Traveler (9 page)

He thought he heard her mutter, “So much for Little Bo Peep and her sheep.” He wondered what she meant.

Maybe he deserved a set of whiskers, too, for curiosity where Io was concerned.

It started to rain once they were back inside Jack’s gothic retreat. Watery dawnlight pressed its way past the dirty-paned windows, edging through the bit of glass scrubbed clean by the cloudburst and sending phantom rivulets of green running down the far wall.

Amazingly, Io was feeling sleepy. Somewhere along the long walk back to Jack’s she had gotten comfortable with him.

“Would you like a shower?” Jack asked. “There’s water here.”

Io hesitated. “Without clean clothes—”

“Use one of my shirts for now. One of us can go out tomorrow and pack some things up for you.” One, but not both. Someone had to stay in the city and hold the spells they’d collected. Without someone to keep them, they would probably melt back into the earth from which they’d come.

“Okay. That sounds good.” Getting clean before
bed suddenly seemed immensely appealing.

“There’s a shirt hanging on the back of the door, and soap in the shower. Ignore the markings on the tap—I’m afraid the water only comes in lukewarm no matter where you set the dial.”

“Would you mind if I gave your spells back now?” Io asked, turning toward Jack. The rain on the glass sent ghostly tears trekking down his cheeks, making him suddenly appear more the death fey that he was.

“No.”

But she could see that he did mind. Feeling bad for rejecting him yet again she explained, “It’s just that I still feel a little odd and I’m afraid of what might happen when I sleep. I’ve been dreaming lately. What if I accidentally morphed them into something stupid or dangerous?”

Jack’s face softened. When he spoke, he sounded thoughtful. “It has been one hell of a night, hasn’t it? And you’re out of the practice of using your magic this way. Come here.”

Prepared for the transference, Io approached, turning her face up so Jack could take her chin. She had herself schooled not to flinch when their flesh made contact, but this time he barely touched her.

“Close your eyes,” he ordered. “There’s no need to watch. I won’t bite.”

Io let her eyelids drift shut. There was a small tingling when his lips brushed her forehead and his fingers traced her jaw. There was an up-rush, like a
breath of air, and then suddenly the magic and headache were gone, leaving her empty and feeling a little naked.

Io slumped, almost leaning against him.

“You’re beat, little fey. Have your shower,” Jack said gently. “I’ll put out some cordial for you.”

Io looked up. Staring into his eyes, she could feel something almost painful stir inside them. Genuine loneliness? Latent lust masquerading as lonesome-ness? She was too tired to figure it out. Probably she should ignore it until she could think more clearly.

Sighing, she turned toward the bathroom door.

“Jack?” she asked, before stepping into the giant tiled room.

“Yes?”

“Where do you live when you aren’t here?”

When he didn’t answer, she recalled his injunction to secretiveness because it was safer for both of them, and added hastily “Never mind. I—”

“I live anywhere and everywhere that the job takes me. But no place is home. You know what I do. I can’t take the risk of having a known base.”

“I see.” And sadly, she did. She hadn’t had a real home for years either.

She closed the door softly behind her.

Jack couldn’t figure out Io’s mood. Perhaps she had truly hit the wall and was too tired to go on being wary. Or maybe she reacted the way she had earlier because of where they were. When one was walking
on dangerous ground, it was bound to raise a hair or two on the nape and make a person nervy as a cat.

But whatever her mood before, she wasn’t fighting him now. When he’d taken the magic away, she had done everything but crawl into his lap and asked to be cuddled. It seemed an ideal moment to try to seduce her—always supposing that he was willing to be his usual bastard self.

But…he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. Not if she was
the one
.

He was just figuring out that she could be. The magic was acting like she was the real McCoy.

He’d had many lovers, most human, and more of those than ever since the holocaust had wiped out most of his kind. There had been no expectation of finding someone he’d be with for life, so he had decided to take his pleasures where he found them. And the lifestyle of casual encounters suited him.

But now, unlooked for, and not particularly wanted, Fate had raised her ever-nosy head and thrust Io into his life. Jack’s whole way of existence could be on the verge of change, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Intrigued, certainly. Maybe a little annoyed.

Maybe a bit frightened.

Frightened? The big bad death fey?

Jack’s first impulse was to deny this. But, though he habitually lied to everyone else, he made it a policy to never be anything but truthful with himself.

Okay, so maybe he was a little nervous. He had reason to be wary. Death feys tended to mate for life. If they ever found a woman who could tolerate them, they tended to settle in like bricks into mortar. And they didn’t do well when something happened to their spouses. Their humanity left them. His father had been cold as a well-digger’s ass after his mother died. Nothing had moved him. Given Io’s chosen path, the odds of something happening to her were higher than Jack liked.

His own calling was even worse…

Leaving his feelings aside, what of Io? She knew there was chemistry between them, and she was fighting for some reason. Could she sense that, in spite of the magic, they were wrong for each other? Or that they were absolutely right for one another, and she didn’t want any part of it because permanence was out of the question? It would be just like that bloody bitch Fate to send him a mate whose heart had already been feathered with silver arrows and could never actually love. He’d heard that a lot of siren fey were born heartless.

Or maybe her resistance had nothing to do with being magical or fey. Was it just that she was as wary of his career as he was of hers, and she was being sensible?

Jack stared out the window. That seemed far too simple an answer.

It could have something to do with Io’s mother getting tangled up with Drakkar. There’d been
magic at work there too—black stuff. Could that ugly affair have permanently bent Io’s psyche? Made her distrust
all
magic and magical beings?

Who could know without asking the sorts of leading questions that would likely send his wary fey running away as fast her slender legs would carry her?

Jack borrowed some of Io’s gutter troll to express his feelings of frustration and then got out a glass and his hip flask.

Io emerged from the shower a short time later, smelling vaguely of coconut and plain old warm skin. Jack’s shirt was huge and looked faintly ridiculous on her, but he liked seeing her in it anyway.

He handed her a glass with two fingers of cognac in it.

She smiled up at him, eyes glowing faintly. “Confusion to the enemy,” she said, and then drank down the liquor.

“Hop up in the hammock,” Jack suggested. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“I don’t want to put you out of your bed,” Io said softly.

“You won’t,” he assured her. They would be sharing the hammock, but she would probably never know it. The cognac had valerian in it and would knock her sideways in five minutes flat.

“Okay.” She yawned. “I’m suddenly very sleepy.”

Looking at her drooping eyelids, Jack revised his
estimate downward. She probably had two minutes of consciousness left—tops.

“Need some help?” he asked, watching her hoist herself into the hammock. His shirt rode up her legs but stopped before the view got too interesting.

“Oh no. I sleep in a hanging bed.” Io yawned again and then added in a slurring voice as she curled on her side, “I live in a tree house. I always wanted to when I was a child, so when I came to Michigan I had one built.”

“That sounds about right,” Jack muttered, picking up a blanket and spreading it over her.

“It’s nice that you don’t have rats,” Io commented, her eyes falling shut. “A lot of old buildings do.”

“That is one benefit to living in Goblin Town,” Jack conceded. “They do tend to keep down the other vermin by dining on them.”

“Mmmhmmmm.”

“Go to sleep now.”

“’kay…”

Io tried to stay awake, but she was barely conscious when Jack emerged from the bathroom wearing jeans and no shirt. She tucked away in the back of her sleepy brain the fact that the rumor was true: He did have the letter J stitched in his chest. It was also true that it didn’t diminish his attractiveness one bit.

She watched through slitted eyes as Jack approached the hammock. He lifted the blanket up
and then rolled into the bed with a practiced motion.

Part of Io knew she should protest the intimacy of sharing the space, but it felt marvelous to curl into his heat and have someone hold her while she went to sleep.

“I don’t suppose that there’s anything you’d like to say to me right now?” he asked softly as she settled her head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his chest.

Eat my heart. Drink my soul. Love me to death
.

“No,” she answered with a regretful mumble. “I’m too tired to die tonight.”

Her living pillow shook and gave a rumble of soft laughter. “If I didn’t know better, little fey, I’d say that you were drunk.”

“I am,” she agreed, unable to resist the truth spell, but then she stopped talking as sleep came rushing up to claim her.

Io woke sometime later when the sun had shifted over into the western sky. The heavens had a sort of acid green radiance, suggesting that storm clouds were lingering nearby.

She waited for her body to wake up to the fact that she was pressed chest to chest with Jack, and start panicking because their posture alone could practically count as foreplay. But her body remained strangely quiescent.

Io felt her hand slowly lifted, and Jack brushed his lips over her inner wrist. She could also feel him smile when her pulse leaped. He scraped his teeth over the mound of her palm and then tucked her hand back against his chest.

Io flexed her fingers and buried her face in his shoulder, pretending that she wasn’t awake and therefore not responsible for anything she did.
Jack’s muscles rippled beneath her, but he didn’t speak, apparently pretending too.

After a moment, she reached a foot out and shoved against the wall, sending the hammock into a gentle swing. The easy rhythmic sway was like lazy sex first thing on a Sunday morning. Body stroked body, the friction of skin on skin causing those magical sparks as the hammock reached its zenith and then fell back.

“Your body’s asking. Why don’t
you?
” a deep voice asked.

Eat me, drink me, love me, Jack
.

She almost said it. She wanted to.

“There isn’t time,” she said instead, avoiding a real answer. “Someone has to get my clothes, and I need to see Zayn.”

“Hm. That sounds like an excuse, and a lame one, and you are being a tease.” This time it was Jack’s foot that reached out and pushed their bed into motion.

“Maybe. But you’re big and strong. I’m sure you can take it.”

“Uh-huh. The question is, can you?”

Io didn’t look up or answer, so Jack continued, “Now, if you are determined on seeing Zayn, then there are things we need to do. Soon.”

“Yes?”

“I’m not sending you out into Goblin Town without a full compliment of spells.”

“That’s fine,” Io agreed, still speaking into his chest. She let her fingers trace a small pattern on his skin, tracking lightly over the thick J. She grinned up at him and then closed her eyes. “I like…having
spells
.”

“Well, goody then,” Jack said, rolling onto his side and dislodging her from atop his chest.

“Goody?” she asked, opening her eyes as he loomed over her.

“Yeah, I just love this part.”

“Why?” she asked, beginning to frown. “Jack! Be nice!”

“Nice? No, I don’t think so. Let me demonstrate how I feel. I do love giving spells to you. Magic.” Jack leaned down and set his mouth against hers. Instantly magic ran down her body from tongue to toes, making her muscles clench at her core. Jack stopped short of forcing a climax on her as he had done that first night, but it was a very close thing.

A worse thing, she decided, as her body started howling its frustration.

“You rotten cad,” she whispered, when her mouth was free. Deprived of even that contact, her body again protested its sudden arousal, and she pressed her thighs together in a useless effort to stop the throbbing. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“That’s almost as much fun as the real thing,” he answered, grinning at her ire and then rolling out of bed, taking the blanket with him. He kept it in front
of his body so she couldn’t tell if he had been affected the way she was.

The thought that he hadn’t, made her almost speechless with fury—and she hated that! She didn’t like the rush of strong emotion. It seemed to be blasting open conduits in her brain, pipelines for more and greater feelings.

“Of course, if you want to finish this,” he taunted, “all you have to do is ask.”

“Not if they were ice-skating in Hell!” she snarled. Anger helped douse her arousal. A little.

Jack turned and opened the bathroom door. Chill air rushed over her bare legs, making her shiver. Desire was dying fast under the twin assaults of anger and cold.

“Suit yourself. If you’re quick, I’ll let you have the bathroom first.”

Io rolled off the swaying bed and glared at him. On her way to the old tiled room the floor was freezing on her socked feet, and she felt frustrated and grumpy. She said something mean in troll and poked at Jack’s ribs as she passed.

“We are going to have to work on your trench mouth,” Jack remarked.

“Give me time. I’m sure it can get worse with practice.”

Io looked into the cracked mirror over the rusted basin in the bath, and gasped at the sight of her hair. She hadn’t cared for the punk look even when it was fashionable.

“Uh-oh,” Jack said, leaning in the door and grinning at her. “It looks like somebody is having a bad hair day. That’s what happens when you go to bed drunk. That and waking up with strange men.”

Io spun about to punch him, but he was already gone. Recalling that she had the steel fist again and could actually hurt him while goofing around, she quickly caught hold of her temper.

“I could have put my fist right through your eye!” she scolded.

“You’re not fast enough.” He laughed. “And, anyway, I put that spell in your left foot this morning. Today you can really kick ass if you want to.”

Jack’s head reappeared in the doorway, then the rest of him. He had pulled on jeans, a gray sweater, and added sunglasses.

“I’m going out for coffee—or some facsimile thereof. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Try not to kill anyone while I’m gone.”

“Don’t worry. You’re the only person around here that I harbor such strong feelings for.” Her smile was all teeth.

“See! I knew you liked me.” Jack pulled out of the doorway and melted into the shadows. Even without his invisibility spell he managed to open and close the door without making a sound.

“Sneaky, creeping death fey!” she called after him.

Thoughtfully, Io lifted her left foot and tested it for magic by kicking the rotting bathroom wall. Plaster and lathe shattered.

Jack wasn’t kidding; he had actually managed to put her spell there. How had he done that without her knowing it?

It just proved what she had always suspected: Lust was a bad, bad thing.