Turning Tides (14 page)

“Tonight, I discovered something different from when I studied him in Tahoe. Mr. MacMahon—ah, Mac—your shifter side is rejecting Aidan’s magic. It is still within you, still a part of your makeup, but it no longer belongs to you. It is Aidan’s magic, not yours. And, just as she needs regular access to her element to survive, you need regular access to my daughter.”

“Are you saying…” I couldn’t finish.

Mac did not share my avoidance. “You’re my element.” He stared at me, wonder and fear battling across his face.

It was impossible, terrible, beautiful. A connection I longed for, and one that needed to be shattered before I destroyed him. “We can’t live like this.” It was a statement, a plea, and a question.

“You may have to.” My mother stood. “Aidan, can I speak to you in the other room?”

“There’s no point. They’ll hear anything we say.”

Annoyance crossed her face. “Very well. If you reclaim your magic, this will be over. It will be difficult, but I believe it can be done.”

Mac’s gaze snapped to my mother’s face.

“Then why don’t you look happier?” I asked.

“Because difficult is an understatement. You must essentially complete the procedure in reverse, without killing him, and this time you would need to work around his shifter magic. When he was dead, that wasn’t an issue. The last time you did this, you were highly motivated, willing to do anything to prevent this man from dying. You’d need to achieve a similar state of highly focused intensity. You must want nothing more than for your magic to return to you.”

Mac didn’t say a word, but I knew what his independence meant to him. He wouldn’t pressure me or even argue with me on this point, but I knew what he wanted to hear. “I can do that,” I said, hoping I spoke the truth. “Somehow. Meditation or chanting or drugs, whatever we need to do. We’ll find a way to get me focused.”

“You would do that for him?”

I studied his face. The high cheekbones, the dark brows, the wide lips, the warmest brown eyes I’d ever seen. “I’d do pretty much anything for him.”

“And that, my dear, is the problem.”

We turned to her in confusion.

“Your magic isn’t just keeping him healthy. It’s giving him the benefits that come from being an elemental. As long as he has your magic, he has access to your lifespan. Mac may no longer live and die as shifters do. He could live thousands of years at your side, and the only downside is that he would need to recharge through you on a regular basis.”

Miriam looked shocked, and for once she didn’t seem to have a ready joke. Mac’s shoulders drooped, the tension he carried exiting his body in a rush. His squeezed my hand once in silent reassurance, then released it, leaving my palm empty and cold.

“Aidan, you can heal him, but to do so you must have no doubt this is what you want, and that is why you will almost certainly fail. You cannot heal him
because
of how much you care for him.”

Miriam whistled, long and low. “Another thousand years of life? That’s one hell of a trade-off, bear-man.”

Mac closed his eyes, hiding his thoughts. “It’s an interesting option, assuming…”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. I heard all the unsaid words. It was an interesting option, assuming we wanted to stay together for a thousand years. Assuming he could ever know peace, with his health dependent on another person. Assuming he wasn’t in danger of attaching himself to a crazy woman for the rest of his life.

“I need a minute,” he murmured. He left the room, and I let him go. The sound of grinding metal filled the room, followed by a splash. I made a mental note to pull the houseboat’s dining table from the ocean floor the next day.

“I’ll fix this, Mac. Somehow, I’ll fix this.” I didn’t raise my voice, but I knew he heard every word.

Chapter 14

I returned to the cottage
well after midnight. I was unused to Sera heading for bed before I did, but her door was closed and no light shone from underneath. Her music still played, but instead of the bone-jarring noise I’d come to expect, the volume was low and one of Elvis Costello’s quieter songs drifted through the living room.

Simon was stretched before the dying fire, furry black stomach exposed to the small embers that clung to life. He raised his head when I entered and blinked once in greeting, then returned to his prone position.

I sat cross-legged behind him, feeling the warmth on my skin. A tendril of magic stretched toward the flames, seeking to recharge, and I was almost too exhausted to stop it.

“You’re not going back tonight?”

In answer, he only scooted closer to the flames. There wasn’t a fireplace on the houseboat, after all.

“It’s probably for the best. I can’t imagine Mac’s in a very good mood right now.” When Mac started throwing things, it was best to get out of his way until he calmed down. A houseboat didn’t provide many escape options, particularly for a cat who viewed the ocean as the devil’s work.

I held out my hand, fingers curled into a loose fist, and Simon stretched until his cheek rubbed against my knuckles. He twisted his head to give me access to both cheeks, his chin, and his nose. Content, he dropped his head onto his paws, his permanent cat grin slightly larger than usual.

I’d discovered that different rules apply with shifters. While I’d never dream of wandering up to Simon and scratching his face when he was in human form, I had no problem petting him when he was a cat, and he never seemed to mind. I moved my hand along his black fur in slow, deliberate motions and was rewarded with a soft purr.

My world might be going to hell, but at least I had a warm cottage and one happy friend. It was a place to start.

“I think I screwed up again,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to, and the screw-up saved Mac’s life, but it won’t be easy to fix.” He rolled over, belly wantonly displayed, and fixed sleepy green eyes on me. I wasn’t telling him anything unexpected.

“There’s more,” I whispered. “And I can’t tell anyone. Sera will worry about me, and I need her to worry about herself right now. My parents will lock me up. Mac will pull away. But I don’t want to bear this alone.”

He rolled to his feet and sat on his haunches, waiting patiently.

“I’m starting to lose control. I almost hurt someone today.” I spoke in a whisper. If no one heard me, maybe the words wouldn’t be true.

Simon said nothing. He didn’t shift, either, only continued to gaze at me with intent green eyes in a serious feline face.

“Everyone’s looking to me right now. I’m supposed to free Sera and cure Mac. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that when I can’t even fix myself. When I’m just going to screw up again, and I don’t know how much damage I’ll do the next time.”

Simon padded toward me, stepping into the lap created by my crossed legs, and gave my shoulder a good swipe with his paw.

I laughed, jolted out of my self-pity. “Good point. I should listen to you more often.”

He seemed to nod, then curled up into a ball. He was asleep within minutes.

I rested my left hand lightly on his body, feeling the slow rise and fall of his rib cage, and I tried to find peace in the moment. It was all I could do.

I gave in
to sleep, eventually, grabbing a throw pil
low for my head and wrapping myself in a knitted afghan. When I rolled onto my side, Simon grumbled and withdrew to the sofa. That’s how Sera found us the next morning.

“You know he’s only ten pounds, right? Even you could fight him for the sofa and win.”

I stretched, working out the stiffness from a night spent on the floor. For good measure, I sent my magic to the ocean, gathering its energy. It revived and grounded me, reminding me that, whatever else I might be, I was first and foremost a water and a daughter of the old ones.

The rest of it—Mac’s connection to me, my growing problems with control—that was all an accident, a strange quirk of fate. I’d had my pity party of one the night before, and that was enough.

I needed to fight for everything I cared about, and I included my own sanity on that list. I would be conscientious. I would be diligent. And I would possibly keep a small bucket of water with me at all times.

I glanced at Simon, still in cat form, stretching his own way back to wakefulness.

“He just looked so cute, all curled up in a ball.” Simon didn’t look indignant at my teasing. In fact, I suspected he shared my opinion. I stood, keeping the afghan wrapped around my shoulders, and sat next to him. He ignored me, the easy friendship of the night before less important than the need to clean his face. “Did you put the kettle on?”

Sera threw herself into the room’s only armchair and simultaneously nodded and yawned. She was wearing a black t-shirt and black sweats. Normally, the dark colors set off her bronze skin perfectly. Now, she looked drawn, her skin noticeably pale.

She looked like a woman facing a trial for her life.

“Any word from Vivian?”

The air next to me changed as a small black cat was replaced by a slim man of average height. “She got back to us eventually,” he muttered.

I’d never heard Simon mutter before. I glanced at him in surprise and saw far more than I intended to. Silently, I handed him my blanket. By that point, I’d seen Simon’s naughty parts so often I could draw them on command, but I felt I should at least have a cup of tea before getting an eyeful of my friend’s genitals.

“Did it take her time to hack the files?”

Sera shook her head, her eyes sharpening. “It took time for Olivia to go to bed so Vivian felt she could help us. She was still working on them when we went to bed.” The kettle whistled. Sera bounced up, the movement far too energetic for someone who hadn’t yet had coffee. She walked into the small kitchen and prepared a cup of tea for me. She waited for the coffee to finish brewing for approximately two seconds before giving up and pouring herself a cup from the half-full carafe.

I took my mug with a grateful nod. Truly, there are few pleasures in this world more satisfying than having someone else deliver your morning caffeine.

“So, is it time for us to make Olivia disappear? We know people, you know.”

I was joking, mostly. Sera’s considering expression made me wonder if she realized that.

“Sadly, we cannot,” said Simon, sitting upright. “It will only turn Olivia into a lost love, the one that got away. Vivian is choosing to be with her. We must wait until she chooses not to be.”

“What if she doesn’t?” I asked. “What if she chooses to spend the rest of her life in domestic bliss with Olivia, knitting and watching reality TV?”

“Then she’s not the woman we all thought we knew, and we let her go so that she can be happy,” he answered. In his early twenties, Simon was the youngest of all of us, but he had an unsettling habit of dropping words of wisdom when they were least expected.

Sera grimaced. She saw little reason to let things remain as they were when she could change them to her liking. “Is that what happened with you, Simon? You decided on your own that you’d rather be with us than with Carmen and her brood?”

I buried my face in my mug, inhaling the steam. I still wanted to beg him to stay and never, ever leave us again, but I was trying to take the high road here. Simon once told me he needed to choose his own future, and he needed to do it on his terms. Pressuring him to stay wasn’t playing fair.

“Mac is my friend,” he said, as if that explained everything. I supposed it did.

“About Mac…” I filled them in on my mother’s diagnosis.

Sera gave a low whistle. “What are you going to do, Ade?”

“Only thing I can. I’ll draw the magic out of him, somehow. Maybe all those meditation exercises Vivian taught me will help me focus. It’s the only option. He’d be miserable, so dependent on me. We all know it.”

Sera didn’t argue the point. Not that one, at least. “But it sounds like it’s a risk to you, too, if you aren’t one hundred percent committed to this. Are you really willing to take this away? To make him mortal?”

“If it’s what he wants.” Last week, I’d have fought him on this. I’d have insisted he at least consider the option, consider the possibility that our relationship didn’t need to have a built-in expiration date. Yes, we’d be more or less joined at the hip for centuries to come and would become the poster children for Co-Dependents Anonymous, but at least we’d be together.

Last week, I’d have fought for us.

But Mac deserved more than what I was becoming. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life with a violent nut job. I’d try my damnedest to remain sane, but rumbling just below the morning’s newfound resolve was the knowledge that I could fail. No matter how hard I tried, I could lose myself, and if I waited too long to recall the magic, I would lose him, as well. That wasn’t an option.

“I’m going to do it tonight, once your trial’s over and you’re in the clear.” I stated, so positive I could be mistaken for Pollyanna. “The longer I wait, the more Mac will suffer. Now, tell me about the files. How far did Vivian get last night?”

They exchanged a look at my blatant attempt to change the subject, but they went along with it. “She retrieved the files from the council’s computer, but they were encrypted.”

On cue, Sera’s phone chirped, the sound of an incoming email. She opened it, then stared at her phone for much longer than it ought to take to read a single message. Her absolute lack of reaction told me the message contained news I needed to know.

“What?”

She put down her phone and looked between me and Simon several times. “It’s not good news.” Her voice, pitched low, suggested this was a massive understatement. “Aidan, after Fiona cured the shifters and removed the magic-nullifying drug from their system, what did she do with the drug?”

I stared at her, shock written across my face.

Months ago, someone we knew injected me with a drug capable of blocking an elemental’s access to their magic. It was terrifying to lose touch with such a vital part of myself, but it lasted only a few hours with no apparent side effects.

Then it fell into a shifter’s hands, and she adapted the formula until it was more a weapon than a drug, a long-lasting solution capable of destroying both elementals and shifters. My mother was attacked, and she fell into a coma that lasted for days. The shifters given the drug were unable to take animal form, forcing the beasts within to rail against their confinement and slowly strip away the humanity that kept them balanced.

In other words, it was the sort of thing that should be thrown into a deep, dark well and never spoken of again. When we subdued the last woman who used it, I thought we’d gained control of the drug.

“I don’t know.” I searched my memory. “She took some blood samples, I think. She wanted to understand what it was, to create a faster cure or even a vaccine.”

“Did she give it to anyone?”

I pressed my lips together and gave a curt nod. Of course she had. She would have needed the blood broken down for analysis, and we didn’t have a forensics lab on the island. “She swore they were people she knew. People elementals could trust.”

Sera stood and began pacing. The living room wasn’t large, and the energy that vibrated around her made it feel even smaller than it was. “Well, unfortunately the council are elementals, too. They learned about the drug, Ade. That’s your punishment. They’re going to take your magic.”

Simon and I shared matching horrified looks. “But that’s barbaric,” I said. “We can’t exist without magic. I’d be in a coma, like my mother, and that’s probably the best case scenario.”

“Maybe it’s a new formula, another variation on the drug Brian created. Maybe it’s the same version, or something worse. I don’t think it matters. If something goes wrong, no one would ever know. You’d still be banished. Once they got you off the island, no one would ever know how the drug affected you longterm. You’d become an example to elementals for centuries to come: step out of line, lose your magic.”

“They’re going to make me into a cautionary tale for misbehaving elementals? A bedtime story for naughty children?” I watched Sera pace the room and wanted to join her, to release my anger and the pulsating energy flowing through my body. “That case. At the trial, Edith kept one hand on a slim black case. I thought it was a fucking clutch purse, but it was the drug, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t move. I clung to my water and, with it, my control. Another piece fell into place. “You realize they just gave you a motive, right? It never made much sense, you killing someone to prevent my banishment. I mean, we already live outside the elemental world. But killing someone to prevent me from becoming a magic-deprived zombie? That might hold up.”

Sera froze in place, considering my words, then began moving again, faster than before. “But I didn’t know. They can’t prove I did.”

“I’m beginning to think this council isn’t so interested in proof. They came to my trial with a plan, and they intend to execute it. They’re going to announce it today, after your trial.”

Somehow, Sera managed to pace even faster. She was practically leaving skid marks on the rug. “Lydia. She knew, didn’t she? She looked disgusted the entire time, and someone cast an innocent vote for you. She doesn’t want the council to resort to this. Maybe she can give us more information.”

“I’ll talk to her first thing. I can be very persuasive.” Simon and Sera stared at me, and I gave them points for not bursting into laughter. “Okay, no I can’t. But I can talk at her until she tells me something to make me go away.”

They nodded, finding that scenario more believable. I wanted to be indignant, but they weren’t wrong.

“I’ll head over this morning. I’ll stop at my mother’s first, just to confirm what she did with the blood. I’d really like to know whose idea this was, particularly as we only need to change one council member’s mind. We do that, and we’re both free. You,” I said, turning to Simon, “need to head back to the houseboat. Someone should be near Mac at all times, and I don’t know what Miriam has planned for the day.”