Chapter 5

 

The beach was cold and damp and absolutely perfect for practicing fire magic and talking without being overheard. The last of the dog walkers had left and it was too miserable for most other people. Julian loved having the beach to himself even if the weather was abysmal.

Of course when it was this cold, he didn’t swim. That was what he really needed to do to give himself a break. While the walk here had been nice, there was something about swimming that he loved and part of it was he had no affinity with the element and he could drown just like anyone else. The water also helped suppress all his magic, so for a little while he was free of it. And free of the responsibility.

Leira had texted this morning to make sure it was still happening, given the weather.

He should be feeling shitty about his two-day-old breakup, but if anything, he was relieved. The weight was gone, a weight he hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying. That was a good sign that he’d made the right decision. He’d actually woken up with a smile this morning.

A blond woman bundled up in a military-style coat and skinny jeans walked toward him. Her hair stuck out from under her beanie, blond strands trailing in the breeze. His heart did an odd little hiccup at the sight of her. He pushed it aside; they were here because of magic. Nothing more.

She was overdressed for the weather. It wasn’t that cold, not really. But then he was used to Sydney weather. They had a proper winter over there. This was still warmish, even though it was raining. He’d forgotten how sandgropers, people who lived in Western Australia, felt the cold, yet on her feet she wore flip-flops.

“This is…delightful.” She smiled but her tone suggested this was anything but.

The coat was too big. She must have borrowed it.

Julian smiled. “We have the beach almost to ourselves.” He tapped his jacket pocket. “I bought the diaries.”

Her eyes lit up. “Thank you. I wasn’t having the best night when we met. I’m very grateful you are taking the time to help me.”

“It’s okay.” He didn’t want her to be constantly thanking him. Any fire user would’ve offered her help; he wasn’t special. “You’ll probably get more out of the diaries than you will talking to me.”

There was a glimmer in her eyes for just a moment. “Well, let’s find out.”

They walked down the beach, away from the popular end and eventually sat on the damp sand surrounded by bits of driftwood.

“Want to build a fire?” He could get one going in a few seconds, even though everything was wet, but he wanted to see what she could do.

“Got a fire truck handy?” She brushed her long bangs out of her eyes.

“You aren’t that bad. You only set fire to a bowl of crisps.”

“This time.” But she reached out and placed a few small pieces of wood between them. She scowled as she concentrated. “This is much harder with damp wood.”

“That’s the idea. If it’s too easy, everything can go up.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“As a teen, I had firefighters talk to me about the danger of playing with fire. I’m sure they thought I was at risk of being a firebug.”

“Ouch. Why didn’t your dad step in?”

“He was at work so the neighbor looked after us. She was very concerned about me after I accidentally set her potpourri on fire. Trying to flush it down the toilet didn’t help.” He kind of wished he hadn’t started telling this story.

Leira glanced up. “What part of the story am I missing?”

The embarrassing part. “I was a fourteen-year-old taking my time in the bathroom and she wanted to know what I was up to.”

“Oh. It wasn’t lighting fires I’m guessing.”

“No… But I knew why those crisps caught fire.” The shock response. But why had she been so surprised to see him? He wanted to ask, but the wood released a thin waft of smoke before catching alight.

“Yes.” She gave a fist pump. “Now I need a lie down.”

“Fire is one of the strongest elements. You’ll be fine.” Fire users had tempers and a heart that didn’t know when to quit. They burned on the inside and were driven. What drove Leira?

“Fire can be put out by the other three.”

He nodded. “Because they are all threatened by fire, but no one wants to see an element die out. That would leave us unbalanced.”

“One more iron nail in the Albah coffin.” She glanced out at the sea. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we hadn’t hidden, if we’d lived openly from the time we started living among humans and the witch hunts had never happened?”

“I do wonder what it would be like to be open about magic.” He used his surreptitiously at work all the time. There was no point in being able to heal and then not using it, though his father managed just fine—although he did take the protect part seriously. “I’ve never really thought about the witch hunts.”

She glanced at him. “I’m doing my master’s in history. I’m looking at the witch hunts and the way they made genocide palatable to a superstitious population.”

“You are talking about the Albah.”

“Not brazenly. Quinn would have a fit.” She bit her lip at the mention of his father.

“Yeah, he would,” Julian agreed before she could apologize. “How are you at throwing fire?”

“You really don’t value your life, do you?”

He put up his hand. “Try throwing some sand.”

She did. It hit the shield he’d created, melted, and then fell to ground as beads of glass.

“What is that?” She didn’t reach out and touch.

“Shield. It’s a little less obvious than a wall of flame.” But he knew some men used that method of defense.

“The shield is a guy thing.”

He nodded. “How are you at scrying?”

She flinched as though he had burned her with the shield. “Fine, I guess. Not as good as Saba. What do you want to know?”

He shrugged. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know, but that didn’t stop him from being curious. “Does it bother you being able to see the future?”

“No, because it’s only the most likely future. If I don’t like what I see, I need to change it.” She dragged her finger down the length of wood and the flame followed. For a moment, it hovered at the end of her finger and he thought she was going to take hold of it. The flame winked out.

“Can you grasp the flame?”

“Sometimes.”

He turned his hand over and let the fire form in his palm. It was pure will, feeding of his energy. Fire needed to be fed. “Put out your hand.”

“No.”

“I won’t burn you.”

“I know, but…” She glanced at his hand and then his face. “Part of me doesn’t trust that it won’t.”

And that was her problem. She didn’t trust herself. He put the flame out and pulled out his mother’s magical diary. “Shall we go back to the beginning?”

“Magic for beginners.” But she scooted around so she could sit next to him and looked at the pages. “You sure I won’t accidentally incinerate the book?”

“Positive. They are warded against all damage. Nothing short of a nuclear strike could destroy it.”

“There’s a challenge.” She grinned and he found himself grinning back.

His jeans were damp, the drizzle hadn’t let up, and yet he was having more fun than he’d had since moving back to Perth. He really needed to get out more. But all he could think about was when they could get together to talk magic again.

* * * *

Emily lay hidden in dunes. The tracking app had worked perfectly and she’d followed Julian here. The blond woman he was with had walked right past her, and Emily had thought nothing of her until she’d spoken to Julian. Then it became clear this little bit was the family friend.

He was such a liar.

This was his new girlfriend. She took a few pictures. How many Albah were living in Perth? They didn’t tend to cluster. So was that bit of fluff from Perth or had she come over to see him and then marry him? The Albah were probably so inbred….

She shuddered.

They were trying to save their dying people, when they should be giving up. They’d lost that battle and now it was just the cleanup operation to round up the stragglers.

Julian and Leira had lit a little beach fire. If this was a first date, it was pretty lame, and cheap. But then Julian had never been a big spender. A tight-fisted doctor. She could do better.

When she thought it was impossible for this date to get any lamer, the two Albah sat close together and looked at a book.

Emily edged back until she could stand without being seen. Then she walked away and left them to it. She’d do some research and see if she could find out some more about the woman. Leira wasn’t a common name.

Or if she waited a few days, Julian might lead her to the fluff’s door.

* * * *

Despite the nice not a date at the beach—and it had ended up being a nice morning, they’d even gotten coffee afterward—Leira was still seeing nothing but smoke and flames in her future.

Surely taking a step forward and learning about her magic should prevent that?

Where did Julian fit in?

They had booked in another get-together, and he had smiled at her and kissed her cheek when they’d parted. She’d been so tempted to turn her head and catch his lips to see if there was something more there. There might be, and she wanted to take the time to find out.

It was so different meeting a guy outside of a club. The expectations were totally different. There had been less groping, and less drunken kisses, which wasn’t all bad.

The shop door chimed as she went in for her shift.

Saba looked up and smiled, but it was strained. “How are you?”

“Fine.” Leira tossed her bag behind the counter.

“I can tell.”

Leira glared at her sister. Had Saba done a reading without her permission? If so, that was so rude. No, Saba wouldn’t have done that. Saba stuck to the rules.

“Julian is the man from my reading, isn’t he?” Saba raised her eyebrows.

“You knew.”

Saba shook her head, her messy bun sliding farther out. “I thought he might be. I don’t know why and it didn’t really matter, as he was in Sydney and I hadn’t seen him in years. I thought I could’ve been wrong. And then he came back.”

“Maybe you were wrong. I expected more…” She was not going to say sparks. “Chemistry.”

“There’s none? Maybe the vision wasn’t about your love life but your magical life?”

Leira frowned. “No, because I’ve checked to see if it was still going to happen and it was always the same. He’s the one.” She paused. “Or at least he was.”

“What do you mean? Did you go out with him already? Is he horrid?”

“No, he’s perfectly lovely.” She’d had fun and she did want to see him again. Maybe she did need to kiss him. She’d never taken things this slow before. Maybe that was part of the problem. “We talked magic and… And that was all.” Maybe he didn’t like her, but he had in her vision, her old vision. A woman who was obviously on her lunch break from an office came into the store and started browsing the oracle cards. Leira lowered her voice. “The vision has changed.”

“Changed how?” Saba was watching her closely. “It shouldn’t matter, if it’s meant to—”

“I know, but it has. All I see now is thick black smoke.”

“Hi, which cards are better? Traditional tarot or oracle?” The woman was holding two different boxes of cards. One had fairies panted in soft pastel and the other was a good bit darker. This woman didn’t know what she wanted.

Leira knew that feeling. It was unsettling after knowing for so many years what was supposed to happen to suddenly have no idea.

“It doesn’t really matter. You need to pick something with artwork that speaks to you, as it is the artwork that will unlock your subconscious.” Saba smiled her customer service smile. Her voice was perfectly pitched to get a sale.

The woman looked at the picture on the front of each box and then went with the less threatening fairies. If she’d known that she was talking to the people who had inspired the fairy myths, she might have picked the darker cards. There was nothing delicate about the Albah. And they certainly didn’t have wings, although some air users could fly—or at least levitate. It was something that Saba had decided to start trying under Quinn’s guidance.

Saba rung up the total and the woman threw in a couple of crystals at the last minute before paying and happily heading back to work.

“I have about five minutes before my first client comes in. Did you want me to look?” Saba indicated to her reading room.

“No, but I need to work out how to fix it. I don’t want whatever is coming my way.” The thick black smoke was starting to haunt her dreams and she didn’t know how to escape.

“Change what you are doing,” Saba said as though it should be a simple problem to solve.

“I did. I went out with him. That should’ve been it, you know, back on track even if there were no trains involved.” She didn’t know what else to do at the moment.

Saba had her lips pressed tightly together, then sighed. “Does he know?”

“He doesn’t want to know anything about his future.”

“Oh. One of them.”

“Yeah.” Even Dale had come around to the idea of getting to see glimpses of the future could be a good thing, and Dale was human. Julian should have been just a little curious. She was curious and so very tempted to have a quick look on his behalf.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Stop using magic?” That way she couldn’t start any fatal fires. She had no idea. She hadn’t expected going to the stupid Albah crisis meeting would make her life take such a dramatic turn. Something must have been said, or had happened to do this, and it had to be more than meeting Julian at the wrong time.

Or was that it. She’d met him too soon.

“What if…” She trailed off as a middle-aged man entered the shop. He looked like he wanted to be somewhere else.

Her sister sprang into action. This was obviously her first client of the day. Saba loved doing readings for the skeptical and wary.

The man’s timing had been perfect, just as she had realized that it might be something as simple as timing. Did that mean Julian had someone?

She did not want to be the other woman.

That would be her first question for him next time—it was not the kind of thing one asked via text. It was, however, the kind of thing she was quite comfortable looking for online. She was sure that he’d have some kind of social media presence even if it was just for work, and maybe there’d be a clue in there.

An hour later and after wrapping up the late lunch break rush through the shop, she had nothing on him. It appeared Julian was completely single.

At least he wasn’t married.

Was there a way to fix the timing issue? Perhaps she could put him off and stall their next date. Non-date. It wasn’t a date when they spent the whole time talking magic or reading his dead mother’s diaries.

The first of which he’d loaned her. He trusted her that much. She’d asked him three times if he was sure. They were one of the few things he had of his mother’s after all and she didn’t want to accidentally lose or destroy them. That would be just her luck. He’d insisted, pressing it into her hand. He’d made some comment about having to see her again to get it back. She’d thought he was being funny. Maybe he’d been serious and was making sure there was a reason for them to get together again. Her lips curved. She couldn’t imagine women knocking him back—unless he had some horrible habit that hadn’t been revealed yet.

She ran her finger over the leather spine of the book. Julian’s protective wards were almost warm beneath the tips of her fingers. A little bit of his magic was now bundled up with his mother’s words on how to use fire. His mother had such neat handwriting. She’d even made a note in the front of the diary about two other fire-using women that she knew of. Both had been old twenty-four years ago. Both were dead now. That had been the first thing Leira had checked.

She was on her own. And she didn’t have long to fix her future.