Waiting for Magic (11 page)

“How did he know to call here for you?” Kemble frowned. “Your cover was perfect.”

Obviously not, but since Kemble had created it he was unlikely to admit that. “I have no idea. He said his Ouija board told him.”

“Great. The Magister of the Golden Dawn gets his information from some kids’ game.” Devin looked disgusted.

“Looks like the kids’ game was pretty accurate.” Kemble tapped his finger to his lips. “But this doesn’t mean we need to change our story. I’m the one who signs the checks to the museum. That still makes me the moneyman.” He turned to Devin. “But he’ll never believe you’re security for an insurance company. He will have researched the family.”

“Then I just go because I’m going. Let him like it or lump it.” Devin sounded firm. “You still need pictures of his collection. If we get to see it.”

Kemble and Kee both sighed. “Okay,” Kemble said. “All that preparation, and for what?” He turned and headed for the door. “How did he know it was us?” he muttered under his breath.

Kee was left alone with Devin for the first time since he’d practically run away from her in the hall outside her room. The scab on his chin made him look older, like a man of the world. She was acutely conscious of the swell of his biceps beneath his t-shirt sleeve. Something between her legs began to tingle. She blinked in disbelief that was quickly turning to horror.

You could cut the silence with a knife. Kee cleared her throat and tried to get hold of herself. Anything was better than silence. “So, uh, how did the date on Saturday go with … Sybil? Is that her name?” Then again, maybe not better. Kee was washed with a wave of … what? Jealousy? Hurt? Outrage? The intensity of it surprised her.

“Fine,” Devin muttered. Then louder, “It went just fine. She’s … she’s a nice girl.” He examined Kee’s face.
His throat was strong-looking, but the notch of his neck vulnerable where his throat pulsed.

Pull it together, Kee
, she admonished herself, trying to get her breath.
It’s not like you haven’t known this would happen.
But the tingle between her thighs had turned to a throb and a wet gush. “Oh good,” she managed somehow. “Did you, um, surf?”

Devin looked away. “Weather wouldn’t give me a break. But we, uh, had coffee.”

Kee nodded, perhaps a touch too convulsively. “Good. That’s good.” Silence fell.
Don’t do it. Don’t you dare do it
. But she couldn’t help herself. “You going to see her again?”

Devin picked at a loose thread in the upholstery of the side chair. “Well, I didn’t get to teach her to surf … so yeah. I guess.”

Like he wasn’t sure? He was sure. He was covering up—she could always tell with Devin. Kee bet he could hardly wait to see the stupid cow.

What had come over her? She was actually breathing hard. She was wet between her legs and overwhelmed. Something was happening here and she didn’t understand it. She
wouldn’t
understand it. “Good,” she choked. She turned like a coward and dashed for the door.

She didn’t stop running until she got to her room. By then she was crying.

Because could no longer avoid knowing what was wrong.

She locked herself in the walk-in closet without turning on the light
and flung herself down into the corner behind the formal dresses. They settled like a curtain around her.

Panic drove up from her belly into her throat. How had she not seen it? Looking back, it had been coming on for a while. She loved Dev like a brother. He was her friend. But now she
wanted
him—as in physical, sexual wanting.

Her
brother
. Someone who could never have magic.

Wrong on so many counts it defined new levels of wrong.
What’s going on here?

She hugged her knees to her chest, tears tracking down her cheeks, as the implications sank in. How long had she been feeling—those feelings—when she looked at him? Flashes of him in the sunlight flipped through her brain. The way his thighs bunched in his wetsuit. The oblique abdominals curving over his hips when he was wearing his board shorts.…

Oh, my God.
She’d been thinking about him as a man for months. She’d just suppressed it. Until now. Her thoughts flitted around like they were looking for escape.

It couldn’t be the real thing, Destiny, the One. That love struck like lightning and you knew it instantly and it was all-consuming, romantic love.
And you got a magic power. Her feeling for Devin didn’t strike like lightning. She’d known him forever and she’d been thinking about him, uh, sexually (that word just hurt) for a while. She hadn’t gotten a power either. Devin didn’t have magic in his genes, so she
couldn’t
get a power from thinking about him…that way. Her mother had done the research so carefully, since technically he was a very distant relation of the Tremaines. No trace of magic in his parents’ lives, or grandparents’. His was a dead-end line.

Then there was the fact that he didn’t want Kee
in return, which sort of put the nail in that coffin. He was actually avoiding her these days. And he was going out with someone else.

As he should.
Kee was his
sister.
She tried to get her breath, gripping some gauzy fabric from a dress in both hands. She brought a fistful up to her mouth, as if she could stifle the feelings she was having. Her parents thought she was a good girl? She defined new levels of bad.

She swallowed. She had to think.
She couldn’t just cry about things, even this.

So this is some … some temporary, sicko infatuation,
she told herself
.
She was just crazy over waiting on her magic, and never meeting anybody, and this aberration sneaked up on her because … well, she didn’t know why.

But it would all be fine. She wasn’t
in love
with her brother. She was just.…

Okay, she didn’t know what she just was. In lust? That sounded
so
bad. But she would meet the One she was destined for, eventually, and this would all be just a bad dream. In the meantime, she’d simply suppress these feelings about him.

No one could ever know. Devin especially. He’d hate her if he realized how she thought about him. Hell, her whole family would hate her. A flash of the look
she would see in her mother’s eyes if she knew how Kee felt made her breath hitch in her throat. And her father? Kee couldn’t even think about that.

She’d be fine. Just forget all about it. And she’d stop hiding in her closet, eventually. She knew that because her butt was getting numb. At some point,
she had to move, even if it seemed impossible right this minute. She could face them. But she was really glad it wouldn’t be until tomorrow.

CHAPTER FIVE

Devin watched Kee run out of the office, stunned. Had he seen a flash of horror in her expression? He hoped to God she didn’t know how he felt, but why else would she look that way? He pushed his hand through his hair. If she knew how he felt about her, he’d just die. He wanted to run until he dropped, scream as loud as he could, smash the glass on the French doors with his fist until he bled and the physical pain made the other pain go away.

But he couldn’t do that. He grabbed a big breath and let it out slowly. And again.

He couldn’t indulge in any of the things that might make him feel better, because he’d be giving off signals to his supersensitive adoptive family that things weren’t right with him, and they’d pick at him until they discovered what it was, and then they’d probably throw him out.

That would be best for everyone concerned. Even him, with how seeing Kee every day was making him feel.

But he wasn’t letting Kee go to dinner at this spiritualist lecher’s house with only Kemble for protection. Not that Kemble couldn’t fight. He and Tris had spilt each other’s blood on more than one occasion, even after Devin came into the family and they were in their early twenties. They were very different guys. There were rough times between them. But when someone outside the family challenged them all differences were forgotten. The Tremaine brothers didn’t put up with much, and they could back it up.

But Kemble wasn’t enough to protect Kee.
Devin didn’t think Kemble was as worldly as Tris. He might miss the signs of trouble. And Kemble didn’t have magic like Tris did. Tris could draw power from the earth and run just about any machine, or heat machines up to white hot. Kemble worked with computers. Not exactly great for protecting a woman.

Devin didn’t have magic either, of course. But Kemble would be worrying about how to get into Pendragon’s collection the whole time. Devin could focus on Kee and her safety.

Tough it out, man.
Pull yourself together.
At least until after tomorrow night.

*****

“
Ms. Le Fay,” the voice on the speakerphone rasped. “I really thought you more sophisticated than that.”

Morgan couldn’t help but grind her teeth. Some half-magic studier of arcane arts thought he was a match for
a descendent of Morgan Le Fay who had magic in her genes? She tried to swallow her outrage. Hardwick thought Golden Dawn had a connection to the tarot. That might mean Pendragon had something she wanted very much. Maybe he knew it. Maybe that was why he was so bold.

“It seemed as though you thought I wasn’t worthy of a partnership,” the voice chided.

“What makes you think you are? And what do you know about me?” That was the issue, now wasn’t it?

“I know you have plans. And a certain … I might say
elemental … experience of magic.”

Elemental
? Morgan seethed. How had he found out about her? How did he keep finding out how to contact her? And what exactly had he done to Jason? Jason was hard. That’s why she kept him around. But he was stuck in a hotel, injured, and now she was without him for who knew how long.

“But we could make beautiful, or might I say, lethal magic together.”

She still held the upper hand. As this upstart would discover. “Prove it.”

“As it happens, I think I have something you might want.”

“A Talisman?” She could have bitten her tongue.
Don’t prompt him. Don’t be too eager.

“Perhaps,” he said smoothly, as though he knew just what she meant. “And three Tremaines.”

Silence on both sides of the line. He knew she wanted Tremaines and the Talisman even before she blurted it out. How?

“They’re coming to dinner tomorrow night. They’ll be leaving about one in the morning, I expect. It occurs after they leave my property. That’s my only requirement.”

“Done.”

“I consider this a gesture of goodwill, Ms. Le Fay. A symbol of my earnest belief that we will be more together than either of us would be on our own. The world is ours, Ms. Le Fay, though we come to our magic from different directions.”

Morgan couldn’t bring herself to respond.

“Deal?” The voice was soft, seductive.

“Deal,” she snapped.

*****

“You ready?” Devin asked.

Kee took a breath. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” What she was ready for was escaping what the nearness of his body in the dark room was doing to her. She moved a step farther away from him. She’d been doing fine with not thinking about him
that way
today as long as she could avoid him. Pretty much. Branches clattered across the windowpane as rain spattered the glass.