Page 56 of A Subtle Scar
I turned at the familiar sound of Chandler’s voice, my heart lifting and my feet walking toward it.
I saw him leaning in the door at the end of the hallway that led to the staircase where he’d experienced his dizziness attack yesterday. The door had been closed and adorned with a hand-drawn sign, proclaiming it was the necromancy office.
“Darling,” I said, and Chandler looked my way.
It looked like he had showered and shaved somewhere else, and he was wearing fresh clothes as well. A wave of dull anger hit me, not at Chandler, but at the idea of someone other than Hermes and myself getting treated to the sight of his naked body in the shower ever again.
The anger was…strange. I had never given the idea of monogamy much thought, and Lucy had seemed insane for totally forsaking the company of other lovers, but in this moment, I understood completely. Well, except I was willing to share Chandler with Hermes so long as Hermes finally got the sharing part through his thick head.
Chandler’s blue eyes were bright, and they widened when he saw me.
“Oh, my—what’re you—”
I didn’t let him finish, swooped in close, and pressed a kiss on his cheek. It was just an innocent thing, or would have been if I had pulled back a second sooner than I did.
“What the hell? Immortal, get away from Agent Chandler.”
I reached out to take Chandler’s hand at the venom in that voice and looked at the speaker, maneuvering so I could shelter Chandler with my body.
“Chandler is my—ourboyfriend. Perhaps you should not make assumptions,” I said to the human who’d risen from a folding chair behind a table that worked as a desk. Nearly the entirety of the tiny room was taken up by the table, and what space remained held talismans and a few tomes on magic. The room looked almost as pathetic as the small athame the human’s hand had flown to.
I sniffed. That one was a necromancer, obviously. The one who’d been absent yesterday. I’d seen him glare at people at the Equinox and birthday party.
“Chandler? Don’t tell me he—I mean, not you too,” the human said. “Don’t tell me this one managed to seduce a mage. What is it with all these immortals messing with people’s heads?”
I frowned. Chandler pushed past me. “There was no seduction, and no one messed with my head,” he said, sounding bitter. My frown deepened. “This is Charon, and he’s been helping out a little with the case. He has not been seducing me. Excuse us. Charon, this way.”
Chandler hadn’t released my hand and now led me to the exit to the staircase whose gray and white walls looked bright in the morning light but still seemed dull compared to Chandler. It was then that I realized seeing Chandler made me feel good, just a swooping feeling in my belly.
When the heavy metal door fell shut behind us, he spun.
“You do want to be properly seduced?” I said before he could say a word.
“What?” His voice echoed more than mine, his surprise clear in his blue eyes.
I shrugged, leaned against the wall. “You said you weren’t seduced. It is a justified criticism. We could arrange to seduce you to your heart’s content. Although the most seducing Hermes has done in the past hundred years is buying someone a drink before asking them for fellatio, but he will manage. You have my word.”
“He didn’t buy me a drink before asking that,” Chandler said, then shook his head as if to clear it. “Totally not what I meant to say. Forget I said it.” I would not. I knew Hermes had lied about just asking Chandler, and now, here was my proof. “I thought we were done? Done here. After last night. You two got what you came for, we’re all adults, and I need to go back to doing my job without distractions.”
I went back to frowning at our boyfriend. “I came for you, last night, when I was taking Hermes to give you a show. Hermes didn’t, but that’ll teach him. He should not just demand you fellate him without making the proposition the least bit tasty for you.”
Chandler’s jaw dropped. He looked a little lost, a little adrift, tossed overboard a boat traveling a stormy sea, and seeing him like that made me recall the Dragon Mother’s words of advice to me.
Be more like yourself, she had said.
I still wasn’t sure exactly what she had meant by that, but I had seen Chandler last night, hurt and uncertain. I didn’t understand what was wrong, but there had been moments when it had seemed as if he weren’t there, as if he were elsewhere, remembering and seeing something else long in the past but no less potent for the temporal distance.
Seeing Chandler like that had been alarming if for no other reason than that I did not know what to do. Gently bundling a soothing spell around him had seemed like the best option. I’d felt him give in to the gentle pull of my magic as if he’d waited for that kind of tender invitation all his life.
Without thinking about it, I allowed my magic to pool around me before funneling it toward him. Chandler gasped. The tension eased from his shoulders.
I pushed off from the wall and closed the distance between us, closed him in my arms.
“I have you, see? We won’t leave you after just one night like any human fool you might have met before us. We are better than that.” Although Hermes would use every possible opening to hog Chandler and get that fellatio. Our boyfriend didn’t need to know that right now.
Chandler exhaled, a long sigh that made his beautifully strong body shudder.
“You’re doing magic to me.”
