Page 17
17
LEON
“ A re you working out again?” I rolled my eyes, pretending not to enjoy the sight of Max grunting, sweating, and flexing. “God, enough with that, already. Pay attention to me instead.”
Max swiped at his forehead, wiping away the sweat. “It’s cute how you think this body just happens. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication.”
I slapped my belly, relishing the resounding drum beat. “And this takes a lot of soft pretzels and ice cream.”
He rolled his eyes pointedly away from me, returning his focus to the empty spot on the wall. He wasn’t really pissed. In fact, I knew that part of Max deeply, deeply enjoyed our repartee, whether or not it was witty. He, in turn, just knew that I deeply enjoyed when he played hard to get, throwing me those hard glares, playing the tough guy. The man was just daring me to do my worst.
But the point was that we could do this again, volley pointless banter at each other, go back to normal lives, or the closest thing to normal that anyone could find in the arcane underground.
Max could go back to chucking sharp objects in back alleys with Guillotina Hernandez, get in some target practice by the dumpsters. I could go back to guzzling a Johnny Slivers special, whether it was a fancy coffee or a delicious cocktail. We could all gather around Roscoe’s tablet to admire the latest traps he’d devised for any unwitting Brillante thugs who still thought invading Unholy Grounds was a good idea.
It had been days since that fateful detonation at the Dos Lunas Dome, since the two of us had somehow managed to put an end to the Quartz Spider’s ritual. At the time, all I could think of was how badly I wanted to keep Brendan from executing his time distortion, what would have been a time anomaly on a grand scale.
Even his smaller anomalies had wreaked enough havoc on their own, back when we hadn’t yet identified him as the Dos Lunas anomalist. Flora and fauna accelerated through natural aging so they turned into dust, endless time loops that affected both inanimate objects and organic life — chronomancy truly did feel like the deadliest of all the magical disciplines.
Looking back later, talking things out with Max, I’d never even considered the possibility that the massive anomaly would have destroyed our memories of one another. If Brendan truly had succeeded at winding time back to a point when his brother had been alive, Max and I would have never even met. The very thought of the possibility stung like a poisoned thorn in my heart.
And yet how selfish it was to even think that. What about the consequences of Brendan’s time reversal for everyone else his magic would touch? Would the dead come back to life? Would babies return to the womb? The effects had been mind shattering enough with the ritual gone wrong through our intervention.
What if the ritual had gone right?
But speaking of selfish, I allowed myself to indulge in the greatest aftereffect of the ritual. The dragons were gone. Poof. Not a whiff of fire or seawater, no midnight visitations from dripping-wet dragon goddesses, and not a single whisper from the inside of my battered skull.
I could hardly believe it had worked. Hurling the dragons into the ritual circle had actually sent them back through time, back before we forged any contracts, perhaps even back before they knew of my existence.
No more dragons for a long time, thanks very much. I was excited to return to my roots, develop a deeper understanding of bruho magic, the ancient arts of the Alcantara witches. My mind had been dulled and ravaged by exposure to the draconic struggles. Now I had all the time in the world to hone it to a sharp point.
If only I could say the same for the Masque, the one who called himself Justice.
A squad of his colleagues had made an appearance at the Dos Lunas Dome shortly after Brendan’s spell had gone haywire. We were reassured that Justice’s mind would reassemble in time — not that Max and I were all that worried to begin with. Given enough healing and therapy, the twelve fractured parts of his personality might still have a chance to unite. The problem was how he very likely had a demotion waiting for him, if not outright termination.
But the ritual had impacted Brendan Shum worst of all. Depending on perspective, though, he might have been the luckiest, too. Being centered in the time distortion had aged him backward, all the way to a time before he’d begun to dabble in chronomancy. Hell, it brought him back to a time before he’d ever worked as a spider. The ritual had turned him eighteen years old again, stripping him of most of his magic, but also his memories.
That underlined the bittersweetness of it all. He was eighteen again, and he thought that his baby brother was still alive.
“Feels like we should be celebrating surviving this fight and being alive at all,” I told Max. “But I do feel bad for Brendan. Or at least this version of Brendan. He didn’t know. He must be so scared.”
I thought of the man who spoke to me inside that other dimension. The sadness in his eyes, the longing that settled deep within his bones. Seeing everything he had done — as a brother, as a chronomancer, as the anomalist — I couldn’t rightly say that he’d ever meant to hurt anyone.
“Don’t,” Max said. “I wouldn’t worry about it. The Masques are tough, but they aren’t monsters. They’ll make the effort to keep him comfortable and rehabilitate him. It’s a bizarre gray area. The Quartz Spider they arrested is someone who hasn’t committed the crime yet. Brendan’s a completely different person. How do they even resolve that?”
I kneaded my temples. “Makes my fucking head spin, honestly.”
Max shook his head. “You know what makes my head spin? All these multiple boyfriends you have. Brendan Shum, and now Justice? Who the hell goes by the name Justice? Was he born in a jury box?”
“You take that back, Maximo.” Heat flared up my face. My cheeks must have gone bright red. “I do not have multiple boyfriends.”
“It can’t be helped. You’re just boy crazy and that’s the end of it.” He tilted his head, studying me from a curious angle. “But what are your thoughts about having just the one boyfriend?”
Oh, God. Was I on fire? I must have been on fire. Did Tiamat’s flames get loose? I would have given anything to burn to a crisp, for my cinders to drift with the wind, far away from Max’s steely, probing gaze.
“I mean,” I muttered. “I guess I don’t hate the idea.”
“You can ogle cute boys all you want.” He licked his lips, pulled on the front of my shirt, putting our faces barely inches apart. “As long as you come home to the same bed.”
I playfully shoved at his hand, pushed him away by the chest, which might have been a mistake because it only reminded me of how muscular it was. Sweaty, and hot, and hard as rock. “To the same bed, sure. Assuming we’re having one of our — you know — sleepovers.”
“Yeah. About that.”
Max lowered his head, scratched the corner of his eyebrow, and averted his gaze. Why the sudden shyness?
“About what?” I asked.
He twiddled his fingers, chewing on his bottom lip. What the hell was going on? Bashful, wishy-washy Max was cute, but I didn’t see this side of him very often.
“I was wondering if — oh, God. Feel free to say no, but — do you think you’d want to bring more of your stuff over? Not just your toothbrush and a duffle bag, I mean. I don’t know.”
Electricity traveled up from the base of my spine. I blinked. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”
He raked stray locks of hair away from his face, glowering irritably at thin air, still avoiding my gaze. “Yes, I am. Fucking — do you want to move in with me?”
I threw my arms around him, laughing when his eyes went wide open, when his hands wrapped around my waist, trying to steady me as I swooned.
“Yes. Since you asked so nicely, yes! Fuck yes, Max. Are you kidding? Your apartment is absolute heaven compared to the dump I live in.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Oh. So this is all about real estate, is it?”
“Yes. A hundred percent.” I pressed a kiss against his cheek, smiling when he smiled. “I’m joking, of course. I’m beyond stoked. Yes. I’d love to move in with you. I promise, I’ll make it worth your while.”
The corner of his mouth hitched into a sleazy grin. “You will, will you?”
“Totally. I’ll cook for you.”
“Leon. You’re a terrible cook.”
“And I’ll clean.”
He sighed. “I always have to clean up after you.”
“Then it’s settled. I’m a walking disaster area, and you’re the stable, chiseled marble statue who’s going to be my rock. And my butler. And my personal chef. It’ll be great.”
Max stared past my head, off into the distance. “Oh, God. What have I gotten myself into?”
“A relationship, apparently.” I kissed him on the lips this time, quick and chaste. “In all seriousness? Thank you. For everything. You don’t know how much of a load this takes off my back.”
He chuckled. “As long as you remember to take my loads on your back.”
I slapped him, light and playful, only hard enough to nudge his face. “So rude. Very obscene.”
Max leaned in, initiating his own kiss this time. Slow and sensual. Dark, warm, beautiful. Just like him. “But you love it, Leon. Admit it.”
“No, I don’t. But I do love you.”
The world went perfectly still, all the breath evacuating my body. Did I just say that out loud, with my own stupid mouth? But the look in Max’s eyes, how they sparkled as he stared at me? Worth it. He chewed on his lip, grinning as he gave it some thought.
“I’m pretty sure there’s a ninety-nine percent chance that I love you, too.”
I thumped him in the chest. “Only ninety-nine? What’s a guy got to do to get it up to a hundred?”
He made a face, wrinkled his nose. “The one percent is for the times when you bother the living hell out of me. I can only take so much of you in chaos goblin mode.”
I puffed my chest up, the proudest little goblin. “But bothering the living hell out of you is my love language. Speaking of which, we should totally start that finder agency I keep talking about.”
He sighed, his breath blowing upward, tousling locks of his hair. “Ninety-eight percent.”
“But I have so many good names. Double Cheese Burglars. Thievin’ Beavers. Swindle Unlimited is still my favorite, though.”
Patiently, softly, he stroked the curls of hair out of my face and smiled. “One commitment at a time.”
I couldn’t hold back my own smile. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I think I can live with that.”
Max cocked an eyebrow. “You sure about that, Leonardo?”
Grinning, delighted, I kissed him on the side of his cheek. “One hundred percent.”
He took me in his arms, hands so strong, yet somehow so gently cradling the small of my back. “One hundred percent.”
One commitment at a time. No, I really could live with that. When he kissed me, I ran my fingers through his hair, relishing that we finally had the time to just sit back and relax. At least until the next assignment came in from the Jade Spider, until the next demented member of the Brillante family decided to glance in our general direction.
Until the next dragon came knocking. The three dragons had gone for the moment, but who knew if they’d be back, if others would follow their example? But even then, only one thing at a time. One job. One dragon. Especially the dragon.
Or one Drake, for that matter. A certain Maximilian Drake, my favorite of the species.
Almost at once, our phones buzzed. I could feel mine rumble in my pocket, feel his vibrate against my hip. He pulled away, and I lurched after him, still hungry for more. He never reached into his pocket, never broke eye contact.
“It can wait,” he said, and for once, we were in total agreement. He leaned in, kissing me full on the mouth once more. I savored the moment, savored his presence, his taste, his smell.
Who needed chronomancy when Max’s embrace could make the Earth stop turning?
He kissed me harder. I laughed against his lips.
Time stood still. The world could wait.