She hooked her black hair with a thumb and drew it all over one shoulder, like Cat had worn hers this evening. This woman stood before him without shame or fear, wearing only a sneer.
“Are you hungry? Are you cold?” he asked.
One eyebrow twitched up. “Are you a moron?”
What was he saying? Of course she wasn’t cold.
She wiped more soot away then came forward, close enough her nipples brushed the ash. She slowly shook her head. “You don’t know what you are. It’s just become painfully obvious.”
The fascination started to ebb. Annoyance settled in. “What are you talking about?”
She narrowed her eyes until they were little more than slits of glittering black. “It’s why you took me, isn’t it? Why you have the others with you—to massage your ego. You have no idea what you are or where you came from, so you surround yourself with other freaks. Clearly you’re compensating for something.” She gave a short, harsh laugh. “You must have the smallest dick in the world.”
He got as close to the box as possible and chanced a touch. Warm, but not lava hot like it had been the first day she’d arrived. He pressed his palm to the fireproof material to show her he wasn’t scared. She glared at his hand.
“Do
you
know what I am?” No use trying to hide what she must have seen him do over there in the corner.
She smiled, and it was gorgeous and evil. “You’re a Secondary.”
“Secondary?” A kick of excitement shot through his gut. Raymond had only ever used the term Splitter, and that was only that one day when he’d found out Michael had inherited the family secret. “What does that mean?”
She rolled her eyes. “How on earth did
you
ever get
me
?” Then she blew on the inside surface of the box until his palm almost ignited. He peeled it off with a hiss.
“Secondary human, asshole. As in, second to arrive on Earth. You’re descended from aliens. God, I love the look on your face right now.”
And he hated how his face felt. Drained of blood, of reaction. “Bullshit,” he said.
“Where do you think your powers come from? Or mine? Or that hot guy who used air and a thought to pick up this entire box? You think Primary humans just
had
that kind of power? No, our ancestors have been coming here from all over the universe since the Earth was new.”
He couldn’t find his breath. “How do you know this?”
“
Every
Secondary knows where we came from. Everyone, apparently, except you.” She tilted her head. “Are you all alone in the world, poor baby?”
Without thinking, Michael glanced at the door to the house.
“No shit,” she breathed. “The kid is one, too?”
His head whipped back around. “Can you read minds?”
“Don’t have to. You’re just giving it all away tonight. Wish you would’ve gotten wasted days ago.”
“This is all new to me.” He ground fingers into his forehead. “You’re saying there are more of these Secondaries out there?”
“Ever hear of the Senatus?” When he just blinked, she added, “Didn’t think so.”
“So there are more? Just tell me. Lea will find them anyway.”
The fire woman’s glare hardened. “Lea’s a water elemental. She can sense other Secondaries. She can sniff out magic like your mom’s apple pie.”
“Now I know you’re yanking my chain.”
She made a condescending sad face. “What? Mommy never made you pie?”
“Shut the fuck up.” No one was allowed to talk about his mother.
“Oh, you don’t want me to shut up.”
He removed his suit jacket and hooked it over the leaf blower hanging from a hook on the wall. “Lea’s not a water.”
The fire woman laughed. “Of course she is. How else do you think she found me? Found you, for that matter? All Ofarians can do that. That chemical they use to erase water powers doesn’t do anything to that magic divining rod.”
He heard little of that except for the name: Ofarian. The sound of it sent a little zing through his brain. A whole world—a whole universe, if this woman was to be believed—left for him to discover.
For him to parade before Raymond.
“Ofarian,” he whispered.
Her mouth dropped open. “You didn’t even know that much, did you? That her kind had a name? Why is it the clueless ones are always the cockiest?”
Never, ever had he thought of himself as clueless, and no
one had ever had the balls to call him that to his face. He always made sure to know the most out of anyone in the room, but this woman had his number. He needed to know everything inside her brain.
“Lea said her kind were rare.”
“As rare as water, my friend. She lied to you.” She ran her tongue along her lips and flame followed in its wake. “That’s what her kind does. They lie, they twist things, just to keep the power. They’re selfish. They’re arrogant. They think they rule everything.”
He realized he should be careful about what he believed. This woman was his prisoner. She’d say anything to get free, anything to cause friction between him and Lea. And that part about being descended from aliens sounded like hokey bullshit.
“So how many…Ofarians are there?”
“Not entirely sure.”
He shifted a few steps to the right, just to make her follow. Just to remind her who really had the power here.
“And you? What are you called?”
Her smile was dragon-like, slow and full of teeth. “I’m a Chimeran. Look up what it means.”
He didn’t have to. His company had done a movie about ancient Greece five years ago. The chimera was a mythological monster that breathed fire.
“Clever,” he said. “And how many Chimerans are there?”
That smile morphed into a snarl. “Does it matter? I’m not like you and Boy Wonder in there. I’m not alone. I can guarantee you that I’m missed.”
“Twenty?” he guessed.
“Ha!”
“A hundred?”
A dry smirk.
Holy fuck
. “A thousand?”
“How does it feel, to know you’re not all that special anymore?”
It made him sick to his stomach, actually, because he’d thrown those exact words in Raymond’s face the night he’d flaunted Jase, his first captive.
“Do you actually think you’re the biggest, most powerful Secondary out there?” She nudged her chin toward the garage
door. “That just because you can cage me and force a few other Secondaries into service, you’re king of the magic world or something?”
She was seriously pissing him off, her attitude layering on top of Cat’s resistance. “So where are all the others?”
She threw out her arms, displaying her powerfully lean body, dusted in ash and soot. “Everywhere, Michael. Absolutely everywhere.”
He smirked right back at her. “So if I’m not king of the magic world, as you said, and you’re this tough bitch, how
did
I manage to get you?”
“Did
you
get me? Or did Lea?”
“Lea works for me.”
The fire woman laughed. And laughed and laughed. The mocking sound of it made him want to brave the fire just to strangle her. “God, she’s done a number on you. You fucking her? Yeah, I bet you are. Thinking you’re all powerful when you do it, too. Like it gives you some control over her.” She pounded her fist on the box and the whole thing shook. “Let me tell you something about Ofarians, Michael. Ofarians don’t work for anyone but their own. They think they’re the top dogs in the Secondary world. Hell, they think they
are
the Secondary world. Lea’s not working for you. She’s working for herself.”
Michael edged away from the box, remembering what Lea had told him about hunting a second water elemental for her own purposes. A water elemental. One of her own people. His fingers grazed his cell phone in his pants pocket. He needed to talk to Lea. Now.
“There’s a lot more I want to know,” he said. “Can we work something out? Maybe, like, if I let you out?”
She raised that eyebrow again as if to say, “I’m listening.”
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” he said, “your freedom, a partnership, information about me and Sean. Just tell me
everything
about your world. You mentioned a…Senatus?”
She was shaking her head,
tsk
ing like a schoolteacher.
Shit
.
“Okay, then.” He scrubbed his face, the alcohol beginning to wear off. He thought about why he’d gotten drunk in the first place. He thought about Cat. “If I let you go, will you take care of someone for me? Burn him to a crisp? Inside his house or something? Make it look like some sort of accident?”
“Sure,” she said with a shrug, and he almost pumped the air with his fist, “right after I do the same to you.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Don’t fuck with me, woman. You’re the one in that box.”
She spit flame at him, the residual ash and smoke filling in the peephole.
“You took the wrong Chimeran,” she screamed from inside the dark. “I’m their goddamn general, and my army will come for me! You’re about to get a really rude introduction to our world.”
That made no sense. She was grasping at straws and it was showing. There was no such thing as a Chimeran army. Shit like that couldn’t be hidden from the rest of the world. Yeah, half of what this woman said had to be crap. She’d been trying to scare him and, for a moment or two, she’d succeeded.
He needed Lea. She’d clear all this up. Lea wouldn’t lie to him. Would she?
The cab deposited Cat on the curb and rolled away through the
slush. The wind stung her bare legs, but she just stood there, staring up at Xavier’s tiny house. The shade was drawn over the big front window, but a pale glow came from behind it. Light made a basement-level glass-block window shine. She’d gambled he’d still be awake; looked like she won.
She climbed to the front porch, her steps echoing up and down the hushed street. She swallowed a big gulp of cold air and opened the screen door to knock on the wood one, just below the off-kilter triangular window.
Movement inside the house. Inside her chest.
The door flew open and there Xavier stood, staring down at her in shock. She’d been hoping for one of his rare smiles. An eager embrace. Instead all he said was her name.
“Hi.” Her teeth clacked together. “I didn’t want to go back to my hotel.”
He just stood there, one hand holding open the door, the other braced against the jamb. His hair was wet at the ends and even standing a few feet away, she smelled his fresh soap. A blue long-sleeved T-shirt stretched nicely across his chest and clung to the muscles in his arms. She loved the battered look to his jeans, how his bare feet stuck out from the ratty hems.
“Can I come in?”
He snapped out of his trance. Without a word, he stepped aside.
“You took a shower,” she said like an idiot, after the door had closed behind her and they both stood in the foyer.
He coughed. “Yeah. I was downstairs.”
Just opposite, the basement door stood ajar. At the bottom of steep, rubber-covered steps she got a peek of a weight bench and a set of giant dumbbells. One of his long arms stretched out and gently pressed the basement door shut.
“You were working out?”
He nodded.
“At two o’clock in the morning?”
Another nod. She took off her red hat and stuffed it in her coat pocket.
“And do I smell fresh bread?”
He glanced at the kitchen, where the only light came from a single bulb hanging over the sink. A pan with a golden crisp bread crust rising bulbous over the top sat on the counter, cooling. “Made the dough earlier. It was ready,” he mumbled.
The foyer was tiny; only two feet separated them. Now that the basement door had been shut, they stood in deep shadow. He kept his face averted, but she could swear there was a pale sheen to his eyes. She wanted to touch him so badly. She wanted him to take her mouth like he had on the stairs—all need, no finesse. She wanted him to just give up and grab her.
“Come in.” He shuffled backward into the dim living room, the kitchen light just barely touching his collection of old, worn furniture that reminded her so much of her own place. He put the coffee table with the chipped corners between them. She stepped onto the carpet, her legs shaking like a tarp in a hurricane.
“How did the rest of the opening go?” His quiet voice was loud in the still of his house.
He was so different from the man who’d stood by her side not two hours ago, and she knew it was because she had come to his home. He felt unguarded here. Was it wrong that that was exactly what she wanted? Should she feel guilty? Because she didn’t.
“I loved having you there,” she told him. “It helped so much.”
“You’ve helped me, too,” he said, almost too quiet for her to hear.
“How?”
He didn’t reply.
She pressed her lips together. “You were right. About Michael. What he thinks about me.”
The only part of Xavier’s body that moved was his right hand. It didn’t pretend to hold a knife this time. It tightened into a fist. “What did he say?”
“Exactly what you said he would.” She laughed humorlessly. Xavier’s face darkened. “I’m…I’m not sure he and I should be working together anymore.”
Xavier went incredibly still. “You’re strong enough without him. The way you and Helen have worked together…you don’t need him anymore.”
For a man of so few words, somehow he always knew the right thing to say. “Thank you.”
“Is that what you came here to tell me?”
She advanced a few more steps into the living room, her fingers finding the zipper of her coat. Carefully, slowly, she lowered it. “What do you think?”
The way Xavier caught his breath—the way his stare devoured the stripe of glittering orange fabric showing between her coat flaps—erased any residual chill from her body.
They stood on opposite sides of the living room, drapes drawn against the sparkle of the town, the pale glow from the kitchen dusting light over half their bodies. His chin dipped low, hair hanging over one metallic eye.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked, at the exact same time he threw out a panicked hand and demanded, “Stay.”
Yes
. That’s what she wanted. A Xavier who told her how he wanted her in ways she couldn’t doubt or misconstrue. A Xavier who didn’t doubt himself.