Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2) Read online

  Paisley pressed her nose to the palm of my hand, then straightened, giving a full-body shake. Her mane of tentacles shook loose, crackling with energy all around her head, neck, and shoulders.

  Christopher flashed me a grin. “I’ll keep watch here.”

  A sealed envelope sat in the snow-covered mailbox. The name Aiden Myers was scrawled across the thick cream paper. The black-inked lettering glinted with magic, but I couldn’t feel anything malicious embedded in the missive.

  Paisley snatched the envelope from me with a flick of her tentacles, folding it into her mane. Then she hightailed it back to the barn.

  Apparently, she was Aiden’s official courier.

  I sighed, opened the front gates so Aiden wouldn’t need to, then trudged back through the thick layer of snow that had accumulated on the drive. It was up to my lower calves now.

  The fact that I could see magic glinting from what I assumed was Isa Azar’s handwriting gave extra credence to Ember Pine’s caution about the sorcerer. I rarely saw residual magic. I could feel spells as they were being used against me, and powerful artifacts, of course. Even dormant magic if it resided in a person, as with Lani. But it took a powerful magic user to leave a trace of energy that I could pick up visually without effort.

  It was almost teatime. I was restless. It was still snowing. The wind had picked up, blowing snow from the roof of the house and the barn in huge white sheets that blotted out my view of the driveway.

  I had pored over three of the five spellbooks that I hadn’t had a chance to look at in detail yet — all sent by Ember and Aiden. Scouring their pages for anything that resembled the runes that the dream invasion had kept at the forefront of my mind all day. Runes that had been inked on my cheeks and forehead in the young witch’s blood. Opal.

  Christopher wandered in with his arms full of wood, actually bringing a chill with him. He knelt down, organizing the wood to the side of the blazing fireplace.

  I flipped all the books arrayed on the coffee table closed. One at a time. Slap. Slap. Slap.

  Christopher threw himself onto the couch across from me. “Was there mail?”

  “Yes. Addressed to Aiden. Paisley has it.”

  He laughed. “It’s a game now.”

  I nodded. Paisley had also absconded with the first package that had arrived addressed to Aiden. A package containing one of the sorcerer’s rings. The other rings, stolen by Silver Pine, decorated the platinum chain I’d seen slung around his brother’s neck.

  “He’ll make it,” Christopher murmured.

  “It’s a lot of snow.”

  “What is that to a sorcerer who has an excuse to return to you?”

  “I’m more than just my magic.”

  “Don’t be spiky.” Christopher grinned as he quoted from my favorite TV show, Downton Abbey. “My point exactly.”

  “Why would he need an excuse to return?”

  The clairvoyant shifted forward, reaching for my notepad on the coffee table and spinning it toward him. He inspected the runes I’d translated there. “Because he hasn’t fulfilled his end of the bargain.”

  “What bargain?”

  “Whatever bargain he struck with you when he left.” He paused, lifting his light-gray eyes to me, giving me space to respond.

  I didn’t. My conversations with Aiden were private.

  Christopher tapped the sketches I’d been awkwardly fiddling with all afternoon. Working with runes wasn’t an ingrained talent or an easily learned discipline for me. Drawing was even less so. The sketches were my feeble attempt to document the runes that had been marked on my forehead and cheeks. “From San Francisco?”

  “Yes.”

  Christopher squinted at the shaded penciled lines. His magic expanded, then contracted. “These aren’t quite right.”

  “I remember them clearly.”

  “When did you see them? In the bathroom at the rest stop? Hours after they were initially inked.”

  “Ah. Damn it.” I suddenly felt like an idiot.

  I’d been researching the runes for months, specifically looking for the spell that had allowed the sorcerers to siphon my magic in San Francisco. But as Christopher pointed out, I was assuming that the magic within the runes hadn’t been burned away or smudged. That magic might have flaked off my skin between the runes being inked, the spell being cast, and me slaughtering anyone who’d still stood before me. I’d only seen them hours later, reflected back at me in the mirror as I washed them off in an ill-lit bathroom on the edge of the highway.

  “And those were just the secondary attachments,” Christopher said. “The pentagram itself was anchored with a rune at each point.”

  “I figured if I found a match, I’d find the entire spell.”

  He slumped back on the couch. “Why not just ask me? I’ve asked you what you’ve been working on multiple times.” He indicated all the spellbooks with a wave of his hand.

  “I’ve been researching magical transference, and now binding spells in general.”

  “As you’ve said.”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” I said. “I’m not shutting you out. The dream last night just brought it up. Again.”

  “Again,” Christopher echoed, almost mockingly.

  I leveled a look at him. “I’m not playing games with you.”

  “Just because a person wants to have a conversation with you, Emma — a back-and-forth dialogue — doesn’t mean they’re playing games.”

  Keeping my gaze on him steady, I neatly piled my books and notes together.

  Christopher scrubbed his hands over his mouth, massaging his jaw. “I’m sorry. Your magic is erratic today —”

  “Don’t blame me for your shortcomings.”

  “Christ, Emma. I was apologizing for needling you.”

  “Do it better.”

  He sighed heavily. “You are a difficult taskmaster.”

  “According to Fish, I don’t push you hard enough.”

  He grunted noncommittally, unwilling to enter into a conversation about the nullifier. Which was the right choice, every time. I never brought Daniel up unless I was looking for a fight.

  “We should have sparred today,” I said, easing away from the tension I’d been allowing to build between us.

  Christopher let out his breath. “In the snow?”

  “It would have been good practice.”

  “For what? Planning to invade the Arctic?”

  “It’s always good to be prepared.”

  He sat forward, smiling in a teasing fashion. “I just watched you clean a house I cleaned two days ago, Socks. Sparring in the snow with you might have gotten me killed.”

  “Please. You —”

  I was cut short by the sight of magic flickering in Christopher’s eyes. His grin widened, his tone turning remote. “What did I tell you, amplifier?”

  “Which time?” I asked caustically.

  “About a little snow never getting in Aiden Azar Myers’s way.”

  I was off the couch and down the hall before I’d made the decision to move. Yes, as idiotic as it was, I wanted to lay eyes on Aiden the moment he was within my line of sight. All I’d had to soothe that desire — for five months — were carefully chosen words on paper. Now I wanted the sorcerer himself.

  I flung open the front door, letting in a gust of chilly wind and snow that reminded me I was barefoot and without a coat. Heedless, I peered through the falling snow that was doing its best to engulf the property.

  A dark-burgundy, hulking SUV rolled through the gate I’d left open at the far end of the driveway, then paused just beyond.

  The driver’s door swung open and a dark-suited, dark-haired man stepped out, crossing out of my sight as he moved to close the gate. The hatch on the back of the vehicle lifted, then the sorcerer stepped over to the gatepost, standing with his back to me and holding a rune-carved baseball bat loosely in his left hand. Dark-blue magic was etched through each rune, standing out starkly against the snow.

 
The sorcerer laid his hand on the gate, over the rune he’d carved into the post five months before. I couldn’t hear him speak, but he tilted his head as if murmuring an incantation. Magic stirred around his hand, flaring through the runes in the bat as he drew power from the artifact. A rune carved into the fence post on either side of the gate began to glow. Then another set of runes on the next posts were activated, then the next.

  Aiden was erecting the perimeter ward line he’d laid the foundation for last fall, but hadn’t had the power to ignite.

  Christopher settled my jacket over my shoulders and set my lined boots next to me. I slipped my feet into the too-large boots without taking my gaze from the sorcerer at my gate.

  Snowflakes were getting caught in his dark hair, sprinkling over the shoulders and arms of his suit as he pumped more and more power into the perimeter line.

  “Impressive,” Christopher murmured, pulling on his own jacket and clicking the door shut behind us.

  I was acting idiotically, standing on the porch when I could simply be waiting by the warmth of the fire in the front sitting room. But the clairvoyant didn’t tease me as he waited by my side.

  The dark-haired sorcerer stepped back from the gate, finally turning toward the house, toward me. He swept his gaze across the snow-covered property, settling the bat over his shoulder. It had been drained of the bulk of its power but still glowed softly, matching the magic simmering in the sorcerer’s striking blue eyes.

  Aiden Myers.

  A slow, satisfied smile spread over his face. And I would have sworn that his shoulders, his entire demeanor, relaxed as he settled his gaze on me.

  My lips curled involuntarily into an answering smile.

  Aiden sauntered back to the SUV, climbed in, and continued down the driveway. There were heavy chains on the wheels and no rental stickers.

  “Think he bought the vehicle on his way here?” Christopher murmured. “What do you bet there’s a shovel and bags of salt in the back hatch? The sorcerer was prepared for the snow.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Aiden parked beside the barn, then stepped out, retrieving his bat and a bag from the back seat.

  Something heavy slammed onto the top of the SUV. A viciously snarling creature the size of a lion appeared on the roof of the vehicle. Glowing red eyes. Sharp, double-rowed teeth. A mane of tentacles sparking with dark, seething magic.

  Paisley.

  Aiden stilled, slowly pivoting to eye the demon dog.

  She curled paws the size of dinner plates over the edge of the vehicle. The SUV listed to the right as she flattened her head and flicked her forked blue tongue toward the sorcerer.

  He started to laugh. The warm sound cut through the snow to flood my chest, then trickle down to my lower stomach. And just for a moment, I allowed that whisper of desire to heat me from within, savoring it as I watched Paisley chortle along with Aiden.

  The demon dog leaped off the SUV, landing next to the sorcerer, who reached through her mane of tentacles and patted her firmly on the shoulder.

  Paisley gazed up at Aiden, huffing happily. Then she crossed toward the house, magic flooding over her as she tucked the tentacles away and shrank down to her large pit bull aspect.

  She wasn’t allowed in the house when she was the size of a lion. She crushed the furniture and damaged the fir flooring with her claws. Deliberately, I thought.

  Aiden followed in Paisley’s wake.

  “Did she drop from the barn roof?” Christopher asked, hushed. “Or just appear?”

  “Appeared, I think,” I whispered back. “If she’d dropped, her momentum would have flattened the SUV.”

  Christopher hummed thoughtfully but dropped the subject — specifically, the fact that Paisley’s magic had sharpened and strengthened since I’d brought her back from the edge of death last September. Strengthened permanently, it seemed. Previously, she’d shown an ability to travel through shadows, possibly stepping into the demon dimension as she did so. But despite the snowstorm, it was still full daylight, so there weren’t any shadows she could have slipped through in order to appear on top of Aiden’s vehicle.

  The demon dog prowled up the front patio stairs, making a show of shaking off the snow that had accumulated on her dark-blue coat.

  Aiden paused at the base of the stairs, settling his gaze on me as if he never wanted to look anywhere else.

  I didn’t look away either. “Aiden.”

  “Emma.” He smiled up at me, my name coming out in a satisfied sigh.

  “You’re in time for tea.”

  “Ah, good. I was hoping I would be.” He transferred the bat into the hand he was holding the bag with, then stepped up, already reaching toward Christopher.

  The sorcerer and the clairvoyant clasped arms.

  “My friend,” Christopher murmured. “We’ve missed you.”

  “Not as much as I’ve missed being here with you.”

  Paisley bumped her head into the side of Aiden’s thigh. He stumbled, held upright by Christopher. They laughed.

  My heart … expanded.

  Inexplicably.

  Painfully.

  I turned, reaching for the handle of the front door and stepping away from the conversation, stepping away from my intense reaction to the sorcerer’s return.

  “I picked up those rose bushes for you on my way through London,” Aiden said.

  “Ah, yes. Thank you. Any trouble getting them through customs?”

  “Nothing a junior sorcerer wouldn’t have been able to take care of.”

  Christopher chuckled.

  I pulled off my boots, carrying them with me down the hall. I glanced back before I stepped into the kitchen.

  Aiden was gazing at me from the patio. His expression was neutral, but the blue of his eyes was soul searing.

  I looked away, stepping through the kitchen to tuck my boots and jacket into the laundry room.

  Soul-searing eyes. That was an absurd thought. Despite the letters and the gifts, the sorcerer had only returned because his brother was in town looking for him. Not because he wanted to see me. That thought, that rationale, cooled whatever emotion had tried to get hold of my heart on the patio. Whatever emotion had stirred at the sight of the three people I most …

  I most what?

  Cared for?

  Loved?

  Christopher stepped into the laundry room, brushing his shoulder against me as he hung his jacket on the wooden peg next to mine. “All right there, Fox in Socks?”

  I nodded stiffly.

  “Aiden’s just dropping his bag in the loft. And probably changing. You know sorcerers. He wouldn’t want to ruin those pretty shoes.”

  Christopher was teasing, being playful. But I couldn’t find it in myself to smile.

  “Socks,” he murmured.

  I shook my head, stepping back out of the laundry room and into the kitchen to put on the kettle. Both the sorcerer and Paisley had exited the house. I couldn’t feel their magic, and I wasn’t going to actively seek it.

  I moved through the soothing motions of making tea, including opening the red-and-black tin that held the orchid oolong and inhaling deeply.

  Christopher settled on a stool on the opposite side of the kitchen island, pulling out his oracle cards and shuffling them absentmindedly.

  I plated ginger snaps, setting the teapot, plates, and mugs on a tray. I added napkins just as the kettle boiled.

  I poured the hot water over the oolong in the strainer set in the teapot. Christopher leaned forward, smelling it with a slight smile. I placed the lid on the pot, turning back to set the timer for five minutes. Then I pulled the milk out of the fridge and poured some into the stoneware creamer, adding three teaspoons to the collection of dishes on the tray.

  “Evoking the perimeter line didn’t even wind him,” Christopher said. “Didn’t even fully drain the bat.”

  “No.”

  “You knew he was that powerful.”

  “He wouldn’t have carved t
he runes in the first place if he wasn’t.”

  Christopher laughed quietly. “The runes made sense. It took him days, maybe even a week, to set them all in place. Few sorcerers could trigger the entire ward with one casting.”

  “Maybe it’s just the front section of fencing, along the road.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “What’s your point?”

  Christopher shrugged, his gaze on the cards he was shuffling. “Just you. You’re worried he isn’t strong enough to survive loving you.”

  “He chose to leave, Christopher.”

  “And you let him go. And haven’t asked him back.”

  “He’s back,” I snapped.

  “He took the first opportunity you gave him to return.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Am I wrong?”

  Again, I didn’t answer. Christopher leaned against the counter, sighing quietly in the long silence that settled between us.

  The timer went off. I pulled the strainer from the teapot, set it to the side, then stepped back to turn off the timer.

  Aiden stepped up on the back patio, instantly snagging my gaze through the French-paned doors. He had changed into jeans tucked into the boots I’d left for him. A navy-blue sweater made the blue of his eyes more pronounced, though the magic he’d been previously wielding had faded.

  The sorcerer stepped through the back door into the laundry room.

  I blinked as if clearing my sight.

  Christopher was staring at me. “Maybe it’s more that you think you aren’t capable? You think the Collective made you a monster, unable to —”

  “I know what the Collective made me.” I picked up the tray, turning away from the conversation the clairvoyant was forcing upon me as Aiden stepped into the kitchen.

  My heart rate picked up. Ignoring it, I crossed through the dining room toward the front sitting room. I felt oddly pleased that the ritual of afternoon tea would allow me to be in the same room as the sorcerer without dissolving into … whatever the hell was going on with me. My visceral reaction to his return.

  I poured myself a second mug of oolong, curling my legs under me on the couch, then simply allowing myself to sip my tea and watch the sorcerer seated across from me. His hair was slightly longer than before he’d left, starting to curl over his ears. He’d gained back the weight he lost when he was drained of his magic by the black witch Silver Pine. It looked good on him. He appeared strong, healthy, relaxed, with one arm settled along the back of the couch as he maintained a murmur of conversation with Christopher — chatting about the weather and the garden and the chicks the clairvoyant was hatching.