“Ah. There we go. You have a question.” I crossed an ankle over a knee. “Great. That’s a good place to focus. Do you want to tell me who the question is for?”

“No.”

“Super. Do you want to tell me what the question is?”

“No.”

“Great. We’re off to a fairly normal start. So go ahead and shuffle until you’re content, then put the cards on the rickety old TV tray that I found on the street—in case you were wondering—and we’ll get started.”

“One might look at the conditions in which you live your life and assume you have no pride in yourself, your magic, or your profession,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Many assume that, actually.” I rose, picked up my chair, and turned it sideways. I couldn’t see much of the water, but I enjoyed feeling the salty air softly muss my hair. I’d rather ignore his handsome face and look out at mostly nothing than attempt to relax within his hardcore focus.

“That doesn’t bother you.”

“Not at all. It’s liberating, actually. I know what box they’ve put me in, and I generally know how they’ll act toward me, too.”

“You are creating a predictable environment in an unpredictable life situation.”

I turned down my lips in thought, then shrugged. “That sounds about right, yes.”

“I assume this is the…young man for whom you bought the turquoise blanket?”

“Was it the turquoise blanket wrapped around his shoulders that gave it away?”

“Yes.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve nailed it. Amazing that I’m such a puzzle to you, what with your fantastic powers of observation.”

“What ails him?”

I closed my eyes against the breeze, letting calm roll over me. “That’s not my information to disclose.”

“I apologize. I wanted to give you the chance to tell me yourself. The nature of his…condition is in his file.”

“Which you looked up,” I said softly.

“Naturally. A young person in his situation, living in poverty and without the resources of his pack, would rarely live past the beginning of puberty. He is nearly cresting, if I’m judging the surges of his power correctly. How have you kept him alive?”

“Hope and a prayer.” I clasped my hands. “And a few ugly blankets.”

“She sacrifices for us,” Mordecai said with a note of pride in his voice. Also sadness. “She sits here, with her rickety setup, and lets the masses belittle her. For us. She takes odd jobs that are way below her intelligence level. She begs, takes handouts, and doesn’t have any use for pride, all because she wants to give us the chance at a future. So while you sit there on your high horse, inspecting her choices like she’s some colorful yet insignificant bug, she’s busting her ass to give us a chance. She’s forfeiting her own life so that we get to have one. You won’t ever find a truer, bigger-hearted person in the world. So you should pack up your enormous ego and go find someone else to mildly threaten with your presence and your interest. We have enough problems around here.”

Heat prickled my eyes at his speech, overcome a moment later by fear. I didn’t know what the stranger’s situation was, but he had clout if he could keep the non-magical people in this freak show away from me. I also knew there were limits to the amount of abuse the guy would take. Being a woman who perplexed him, I’d gotten a momentary pass while he toyed with me a while longer.

Mordecai wouldn’t get the same lenience. And I didn’t know how to protect him.

22

Alexis

“Don’t mind him.” I tried to keep the worry from my voice, still looking out over the bay. “He’s—”

“Exactly right,” the stranger finished softly. “Thank you, Mordecai. You have fit a piece of the puzzle into place.”

“Good job, Mordie.” Daisy sniffed.

“Do you get that medicine at a discount?” the stranger asked.

“I thought you had extensive records on magical people?” I couldn’t help it. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what the guy knew and what he didn’t.

“Mordecai was left for dead, and the pack has been operating on the belief that nature took its course. Their records are lacking, and as such, so are—” The chair squeaked as the stranger shifted. I glanced over, but his face was a hard mask, giving nothing away. “The girl is not in our records at all.”

“I’m a Chester,” Daisy said. “Also left for dead.”

“Shh.”

“I swear to God, Mordie, if you elbow me one more time—”

“She’s not a Chester.” I cradled my head in my hand, suddenly exhausted. “She’s not nearly that ignorant. Or arrogant. But she is non-magical, and her situation, if she were to go back to the non-magical foster system, would be a nightmare. And no, we do not get the medicine at a discount.”

“Does a five-finger discount count?” I could hear the laughter in Daisy’s voice.

“Elbow her, Mordecai,” I said.

“I see.” The cards slid against each other in the stranger’s hands.

“Do you?” I wasn’t sure what prompted me to ask, but there it was, out in the world.

Silence dropped around us, then stretched. The heaviness of it competed with the shrieks and roars of the fair around us. Finally, when I was about ready to turn my head and look at him again, if only to see what danger clouds lurked on his expression, he said, “No. I’ve never known poverty. I’ve never watched a loved one suffer because I couldn’t afford the treatment she—or he—needed.”

That had been a slip, and now I did turn my head.

A shadow sliced across the stranger’s face, partially covering the simmering fury in his expression. One eye, catching the light of the fair, shone bright with viciousness.

But under it all existed pain. A hollowness he couldn’t seem to fill.

His magic rose around me, but this time it was different. Instead of the sexiness and passion I’d felt at the bar, which had nearly driven me to questionable life decisions, I felt a vast emptiness. The salty breeze took on a life of its own, its caress turning into a longing for the rise and fall of the waves. The song of the ocean drifted to me from the bay, mournful yet beautiful, blanketing my heart.

A tear slipped from my eye as I tucked into this feeling like I had the sexy-type magic. Its beauty captivated me. Its vitality invigorated me. But that sadness weaving within it broke my heart.

The presence came slowly, from a place I never would’ve thought to look.

Turning my head toward the bay, I saw it despite the darkness: arms swinging up and down, stroking a path through the water. The body attached to them rode a wave up, then sank into the swell. The person disappeared as he or she neared the edge of the large dock, only to float up again. This time she ascended the dock, revealing a long, white flowing dress and bare feet pointed elegantly like a ballerina’s.

The wind whipped her raven hair around her beautiful face, the breeze she was experiencing different than that of reality, her chosen place of un-rest wild and blustery. She hadn’t, or maybe wouldn’t, acclimate to her new surroundings. This wasn’t her home.

Her bare feet, still wet, touched down onto the dirty ground beside the dock, and spirit or not, I couldn’t help but grimace with the grime they’d be touching. Her movements were elegant as she drifted toward and then past me.

Slightly in awe, because I’d never seen anything like that—and I thought I’d seen it all—I rose and turned my chair to again face the stranger. The woman stopped beside him, staring down at him with adoration.

“You were expecting a woman, I take it,” I said, clasping my hands in my lap. I didn't notice the stranger’s reaction because I couldn’t take my eyes off her, she was so beautiful. “In life, was it like an ethereal glow radiated out from her? Like she was lit up from within?”

“Yes,” he said in a release of breath, and though I could tell he was trying to keep his voice flat, a slight tremor jiggled his words.

“She’s young. My age.” High, arching eyebrows sat above large blue eyes and a thin, dainty nose. Sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw defined her face, the look completed by lush, shapely lips. She was a soft, feminine version of the stranger. “Is she a sister, or is this her chosen age and not the age she was at death?”

“You see her?” His throat was tight, and I finally switched my focus.

He’d leaned forward, staring at me, not in the intent way from earlier, but hard, like he was willing words to come out of my mouth. Earnestness and longing clouded his expression, and the muscles on his sizable frame flexed.

“She’s here, yes. Beside you. Looking down on you. She loved you very much, and it transferred into death.” I scratched my chin. “So your mother, then, because I don’t think a sister would be that gushy about the situation.”

“Your age, you said?” he asked. “Twenty-five?”

“Around there, yes. I’m not a master at telling ages.”

“Before she met my father.” His jaw clenched.