Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1) Read online

  “From your mother?”

  He nodded.

  I wanted to ask him more questions, about his life, his childhood. But I couldn’t reciprocate like a regular person could, couldn’t build relationships based on shared experiences, so I didn’t.

  Instead, I turned away, crossing toward the front of the house and tracking Jenni Raymond as she drove down the driveway.

  As I passed him, Aiden opened his mouth, lifting one of his hands as if he was going to call me back, continue the conversation. But he didn’t.

  “Oh,” Christopher said around a mouthful of stuffed peppers. “A package came for you.”

  Aiden glanced at me, then back at his plate. We were about halfway through eating dinner. The evening had turned chilly enough after the sun set that I’d closed one of the French doors and gone back upstairs for a heavier sweater.

  “A package?” I asked. “When? From a courier? Where did you leave it?”

  “About an hour ago. It was on the front mat. Paisley has it. She refused to give it to me.”

  The aforementioned demon dog was sitting half in the house, half on the patio, her back side facing us. She was the reason I couldn’t close both doors. The sorcerer’s continued presence at dinner was the reason she was sulking.

  She glanced over her shoulder at Christopher, eyes glowing softly red as she pinned him with a withering look.

  Aiden paused his chewing.

  “It’s not addressed to you,” Christopher said mildly.

  Paisley huffed. Then she rose to prowl around the table until she was standing between Aiden and me. The sorcerer swallowed, spearing another mouthful of ground-turkey-and-tomato-laden orange pepper while keeping an eye on the demon dog.

  A tentacle uncurled from Paisley’s currently invisible mane, swooping up and depositing a small brown-paper-wrapped parcel on the table next to Aiden’s right forearm. Occasionally, she hid small items in her mane that way, usually cookies or the odd chicken egg she managed to steal. I wasn’t sure why she didn’t just eat the cookies, but I had an inkling she was trying to hatch the eggs.

  The sorcerer’s eyes widened, but he heroically stifled any other reaction.

  I leaned over, reading the name on the package. It was addressed to Aiden Myers.

  He noticed at the same time I did.

  “Thank you,” he murmured to Paisley, his eyes glued to the package as he set down his knife and fork.

  She grumbled, then knocked against his chair with another grumble as she prowled back to the patio.

  “No address,” Aiden murmured.

  “No postage,” I said, glancing over at Christopher. “Magic?”

  “No,” the sorcerer said.

  “Stripped.” The clairvoyant took another stuffed pepper from the platter in the center of the table.

  Aiden looked at him sharply.

  “Stripped?” I echoed, then glanced at Aiden questioningly.

  The sorcerer shook his head, hovering his fingers over the package. “Even not drained, I’m not certain I could pick up the difference between it being simply not magical in nature and having been actively stripped of magic.”

  I glanced over at Christopher.

  He nodded.

  Sensing magic wasn’t an aspect of clairvoyance, but neither was Christopher’s masterful touch with plants and gardening. The Five all had mixed DNA. It had been obvious for some time that Christopher’s magical genetics contained DNA from at least one witch. Enough that he could even cast basic spells, and could handle more complicated magic if he was accompanied by other witches. It was highly likely that my DNA contained witch genetics as well, though I could only wield stolen magic as the original wielder had intended. I couldn’t cast it myself.

  Being able to tell that magic had been deliberately stripped from the package was beyond basic witch skills, though. That was something Christopher could sense only because he’d spent the first twenty-one years of his life with a nullifier.

  Nul5. Fish. Now known as Daniel Jones.

  Aiden frowned.

  “Stripping something of magic …” I trailed off.

  “To make it untraceable.” Aiden opened the brown-paper packaging with quick flicks of his dexterous fingers, revealing a plain white box. He opened the box, reached inside, and plucked out a silver band etched with runes. No, not silver. Platinum by its look.

  His expression became stony as he turned the heavy ring, its runes catching the overhead light.

  “Yours?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  The sorcerer slipped the ring onto his left forefinger, growling darkly. “Mine.”

  I glanced over at Christopher. “And you didn’t pick up anything from the package?”

  He shook his head.

  “So the question is … was it stripped of magic so Aiden couldn’t trace it? Or …” I didn’t finish the thought, which was meant for Christopher anyway.

  The sorcerer glanced back and forth between us. “You think someone is targeting you through me? That’s —”

  “Don’t say impossible,” Christopher said, chewing thoughtfully. “Emma doesn’t like that word.”

  Aiden shook his head. “No. The witch is playing with me.” He pushed back his chair, tugged the ring off his finger, and shoved it in his pocket. Then, though he’d eaten only half his dinner, he collected his plate, utensils, and glass, crossing into the kitchen.

  Paisley appeared beside him, relieving him of the plate before he could scrape it off into the compost.

  Aiden flinched, but then stifled his reaction by turning back to the table, collecting the wrapping and the box. “I’ll go,” he said, speaking to the table rather than Christopher or me. “I’ll take care of the witch.”

  “Drained?” Christopher asked archly.

  Aiden pushed his chair up to the table. “I won’t bring trouble here.”

  Christopher reached out his hand, palm up. Then he wagged his fingers toward Paisley. She grumbled. But while she continued to clean up Aiden’s plate, a long tentacle snaked out from her neck and deposited the clairvoyant’s oracle card deck in his hand.

  “And why is Paisley holding those for you?” I asked.

  Christopher chuckled lightly. “I tried to trade them for Aiden’s package.”

  “And she kept both.”

  “Yes.” He pulled the cards from their box, shuffling them. “Trouble was here before you came, sorcerer. Magic draws magic.”

  “Not this magic,” Aiden said stiffly, watching Christopher shuffle the cards a second time.

  I returned my attention to the food growing cold on my plate. “The witch is either toying with you, or us. If it is you, then you’re better off staying, recovering, than going after her.”

  “That is only logical,” Christopher said. Then he smiled at me smugly. “And if she’s coming for us?”

  I met his gaze. “What do you think will happen?”

  He chuckled, pulling three cards in rapid succession.

  Ginger.

  Rose.

  Strawberry.

  The same three cards.

  Aiden swore softly under his breath.

  I was either being dogged by destiny or Christopher was playing with me. Though I doubted whether he could move quickly enough to fool me. And why would he deliberately pull the same three cards over and over again? To what end?

  “You, Socks,” Christopher said, touching the ginger Manifestation card. “I think you’ll happen. And the witch won’t know what hit her.”

  Aiden frowned, looking over at me.

  But I just nodded. No witch stupid enough to toy with a sorcerer of Aiden’s caliber was going to run me off my property, not even if her intended target was actually me. Not even if she brought a Collective strike team with her.

  The time for running, or even contemplating running, was over.

  “Socks doesn’t like being played with,” Christopher said, speaking to Aiden. He scooped up the three cards, twirling them before him in a bri
ef, showy magical display.

  “All right.” The sorcerer straightened, staring out at the dark yard beyond the patio doors. “Okay, then.” It sounded as if he was making a statement rather than agreeing to anything.

  Christopher flipped a fourth card.

  Lavender.

  Fulfillment.

  The clairvoyant tilted his head thoughtfully. Magic was glowing from his eyes. Barely discernible, to me at least, the cards were glowing as well. He reached over and spun the lavender card, watching as it slowed, then stopped, now facing me. “Unfinished business,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” Aiden said. “I’ll take care of it. I apologize for bringing this to your doorstep.” He glanced at both of us.

  Christopher hadn’t taken his gaze off me.

  The sorcerer opened his mouth, then shook his head, changing whatever he’d planned to say. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” I said.

  Aiden released his grip on the back of his chair, then wandered out into the night beyond the back patio. I tracked his magic as best I could, making a guess at when he would be out of earshot. Then I spoke to Christopher.

  “The Collective?”

  He shook his head. “Still no. Not that I see.”

  “Okay.” I returned to my meal, which had cooled.

  “And …” Christopher swept the four cards back into the deck and reshuffled. “If the Collective is on its way in some form, it doesn’t hurt to have a sorcerer with us.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Though of course, it would be better for him and us if he were at full power.”

  Again, I just continued to eat, clearing the last of the stuffed peppers from my plate. They were still tasty lukewarm.

  Christopher lowered his voice. “What are the chances that he doesn’t already know what you are, Emma?”

  “Even if he’s met other amplifiers, even if his magic has strengthened enough to pick up the tenor of my magic and match it to those in his memory —”

  “He fixed the bowl, didn’t he?”

  Ignoring the interruption, I picked up my plate and carried it to the sink, rinsing it. Then I said quietly. “He has no idea of who I can be.”

  Christopher settled back in his chair, nodding thoughtfully. “And you think that would scare him off.”

  “If he’s even interested in staying at all.”

  “He’s interested. And not in the farm. Or me. Or Paisley.”

  The demon dog huffed. Christopher stood up, crossing to pet her broad, flat head. Then he leaned against the counter next to me. “Why else fix the bowl?”

  “Same as the fence,” I said, placing my plate in the dishwasher, then drying my hands with a tea towel. “Exercising the body and mind helps recover magic.”

  “The point is —”

  “I get the point. You think I should offer to amplify the sorcerer. Got it.”

  “You could just sleep with him. That works as well, doesn’t it? Or so I hear.”

  I pinned him with a look. “And who would you have possibly heard that from?”

  Christopher sighed. “I was joking, trying to lighten the mood. The only person I know who you’ve slept with is Fish. And it … that doesn’t happen …” He waved his hand. “When you’re with him. Not involuntarily. I just assumed —”

  “Stop.”

  “Emma …”

  “Just stop talking about it. I’m not going to have sex with the sorcerer because you’d like to see him all powered up, see what he can do, what visions he would trigger.”

  The clairvoyant scrubbed his hand across his forehead. “Why must we always be at odds about these things?”

  “One thing. We only ever fight about using our magic indiscriminately.”

  “That’s your characterization, not mine.”

  “Exactly.”

  Christopher huffed out a laugh. “The sorcerer isn’t going to get scared off. He let that witch drain him, whoever she is, didn’t he? Why would it scare him that you can do the same?”

  “She …” I bit off the words one at a time. “She can’t kill him with a mere spell. I can. Plus … he didn’t let her have his magic voluntarily.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “And while we’re on the subject …” I raised my hand, hovering it before Christopher’s chest. “I scare you. I scared the other four. For good reason.”

  “Yes. Yet any of us would hold your hand given the chance.”

  I met his earnest gaze. “Only because I’ve been forced on you, embedded underneath your skin. Given an actual choice, any of you would walk away. Just like the sorcerer will.”

  “Socks …”

  I shook my head, replacing the tea towel on the handle of the oven door, then turning away and leaving the rest of the cleanup for Christopher and Paisley.

  “Socks,” Christopher called after me.

  The magic in the tattoo that bound me to him, and him to me, shifted on my spine. But I ignored that magic and the plaintive note in his voice as I moved away, down the hall, up the stairs, and into my bedroom.

  Not retreating.

  Not hiding.

  Just resolute.

  I would meet whatever ‘unfinished business’ was headed our way — because I had no doubt it was coming for me, not Aiden. But I would meet it on my own terms. And those terms didn’t include powering up the sorcerer, whether directly, or indirectly by having sex with him. No matter how much I wanted to be in his bed.

  Or even better, to invite him to mine.

  Chapter 5

  I paused three-quarters of the way up the interior wooden steps into what had once been the hayloft of the barn, the light of late afternoon filtering in through the open doors below me. A pentagram had been painted in straight, smooth black lines over the white-painted, slatted floorboards, about a meter in front of the open door to the suite.

  Aiden sat cross-legged in the middle of the pentagram, hands on his knees. Eyes closed.

  Meditating?

  I thought at first that he was naked. He wasn’t, but the combination of the low light and his black boxer briefs had sent my heart racing.

  The baseball bat, now half covered in carved runes, sat on the floor in front of Aiden, spanning the base of one of the five points of the pentagram. The sorcerer wore two copper rings on each hand, on his forefinger and ring finger — presumably cut and carved from the copper piping he’d found. The polished bands were also carved with runes. He wasn’t wearing the platinum ring that had been delivered in the package the night before.

  I hadn’t seen the sorcerer since dinner. He had already been working on the outer fences when I woke up that morning, and hadn’t joined us for lunch. I checked my email three times, finding nothing further from Ember, even while working on the translation of the runed grimoire. But I couldn’t focus on it enough to absorb what I was reading.

  About thirty minutes previously, our regular DHL courier had driven up to the house, giving me some temporary relief from my restlessness. Though she most often dropped packages that didn’t need signatures in the mailbox, she’d had two this time. One for Christopher — some rare type of garlic bulb — and one for Aiden.

  I had opened the sorcerer’s package, of course. Revealing a passport and a credit card, then confirming that the information on the passport matched what Ember had emailed. I’d also made note of the return address — a PO box in California — and the credit card number. I immediately emailed both pieces of information and a picture of the passport to the witch lawyer as well.

  The meditating sorcerer inhaled deeply. A lazy lick of magic curled around the inner edges of the pentagram. The runes on the bat and rings glowed briefly. And every inch of Aiden’s tanned skin glistened as if the light sheen of sweat coating him carried his magic as well.

  It was some sort of fueling spell, for himself and for the artifacts he’d created out of wood and copper.

  He exhaled. The magic contained in the pentagram ebbed.

  I w
as staring.

  I shouldn’t have been staring.

  I turned away as silently as possible, grimacing when the wood under my feet creaked.

  “Emma?” Aiden whispered behind me, his voice deeply edged with power.

  A sliver of desire ran through me — triggered just by his utterance of my name. That had to be some sort of magic, didn’t it? To affect me so viscerally? I paused to absorb the feeling. I might have been caught on the stairs, staring at Aiden, but I wasn’t cowardly enough to run.

  Behind me, the magic sealing the pentagram died with a sharp snap. Aiden had broken the spell.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured, not looking back. “I should have called up before climbing the stairs. There’s a package for you.” I held up the thick envelope that had been dropped off by the courier. “I opened it.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  As Ember had also indicated, Aiden’s French passport listed Paris as his main residence. But as far as I had seen or heard, there was nothing French about the sorcerer. Most Adepts had lawyers that facilitated things for them in the mundane world, just as I did. Of course, the sorcerer could have had other reasons to be tied to Paris specifically. Relatives living there. His mother, perhaps. Even a spouse …

  I tamped down on that line of thought, glancing back over my shoulder. Aiden had stepped out of the pentagram and was in the process of tugging on his jeans with his back to me. His T-shirt was still slung over a chair he’d moved from the suite into the far corner of the open loft. The baseball bat was propped against the doorframe leading to the bedroom.

  I climbed the last few stairs, again aware that I was staring at him, watching the muscles shift across his back, but not wanting to look away.

  “I’ll paint over the pentagram before I go.” He spoke without looking back at me, buttoning his jeans.

  “Of course.”

  “I went through three parties with the courier, as you requested. The delivery shouldn’t tie me to the property or the town. Other than at your end.” He smiled tightly. “And the locals already know I’m here.”

  “They are annoyingly observant.”

  He laughed quietly, grabbing his T-shirt and stepping forward into the low light filtering in through the upper windows. He had removed his bandages, revealing three ragged claw marks across his abdomen. The wound was still an angry deep red.