“Are you creating multiple spells at one time right now?” Reagan asked as she muscled her sword through one lowball spell after another. “How the hell are you creating multiple spells? That can’t be done.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t feel magic. I think you were lying.” His tone said he was teasing, but his face was screwed up in intense concentration.

It occurred to me that Emery had been trained similarly to Callie and Dizzy. Though he was more flexible, Reagan was likely one of the first people who’d made him rethink his usual fighting strategies.

Welcome to Reagan Land, where every day was a new nightmare.

“Hello?” a man said on the other end of the phone.

I’d completely forgotten I’d pushed talk. “Oh sorry, hello?”

“Penny?”

“Yes, who is speaking?”

“This is Red. The shifter from down—”

“Reagan’s friend, yeah. Hi.”

“I don’t know about Reagan’s friend…” he muttered. “Hey, you got a minute?”

“Uh…yeah. Wait, how did you get my number?”

“I deal in intel.”

I waited for more. Silence stretched between us, getting awkward, until he finally said, “Reagan gave it to me in case I needed to talk to you and couldn’t get a hold of her. In case there was danger, or something.”

“Ah, right. She’s right here, if you—”

“No, no. No, that’s fine. She’s probably busy.” I didn’t miss the wariness in his voice. “Listen, I thought you should know. There’s been a lot of activity in the bars lately. In this whole area, actually. Mostly in the daytime and early evening. People drift away when the sun starts going down, and then it’s just the regulars. Now, I don’t know what all of them do, you understand. I do my job discreetly. I listen, I don’t ask questions.”

“Okay…”

Emery loosed the secondary spell he’d been working on, then quickly brought up his hands to weave a more complex spell between his two palms. Reagan chopped and hacked her way through his newest spell, struggling more with this one.

Without warning, weaving all the while, Emery ran forward and kicked her between the legs.

“Oh!” Reagan’s knees buckled and she sank to the ground. “You kick much harder than Penny.” The spell dove at her. She waved her palm through the air in what I knew was her last-ditch effort. Fire crackled above her, a thin line over her body, catching the spell. Flame dug into his spell and fractured it, like stress cracks. The next moment she was up, walking a little bowlegged, using her sword again and cutting away the rest of the spell.

Erasing one of her most perplexing pieces of magic from the air.

“What the… You have a big secret, Ms. Gobshite,” Emery said with wide eyes.

“I should never have agreed to fight you,” she said, launching at him.

“Penny?” Red said.

“Oh, sorry—Reagan is practice-fighting someone right now. I’m a little distracted.”

“Good. She’ll have less energy to torment me.” Red cleared his throat. “About these people—I mean, you know our neck of the woods is heavily populated with tourists. So I see a lot of faces every day—”

“Who is it?” Reagan said, making me jump. Sweat ran down her face and slicked back her hair. Her breath came in deep pants. Emery had finished off what I had started.

“Red.”

“What does he want?” she asked, reaching for the phone.

I handed it over without thinking. My magic might’ve been getting worlds better and stronger, but my ability to resist orders, even silent ones, from headstrong, competent people hadn’t gained any ground.

“What’s up?” she said into the phone.

“Who’s Red?” Emery asked, pulling up the base of his shirt to wipe his sweaty face.

On impulse, I grazed my fingers across his defined stomach before laying my hand flat against his skin. It felt good to touch him again. To feel his heat and solidity.

I still couldn’t believe that he’d actually come back. A large part of me had feared he wouldn’t. That he’d forget me a little more with each passing month, that he’d decide the connection between us had only stemmed from the heat of the moment. But he was here, now, and it felt like we were picking up exactly where we’d left off, except I was less naïve, less new to this world.

A hum buzzed deep in my core, and I looked up and caught his Milky Way eyes. The sound of Reagan telling Red to get to the point drifted into my consciousness. “Huh?”

A smile flickered across Emery’s lips and he knelt, now eye level with me. “I was too far away to see the weaves you did. I couldn’t duplicate them.”

“Your magic didn’t seem totally balanced.”

“It wasn’t. You weren’t close enough.” His thumb drifted over my chin, trailing heat in its wake.

“I was. I used you from the distance. You can use me. It’s just a matter of reaching out.”

He shook his head slowly and his eyes dipped to my lips. “That kind of sharing still isn’t second nature to me. Maybe this special ability of yours is like my foresight. A special gift, in additional to being a natural. You can feel and siphon magical ability from those around you. Borrow their abilities and make them your own.”

“Or maybe I just like sharing,” I said with a small smile, “and willingly opening myself up to experiences.”

“Maybe we’ll have to practice opening up to experiences.”

His voice, deep and low, spoke of a different sort of practice. A more intimate kind of practice that I was desperate to explore with him.

“We gotta go.” Reagan snapped the phone shut, making me jump. “Red is mostly talking gibberish, but he knows something. I can tell when he’s trying to be invasive.”

“Invasive?” Emery’s brow furrowed and he glanced at her, equally taken out of the moment.

“Evasive. Whatever.” She stalked toward the door, waving her finger at the ground as she did so. “Get these rocks picked up. You might need them.”

33

“What are you thinking?” Emery asked Reagan as he met her at the car with me in tow. The sun was nearly gone from the sky, leaving long shadows.

“I’m thinking I still miss the Lamborghini.” She pulled open the driver’s door and sat down behind the wheel.

Emery opened the rear door. “Do you mind if I sit in the front?” he asked me. “I want to get a feel for what she’s planning. She doesn’t seem like the strategic type, and I—”

“Yes, sit in the front.” I dropped onto the seat and pulled in my legs. “You’ll be better at steering her than I will.”

“Nothing to steer,” Reagan said as Emery shut my door and sat in front of me. “We’re just going to get some information from my good buddy Red, and then we’re going to figure out what to do with that information. I’ve done this a million times.”

“If you’re so close to Red, why did he call Penny?” Emery asked.

“Two reasons.” Reagan gunned the car down the lane to the highway. “Man, but I do miss that Lamborghini.” She turned. “First, Red doesn’t understand what friendship means. Sure, I make his life hell, but does he get picked on by anyone else? No, he doesn’t.”

I could just barely see Emery nodding slowly.

“Second, Penny’s special look lured him in. He wants to protect her. They all do. It is pretty damn fantastic. I want that talent so bad. Alas, I’ll just have to rely on inspiring blind fear.”

“Penny’s special…look,” he said without inflection.

“Yeah. You’ll see. She hasn’t done it with you yet. It’s this sad puppy sort of look. Pure damsel in distress. It seriously works, trust me. All the boys rush to her side to help.”

“She’s exaggerating,” I said, shaking my head and looking out the window. “The incident she’s talking about was right after I was basically chased out of Darius’s house. I looked like a wet poodle—”