Page 35 of The Fantastic Fluke

The grin on his face was boyish and innocent, considering the subject. “Yup. And now it’s half dirt and cobwebs, just like you said.” He glanced over at the box, and back at me, then winked. “Just like his soul. It’s a good match.”

I groaned and would have buried my face in my hands had they not been filled with grocery bags. So instead I headed for the kitchen, pretending to ignore Gideon’s laugh as I went. How could the man be so adorable while also laughing at my mistreatment of my father’s ashes?

Because you’re the only one who’s even trying to like your father, my brain helpfully pointed out. Which was true. Even his fans, whose visits were thinning out as the days passed, hadn’t liked him enough to visit him or go to his funeral.

Much like my mother, everyone had been temporary in the life of John Bradford. I’d been the longest running landmark in his existence, and if I were being honest with myself, I knew he’d kept me around after I turned eighteen only because I had been cheap labor he could push around.

“I keep looking back, wanting to see something that wasn’t there,” I finally told Gideon, who had followed me into the kitchen. “I want our relationship to have been good, so I don’t have to decide that it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t want to lose that.”

I dumped the bags on the counter, then took the one foxy had carried for me from between his teeth. It was more treats for him, mostly, and some peanut butter that he’d practically begged for. My little glutton.

“Sage,” Gideon said, leaning down to look me straight in the eye. He was close enough to kiss, if I’d wanted to.

Oh, who the hell was I kidding? He was close enough to kiss if he’d been corporeal. I definitely wanted to.

I looked into his deep brown eyes and wondered how the sun glinted off flecks of gold in their depths when the eyes weren’t really there, and the light was behind him.

He lifted a hand as though to touch my cheek, and his voice when he spoke again was soft. “There’s nothing to lose. He’s gone, and the relationship never was. Missing something that never existed can only hurt you.”

I closed my eyes and I could imagine his breath ghosting over my cheek. The feeling of his body, just inches from mine. He’d be warm and solid, and smell of leather and gun oil.

When I opened my eyes again, he was still there. Still looking down at me. There was a spark of something in his eyes, and I wondered if, maybe, he had the same notion. The same curiosity.

No, not curiosity.

Longing.

I wanted him to lean forward and press his lips against mine more than I wanted to have a civil conversation with my father. More than I ever had wanted that.

He took a step back, and I could almost feel the space open between us, the air returning to me, even though he didn’t have the physical ability to crowd me. I turned back to the bags and started rifling through them, as though my life depended on finding the tub of cream cheese.

I had bought bagels, so it might.

“Have you remembered any more names?” I asked, and I was proud of how even my voice was. No tremble at all. No hint of the pitiful longing to have a ghost kiss me.

He sighed, but I didn’t think it was about me. It was pure frustration. “No. Well yeah, but it’s not gonna help.”

Over the previous day, I’d been trying to compile a list of the people he’d trained after his death. It was a distraction from getting started with the training, but if we were being honest, I didn’t mind that.

Gideon said he had to stay until he trained me, so anything we did to put off the end of my training meant he stayed longer. Granted, he’d only been a part of my life for about four days, but like with Fluke, I was already attached.

Sure, he was enormous and had more muscles in his arms than I had in my whole body, but he was also kind and sweet. He smiled at me in a way that made me full-body shiver, and it was only lust about half the time.

The other half, it was just that... he saw me.

My father never had. Other than Beez, Gideon was the first person in almost twenty years to really look at me. The first person to give a damn about what he saw.

“The last one, Meredith,” he interrupted my thoughts with an answer to my question. “I think her name was Johnson.”

I sighed, letting my head fall forward and bump against the cupboard in front of me. “Clearly she’ll be a snap to look up.” He didn’t deserve my annoyance, though. He was trying to remember people’s names, and it wasn’t his fault if they were common ones. “I guess at least if you have to do this again, it’ll be easy enough to have your new apprentice look up how I died. Not too many Sage McKinleys out there.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he shot back, scowling at me. “That ain’t funny. I don’t want you to keep dying, that’s why we’re talking about this. We’re gonna figure out what’s going on, and you’re gonna live to be a hundred and fifty. No more need for me.”

My stomach dropped as I realized that was a very real possibility if I were as powerful as he said. Mages above class four or five had extended lifespans, theoretically because of the increased ability to manipulate the energy flowing through themselves. I had never expected to have any part of it.

On the other hand, my parents had been within reason to expect it, and they’d died at thirty-three and fifty-five. The world wasn’t a certain place, and clearly the previous practitioners of this kind of magic hadn’t lived to ripe old ages.

Hell, maybe accessing the ley lines prematurely aged a person, and they were dying because of the magic.

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