Future Tense (4 page)

She pressed her fingers to her temples and rubbed. Her nails were just long enough to be classy. They were painted icy pink, and that was all the color on her hands. No jewelry. No engagement ring. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand this.”

“If you’re interested, I can help with the pain.”

She took off her sunglasses and blinked a few times. He wondered about her ability to shut down her magic. That kind of control was usually the result of training. A lot of it. “Like before?”

He nodded.

“I’m not a normal person.” Lys tossed the glasses back in her purse.

“I know.”

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“You’re okay with that?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I need to touch you,” he said. He didn’t go for women like her. She was too controlled. Too fastidious for him, but he was seeing himself doing it with her, and in his imagination she wasn’t uptight or fastidious. She was hot and naked and totally wild for him. “Is that a problem?”

Her fingers kept massaging her head, moving out from her temples. She hesitated and looked up at him. “I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Usually, it’s not good when people touch me.” Her hands stilled and she looked at him dead on. “Can you keep me from getting into your head the way you did before?”

“Maybe.” Telos moved closer to the couch. “What happens if I don’t?”

“You’ll think I’m crazy.”

He shook his head. “After what happened with Michael? I don’t think so.”

She watched him. He didn’t have to have a hook into her head to know she was trying to decide whether to lie. “I see people’s futures.”

“Everyone’s?”

“No.

“Mine?”

“Not yet.” She didn’t sound happy about that. “When you touched me before, I didn’t get anything from you, and I should have.”

“Huh.” No accident, but he kept his silence on that.

“One time, I kept a log of what I was getting from people. Of the twenty events whose outcomes I was able to confirm, I was right nineteen times.”

“You never tried to warn them?”

“Sure I did.” She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on a horizon he’d Jewel/Future Tense — Chapter 4

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never see himself. “Intervening only makes things worse. For everyone. Especially me. I was lucky none of my foster parents had me committed.” Her attention flicked back to the now. She gave a tight smile. “I learned how to block people out. Most of the time.

I’d be in an institution otherwise. Or a crazy lady walking the street talking to myself while I push a shopping cart full of my worldly possessions.”

Telos hooked his fingers into his belt loops. Definitely a witch. Untrained though, he’d bet on that. The magekind tested their kids when they were three. The ones who didn’t show any magical promise got adopted out. Or abandoned. From the sound of it, Lys had been one of the abandoned ones. “How long have you been like that?”

She pointed a finger at her ear and made a twirling motion; the universal sign for loony. “As long as I can remember.” Her expression turned somber. “I don’t know if I’m seeing the future or if what I see actually changes someone’s life.” She laughed, but the sound was brittle. “I mean, that really would be crazy, changing people’s lives with the power of my mind.”

“No wonder Michael hooked up with you.”

“Nobody can change the future just because of what pops into their heads,” she said. “Most days I’m sane by a nanometer. Working with Michael helped a lot. It used to. Lately. . .“ She bit her lower lip and chewed on it for a while. Telos entertained more dirty thoughts. “I don’t want to talk about Michael. I just want my head to not explode.”

He held out his hand. “Tell me if you have any problem with this. Okay?”

“All right.” She leaned forward, squinting a little as she stretched to put her hand in his. Her skin was pale, her fingers warmer than he expected from a human woman.

When she was upright, he released her hand and got close enough to press a fingertip to her forehead. Her eyes fluttered closed. She had some serious defenses. It was like trying to get through an iron wall.

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“Relax,” he said.

She pried open one eye. “This is relaxed.”

“Relax more.”

She did, and he made his psychic connection. Like before, he kept himself blocked from her. No need to be subtle now about what he was doing. Her eyes flew open, wide, stark, and her pain lanced through him like it was being delivered by a semi.

Telos siphoned off the reaction as best he could, but her head was a fucking river of agony. Aspirin wouldn’t have done a goddamned thing for her. He ended up straddling her, one hand on the back of the couch, the palm of his other hand resting on her forehead while he bled out the agony.

Compared to a trained mage, her magic was stunted, but right now he was in direct contact, and he was bowled over by the way her power folded over and under and around itself. Stunted, but concentrated. He had a predictable reaction to that.

Getting this close to her magic? Almost better than sex.

Eventually, he released the link between them. “Better?” he asked.

“Yes.” She released a shaky breath, looking at him through half-closed eyes.

“Yes, much.” She touched his cheek. “Thank you.”

Telos didn’t look away. Neither did she.

He was aware of how close they were. Physically. Of her long legs and the curve of her chest, and the buttons down her blouse. Some human women liked the way he looked and since he preferred that kind of woman, he’d perfected the look that attracted what he liked. Lys wasn’t it. All those expensive clothes, always perfectly put together.

He breathed in. She smelled good. Clean. Something flowery.

“I ever tell you about my name?” When she shook her head, he said, “My Mongolian name.”

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“Telos?”

“Khūnbish. It’s the kind of name parents give their kid if they want to keep the gods from noticing him. To avoid bad luck. My name’s like that, but for a different reason.”

“Yeah?”

“Khūnbish means ‘not a human being’.”

He liked the way her eyes stayed on him. “Is that a good name for you?”

“It is. I’m not like Michael. Not a mage.” He brushed a fingertip over the soft skin along the side of her throat. Silky. Smooth human skin. “Not like you, either.”

She tilted her chin to get a better look at him. “I’m one of the smart girls, Not A Human Being.”

“You think you know what I am?” He put his hands around her waist, thumbs in front, fingers around her sides.

“Of course.”

“And that is?”

“You’re a demon.”

She had that right.

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CHAPTER 5

With a crack like ice breaking, one of the hundreds of carved wooden medallions that made up his early warning system snapped in half. That meant he had company of the unwelcome sort. Better than any electronic alarm system, though he had one of those too, just to keep up with appearances.

Lys sat up straight, and he moved so he was sitting beside her. “It’s Michael.”

“Probably.” He walked to the window and took a look. Not good. Not good in any way.

Another of his wards cracked. He glanced to the line of medallions placed around the perimeter of his ceiling and saw that for several of them, the carved faces were no longer smiling. One was outright frozen in a scream. His pulse sped up.

Michael wasn’t playing around.

He brought up a number he’d had in his phone contacts for a long time. He’d known for the last year or more that he couldn’t stay unaffiliated forever. This deal with Michael was pushing his decision. He was fine with that. From what he’d heard, there were worse warlords to tie himself to than Nikodemus. He pressed
call
.

“Are you calling the police?”

“No.” The ringing stopped. A woman answered the phone, and that wasn’t Jewel/Future Tense — Chapter 5

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right. He put his finger on the button to disconnect the call, but the woman said, “I represent Nikodemus.”

Telos said, “That so?”

“Yeah.” Short and assured.

“I may need help,” he said into the phone.

“Free kin?”

“For now.” He felt a world of understanding in the silence that followed his answer. He was free for the present. Later on? Maybe he wouldn’t be.

“What’s your situation?”

“Just so you know, if any of them get inside, I’m taking down as many as I can.

And that includes the mage.”

“Fair enough.” Whoever she was, she understood his situation.

Telos got up and walked to the window as he gave his name, figuring that was a good place to start. Nikodemus would at least have heard about him. The woman whistled softly. “An honor, Telos.”

He looked out the window and did a quick count. “There’s a mage outside my place with six magehelds that I can see,” he said. There were probably more at the back.

From the way his wards were going off, there was one on the roof, too.

He turned around and kept his eyes on Lys. “Also an unstable, untrained street-witch inside here with me.” He felt the peculiar nullity from her that he’d previously mistaken for vanilla. Rumor was that Nikodemus didn’t practice the adage that the only good witch was a dead witch. Supposedly, he accepted fealty from the magekind, too, but Telos wasn’t sure he believed that. “The mage says she’s dangerous, but I’m not sending her back if she doesn’t want to go.”

“Any chance she’ll go back on her own?”

“No.” That came out more of a growl than an answer.

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After a pause, she said, “Can you trust her?”

He held Lys’s gaze. “Can I trust her?” he said for her benefit. “Yeah. I can trust her.”

“Give me your address,” the woman said. “I’ll get some of my people out there.”

More of the wards went off. “That might not be soon enough. I only counted the ones out front. There’s going to be more than six.”

“Whoever comes will be able to sever you if you get taken.”

He’d heard rumors about that. He didn’t believe a word of it. The only way to free a mageheld was to kill the mage who enslaved the poor fuck. “Is that possible?”

“Yes.” The woman fell silent, too. Not used to being doubted? Or did she usually spout off bullshit and people believed her?

“You better be right.”

“I’ll come there and sever you myself if that’s necessary.”

“Sure you will.”

“You called me, Telos. Either you trust me to take care of this or you don’t, and this goes all kinds of wrong.”

He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. Above him, more medallions turned black. He brought the phone back to his ear. “Who are you?”

“Carson Phillips.”

The name more than rang a bell. “Nikodemus’s witch?”

“Yes.”

He was talking to the demon warlord’s witch. Not just a representative of the warlord. More like his damned other half. And, if rumors were to be believed, the warlord’s lover. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe the warlord was her lover.

“Nikodemus will want to talk with you. No obligation.”

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“I’ll think about it.”

“You should be able to hold off six magehelds until I get there.”

“I told you, there’s more than six.”

The windows shook harder, and on the other end of the phone call Carson waited for the noise to stop. “If you’re under attack, you do what you have to. I’ve already sent some text messages, but I need to make a couple more calls to get this in motion. You keep the witch alive and safe and whatever happens, I can sever you, I promise you that.”

Carson disconnected, and Telos was left holding his phone, staring at Lys while his house shook.

“Can I help?” Lys asked. Decent of her. Very non-bitchy.

He got close enough to touch the side of her head. “What happens if you stop blocking out all those other minds?”

She leaned her shoulder against the wall. “I see people’s futures. Or change them. Maybe. I’ve never been exactly sure how it works. All I know is that whatever I see in my head, it happens, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Except try to keep them out in the first place.”

Telos glanced out the window.

She moved to the window and pushed aside the blinds. He knew the moment she lowered her blocks because his spine went cold as ice. The medallions within ten feet of her deformed as they reacted to the magic coming from her. He shut down the wards closest to her so she wouldn’t get caught in the blowback if or when they went off.

Lys closed her eyes and rocked on her feet, a motion that coincided with a tickle that slid down his spine like the blade of a knife. A low sound came from her throat.

Her knees buckled, but when he moved to help her she held out a hand to stop him.

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“Don’t touch me.”

She positioned herself at the side of the biggest window, making as small a target of herself as she could. Michael and his magehelds weren’t going to miss her magic.

Cycling out of control like that, it was setting him off, too. Her shoulders trembled.

After a bit, things calmed down. She put her blocks back in place. She said,

“You’re going to kill two of them tonight.”

“Only two?”

She turned to him, pressing her back to the wall. She was nearly as pale as when he’d met her outside her building all those hours ago. Her arms were clasped tight beneath her breasts in an attempt to hide that she was shivering. He could see it, though, and feel, too, the psychic cost of opening herself like that. “The others—“ She gestured at the window “—something’s going to happen to them, too, but they won’t die.” Her mouth thinned. “I don’t understand what I’m getting from them, and usually, I do.”

He took a quick look out the window. Of the six he could see, two weren’t going to be any trouble for him. The other four were big. In the case of the demonkind, size and perfection of the human form tended to be an indication of magical power. If he had to go up against all six at once, his margin for error was going to be small but not unsurmountable. Unless there were more, and he was certain there were.