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“I do not know.”
“Well,” Jak said, from the other side of the car, “we’re not going to find out what’s going on by standing here.”
“No.” I hesitated and glanced at Azriel. “You really can’t get in there?”
“The wards are set just within the building walls. Destroy them, and I can enter.”
“If I do that, whoever set them will likely feel it.”
“Yes.” He half raised a hand and, just for a moment, he leaned closer, as if to kiss me. Then he stepped back. “Be careful.”
“Coward,” I muttered, then spun and walked away.
“So.” Jak’s voice was conversational as he fell in step beside me. “There’s absolutely nothing going on with that reaper and you, is there?”
“Just drop it, Jak.”
“Thought so.”
“Then you thought wrong.”
He chuckled softly. I ignored him and kept walking. There were no doors on this side of the building, and all the bars—despite their rusted appearance—were solid. But there were two entrances on West Street—one of them heavily padlocked and apparently leading into an old office area, and the other a roller door over what once must have been a loading bay. The door itself was battered and coated with grime, and the bottom edge had been torn away from the guides. Obviously, this was where the homeless had been getting in.
I took a long, slow breath that didn’t ease the tension knotting my stomach, then squatted and squeezed through the gap.
The room beyond the roller door was still and quiet. I shifted to one side so Jak could enter, and studied the immediate area. A platform ran around three sides of the dock, and there were stairs down at the far end that led up to it. I could neither see nor smell anything or anyone out of the ordinary, and yet there was something here. Something that crawled along the edges of that other part of me—the bit that saw the reapers and was sensitive to the feel of magic.>“Because it would explain my unrelenting need to be sexual with Lucian whenever I’m with him.”
The surprise gave way to amusement. “Why does a spell have to be involved? I mean, he’s a hot and sensual man and you’re a werewolf—unrelenting need comes with that sort of combination, doesn’t it?”
I was shaking my head before she’d finished. “This is something else. It’s almost a compulsion. It takes a huge amount of effort to say no to the man, and I’ve never been like that with anyone before now, werewolf heritage or not.”
She frowned and walked across to me. She raised her hands and skimmed either side of my body, not touching me but close enough that I could feel the sudden tingle of energy flowing from her fingertips. Reading my aura.
She stepped back. “I can’t sense any obvious spell, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one on you. It could be a geas of some kind, which tends to be subtler and harder to trace.”
“Damn.” I thrust a hand through my hair. “Have you got anything that might be able to counter such magic?”
She hesitated, then went over to the huge, walk-in floor-to-ceiling cupboard that housed all her magical bits and pieces. She opened one side, revealing shelves stocked with all sorts of bottles, herbs, various tools, and other stuff I had no idea about, and fished around for several minutes. Eventually she returned with what looked like a thin rope bracelet entwined with dead leaves.
“This isn’t strong enough to totally counteract any spell or geas, but it will mute the force of it and allow clearheaded thinking.”
“Which is all I really need.” Sex with Lucian might be extraordinary, but I sure as hell still wanted the option of saying no occasionally.
She slipped the bracelet over my left hand, but as it settled on my wrist, the Dušan came to life, its head whipping around as if to study the intruder. Its tail lifted from my skin, curled around the bracelet, then returned to my flesh. And the bracelet went with it, prickling and itching as it leached into my skin. After a few seconds, it was little more than a leafed tattoo that encircled my wrist, one that was entwined by the Dušan’s serpent-like tail.
My gaze shot to Ilianna. “Was that supposed to happen?”
Ilianna’s eyes were wide. “Hell, no.”
“Azriel?”
He appeared and I shoved my hand at him. “Any ideas about this?”
He studied my newest tattoo with a frown. “Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the magic that created the Dušans, let alone understand what they are fully capable of. I had thought they were unable to be active on this plane, but that is patently untrue when it comes to the one that resides in your flesh.” His gaze met mine. His expression was flat, giving little away, and yet I felt the turmoil in him. He was fiercely glad that this had happened, and just as annoyed by the strength of that reaction. “This is not a bad thing, though.”
No, it wasn’t, though I suspected his reasons for thinking that stemmed more from a hope that I’d now stay totally away from Lucian rather than merely being less compelled in his presence.
Ilianna tentatively touched the tattoo. “The magic is still alive within it. Amazing.”
