Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

“Where are you parked? Oh, never mind.” Alex squinted across the lot near the turnstiles and navigated to within three feet of the Pathfinder.

“You can see it?”

“Sort of—only because I knew what to look for.” He took the keys out of the ignition and looked at me a little too closely. I had an annoying urge to comb my hair. “You fell asleep pretty fast. Have you been tired a lot the last couple of days?”

I unbuckled the seatbelt. “Just a lot going on and too little sleep. Plus, I used a hefty dose of magic today.”

I opened the door and got out, digging my keys from the backpack and using the staff to break the camouflage charm on the car. I didn’t have enough juice left to do it on my own.

“Walk around with me a few minutes and give traffic time to clear out. I want to check out your latest handiwork. You’ve become quite the arsonist.” Alex sat on the top of the fence and swung his long legs over while I struggled through the turnstile. I caught up with him near the clown head, which no longer smoked. It held small pools of water, like the ruins of the buildings at its back, and stank like a dirty ashtray left outside in the rain.

“Impressive. Your fire-setting skills are improving.” He sat on one of the carousel swings nearby, testing his weight against the rusted chains before shifting all the way back.

“Let me give you the guided tour.” I did a game show hostess pre sentation. “Behind Door Number One: the now-halfsunken Jean Lafitte Pirate Ship—only half sunken because Adrian used his pretty Blue Congress magic to undo some of the fire I set.” I twirled dramatically. “Behind Door Number Two: the great Smoking Bozo, which I was trying to blow apart when I hit the building behind him.”

Alex didn’t smile. In fact, he frowned.

“Hey, you gotta laugh. I don’t do my Price Is Right impression for just anybody.”

His voice was quiet. “How are your ribs?”

I laughed. “They’re—” Shit. The world tilted, and I had to rest a hand on the clown head to stay upright. “They don’t hurt at all.” My ribs had still been sore this morning and had healed in the last four hours—to the point I’d forgotten about them?

I needed to take another blood test.

Alex didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. I took the swing next to him and plopped down, daring it to dump me on the ground. I eased the left arm of my sweater up to look at my unmarked arm. “Did you know that when a wizard turns werewolf, the Elders lock him or her up in an institution in Greenland?”

“You don’t know for sure,” he said. “Maybe you just turned a corner with the ribs and they quit hurting.”

He was grasping at wolf whiskers and we both knew it. “Jean Lafitte told me to come to the Beyond if I shifted, so the Elders wouldn’t be able to use me or lock me up, or kill me.”

Alex stopped his gentle swinging. His stillness, the sudden quiet, felt heavy and profound. “You aren’t leaving. I . . . you can’t leave.”

He reached his left hand out to take my right and tugged me toward him.

I had to deal with this. We had to deal with it. “Alex, we just—”

His mouth landed hot on mine, and the world shrank to the two of us. My palms absorbed the heat of his shoulders, and I closed my eyes to block out everything but his big hands circling my back, his breath hot on my lips, my neck.

I pulled away. His long-lashed eyes, rich, dark brown, were half focused on my mouth at first, but finally his gaze rose to meet mine. His voice sounded hoarse. “Come home with me.”

I kissed him again and bent to pick up my backpack. “This is the wrong time for the wrong reason,” I whispered. The waterfall of tears was threatening to start again. I wanted his warmth and his comfort—needed them. But not out of pity.

He focused on the ground, his jaw clenching and unclenching as if he were biting back words. Finally, he stood up and looked down at me with pain- filled eyes. “You’re wrong about both the time and the reason. Just think about it.”

We walked back to the parking lot in silence, the setting sun burning orange and blue and promising another ending. I was sick to death of endings.

It’s just as well we drove home in our respective vehicles so we didn’t have to talk. I knew Alex was afraid for me, and he was desperate. Afraid for Jake, too, because whatever became of me impacted both of us. I couldn’t be sure if he asked me to go home with him because he wanted us to see whether things were real between us, or because he was afraid it was our only chance to be together.

Maybe both.

He reached the parking lot behind our houses ahead of me and was waiting next to his truck. When I climbed out of the Pathfinder, he took my hand and squeezed it. “We do the blood test together this time.”

I nodded. The trip through the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the library felt like a gallows walk. I felt oddly calm, and even though I realized it was probably shock, I welcomed the lack of feeling. It helped me pull a clean slide out of the box, slice my finger, let the blood drop onto the glass, and cover the first slide with a second.

But I couldn’t do anything with it other than stand there, looking down at it. My whole future could rest on the red smudge between those two thick rectangles of glass.

“Here, let me.” Alex took the slide from me, fiddled with the microscope to turn it on and get the slide into the right position. Finally, he took a deep breath and leaned over, closing one eye and squinting into the eyepiece with the other as he focused the image.

“What do you see?”

“Lots of circles, kind of pinkish in color.”

That was good. That was normal. My heart sped up. Maybe the rib thing was a false alarm.

“Anything else?”

“Some brown curvy things, kind of like commas with wide tails.” He looked up from the microscope. “Is that bad?”

I nodded. That was very, very bad.

Adrian Hoffman’s expression told me he was a vampire club virgin, just in case his earlier vamp snark had left any doubts. His eyes bugged out like an anthropologist who’d just uncovered an exotic cultural artifact, and his wizard’s energy buzzed with equal parts fear and excitement. We weren’t even inside the club yet.

I had little patience and no desire to share his feelings. I’d done a long grounding ritual—part meditation, part magic—to keep my empathy under control before leaving the house. I’d be able to absorb what was useful but didn’t have to take it all in like a radio receiver.

My own nerves were bad enough, but the daze that had come over me this afternoon had yet to break. For now, it let me ignore the results of the blood test. I’d even been calm enough that Alex had agreed to go home.

Nine p.m. had barely come and gone, yet the line of people waiting to get into L’Amour Sauvage already stretched down Chartres Street. It wasn’t the normal tourist crowd of bug-eyed Midwesterners and shitfaced college kids. Very upscale clientele, well-dressed and broadcasting sexual vibes. These people didn’t realize the sexually charged atmosphere luring them in had been intentional foreplay, designed to get them in the mood to become vampire dinner. From what I’d heard, they’d enjoy it plenty and remember nothing.

Adrian fit in perfectly with his tailored black suit, crisp, open-collared white shirt, and a tasteful diamond stud in his ear. I was back in jeans and a black sweater, but I had at least showered and washed the ashes out of my hair.

I fingered the small bag of magicked herbs and rubies in an amulet I wore around my neck, the better to avoid picking up horny vibes and doing something like coming on to Adrian or a vampire. Either of which would be a bad idea on so many levels.