“Meriel, I can hear the gears turning in your head.”
“Dominic, I need to confess something to you.”
“Do you? Crap, Meriel, are you going to tell me you have to? I really think you don’t need to go there.”
She raised one brow and waited until he got himself calm again. “I’m aware that many believe I’m too mellow to run a clan. I’m efficient, yes; they trust my brain and even my magick. But they don’t know if I’m tough enough. Mainly because really, unless I started going Godzilla and tearing cities apart, how can I outdo my mother in that department?”
He laughed.
“In any case, in general, I prefer to avoid conflict when I can. Not because I’m afraid of it or because I’m too weak to fight back. But because conflict eats up your time. It is exhaustive in terms of energy you have to expend to be involved in it. More if you mean to win, and I’d never do it if I didn’t mean to win. I’d rather spend my time on other things and in general, most people aren’t worth that much of my time and energy.
“But sometimes, well, sometimes we need to show and not tell. If you get my meaning. This woman has harmed the people I love. The people I’m honor bound to protect. I will be involved in whatever it takes to eradicate any threat she may pose.”
He was silent a long time as they approached her building.
“I agree, that we are honor bound to protect Owen witches.” He touched her face. “And each other.”
“I can hear the unspoken but at the end of that sentence.” He took her bags and escorted her upstairs.
“Before we continue this discussion, let’s try something. I learned something in San Francisco. Use your othersight.” She took his hand and opened her own. “You can see how everything here has an energy signature. Plants look a certain way, inanimate things like benches or walls have that flat, opaque feel.”
He nodded.
“Just beneath that there’s another kind of signature. But I didn’t know what to even look for until one of the witches I met day before yesterday showed me something.”
Meriel drew the sigils in the air. This sort of magick was older than spoken spellwork and varied all across the world. The witch in San Francisco had learned it while she’d been in Tibet.
“Do you see how it all works together?” she asked Dominic, indicating the symbols she’d drawn in the air.
“It’s like calculus. Holy shit, this is beautiful and really old.” He looked at it and added something and then adjusted a symbol earlier on in the spell. Their intent made it real and suddenly the hallway to her apartment exploded into a wash of colors. Of ebbs and flows of the kinds of energies lining the place.
“How did you know how to do that?” Whatever he’d done to adjust the spell, it made everything else fade into the background, enabling her to focus on these energy swirls.
“I aced calculus.” He shrugged. “You told me to let my gut have its say. It seemed right to fix it the way I did.”
“That was awesome.”
Surprise washed over his face. He dipped to kiss her. “Thank you.”
“So you can get a general idea of what this hallway looks like. Lots of that sort of soft wash of blue there. Humans obviously. But you can see deeper now. Now you can see the sorts of energies they expel. Weres have that vibrant green, but it’s got this sort of verdant feel on this level. Vampires are red, obviously. But you can see if they’re using darker energies and hurting people. With witches …” She paused and saw it.
“Witches are the brilliant blue. You can see a lot of it near my door. But mages, or anyone who uses unnatural energies has a sort of sickly gray smudge.” Just like the one in the hallway ahead.
His mouth flattened into a hard line and he grabbed her upper arm, marching her back toward the elevators. “We’re leaving.”
“No, we’re not. You can see that it didn’t get close to my door. My wards are holding just fine. We just know someone who’s doing something bad has been here. We don’t know enough to panic.”
She moved to her front door and unlocked it.
He went inside first and she followed closing up behind herself. “We’re fine in here. No one has been inside since I left. I need to tell Nell, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they know where I am.”
“Oh, so a random mage was just walking down your hallway and stopped near your door. Just because.”
She called Nell, who gave a similar lecture.
“Go stay at Dominic’s or come here, but you need to move to a place where you’re defended better.”
“I’m just fine here.”
“Shut up. Put Dominic on the phone.”
“No.”
“I can hear the entire conversation anyway, Meriel. I already had an appointment for us to look at an apartment in my building and one across the street. I planned to grovel and then suggest it. This obviously pushes my timeline forward. Let’s get some of your bags. We can come back tomorrow and get more.”
“Pushy much?”
“You know it. Don’t test me on this. I’ll bring this to the quorum if I have to. You should let me keep you safe. Plus my building is close to the office and it’s close to Heart of Darkness. We can be together and you can be taken care of.”
“How do you know I’m safer anywhere else?”
“What I know,” Nell barked into her ear, “is that you’ve got a mage lurking around your hallway. If Dominic doesn’t have one, that makes his place safer. Plus you’ll draw even better being so close to the font. You won’t win this one so let it go. Anyway, his place is closer to mine.”
“She’s right.” Dominic raised a brow as he shoved her clothes into a bag.
“Hey! You’re going to wrinkle that.”
“Yell at me later. I want up and out of here. I have a bad feeling.”
Chapter 22
HE stalked her as she walked through his place. She sent him the side-eye but he wasn’t deterred. He liked having her in his apartment. Which was sort of funny given that he’d never, ever seriously considered living with a woman. Now though? This woman? He wanted her with him all the time.
She would be safer, no doubt. He’d be around. She’d be closer to her job and he wouldn’t have to run back and forth across the lake to see her.
“You’re making me nervous.”
“No, I’m not. Very little makes you nervous.” He smiled and she huffed and went back to putting her clothes away.
“I missed you when you were gone.”
She must have gotten a pedicure when she was in San Francisco. Her toes were different. A deep, dark red. Like every other part of her, her feet were sexy.
She looked up at him, suspicion on her face. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Why you gotta be this way?” He added a little bit of a purr, just for her.
“What way is that?”
“How was San Francisco?”
“Useful.”
“Are you going to remain prickly so that I have no other choice but to seduce a good mood back into you?”
“You’re pretty bold for a guy who’s still in the doghouse.”
He stood and moved to her. “But you know my general feelings about being challenged.”
She held a hand out, trying not to smile but failing. “Stop that. I have to unpack and do laundry.”
He shook his head. “Your clothes are already in the washing machine. Laundry — check. Your stuff is hanging in the closet — check.”
“Are you in charge of my schedule now?”
“Or maybe you need your own stress relief. Orgasms are good for you. And maybe, maybe I’ll do it just because I can.” He got closer and she moved around the bed.