My vision was back.

  Ash squinted at the thumb drive with one eye shut. Then the other one. The examination only useful as a distraction technique from her distress.

  “Ash?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. All better?”

  “Yes.” I paused. “Your bedside manner is shit.”

  24

  “You suck as a patient.”

  Oh good. Situation normal restored. My appetite had returned along with my vision, so I checked out what was in the fridge. I fumbled a butter knife. Exhaustion made me clumsy. “Are you hungry?”

  “I might take a…” Ash peered out of the balcony sliding doors. “Is that a hot tub?”

  “Yeah.” Peanut butter and bread. Fucking, yes. Veronica deserved a raise for keeping this place properly stocked.

  “Is it on?” Ash said.

  “Should be.” I slathered the peanut butter on, taking a messy bite, watching Ash disrobe down to a T-shirt and underwear out of the corner of my eye. Nice legs.

  She ran outside, leaving the sliding door ajar, a wash of cool salty air flowing over me.

  The hot tub wasn’t a bad idea. I could soak my aching muscles and grill Ash in a contained environment.

  Her magic created smudges. I licked a smear of peanut butter off the side of my hand.

  Blood magic wasn’t supposed to exist, but in the span of a couple of days, I’d come face-to-face with it more than once. How could something like this remain undocumented throughout history? Everything about Nefesh was recorded, all the better to use against us. How had magic this dangerous been missed?

  I threw on a bathing suit that I kept at the cabin along with some other changes of clothes.

  Ash did a piss poor job of acting like my presence in the hot tub was inconsequential. She sighed, stretching out her legs.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said.

  25

  “Too late. I’m never leaving. Expense it to the House.” She pushed the floating chlorine dispenser at me.

  Where to begin this shit show of a conversation?

  “How did you find this place?” she said.

  Apparently, we were starting with small talk. “We’re investing in some environmental tech with a company based in Tofino. Seemed prudent to have a place here.”

  “Oh.”

  “You dropped your glamour,” she said. “When you saw me… when you saw.”

  “I know. Not yours though. And I don’t think that guy noticed.”

  “No, he was a bit preoccupied.”

  “If he did?” I shrugged. “We’ll deal with it should the time come.”

  “For the record, I don’t think you’re a monster.” Ash paused. “That’s where you say, ‘I don’t think you’re a monster either, Ash.’”

  She wrung her hands together and my ribcage tightened, an angry flush hitting my cheeks. I wasn’t going to grant her absolution when she’d almost torn a man’s magic from his body.

  I wasn’t going to be cruel, either.

  “I think the two of us are more alike than I even imagined,” I said.

  Ash massaged her foot. “Jeez, Levi, that’s depressing.”

  “Isn’t it just?”

  She flinched imperceptible. “For better or worse, we have to work together until these third-party smudges are destroyed, so we better find a way to peacefully co-exist, even though we’re nothing alike. We’re oil and water.”

  26

  I stared at her until she reluctantly met my eyes. “No, we’re not. We’ve reminded each other of ourselves from the first day we met, and the reflection is a little too close for comfort.”

  “There are more out there like me,” she said.

  No shit. “I figured. Did you know you could do that?”

  “That I could create smudges? You got me.” Ash was in a fine temper, all jutted chin, and cutting glances. “I’m the one running around town doing this. I’m also working with Mr. Sharp and his people.”

  “Here’s a wild idea. Try and see this from my perspective. Nothing about your magic fits the rules. I don’t subscribe to this hairbrained theory about recessive genes turning on.”

  “It’s a perfectly good theory, but how did you hear about it?” Her self-administered foot massage looked more like a full frontal assault.

  I rested my arms along the rim of the hot tub so I didn’t reach for her. “Assume I know everything that goes on in my House. Obviously, you didn’t create the smudges that are out there, but I’m still waiting for a plausible explanation about when your magic first showed up.”

  “Me too, but right now that gene theory is the only thing I’ve got, so stop making me feel like a criminal. You’re having trouble with all this? Try living it. Fuck.” She dropped her foot with a grimace.

  Even angry and upset, she glowed, bathed in moonlight and a radiance that all the darkness of her magic couldn’t diminish. Finding out her magic could create smudges must have been the ultimate head trip, but she’d refused to let that derail her and had successfully gotten the briefcase with the vial.

  I’d been so arrogantly certain that I’d had her pegged all these years, but the woman across from me was more intriguing than I’d ever given her credit for.

  27

  “Apology massage?” I said.

  She warily extended her leg. “Tickle me and I’ll puke on you.”

  “Noted.” I massaged her in even strokes, falling into the hypnotic rhythm, oddly content to let this conversation happen at its own pace instead of demanding answers to all my questions.

  “I swear I didn’t know about the smudges. But being able to take magic?” She sighed.

  “Sharing. Not a thing I do much of.”

  “Another thing we have in common,” I said.

  “I suspected I could do it the night we trained.”

  “Hence the freak out.” I dug my thumb into the arch of her foot and Ash moaned, pressing into my hand. The sound went straight to my dick, and I covered my reaction with a joke. “Foot massages. You’ve finally revealed your weak spot.” I pretended to twirl a mustache.

  “I’ve waited years for this.”

  “You’d have to catch me to use it against me.”

  “I could catch you.” My voice had dropped an octave, the blood pounding in my ears, and this ridiculous foot massage suddenly unbearably erotic.

  “That’s a terrible line. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  She thought I was joking. Thank fuck. I arched an eyebrow, playing along. “I am Levi Montefiore. I do not require lines. Women fall at my feet.”

  “More like your ego sucks up so much oxygen that they pass out.”

  “Can’t let me have one win, can you?”

  “We have a working pattern. Why break it?” Ash gnawed on her bottom lip. “I can’t stop thinking about Meryem. What they might be doing to her. Hopefully that thumb drive will have answers.”

  28

  “We’ll see, but in the meantime, there are more of those vials out there and they can’t be allowed to exist. Multiple smudges wreaking havoc? It’ll be catastrophic.” My fingers skipped up to her ankle and I forced myself to release her foot before I ghosted my way up the inside of her leg to see if the skin on her inner thigh was as soft as I imagined it.

  It was getting too hot out here. I was about to go inside when she spoke again.

  “That drive is our only lead right now to finding the kids, the vials, and whoever is behind this. You have any other ideas?”

  Business. Right. It was best to debrief about this now.

  “No.” I sank under the water to clear my head.

  Ash kicked me until I resurfaced. “Do you get manicures?”

  Huh?

  “Why illusion magic?” she said. “I always thought it was because you’re such a control freak that you had to bend the world to your will, but it doesn’t fit my idea of you that you’d think it’s monstrous.”

  “I’m not your puzzle to solve,” I said.

  “Sweet summer child, everyone is my puzzle to solve. Besides you’re the one who raised the whole onster-may thing.”

  She didn’t get to coolly psychoanalyze me. I caught her other foot, intending to distract her with another massage. “Drop it, Ash.”

  “Come on. You know all about my fucked-up life.”

  Right. Focus on that and how this has complicated my life immensely. And maybe let go of her foot, you idiot. “Actually, I don’t. Your dad took off. Sucks but you kind of went over the top with the whole car thing, don’t you think?”

  29

  “You don’t pull punches, do you?”

  “Not with you.” I didn’t have to. Was there anyone else I could say that about? “So?”

  Now Ash sank under the water for a moment. Not so fun to be dissected, was it?

  “Your dad was a Charmer,” I said. “Did he have you charmed or something and that’s why you went apeshit when he left?”

  “No. God. You knew about my dad’s magic? How big is that file on me?”

  “My father has no magic and it eats him up.” That fact never failed to make me happy.

  “He’s also shady as shit, and had to subcontract certain jobs over his illustrious career in data security to people with the innate ability to charm others into business deals that benefited my father.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Would that I were.”

  “My dad worked for yours? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Adam was gone by the time we met and I didn’t even know until several years ago.

  What was the point?”

  “The...?” Ash stood up. “Fuck.”

  “Sit down.” My equilibrium had been restored. It was my turn to ask questions. “Ashira.”

  “Dad taught me there were two kinds of people in this world, cons and marks. And marks were the worst thing you could possibly be. I had that pounded into my head. But when he left us without a word, that’s what I was. A stupid mark, because I’d believed him when he…” Her voice cracked and a tiny stab of guilt hit me. “When he called me his little jewel and said how much he loved me. So sue me, I went a little apeshit. I swore that no one was ever going to play me again. Except then I found out that someone had tattooed a ward on my head and suppressed

  30

  magic that hey, happens to be monstrous, and I’m realizing I’ve been played so many ways that I don’t even know what the game is. Or if you’re part of it.” She stared at me.

  Her accusation stung.

  “I’m not,” I said frostily.

  “Whatever. Now you know. Mazel tov. All your worst opinions of me are confirmed.”

  She tried to make her escape but I grabbed her arm. “What the hell are you talking about?

  I don’t think badly of you.”

  Ash yanked free. “You think I’m lying about my magic.”

  “No, I don’t understand why your magic wasn’t present at birth, but I don’t think you’re lying. Anymore.”

  “And that I go around doing whatever I want.”

  “You do.” I held up a hand as much to stave off interruption as protect myself from the volley of hate spitting from her eyes. “If I’m being honest, I admire that about you. Hell, I wish I could live that way. You’re doing exactly what you want to, despite all the obstacles you had to overcome: being female, being Mundane. You’re smart, you’re tough, and you have no hesitation dishing shit out to me constantly. You know how rare that is? With very few exceptions, everyone either wants to kiss my ass or knock it down a peg.”

  The incredulity that made her legs give way and Ash topple onto her ass would have been priceless if she hadn’t grabbed my shoulders for balance.

  I pulled away as fast as I could. It wasn’t fast enough.

  “Levi. Let me see. Please?”

  “Don’t you have enough ammunition for one night?”

  “No.”

  31

  “Great,” I muttered.

  “No, dummy. I mean… Do you know why I said you were Watson? Because he’s the moral center and for all your many faults, you care deeply about your House and your people.”

  I placed my hand on her forehead as if she were running a fever. “Methinks there was a compliment somewhere in that insult.”

  She smacked it away. “I’m trying to be nice here, but you make it impossible. Watson isn’t weak, and this isn’t about ammunition because scars aren’t weakness. They’re strength.

  They prove you survived. You know my scars. Let me see yours.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse, push her away with the harshest of retorts, but her expression was kind. My breath caught. Her magic was steeped in darkness, same as mine.

  Could I accept that she and I weren’t so different and in her, I might find the one person to understand me?

  I laid myself bare and showed her the scars crisscrossing my back.

  She traced a finger over one of the white lines. “Do they hurt?”

  Her gentleness on something that been created with such violence, unnerved me. I moved her hand away. “Not anymore.”

  “I’ve seen you in a tank top. How come I didn’t see them before? Whoa. Do you constantly illusion them away? That seems like an exhausting way to live.”

  “Since I don’t walk around naked, no, I don’t.”

  “You should try that next time you butt heads with the mayor. Might liven things up.”

  She hesitated. “You didn’t have the perfect childhood everyone assumes you did.”

  “Appearances matter.” I mockingly threw her words from the auction back at her.

  “Can I get you some wine for your pity party?”

  32

  I laughed. “Well played, Holmes.”

  “You do not have rights to that name,” she said. “Only Pri gets to call me Holmes.”

  I bopped her on the nose with my fingertip. “Ah, but I predate her. You get Leviticus, I get this.”

  “Try it and I’ll gut you. I rue the day my grandparents sent me to that stupid camp.”

  “Moriarty and Holmes. Admit it, that was the best day of your life.” It might not have been so bad for me, either.

  She stared at me oddly, and I braced myself for some scathing barb about how meeting me was the worst thing she’d ever experienced. It was more disappointing than I cared to admit.

  “You can’t call me that,” she said. “We aren’t Moriarty and Holmes.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because despite a staggering amount of fanfic, Holmes and Moriarty never did this.”

  She kissed me, falling into me sweetly, her lips soft and pliant. Had the past fifteen years been hurtling toward the inevitability of this kiss? I checked myself. With Ash? No way.

  I caressed her cheek, her skin slightly flushed from the hot tub, and an electric jolt shot to my groin.

  Ash blinked up at me, looking slightly stunned. I wanted to smirk, make a crack about being too much to handle, but mostly, I just wanted more, because that kiss had knocked me sideways. And we hadn’t even gotten started.

  I leaned forward and grinned. “Best day of your life.”

  My turn.

  I kissed her hard and rough, turning the adrenaline and fears of how the auction could have gone so wrong into something that burned bright and hot, making me feel gloriously alive.

  33

  She tugged on my hair bringing the finest sensation of pain. Challenging me even as she met me kiss for kiss, her tongue tangling with mine. Desire thrummed along my skin.

  Her body was dangerous slippery curves that I recklessly navigated.

  I pulled off her shirt, palming her tit. Her soft sigh fizzled from my fingertips down to my toes. “This is weird.”

  “Phrasing, dude.”

  “Not these,” I said. “These are…” I sucked one breast into my mouth, flicking my tongue against her bra, and feeling her nipple harden. Christ. “Magnificent.”

  Too much fabric. I pitched the bra over the side of the hot tub, losing myself in the taste of her. Even the faint tang of chlorine from the water was a turn-on.

  “Okay, yeah, it’s weird. Yay, weird.” Her voice was breathy and loose. Ash pulled me back up into another kiss that was ferocious in its wildness.

  My balls tightened, a shiver starting at the base of my spine. Thinking about cold showers, I pulled back, needing some space, because I was losing control too fast. But I couldn’t stop touching her. I traced up the inside of her leg. Her inner thigh was even softer that I’d guessed.

  Ash arched into me, her fingers digging into my shoulders.

  “Are you okay with this?” Please, be okay with it.

  “Put it this way,” she said. “Stop and die.”

  “I didn’t hear please. Etiquette is important.”

  “Evil bastard. Please.”

  I was a sick fuck, because the snark in her tone got me even harder, which I would have thought impossible. Naked. Now. I slid her underwear off, my mouth crashing down on hers.

  34

  Ash sucked on my lip and a growl tore from my throat. I opened my eyes. Her expression fierce, she pulled me close.

  I gripped the nape of her neck possessively. Our kiss was a dominance fight and I no longer knew if I wanted to win or lose. I stroked her clit, rewarded with that sigh, and her hips rolling against my hand.

  She’d seen my darkness tonight, and she still wanted me.

  Didn’t she?

  “Are you imagining Santino?” I said.

  “Who?” She blinked at me in obvious confusion.

  A knot deep inside that I hadn’t known existed, loosened. I gentled my hold, my kisses soft caresses down the length of her body.

  Ash rubbed my cock and, my breath shuddering out of me, I pressed against her. I played with her clit, catching her sweet gasps, claiming them for my own.