She Blinded Me With Science (10 page)

"Did you ever consider that we've been helping each other? I stayed because you
intrigued me. And I really had to know what kind of kisser you are."

"And?" Her eyes sparkled and she blushed even darker. She laughed when he just
whistled and rolled his eyes.

Kevyn liked laughing with Sophie. He liked holding Sophie when she laughed. He
intended for that to happen quite often.

"I like being here with you," he said, and slid his arms around her again. She didn't resist
when he drew her head down on his shoulder. "I want to stay here with you. Or better yet, take
you away with me. Think about it, Sophie. Exploring the whole world. The Human side and the
magical side. Anywhere you want to go, anything you want to see and learn and do, we
can."

"Sounds great."

Her too-quiet voice didn't echo the sentiment. Kevyn cradled her closer and stroked her
hair.

"So, what's wrong with my plan? Too irresponsible? Too vague? I know you like being
organized. We could make a plan for the first ten, twenty years, and then when they're over,
make a plan for the next fifty years, if that'll make you feel better. Anything you want. Just name
it."

"I can't," she said. That tired tone was back. Kevyn wondered if he had slammed her
with too many revelations and new concepts and stretched her powers of belief too far.

"Yes, you can. Anything is possible."

Was she rejecting him before they had even begun? He wouldn't let it happen. He'd do
anything to make sure she stayed with him. He'd stay here and become a college student, if she
wanted. He'd even go home and go to Advocate school, if that would please her.

Being an Advocate would be a pleasure cruise compared to living without Sophie.

"It'd be fun for a while. But did you hear yourself? The first ten or twenty years. Then
the next fifty. Do you know how old I am, Kevyn?"

"Doesn't matter. Or is that the problem? I'm almost seven times your age, but you're a
whole lot more mature than me, if you really think about it."

"That's because I'll die a whole lot sooner than you, too," she whispered. "I'll get old and
I'll get weak and then I'll get sick. And don't tell me magic will take care of that. I've got the
feeling Great-aunt Serena wasn't repeating a bunch of propaganda sent out to mislead people,
when she said that even magic can't quite conquer death, no matter how strong that magic
is."

"She's right. But only partly."

"So, tell me what part I missed."

"You have Fae blood."

"So did all my relatives, sane and weird. Everybody, as far as I know, has gotten sick
and died or gotten old and died."

"Did Great-aunt Serena ever tell you about Changelings?"

Someday, he was going to have a talk with the geniuses at the Ministry of
Misinformation. They really had to do something about the misery and suffering of the innocent
products of Fae-Human seductions. Starting with making correct information available to them if
they ever guessed the truth.

He took his life into his hands when he contacted someone at the Central Physicians
College. Kevyn knew the chances of his family having someone watching for any
communications with the Physicians were remote, but they could still track him down if they
learned he had asked for help. He had to do it, for Sophie.

Actually, if he was going to be perfectly honest--and why break the trend he had started
today, anyway?--he had to take the risk for both of them. Life without Sophie would be worse
than any cramped, restricted existence he had fled before.

Physician Hypnomates was one of the few who still made house calls to the Human
world. Kevyn suspected the six hundred-plus-year-old chief of the council in charge of tracing
Fae blood in Humans was something of a rebel and needed to get out of the Enclaves from time
to time. That suited him perfectly.

Today Hypnomates wore purple. Robes, hair, eyes, even his fingernails and freckles. He
opened up a communications globe to listen and stepped through when Kevyn introduced Sophie
and pointed out her magic-damping gemstone necklace.

"Mercy stroke, and a cleverly designed one," he said, after he persuaded Sophie to
remove the necklace and let him examine it. Hypnomates didn't touch it, but enclosed it in a tiny
scry globe and spun the necklace through a rainbow-streaked version of a spin cycle. "With this,
your Great-aunt Serena effectively prevented you from suffering all the little intrusions that
made everyone think she was so strange."

"Like my seeing Kevyn go invisible and then semi-visible again?" Sophie guessed. She
chewed on her bottom lip, which made Kevyn hungry to nibble on it. "It damps my sensitivity to
all the magic going on around me. If I don't see or hear or feel it, then I don't react to it, and it
doesn't bother me. Poor Aunt Serena." She grimaced when the scry globe spat out the necklace
into her hand.

"You don't really want to put it on again, do you?" Kevyn said. He was delighted when
she shook her head without hesitating. "Good. It's pretty, but it'll get in the way when we're
necking."

Sophie blushed bright red, with a shading of lavender around the edges. Kevyn noted
that and decided not to say anything. He glanced at Hypnomates, and the physician nodded that
he had seen it.

"Would you mind if I performed a diagnostic on you?" Hypnomates asked.

"My computer got one, why not me, too?" Sophie gestured at the couch and when
Hypnomates nodded, she sat down. "Why? What's up?"

"We'll know in a moment," he muttered. "This might sting a little."

Sophie gasped and leaped to her feet when a scry globe enveloped her. That move made
the globe shoot up toward the ceiling, where she hovered, bobbing gently for a few moments.
She stayed perfectly still, and Kevyn was grateful. He had a vision of her bouncing all over the
house, and being thoroughly peeved with him when Hypnomates let her out. Kevyn braced
himself to catch her when the diagnostic ended, but Hypnomates settled her down on the couch
before dispelling the globe.

"Fascinating. I theorize that somewhere in your ancestry, both sides of the family had
Fae blood, and married others with Fae blood." Hypnomates shook his head. "I could write
several papers on this. The recombination seems to bring out the Human tendency for magical
talent and weaves it into the Fae heritage."

"Meaning?" Sophie demanded.

"Meaning you could be a Changeling, if you wanted." Kevyn took hold of her hand.

"Okay, that's something else that was left out of the curriculum. Aren't Changelings
Human babies who get switched with Fae babies?"

"Rubbish." Hypnomates snorted. "You explain it to her, my boy. I assume you'll want to
apply for the procedure, so I'll just head back to the office and file the preliminary paperwork."
Without waiting for a response from either one, he conjured up a portal, stepped through, and
pulled it closed behind him with a soft pop and a splash of iridescence.

"Procedure?" Sophie didn't tug her hand free, but the look in her eyes told Kevyn that if
he didn't explain and make it good, he might just be in trouble.

Trouble with Sophie might just turn out to be fun.

"Okay, here it is." Kevyn took a deep breath and caught hold of Sophie's other hand. Just
in case she got angry enough to punch him. "Changelings are Humans with enough Fae blood to
give them some real magic. And there's a procedure that basically turns off the Human genetics
and lets all the Fae recessive genes come out. Kind of like gene therapy, only better."

"So...you're saying I could become a Fae?" Sophie said slowly.

"Run away with me, Sophie. Live forever and learn real magic. That's a whole lot better
than any stupid PhD any day, isn't it?"

Sophie flung herself at him and gave back the kiss he had stunned her with earlier.

When Kevyn got his breath back, he dragged her into the kitchen and they attacked the
triple chocolate sin cake, washed down with a two-liter of diet cherry cola. In between kissing
and making wild plans for all the things he wanted to teach her to do and all the places he wanted
her to see, they demolished the cake. The woozies hit Sophie before they hit him. One minute
she was giggling about tracking down Great-aunt Serena and fixing her up with Hypnomates and
making her a Changeling too, if that was possible. The next minute, she was face down in a pile
of frosting and whipped cream.

Kevyn was still steady enough on his feet to pull her out of the cake plate and carry her
to the bathroom. He washed the smears of frosting and whipped cream and crumbs and spilled
cola off her face and shirt. He played with the idea of peeling her out of her clothes and sharing a
shower with her. While that might be fun, he suspected there was a lot that had been left out of
Sophie's education. He wanted to take things slowly with her. The last few weeks had taught him
that anticipation and working his way up to his goals had quite a few benefits.

Besides, Sophie might wake up from her blitz shocked enough to punch his lights out.
Now that she had removed that interfering necklace, who knew what kind of magic she had at
her disposal? Hypnomates was certainly intrigued by her potential. Unconscious use of magic
could be dangerous, at the very least.

He put Sophie to bed in her wet shirt, tugged her shoes off, pulled the blanket up to her
chin, and couldn't resist the hungry temptation to lean down and kiss her good-night.

"Kevyn?" she whispered, responding to the vibration that was part power surge, part
subliminal musical chime.

"Yeah?" Somehow, he couldn't get up off his knees. He just stayed there, leaning over
her, close enough his short, rapid breaths stirred her drying hair.

"Wha' happ'n'?" she said on a sigh. She smiled and reached up to curve her arm around
his neck. That brought him down close enough he could taste the sweet cleanness of her skin
without actually touching her cheek.

Talk about playing with fire
...

"Go to sleep, sweetheart."

"Only if you sleep with me." Her lips curved up in a smile that sent his pulse
galloping.

"Believe me, I want--"

She ambushed him with a warm, wet, open-mouthed kiss that sucked the air out of his
lungs. Kevyn tossed caution to the wind and pulled back the blanket to climb in next to her. Then
she sighed and her arm went limp and her hard, hungry mouth turned soft. Kevyn held still,
afraid to breathe for several seconds. When it was very clear she slept, he tucked her in and left
the room.

He had a choice of laughing or cursing. He chose to laugh, and neatened up the kitchen
with a few flickers of magic. Then he took a long shower, hot and then cold and then hot again,
until the hungry tension left all his muscles. He tormented himself with one look at Sophie, from
the doorway, with five feet of empty air between them, before he went down to his basement
room. He had a lot of contacts to make, favors to call in and deals to make with his parents, if he
and Sophie had any chance of being together.

* * * *

As hangovers went, Sophie supposed she got off easy. Kevyn had explained to her the
intoxicating effects of diet cherry cola versus the boosting and magic/health-enhancing
properties of chocolate. They had gone on an all-out blitz on that monster, deadly,
ultra-chocolate cake he had made. Which was reason enough all by itself to keep him. The cake and
cola had worked against each other, she supposed.

Sophie wandered around her house, feeling a little wobbly, more euphoric than sick.
There was a haze in her head that was rather pleasant, until she decided to take a shower and
rinse off the last vestiges of sticky delight. Her head cleared completely. No ache, no nausea, no
dizzy feeling like the world was trying to twist out from under her.

Yeah, she could get used to being a Fae.

"Where's Kevyn?" she whispered, and tried to conjure up that scry globe Guber and the
physician had both used.

As Kevyn had explained it to her, belief was about nine-tenths of the problem when
performing magic. Either she had access to the magical reserves in the ether, or she didn't. Belief,
and knowing exactly what she wanted to do with that magic, of course.

She didn't get the scry globe, but she did get a wavery, mostly translucent image of
Kevyn down in his room, talking with someone in a big communications globe done all in
somber burgundy and gray tones. She tried to remember what he had said about his family and
the problems that made him head for the hills. She guessed that was how the Fae version of
big-time, dignified lawyers took care of phone calls.

It was nice that he was finally talking to his parents again. At least, she guessed that man
in the dark robes with the long, somber face was his father, before the image faded out. Not that
she would ever try to eavesdrop. Not that she could. And it was good he was busy, because that
gave her a chance to get cleaned up.

Kevyn had cleaned the kitchen. A man who cleaned up after himself and cooked. She
definitely had to keep him. That left her the job of picking up the living room and her bedroom
and trying to do something with her hair and some makeup.

"Okay, some magic would really come in handy here," she muttered as she stared at her
reflection in the bathroom mirror. She had spent so long pursuing a psychology degree and
fighting the reputation for insanity in her family, Sophie hadn't paid much attention to fashion
and beauty secrets. Which were definitely secrets, as far as she was concerned. Kevyn seemed to
like what he had seen so far, when she wasn't trying at all, but that was no reason to slack
off.

Thinking about trying some magic on herself reminded her what Kevyn had said about
the protective magic she had inadvertently woven around the house. Now that she had taken off
Great-aunt Serena's necklace, maybe she could actually see the evidence of magic at work.
Would it appear as a sparkle in the air, a tint of color in the right light, a hum that only she could
hear, a vibration only she could feel? Well, obviously not only her, since Kevyn knew what she
had done.