Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3) (10 page)

Gina only occasionally travelled to New York via portal since it meant dealing with Paul O’Halloran. He was a sleaze. What she hadn’t realized was that he was a stupid sleaze. Only an idiot would question Lewis in her pretend boyfriend’s current mood.

Their kiss had warmed Lewis up briefly, but he’d soon fallen back into a seething frustration that showed in the rigid movements of his body and the chill of his gaze. They’d collected his overnight bag from his apartment in silence and he hadn’t bothered to change out of his business suit before setting out for Paul’s portal.

In her jeans and comfortable sandals, Gina had kept up with Lewis’s brisk stride. She wasn’t sure he’d have noticed if she’d fallen behind. Somehow, this time, they weren’t holding hands.

Yet in the face of Lewis’s massive and obvious anger, Paul stood at the edge of his portal, beer in hand, and pursued his own complaint. “You used my portal this morning without contacting me.”

Lewis said nothing.

“Not cool, man.”

“I am a registered user of your portal.” Lewis’s every word chilled the air. “Please, contact the Cape Cod porter.”

“I like to know who is coming through my portal,” Paul complained.

“And obviously you do.” Lewis finally looked at the man. “I’d be interested to know how you use that information.”

Paul froze, beer halfway to his mouth. “Ugh.”

“Information is currency,” Lewis continued. “But trading in some commodities can be dangerous.”

Paul had all the power of the portal at his command. Lewis had burned out his magic. However, it was obvious who was the more dangerous.

“Call Emmaline,” Lewis said.

Paul called into the in-between, using the magic porters exercised.

It was Riaz who answered. And knowing Riaz, Gina mused, it was probably he who’d suggested handing Lewis through the New York portal without waking its porter for the transport. Trouble-maker.

Riaz hauled first her, then Lewis, through the in-between and into Emmaline’s clean basement.

“Thank you,” Lewis said briefly, halting Riaz’s greeting.

Her almost-cousin shot her a comically questioning look.

Gina shrugged. Whatever had stirred up Lewis, it wasn’t minor—and he seemed determined not to share anything until they reached her house. Or rather, her privacy wards. Ominous.

The car radio filled the silence till they pulled into her driveway.

Lewis exhaled in a huge sigh of released tension.

“You okay?” Gina kept her eyes forward, her attention nominally on the slowly opening garage door.

“I’m fine. My temper’s not. I need to run or swim or something. Then I need to see your dragon. Will Morag allow me to visit on short notice?”

“Why?” Gina turned off the car engine.

The garage was quiet and shadowy thanks to the pine tree shading it from the evening sun.

“I’m seeing the silver light,” Lewis said. “And this afternoon, I touched it.”

She turned in the driver’s seat. The small size of her car brought them close. “What do you mean you touched it?”

“In the way we gather in magic or cast it, I touched a mental finger to a mesh of pale silver light. As a result, the sounds of the ocean entered a Collegium senior mage’s office.”

“That must have startled him or her.”

Lewis didn’t crack a grin. He did crack open the passenger door and maneuver his long legs out. “Yes. William now doubts whether I ever lost my magic—and he’s the head of the Healers’ department and the mage who confirmed that I’d burned out.”

Lewis got out of the car and closed the door firmly. He waited till she’d gotten out, too. “I realize you came to see me for a reason, but I need to run off the day first.”

“My news can wait. I found the identity of the fourth group member.”

His attention sharpened. “Who?”

A touch of her magic and the kitchen door opened. She walked through it. “Lindsay Perez. Go. Run, swim, whatever. I’ll tell you about her after dinner and then we’ll go see Morag.”

He paused in the doorway, bag in hand. “Is it okay to visit her without an invitation?”

“We might wait a while if she’s busy, but she seems keen on teaching you the Deeper Path so I doubt we’ll wait for long.” She closed her mouth before further questions as to how he’d used his clarity of sight to summon the sounds of the ocean could escape. She went to the fridge and began pulling out ingredients, transferring them to the counter near the sink. When she heard his footsteps ascending the stairs, she ceased being busy and leaned into the counter, staring out the window.

Gina had watched her aunt Deborah move casually and inexplicably through the world. Aunt Deborah wasn’t much of a communicator, so she’d never really explained how clarity of sight changed things, but Gina knew that the world and its limits were different for her aunt. “Seven dimensions.”

Lewis, perhaps unconsciously, had been thinking of the ocean, and as a result, the fabric of three dimensional reality had rippled to allow him to reach the sea. His mind was opening to new ways of being in the world, and Morag would structure and accelerate that process.

Only Gina’s intimate connection to her house alerted her to Lewis’s descent of the stairs. He was soundless. She reached for a pot and put it on the stove.

“Do we have time for me to take an hour’s work-out or should I condense it?”

“An hour’s fine.” Her voice strangled as she saw him stripped down to short black swimming trunks, with a towel over his shoulder.

The man was all muscle, from broad shoulders and chest, to flat stomach and powerful thighs.

Her own stomach tightened.

Barefoot, he crossed the kitchen and went out the door.

Gina stared at the pot in front of her. Then she put it and all the ingredients for her salmon pasta away. She’d made a large pan of lasagna a week ago and divided it into individual servings before freezing it. Two of those for Lewis and one for her would do for dinner. She popped them in the oven to heat through. Meantime, she’d indulge in an activity that mightn’t ever be available to her again. She poured herself a glass of rosé and carried it out to the front porch where she could watch Lewis train.

Lewis warmed up on the rough cut grass that served as a lawn at the front of Gina’s home. Stretches gave way to a high-intensity mini-circuit before he jogged down to the beach to sprint along the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. The tight control he’d kept all day was released in the hot burn of the exercise. He plunged into the ocean and swam out. He was a powerful swimmer even if he usually used the indoor pool at his apartment building. Cape Cod was colder but better. He swam out, then parallel to the beach before returning and walking, dripping, up to collect his towel from the grass.

He wiped at his face and chest, his arms, and was aware that Gina watched him from the porch. He was accustomed to people admiring his body, and there were any number of women drawn both to his physical power and the power he wielded as president of the Collegium and before that as commander of the guardians, but with Gina, he liked the caress of her gaze. He liked it too much.

He draped the towel around his neck and headed for the back of the house and the kitchen door.

“You needn’t go around,” she said. “House witch, here. I can deal with a little bit of beach sand tracking in. Won’t be the first time.”

So he climbed the porch steps to where she sat in one of two Adirondack chairs. She tipped her head back, looking at him, as he walked to the front door. He stopped.

Her gaze stayed on his face.

They stared at one another.

She’d watched him in the distance, but now she refused to study him close up. Like him, she knew they were playing with fire. The attraction between them was dangerously intense.

It was crazy, but he lifted the towel from his neck and began drying himself again, daring her to watch where his touch directed her attention.

“There’s lasagna warming in the oven.” Her voice was husky.

He rubbed the towel lower. “I can smell it. Smells good.”

“Yeah.”

Abruptly, he wrapped the towel at his waist. “I’d better shower first.” The game had turned on him, his body rather obviously showing his reaction to her hungry gaze.

Now was not the time for games—a reality confirmed twenty minutes later when Gina told him of her dealings with the Group of 5.

“The fifth member pursued you?” The tasty lasagna was suddenly flavorless.

“Hardly. Someone tracked back one of my identities, and not the most important, to a couple of chat rooms in the dark web. They never got close to discovering who I was.”

“But they’ll be looking.”

Gina shrugged. “For all the good that’ll do them. You were right, though, they are a rotten bunch. No conscience. Today was a preliminary look around. I’ll need another week—”

“No.”

“To pull together a decent report on their online activities,” she continued. “It might even take me a bit longer than that since I’ll be taking precautions when I poke around.”

“I didn’t anticipate them detecting your investigation and coming after you so fast. It’s too dangerous.”

“Not if I’m careful, and I am.”

“Let it go.”

She smiled at him. “You’ve had a frustrating day, haven’t you? First the Collegium and now me. Lewis, my life means my choices. You’re not the only one who can’t let a problem go. It’s as you said to Morag, doing nothing is not a neutral choice.”

“And if I ask you to let it go, as a favor to me, because I have enough to worry about?”

She paused with her fork cutting into the lasagna. “I don’t think I can. It’s part of the hacker psyche. Something in me won’t rest till I discover who the fifth member of the group is. Whoever it is challenged me by coming after my false identity.”

He groaned. “I guess it’s an example of ‘be careful what you wish for’. I wanted help in tracking the Group of 5.”

“And you got me.” She smiled brightly.

She was being perkily annoying on purpose, he suspected. Perhaps because he’d suggested she couldn’t protect herself. Morosely, he ate the last of his second helping of excellent lasagna. The senior mages were easier to deal with because he didn’t care if he hurt their feelings.

“All right.” Gina was clearly in a rush because as soon as he finished eating she cleared the table with a sweep of house witchery that set the dishwasher sh-shushing a moment later. “Time to visit Morag. I’m interested to hear about your first steps along the Deeper Path.”

Three hours later, Gina was less sure she wanted to learn about Lewis’s progress along the Deeper Path. At her house he might have been grumpy and overly protective, but he’d been human. Now, as he followed Morag’s verbal directions, Gina could sense him drawing away from her.

She got the same emotional distance from her aunt Deborah. The older woman obviously loved her family, but she seemed to view them from a distance. Gina had thought that was a personality quirk or perhaps a consequence of journeying through the galaxy, but Morag’s instructions made it obvious that instead that distance was the price of the Deeper Path when humanity trod it.

The dragon flicked the tip of her tail against an opalescent wall, setting a strange pattern of beats that jangled Gina’s nerves, particularly when the wall pulsed subtly in time with her strikes.

Lewis put a hand against the wall. “I see it. A spiral compressed within a spiral.” His concentration was total. It flattened his voice.

“Don’t touch the inner spiral,” Morag said. “You need to stretch the outer one. Pinch it at the third coil from the top, right in front.”

Morag had guided him along what she called a Meditation of Abandonment. Lewis had released his awareness of the physical environment, his body and emotions until finally Morag had asked, “Can you see the outer skin over Gina?”

Gina shivered as she recalled how his dark eyes had studied her. Two hours before that he’d stood on her front porch challenging her with a sexual tease. Now, she wasn’t a person to him. She was a study prop.

“Yes,” he’d said.

“Good.” Morag’s alien eyes on Gina had been kinder. Kinder, but still ruthless. “That outer skin is the arrangement that lets Gina perceive my home as something comprehensible in three dimensions. Now, look for that same skin over you. It’ll be harder to detect as concentrating on yourself might bring you back to your three dimensional, magic-limited self. I could remove it for you—”

“I’ve got it.”

When Lewis interrupted, Morag had blinked once, surprised. She’d recovered fast. “Pull it off.”

A moment later, Lewis had jolted out of his meditative stance. He and Morag had stared at one another. “Continue.” One word in his deep voice. They’d continued.

Gina wrapped her arms around her knees as she curled up in the chamber’s solitary armchair. What did Lewis and Morag see when they perceived the chamber in more than three dimensions? Lewis had promised to describe his progress along the Deeper Path to her, and she’d ask him, but was there even human words for it?

Abruptly, Lewis vanished.

“Morag?” Gina called.

“He’s here, Gina. But also somewhere else. The chamber works differently in five dimensions. My home is a safe place for him to learn the patterns of translocation.”

Lewis reappeared. Disappeared.

Reappeared. “Is it safe for me to leave the chamber?”

“Yes. Wherever you go, I can find you. But don’t leave Earth.” Morag looked at Gina as Lewis vanished again. “I’ve never had a human learn the Deeper Path so fast. His discipline is remarkable. Even faster than Deborah, he shed his ties to this world.”

Gina should have asked how she could copy him. She should be wanting to follow him along the Deeper Path. It was her life’s dream. Instead, she felt lost. Abandoned. “He looks different.”

“I’ve observed humans for a long time.” Morag sank down, bringing her face companionably nearer Gina’s height. “Far more than my people, you are part of your world. Your social ties are important to you, as is your sensory involvement in your planet. Your bodies constantly register and react to changes in your environment. They are alert for opportunities to give and receive comfort.”

“Comfort?”

“Security. Pleasure. Ease. A sense of belonging.” Morag glanced to a far corner.

Gina looked but saw nothing beyond the opal walls, the familiar reality of the dragon’s den. Yet Morag said that what Gina saw and heard and felt of the chamber was a false construct, one manufactured to give her confidence in the alien setting. When Morag looked to the far corner, what did she see?

Reality had fallen away from beneath Gina’s feet. Did the floor she stand on exist or did she hang in midair, in a spinning void? She leaned back in the armchair, huddling into its certainty.

Morag sighed, a soft gust of sage-green smoke. “I envy humans. Comfort is less accessible for my people. We share it less.”

“Is that Lewis’s future?” Gina asked. “Will he withdraw more and more? He’s already so contained.” When his control broke, the passion in him was scalding excitement. But would the Deeper Path freeze that emotion and heat?

“It will be his choice,” Morag said.

Gina shivered.