Twisted Fate: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (The Harlequin's Harem Book 1) Page 8

  Another conspirators glance, this time between Eli and Damon. “Why do you say it?”

  “Because whatever was in there wasn’t a person. I thought it was, it sounded like one; breathing, talking. But I just knew it wasn’t a person.”

  “Do you have any idea what it was?”

  A demon. I shook my head. “No. It would be stupid if I said it out loud.”

  “Trust us,” Logan said, “We’re here to help you, Andi.”

  I looked at him and nodded. “Demon,” I said, “Some kind of monster.”

  “Could you describe it?” Damon asked.

  “I didn’t see it, I could only hear it. First it was breathing, then it started speaking…”

  “Speaking? To you?”

  “No… I think it was… sleep-talking. Dreaming.”

  “Dreaming,” Eli said, “Then it’s true.”

  “What’s true?”

  He shook his head. “We needed to be sure, but you’ve shown all the signs now.”

  “As if the mask didn’t do it,” Logan put in, the sarcasm clear in his voice.

  “The mask wasn’t necessarily indicative of anything,” Damon said, “We all get Talismans.”

  “Not all of us.”

  “Guys,” I interrupted, “Could one of you talk to me?”

  All three men shut up and turned their eyes on me, but none of them spoke, not at first. It was like they were waiting to see if I would figure it out on my own. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to figure anything out without being told, Damon—as usual—took control of the conversation, but not before commanding me to look at him without even having to ask; I felt my gaze get pulled toward him as if by an invisible hand.

  “First there was luck,” Damon said, “Luck that we had happened to be eating at your restaurant last night, that you had been working, that Lucia had been there too. You were lucky that the men chasing you hadn’t caught you, lucky you hadn’t been killed crossing North Rampart. Jumping over the car like that, all Mages are a little faster, stronger, and tougher than humans, but you’d been lucky to have seen it in time to react. Lucky there was a band playing in the park, with a crowd gathered around…”

  “Okay?” I said, “So, I’m lucky.”

  “Supernaturally lucky,” Damon continued. “Then there was the phantasm, the way you’d created an illusion of yourself that everyone could see, not just the people chasing you. We weren’t kidding when we said that gift was rare. It is. I’ve never seen anyone create a phantasm like that before. But what really solidified to me what you were, what your magical bloodline is, is the dream you just described.”

  My… bloodline. “What about the dream?”

  “What you described to us wasn’t a normal dream; you were dream-walking, reaching out with your own consciousness to another person’s.”

  “But… it wasn’t a person. I know it wasn’t a person. It was a monster, a demon; an It, not a He.”

  “Whatever the case may be, the thing you were reaching out to was dreaming… this is an ability only one bloodline of Mages possesses, has ever possessed. The skill isn’t teachable.”

  “What bloodline?”

  “They’re called Harlequins,” Eli said, “They’re one of the oldest known lines, and they’re also incredibly rare. You just don’t see them.”

  “Mainly because they don’t want to be seen,” Logan said.

  “Right, because their gifts are unique and powerful, and people would want to exploit them for it. I’ve heard of entrepreneurial Harlequins selling their services as freelancers, but these stories come out of places like Brazil, Italy, Romania—rarely in the US. It’s like Harlequins in America don’t want to be known.”

  “So, if what you’re saying about me is true, then I should want to hide?”

  “What we’re saying about you is true,” Damon said, “If your gifts aren’t enough to prove it, then your Talisman is.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve used that word, Talisman.”

  “It’s what your mask is. An offering to you from whatever higher power allows us to use magic. Some Mages get one when they come into their powers, though it’s not always known how they get one.”

  “I… pulled mine out of my dream like it was Freddy Krueger.”

  “Consider it a blessing. Mages who have Talismans are usually a lot more powerful than those without, but that isn’t what we should be talking about. We should be talking about Lucia, and how we can find her.”

  I scanned the guys’ faces. “I thought you said you didn’t have a plan.”

  “Well…” Eli started, “We do now that we have a confirmed Harlequin on our team.”

  “On your team? What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll need to practice some,” Damon said, “But tonight you’re going to use your magic to find Lucia.”

  “What? How?”

  “You’re going to get into her dreams… but first, you’re going to get into mine.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The saying went, you’ve gotta learn to walk before you can run; I was being expected to learn how to fly before I could crawl.

  “You realize I don’t know what I’m doing, right?” I said to Damon.

  All four of us had gathered in Eli’s lounge. The sofas, coffee table, and armchairs had been drawn aside to create a circle for me to be able to stand in, to have enough room to operate in. I wasn’t quite sure what operate in meant, but I didn’t like the sound of it. It made this whole thing seem much scarier, much more dangerous, than it probably was.

  Then again, what the hell did I know about magic?

  “None of us do at the beginning,” Eli said, “It takes a while to get used to this all.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Logan put in.

  “We aren’t all Primals like you.”

  Logan grinned, smugly. “Unfortunately, huh?”

  Eli rolled his eyes.

  “That’s enough of that,” Damon said, then he turned to look at me. “I know this seems like a lot, but you need to trust us when we say, the magic will come. All you have to do is think it, believe that it will come when you want it, and then summon it.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “Magic is yours, Andi. You are its master, but also its slave. Treat magic with respect, and it will in turn take care of you and all of your needs. Abuse it, and you will end up as one of the Wretched.”

  That word struck a sharp, off-key chord. “Wretched?”

  “A Mage no longer in control of their magic,” Eli said, “Lost. Dangerous.”

  I nodded. “I still don’t know what I’m doing, but if you say it’s as easy as thinking it, I’ll try. What should I do exactly?”

  Damon looked over at Eli, then back at me. “We’re going to see how good your luck manipulation is first.”

  “Luck manipulation? I’m sure I’ve never thought I’m going to have good luck right now, so I have no idea where to start there.”

  “Probably not, but you have been in tight situations before, have responded on instinct, maybe you’ve known where to put your foot to avoid the loose floorboard, or you’ve spent just enough time at the store to qualify for a hundredth customer of the day discount.”

  “Is that even a thing?” Logan asked.

  “For the purposes of this exercise, it is,” Damon said. “What you have to do, is surround yourself with good luck, feel it, want it. Then Eli is going to hurl that baseball at you, and it’s going to miss because luck is going to get in the way.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” I asked.

  “Then you get hit in the stomach with a baseball,” Eli said, shrugging, “And I used to pitch for my team in college, so I’ve got a pretty mean curve-ball.”

  I stared at Damon, then at Eli. “I hate this idea, you should both know that.”

  “I hate it too,” Eli said, “But we have to try something.”

  “Okay, whatever. C’mon.”

  Damon stepped ba
ck. Eli wound back his arm and waited. He didn’t want to hurt me, so he hadn’t quite pulled his arm all the way back, but if that ball shot off him like a bullet—and given the size of him I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t—then I was likely to throw the contents of breakfast up all over the hardwood floors.

  I watched Eli from where I stood, repeating the word luck in my mind like a mantra. Luck, luck, luck… give me luck. Magic, give me luck. Eli then pulled his arm back a little more, and launched the ball at me, but just as he did, a big black dog jumped up against one of the side living room windows and began barking and slavering. Eli’s shot went wide of where I stood, smashed into a wall, bounced, and then flew through one of the front windows, shattering a glass panel.

  I hadn’t realized until the adrenaline had started coming down that my body was buzzing slightly, possessed of a kind of vibration.

  Damon and Logan looked over at Eli scowling at his dog; a gorgeous, black Rottweiler. Eli then turned his attention on me. “There’s no way…”

  “I got lucky,” I said.

  Logan chuckled. “Yeah, you did.”

  I shook my head. “No, I mean, I got lucky. I don’t know how I did that.”

  “Maybe it’s more of an intuitive kind of magic,” Damon said.

  “Or maybe she can’t control it,” Eli said, “It just moves and twists around her to protect her from harm.”

  “There’s a word for that,” Logan said, “It’s fate.”

  Damon nodded. “I agree. Maybe this isn’t the kind of magic we should be asking her to perform.” He narrowed his eyes, “Try to create a phantasm.”

  “A phantasm?” I asked, “Like, try to make a clone of myself?”

  “Maybe not something as extreme… you should be able to create just about anything, really. Anything you can think of.”

  Creating a phantasm, or whatever, of the dog came to mind, but that seemed too complicated. Then again, I had created three clones of myself just last night, but that had been under strenuous circumstances, and I wasn’t entirely sure how in the world I had done that to begin with. Replicating the effect here, under the watchful eye of three other people, seemed like an impossible task.

  Then I figured out what I could create. I stretched my hand out and opened my palm, turning it up toward the ceiling. I concentrated as hard as I could, narrowing my eyes and staring at the center of my palm, imagining a blueprint of the object I wanted to call into existence floating in the center. The vibrations returned to my body again, radiating out from my chest, shooting into my arm, and then pushing through to the hand I was holding out.

  A light, faint and small, appeared above my hand. It danced, swirling this way and that, then it multiplied into two lights, then four, and so on, continuing to multiply the way an embryo would grow in the womb, splitting and growing until it became a fully-fledged… baseball. The ball sparkled and glistened for a couple of seconds after I had created it, but then it settled into a completely solid form, becoming indistinguishable from a real, material ball.

  I closed my hand around it, and tossed the ball to my other hand, but when I caught it, the ball exploded into a handful of glittering, blue stardust.

  “Dammit,” I groaned, “I’m really bad at this.”

  Damon’s eyes narrowed, then he exited the room in a hurry, leaving the rest of us wondering where he’d gone, what he was doing, and me in particular, wondering why the ball had broken apart like that. What had I done, or not done, that I had done or not done last night when I created those clones of myself?

  When Damon returned, he had my mask in his hand. My heart leapt into my throat and began to pound. “You aren’t serious,” I said.

  Damon approached and handed the mask to me. “I am,” he said, “Put it on.”

  “Damon… I’m not sure about this.”

  He walked around behind me and, without asking permission, pressed the cool mask against my face and tightened the bow around the back of my head. The mask fit perfectly around the contours of my face, as if it had been made especially for me. I touched it, couldn’t help myself, and almost smiled at the way it felt beneath my fingers; almost.

  Powerful. The mask felt powerful.

  Damon circled around and stood in front of me. “Try it again,” he said.

  I screwed up my face, put my hand out again, and this time all I had to do was think of a baseball, and then blue lights appeared from out of nowhere, congealing and coalescing just above my hand to create the shape of a baseball in only a manner of seconds. When the baseball had taken shape, it materialized and dropped into my hand.

  Tentative, hesitant, Damon picked the ball up and tossed it at Eli, who examined it more closely. “Looks pretty real to me,” Eli said, nodding, “You’ve nailed it.”

  My body was buzzing, infused with a kind of power I had only felt once before while under duress. Now, standing as I was in the middle of the lounge, totally comfortable and safe, I was able to experience the extent of my magic in a way I just hadn’t until now. The very idea that I was using and manipulating magic no longer seemed like a foreign concept to me, not with the mask on. Now it felt like returning to a home I had made a long time ago.

  Then I noticed something; something I had only caught a glimpse of last night. There was a pattern of lines and shapes forming under the skin of my forearms. The patterns looked like a tattoo, but they were incredibly faint and almost imperceptible, but they were there. I spotted the symbol for spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, each of them interconnected by a series of black lines. They faded away to nothing while I watched, taking with them the buzzing sensation I had been feeling.

  “Okay,” I said, “Now what?”

  Damon nodded. “The third and final thing I want you to try right now,” he said, “I want you to dream-walk.”

  “Dream-walk? With who?”

  “With me.”

  “Don’t you have to be sleeping for that?” Eli asked.

  “I’m going to put Andi and I under, and when she’s asleep, she’s going to find my consciousness and reach into my mind, then she’s going to try and find whatever I’m dreaming about and either participate or just… observe.”

  “I can… participate?”

  “I’m not a Harlequin, so I don’t know exactly what you can do, but you’re not going to find out unless you try.”

  “And you’re suggesting I participate in your dream?”

  “If you can even reach my dream, it’ll be a step in the right direction. What you do after is entirely up to you—use your discretion.”

  Shrugging, I nodded. “Alright,” I said, “I guess this is what counts, right? This is how we’re going to find Lucia?”

  “If you’re good enough at dream-walking you might be able to reach for her sleeping consciousness and have her tell you where she is, so yes, I think it’s the best shot we have.”

  I took a deep breath and sat down on the couch, then let myself slide until I was on my back. “Okay… I have no idea how to even initiate this, so you’re going to have to be patient.”

  “It should be no different than what you did with the ball,” Damon said, settling into the couch opposite me. He didn’t lie down, but he did lean his head back and close his eyes. “I’m going to use my magic on you from here, so just let it wash over you. Don’t resist.”

  “I won’t.”

  Eli and Logan sat down on arm chairs around the room and prepared to wait until Damon and I were both done. Neither of them knew how long this would take, I didn’t either, but it seemed like we had all day because, well, if I could only reach into a sleeping mind, then we would need to make sure Lucia was asleep if I had any hope of slipping into her consciousness.

  As I lay on the sofa with my eyes shut, I became distantly aware of a warm blanket of energy falling on me. I sensed it first at the edge of my perceptions, and my body reacted to it by setting the hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck on edge. Instinct told me if I wanted to resist this feeling, if
I wanted to shake it off, I could—I only had to want to shake it off. I remembered then how it had felt to be hit by that green bolt of light, how much it had hurt, and how I hadn’t had an option to resist—I just had.

  Maybe that’s what happened with all negative magic; you just resisted it by default, your body knew it wouldn’t be good for you, so it put up some kind of shield. But Damon’s magic wasn’t exactly negative. The closer the feeling got to me, the more I understood, this magic was more of a suggestion—sleep?—than a command—here’s a big fat worm for your throat, now you can’t speak.

  My muscles relaxed as I allowed the effect to take hold of me. Seconds later, my mind was already starting to float, to simultaneously rise above my consciousness while also sinking deeper into it. I became aware of the sound of my own breathing becoming more and more distant as one moment stretched into another, and another.

  The urge to open my eyes arrived, and when I did, I was no longer lying on a sofa in Eli’s bright, airy lounge, but standing in the hallway on the first floor and staring at the door directly across from me. The lights were on here allowing me to see just fine, I didn’t need a light—my light. Panic tried to settle in as the memory of my dream last night tried to take hold, but I didn’t let it. This was different. I was in control here.

  I took a deep breath, the sound of my own lungs taking in air seeming like an altogether internal sound than an external one, then I stepped forward toward the door, one motion after the other. There were no markings on it that I could see, and the door itself looked like any other door on the house’s first floor, but I knew what was behind it; Damon’s dreaming mind.

  This knowledge came as instinct too, much like the instinct to protect myself from his magic. So, when I spotted the branching hallway to my right, a hallway that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and I felt like it would take me back to that thing I had encountered last night, that demon, I didn’t question the instinct. Instead I continued walking toward the door directly ahead of me, taking hold of the handle when I reached it, then turning it and pushing the door open.

  The room beyond the door was dimly lit. What light there was, in fact, was flickering and dancing like the glow from a fireplace. Immediately I noticed this room didn’t belong in Eli’s house. It looked more like a log cabin somewhere north of… well, Chicago; somewhere cold. There was a fireplace, and the wood was crackling and popping, the fire casting shifting shadows on the walls and ceiling, but that wasn’t the centerpiece of this stage.