Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

But the thing is, I do believe in fate and destiny, and I’d be honored to follow my mother into an advisory position. I’d appreciate it if you’d help me out.”

Translation: You owe me. And the thing was, Nate realized, maybe he did. He’d slept with her when the pretransition hornies had hit him hard, and he’d broken it off when the urges waned. In reality there’d been more to it—a whole shit-ton more—but she didn’t know that. All she knew was that he’d used her when he’d needed to get his rocks off and dumped her when the mating urge leveled out. So yeah, he probably did owe her. And if the payback was him helping her impress the king by getting both the knife and an idea of whether Rabbit’s magic reacted to the redheaded mage, then so be it.

“Okay.” He nodded. “Fine. I’m in.” He still thought it was a piss-poor idea. But he also knew her well enough to figure she’d try it with or without his help. “Come on. I guess we watch and wait.”

He headed for the coffee shop where Rabbit had disappeared to, and he didn’t look back.

In the small café, Nate and Alexis sat together at a table so small that their knees bumped beneath it, while Rabbit sulked at a stool by the window, shoveling in calories at a rate of about a thousand a minute, in the form of beignets, lemon squares, and coffee-laced hot chocolate. All three of them had decent views of the alley that ran around the back of Mistress Truth’s shop, leading to the rear exit. If anyone came or went from the tea shop, they’d see.

The waiting, Alexis soon found, was the hardest part. Or rather, waiting with Nate was, because he was crowding her, getting inside her space, under her skin. And he wasn’t even trying to, damn him.

Her dream-vision of the two of them making love in the underground temple had undone the four months’ worth of forgive-and-forget she’d managed to build up since their relationship ended. She wanted to scratch at him for dumping her, for not remembering what her gut told her actually had happened between them in the stone chamber. At the same time, she wanted to be skin-on-skin with him, wanted to ride him, race him, roll with him like they’d done before, when they’d packed more than her prior lifetime of sex into a couple of short months that’d ended long before she was ready.

And she wanted, more than anything, to get a grip on herself.

The writs said that what had happened before would happen again, and boy, was that the truth. As hard as she’d tried to do otherwise, she’d put herself right back where she’d been too many times before—dealing with an ex on a daily basis and having to pretend it was no big deal. Before, it’d been her clients, wealthy men who had wanted her for her business acumen as much as for her body, and had generally been bored with her body long before they were finished with her stock tips. When she’d broken up with Aaron after catching him below-decks on his yacht with a bimbo twofer, she’d vowed to do better the next time.

Yeah, that worked, she thought, glancing at Nate, only to find him looking back at her. Their eyes connected, and the punch of remembered heat was tempered with a twist of regret. Maybe it was the magic of the coming eclipse, which was thinning the barrier and strengthening the sexual pull that’d been there from the beginning. Or maybe it was their close proximity, or the vision. Whatever the reason, even though she and Nate were sitting still, unspeaking, she suddenly felt naked beneath his gaze. Vulnerable.

Excited.

Damn it.

“There,” he said suddenly, leaning forward. “In the shop. Something’s happening.”

They rose and moved to flank Rabbit’s vantage point at the front of the coffee shop. There was motion inside Mistress Truth’s place: blinds being drawn, and a pair of shadows moving behind them, backlit by a glow of warm illumination that was too steady to be candlelight, too dim to be the shop’s fluorescents. The quick February dusk had fallen, showing the figures clearly—one was Mistress Truth, the other far too small to be the big redheaded man. “Two shadows,” Nate said. “The witch and whoever else was in there watching us.”

Alexis shot him a quick look. She’d thought she’d been imagining the sensation of being watched.

Apparently not.

“I saw her,” Rabbit said, “I think.” At Nate’s look, he elaborated, “My age, maybe a year or two older. Thin, dark hair, black eye.”

Alexis asked, “As in she had dark eyes, or she had a shiner?”

“A shiner. Looked like someone clocked her good.” The teen shifted on his stool, shrugging restlessly inside his clothes.

Maybe the caffeine was catching up with him. Or maybe it was something else, Alexis thought as she caught a buzz of power off him, a whiff of smoke. Oh, hell, she thought, looking past the teen and catching Nate’s eye. Her stomach dropped when he nodded that he’d sensed it, too.

The kid was jacked in and jacked up, and far too twitchy for his own good. Typically hair-trigger on a good day, Rabbit was wired to blow. He must’ve been more excited than she’d thought about the prospect of some action. Or else it really was the caffeine—who the hell knew with his powers?

The king had ordered her to keep Rabbit safe first and foremost. Learning more about his magic was secondary. Which meant she so wasn’t putting him in front of the Xibalban now. Not like this. The kid was a loose cannon leaking way more power than he ought to be. Add that to the hormonal explosives that came with being eighteen and having aY chromosome, and bad things could happen way too easily.

“Hey.” Nate put a hand on the teen’s shoulder. “Take a deep breath and chill.”

Rabbit practically exploded off the stool, shooting backward and landing in a defensive crouch.

“Don’t,” he said on a whistle of breath, “touch me.” He stood there for a second, ribs heaving, then looked around and went brick red when he realized he’d quickly become the center of attention in the café, and a couple of big dudes in the coffee line were looking like they were thinking about getting involved.

“We’re cool,” Nate said, holding both hands up in a gesture of no harm, no foul .

“Yeah.” Rabbit sent the would-be Good Samaritans a filthy look as he slouched back onto his stool.

“Nothing to see here.”

“Sorry for the commotion,” Alexis put in, and waited until most everyone had gone back to their own business before she glanced over at the teen. “You need to work on your blocks if you’re pulling this much power already. The eclipse isn’t for another forty-eight hours.”

“The witch is leaving,” Nate said quietly.

Alexis looked over in time to see Mistress Truth hustling through the front door of the tea shop, wearing a big purple jacket over the same purple tracksuit she’d had on earlier. Bracing herself for a fight, Alexis said, “Rabbit, listen—”

“I think I should stay here,” he interrupted, then swallowed hard. His voice was shaky, his color was off, and heat crinkled in the air around him. “I’m not feeling so good. I’ll wait here until you get back, maybe call Strike for a pickup if I start feeling too shitty.”

Which so wasn’t what she’d been expecting. “I . . . uh. Yeah. I think that’d be best.”

“We’ve got to go if we’re going,” Nate said as a dark sedan pulled up in front of the tea shop and Mistress Truth climbed in. “Unless you want to stay here with Rabbit?”

She ought to, she knew. She’d promised to keep him safe. But Rabbit shook his head and waved her off. “Go. I’ll keep out of trouble. Honest.”

As Nate headed out to the street and flagged a cab, Alexis wavered. Finally she said, “Okay. I’m going to hold you to that.”