"Foolish heroics," Vivian repeated.
He nodded.
"Like rescuing animals?"
"Or people, when it"s not approved."
"Or the Fates when they might punish you for it."
He nodded.
"Foolish heroics." Vivian smiled. "I like that."
"I never have," Dex said.
"But you"ve lived up to it."
"I guess."
Vivian took a deep breath. "So there"s no comfort in your prophecy either. You"ve found the love."
"Yes," he said.
"And mine says we might lose it."
"That"s one interpretation," Dex said.
"It seemed to be Aunt Eugenia"s," Vivian said. And then Dex opened to her as all of his blocks left him. He was worried, and beneath that worry was a subtle fear. "And yours."
He took her hand. "Vivian, you"ll be all right."
"It"s not me I"m worried about," she said.
"My foolish heroics only lead me to love," he said.
The implication was that she might not survive, and he would. He must have heard the thought.
"I"ll do everything in my power to keep any harm from coming to you," he said.
She knew that. She trusted him beyond all measure, beyond all logic. But she also knew that his resources were limited, just like hers were.
And now that they"d found each other, they both had something precious to lose.
*Chapter Twenty-two*
Eris waited until the sun had set. Her magic was stronger in the dark. But this street wasn"t entirely dark. Street lamps cast large pools of light on the road and the surrounding yards.
Eris pointed her right hand at the first streetlight and pinched her thumb and forefinger together. The light went out. She continued the process until all the other lights were out as well.
The change was silent. No big explosions, no cascade of sparks. The neighbors--the handful who lived on the block--probably hadn"t even noticed.
Eris smiled and walked farther up Dexter Grant"s driveway. While she had been waiting for the twilight to end, she had been sending out thin feelers, searching for magic. She made sure the feelers didn"t touch the magic; if they did, they might alert Grant.
The feelers found a deep sense of magic all around the house. Grant had used standard protect spells and had updated them just that afternoon, probably when he arrived home with Kineally. Two bits of magic still floated in the air above the house--one a large relocation spell, bringing two people into the area (it took little work on her part to realize those people were Grant and Kineally) and the second a small relocation spell, which brought three boxes into one of the bedrooms.
The boxes carried the faint odor of Eugenia Kineally.
Eris had finally found where Eugenia"s spell recipes had gone. They had gone to her niece Vivian, who in return gave them to her new sweetheart, Dexter Grant.
The recipes were a bonus. Eris could hold the Fates without them. But the recipes would show her the protection spells that surrounded the Fates, the way Eugenia Kineally had shown them how to protect themselves even though they had given up their magic.
Eugenia"s spells had to have been very powerful, given the success the Fates had had so far. Eris was certain the spells had been designed to protect magical Fates. The fact that the spells protected nonmagical Fates showed just how powerful Eugenia Kineally had been.
The night had become pitch black. The moon wouldn"t rise for another two hours, and then it would be a pitiful sliver--certainly not enough for some inept souls to pull magic from. Eris never pulled her powers from anywhere else. She stole magic from rivals--although she hadn"t been able to get Eugenia Kineally"s, dammit--and she absorbed glimmers from the marginally magical, but she never used an object outside of herself as a source for her power.
It simply wasn"t practical. Other people, other "things", couldn"t be relied upon. One had to learn to rely upon oneself.
Eris extended a hand and cast a shimmering red light forward. The light was almost invisible to the untrained eye. She loved this spell; it detected hidden magic.
She sent the light toward that fence in the backyard, where she was certain Grant had built a second house, this one shielded and magical. The light floated around his ugly ranch, caught on the weak shielding, and shimmered for a moment.
Then it disappeared.
Eris followed it, careful to avoid the edges of the shield. The light had not gathered in the backyard, as she had expected. Instead it was seeping into the earth.
She had never seen anything like it before, and she wasn"t certain what it meant. The light didn"t sit on top of the ground and shimmer; the ground had apparently absorbed it.
A spell she didn"t recognize? A protection she wasn"t certain of? She hadn"t encountered one of those in more than four generations. She had to give Grant credit for resourcefulness. For such a young man, he had a wide repertoire.
She tried to call the light back to her, but it wouldn"t come. It felt stuck, and now she recognized the spell. If she tugged on her own magic, urging it to return to her body, it would instead pull her into the trap, holding her there until someone--probably the mage who laid the trap--set her free.
Clever, clever Grant. Her respect for him grew even more. Too bad she had to rely on her careless son Strife when a talent like Grant was in the world. Too bad she couldn"t bring him over to her side.
She put her hands on her hips and studied the aluminum windows of the horrible little ranch house. She couldn"t sense any life in there at all--not even the animals Grant was famous for rescuing.
He had them hidden somewhere. Just like he had the Fates hidden. And he had them hidden very well.
But no one thought of everything--at least, no one as young as Grant. He would have made a mistake, left an access point somewhere, or allowed a weakness in one of his shieldings.
She just had to find it.
A klaxon sounded overhead.
Vivian jumped, her heart pounding. The calico cat scampered off her lap, leaving deep claw marks in Vivian"s thighs. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw other animals scurrying for cover.
The klaxon continued, and over it, a digitized female voice repeated, "Security breach, south lawn. Security breach, south lawn. Security breach, south lawn."
Vivian wasn"t sure if she had transported to the bridge of the Starship "Enterprise" --that klaxon was d.a.m.ned familiar--or if the elevator had taken her to the White House. She wondered what the president would think if he heard "Security breach, south lawn," and then decided he probably wouldn"t have felt a lot different than she did now.
Adrenaline rushed through her system, and her heart was pounding. She looked over at Dex, hoping he would tell her what to do. She was in his world now, and it was about as alien as a world could get.
"Audio system off!" he shouted, and the noise ended in mid-klax and halfway through the eighth round of "Securi--."
Vivian"s ears rang. The noise had given her an instant headache. "Well, let me guess," she said. "You got that klaxon from "Star Trek"."
"Original "Trek"." Dex was standing. "I tend to prefer prototypes."
Even though he was speaking lightly, he wasn"t smiling, and his mind didn"t seem to be on his words.
"What"s going on?" Vivian asked.
"Probably nothing." But he wasn"t acting like there was nothing. He was acting like there was something. And, she realized, he had cut himself off from her. She couldn"t reach his thoughts or his emotions.
"Dex, you can"t lie to me."
"I"m not," Dex said. "When the system"s on, it"s very delicate."
"This was a magic warning?"
This time he did grin. "No magic at all. You can buy all this stuff and program it yourself from half a dozen Web sites."
"So what was breached?"
"The backyard. Might have been anything. A deer. A neighbor. I"ll just go to the cameras and see."
"Okay." Vivian stood.
"I"m going to go alone, Viv. I work better alone."
"I thought you were just going out front," she said.
"I am, but there"s an entrance into this place from the south lawn. If someone found it, they could conceivably be heading into the main area now."
His explanation sounded true, but he was still cut off from her.
"What am I supposed to do?" she asked.
"Keep researching, so that we know what we"re up against."
"What if it"s Eris out there?"
"I"m not leaving the building, Viv." Dex sounded impatient. "Now let me go."
She realized then that she"d been forcing him to stay by quizzing him. She nodded once, reluctant to let him leave, but not willing to cross him either. This was his place. He understood it better than she did, and he knew how to respond to it She would have to trust him.
"What if you don"t come back, Dex?" she whispered.
He was already halfway through the kitchen. "I"ll come back, Viv," he said. "I always do."
*Chapter Twenty-three*
He lied to her.
Dex was astounded at his own behavior. He had just lied to Vivian.
He"d had to hurry out of the dining room because he couldn"t hide his thoughts or his emotions from her any longer. Both were threatening to spiral out of control.
At the moment the klaxon had gone off, his own magical system sent a shiver through him. A very delicate spell--some kind of light, done to suss out his own magic--had been absorbed by his backyard trap. He"d set up that trap so that he would be alerted whenever something magical touched it.
And this time, the magic was subtle and ever-so-faint.
Then the alarms had gone off, warning of an intrusion. Even though the breach had been in the backyard, Dex had a hunch that whomever had done that was long gone. Either that or it was a way to use his own system to snare him.
He wouldn"t be trapped. And to prevent that, he had to keep Vivian protected.
As long as she stayed down here, she would be all right.
He hurried toward the main room. Sadie joined him halfway there, looking concerned. He wondered where she had been when the alarms went off. He hadn"t seen her in the dining room.
All the lights were on in the main area, making the black walls seem even shinier. The computer screens were up. Words scrawled along the center of one: Security breach, south lawn, Quadrant A. The other screens showed the lawn--all of it, including the north, east, and west portions. Floodlights had turned on, making it seem like daylight outside.
Other screens showed the interior of the house. The lighting hadn"t changed there. It remained the way he and Vivian had left it--a few lights on in some of the rooms, off in others.
The rumpled bed caught his attention, the pillows propped against the wall, the sheets tangled. That bed--that room--probably still carried the faint scent of their lovemaking. It had been the best experience of his long life.
He hoped it wouldn"t be one of the last.
The reading he had done worried him. Eris was, by far, the strongest mage he had ever encountered. If Vivian"s Aunt Eugenia was right--and he had no reason to doubt her--then Eris had been stealing magic for years. She would be even more powerful than the woman whose impetuous actions had started the Trojan War.
If this were a normal situation, he would have gone to the Fates and begged for their help. He would have told them he would be able to prove that Eris was abusing some of their magical laws, and he would have demanded--and probably got---justice.
That was how he had caught his first few mages, the ones who were so much stronger than he had been. At first the Fates had thought Dex was doing a good thing. Then, in a blink of an eye to them, two decades to him, he"d been outed, in a comic book of all things, and the Fates" att.i.tude had changed.
Their biggest problem was their hatred of mortals. Or it had been their biggest problem, until they decided to venture into the real world with no power at all.
He reached the computer screens, Sadie beside him. He was still angry at the Fates. Even though they had enabled him to find Vivian, whom, he knew, was the woman he"d been waiting for.