One Thousand Kisses (21 page)

“I don’t want to be left in the dark,” she said, her voice rising. “A communication globe isn’t enough.”

“There are globes and money upstairs in the wooden armoire.” He hadn’t needed most of the supplies, only the specials.

She stormed across the room. “This is not acceptable.”

His phone rang, finally, and he answered. “Everything in place? Good. I’ll be there momentarily.”

Anisette whipped around, her eyes so big they shone like the sea. “Now?”

He removed a transport globe from his pocket. The Drakhmores would reconnoiter the area so it would be safe for magic. He lifted the globe and inclined his head, his throat tightening. He felt an inexplicable urge to tell her everything so she wouldn’t be fearful, but there was no time. “Goodbye, Anisette.”

“No, wait!” She flew toward him.

“I can’t—”

“By Hella, don’t tell me you can’t.” And then she was kissing him as if he were actually in danger. As if this operation weren’t a sure thing.

He wrapped his arms around her, his fingers spreading across her back. His cock hardened again, and he didn’t care. He adored the supple feel of her and the way she tasted. The way she held him. Warmth spread from her into him, removing the chill from his skin and heart.

With her arms around him, her lips on his, Embor’s motivation clicked into place. His anxieties faded—his mind flooded with rightness.

No killing today. Revenge would be sweet, but his mission had always been to use the Torvals against the AOC and remove the threat they posed to the Realm. Milshadred and her sibs had too much information he needed for him to execute them in a fit of vengeance.

If he could resist making love to Anisette, he could resist anything.

“Anisette. Ani.” He set her gently from him. Her eyes glistened like the repository stone. “I must go.”

“I’ll follow you.”

“If I’m worried about you, how can I concentrate? I’ll be fine.”

Her hands trembled and she shoved them under her arms. “What if you aren’t?”

He didn’t answer. She should trust that he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t a heedless person.

She exhaled. “I’ll contact you in four hours. If you don’t answer, I’m telling…I’m telling Skythia.”

“Fair enough.” He’d fetch her long before that. She was the first person he wanted to see when it was over.

He activated the transportation spell, their gazes locking even as he faded into the ether. He’d had a kiss for luck. If she decided he needed another one, he’d be late to his own covert operation.

Chapter Sixteen

“Was that supposed to be amusing?” Embor, sweat dampening his shirt, slammed the door behind him and glared at the Drakhmores assembled in the room above a drinking establishment in Old Town. Embor’s coordinates had manifested him several streets off-course. Luckily he’d materialized somewhere no humans noticed. Unluckily he’d burned fifteen minutes jogging to the meeting spot.

“What are you talking about?” Horace, the Drakhmore prime, lounged on a vinyl settee and watched him with dark eyes that reminded Embor of Jake. There, the resemblance ended. Jake was lean and tall while Horace was a bulky, bald man whose magics were fire and water. “What took you so long?”

“You gave me faulty coordinates.” Embor flipped the cap off a bottled water. “You wasted our time.”

“Dunno what you’re talking about.” The Drakhmore clan primes were triplets, but Embor had contracted only Horace for this job. “Maybe your aim’s screwed up. Burly told me about the—”

“Not a factor,” Embor interrupted. Anisette had erased the so-called withdrawal headache before he’d cast the transportation spell. Unfortunately, it had returned during his impromptu jog. “If this was one of your infernal bets, I’m confiscating the winnings.”

Several of the Drakhmores averted their eyes. Ironic that Burly, the Drakhmore’s acting healer, thought Embor had a globe addiction when he and his compatriots gambled on anything and everything.

Horace patted the couch. “Would I let somebody mess with the operation this close to the end? Take a breather. Lara’s not at the southernmost tip yet. We have a few minutes.”

With a final glower, Embor sat and drank his water. The liquid cooled him but did nothing to ease the headache. Sometimes he didn’t enjoy being hot.

Outside, Duvall Street teemed with humanity. No doubt the Torvals were in some dive overindulging in alcoholic beverages and animal flesh. Thinking themselves so clever they were safe outside a deadspace. They had no idea he and his team were about to take them down.

The majority of the Drakhmores resumed a discussion of the carousing they intended to do after the maneuver. They’d ceased heckling Embor to accompany them on these aptly named bar crawls months ago. Thanks to their long-lost Jake, at least they knew what to steer clear of—sex with humans who could be unidentified lost ones.

“So this is it. After today, what happens?” Horace asked him. “Seems like a good time to discuss it.”

“We have discussed it,” Embor corrected. “I’ll transport the Torvals to the Realm. Your involvement won’t become public knowledge. No sanctions to your clan.”

“That’s not what I meant. What becomes of our partnership?” Horace pointed between himself and Embor. “You and my people.”

“There should be no need for our continued association.”

“You sure about that?”

Embor crossed his arms. He’d like to test his ring-closure theory on the Drakhmore’s circle, the better to contain them. The access had gone to their heads long before Embor had sought them out.

However, closing their ring wouldn’t exactly ensure their silence. “You agreed to cooperate if I allowed you to be reunited with Jake,” he reminded Horace.

“And if you turned a blind eye to any dealings we have in the black market,” Horace added with a piratical grin.

No, Jake bore little resemblance to his Drakhmore relatives. He was of their blood but not their nature.

“I can’t predict what other Fey might notice.” If Horace blackmailed them, Jake had agreed to help contain the situation. The Drakhmores, for all their flaws, weren’t naive. They had to know Embor would have safeguards in place. “Nor can I sway the Elders, should they discover your illegal activities.”

“You can try,” Horace said. “As a friend.”

He sincerely doubted Horace thought of him as a friend. “The less I know after tonight, the better.” If everything went as planned, this was the last time he’d utilize the Drakhmores.

If all did not go well…

But it would. The Torvals wouldn’t even know what was happening until they were under magical lock and key. The main way they could be tipped off—a traitor in Embor’s ranks—was one he didn’t fear. The Drakhmores had consented to loyalty tests before signing up.

“Nobody will even know we’re here,” Horace assured him. “Torvals included. Most agents are such deadheads I don’t know how a healer can fix them.”

“Court healers are very skilled.” The Drakhmores’ banishment included being deprived of advanced medical magic. Their clan didn’t tend to produce healers.

“Burly’s the only doc we need,” Horace said. The other man’s appointment as medic had been supplemented by healing globes. Lots of healing globes.

“Hm.” Embor might not have survived what the Torvals had done to him if Burly had been his healer. Separation sickness was vicious, and most humanspace agents had to endure it. The AOC was supposed to rehabilitate agents after their terms, but the board had refused to share percentages with the truthseekers. Ironically, it was Milshadred Torval who’d informed Embor how deep the AOC’s treachery extended.

“Me and my sibs were thinking,” Horace said. “If Jakey’s such a big shot in the sixth arts, what about other onesies?”

“What about them?”

Horace leaned forward. “You know where they are, right? Whose kids they are?”

“There aren’t many.” Single births were rare, and fairies consigned to humanspace lived human lifespans. The problem was when lost ones mated with one another. During the Incident, historical records had vanished, and the agent network had been scrambling to reconstruct family trees ever since. Milshadred’s paper files had led the Court genealogists to conclude most descendants of the lost ones had been tagged. The Torvals, for whatever reason, had inventoried onesies worldwide instead of sticking to their assigned territory.

“But there are some,” Horace said. “Do you still think we should hide them away like mistakes? Look at Jake. Onesies could be assets.”

“Or rattle the Realm until its foundations cracked,” Embor said. “Jake spent a year in the Realm after his birth and bonded with Talista before reentering it. It increased his stability. Other lost ones don’t have that advantage.”

“They’d be all right if they were good people. We could help them.”

Onesies flocked to areas with strong rings. They weren’t consistently good any more than humans were consistently good. “Too precarious.”

“You’d tell me if there were more Drakhmore kids here, wouldn’t you? As a friend?”

“There aren’t,” Embor said. No first-generation ones, at any rate.

Unlike most of the Realm, a number of Drakhmores knew about onesies. They’d hidden Jake the first year of his life. Before the Court could adopt Jake to an appropriate human family, he’d disappeared. The Drakhmores claimed ignorance, so the Court had bespelled them to confidentiality and banished them from Court.

Years later, Talista had found Jake in Vegas, and the two had fallen in love. But Jake’s situation wasn’t like any other onesie. None of the rest were truly as lost as Jake had been. It was fitting none be as found.

The communication globe on the coffee table flashed. Horace clapped his hands.

“The three points are in place,” he announced.

The Drakhmores quieted, watching Embor and Horace.

“Make it so,” Horace said to Embor.

“Yeah, do it, Number One,” added Horace’s daughter Gret, one of the more bloodthirsty members of their team.

Embor notified the other points of the triangle to activate their locator spells. Then he squeezed his fingers around his own.

Magic shot out in an invisible web. One second. Two seconds. For this area, it shouldn’t take long for the spells to connect.

Three seconds, ten. His headache spasmed as the magic wobbled. Damn and blast.

Horace frowned. “What’s the hold up? They not here?”

“They were an hour ago. They couldn’t have gotten far.”

Twenty seconds. Thirty. After Talista’s location spells, the Realm-manufactured globes felt sluggish. It had never taken this long in practice.

“We could cast from the repository,” Horace suggested.

Embor wasn’t about to bring Anisette into this. “Give me another one.”

“How about I try?” Horace pinched the globe, and the magic gusted past Embor without a hitch. The three spells cinched, finally, isolating the Torvals’ location in Embor’s mind’s eye.

Burly and Lara popped into the room from the other points, excitement on their faces.

“We got ’em loud and clear.” Burly, tall and wiry with a thicket of facial hair, thrust a tattooed arm into the air. “Death to the infidels!”

The Drakhmores cheered.

Embor cleared his throat. Again, more loudly. They fell silent.

“No death.” Part of him wanted to join their cheer. Part of him wanted to release a primal howl as he began the final hunt.

“Sure, sure.” Horace slipped a messenger bag over his head so the strap bisected his torso. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

“Why?” His lightweight shirt and trousers were seasonally appropriate. His protective vest had pockets for small globes, and he had a hip pack for the large control globes.

“You’re conspicuous.” Horace fingered a scar on his lip. “A flak vest and long-sleeved pajamas.”

“It’s human-made. I purchased it yesterday.” He didn’t enjoy the chafing garments called jeans and he never wore short sleeves, but humans did dress with some variety.

“People are going to think you’re not here to party.” The male Drakhmores wore cotton shirts with stenciled decorations while the women had on bright dresses or shorts.

“Then people are going to get mindwiped.”

Horace shrugged and turned to the team. “Burly, you and Corvan take point. Embor, we need you in the center with the control globes.”

After initial tests and a small incident with Talista, the control globes had been locked. No one but Embor and Jake could use them. As reliable as the Drakhmores had been, having Jake’s power at one’s fingertips could corrupt.

Aside from Jake being a onesie, this was the other reason those who knew the truth about Jake had voted he could never be trained. Spirit magic was against everything the Doctrine of Ethical Magic Use stood for. The consequences against Embor, Jake and Talista would be severe if the whole truth came out. Jake’s accomplishments weren’t spells other sixth arts practitioners had mastered.

They weren’t even spells anyone realized could be done.

The team trooped out of the room. In their human clothing, the Drakhmore operatives melted into the tourist crowd on Duvall Street, indistinguishable to the uneducated eye, which all human eyes were. Several fairies crossed the road, weaving around a row of bicycles to the opposite sidewalk.

They’d trained for this. In populated areas, contact was inevitable. Embor took the Policy of Discretion seriously. Jake had augmented the mass control globes with a targeted memory wipe so no human would recall anything unusual.

He could detect the stench of the Torval agents. Two blocks away. One block. Nearly there. Sunlight dappled through balconies and clouds. Buildings lined the sidewalk, with few gaps between except at cross streets. Palm trees marched along the road like soldiers. Greenery blossomed everywhere. The triaungulation magic pointed to an alley for foot traffic, between a restaurant and a tattoo parlor.

Burly strode into the shady walkway. After a few moments, several Drakhmores followed, Embor and Horace side by side.

When he’d last seen Milshadred and her sibs, only Euridyce had looked under four hundred and fifty. Embor saw no one aged in the wide alley. Ahead of him Burly halted beside a bar called the Drunken Flamingo, whose neon sign featured a beer stein with a flamingo’s head stuck in it. The bar’s windows were painted black.

Burly nodded. Embor slipped his hand into his pouch, finding a control globe by touch. Several Drakhmores disappeared to seal back entrances to the building. Gret, in a peach dress, shook her dark hair, stuck out her chest and walked through the door like any human with a right to be there.

Embor’s linked communication globe heated. Then it vibrated four short bursts. All four Torvals were inside and stationary.

Twenty feet away. He had them. He had them, and they would not get away.

Beside him, Horace grunted. “They’re in there.”

A Drakhmore at the head of the alley gestured, giving the all clear. Embor’s gut twisted. When the communication globe heated, indicating rear entrances were blocked, he stalked to the door, drew out the control globe and exchanged a glance with Horace.

Since most inside would be humans, the spell should subdue every occupant of the bar. No struggle, no strife, no one getting hurt. It was the plan.

The other man bared crooked teeth in a ferocious grin. “There may be an accident.”

Embor paused, his fingers denting the globe. “No accidents.”

“If they try to attack us, what are we supposed to do? Let them get in a lick?”

“They won’t know what’s happening.” The globe’s magic would coat the area. With all sentient beings in a brief, suspended state, it would be simple to apprehend the Torvals and transport them to a restraining cell. A few Drakhmores would stay behind to deal with the aftereffects.