Call Out (19 page)

“Ashe told you earlier that I work in
internal affairs. Being in IA, I have access to a database of
everyone who works for or has worked for the agency.”

“Wait, whoa,” I said. “Are you saying Julia
is one of your agents?”

“No,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “Not
anymore. She’s gone rogue.”

London turned his head a little to look up at
Ashe, his eyes wide. “I don’t understand.”

Ashe sighed and dropped his hand down onto
London’s shoulder. “I’m not entirely sure I do, either, kid.”

“It’s like this,” Quinn said, only to be cut
off by a knock on the door.

Dylan slid from the bed and hurried to peek
through the peephole. She flung the door open to let Brian, Kenny,
and Adrian inside, giving Brian the briefest of hugs as she let the
door swing shut.

Brian’s eyes went from London to the picture
of Julia on the laptop and back to London, his feet carrying him
forward before he could have had time to make sense of what he’d
seen. Ashe moved aside, and I could tell that London’s shields were
up again. Brian half-sat on the arm of our chair and rested his
hand on London’s shoulder just as Ashe had done.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Ashe brought Brian and the others up to
speed. He also asked after Jimmy, who was calmer now but had opted
to stay out of the whole magic mess. I figured Ashe had asked for
London’s sake, because I got the feeling he didn’t really think
much of Jimmy. Then he and Quinn asked Adrian a little about his
abilities to sense magic and his lack thereof where Julia was
concerned

“Being able to mask your abilities like that,
it’s all but unheard of,” Quinn noted. “There are two people in the
database with that power. Both are recruiters. But it’s not listed
in Julia’s dossier.”

“Why does ‘recruiter’ sound sinister the way
you say it?” Kenny asked.

“Because it kind of is,” Quinn replied.

“Recruiters for the agency aren’t like
recruiters for 9-5 jobs,” Ashe added. “Sometimes it’s someone who
can sense magic....”

“Like Adrian?” Dylan asked.

“Not exactly. Sounds like Adrian’s abilities
are limited to seeing magical auras and being immune to some forms
of magic. A recruiter who can sense magic will have other abilities
as well and can also tell how much magical potential a person has.
Sometimes they work alone, and sometimes they work with another
agent who has a better likelihood of swaying the prospective
recruit to join the agency.”

“It wasn’t real,” London said. His shields
wavered, and I pressed a little closer to him, saw Brian grip his
shoulder a little tighter. “It was a setup, from the very
beginning. God, I feel like such a....” He grappled for the right
word for a minute before shaking his head. “I feel so damn
stupid.”

“She fooled all of us, London,” Adrian said,
moving to sit on the end of the bed so he could look his friend in
the eye. “We all thought she was the real deal.”

“I was going to marry her, and I didn’t even
really know her,” London added.

Brian made a little sound somewhere between a
snort and a laugh. “You wouldn’t be the first,” he said.

“Hell, no, you wouldn’t have been,” Ashe
added. “I made the same mistake...a few times.”

London smiled a little in spite of himself.
“This is different.”

“Just a different level of crazy on her
part,” Ashe said. “I had one of my exes try to kill me. Tried to
run over me with my own truck – and back then I drove a
full-size.”

The smile fell from London’s face and he
hugged me even closer. “She didn’t try to kill me. She tried to
kill Elizabeth,” he said. “Me, she’s still trying to recruit.”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Dylan
said. “That’s what this whole kidnapping me thing was about?
Turning you into some kind of government agent?”

“No,” Quinn said. “She’s not agency anymore.
If she’s trying to recruit him now, it’s for something else. Don’t
think we’d let one of our recruiters get away with endangering
anyone like that.”

Dylan inclined her head toward him as if to
say ‘point taken’. “Fine, whatever. But still. She kidnapped me to
get London’s attention? That’s more than a little nuts.”

“Nuts, yeah, but with a certain sort of
logic,” Kenny pointed out. “She knew he’d do anything he could to
help Brian.”

“What I want to know is how she even knew
about Dylan. We’ve kept things pretty quiet.”

Quinn shrugged. “There are plenty of ways she
could have found out about her. All it would really take is a
little surveillance in the right place at the right time. If Julia
is looking to recruit London, she’s probably been watching him and
everyone around him for a while.”

I felt London shiver. “No one I care about is
safe,” he said.

“That’s what really doesn’t make sense,
though,” Dylan chimed in. “Why me? Not that I’d rather it be your
mom or anything, but....”

“And how the hell did Vanessa get involved?”
I asked. “She’s about as magical as an egg.”

Ashe shook his head. “There are a lot of
questions we might not ever get the answers to. What’s important is
that we know who and what we’re dealing with.”

“And knowing is half the battle?” I asked. It
came out more sarcastic than I’d intended, but I didn’t feel too
bad about that.

“As far as all of you are concerned, it’s the
whole battle,” Quinn said. “The agency will deal with things from
here. We’ll arrange for bodyguards and surveillance for all of
you....”

“Good God, you really are a government
agent,” I said. “Dumb as a fucking boot.”

Quinn’s jaw dropped in surprise, and I saw
amusement sparkle in Ashe’s eyes.

“Told him you’d disagree with his grand
plan,” he said.

“Damned right I disagree with it. Just go
home and sit and wait for the crazy bitch to play her next card?
Fuck that. Fuck that a lot.”

“I’m with her,” Dylan said.

“Yeah, me, too,” Adrian said. “We can’t just
stick our heads in the sand and wait for things to get better.”

At that point, everyone started talking at
once: Quinn tried to convince everyone to leave Julia to the
agency; me, Brian, and London reasoned that Kenny and Adrian should
go home, taking some of Quinn’s offered bodyguards with them; and
Adrian and Kent argued that they wanted to see this thing through,
too.

In the end, Kenny agreed to head home the
next morning, bodyguard in tow, and explain the situation to
Adrian’s wife, Summer. They didn’t seem to trust Jimmy to explain
things in a way that wouldn’t scare the hell out of her. Despite
the fact that his new bride and love of his life was waiting for
him in L.A., Adrian insisted on staying behind with London and
Brian. Thankfully Orlando had been the last date on their tour, and
the boys had a little downtime ahead of them.

Dylan and I had lives, of a sort, back in
Texas, but we agreed that dealing with Julia and Vanessa trumped a
crappy job and crappier college courses. I had a feeling I’d be
repeating all my classes come fall, but right now I had more
important things to deal with. Dylan didn’t seem worried about
work, even though she was due back there the next day. I was pretty
sure she was hoping to get fired so she wouldn’t have to deal with
her incompetent boss anymore.

“What exactly do you think you’re going to be
able to do?” Quinn asked us.

We all looked at each other. I’m not sure any
of us had any idea what to do about Julia, but there was one thing
I did know for certain.

“I’m not letting London, Brian, or Dylan out
of my sight just yet,” I said. “That shouldn’t be so hard to
understand.”

“And you can’t keep them in sight in another
state because..?”

I sighed, and Ashe clapped Quinn on the
shoulder. “Leave it be,” he suggested.

Quinn frowned and turned away to fiddle with
his laptop. Let him be unhappy with us; we weren’t going to go play
ostrich while some covert agency squared off – or failed to square
off -- against the evil ex-girlfriend.

Chapter Seventeen

With the stay-or-leave question settled,
everyone began to go their separate ways. The other boys in the
band headed off for showers and sleep, Brian with Dylan on his arm.
Quinn and Ashe wandered off to do whatever it is that secret agents
do, Ashe pausing at the door to fling a simple “behave yourself”
back at London. If he meant what I assumed he meant by that
comment, then London ignored the admonition. The second the door
closed, London turned my face toward his and kissed me.

Our first kiss – had that really only been
the night before? – had been tentative, uncertain. When he’d kissed
me earlier in the night, it had been all heat and lust, demanding
and damned near brutal. This kiss was neither uncertain nor
demanding, but tender and passionate and confident. Maybe it wasn’t
one of the five perfect kisses in the history of the world, but it
was definitely one of the most perfect kisses in the history of
Elizabeth Morgan.

That kiss led to another and then another, as
they usually do. The desire I thought I’d buried earlier proved to
have been lying in wait for just such an occasion, and for a moment
or two I let it sweep me away – away from worry and fear and not
knowing what would happen next. Only when I felt London’s shields
waver, felt the beginnings of the dreaded echo effect, did I force
myself to draw away, just a little, resting my forehead against
his.

London sighed and traced his fingertips up
and down my bare arm. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

I leaned back a little and cupped his face in
my hands. When he raised his eyes to meet mine, I smiled at him.
“What exactly are you saying ‘sorry’ for?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it
again and thought for a moment. “For being complicated.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Smiling, I
wrapped my arms around him in an awkward hug. “I’m the Queen of
Complicated, sweetheart,” I said. “If you’re smart, you’ll turn
tail and run now.”

London grinned at me. “I’ve never been all
that bright,” he said and kissed me again.

I giggled into the kiss, and London’s grin
widened into a full-on smile. It made kissing awkward, sure, but
the silly sweetness was a helluva lot easier to deal with in that
moment than stronger, more serious feelings. And it just plain felt
good.

The moment didn’t last long. London cupped
the back of my neck and pulled me in closer, kissed me a little
harder. I pulled away again, and I guess something of what I was
feeling must have shown on my face because London apologized
again.

“I really hate having to be ‘the responsible
one’,” I said, my words coming out harsher than I’d intended. “It’d
be nice if you could not make things hard on me.”

“I’m....”

“Don’t fucking say you’re sorry again.
Just....” I pulled away with an almost-growl of frustration and got
to my feet.

“I am, though,” London said, catching hold of
my hand. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I just want....”

“To be normal?” I guessed.

London nodded and inclined his head, his damp
hair falling forward like a curtain, hiding his expression.

“Normal is kind of boring.” I reached out to
stroke his hair, then changed my mind and cupped his chin instead,
urging him to look up at me. “The idea of losing myself in you
again, in your emotions - or, I guess, our emotions – well...I’m
not gonna lie. That scares the hell out of me. Even though it felt
really damned good. Maybe because it felt really damned good.”

“I get that,” he said. “It...it kind of
worries me that it doesn’t scare me. That...it’s what I want right
now. What I feel like I need.”

“It makes sense that you want to lose
yourself. Hell, it’s not just you, London. I want that, too. Being
able to let go and forget every damned thing for a while sounds
awesome.” I sighed. “And the more I babble about it the less I know
why I’m resisting.”

London smiled up at me. “Good to know.”

I smiled back and tugged on London’s hand as
I took a step back toward the bed. He surprised me by letting go,
though he timed it so that I was steady on my feet and didn’t
stumble.

“There are other considerations.”

I frowned, uncertain what he meant. Then I
remembered the mad scramble for a condom the night before. Brian’s
suitcase wasn’t here to save us tonight, and once the cumulative
effects of London’s empathy hit us full force, we wouldn’t stop at
making out. Maybe that's what he was talking about.

“There’s a reason Ashe told me to behave,”
London added. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees,
hands clasped in front of him.

“What am I missing here?” I asked, perching
on the foot of the bed.

“Um.”

“London?”

He looked uncomfortable. Embarrassed
even.

“It’s like Ashe knew what would happen after
the show. Like he knew I’d throw myself at you.” He shook his head.
“He warned me that I should think of you as off-limits until I get
better at shielding. Well, until I learn to shield properly. Using
magic to throw up shields is only making things worse.” He paused.
“I’m talking in circles.”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“The stronger my abilities get, and...and the
stronger my feelings for you get, the stronger the...whatever you
want to call it. The cumulative effect, I guess. The stronger that
gets. If we give into this...it could be bad.”

“How bad?”

London sat back, leaning his head against the
wall, and rubbed his face. “I think Ashe’s exact words were,
'Imagine giving Viagra to a 16-year-old'.”

“Yikes.” I took a moment to process the
thought. “So we’d...what? Screw until it hurt?”

“More like until one of us passed out.”

“And that concept didn’t bother you enough to
think with your brain instead of your dick?”