he was smiling. The analytical side of him knew that the day—or rather, the past two days—had to go in the minus column of shit news and more shit news. But the man in him thought the crappy-ass intel was balanced, at least in the short term, by the fact that he and Jade were finally on the same page.
Now he just had to make sure they stayed there.
The residents of Skywatch met, as was their habit, in the great room of the main mansion. The five in-
residence winikin sat at the breakfast bar that separated the big marble-and-chrome kitchen from the sunken sitting area, where the Nightkeepers were scattered on chairs and sofas—or in Sven’s case a couple of pillows on the floor. Jade had staked out one end of a long couch, and didn’t mind in the slightest when Alexis and Nate filled up the rest of it. She wasn’t trying to distance herself from Lucius, precisely, but she was hyperaware that the others knew they had slept together. She’d known that would be the case going into things, of course. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t been there before.
Private lives didn’t stay private for long around Skywatch, not with sex so integrally connected to the magic. For some reason, though, this time the sidelong looks put a strange shimmy in the pit of her stomach and made her want to squirm.
Then there was Shandi, who frowned down at her from the breakfast bar. The winikin was in her late fifties, with silver-threaded dark hair worn straight to her waist and distinctive facial features she’d explained as Navajo heritage out in the human world, but that had really come from her Sumerian ancestors. She was petite, as were all of the winikin, and seemed to exist in a perpetual state of Zen-
like peaceful calm. Jade knew firsthand that the calm was an illusion, though. In reality, the winikin had a cold, biting temper and a low tolerance level.
As a teen, Jade had offset Shandi’s regular “proper deportment and behavior” lectures by coming up with various sets of the three “D”s for her winikin. Most often, they were along the lines of
“disconnected,” “disapproving,” and “duty-bound.” And while Jade had known she could’ve wound up in a worse situation growing up—there hadn’t been any violence, no neglect; if anything, Shandi had paid too much attention to her, stifling her with rules—she’d often wished for something . . . different.
She had dreamed of what it would’ve been like if her parents hadn’t died, if she hadn’t been left in the care of her chilly, rigid winikin. Her mother would’ve been tall and serene, with Jade’s long, straight hair and sea foam eyes. She would’ve been unruffled by her daughter’s childish pranks and youthful bounciness, maybe even playing along sometimes. Her father’s image had been less clear, but his voice had resonated in her imagination; he’d been big and strong, and his arms around her had made her feel safe. They wouldn’t have lectured her on duty, decorum, and diligence, or at least not all the time, over and over again until she wanted to scream. But her parents were dead, and she’d known Shandi was a better parent than some, so she had done her best to live up to—or down to?—her guardian’s expectations of a quiet, well-behaved child.