Текст книги "Irregulars "

Автор книги: Astrid Amara

Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

“You go to Gunther, Princess. Tell him about the ambush at the coffee shop and that I’ve secured Jason at his residence but that I think that this is bigger than just Phipps. We might be dealing with the sidhe. Tuatha Dé Dannan.”

The kitten rammed her nose into Falk’s palm.

“Yeah, you’re pretty as anything. Now get going,” Falk told her.

The kitten butted her head lightly against the square that Falk had drawn on the windowpane. The glass swung out like the flap of a cat door. Beyond it Jason glimpsed the corner of a door. Then the cat darted through, the glass swung closed, and the view returned to the familiar expanse of surrounding buildings, power lines, and the darkening sky.

Falk briefly studied the sky, then commented, “Looks like rain again tonight.”

Jason just stared at him. He made all these truly unreal things seem so simple…so normal.

“You’re amazing…” The comment escaped Jason before he could think about it. “How do you just do something like that as if it were nothing?”

Falk simply shrugged, but Jason thought there might have been the slightest flush to his tanned face.

“I mean, you’re magic. Really magic.” Jason wished he could think of any other words to convey exactly how astounding everything Falk did seemed to be. The man walked through walls and brought animals to life from bathwater. He always seemed to have a solution for any situation.

Earlier, Jason had been too disoriented and then too terrified to truly appreciate any of it. But now it struck him just how incredible Falk was. Like some magician out of a movie, only so much more soft spoken and subdued that no one would have ever have suspected.

“You’re one to talk,” Falk replied.

“Me?” Jason shook his head. “I could never—”

“You could,” Falk cut him off. “Why else do you think those goblins wanted you? Why do you think Phipps sold you?”

“Because I can see things,” Jason supplied. “But that’s not really doing anything except opening my eyes. And most of what I see isn’t useful to me. It’s weird and creepy. It’s not like I can change anything by seeing it.”

“Maybe not yet, but everything begins with perception. No one can alter what he can’t perceive. The more perfectly you see, the more accurately you can work magic.” Falk gave a wry smile. “Most of us have to build spells based on myths, superstitions, and guesswork. Believe me, all that can go to shit fast.” Falk lifted his mutilated hand and very slowly closed his fingers into a fist, then dropped his hand back down to his side. “You’re far more rare and powerful than you realize, Jason.”

Jason contemplated his shelf of musical notations. He didn’t feel powerful and rarity just made him a freak. His true sight had screwed up most of his life and now it made him a target for attacks from monsters.

“None of that did me any good when those goblins came after us at HRD.” Jason dropped his gaze to his own pale hands. “I would have died if you hadn’t been there. And you got shot protecting me…”

“All part of the service,” Falk replied easily. Then he cast Jason a scrutinizing glance. “I suppose I could teach you a trick or two, but I don’t know if I’d be doing you a favor or just getting you in deeper.”

“I’d like to be able to protect myself.” The idea appealed immensely to Jason. “I don’t see how that could hurt.”

“You wouldn’t, would you? But I’ve seen it happen more than once.” Falk leaned back against the wall. “A guy picks up a few moves and he starts to think he can take on the world. Then, when he should be running for his life, he stands his ground and ends up butchered.” Falk scowled and turned his gaze to the stained walls surrounding them. “Sometimes a little magic is worse than none. And on top of that, learning magic isn’t like taking up the trombone. It’s dangerous. And if you’re going to take on a teacher it should be someone you know and trust. Someone who isn’t going to skip town in two weeks.”

Jason felt a flare of disappointment at the mention of Falk leaving, but it didn’t alter his situation. If anything, it exacerbated it.

“That may be,” Jason replied. “But you’re the only person I’ve got right now and I need to learn now. I mean, Mr. Phipps is still going to come after me and there may be more of those goblins as well.”

Falk looked uncertain and Jason decided to press his point.

“You already showed me how to close a wound.”

“That’s not even remotely the same as engaging in a battle using magic.”

“I’m not going to engage in a battle,” Jason snapped. “I’d just like to know enough to defend myself or have a chance of understanding what people around me are trying to do to me…I want to have some control of my own life.”

Jason waved a hand at the sparsely decorated room around them in frustration. “You know, it took me nearly a decade to achieve this much freedom from the doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists who were all trying to keep me safe and thought they knew what was best for me. The last thing I need is to have a new bunch of well-intentioned people making all my choices—”

“I’m not—”

“Maybe you don’t think you’re taking my choices away, but you are. And maybe you’re right about what would be best for me. But this is my life and I have the right to live it for myself. If I make a mistake, that’s my right!”

 Jason glared at Falk only to catch the other man contemplating him with an unnerving gentleness. Jason suddenly felt his face warming with embarrassment at his outburst.

“You spent a lot of time locked up?” Falk asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Jason admitted, though it was the last thing he wanted to discuss. Falk nodded but didn’t inquire further. Instead he yawned and stretched his long arms.

“All right, I’ll show you what I can,” Falk said at last.

“Really?” Jason wondered what had changed Falk’s mind. He hadn’t expected Falk to relent, at least not so easily, and for a moment he just stood there, feeling a little stunned and grateful.

“Yes, really,” Falk replied. “But not right now. I’m bushed and you look like you just got cut down from a noose. First thing tomorrow I’ll show you a couple moves. In the meantime I’m thinking that we ought to put this bed of yours to use.”

Falk dropped down onto the futon and then looked up to Jason. “Come here. Sit down and let me see what I can do about your neck. Just looking at those bruises is making my throat sore.”

Jason sat beside Falk, feeling overly aware of the easy sprawl of Falk’s long limbs. If he moved just a little closer his thigh would brush against Falk’s. The room seemed too quiet.

“How do you want me?” Jason asked.

“Now there’s a leading question.” Falk grinned and Jason suddenly flushed.

How had Falk known? How had he given himself away?

“I didn’t mean—” Jason began, but Falk’s low laugh cut him off.

“I know, I know. I’m just having fun with you,” Falk assured him. “This would work best if you faced me straight on.”

Falk laid one hand on Jason’s shoulder, leading him just slightly. Jason moved to sit cross-legged on the futon across from Falk.

“What are you going to do?” Jason almost flinched at how much excitement rang through the nervous question.

“Just heal up those bruises. I won’t hurt you,” Falk promised.

He reached out and gingerly traced two of his thick, callused fingers across the delicate skin of Jason’s throat. An electric tremor shivered through Jason and his heartbeat quickened.

“That’s all right, isn’t it?” Falk continued to stroke him. Waves of heat seemed to radiate from his hands. It had been so long since anyone had touched him so carefully or so tenderly.

“It’s nice,” Jason admitted. Though, it was more than that. His whole body hummed with the pleasure of this simple human contact.

Falk drew him a little closer, and for an instant Jason thought he might kiss him. His gaze was so intense—his expression so searching. Jason knew he ought to stop him. He hardly knew Falk. And his life was already too complicated right now. But at the same time he couldn’t bring himself to resist. He craved the comfort of another body desperately, even if only for a few hours.

But then Falk bowed his head to Jason’s neck. His blond hair tickled Jason’s cheek. He smelled of earth and juniper.

Falk whispered a low, soft word against Jason’s skin. The sensation of his warm breath sent another thrill through Jason’s body. One of Falk’s big hands cradled the nape of his neck; the other rested against his back.

“This next part might seem weird, but trust me, okay,” Falk whispered. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Okay.”

Jason felt as though he might be in the hold of some greater spell. He closed his eyes and relaxed in Falk’s grip.

Falk drew him closer and ever so lightly pressed his lips to Jason’s neck. Arousal fluttered through Jason’s loins at the contact and he started to draw back, if only to save himself the humiliation of popping a boner like a twelve-year-old. But then warmth flared through the muscles of his neck, eclipsing all other sensations. A molten heat coursed from his throat down to the scabbed bruises of his forearm.

As Falk opened his mouth and touched Jason’s bare skin with the tip of his tongue, the heat intensified to the edge of pain. Jason felt like his arm and throat were burning up. In a moment flames would erupt from his mouth; dark smoke would rise from the gash in his arm.

It took all of Jason’s willpower to remain passive in Falk’s grasp.

And then Falk lifted his head and the waves of heat dulled to a lingering warmth. Falk released him and flopped back onto the futon. He looked exhausted.

“Are you—” Jason began.

“Fine. Fine,” Falk replied. “Just drained. How’s the arm?”

Jason peeled back the dirty bandage from his forearm. Not a trace remained of his injury.

“Better?” Falk asked.

“Much,” Jason replied.

“Good.” Falk closed his eyes. “Don’t go anywhere, okay.”

“Ever?”

“Until I wake up,” Falk replied with a smirk, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Get some sleep. You’ve had a hell of a day.”

Jason was about to ask if Falk minded him sharing the futon, but then he realized that Falk had already fallen asleep.

Jason slid off his own shoes and after a moment of consideration, stripped off his stained clothes, and then lay down alongside Falk. He stretched a blanket over them both. He felt certain that he wouldn’t sleep long or deeply, but in an instant he slipped free from any further thought.

Chapter Six

Henry felt the living heat of a man’s body pressed against his own. He didn’t open his eyes—didn’t really wake—just caught the scent of masculine sweat and traces of ancient blood magic. He registered the rattle of water pipes and the hiss of a radiator, and old memories stirred.

It should have alarmed him, but somehow he still found comfort in the sensation of a lean body pressed against him, wanting so much in silence. For just an instant, Henry was certain that it was Frank lying next to him again, just as he’d come to him their very first night together.

If only time could have stopped right there, in that perfect moment of knowing they’d found each other.

If only Henry could have kept from remembering how it all fell apart three years later. He didn’t want the memory of Frank’s engagement to Director Walton’s daughter. And he would have gladly forgotten all those terse arguments in dank hotel rooms that followed Frank’s many relapses into desperate sex with him. More than anything he wanted to forget that sick knowledge that he had become a liability to Frank’s ambitions.

But not even death stopped time. Events flowed from cause to effect like a fuse burning to a bomb.

And in an instant Henry had gone from knowing that Frank had given him the short straw to fighting the leather restraints on the steel table and biting back a howl of agony as Frank’s assistants severed his finger and used the gory digit to dedicate his flesh to life within death, to the eternal that lay beyond mortality.

On the edge of shock, Henry had looked to Frank. Maybe it had just been reflex or perhaps he’d harbored some desperate hope that Frank would call it all off. It had been so long ago Henry didn’t remember anymore. What had been burned into his mind at that moment had been Frank’s countenance.

Henry could see him even now.

His face was pale as candle wax, his eyes wide with terror, and yet his expression was pure determination. The smell of vomit clung to him and sweat had soaked through his clothes and lab coat. Still, he took Henry’s severed finger in one hand and lifted the long bronze knife in the other.

In that moment Henry knew there would be no reprieve. Not even an angel of Abraham could still Frank’s hand. He’d convinced himself—and too many of his superiors—that this was the right choice, the only choice. A single human life and, in return, mastery over the shade lands: a key to death and immortality. This war and every one after would be theirs to win. And what was one life lost when thousands were dying pointlessly in filthy trenches?

This single sacrifice would promote Frank to the highest ranks and open the gates of the most profound power for him. And perhaps there had even been a part of him that had felt relieved to be free of the exposure that Henry had come to represent. Henry thought he saw as much in Frank’s face as he leaned over him, his clammy skin glistening with sweat.

The surgical lamp flared like a halo.

Frank’s hands trembled as he lifted the knife over Henry’s heart, but he still brought the blade down fast and hard. It struck deep to the very core of Henry and agony bloomed through him.

Henry knew he was dying and almost welcomed it, if only to stop seeing that sick, broken expression spreading across Frank’s face…if only not to witness Frank cry out in horror and crumple over his body sobbing—now that was all far too late.

Henry just wanted it to end.

But the pain only intensified as Frank tried hysterically to jerk the bronze blade out of Henry’s body. Henry felt every motion as Frank’s sweating hands slipped on the blood-slick hilt.

At the edges of Henry’s vision the Lost Mist rose and then the dark depths of the shade lands opened. He’d thought it had been all over then. But he’d been wrong.

They’d all been so wrong.

Back then, they hadn’t understood the real nature of sacrifice nor the price of true power. It had all seemed so simple when depicted in neat little rows of pretty runes. They’d blindly reenacted rituals pilfered from ancient tombs and then expected easy glory. They’d been stupid as kids playing tag in a minefield.

Their incantation had opened the shade lands before them all, but the dead within that vast darkness did not suffer the living. And suddenly only Henry, with a blade in his jerking heart, no longer qualified as a living sacrifice. But every other man and animal in the military laboratory had been.

With each of their torn bodies, the ritual had bound Falk to life in death: fed him their deaths, armored him with their shattered bones, and burned away his promise of mortal respite.

Eighteen hours later, in the gore-spattered ruins of the lab, Henry’s heart had started beating despite the bronze blade impaling it. Henry had taken a breath and choked on pain and blood. And then he’d realized that it would never be over, not for him.

***

Henry came fully awake, but the warm body in his arms hadn’t fled along with his dreams.

Jason lay pressed against him, his long hands curled against Henry’s belly and his breath tickling through the blond hair of Henry’s chest. His morning erection thrust up against Henry’s thigh with the excited optimism of a teacher’s pet waiting to be called upon.

Henry’s own arousal intensified from a dim flicker to something much harder and hungry. As gold pools of morning light spread across the bed, Henry shifted, slipping his big hands down Jason’s body, stroking the length of him.

Jason’s eyes opened and he smiled, groggy and shy. But he didn’t pull away. He nuzzled his face into Henry’s chest and murmured a soft encouragement. Henry almost laughed at this sleepy lust, but somehow he found the honesty of it too moving to deny. As he stroked and teased Jason’s flawless, young body fully awake, Jason shyly returned his attentions.

Jason’s hands drifted to the waistband of Henry’s sweatpants and slipped past the elastic. Anticipation thrilled through Henry. Just the first brush of his fingers felt electric. His sure caress and knowing grip assured Henry that Jason might be young and sweet but he was no virgin.

With that knowledge, Henry abandoned his restraint. He nudged Jason’s legs wider, feeling an almost predatory pleasure at the trusting access Jason offered him to his body. Henry slicked his fingers with saliva and incantations. Then he applied himself to discovering just what touch where would bring the young man off. Henry’s hands were large and rough, but Jason soon responded to his motions with wanton thrusts and urgent, eager gasps.

All the while, Jason’s encouraging caresses rocked through Henry’s body, like the rush of life returning to his flesh. Whether by instinct or experience, he knew almost too well what he was doing. Sweat beaded both their bodies and their breaths came in fast gasps. Jason gazed through his lashes, his face flushing. Henry watched him with hungry fascination.

They worked each other almost as if it were a contest of pleasure. Henry drove Jason’s taut body to crests of ecstasy with calculated control, while Jason gasped and quivered, using both his sweat-slick hands to pump and please Henry’s thick erection.

At last Jason came with a muffled cry into Henry’s chest. As if inspired by Jason’s exuberance, Henry’s own body climaxed, spilling semen across Jason’s belly.

Jason smiled and lifted his face to meet Henry’s gaze directly. He looked both vulnerable and proud, like he had just won a marathon and wanted to be congratulated. He’d looked the same way briefly last night, just after he’d patched up Henry’s chest…flushed and tender, like he was waiting for true love’s kiss.

It was only then that the stupidity of this entire thing struck Henry. He was nobody’s true love. Hell, he was hardly decent enough company for the hustlers in the Tenderloin. Jason was probably too inexperienced to recognize it, but a man like Henry would be worse for him than letting a vampire loose in his living room.

He should have known better than to even lay a hand on someone as kind, clean, and young as Jason.

Henry broke away from Jason’s gaze and sat up.

“What time is it?” Henry asked, though he could see the clock easily.

For an instant Jason just lay there, looking stunned. Then he too quickly sat up. He turned so that Henry couldn’t see his face.

“Six a.m.” Jason didn’t look back from his study of the clock.

“We should probably get a move on…” Henry commented, but without any real intention. He just didn’t want this to become some kind of a scene.

“Right,” Jason agreed. But he still didn’t look back at Henry. Bright morning light shone across the planes of his straight back and tense shoulders.

Henry felt like a bastard, but he couldn’t let Jason start thinking that they were having a romance here. Jason would only end up hurt worse.

“Unless you need to use the bathroom first, I’m going to take a shower,” Jason stated.

“Sure, go ahead.”

Jason stood quickly, snatched some clean clothes from the crate beside his bed, and fled into the bathroom. Henry heard him lock the door behind him.

“Well, shit,” Henry muttered to himself. This was exactly why Henry spent more time with the dead than the living.

From the windowsill a tiny meow sounded as if in agreement with him. Princess lay in a patch of morning sunlight, watching him from over her scarlet tail.

Henry tugged his sweatpants back up and then stood.

“Did you get word to Gunther?” Henry inquired of the kitten. She gave him a curt nod, then hacked up a damp wad of paper.

“Nice,” Henry commented and he thought that Princess looked embarrassed, but then she busied herself cleaning the unnaturally long toes of her front paws.

Henry unfolded the wet paper to find a note written in Gunther’s neat, cramped script.

Good to hear you’re ok. HRD looked nasty. PR division cleaned it up. News will report a biker brawl if anything.

Trolls posted bail for the brownie we nabbed. Ten minutes later the Tuatha Dé Dannan regent unleashed his ambassadorial corps. They went straight for Carerra’s throat—demanded disclosure of all properties and persons seized during the Phipps raid. Cethur Greine’s definitely after Shamir and he’s got legal on his side. Carerra’s still holding out. Keep him on the down low for as long as possible. And just a warning: the guys in R&D to want a look at Shamir before anybody else gets a hand on him.

Take care.

 G.

Henry didn’t like the idea of Research and Development getting involved with Jason, though he knew he should have expected as much. He certainly wasn’t any happier about the sidhe regent’s interest.

Absently he registered the noise of the shower running in the bathroom, but his thoughts were far away. Princess butted her head into the back of his hand. He scratched her and frowned at the note in his hand.

He’d already suspected that the attack on Jason’s father and this latest grab for Jason were linked and that both would lead back to the Tuatha Dé Dannan court. Though, it struck him as strange that Greine would bother to dispatch ambassadors when he’d already loosed assassins. And if he’d known enough about Jason to hunt him down at his favorite coffee shop, then why had he drawn attention by confronting NIAD and demanding information about Jason?

It wasn’t like the bronze-skinned sidhe regent to fuck around with two radically different tactics.

Cethur Greine threw everything into his ambitions, whether that meant amassing an army of snow goblin mercenaries to assassinate a legitimate king or shoring up his claim to the throne by dragging the murdered king’s daughter to his bed. Greine wasn’t the type to relent or rethink his approach.

That uncompromising character was also largely responsible for the fact that even now, nearly thirty years since he’d assumed power, his snow goblin mercenaries still had to suppress violent protests and enforce curfews in every city of the Tuatha Dé Dannan Islands.

Henry had dispelled the furious phantoms of hundreds of Greine’s enemies over the last twenty-five years. And he suspected that if Greine ever did lay his hands on the Stone of Fal and claimed the famed power of the high king he’d be dispelling thousands more. Only the theft of the Stone of Fal limited Greine’s hold over his subjects.

At the time of the stone’s disappearance, agents and sprites alike had suggested that Greine himself had been behind the theft, removing it to ensure that the stone couldn’t reject him. It was said that the relic would only answer to the bloodline of the true high king.

But Henry had never swallowed that line. The stone had responded to usurpers before and there were always ways to cheat blood magic—particularly when Greine kept the daughter of the true king on hand to bed and bleed as he needed. No, Greine would want the stone badly enough to kill for it without a doubt.

But when Henry thought of the attack in the coffee shop, he scowled.

He’d seen the ruins of Greine’s enemies. They were murdered with brutal efficiency. Killed in an instant by assassins as silent and merciless as shadows. Greine wouldn’t have dreamed of hiring the messy, rough thugs that Henry had dispatched at the HRD Coffee Shop.

Henry would have bet his right thumb that those boys had been backstreet toughs serving a cause. Talented amateurs, but amateurs nonetheless.

Which meant the real soldiers were still to come. Automatically, Henry felt for the wards he’d placed around Jason’s flat. All still in place, but not untouched. Something had brushed over them and then withdrawn.

Then Henry noticed that Jason was singing something to himself very softly. The melody just carried over the spit and hiss of the shower. He had a beautiful voice. Princess tapped her front toes in time to the tune and purred.

“You like him, don’t you?” Henry commented.

Princess nodded.

Henry shook his head.

“You don’t even know him,” he muttered. Princess gave him a dark, assessing look, which Henry decided to ignore.

He listened to Jason’s song, feeling almost as if it were waking something in him, then scowled at his own drifting attention. What was he, an infatuated fifth grader? So Jason had a nice voice. It wasn’t going to do him any good when Greine’s assassins showed up.

Henry needed to think.

He read Gunther’s note again and this time the implication that Greine held some legal claim over Jason struck him with greater force. That alone disturbed Henry, but coupled with the events of the previous day, it also made one thing very clear.

 If the law were truly on his side, then Greine wouldn’t have bothered to purchase Jason through Phipps. Greine would have done just what he was doing now—manipulated the NATO Irregular Affairs Division do his dirty work and hand Jason over to him. So Greine hadn’t been the party Phipps had auctioned Jason off to, but whoever employed those angry goblin thugs seemed likely.

And if Greine had only just recently unleashed his ambassadorial liaisons, then he hadn’t known about Jason until after Phipps’s original deal had gone sour. Henry could think of only one person who possessed the time, knowledge, and character to have passed on information regarding Jason—for a fee, no doubt. He realized that he needed to get his hands on Phipps.

The water went off, and a moment later Jason leaned out from the bathroom door, looking a little shy and very wet.

“Would you mind tossing me a clean dishcloth from the kitchen? There should be two of them in the drawer.”

Then Henry remembered that he’d left Jason’s bath towels, damp and bloodstained, on the bathroom floor. He quickly located the dishcloths and handed them to Jason.

“Thank you.” Jason took the cloths and held one over his groin, still shy despite the fact that Henry had already seen and touched every inch of him. Or maybe shy because of that.

“No problem…” Henry felt an uncharacteristic heat flushing his cheeks. “Look, Jason…I need to go somewhere—”

The disappointment in Jason’s face stopped him as he realized how this was coming off, like he’d screwed Jason and was about to bolt.

“I guess you don’t have time to teach me anything, then.” Jason dropped his gaze and Henry silently cursed himself for fucking this all up and making the kid feel used.

“We’ve got a little time, but we’ll need to be out of here before noon.”

Jason looked up at him in surprise. His entire countenance lit up as he smiled.

“You want me to come along?”

“I wouldn’t be much of a bodyguard if I just left you on your own, would I?” Falk replied.

“I’ll get dressed right away.” Jason was already pulling on a pair of blue jeans. Henry had to suppress a laugh as he realized that the yellow T-shirt Jason shrugged on proclaimed him to be a “treble maker”.

“You want coffee?” Jason bounded out from the tiny bathroom.

“Sure. That’d be nice,” Henry said. He collected his trench coat from where it hung on the doorknob, and while Jason padded into the kitchen, Henry cleaned himself up and dressed in the bathroom. When he stepped out, Jason handed him a mug of hot black coffee.

“How did you get all the blood out of your clothes?” Jason asked.

“Enchanted threads—Gunther picked up the shirt and pants for me at a local goblin market ages ago.” Henry took a swig of the black coffee and wondered if Jason had added a little cinnamon to the grounds. “Blood dries, then flakes right off.”

“There’s still the bullet hole in the chest, though,” Jason commented over the rim of his coffee cup. “You sure you don’t want to borrow one of my shirts?”

Henry felt pretty certain he wouldn’t fit all that well into anything of Jason’s, not his clean shirts or his tidy life.

“Thanks for the offer, but when you’re known as Half-Dead Henry, a bullet-riddled wardrobe isn’t really a problem.” Henry glanced down at the tattered fabric of his shirtfront. “Anyway, the hole offers me a rare opportunity to tan my nipple.”

Jason almost choked on his coffee as he tried to stifle a laugh. Henry gave him a gentle slap on the back.

“Thanks,” Jason said, though he looked inexplicably flushed. Then Henry realized that his hand still lingered on Jason’s back, making the contact seem like a caress; the heat of Jason’s body radiated across Henry’s palm. He drew back, turning toward the cramped kitchenette.

“You don’t keep much of a pantry, do you?”

“There’s cereal and milk,” Jason replied, as if that constituted all the sustenance anyone could ever need. Henry supposed that, being a man who regularly ate cold chili beans straight out of the can, he couldn’t criticize. The shredded wheat cereal reminded him of old army mattresses, which probably meant it was good for him.

After he and Jason had both eaten, Henry decided to get down to work on Jason’s defenses. While he showed Jason a proper stance, Princess jumped down from the windowsill to lap the remaining milk from Henry’s bowl.

***

Henry wasn’t really the teaching type and his first few attempts to ascertain the extent of Jason’s power seemed to result in nothing. Whether he called a burst of cold blue flame or the tendrils of Lost Mist, he couldn’t seem to provoke the slightest magical response from Jason. Though, Jason certainly looked uneasy enough.

“Am I doing this right?” Jason asked. He eyed the guttering blue flames on his left suspiciously.

“You’re doing fine.” Henry tried not to sound annoyed. Normally, even the weakest nixie would throw off a few sparks in response to geysers of blue flame, but Jason demonstrated no discernable defensive reflex. If Henry hadn’t known better, he would have sworn there wasn’t a shred of power in Jason’s entire being.

He did note that each time he spat a blazing spell out at Jason he missed his mark by farther than he had intended. Henry’d never been one to miss his target, particularly not at this range and certainly not three times in a row. Some deft magic worked to deflect his assaults with a subtlety that aggravated him.