Hot Magic (38 page)

Linda straightened from the wall and walked over to the small group. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to take you back to your holding room until the Balance is ready to judge you.”

“This is ridiculous!” Jean turned to her. “I won’t stand for having my daughter brought to judgment because she wanted to rescue her daughter.”

Linda shrugged. “Sorry, Jean. I don’t make the rules. I don’t even enforce them. I’m a guard, and I’m guarding the Dancer until I’m told not to.”

The room grew silent again, and all eyes turned to Harry. He was the only one who could tell Linda not to. Harry dropped his hand from Julie’s neck and stepped away from her.

“Guard her well, Linda.” He sounded cool and professional.
 

Julie must have misunderstood. She turned toward him. “You want Linda to take me back to the holding room? You’re going to pass judgment on me?”

“I’m the Balance.” His face looked remote, but she felt his mind touch.
Julie.
The aching tenderness and regret in the word caused a knot in her chest.

And being Balance is more important than us?
She touched his arm, trying to understand.

 
“I’m the Balance,” Harrison repeated.
 

“You may be the Balance, but you’re also a jerk.” Jean stuck her chin out, ignoring the gasps from Linda and Heidi. “Julie didn’t do anything that any good mother wouldn’t do. We won’t let you convict her.” She tugged Julie away from Harrison and stepped between them. The sign in her hand flew up, almost hitting Harrison in the nose.
 

Written in bold letters were the words FREE JULIE. “I’ll camp outside the Council door with my sign until my daughter is released. Won’t that bring some unwanted attention to your sham company, whatever it’s called?”

“Bright Promise Energy,” Heidi piped in, pointing to a sign on the wall. “It’s quite legit. We have a thriving research and development group.”

Everyone ignored her. Dorie raised her sign, identical to Jean’s. “I’ll be camping out, too. Though I can just stay a week, because Jim can only get off work for that long and someone has to watch the kids.”

“Me three.” Tash stood shoulder to shoulder with Jean and Dorie.

Julie tapped Dorie on the shoulder. All three women did an about-face. Suddenly she didn’t feel so empty and alone anymore. “Dorie, thank you, but go home. You need that vacation time for your family trip out West this summer.”

Dorie shook her head. “Like I want to spend my vacation keeping the twins from falling into the Grand Canyon anyway. You’re my best friend. I’m not going anywhere.”

Julie tried to frown at her daughter, though her lips trembled. “Tasha. School.”

“Mom.” Tasha smiled slightly. “Forget it. I love you. I’m fighting for you. I’m in your corner all the way.”

Julie turned to Jean and just looked at her.

“I know, baby. We’ll straighten this out. It will be okay.”

With those words, the three of them surrounded her and hugged her, their arms wrapped firmly around her like a warm cocoon. Her eyes met Harry’s, standing stiff and aloof outside the circle.

Linda sniffed and swiped at her cheek. “We’re all going to be bawling if you don’t cut this out now. Let’s go off to the torture chamber, and we’ll be back before the Council in no time.”

“Torture chamber?” Tash tightened her hold on Julie.

“It’s a bedroom,” Julie assured her. “Very comfortable.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you like it!” Heidi clapped her hands.

Before she could say thank you and goodbye to everyone in the room, and most of all before she could yell at Harry or get on her knees and beg him to love her, Linda reached into the circle and grabbed her arm. A quick swirl of stomach and she was laying flat on her back on the red bedspread in her prison room.

Linda loomed over her, a serious expression on her face. “You hurt the Balance and I’ll have something to say about it,” she warned. With that, she turned on her heel, walked out the door and slammed it shut.

Julie didn’t even bother to sit up. She just stared up at the ceiling, pain permeating every cell of her body. Hours might have passed before she shifted and a sharp edge nudged her ribs. She lifted herself on one elbow and saw the leather-bound book Bas had given her to read.
Words of Wisdom
. She curled her fingers around the binding and lifted it. Propping herself up on two white bolster pillows, she began to read.

“Y
ou’re quiet,” Bas commented as Harrison adjusted the black ceremonial robe worn on Judgment days. They stood in Harrison’s office, adjacent to the Council chamber.

“I’m always quiet. You’re the one who comments on everything.”

“Part of my duties as ancient wise man.” Bas wore a black T-shirt and jeans today, in total disregard of the formality of the Council proceedings.

“Any words of wisdom on how to handle my current situation?” Harrison glanced at his watch, then at the wall clock, to check its accuracy. The hands on the dial hardly seemed to move.

“My wisdom doesn’t extend to matters of the heart. Nobody’s does.”

“You performed the blood-bond ceremony on Julie and me,” Harrison pointed out.

“I wasn’t concerned with your heart when I did that. I was concerned with your soul. Are you sorry I did?”

“No. However, the bond will make my decision on Julie’s judgment more closely scrutinized than most. The Council is meeting after this case to decide if I will remain Balance.” Harry gave a small smile. “The only reason they’re still letting me hear this case is because no one else wants to touch it. It’s political suicide almost any way you look at it. Put Julie in Lobolo, and you piss off a powerful demon, not to mention Jean, which is almost as bad. We don’t even know if Lobolo will hold Julie. She can skip in and out of Gehenna like she’s going next door. On the other hand, let Julie go free, and you’ve set a very poor precedent for future wild powers. Julie can’t fully control her energy and there’s the real possibility that she’ll expose us to humans.”
 

“You’re balancing between a rock and a hard place.”
 

Harrison walked to his desk and stared down at the empty surface. “The law is very clear on wild powers.”

“The letter of the law or the spirit of the law?” Bas perched on the edge of Harrison’s desk. His face held none of the amusement with which he usually regarded the foibles of the rest of the world. “You have trained to be Balance your entire life. What will you do if they remove you?”

“I don’t know.” He had never imagined a future that didn’t include his work, his service, as Balance. “This is a particularly bad time for a change in leadership. We’re just starting to build trust, appoint regional Lions and get the Threes back into action.” He shut his eyes, seeing nothing but black until an image of a woman with brown hair and brown eyes formed behind his lids. He opened his eyes and met Bas’s gaze with a small smile. “But no one is irreplaceable. As you know, we’ve been carefully monitoring the boarding school assessments since I took office. No clear candidate has emerged as the next Balance, which is unprecedented. No one since Lia has been marked as a future Balance.”
 

Lia Chevalier, a distant cousin of his, had tested through the roof on all of the measures of intelligence, leadership and power used to choose a new Balance. She was ten years younger than him, but had unfortunately died in an accident when she was nineteen. Each year, several children who reached puberty were chosen to go through a modified form of the Balance training. As they grew to adulthood, they formed a pool from which an interim Balance could be chosen if no chosen Balance was available to lead. Because they were seldom required in that role, those who were thus trained usually became the Lions of their respective regions. “The Council will choose someone from the interim pool, and I will likely be chasing after my mate, making sure that she doesn’t blast open the Gates of Gehenna or something similar.”

“The Council is handling the news of your bonding quite well. Especially since there is no chosen Balance in the wings, they may be open-minded about it. After all, there are no written rules against a Balance blood bonding. The fact that none has before you is beside the point. And there are certainly no rules against blood bonding with a demon hybrid.”

Harrison shot him a wry look. “Only because no one envisioned the possibility. I don’t consider a week of intensive research into archaic laws and histories on bonding and mixed heritage, hours of non-stop questioning and endless debate as ‘handling the news well.’” He glanced at the wall clock again. Had the hands moved at all?

“Obviously they haven’t read
Words of Wisdom
lately.” Bas didn’t look pleased at the idea.

“There is no place in that whole damn book that talks about a Balance bonding with a demon hybrid. I wouldn’t have forgotten that part.”

“Interpretation. Prophets aren’t allowed to say things straight out. Most prophecies are only realized after they happen.”

“How very convenient for you prophecy writers.”

“Not always.” Bas tapped his fingers against a side table, looking unusually morose. “Imagine watching people you care about heading towards a train wreck because they refuse to use the map you gave them.”

“
Words of Wisdom
isn’t a map, Bas. It’s a word maze. You can’t blame two trains for crashing if you’re not clear what track they should be on.”

 
Annoyance flickered in Bas’s eyes. “Having a book of prophecy doesn’t mean you don’t take responsibility for your life, your decisions and what track your train rides on. You have free will. I can’t interfere with that, no matter how much I might want to.”

The pain in Bas’s voice stopped Harrison’s flip answer. He studied his enigmatic friend. “When have you wanted to interfere with someone’s free will?”

Bas ignored him. “I saw Julie a few days ago.”
 

The words distracted Harrison, as Bascule had no doubt intended. “How is she doing?” He hadn’t seen her since the day they’d made love in his office, over a week ago.

“Getting antsy, like you. She wants to go home.”

Harry bristled at the idea that he was getting ‘antsy’ and glanced at the clock again. “Has she asked to see me?”

“No.”

She hadn’t made a single attempt to join minds with him, either. “Does she understand why I haven’t been in contact with her?”

“I explained how inappropriate that would be. She said that she’d hate for you to ever be inappropriate.”

Bollocks. “What is she doing? How is she spending her time? Is she enjoying the clothes?” The full wardrobe of designer clothes had been Heidi’s idea.
 

“She’s been engrossed in reading
Words of Wisdom
.”

Harrison hadn’t meant for her to get that bored. “Wasn’t she provided with any movie she requested?” He’d envisioned her blissfully watching Jane Austen movies, crying at each happy ending.

“Apparently she preferred my book,” Bas spoke smugly. “You should have mind touched with her, Harrison.”

“Contact by the Council or the Balance with those coming for judgment is forbidden once they’ve been arrested.” He recited Section VII of the Council’s Policy and Procedure Manual.

Bas looked less than impressed. “You already had contact with her after she was arrested. You blood-bonded with her, fought a demon with her and made her scream in your office.”

Harrison ran a hand through his hair. “If I went to her, Bas, I wouldn’t be able to leave her.”

Bas gave him a pitying look. “You should have told her that. You have a lot to learn about being part of a family.”

A family. The words conjured feelings he didn’t know what to do with.

“Family means sacrifice,” Bas said. “Sometimes it means ignoring rules, forgetting about work and spending way too much time worrying.”

“How do you know? Have you got family?” Bas always traveled alone.

“I consider you my family, Harrison. And believe me, I’ve got the breaking rules and worrying part down to an art.”

“Bas.” He looked at the strong, enigmatic man who had been responsible for every good moment of his childhood. This man had brought him out of his black and white world and introduced him to a life full of color, a life shaded with gray. This man had sent him to Julie. He couldn’t find words to fit the emotion that weighted his chest.
 

A deep bell tone vibrated through the air. Bas’s lips curved. “Showtime, my boy.”

Harrison nodded. He turned to his desk and gathered the opinion papers of each of the Council members. “Julie will understand. She knows about duty.”
 

Bas shook his head. He opened the door that led into the Council chambers and stood to the side to let Harrison enter the room first. Harrison paused before stepping through the doorway and put a hand on Bas’s shoulder. Bas was always present when he most needed him.
 

When Harry didn’t move through the door, Bas gave him a questioning look. “Thank you.” Harry squeezed the other man’s shoulder, cleared his throat and walked toward Julie.

J
ulie decided that whoever had designed the open, sunny Council chambers could re-do her living room when she won the lottery. Large floor to ceiling windows filled one wall, a brilliant gateway to the morning light. The sun warmed her cheeks and she smiled for the first time since she’d been confined to the Red Room. She reached out with what she’d begun thinking of as her mental hand and touched the light, comforted by its presence, comforted by her ability to access its power.