Page 39 of Spies without a Face
I ground my teeth and pulled my head away. He’d let me believe he’d been killed, and I’d mourned for him.
“You cavorted with a vampire and sirens, providing them with magic that’s extremely dangerous and unethical. And which hurt my friends.”
Both of his brows shot higher. “Are you going to continue to accuse me of things where you have no proof?”
“Are you going to continue to deny it?”
He reached out and touched my hand. “Oh, Pandora. I love the verbal foreplay. Let’s go upstairs and make up for all the years we lost. I still remember everything about you. The sounds you make when I touch you. The way you feel. The way you taste.”
Heat simmered inside as I pictured how good we’d been together once upon a time.
“Let me show you how much I’ve missed you. Then we can talk about our future together,” he added in a sultry promise.
My heartbeat echoed so loud, I’d swear it was echoing off each wall. I snatched my hand back. “Our past means we have no future.”
“Come now. You didn’t think so badly of me once.”
“That’s because I spent too much time focused on the goodness within you, hoping it would outshine the dark. I was blind to seeing what you were becoming for a long time. I was wrong.”
He fixed his dark eyes on me, and the familiar intensity that left me tingling. “By now, you must know you’ve looked at terms of good and bad too rigidly, forcing light and dark into boxes they were never meant to be constrained to. Magic shouldn’t be forced into opposite spectrums of dark and light. The universe doesn’t embrace the sun while shunning the night. Both are necessary.”
I flicked my chin up a notch. We’d circled around this many times in the past.
Marius continued. “Daylight doesn’t switch to night like the flick of a switch. It’s a gradual shift. Magic works the same way. You can’t avoid dark magic, Pandora, just as you can’t avoid night. It’s part of the whole wonderful spectrum of all we can experience.” He raised one hand and spread it in an arc. “The dark is beautiful. Night is magical. You simply must open your mind to embrace it.”
I wouldn’t deny that there was some truth to what he was saying. Many witches had made similar statements. The problem was that Marius had ventured too far into the darkness in the past in pursuit of power that I feared he’d been lost to all light.
“Does that mean you’ve found a balance?” I asked, a twinge of hope rising although the skeptical part of me knew better. “Have you come back to the light?”
His dark eyes fixed on me again with that familiar intensity. “You can be my light.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“Join me. Together, we could be formidable—the most powerful couple the magical world has ever seen. Come with me, Pandora.” He extended his hand.
My heart cracked once more before it sank. “You haven’t changed.” I stepped away from him. “You still seek power above all else.”
He lowered his proffered hand and raised his chin. “Might is the means to achieve all else.” His jaw tightened. “You’ve chased it as well. You’re now the most powerful witch in Salem.”
That might not be true. Some of the elder witches were total badasses who’d honed their skills over decades of magical practice. How he knew about this bothered me. What else did he know? “How long have you been spying on me?”
He turned away. “Accusations once again.” He faced me once more and searched my face. “I’ll give you time to consider my offer.”
He spun with a whirl of his black cape and vanished, the outline of his body turning transparent before he disappeared.
I gaped at the space where he’d stood before I walked toward it. A residue of his magical energy lingered. For the love of black cauldrons, just how far had he ventured into the dark?
AUSTIN
He was back.
The same guy that I saw out back at Pandora’s the night after we met was on her back deck once more, and—gulp—she let him in. Again.
Ouch. My bear whined. The jealous pangs tore at me as well. I tried to shake it off, rolling my suddenly tense shoulders, but it was as easy as skiing uphill in the Rockies. I kept replaying the image of her opening the door for the guy with the black cape, and him walking in.
I rubbed my jaw and paced, trying to force myself from glancing out the window. She said she wasn’t seeing anyone. Was she lying?
She kissed me last night. We talked about going out again. Was she playing me? Playing him? Maybe I didn’t know the witch next door as much as I thought.
