Chapter Eight
Once everyone appearedto be sufficiently clothed, especially Helix, we met outside the house. Fin had already gone out, to start the car, and dig through his weapons cash in the trunk. I had to force my mind away from thinking sappy thought my man who kept his weapons a constant access.
And I climbed in the passenger seat, and back of my seatbelt. Fin did the same in the driver seat. The rest of our strange collective filed in the back.
A worry popped into my head. “If we need to wait for the night market to open, why are we leaving in the morning?”
Helix stuck up from the second row of seating in the back. “As merchants for the night market, Melinda and I have access to the grounds during the day.”
I shifted in the seat so I could look at them while I spoke. “Are you going to need access to your magic for that?”
Melinda answered. “No, not after our first time entering. I don’t usually go to the market. Helix is more the face of our operation.”
Well, at least that was settled then. One less thing to worry about. And I didn’t want another encounter with Fin’s fan club. Since the market was closed, hopefully none of them would be there.
We settled in silence as we drove to town. Once we made it to the city limits, Helix directed him to where market would be located tonight.
Before I could climb out of the vehicle, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I glanced around the group, one face to the next. Everyone who might text me was here in this car.
Almost everyone.
I dug the phone from my jeans pocket and almost sobbed at The Chief’s name across the screen. I hit the button and answered. “Hello?”
“Zoey, don't give this bastard a single thing. I’d rather—.”
His voice cut off, and then Esteban's smooth cadence took over. “I’m so glad you answered.”
I kept my voice level and even. It scared people more when I seemed calm. “Have I threatened you lately? But, just to be thorough, when I find you, I'm going to skewer you use your intestines for a scarf.”
“You say the sweetest things. Are you on your way to pick up your daddy yet?”
Been touched my shoulder, and I glanced up into his expected face. Shit.
I pulled the phone away from my cheek and hit the speaker button. “No, actually, you seem to be mistaken. That man is my boss, and as far as bosses go, he's a shitty one. So, in taking him, you wasted your time.” It was a long shot, but I had to try.
“You might think I’m an idiot, Zoey, but I’m not. I know who this man is, and I know who he is to you. He and I have met many times over the years when I wore very spaces in different names. You see, I’ve been watching you most of your life. Waiting. And now, I’m done.”
I met Fin’s eyes again, hoping he saw the question there. He shook his head, just as confused as me then. “Well, that’s super creepy. What were you waiting for? I’m sure there are plenty of lovely mage women out there you could have taken for yourself. In fact, I’m pretty sure one tried to kill me when we first met.”
Ah, Olivia. May she rot in hell.
“For you to grow up, of course. Grow into your power. For you to become a mate to me, a real mate.”
A mate. I mouthed the words towards Fin, but they didn’t seem to have any significance to him as well.
“What does that mean? A real mate?”
A shout came from through the phone, and I flinched, knowing it had to be The Chief. It took everything in me not to start a tirade to explode his fucking brain. Right now, I needed him to keep talking. The more he talked the more he gave away.
“Ask Fin. I think you have what four days now?”
I had nothing to say to him, and yet I wanted to keep him on the line. If I kept him arguing with me, then he wasn’t using that time to hurt The Chief. But we all knew he outsourced his torture on occasion. My ribs ached just thinking about our first encounters.
“What do you want, Esteban? I know we are at an impasse here...with me wanting to gut you, and you wanting to do whatever you want to do with me, but there’s no reason to get anyone else involved.”
He growled, actually growled into the phone. “You brought them into this. You decided to work with them and now they can thank you for losing them their magic.”
Damn. Had we come so far from me just wanting revenge for my parents, for wanting a simple lead that might get me to him in the first place? Now I endured droning conversations to keep the people I cared about safe.
“Think about it, and they should as well. I’ll see you soon, Zoey.” The line went dead. I scowled at the phone so long Fin plucked it from my hand and set it in the cup holder.
But then I scrambled to snatch it back to find the tracking app which connected my phone with The Chief’s. But then I cursed, the GP function on his phone had to have been disabled obviously.
I looked up at Fin. “Did you get anything from that nonsense? I know mages don’t mate the same as fae. Could that be what he means? He wants to fae version of mating?”
You shook his head, and he worked his hands over the steering wheel. The leather creeped from the force of his grip. “I don’t know why he thinks I understand what he wants with you. He made it clear in the forest the specifics. But now, it seems to be more than just procreation, or power.”
The prospect of procreating with Esteban made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. The good news was, The Chief lived. For now.
I shoved the car door open. “Let’s get this done guys.” And refreshing twist, no one argued about who would stay or who would go. Everyone simply climbed out of the car and followed Helix toward an empty shed in the middle of a deserted Field. Oh yeah, whoever did the shielding for this place, watch too many scary movies.
Getting inside only took a few minutes. Once we reached the stall, I itched to dig through Melinda's weapons, already knowing her capabilities from the preview I had at her house. But, if I had to learn sending properly, we didn't have time for me to go shopping.
Melinda found what she came for and sat a black velvet jewelry box on my palm.
“Aw...that’s sweet, but I didn’t get you anything,” I said, opening the box. Inside light a pair of earrings. They were tiny, delicate little snowflakes, but the magic wafting from them packed a punch.
“So what do they do exactly?” I eyed the little diamonds set in what appeared to be gold.
“Not here,” she whispered, tugging me back out to follow the men. The second she’d unearthed the jewelry they’d all lost interest. We got back to the car with little fanfare.
Once inside, Melinda shifted to lean over the consul and explain her creation. “Obviously, you’d wear them and then when you perform magic requiring mental capacity like sendings, or visions, they should amplify your established abilities.”
I tried not to give her a look at that. My abilities couldn’t exactly be called established in any sense of the world. I’d use uncontrollable, erratic, perhaps a tad tempestuous.
Fin stifled a chuckle beside me, no doubt sensing what I felt. The plan in my mind, which had been solid this morning, seemed tenuous now.
“Right well, we’re going to practice first anyway, so this is totally fine.” I slid the earring into my ears with some effort. It had been a while since I’d bothered to wear any. Once in place, I thought I’d feel something, but nope, nothing.
“It’s why I’m so good,” Melinda offered, no doubt reading my face. “I can create items that don’t give off that magical hum. Unfortunately, it means finding the items I’ve created isn’t as easy if someone has hidden them.”
As we all settled in to head back to the safe house a man stepped in front of the vehicle.
“Do they have some kind of radar for your presence, or what? How did they know we were here?”
“You’ve met them before?” Melinda asked.
“Met them, beat them, left them, etc. It was a rough night.” I offered, by way of explanation. Although, I assumed by now, I probably didn’t need to explain anything I did to them.
I buckled my seatbelt. “Just back up and go around him. We don’t have time to deal with these idiots again.”
He shook his head and then his magic flared bright in the car, and through me. The man outside crumpled to the ground.
“I guess that works too. Did you kill him?”
Fin carefully maneuvered around the man’s body. “No, he’ll just sleep for a while. Like you said, we don’t have time.”
It didn’t take long to get back to the house. The entire way I’d been thinking about the fights with others we’d been in since Fin and I met. How many times he’d used his mind control magic, and how often he opted for other abilities or skills. When we first met, he’d used it on me, and I hated him for it. Every time he used it, I made him feel like the worst sort of person. Of course, I’d told him to stop using it on me, but maybe he internalized that I’d rejected that part of him. It must have been what his demonstration last night was about.
I reached over the cup holds and squeezed his thigh gently. Not once had he made me feel inferior, despite being partly something he despised. Maybe it was the mate bond affecting him, allowing him to care for me despite any resignations he might have. I looked over at him, but his gaze remained fixed out the windshield. Could we have a forever with me being half of an enemy. At the very least it deserved a conversation.
“You’re making me nervous, doing a lot of thinking over there and I can’t quite make out what you’re feeling to know if I should be worried or not.”
I gave him another soft squeeze. “It’s fine. I’m just thinking about magic and the nature of non-human beings.”
Now that earned me a look. “Really?”
“Really,” I said. “I’m thinking about the differences between the mages and the fae. I’m thinking about how we haven’t killed each other off yet. There has to be some sort of equilibrium there or else neither of our kind would be left. Mages would try to take fae power, fae would fight mages preemptively to keep themselves and those they loved safe. But, like me, what if there is a middle ground. Like The Captain, maybe not all mages want the same kind of power as Esteban. Are there mages who were created out of necessity? A fight for his life, an accident?”
The car got eerily silent, and I spun to look at everyone in the back. Hawk stared out the window, no doubt wanting to stay out of this conversation. Melinda refused to meet my eyes, which I understood. She’d been traumatized by a mage for years; she wouldn’t be able to sympathize with them.
In the end, it was Helix who answered. “Is that what you would like to believe, or what you think is actually possible?”
I considered his level-headed response. “Both. I think both. As part mage, my father was one, so how do I know he was a good person? Did he take my mother against her will, did he plan to steal her power? Or what? They’d always seemed happy and in love to me. If it wasn’t her power he wanted, how did he become a mage to begin with? By killing another fae?”
All these questions backed up in my head. Things I probably should have considered ages ago. How did I know I wouldn’t end up like Esteban one day, the desire for more magic too great a temptation to resist?
Fin spoke next. “There have been cases of fae going mage out of some odd circumstance like trying to save their own life, but mostly mage power isn’t natural. It’s a perversion.”
A fist squeezed around my heart at that, and tugged my hand from his leg. “Then who am I? I feel my fae power, and my mage power individually. But maybe they can blend together too. Has anyone ever tried it? Has a fae tried to use mage magic without going you know...fully to the dark side.”
Fin’s glance told me all he thought about that. “Like the dark side, mage magic corrupts the individual. Makes it harder to resist the clear clean fae energy, and in the end eats through all the decency a person has.”
Ouch. Hawk whistled from the back. A distinct, oh shit he didn’t, noise.
My ears burned and Fin finally caught the sensation building inside me.
“You do realize we’re mated. So what does that mean for me, for us? Am I doomed to burn through all my good qualities leaving dark magic and a whole lot of sass behind? Will it mean I take your power in the end to fulfill my dark purpose in this world?”
A buffer seemed to press out of me, deadening all sound, as I wrestled with these new revelations. Had I thought accepting me as his mate had been easy, no, of course not. But I didn’t realize this level of hatred existed inside him still. Or was it willful ignorance on his part. He could just pretend I wasn’t part mage when I smiled, looked pretty, and didn’t turn into a raging psycho.
I don’t know how long until the sound of someone screaming my name hit me. We’d arrived at the house and I still sat in the front passenger seat, but everyone was out of the car crowding into my open doorway.
“Zoey?” Fin asked, his hands cupping my cheeks.
“What?” I didn’t bother tempering my tone. He had to know that he just scrambled my insides like it meant nothing at all.
I shoved him away and climbed out of the vehicle, forcing them backward enough to get out and go inside.
“Zoey?” Hawk called. No doubt wanting to diffuse the situation like he always did. He couldn’t fix this. No amount of pummeling his face would help me right now.
Last night Fin told me he could accept my flaws and my virtues; he just didn’t mean my magic as well.