Page 10 of Jack of All Trades

Maltin was in the kitchen area, looking out over the rest of the apartment and pouring him a glass of water from a clear jug from the fridge. “I, uh, did, yes.”

“What was it?”

When Graves didn’t answer, Jack tried to push, and all he got for that was handed the water and told to drink.

Maltin sat at the large wood block that served as a coffee table as he watched Jack drink. Once Jack took the glass from his lips, Maltin took it, and a buzzer sounded. “That must be the EMTs.”

Jack didn’t want to be checked over; he wanted answers. Still, Maltin was probably right. If he landed on his head or back, he could be hurt, and the shock might keep him from feeling it.

The EMTs rushed in once Maltin led them to the loft, and after poking and asking a million questions, including if he’d used his own power to break his fall, they left. He sat unable to shake that question, to which he’d had to answer a simple no, hoping he didn’t have to elaborate.

Thankfully, he didn’t, and Maltin showed them out once they came back with good news: besides his elevated blood pressure, he was fine.

“Please, Jack, take the rest of the day off with pay. Go home and rest.”

Not waiting for Maltin to change his mind, Jack got up and left quickly, barely acknowledging Maltin on the way out the door.

Home was not an option. He had an old laptop that didn’t work, and he needed answers. After catching the crosstown bus, he went to the city’s biggest library and got on the computer there, looking for anything that could explain the strange things happening to him.

There had to be answers. Dreams, what happened when he and Maltin touched for the first time? Something had to stop his heart from beating out of his damn chest. His head swamwith all the questions, and he hoped beyond hope that he’d find something to ease his mind.

Chapter Four

Being drawn so heavilyto Jack had been a problem from the start. Maltin Graves stared at the door that had slammed shut upon Jack’s leaving, and his eyes stayed there for more than an hour as thoughts crowded his mind.

He’d opened his mouth to call out to Jack, to beg him to stay and recover more, but the words fell away from him, and he’d closed his mouth again.

At the bathroom sink, he stared at his image, looking for and finding the tiny lines that had formed around his eyes.

To anyone else, they’d be nearly invisible.

Every time Maltin Graves used his magic, he was closer to death. It was a menacing truth of his very long life.

You see, Maltin Graves was a half-breed, and while the world had changed during his time on it, where that term didn’t gather derision, it did mean he had a finite level of magic. His family, for instance, those on the witch side, could cast spells to lengthen their lives. He had an aunt that was close to ninehundred years old. For him, however, those spells couldn’t be cast. They took too much magic, and the trying of them would likely kill him.

The line of magic he was from was so powerful that his people were revered throughout the magic realms. His father, however, wasn’t a witch. His mother had fallen in love with a shifter on a trip to Denmark one icy winter.

Since his father’s animal form was never seen, Maltin didn’t know what creature he would be once he shifted. Most find out at a young age. His mother told him that his father died without shifting once, and she’d learned that some won’t until they meet their mates. His poor mother spent the rest of her years pining for that lost love. He’d died so young, not yet forty.

The magic he’d used to slow Jack’s fall from the roof had taken a lot out of him. A lot of energy and a lot of magic. Out of practice, he hadn’t used magic for more than twenty years. He sat on the bed in his room, staring down at his hands, especially the one Jack had touched. That energy that was cast between them wasn’t normal magic. It was dark, but it was alive.

Feeling pulled to Jack from the first, he’d passed it off, thinking it had just been too long since he’d been in close company with such an attractive man. Sure, he had been around gorgeous men at the studios when he was forced to go in them to take his scripts or do rewrites in person, which he hated.

No one made him feel the things that Jack had made him feel. Longing, need, bordering on desperation. Thinking back on his mother’s words, they sat in his gut and ate away like acid.

“We were in love, but if he’d met his fated mate before he’d died, he would have had to leave me for her.”

Wondering, not for the first time, if his mother had been secretly happy that his father had died first before he could meet his mate…Maltin wondered if he’d just met his own.

That touch. That all-consuming touch so strong as to throw Jack into the air was nothing short of powerful magic. Maltin lay on his bed, letting his lids slide closed and thinking about Jack, that beautiful face, that amazing body, and those hazel eyes that were gray at times and olive-green at others, and he dared to let himself hope that he’d met his mate at long last.

***

The Carmichael Library wasnear downtown Valleywood, right down the road from The Valleywood Mall. It was a vast, grey brick building with two winged lions guarding the front on either side of the marble steps.

The inside boasted hundreds of stacks of books, including novels and reference books, but they didn’t stop with those. Sections of the library were dedicated to every form of magic, magical beings, and other worlds.

The books on magic alone were half the library, and he didn’t know where to start. He got on one of the computers and started adding words to the search, but the possibilities were so great that Jack knew he’d never find what he was looking for.

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