“What the hell?” Fensic threw one hand in the air.

  “Both hands, Goddamn it!” He was woozy every way that counted, but his will to not end up bleeding in a heap of twisted metal was in fine working order. “At this speed, you drive with both hands on the wheel.”

  Her palm slapped onto the leather-covered steering wheel. The car fishtailed when she took the corner at the first intersection. He reached for his magic and there it was, a wide open tap. A fucking lake, and he pulled until he was inches from a physical change. If Michael came after them, the mage was dead. As long as Fensic didn’t kill them first. She made the next turn at near reasonable speed.

  “What the hell was he doing to you?” She wheezed, but her eyes were focused on the road, so there was at least a chance they weren’t going to die. “I felt that. I felt what he did and what it did to you. What the hell was that?”

  The loss of her usual cool had the ironic effect of settling him down. Psychically speaking, she was wide open to him and now, now, he understood the control she had over herself, and it terrified him that any street mage could have that kind of magic and live and fool people like him into thinking she was mostly normal.

  Lys Fensic was fucked up. Bad. He was already in a volatile state, on the brink of physical transformation, and edgy as hell from all that shit with Michael. He’d been nanoseconds from breaking the one rule he knew Nikodemus enforced ruthlessly. No harming the magekind. He sat up straighter. “Thanks.”

  Like thanks even began to cover it.

  “Thanks? For what? God, Khūnbish, I am so sorry.” Her voice shook.

  “Slow down.”

  “I know what he’s like. I never should have brought you when there was even a chance he’d be there. Never.”

  Rubbing his chest didn’t relieve the ache from Michael’s attempt to take him, but he did it anyway. Now that he was calming down, recovering, he was reacting to Fensic’s unshielded magic. He was turned on. He couldn’t help it. His kind reacted to human magic that way. The magekind counted on it.

  “I hope his eyeballs are melting in his head.”

  “Amen, sister.” He risked a brush of his finger along her arm because he knew from how she’d reacted before that touching her helped calm her down when her control frayed. One touch and her magic blasted through him hard enough to bring on a partial transformation to one of his other forms. He got that stopped before she noticed. “Get us out of here without getting pulled over, would you?”

  Mentally, she closed up. Shut just about everything down, and it scared him to think she could do that to herself. She eased up on the gas, and it was awful seeing the ice queen back. An elegant, ice-cold bitch. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. She focused on the road, but her fingers on the steering wheel were bone white. “Where are we going? Anywhere or do I just drive?”

  “For now, just drive.” He kept an eye out for cops. Or a tail. As soon as Michael recovered, he was going to send magehelds after them, no question about that. And not just for him. A trained mage was likely to have at least one mageheld demon skilled at tracking. Even a tracker with mediocre talents could follow the residue he and Fensic had left—were leaving now. If they were lucky, they had a day or two before the next set of magehelds found them. If the tracker had some talent, they might have half that. Telos allowed himself a private smile. Either way, he was going to be ready for the rat bastard mage. Fuck Nikodemus and his rules.

  The back of the car shuddered again. “Have you always had a lead foot?”

  She slowed to forty-nine. “I have a perfect driving record.”

  “How many cops let you off because you smiled pretty?”

  “My appearance has nothing to do with the fair and equal administration of justice.”

  Telos snorted. “Speed limit here is thirty-five. You’re doing forty-three. Slow down.”

  “Fine.” She slowed, but not enough. Two minutes later, the speedometer was back to forty-five.

  “Do you have any idea how much a speeding ticket costs in this city? I don’t care if you don’t have a job, I’m not paying the fine.”

  “I won’t get a ticket.”

  “No, instead you’re going to get us killed. Pull over and let me drive.”

  “Forty.”

  He looked at the speedometer. “Seven. Forty-seven and this is my fucking car. You wreck my ride and you better be prepared to write me a check.”

  She bowed her head and over-corrected after the car drifted because she’d taken her eyes off the road. “Fine.”

  They made the switch at the first gas station they came to. They didn’t say anything for several minutes, and he was fine with that. He drove, heading west.

  She broke the silence. “Those men at my house.”

  He signaled for a turn. He didn’t see any reason to pretend about anything. “They weren’t men.”

  “Demons. They were demons, is that right?”

  “Magehelds. Your ex-boyfriend’s slaves.”

  Her shoulders climbed toward her ears, and he got flashes of her mental state: unsettled, determined, and still on the edge of a psychic crash. Why the hell wasn’t she insane?

  “He’s not kidding about killing you,” he said.

  “You either.”

  “He doesn’t necessarily want me dead.”

  Her phone rang, muffled since it was inside her purse. She grabbed it and stared at the screen. “Michael.”

  _______________________________________________________

  CHAPTER 5

  Telos reached over and took the phone away from her. He considered crushing it to bits of plastic, silicon, and metal.

  She snatched it back. He couldn’t help but catch the ragged emotions leaking from her. He was getting even more turned on. Nothing he couldn’t control, though. Fensic pressed against the back of the seat and went completely still. After a bit more silence, she dropped the phone onto her lap.

  The phone rang again. She picked it up and stared at the display.

  “Don’t engage.” He rubbed a finger along the steering wheel.

  “You know what?” she said over the ringtone.

  “What?”

  “You’re right.” Phone in her hand, she pushed the button to roll down her window. Wind whipped through the car. Some of her hair came loose from the roll at the back of her head. She stuck her arm out the window and spread her fingers wide. He heard plastic shatter. She raised the window. “I think we can call that refusing to engage.” Her smile was cold as ice. “Don’t you?”

  He looked at her and then out the side window. “It’s a start.”

  She looked out the window, too. “I probably shouldn’t have done that. I have a year left on my contract.”

  “You can get a new phone.”

  She slumped on her seat, unaware, or uncaring, of the way her skirt stayed where it was. He was beyond feeling guilty for looking. “I’d rather have a puppy.”

  Telos laughed. “A new phone would be less work and less expensive.”

  “True.” Fensic tapped her finger on the top rim of the door. “I can expense a new phone.” She let out a brittle laugh. “Well, I could if I still had a job.”

  They didn’t say anything more for the twenty minutes it took to reach his house at the far edge of Presidio Heights. He pulled into his garage, punched the button to close the garage door, and shut off the engine.

  She looked around his garage. “Where are we?”

  “Home.”

  She ran her hands over her head, smoothing her hair. He wondered what she looked like with it down. Hot, probably. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Probably not.” He shrugged and juggled the car keys on his palm. “I’d take you to your place if there wasn’t a homicidal mage waiting there for you.”

  She stretched out her legs and leaned an elbow on the rim of the car door. “A hotel then.”

  “Do you have enough cash on you not to use your credit card?”

  “No, but—” She looked at him sideways. “You already did me my favor and look how that turned out.”

  “You’ll be dead twenty minutes after your card swipe.” He shifted on the seat. “Look, you’re safer here than anywhere else. They’re going to find you no matter where you go. With me you have a shot at living to see another sunrise.”

  She let out a breath. “I was wrong about you. You aren’t like Michael.”

  Telos fisted his keys. “Pretty much the opposite, I’d say.”

  “A demon.”

  He shrugged. He did like the smart chicks. “If you want me to take you to a hotel or someplace else, I will, but then it’s your funeral. I’m offering to help you stay alive.” From what he’d heard, a lot of survivors like her were intensely self-sufficient. They had to be. They tended to have abandonment issues, too. “It’ll probably take him at least until tomorrow sometime to find us, and that’s if he’s got a good tracker. In the meantime, I’ll put in a call to Nikodemus and let him know what’s up.”

  His car felt uncomfortably enclosed right now because he was aware she was all legs. She drew in a breath, but didn’t look at him. Good thing. She had a more than decent rack, too. She shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything, Khūnbish.”

  “Saying that doesn’t change the truth. I owe you. That’s just a fact.” This time she did meet his gaze. Her pupils were huge. More than anything, he wanted to reach over and unbutton the top button of her shirt. “Look, you’ll be safer with me. We can drink beer, order Thai, and watch wrestling all night.”

  She smiled. Almost like old times. Except not. “Wrestling?”

  “Or a monster truck rally. I have three DVR’d.” He schooled himself against smiling. “You pick.”

  She sighed again, but there was a smile somewhere in there. “All right, Mr. Khūnbish. Let’s go inside.”

  They got out of the car and went in. He was careful with his proofing, the magical wards he set to keep the bad guys out. He made sure to adjust things so Fensic wouldn’t set them off.

  He couldn’t help relaxing a little. This was his turf. He had the place well-warded. Anyone who tried to get in had some nasty surprises in store.

  In his living room, she dropped her purse on the floor and slumped on his couch, legs sprawled out. She wasn’t wearing pantyhose. The ice queen was in his house, and he was thinking dirty thoughts about her.

  He watched her look around and take in her surroundings and what he’d done with his place. This was a big house. Big enough to put him in the one-percent category. Three stories, vaulted ceilings in this room, six bedrooms, two of which he’d converted into a climate-controlled server room—not that she knew that yet.

  “What paid for this?” She lifted a hand. “Don’t tell me if it means admitting you committed any crimes.”

  He stood in front of her with his arms crossed over his chest. At the moment, psychically speaking, he got nothing from her. Nothing. She was so tightly closed off she could pass for vanilla. “You know what I charge per hour.”

  She lifted a hand to shade her eyes. He relaxed when he saw her familiar icy smile. “Honey, you are worth every penny. But even your hourly rate couldn’t pay for this.”

  “I have no worries, let’s just say that.”

  She stretched her arms over her head, arching her back. Her clothes were rumpled, but she still looked corporate uptight. The look worked for him. “Does your mortgage payment bite your ass every month?”

  “Paid off.”

  She gave him another long look. “I didn’t realize hacking paid so well. Maybe that should be my second career.”

  “There’s big money in spam. All you need is an open relay on a misconfigured mail server and you can send out millions of pitches to enlarge your dick.”

  “You’re a spammer?”

  He laughed. “No. If you’re good, protecting corporate America from hackers pays well.”

  “And you’re good.”

  “You know it.”

  She sat up enough to pull the clip that held her bun and shake her head. He got distracted by the way her skirt rode up. Again. She finger-combed the honey-blonde mass; there was a lot more than he would have guessed, and having it down completely changed her looks. Totally fuckable. It hurt his dick to look at her she was so hot. She quirked her eyebrows at him while she got her hair slicked back. Did she know how she looked with her hair down like that?

  Fensic returned her hair to its clip and flopped back on the couch. Her skirt hitched up to mid-thigh, and even though she knew he was looking, again, she didn’t move. His couch was a charcoal micro-suede, and she practically glowed against the dark fabric. Without straightening, she fished a pair of sunglasses out of her purse and put them on. “Do you have any aspirin?”

  “Sorry, no.” He shook his head. “Headache?”

  “The light hurts my eyes.” Now she looked like a movie star, all frosty-cold beauty. “Never mind. It’ll settle down in a bit.”

  Telos walked over to the wall switch and flipped the main lights off. Like she was a date, and he was looking to get romantic with her. He closed the blinds, too, and did one more mental pass through his wards. Everything locked tight.

  “Thanks.”

  Back at the couch, he took his time studying her. She was in a partial sprawl, eyes covered by an arm thrown over her face. The first two buttons of her white blouse were unfastened, and he could see the very top curve of her breasts. Nice. She had pearls in her ears and ash-gray pumps that were not practical for anything but looking hot. She had toned calves, high arches and ankles that looked like they should have broken while she was running from her murdering ex and his magehelds.

  She pressed her fingers to her temples and rubbed. Her nails were just long enough to be classy. They were painted icy pink, and that was all the color on her hands. No jewelry. “I guess you figured out I’m not a normal person.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re okay with that?”

  He shrugged one shoulder.

  “You’re not exactly normal yourself, are you?” she said.

  Telos had to laugh at that. “Hell no.”

  Her fingers kept massaging her head, moving out from her temples. She hesitated and looked up at him. He couldn’t see her eyes through her dark glasses “Usually it’s not good when people touch me. But when you do?”

  “What about Michael? What happened when he touched you?”

  She flushed. She’d misunderstood his question, but what the hell. The answer would be interesting. “We made sure I had time to prepare. Mentally.”

  “Meaning?”

  “To get myself shut down.”

  He shook his head. “Hell on the spontaneity, isn’t it?”

  She lifted her sunglasses above her eyes and blinked a few times. He wondered about her ability to shut down her magic. That kind of control was usually the result of training. A lot of it. She smoothed a hand along the seat of the couch, leaving a wavy pattern in the micro-suede. “Has to be that way for me.” Her hand stilled, and she looked at him dead on. “You can block me. How?”

  “I’m not human.” Telos moved closer to the couch. “What happens if I don’t block you?”

  She huffed. “You’ll think I’m crazy. Correction: you’ll know I’m crazy.”

  “I already know that. You were wide open to me a couple of times.”

  “Never for very long.”

  “Oh, Counselor.” He couldn’t stop his grin. No more flirting. He was into the direct come-on. “I can do it long enough to make us both really happy.”

  She rolled her eyes at him.

  “Your friend today. Is that what happens when you’re not locked down?” He didn’t have to have a hook into her head to know she was trying to decide whether to lie.

  “I see people’s futures.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Or else somehow what I see, I make happen. I’m not sure which it is.”

  “I’ve touched you. Lots of times. I never had a clue what you can do. Whatever the hell it is.”

  She rubbed her temples again. “All those times, I was prepared.”

  “But not today.” He stayed where he was, a few feet away from the couch. Close, but not too close. Not close enough.

  “No. Not today.” She didn’t sound happy about that. “I didn’t have good control today. He touched me, and I saw it happen.” She looked away, then back, and there wasn’t a single break. “And now he’s dead.”

  He didn’t argue with her. The poor bastard had been dead long before the paramedics got him strapped onto the gurney. She knew it, too.

  “I don’t know if I’m seeing the future or if what I see actually changes someone’s life.” She laughed, but there wasn’t any emotion in it. Her expression stayed somber. “I mean, that really would be crazy, changing people’s lives with the power of my mind.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Nobody can change the future just because of what pops into their heads.” She bit her lower lip and chewed on it for a while. Telos entertained dirty thoughts involving her mouth and his dick. “Most days I’m sane by an inch. Today, not so much.”

  “You’re not crazy. You just don’t know shit about what you are.”

  Fensic tossed the glasses back in her purse. “One time I kept a log of what I was getting from people. Of the twenty events whose outcomes I was able to confirm, I was right nineteen times.”

  “You never tried to warn them?”

  “Sure I did.” She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on a horizon he’d never see himself. “Intervening only makes things worse. For everyone. Especially me. I was lucky none of my foster parents had me committed.” Her attention flicked back to the now, and she gave a tight smile. “I learned how to block people out. Most of the time. I’d be in an institution otherwise. Or a crazy lady walking the street, talking to myself while I push a shopping cart full of my worldly possessions.” She pointed a finger at her ear and made a twirling motion; the universal sign for loony. “Been this way since I was fourteen.”

  “That’s about when it starts for survivors like you.”

  “Like me? There isn’t anyone like me.” She spoke with a bleak deliberation that tugged at him. “According to Michael, I’m a stone-cold killer.” Her voice got stronger. “I’m not like him. I have never, ever harmed anyone on purpose. Because I know exactly what I am.”