Page 26 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

“And that bothers you.”

“Yes.” Zarek exhaled through his nose, staring at the glass resting on the counter. “But not for the reason you think.”

Martar waited.

“I can’t read her,” Zarek finally admitted. “No thoughts or memories to even get through to take or erase.” Which was part of the job. “But I can feel her.”

Martar’s brows rose. “Feel? How?”

“Fear. Pain. Shock. Her hangover.” Zarek stared into the dark liquid inside his glass. “I felt her terror when she screamed. That’s how I found her.” And it’s how he knew of her nightmares.

An uneasy silence settled between them. Glasses clinked, as the music pumped low in the background. Blends of tobacco-style smoke, uncommon in the mortal realm, carried their jumbled conversations to disappear into the ceiling.

“That’s not possible. We sense presence. Magics. Power. That’s all. Even between ourselves, we can sense the level of personal magick of everyone in this room.” Martar nodded at the sparse crowd of Paradox natives.

“I know.” Zarek’s fingers tightened around the glass. “And yet she knows when I’m near. You heard the professor; she recognizes my scent.” He huffed. “That makes us sound like some animal—which makes this dangerous.”

“For whom? You? Or for this Angela?”

Zarek scowled at his glass. The liquor trembled, warming it to where wisps of smoke curled from the surface as though on the verge of ignition.

Martar waved a hand over the drink, as if shooing a fly. Instantly, frost bloomed across the glass, sealing the liquor in a thin layer of ice. Martar had been the ice to Zarek’s fire ever since they were small boys.

“Does she feel what you feel?” Martar asked quietly.

Zarek shrugged. She said she did, but he wasn’t sure. And that uncertainty clawed at him far worse than any enemy ever had.

“Is that why you let Pete speak freely?”

“Yes.”

“You’re serious about him approaching this woman?”

“She’s having nightmares. And mortals who remember too much don’t survive. We know they eventually fracture and lose themselves.” His voice dropped as a smoldering of fiery coals shifted inside his belly. “I won’t let that happen to her.”

There it was. The line he hadn’t meant to cross.

Martar studied him for a long moment. “You’re protecting her.”

“I protect the realms,” Zarek said automatically.

“Then let’s hunt.” Martar pushed off the bar, his grin growing as he brushed down his fancy leather with the polished buckles. He always liked to look good for the ladies. “Before this thing inside your head grows horns, we’ll hunt and get it out of your system.”

“That’s the first decent idea you’ve had in a long time.” Zarek welcomed the distraction. After all, his life was all about the job.

And they vanished, leaving their glasses on the bar at the Bone & Whistle that hummed quietly behind closed doors, and nobody raised an eyebrow at their disappearance.

TWELVE

Angela was halfway home from having worked late at the bookstore. That book on staves was finished, packaged, and ready for the auction house to collect in the morning. She was now ready to celebrate and kick off her shoes, collapse on her couch with a glass of wine, flick on something to binge-watch and decide what to get delivered for dinner. Easy, right.

When a sharp pain came out of nowhere to stab below her ribcage—she nearly steered the car off the road. It was only when she clutched at her side that she realized it wasn’t her pain.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, as rain streaked across the windshield, blurring streetlights into long white smears. Her mind stuttered for a justifiable source for the pain.

Until one name roared through her like a command.

Zarek.