Natural Dual-Mage (Page 27)

“It’s unique.” He fitted the ring in the box but left the lid open. “And more powerful for it. Just like you.”

I fell into his kiss then, soaking in the passion and emotion we both felt, roaming my hands over his hard body. I was desperate for us to explore these feelings further in our room. But he backed off and glanced at the far corner of the garage by the door, where a moveable Asian-style divider was set up.

“Shall we?” He stood, his eyes so deep that I could see all the way to his overflowing soul.

In perfect trust, I let him help me up and then followed him to the corner, where he folded the divider and set it aside. A wave of nervousness washed through me upon seeing a black cauldron. Next to it sat a stack of marked and labeled containers.

“Wow. Prepared.” I rubbed at my butterfly-infested stomach, remembering the last time I’d done a potion. As Reagan and the Bankses would never let me forget, I’d accidentally turned a bunch of witches into zombies. “We’re sure we have the right spell, and all the ingredients are fresh…and everything?”

“Darius is the prepared one. More so since the goblin incident. This station has been kept in a constant state of readiness. As for the spell…” He moved around the side, looking for something. Not finding it, he turned in a circle, scanning the storage shelves and Darius’s desk across the way. Looking around the cauldron area again, he clucked his tongue and stepped toward a black binder that sat propped up on the shelf. “Right in front of my face.”

Flipping the binder open, he read the first page before his brow furrowed. He moved on to the second page, then the third, running his finger down and across the lines, taking it all in.

“It’s that long, huh?” I asked, wanting to step closer and get a look—and also wanting to keep my distance.

“No…these are…other spells.” Emery flicked the pages, pausing a moment on each. When he reached the spell he was looking for, he tapped it once and then went back to look at a few others. “These are…advanced spells. Extremely complex. They’d need a crap-load of power to complete.”

“Which he assumes we’ll have after we become dual-mages?” I finally moved closer. As I scanned the page, magic sifted and twisted around me, ruffling my hair and caressing my skin. Whispered words seeped out of the darkness in my mind, and various words lifted off the page in sparkling color.

I’d read a good few spells in the last year, the ones from Reagan more complex than most, and voices had never whispered in my mind before.

I took a step back. “Something is wrong with those spells.”

“Why?” Emery flicked a page before looking at me. Whatever he saw erased the good or analytical mood he’d been in. “Let’s get working.”

With smooth economy, he took the lid off a large container marked distilled water. After sloshing that into the cauldron, he set up the binder on a spell stand a couple feet from the cauldron, leaving it open to the dual-mage potion directions. That done, he read them over, then checked the ingredients again. He was no novice when it came to creating potions.

“Okay,” he said, motioning me closer to the binder. “At first, this will be a potion like any other. Feel the intent and follow the steps accordingly. About three-quarters of the way in, you’ll start to feel a tug…about here.” He put his palm to the bottom of his ribcage, the place where I’d often felt a tug while doing magic.

I nodded to show I was following.

“That’s the start of the actual connection. That tug will seem to be connected…” His hand drifted out, and stopped at the same place on me, prompting a gush of warmth. It moved back to him. “You’ll feel the first connection to me.”

It was hard to breathe with all the heart swelling and belly flutters and excitement, not to mention the fear I’d severely screw up and turn him into something awful, so I just nodded again.

“The feeling will increase as we move on. With…” Sorrow moved in his eyes and he cleared his throat. “With my brother, it was an exciting feeling, like collaborating on an intense new project. But I’ve heard dual-mages feel different things. I’ve never heard of it being a negative experience.”

I licked my lips, knowing nothing I dabbled in ever came out normally. “Let’s hope we’re not the first.”

A smile tickled his lips. He must’ve read my mind, because he bent and ran his lips across mine. “We’ll be fine.”

His thumb slid a trail of fire across my chin before he went back to the binder.

“Toward the end, the intensity will dramatically increase. That’s when our magic will fuse, as it were. We’ll both feel an increase in our normal power level, as well as little details and variances from the other person. Good and bad, I’ll share what I’ve got going on, and you’ll share what you’re working with.” His hand moved back and forth between us.

“Will you be able to siphon magic from other people, like I do?”

He studied me for a moment. “That’s a question I’ve wondered myself. My brother didn’t get my premonition ability, and I didn’t get his ability to easily decipher truth from lie, so possibly not.”

“He could tell truth from lie? Like…just know when people were lying to him?”

Emery nodded, organizing the containers now, probably into what would be used and when. “To a degree, yes. It really helped him in the Guild. Clearly, it didn’t save his life. I have a theory that mages have extra little individual gifts in addition to their magic. The higher the power level, the more apparent the gifts are. It’s a recent theory…” He gave me a sheepish smile. “In the past, I just thought my brother and I were prodigies.”

“Well…you were. Two naturals coming out of the same family is kind of a big deal.”

“Right, but I let myself think there was more to it than that.” He shrugged, and I could see a boyish delight shine through. “Think superheroes.”

“Ah.” I glanced at the opened binder, curiosity pulling at me. Fear holding me back.

“But in seeing your pretty extreme gift, I can’t help but wonder if other mages have them to a lesser degree, or maybe just naturals get a little something extra…”

“We already have so much. That doesn’t seem fair.”

He chuckled as he straightened up. “There’s that pure heart. Here I was thinking about being a superhero, and you’re debating the fairness of it all.”

“Your brother did a lot of the intense decision-making, didn’t he?” I asked, angling my face up as he ran his fingers along the underside of my jaw.

He smiled again before he brushed his lips against mine. Not satisfied, he deepened the contact, opening my lips with his and probing with his tongue.

My body turned molten and I moaned into his taste. The wildness of his magic throbbing around us. The feel of his body against mine.

“Focus, Penny Bristol,” he murmured against my lips, his breath fast, his smile gone. His palms spread up my stomach and cupped my breasts.

“I’m not the one copping a feel.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, lost in his touch.

His hot lips trailed down my exposed throat and his hands kneaded. I sucked in a breath as his thumbs moved across my nipples. “Focus,” I heard again, wispy. He kissed my collarbone but straightened up. Slowly. His hands moved down to my hips, gripping tightly. “We have all night for that. We need to do this spell.”

He stole one more kiss before stepping back and running his fingers through his hair. He blew out a breath and a boyish grin worked up his face. “I am certainly approaching this spell differently the second time around.” He shook his head and picked up a large wooden spoon before handing it over. “Don’t turn me into a zombie.”

All the air went out of me. Scowling sullenly, I took the spoon. “Low blow.”

“Yes, my brother did make all of the intense decisions. Most of the decisions, big and small. He was the oldest, after all. I’d been trained to do as he said or get the snot beat out of me. Even when I got older and could hold my own, I still remembered those early lessons.”

“I know something of that.” I edged up to the binder. “Because of Reagan.”

“It helps, though. In the long run. Makes you tough.”

“I’m certainly blasé when I’m thrown against the wall by an enemy. Which is not something I ever thought I would say.” Magic danced around me as I neared the spell stand. My energy fizzed and spurted. Words jumped off the page in bright, sparkly colors, vying for attention, pointing out the most important part of the spell, and what could go wrong.

Wind kicked up, brushing against my face and tossing my hair. But when I put my hand up to pat down my flyaways, they hadn’t been disturbed.

“This spell doesn’t look overly complex,” I said, confused as to what was causing this reaction in me.

“It’s not.” Emery picked up the second ingredient, a jug of orange juice. Knowing Darius, it was hand-squeezed. “You have to have enough power to do it, but I’ve seen mages barely more powerful than witches form a dual-mage pair.”