Page 1 of Elixir of Strife
1
LEON
Asingle bead of sweat trickled down the bridge of my nose, tickling a perfect, irritating line down to the tip. I licked my lips, waiting for it to dribble off, too tense to use my hands, to move a single muscle. The wall was cold against my back, but I was sweltering. Fucking sweltering.
Infiltrations weren’t supposed to be this hard. The equally sweaty man panting just inches away from me was making it even harder, in more ways than one.
How come I had to hold his stupid leather jacket while he pretended to be a super-spy action hero? How was I supposed to focus on keeping quiet and stealthy when his biceps and delts were right there under my nose, gleaming and glazed and bulging? Very unprofessional. Very unfair.
Maximilian Drake could wear the hell out of a plain white tank top. Ribbed for my pleasure, the better to hug the ridiculous curves and tight edges of his torso. I’d seen the man topless, and what a sight that was. But somehow the skintight sweatiness of Max poured into a regular old tank top seemed obscene. Pornographic.
He placed a finger by his ear, indicating with some esoteric gesture I was certain he’d picked up from a movie. He pointed at me, then at his face, then down the corridor. I rolled my eyes.
“On my signal,” he whispered. “We make a move.”
My contrarian reflex kicked in, because half the fun of existing around Max involved annoying the living hell out of him, even in dire straits. “Why on your signal?”
His jaw clenched, the powerful muscle in his neck tautening with irritation. There was that, too. Part of the fun of annoying Max was how incredibly sexy he looked when he got all hot and bothered. Sorry, I meant angry.
“We could get this done in half the time if you’d just stop being such a chatterbox about it.”
I frowned. “I’ll stop bickering with you the moment you admit you don’t love it so much.”
“Fine, Leon,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do you want to do the honors of giving the signal?”
“Nah, I don’t really care. You go ahead and do it.”
Max’s teeth and jaw clenched so hard that he might have been imagining chomping down on my neck. He repeated his weird finger gestures again — deeply mundane and unmagical, nothing cool like the diamond thing he did once — then took a sideward step down the hallway, back pressed against the wall.
I only wished the damn place had better circulation. Who the hell could work in these conditions with such, uh, terrible air-conditioning? Still, this wasn’t so bad as far as infiltrations went. All part of being a relic finder, right?
Creeping down corridors, keeping quiet and stealthy, so we could slip in, retrieve the target, and slip right out again. The setting? An office in Dos Lunas, fortunately not one of those horrible open-floor setups. This one still had actual cubicles for privacy, perfect for us to use as cover.
“There,” Max muttered. “That must be it.”
A single gray filing cabinet sitting at the end of the corridor. Innocuous enough, no nearby signs of danger, unless we counted the potted plant next to it. Max’s diamond-dust spell had frazzled the security cameras, too. We were clear to approach.
I crept along slowly behind him, almost wary of how easy this all felt. He stopped just short of the metal cabinet, glancing at me with a wrinkled nose and an expression of disgust.
And then it hit me.
“Eww. Oh, God, this must be the smelliest filing cabinet in the world. What do they file in here? Dead bodies? Feet?”
Max grimaced. “Just shut up and open it already. You know what, I’ll do it.”
“No, no,” I said, holding my hand out. “Let’s do this properly. Keep the noise level down. What if it’s old and noisy? Squeaky hinges and all. We might end up alerting someone.”
“Good thinking.” He stood back and folded his arms, watching, waiting.
I fished something out of my pocket. A single brass altar bell, not unlike the ones used in church. This differed in two ways.
First, it was a gift, an old tool of the Alcantara witches, my many mothers. Second, there was no clapper. It kind of looked like that candle snuffer Max kept in his living room. But it still rang when I shook it, very, very faintly, like the chime was coming from another room.
“Silencio,” I whispered, a request, a plaintive sigh.
A wave of quiet magic rippled outward from the bell in my hand, the brass handle vibrating with a surge of gentle power. As a kid I liked to use the bell to sneak snacks after midnight, the creaky hinges of the kitchen cupboard always betraying me.
Mom didn’t actually ever mind. She knew that growing bodies came with growling stomachs and bigger appetites. I just didn’t want to wake her up. Funny how some of the Alcantara magic, I learned for the sake of love. Sleeping salt to make her eyelids heavy when she couldn’t sleep, the bell to make sure I didn’t disturb her when she finally did.
