Sorcerer's Luck (10 page)

“No,” I said. “Even if I did, I'd call him right now and tell him goodbye.”

“Good. That way I wouldn't have to kill him.”

I had the distinct feeling that he meant it. I raised up on one elbow and looked at his
face. His expression: perfectly calm, perfectly pleasant, perfectly sincere.

“You're kidding, aren't you?” I said. “About killing someone, I mean.”

“No.” He kept the straight face. “Assuming, of course, that he was another bear like me.
We'd have to fight over you, then, in the autumn before we hibernate.”

“Oh good grief! You had me going for a minute there.”

Finally he grinned at me. I lay down again.

“Don't worry,” I said. “I am so not poly. Whether it's with apes or bears.”

“Good. Neither am I. I just thought we should get that clear right at the beginning.”

“But look, you must have had other girlfriends. You sure know what you're doing in bed.”

He laughed at that. “Yes, but that was before I was bitten. That's changed everything.
Just never leave me. Okay?”

He kissed me before I could answer. He stroked my stomach, then slid his hand between my
legs, and I forgot about being rational.

Later that day, after we'd gotten up, I did put some hard thought into the situation. I
doubted that I'd ever want to leave him. The élan vital I'd received from him
more than made up for what I'd lost in the three days of the bjarki's
dominance. Besides, he'd given me his promise, taken on the runes, that he'd
never again force anything upon me.

Or was that exactly what he'd said? He might only have meant that he'd take me back to my
apartment when I asked him to. I couldn't quite remember his words. I knew from
all those fairy tales that when a sorcerer promised you something, you needed
to be sure you understood precisely what he meant.

When he started dinner in the kitchen, I sat down at the breakfast bar to watch. He
uncorked a bottle of red wine and poured us each a glassful.

“Cabernet,” he said. “Trite, I guess, but I like it.”

I took a sip of mine. “It's good, but I can't really tell one red wine from another.”

“Half the time I can't either.” He saluted me with his glass. “Something I wanted to ask
you. Can we sleep in the same bed from now on?”

“Sure. I'd like that.”

“Okay, then I'd better change the bedding. I've got some old sheets and blankets I use for
the bjarki nights.”

Which jogged my memory about something I'd noticed when I was too distracted to
follow it up. “You know, you said that there was hair on the blankets. I never
saw any.”

He put down his glass and stared at me.

“Are you sure it's there?” I went on.

“Well, I—hold on. Let me go look.”

I set my wine down and followed him into the bedroom. He turned on the bright overhead
light, then picked up the blankets from the floor. No hair scattered, and on
the pale yellow blanket, we would have seen it. He knelt on one knee and swept
the side of his hand across the carpet—no hair clung.

“I don't understand,” Tor said. “This morning I saw it. Lots of it. Usually I vacuum it
up right away.” He gave me a sultry grin. “Something made me forget this time.”

I grinned in return. “It can't be real hair,” I said. “It must just melt away.”

“That could be. I've got one book that takes shape-changing seriously. It talks about
emanations of force-lines.” He stood up, frowning in concentration. “That's a
terrible translation of the German. Sorry. Maybe those lines are what I see as
hair. The author thinks that shape-changing's just a matter of illusions,
anyway. Which I doubt.”

“I really don't understand that.”

“Neither do I.” He shrugged and smiled. “But when I look in the mirror on bjarki nights, I
see a bear. With a pelt. A bearskin. I don't see me.”

Reflexively I glanced at the battered door, striped with gouges. “You couldn't do that with
your fingers,” I said.

“No. Not and have any nails left. He chewed up the closet door a couple of months ago,
too. That's why I got this tattoo.” He pulled up his T-shirt and turned around
to let me see his back.

Just below the waistband of his jeans I saw a cluster of runes, six arrows, three pointing
up, three down, bundled into a shape like a snowflake. The design was small,
maybe the size of a quarter, which explained why I hadn't noticed it that
afternoon. He let the shirt fall and turned to face me.

“Tyr's mark,” he said. “The god who bound the mouth of Fenrir, Odin's wolf, when it
went on a rampage. That's his rune, Tiwaz. It helps me control the bjarki.”

“That must have been dangerous, binding a wolf's mouth.”

“Oh yes. He lost a hand doing it. The gods aren't invincible, you know.” He paused for a
sigh. “Not even the gods always win.”

He turned out the overhead light. As we left the bedroom, he bumped into my shoulder. I
could feel traces of the excess élan wisping around him like the scent of
perfume.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm just kind of dazed, thinking about the hair and all of that.”

“It's okay.” I stopped walking and turned to him. “Give me a kiss?”

He put his arms around me, drew me close and kissed me open-mouthed. I felt both kinds of
energy, the sexual and the vital, sweep over me. I sucked them both up and
kissed him again. I'd absorbed so much of his cast-off vitality that I had
energy to return to him, the raw animal kind. I'd never felt so sexually
aroused. I rubbed against him and whimpered. He slid his hands down to my
buttocks and pressed me against him.

“Let's lie down,” he said.

“Please.” I meant it, too. I was begging. “Take me to bed, Tor. Please?”

This time, because I'd fed enough, I could focus on the sex, the intensity of the pleasure
he gave me, and on returning that pleasure to him. He gasped when he climaxed,
gasped aloud and shuddered rather than endured a macho silence. Afterwards he
turned onto his side and pulled me tight against him. He kissed my face,
stroked my hair, and told me that I was beautiful.

“So incredibly beautiful,” he whispered. “I've never had sex this good before.”

“Me, either. You make me feel so wonderful.”

He smiled and lay down on his back. I rested my head on his chest and fell asleep,
suddenly and without a single thought or yawn. Eventually he woke me up and
told me that dinner was ready.

Later I realized that I'd never asked him about the promise he'd made, that night when
he'd offered me a job. I'd fully intended to, but it seemed so ungrateful of
me, after everything he'd given me. Besides, did I really care about the
answer? I didn't want to leave him. I had never felt so good in my life, so
energetic, so whole, so
fed
. For a change I could laugh at Death instead
of the other way around.

That night Tor and I slept together in the master suite. We did change the bedding first,
just in case some of that magical illusionary animal hair was lurking in the
folds and crevices. He even sprinkled the clean sheets with lavender water.
When we lay down I could smell flowers, just a hint in the air. We shared a few
kisses, but we both wanted sleep more than sex by then.

Since I'd left my alarm clock in the other bedroom, I overslept. I woke at about ten
o'clock to find Tor already up and gone. In my shorts on the floor, my phone
was ringing. I grabbed it and clicked on, then lay back down.

“Maya?” Cynthia's voice. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sorry.” I paused for a large yawn. “Looks like I'm missing class.”

“Well, you missed yesterday, too. Are you sick or something?”

“No. My shape-changer and I just had some incredibly steamy nights.”

Cynthia laughed. I heard her telling Brittany what I'd said, and she laughed as well.

“By the time I got cleaned up and drove down to school,” I said, “the session would be
almost over. Do you feel like lying for me?”

“Sure. You had a cold, right?”

“I couldn't stop sneezing and spreading germs all over, yeah.”

“I'll tell the prof that. We all know how she hates germs. Uh, you guys are using
something, aren't you?”

“I take the pill, yeah, because of my menstrual problems. They're supposed to put me on a
regular schedule.”

“Are they working?”

“Not yet.” My vampirism was the reason, of course, not that I could tell Cynthia that. “For
all I know I couldn't get pregnant even if I wanted to.”

“Don't take chances, okay?”

“Don't worry! I'm not ready to have his cubs.”

Cynthia snickered and hung up. A good thing she did, too, because when I sat up to put
the phone away I realized Tor was standing in the door. He must have been up
for some time, because he'd gotten dressed. He'd dropped the nerd illusion. His
eyes narrowed, and I could see the torment in them, the sign of a man who could
be cruel if something drove him to rage.

“What's all this about cubs and shape-changers?” he said.

“When I first moved in with you, y'know? I told my friends that you were a
shape-changer, a bear. We sort of joke around about it.”

Still scowling, Tor walked into the room and stood over me. He crossed his arms over
his chest.

“Well, I had to tell them something,” I said. “They asked about my new job, and I
couldn't think of what to say. I didn't want to lie. So I told them I was
taking care of a were-bear. They thought it was hysterically funny.”

“Oh.” All at once he grinned. “They didn't believe you.”

“Of course they didn't!”

He uncrossed his arms, hesitated, then sat down next to me on the bed.

“You're naked,” he said. “You know what that does to me, don't you?”

“Show me.” I smiled at him. “I'm literal minded. I want a demonstration.”

“That can be arranged.”

There was something about him being dressed and me being naked that I found really
arousing that morning. When he started to take off his shirt, I stopped him
with kisses. When I began unzipping his jeans, he took the hint.

When we were finished, I leaned over the side of the bed and retrieved the box of
tissues we'd put there earlier for the usual necessities. Tor pulled up his
jeans but left them unzipped. He took a tissue from me.

“What are you grinning about?” He was smiling himself.

“I was just remembering how determined I was to wait before we fell into bed. I wanted to
get to know you better.”

“You know me better than you think you do.”

“I sure do now, yeah.”

I finished cleaning up and lay down next to him. He turned over on his side and pulled me
close.

“You're so beautiful,” he said. “I'm so lucky.”

“So am I. I love your body. It's lean and smooth, but you're strong, too. You're not like
those totally grotesque muscle guys. You know, the ones with pecs that need a
good bra.”

He laughed out loud and kissed me. “I'm double lucky, then,” he said. “You really think
that?”

“Yeah, I do. Y'know, you're a man who's got good looks and money, but you're not real
sure of yourself, are you? I'd expect a guy like you to be arrogant. Why aren't
you?”

“The bjarki, of course.” His smile disappeared. “I used to be arrogant. I think
that's a good word for it. Conceited would be another one. It shows what
happens to men who get swelled heads. Something always brings their luck
crashing down.”

I raised myself up on one elbow and looked into his eyes. I could read his sincerity
from the sadness in them.

“I'm glad I didn't find you before,” he went on. “You wouldn't have had anything to do with
me. You would have told me off with four-letter words and walked away.”

I could say nothing to that, because he was probably right. I sat up cross-legged on my
side of the mattress. He got out of bed and concentrated on tucking in his
shirt and zipping up his jeans.

“You know,” he said, “it hadn't occurred to me before that being a bjarki might have some
benefits.”

“I don't think I'm worth it. What you go through, I mean.”

“Now who's being humble?” He managed to smile, but I could see that it cost him. “Why
don't you get dressed? It's about time for lunch, and exercise always makes me
hungry.”

Before I could say anything, he turned and strode out of the bedroom. I got up and
retrieved my clothes from the floor. While I dressed, I remembered what Cynthia
said about ‘using something.' I hadn't given one single thought to using a
condom to protect against STDs. It was a little late to do more than hope Tor
was as healthy as he looked—aside, of course, from that little matter of his
shape-change. As long as he never bit me, and he wasn't the type of guy who
liked causing pain during sex, I wouldn't have to worry about that.

The bjarki would present a different kind of problem once school returned to regular
sessions and the moon cycle took itself out of sync with the weekends. Over
lunch I brought up the difficulties of having the full moon fall on class days.

“I'll always be here in the evenings,” I told him, “but what are we going to do when
the bjarki dominates and I've got class during the day?”

Tor thought for a couple of minutes.

“It's not likely there'll be a fire,” he said eventually. “The security system has heat
sensors, so even if there was one, the company would call the fire department.
You need to keep up your work. I want you to get that degree, you know. I can
tell how much it means to you.”

“Thanks. Not that I know what I'm going to do with a degree in painting. I could end up
doing portrait sketches down in Jack London Square.”

“Don't even think it! You never know what kind of weird character you'd meet if you did
that.”

I had to laugh, and he joined me.

“But what you can do,” he continued, “is paint, of course. You don't have to worry about
money any more.”

Some women might have eaten that statement right up. The huge assumptions behind it
bothered me.

“If nothing else,” I said, “I've got student loans to pay off. I'll have to get some kind
of job.”

“No.” He shook his head and smiled. “We can take care of those.”

I considered arguing, but I figured it would get me nowhere. Besides, I had
another year of school before I—or we—had to worry about the loans. If things
continued good between me and Tor, I could even continue studying for yet
another year and get a credential in art education, something a little more
practical than just learning portraiture.

I still however valued the portrait class. The teacher had set up a model for our final
project, the one that was going to carry half the class grade. This model was
an Asian-American man. She'd dressed him in khaki trousers, a corduroy plaid
shirt, and for the final challenge, a shiny silver vinyl vest. I made sure I
showed up the rest of that week to work on the portrait. I made up studio time
in the afternoons even without the model present by working on the background,
a drape and a lot of artificial potted plants. On Friday I was planning on
staying extra late, because the room would be closed for the weekend, but Tor
called me around three o'clock.

“Uh, Maya?” he said. “Were you going to come home soon?”

“I can. Why?”

“I just got email from Liv. I uh I don't know what to say, but it's really kind of
upsetting.”

“I'll just clean up and come right back to the house.”

When I returned, I found Tor pacing back and forth in the living room in front of the
west window. The late afternoon sun shone around him, and by some trick of the
light, his shadow on the floor fell in the shape of a bear. I slung my backpack
onto a chair and hurried to his open arms. He held me close and kissed me. I
pulled back so I could study his face.

“What's wrong?” I said. “You're practically shaking.”

“Yeah, I know. I just learned something new about my family. It's changed everything.”

“Whoa!”

“Yeah. Let's sit down. I translated the email and printed it out for you.”

We sat down close together on the couch. He picked up two pieces of print-out from the
coffee table, handed one to me, and slipped his arm around me while I read.

“Dear Tor,” it began. “I asked Mother your question, and she unburdened herself to me about
something that's been bothering her for years. You and I have an uncle we've
never heard of. He's grandfather's bastard son. Mother and Father knew all
along, but they didn't want us to know because they wanted us to respect our
grandfather when we were children. I don't suppose we would have even
understood, much less been upset by it, but you know how she is about such
things.”

I glanced at Tor and pointed to that line.

“Worried about what people would think of her,” Tor said. “Not prudish, no, but wanting
the neighbors to look up to us. She was a village girl from Norway, not even Icelandic. She never felt she belonged in Grandfather Halvar's world.”

“Is that why your folks moved to America?”

“One reason.”

I waited, but he said nothing more, and I resumed reading.

“So,” Liv's email continued, “Father was not the eldest son after all. I suppose that's why
his talents were so thin. Uncle Nils is not a nice man, Mother says. He hated
and resented Father because he had everything, and Nils had so little.
Grandfather acknowledged him and let him have his name, but when he died, he
did not leave him anything in his will. Mother heard many years ago that Nils
moved to New York City for a job in banking there. Grandfather did do that for
him, give him education and connections. So he still probably is in the United States.

“There is a woman who might still live in California who might know more. She was Nil's
mother's close friend. Her name is Bryndis Leifsdottir. She moved to the States
to live with her son, Orvar Arngrimmsson. She would be over seventy now if she
is still on this plane of existence. Mother doesn't know where she moved to in
the state, so it could be many miles away from you of course. I'll see if I can
get more information, but Mother really hates talking about this. She did give
me the one photo she has, and I scanned it.”

I looked up, and Tor gave me the second piece of paper. On it was a color print of the
man I'd confronted in the mall, much younger but still recognizable.

“That's him,” I said. “That's the guy I saw at the mall, and the guy who saw me at the
café before I moved in here.”

“You're sure?”

“Real sure. We're going out with my friends tomorrow, anyway, so we can take this along and
show Cynthia. She got a good look at him, too.”

“That won't be necessary. It's not that I don't believe you. I'm just real worried. If Nils
is the oldest son, he should have had the rune set, and I bet he knows it.”

“The ancient one you showed me?”

Tor nodded. “I inherited it from my dad, and I don't want to give it up.”

“There's no reason you should. It's not your fault your grandfather gave it to your father
instead of this uncle.”

“That's a good thought. And we don't even know if Nils is the one who's behind the
illusions.”

“Right. If he is, though, it might explain why he's calling you a thief.”

Tor considered this in silence. Finally he shrugged. “The runes probably don't
blame me,” he said. “They lend me their power, after all. They'd withhold it if
they thought I wasn't entitled.”

“Can't you ask them about it?”

“Of course.” He smiled in honest relief. “I can't use them as staves, but I can bring them
out and then use another set for the reading. Do you mind if we do it right
now? I need to stop worrying.”

Before we went downstairs, he rummaged around in the kitchen and brought out a plate of
offerings for the nisse, a slice of bread, an apple, and a small glass of
brandy.

“Would you carry these?” he said. “All you have to do is put them on his rock. If you feed
him, he'll know you're part of my household now.”

Part of his household? The words struck me as strange—antique, from some time that defined
a household in a very different way.

I put the food and drink on the nisse's rock while Tor drew the drapes in his laboratory,
as I thought of the big room with the crossed circle on the floor. The pair of
barstools faced each other on either side of the high wooden table.