Page 41 of Reluctant Rogue

The woman’s companion, a dark-haired man with dark tan skin strolled languidly up to them, waiting as the women hugged.

“Oh! Julian!” Jacinth pulled away from the woman and flung herself at the man. He caught her in his arms, laughing a little.

“Hey, there.”

She grinned at him, and turned to Naomi. “Naomi, this is Alessandra and Julian, up from Staten Island. This is Naomi,” she told her friends.

They all shook hands, while Naomi frantically searched her memory as to who they were. Oh! Right! “You’re the mage,” she said to Julian, feeling a little awed. She knew nothing of mages, had never heard of them before, but she’d read Harry Potter and seen the movies (well, who hadn’t?), and the idea of being able to do magic… even if it wasn’t Harry Potter style… was kinda blowing her mind.

“I don’t know much about mages,” she confessed, “just that they said you were one, and cursed, and Alessandra freed you. Oh! And you saved Katerina’s sister and her babies.”

Jacinth interrupted them, taking Julian and Alessandra by the shoulder and turning them to face the far end of the patio where a round, glass-topped table stood, with a cluster of matching chairs.

“Naomi’s met everyone else here. The three of you all go sit over there and get acquainted, and you can tell her your story,” she said, handing each of them a frosty bottle of beer. Naomi looked at the beer in her hand, then back at Jacinth.

“How did you know this is the brand I like?”

Jacinth winked at her merrily. “Djinn here, remember?”

She stared at Jacinth, then at the bottle. “Wow.”

Laughing, Alessandra pulled her away. “Come on, let’s get settled, before more people come and someone takes the chairs.”

Naomi blinked, looking around at the crowd. “More?”

They crossed the patio to the table Jacinth had indicated, and Alessandra nodded. “There’s a local construction crew that’s all shifters… bobcat, mostly, if I remember right… and they sometimes show up for these shindigs, too. Hmm. Maybe not today, they might not have wanted to overwhelm you.”

Julian snorted. “As if this crowd isn’t overwhelming enough all by itself.”

Alessandra laughed, and leaned into him, sliding her arm about his waist. “True.”

Reaching the table, Naomi pulled out a chair and sat down. Taking a swig from the beer bottle, she leaned forward eagerly as the couple settled in across from her. “So all I know about mages is that they do magic,” she told Julian. “Is it like, magic like in Harry Potter?”

He had a deep laugh. “Not exactly. Mages are ceremonial magicians… the alchemists of medieval times.”

Naomi’s brows furrowed, delving deep into her memory from her history classes, so long ago. “They were the ones trying to change iron into gold, right?”

He nodded. “Base metals into noble metals, yes. But it was much more than that. They sought, and many still seek, the Elixir—al-iksir in Arabic—of Life. Which is also known as,” and he paused significantly for a long moment, “the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Naomi stared at him, feeling her jaw drop.

“But it’s not a stone at all,” Alessandra put in. “It’s an elixir, a potion.”

“Okay, so you were a mage, and you got cursed… by another mage?”

Julian grimaced. “If only. No, this was something I did myself.”

She started at him. “You cursed yourself?”

“It wasn’t precisely a curse,” Alessandra put in.

Julian nodded at his wife. “Indeed. It was… consequences of trying to use magic too broadly, my spell not optimally worded, too all encompassing.”

“You were trying to do the right thing,” Alessandra defended.

“The thing is,” Julian said, looking across the table at Naomi. “It was the fourteenth century, and the plague had arrived in my city, Genoa. This was the first we had known of such a thing. We were ill-prepared…”

“If anyone could be prepared for such a thing,” Alessandra put in.