Chapter Eighteen
We decided to go backinto the house and discuss things. Also, I needed a first aid-kit considering I wasn’t the only one who now had access to magic, but it wasn’t their own.
Despite the success of killing The Black Mage once and for all we looked like a sad and sorry group huddled together into the living room of the old farm house. Melinda, who looked the least unfazed, brought some water out for everyone to drink.
I excused myself to the bedroom to wash my hands and put on my own clothes again. I took my time stripping my weapons, the dirty ripped silk, and then to stare down at the crusted bloody stain on my hand. I should feel good about this right? About finally paying him back for all the misery he put me through.
All I felt right now was numb. I squirted the soap on my palm and lathered it up with water. Pink ran down the drain, and I’d mostly cleaned it all off when Fin entered a few minutes later.
“Are you alright? Need anything?”
I shook my head. “Fine, I think. Just needed a minute to wash this blood off. Are you okay?”
He wrapped his arms around me from behind and tucked me against his chest. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now but I feel good that this is over at least. A lot of souls can rest now with his death. Even so, he was my brother and I’ll mourn the little boy I grew up with. I know Melinda will too, in her own way.”
I nodded, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “Is she okay? Did everyone get their powers back?”
Something passed across his face so I shifted around to look at him directly. “What is it?”
“Everyone has power. Everyone.”
I blinked up at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means everyone has magic now. The Chief and Hawk included. But it’s like once the devices connected, they just broke and all that power just distributed themselves to the nearest hosts without magic. I think that’s what happened with Esteban. He was full of power, so it reacted and created that time freeze you seemed to be in. We were all aware of it, but unable to do anything until you broke it.”
“Is that normal? How often does that sort of thing happen?”
His shrug didn’t comfort me. I released him and went back into the bedroom to try and find some clothes. In the end, I grabbed one of Fin’s shirts and slid on a pair of sweatpants. At least now I’d be able to go back to having a normal closet and not having to see what each new safe house provided.
Back in the living room everyone still sat a little shell shocked. Needing to do something I took the seat by Melinda and waved at the collective. “So what do we do here? Can we make another thing to move the magic around to where it goes? Like Operation with magical powers?”
She shook her head fast. “No. I don’t have the power to manipulate metal in the same way. Someone here probably does but it'll be years until they can manage the delicacy to create something like that.”
“So we find someone else who can do it for us and then take care of it.”
Another gentle shake of her head. “I don’t know if it would work. Since these powers were trapped before, we can’t know if they will resist it the next time, or something worse could happen. The best we might be able to manage is removing them all together, but that’s it.”
Awesome. So we were all stuffed full of unfamiliar magic that could or could not turn against us at any moment. Not to mention all of us would need to gain familiarity with it all over again. At least with Esteban gone there wasn’t a big bad to hide from in addition to these new revelations.
“What happened when time stopped?” Helix asked from his chair across the room. He seemed unaffected, like Melinda, but his hands shook as he tucked them under his armpits.
“We talked. He looked younger, different, and remembered me as a child. I found out why he killed my parents and I told him he was a bastard who deserved what he got before I shoved my knife in his belly.”
Fin came around to rub the back of my neck. “Anything else?”
“No, I don’t think so. He seemed confused, sad, uncertain about how things could have turned out the way they did. I didn’t try to reassure him. I made it hurt.”
Maybe I should have felt guilty for that part, but I couldn’t summon it. Not with the hot ghost of his blood on my skin and the way he’s spoken to me as if I already belonged to him.
“What do we do now?” Hawk asked. He’d taken a seat at the counter behind the couch, so I had to twist to look at him.
“No idea. I think we get to go back to our normal lives and try to learn what it’s like to live without a reason for vengeance.”
Hawk snorted at that. The man did know me. If I didn’t fight for one reason, it was another. I’d always been good at finding them. “Are you coming back to The Office?”
The Chief put his hand on Hawk’s forearm. “It’s not something that needs to be figured out right now. She can come back whenever she wants. In the meantime, we’ll work on replenishing the ranks.”
“Am I going to be welcome with all this magic?” Magic I wasn’t comfortable exploring just yet.
The Chief shook his head gently, discouraging me from talking about it again. “We’ll discuss later once everyone has recovered and been given time to think about things.”
Ash and Echo stood a few minutes later. “If you don’t mind, we are going to leave you now. We’ve done what we came for. If you need to speak to me, though, you have my number.”
I stood and shook both their hands. “Thank you for helping us and trusting us with your powers. I know, as mages, that’s never an easy thing to do.”
They both gave me a nod and walked out the door. Without their presence the room felt a little more open, a little less stifled.
I rolled my neck and then stood. “I think I want to go home too.” I glanced at Hawk. “Can you get The Chief home? Make sure he’s settled.”
“Of course,” he said.
Fin went into the bedroom for a moment and then returned with a bag. “Let’s go. I’ll call some cars to get anyone else where they want to go.”
I followed Fin out the door and into his SUV. He pulled away from the little house and I glanced back. “We should do something with Esteban’s body at least.”
“I’ve already got someone taking care of it. Don’t worry. I wasn’t going to leave him there in the dirt, even if it was what he deserved.”
We drove back toward the city, and I almost sobbed in relief as my apartment building came into sight. “I know it’s not your mansion, but you’re welcome to stay here with me. I can’t wait to take a shower in my own shower for once.”
He chuckled and pulled up in front of the building. We went inside and I had to get the key from the landlord since who the hell knew where my keys had ended up.
The apartment looked the same, but it didn’t feel the same, maybe because I wasn’t the same person walking through the door this time. I went straight back to the bedroom, stripped, and climbed into the shower. Fin waited until I finished, giving me some space, and took his own after me.
When he came out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam, his chest gleaming, I couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t know if I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, or what. I keep expecting my phone to ring, or for some magical disaster to occur. I don’t know what to do with myself, I guess.”
He climbed up beside me wrapping his still damp arms around me. “Me either. So much of my life has been spent looking for Sol, and then hunting Esteban, that I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with myself either.”
“We should get dressed and do one thing.”
He kissed the tip of my nose. “What’s that?”
I heaved off the bed and threw on a fresh pair of jeans and t-shirt. Wearing my own clothes, I felt like myself for the first time in ages. “Let’s go. You’ll want to come too.”
We got back in the SUV, and I knew Fin thought this could wait, but I didn’t think so. We headed toward the mansion and the grave Fin had created for The Captain.
I didn’t bring flowers, but I did bring one blood crusted blade to offer him. I sat it against the stone and stared down at him. “If you were here, you would have given me so much crap for this last plan and how it all turned out. You’d have cursed us up one side and down the other and we probably would have deserved it.”
Fin snorted from behind me, his hands tucked into his black slack pockets.
I continued after tossing him a glare “Anyway, we succeeded and he’s dead. This is the knife I used to gut him after I made him understand what he lost when he didn’t get to have you as his mate. I’m sorry you had to endure that. It couldn’t have been easy.”
I patted the stone quickly. “Thank you for keeping my mate safe until I could eventually find him.”
We left and I knew I likely wouldn’t come back to the grounds here. They all reminded me too much of losing The Captain, of losing my parents, of all injuries, and pain, and torture. No. When Fin and I created our home together it wouldn’t be here with all these ghosts.
A new car sat in the drive away when we crossed the grounds. A black town car. The driver opened the back door, and I gave Fin a look as I climbed inside. “Did you forget we’re rich? I’ve only been driving us around because I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger.”
“What if I like to drive myself places?”
Fin gave me another look, like he couldn’t believe I’d just said that. “Then you’ll send a text to the car line and they will pick you up and take you wherever you want to go.”
I leaned my back against the window to look straight at him. “What if I want to go to New York City?”
“Done.”
“Fayetteville? Phoenix?”
He shrugged. “If you want to drive, they’ll take you. But the jet line is in your phone too. You can text them whenever you want and they will fly you anywhere you want to go.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Amsterdam?”
He huffed. “Yes.”
“Prague?”
“Yes.”
“Australia?”
“How many times are you going to ask me the same question?”
I laughed and shook my head. “How many times are you going to keep answering the same question?”
We pulled out onto the driveaway. “Where are we going now?”
“It’s up to you. I’ll go anywhere you are.”
“What if I want us both to move into my apartment.”
He let out a long sigh. “Then I’d endure my life without Italian marble, I suppose.”
“Where do you want to live? I’m sure you have other places. I’d prefer to be in the city, but I might be persuaded to try somewhere else if it’s nice enough. Also, a jacuzzi tub wouldn’t go amiss.”
“I do have a penthouse with a jacuzzi tub.”
I didn’t bother hiding my face as I rolled my eyes. “Of course you do.”
“There’s plenty of time to figure out what you want to do. No need to make any choices today, or right now.”
He was right. After the shock of the day, or the way it all fell out, I should probably spend some time considering my next steps after some of the trauma wore off, or at least the adrenaline.
On the way back to the city, my phone rang and I glanced down to find The Chief’s name across the screen. It stopped ringing before I could answer so I put it back in the cup holder and laid my head back on the seat to relax.
“Take us to this jacuzzi tub, Fin. I want some bubbles.”
He reached out and wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and massaged lightly. “Of course. Any other requests?”
I shook my head and let him massage the knots from my neck. There was still a dull ache from the burn in between my breasts, but all in all, I thought I came out of things pretty unscathed.
His hold shifted into something firmer, and I risked a peak at Fin. He watched me with an almost feral glint in his eye. The look turned my insides liquid. It took no effort for him to lift me over the seats and across his lap. I settled over his thighs and leaned in to brush my mouth against his. “It feels like years since I’ve had the privacy to really touch you.”
He cupped my ass in his hands and squeezed tight. “I agree. Even if we don’t have complete privacy right now.”
I peaked at the driver and then back at Fin. “Eh, he should probably get used to this. You do like to grope me in the car and all that.”
My statement earned me a chuckle, then he dipped his head and tugged my earlobe between his lips. “Say the word and I’ll take you right here, Zoey. I’ve been missing how you feel around my body.”
I moaned, the words already starting to fall from my lips when my phone rang again. Fin groaned and grabbed it out of the cup holder for me to check. The Chief again. Shit. If he called back then it must be important.
I answered and pressed it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Zoey?” His voice sounded soft and far away.
“Yes, what’s up?”
“Can I see you please? Will you come to the cabin tomorrow so we can talk. It’s important.”
“Of course. Are you alright? We can come right now, bring you anything you need. I know we made a mess of your place, we’ll take care of that too. I promise, I didn’t let anyone into your bedroom or anything.”
“I don’t care about that.” Again, his voice sounded weak, faint, and a spike of fear shot through me.
“Chief. Really? You’d tell me if something were wrong right?”
“Yes, Zoey, I would. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He hung up leaving me staring at my phone, a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.