Page 76 of Beneath the Watching

My eyes squeezed shut. This was a huge issue with this kind of magic—there was no way to maintain complete control. Information was nearly always left wide open to a variety of translations.

In general, even the most detailed spell could end up having tremendously unintended consequences. Toying with the fates was not for the weak.

The archangel Matthew, who Ilya had hired to erase Kiara’s memory with a time travel spell surely knew the magnitude of what he was doing and yet he still did it anyway. Screwing around with time never erased everything. The alternate or original timelines remained in existence, popping up at inconvenient times with a dash of Deja vu here or an errant memory there, to torture the psyche.

With a deep sigh, I answered, “Many people will always die but don’t forget there is no such thing as death, not in the way one would think. Energy can’t be destroyed, and it moves onto to another form or another existence.”

“Then why even say it? If it's not true? I don’t want anyone I know changing or going anywhere.” The pencils fell from her grasp as she let them go, clattering against the counter. I stoppedone from rolling to the floor and pushed the bunch away from her. “I don’t know what to think,” she said.

The rest of the week passed uneventfully, and this morning Mabel had left to go running with Kiara. Ilya had the bright idea to force the woman he loved to start exercising again and Mabel decided she wanted to try it, too. What had started as a forced enterprise for Kiara turned into her convincing herself that she lived for it, to try and take away some of Ilya’s power over her.

At least, that’s what it looked like to me.

From my seat on the patio, I watched as Kiara and Mabel sprinted back and forth, trying to beat the other. I could sense Ilya’s confusion from all the way up here and couldn’t stop my grin from spreading as he stalked up to me, planting himself in the chair beside mine. The two women’s breathless yells and haggard laughs carried on the wind and a deep sense of contentment spread through me.

Ilya lit a cigarette, the smoke quickly carried away on the breeze. “Never thought I’d see the day,” he remarked. He’d gotten nearly everything he wanted—the woman, more power, and more magic, which in turn equaled more respect.

Twisting the cap off a bottle of water, I said, “Neither did I. I’m happy for you.”

When I’d first seen Mabel, sitting at a table in the casino, I never could’ve pictured this idyllic scene. Granted, Ilya’s road to this point had been much harder than mine, but I never thought it’d end up like this. This was the two of us almost domesticated.

“Have you thought about having Mabel use her Sentient on Kiara?” he asked.

My hackles rose. No, I had not thought of that, and I did not like what he was implying. There was no way I’d allow for Mabel to be manipulated to try and secure more power for my best friend. Never would I subject her to relentless question and answer sessions—which is what it would turn into, under his supervision.

After I swallowed a mouthful of water I answered, “No, and I won’t do that to her. You have a source of magic. No one else has that, be happy with what you’ve got.”

Ilya raised his palms. “Just a thought. No one’s ever done it before.” He didn’t verbalize it, but I could feel the unspoken threat in the air. I’d asked a while back, and he’d agreed, that Mabel’s presence here would be kept as quiet as possible and her magic unspoken of.

“We’re not gonna start, now,” I snapped at the man who held too many of my secrets. Neither of us had said it out loud but I knew he knew I was only half demon. What he knew about me had piled up to levels that made me distinctly uncomfortable. It didn’t stop me from putting Mabel first, though.

He took a long drag of his cigarette and returned his gaze to Mabel and Kiara, who were now flat on their backs in the grass. “All this sweat is making me horny,” he said, standing up.

“Too much information, Ilya,” I drawled.

He headed across the grass and the two women stood up. Mabel brushed herself off before coming back this way, trailing behind the others. Kiara dismissed me with a casual glance, and I took Mabel’s arm and headed back into the fortress.

Ilya and Kiara went in one direction, and we went in the other. When they were out of earshot Mabel whispered to me, “Should we have told them?” I furrowed my brow. “What the voice said, about death,” she clarified.

“Has it said anything else?”

“No.” She paused before saying, “Well, there was something about asking and receiving, but it was pretty general.”

We’d reached our wing and Benjamin opened the door for us. “We don’t want to cause problems where there aren’t any. As I’ve told you before, it's not always reliable. What was relayed to you could mean anything with how generic it is.”

Mabel walked down the hall to our bedroom, and I followed. She stripped off her shirt, getting ready for a shower. “I just don’t want anything else bad to happen.”

Taking her shoulders in my hands, I faced her. “I know you blame yourself for what happened to Kiara, but you can’t. She made her own decisions. Whether you said anything or not in the beginning, it wasn’t your battle to fight. All of it would’ve happened regardless.”

She glanced away and unhooked her bra, revealing her full breasts. “I didn’t do the right thing by her,” she insisted, wiggling out of her leggings. For some reason, she hadn’t been wearing any underwear.

She leaned over, her ass jutting out and lifted a foot to peel the fabric from her leg. My finger traced the globe of her rear. “You’re going to make me fall over,” she complained, just as I slung an arm around her waist.

“Maybe you should be punished for not speaking up,” I rasped, as my cock thickened in my pants.

Mabel swung around under my grasp. “But you just said...” She sucked in a breath.

She had one leg of her pants trapped on her foot, but I didn’t care. I picked her up and tossed her on the bed. She bounced once and then raised on her elbows and tried to roll away. I snagged her calf and pulled her back before straddling her.

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