Missing powers, p.6
Missing Powers, page 6
It was really in her best interest to go out to eat, rather than stay home and make something. It was better for everyone involved.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The first restaurant that Reg had gone to upon her arrival at Black Sands was The Crystal Bowl. It was a hangout for all kinds of practitioners, and they served tasty food in a comfortable, though somewhat dramatic, atmosphere. It was close to home and remained her favorite eatery in Black Sands. So, tired though she was, it didn’t really take any effort to hop in her car and drive the few blocks to The Crystal Bowl for a meal.
There had been some trouble getting service at The Crystal Bowl when her siren parentage had been revealed. She was told that they didn’t serve her kind there and she would have to leave. But Sarah had promised that people would forget about it quickly enough, and she had been right. Corvin had eaten with Reg there a couple of times, and his charms ensured that no one would kick her out. So things had gone back to normal again. Maybe Reg should have held a grudge against management for treating her that way, but Reg preferred eating there to the meager satisfaction of withholding her patronage because they had done her wrong.
Everyone made mistakes. It was best to leave the past in the past and move forward. From what Reg had learned about time travel, she wouldn’t want to remain in the past or change anything for a better future anyway. Things never seemed to work out for the better when tampering with the timeline.
Reg greeted Bill, one of the bartenders, at the bar and had a refreshing first drink to slake her thirst and calm her nerves. She could just relax and enjoy the ambiance of The Crystal Bowl on a lazy afternoon before the dinner rush. With a warm, comfortable feeling, Reg slid off of the barstool to find herself a table.
She should have recognized that the flush of warmth wasn’t caused by a malfunction in The Crystal Bowl’s air conditioning or her drink. She should have known that familiar feeling for what it was.
Corvin was standing behind her, dark hair and eyes, carefully sculpted beard, a shark-like smile fixed on his face.
“Oh!” Reg froze, startled to see him there. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“Ready for dinner?” Corvin asked, looking like he was more interested in consuming her than eating with her.
“No—” Reg could just go home and eat there. She didn’t need to stay around Corvin. But was she going to let herself be run off by him? From her favorite restaurant? She couldn’t stop going to The Crystal Bowl just because he knew it was her favorite place to eat and he would be able to find her there for dinner at least half the time. “Uh… yes. But I was planning to eat alone.”
“Then isn’t it fortuitous that I am here and can keep you company?” Corvin touched her arm to escort her to a table. There was a buzzing electrical charge between them when he touched her and she couldn’t resist his encouraging smile.
She shouldn’t be with him. Not when she was exhausted from her housework and already had one drink on an empty stomach. It made her too vulnerable. Too susceptible to his charms.
Reg walked with him over to the booth that he picked out, smiling like she really wanted to be there. And she did. She enjoyed the feeling of his touch on her arm, the heat of him standing beside her, the heady smell of roses that he exuded when charming her.
“No, I shouldn’t…” Reg murmured. But she knew it wasn’t a real protest, and so did he.
“We could go somewhere else,” Corvin suggested. “Somewhere more private.”
“No.” Reg’s protest was more emphatic this time. She knew that she shouldn’t leave with him. As long as she was at The Crystal Bowl, Bill and the other staff would keep an eye on what was going on. She was safe where there were people. If she were to leave with him and go to his private club or to either of their homes, things would not go well. Reg knew only too well that he would not be able to control himself, even to get the pro forma consent that the magical laws required. “No, I want to stay here.”
“You would be more comfortable, and we would be more free to discuss things openly…”
“No.” Reg pulled her arm away from him. “I said no.”
The resistance required an effort. Reg tried to shield herself from his charms to allow her head to clear a little. She was feeling warm and contented and a little muddled. She needed a clear head if she were going to stay in control of the situation.
Corvin didn’t try to touch her again. He motioned to the booth with a grand sweep of his arm, and Reg sat down. Corvin seated himself across from her. There was a slight scuffle as several waitresses tried to approach the table at the same time to talk to Corvin, but one of them came out the clear winner and placed herself at Corvin’s side, looking down at him, eyes shining.
Corvin ordered a bottle of wine. Reg shook her head. “I’ll have a glass of water—no, a Coke. Thanks.”
The waitress looked disapproving, but wrote it down on her order pad, bestowed another adoring smile on Corvin, and walked over to the bar. Corvin raised his brows at Reg. “Teetotalling today?” he asked, shaking his head. “Coke won’t exactly pair with your meal. You expect me to drink the whole bottle myself?”
“You can have however much you want. I need… a clear head.”
He rested his arm on the table and extended his fingers to touch Reg’s arm. Reg pulled back at the electrical charge between them.
“I won’t even make it to dinner if you keep doing that.”
He shrugged. “It’s a bit early for dinner anyway. We could do other things. Worry about dinner later.”
“No.” Reg was as firm as she could be, keeping the shield between them and avoiding his touch.
Corvin pushed back against the shield, making Reg’s body temperature go up. She broke into a sweat. She concentrated on using the shield to reflect his heat back at him and, in a few seconds, Corvin withdrew, wincing uncomfortably. Reg breathed more easily. If he would stop trying to ensorcel her, they could enjoy a meal together. But if he kept pushing it, Reg would have to leave.
“Just leave me alone,” she told him in a low voice. “I’m hungry.”
He gazed at her. “So am I.”
“I could leave.”
“I could follow you,” he countered, his mouth curling up in a smug smile.
“If I can transport myself to and from Egypt, I think I can transport myself home from here. Or maybe send you back to Egypt. How about that?”
Corvin sat back and stopped trying to influence her. He shook his head. “Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it.”
Reg breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah. It is.”
The waitress returned with the bottle of wine and Reg’s Coke. “And what can I get you to eat today?” she asked Corvin, without even a glance at Reg.
Corvin flicked through the pages of the menu, which he must know off by heart. Reg knew everything the restaurant offered, and she hadn’t been in Black Sands as long as Corvin had. He placed his order, then looked at Reg for hers.
“What’s your freshest fish?” Reg couldn’t help thinking about going to the ocean with Corvin. Taking him to the water’s edge. Her mouth was watering. But fish would have to suffice.
“The trout.” This was obviously a question that the waitress was asked regularly, because she didn’t have to think about it. Living so close to the ocean, people in Black Sands expected their seafood to be very fresh.
“I’ll have that, then.”
The waitress nodded. She smiled at Corvin, fluttering her eyelashes, then withdrew to place the order with the kitchen.
Reg tried to assess Corvin dispassionately. His eyes flitted around the restaurant instead of staying on her as they usually did. He normally gave her his full attention, or at least pretended that he was. Without his charms affecting her, Reg noticed something different about Corvin. His aura was dark. Something appeared to be worrying him or making him anxious. He didn’t stop moving, but shifted his position every few seconds, eyes monitoring everything in the restaurant.
“What’s going on?” Reg asked him.
“What do you mean?” Corvin’s eyes touched on her briefly, and then his gaze was elsewhere again.
“You seem like you’re worried about something. Is it… campaigning for the leadership of the coven?”
“What do you know about that?” his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“You told me.”
He eyed her for a moment, scowling, then he wiped his hand over his face in a tired gesture and smoothed the angry lines. “Yes. Of course I did.”
Reg nodded. “I just wondered if that was what was on your mind. You seem… distracted.”
“Maybe I am,” he admitted. “You wouldn’t think that it would be stressful to do something you wanted to—being reinstated to the coven and maybe taking over its leadership—but even positive changes can be taxing.”
Reg nodded her understanding. Any new situation or big change was difficult. Living in her own little cottage in Black Sands, finding out that she had powers, coming into money, they had all been difficult for her.
“Is it going to be a lot of work, running for leadership of the coven?”
“Yes, of course it takes work.”
She stretched out all of her senses, trying to feel more from him. The stress of running for Davyn’s position in the coven didn’t seem to fully explain the darkness around him. He was doing his best to keep his mind closed from her but, due to the way that they had been connected in the past, the conduit between the two of them could not be completely closed off. Reg shut her eyes, trying to visualize what was going on with Corvin. Trying to get some sense of what was going on with him.
“Mind your own business,” Corvin told her.
Reg pulled back her mind and opened her eyes. “It isn’t the coven?” she asked tentatively.
“What else would it be? That’s the most important thing in my life right now. Getting back my life. Showing that I am as qualified for leadership as—even more qualified than—anyone else.”
Reg nodded slowly. She took a sip of her soft drink and looked around the room, taking her focus from Corvin to sense the moods of the others around her. The Crystal Bowl was not very busy, so there weren’t many other people to worry about. Even the voices in her head were relatively quiet and relaxed for once.
“You’ve never said very much about your coven,” she said. “Is the membership secret?”
“No. We don’t generally talk about what goes on in the coven. We afford people their privacy. But the membership itself is not a secret. Happily, we live in a society where mere membership in a coven is not enough for a person to be burned at the stake.”
“Who else is in your coven? What are they like? The only one that I know of is Davyn. Damon isn’t a member, right?”
Corvin shook his head, sneering. “He’s not a member of any coven.”
“That’s right,” Reg remembered. “He called himself a lone wolf or something like that. He said that with his security business, he can’t afford to take sides or be associated with any particular group.”
Corvin rolled his eyes. “Good excuse for not being able to get along with anyone else.”
“Do you think so? He’s friendly enough; I thought he got along with people. He was in charge of the security for the Spring Games. That was a big deal.”
“That’s his business, not his personal life.”
“Well… yeah. I guess so.”
“You don’t get along with him,” Corvin pointed out. He gave a slightly superior smile.
Reg struggled to answer his point. She had several reasons for not getting along very well with Damon Knight. “He’s a nice enough guy, and good at his job… he can be fun. But…”
“You don’t need a diviner analyzing whether every statement you make is true?” Corvin suggested.
“Well…” Reg’s face warmed. Not finding out that Damon was a diviner until she’d probably told him several things that were not quite true had made her pretty uncomfortable. Reg wasn’t quite as married to the truth as some people. Sometimes it served her well, and sometimes it did not. She didn’t like being caught in a lie, even just a small one. “He was never mean about it. He said that everyone lies.”
Corvin considered this. “Still probably didn’t make you feel very comfortable around him.”
Reg nodded.
“But that’s not all,” Corvin guessed.
“No…” Reg didn’t want to get into why she was not comfortable around Damon and had decided that their relationship would not go anywhere. It was pretty personal, even if Corvin had been in her head before and would not be shocked by anything she had to say. She had asked him about his coven, and that was what she wanted to talk about, not Reg’s suitors. “I guess… I had to keep telling him not to put visions in my head, but he acted like he couldn’t help it. And then he used them to deceive me when we were looking for Wilson.” Reg rubbed her forehead hard, trying to release the tension in the space between her eyes. “I’ve got enough stuff going on in my head without someone else adding visions of things that aren’t true.” She shrugged. “I can’t deal with that.”
Corvin nodded, looking very smug. It wasn’t like he was a prize catch. She knew that things could never work out between her and Corvin either, no matter how attracted she was to him when she touched him or he was charming her. The only thing he wanted out of a relationship was her gifts, and she knew that her feelings were being manipulated. They weren’t real. Two handsome bachelors in her life, and neither one was someone she could live with for a day, let alone long-term. Reg let out a long breath.
Before coming to Black Sands, she’d always been on the move, never in one place for more than a few months, so none of her relationships had been serious. She could have a fling, do what she liked, and then be gone by the time the relationship started to sour. Encounters could be as short as she wanted and not mean anything to her long-term. Now that she was settled down in one place, with a home of her own and stable employment, she had to consider where a relationship might take her and what would happen when she ended it. Would she end up awkwardly avoiding an ex at the grocery store? Trying to divide up their friends between his and hers? She had no idea how to navigate that kind of complex relationship. She would have to leave town, and she didn’t want to be put in that position when she had finally found a place she belonged.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Corvin had been looking away from her, scoping out the room carefully as if looking for hidden dangers. He turned his gaze back to her, brows drawing together slightly.
“Belonging?” He echoed the word in her thoughts. “It must be nice to find a place you feel like you belong.”
Reg shifted uncomfortably. “You belong here,” she pointed out. “You’re a warlock. You have a coven. You have a business where you provide magical services to people. You have your studies. You fit in here like a piece in a puzzle.”
He shook his head. “It only looks that way from the outside. I have been different ever since I was born. Hated because I am what my father was. Excluded from polite society. I was allowed into the coven, but barred from progressing any further. You think that’s a life of belonging? To be shunned everywhere I go, even, eventually, by my own coven? The people who were supposed to be my spiritual brothers?”
Reg shook her head. She wasn’t sure what to say to him. He was twisting it around. She didn’t know what his whole life had been like, all of the secret resentments he had against the people who had excluded him. But she did know that his coven hadn’t shunned him for being a power drinker. He had been shunned for breaking the laws of their community that said he could not take someone’s powers without their permission. Because he had tried to do exactly that and take Reg’s powers from her.
“Neither of us belongs here,” Corvin told Reg, his eyes reflecting a weird light as he stared at her. “I because of my curse. You because you are part siren, part immortal, and have more magic in your little finger than anyone else in this room.”
He took another look around the room as if something might have changed since he’d checked last. He looked back at Reg.
“Except you,” she said.
“Except me,” Corvin said, smiling to show off his even white teeth. “You and I are more matched in our abilities. We belong together.”
“You don’t want me. You just want to hold my powers.”
“There is more to you than just your powers.”
Reg raised her brows. There certainly was, yet Corvin seemed to have little idea what her other desirable attributes might be. He had said that she was beautiful and given her other compliments, but all he’d ever had eyes for were her powers. She’d been too naive, had known nothing about his kind or his powers, and had let herself be taken advantage of. But that would never happen again.
The waitress appeared beside them at the table, startling Reg. She nearly knocked over her drink and grabbed it to keep it from falling over.
“Sorry, sorry! I didn’t see you!”
The waitress smirked at Reg, then simpered at Corvin as she put his plate in front of him. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
“This looks fine. Thank you.”
The waitress said nothing to Reg about the plate she had put in front of her. But the fish looked good, and Reg didn’t think that the waitress had spit in it. Reg hadn’t done anything to be rude to her. Though she might be a target just because she was there with Corvin and every warm-blooded woman in his orbit wanted to be with him instead.
They made noises indicating their enjoyment and talked about the food for a little while, but they hadn’t really gotten together for the food. An undercurrent ran through every look and sentence.
“I’m starting to worry about Davyn,” Reg said, pausing to take a drink and see if her comment elicited any reaction from Corvin.
“He’s a grown man.” Corvin dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “I don’t think there is anything to worry about.”
