Hidden time, p.7
Hidden Time, page 7
I shot her a text first. Busy?
Instead of replying, she called. “Rowena!” There were people who were happy to see me or talk to me—my parents and, dang…mostly, just my parents, but GW always made sure I knew it.
“GW!” I matched her enthusiasm.
“How are you? What have you been doing?” She paused. “Seeing anyone?”
Maybe it had been longer than I thought since we talked. I put the phone on speaker and set it on the table. “I am actually seeing someone.” After my divorce, many years ago, I hadn’t thought I was ever going to get to say that again. Not with hope in my heart. “I work with him.”
“Ohhhh, Nice.”
I pictured Craig, muscled and tan, the body of a Greek god, the smile of a model, a voice that made me want to do things to him. Sexy things. Man-I-feel-like-a-woman things.
“Yeah. He’s pretty great. We have to work out a get-together. I can’t wait for you to meet him.” It was true. He was important to me and so was she. And her opinion mattered. But Craig wasn’t the kind of guy who needed me to build him up. A blind woman would be able to see how amazing he was. Yet, I couldn’t stop singing his praises. Maybe it was because he was the shiny new toy in my box, but I wanted to tell her everything without making it sound like I was bragging about him. So, like it was a little add-on tidbit instead of one of the headlines. I added, “He’s a witch, too.”
“Oh, Ro! That’s so great.” She laughed. “I’m going to be single forever. I’ve already decided.”
I wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not. “Oh, G, there’s someone out there for you. I know there is.”
She laughed, probably sitting on her back patio with a glass of Merlot and a mosquito protection spell. “Don’t be trying to drag me into your little picture of domesticated bliss. There is joy in dating multiple men.” Or maybe she was with one of them.
For a while, I’d envied her lifestyle and wished I could be more social, more outgoing, because GW never lacked for companionship. It had taken me a while to realize, I could never pull off the work all day, play all night schedule she kept. I was born for monogamy. It was exhausting to have to be on all the time. Sometimes, I just wanted to wear my pajamas and stuff my face with ice-cream.
“Joy? I’m struggling to keep up with one guy.” And wasn’t that the truth. Craig was a sweetheart, but we were barely finding our groove. Sometimes the thought of keeping up overwhelmed me.
She laughed. “How’s work?”
When all this started, I’d told her the very basic information I had about the job but nothing about the assassinations or the spells I’d been mastering or that I was learning how to kill without leaving evidence. We were friends, but I wasn’t sure where her line in the moral sand sat.
“It’s kind of incredible.” Aside from the aching muscles and ass kicking I’d taken today.
“Oh, my God, Ro! Tell me everything.”
I told her what I could, and a lot she already knew. I’d signed about a thousand pages for HR and a couple had been non-disclosure agreements, and since I wasn’t sure if they were relative to my job as a whole or to specific missions, I gave the barest of details. That the company supplied era appropriate clothing, where I’d been, the things I’d been too young or too busy to appreciate when I’d actually lived in those times.
“What if you run into your younger self? Can you go back and find ten-year-old you and tell yourself not to kiss Jesse Hoffman? Tell teenager you not to hop into the backseat with Will Pruett.” We hadn’t known each other back then, but after a long night of drinking and watching romcoms on Netflix, we’d talked about everything. I didn’t think she’d remember so much.
“I can’t affect the future except what is specifically relative to my missions.” I wasn’t mentioning the plan to save my mother. Not to her. Not to anyone. At least, not until I had something definitive more than save mom as a plan.
“So, you can’t find me on New Year’s Eve 1999 and tell me not to sleep with Hunter O’Shane just because he says we only have minutes until the world might end?” She laughed. “Better yet, go back to the week before and tell me not to go out with him on New Year’s at all.”
Oh, the things I would clean up in my own past if I could. The marriage license I wouldn’t sign, the ceremony I wouldn’t show up for, the life I wouldn’t live. If only.
“I wish.” We both laughed.
“I’m going to make a list. You can run it by your higher ups and ask, at least. Honestly, who doesn’t want an undo of stupid things they’ve done. I don’t think I would be able to do that job.”
“The temptation is real.” Never more so than when I had time to sit with my regrets, my coulda, woulda, shouldas. “But what if I went back and never married what’s his freaking name and then I ended up not getting this place to live so I would never run into Artie and so on and so on…”
“Artie?”
Now that was a long story. And I wasn’t sure how to explain about him. The simple explanation was probably best, but it didn’t do justice to the importance of his place in my life. “He knew my biological mom back in the day. They worked together and he helped her.”
“Helped her like helped her reach her sexual potential or helped her like he showed her where the copy machine was?” She made both sound equally suggestive, and not for the first time, I wondered what kind of life she really lived.
“I don’t even know what that means.” I laughed and swirled the water around a bit to redistribute the warmth. “He helped her on her missions. She was the time traveling ass”—oops— “uh, time traveling witch before me.”
“Interesting.” She clicked her tongue a couple times. “So, it’s possible you could go back in time, have a conversation with her?”
“Yeah.” Not only was it possible, but I’d done it once and was going to make it happen again. I couldn’t contemplate the ramifications, the changes it might make to the future if my mother survived the Rogue attack. But the thoughts nagged. Timelines would change. But the one thing Artie always said was that if things were supposed to happen, they would no matter how much TIME interfered. So, if I was meant to be a time traveling assassin witch, I would be. And if I was meant to chase my cat through a portal I accidentally made and meet Artie, I would. Probably.
I had to believe so anyway.
“Wow. That is powerful. You really do affect the future.”
With great power came great responsibility. It said so inside the handbook for the agency. But that was a credo every witch knew. Power was one thing. To have it, wield it, harness it were all things every witch needed to master so we didn’t do harm where harm wasn’t the intent.
“Yeah, but I don’t. I go back, do my mission, then come home.” Most of the time.
“And date the hottie witch you work with.” Oh, good. I loved my job but explaining it to her was harder than I thought. And that was without telling her about the assassination missions.
But Craig was a topic I could’ve talked about all night. I could’ve done a few hours on his eyes alone.
“Have you guys… done the deed?”
It wasn’t like we couldn’t say the word sex. We were adults with active lives—hers more than mine—and sex was just a small part. Again, smaller for me than her, but I was getting there.
“A couple of times.”
“And?”
“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.” Not this one anyway. Mostly because prior to Craig, there wasn’t much kissing and even less to tell about. Since my marriage had died, I’d had other priorities. But now, I wanted to shout from the rooftops. I wanted to wear a T-shirt that said I was being boned by Craig Ferguson and it was good. Poem good. Sonnet good. Limerick good.
“Okay, but fair warning. Next time I see you, I’m getting you drunk so you spill all the juicy deets.”
“Deal.” But for now, all the juicy parts were mine alone.
I shifted in the water and my muscles groaned in protest. Or maybe it was me, but my muscles inspired the sound.
“Let’s get together next week. It’s been too long, Ro.”
I agreed. We made a plan, and I clicked the end call button. The hot tub wasn’t doing its job, or maybe it was, but I was too impatient to wait it out. I didn’t have time to lounge in the hot tub. Talking to GW reinforced the importance of coming up with a workable plan to save my mother. I waved my finger over the swirling water.
“Pain and ache soon be gone, heal the body, soothe the ache, take the burn for heaven’s sake.” I wasn’t sure about the end of the spell, but I closed my eyes and let my mind conjure a vision of the pain lifting out of my body, over the water, into the ether. Someone else could have that shit. Preferably someone with a rotten heart.
I stepped out of the water and stretched. Nary an ache. Nil on the pain. I did a slide into a dancer’s split then pulled myself up. Good as new. And hungry for something chocolate chip flavored.
Before I walked inside, I gave a cursory glance to the patio, looking for Fred. I hadn’t seen him in a bit or heard him since we were at TIME. There wasn’t much reason to think he would take another video since I wasn’t doing anything particularly video worthy, but I kept my fingers wrapped around my cell. I’d watched the video he’d made of Craig and me and somehow, for being a tiny little dragon, he’d worked the angles, used the lighting so it caught us at mostly our best. If this Fae-familiar-dragon thing didn’t work out for him, he had a career in the adult movie industry, but damned if I was telling him.
I clicked on the music app and selected my 80s playlist. Something about moonwalking like an Egyptian made anything I cooked taste better and some days, I could use all the help available to me. Besides, Bon Jovi and George Michael were fine kitchen companions when I had no one else. As I mixed the batter, I made a list of all the things I didn’t know about Craig. Like what kind of music he listened to when he cooked. Or if he cooked. It was funny, I knew his preference in underwear—boxer briefs—and the exact taste of his lips, but I didn’t know if he preferred NSYNC or the Backstreet Boys, Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock.
I used a spell to drop the batter onto the pan then slid the cookie sheet into the oven and set the timer. Twelve minutes. I sat down, looked left and right, then said, “Fred? Where are you, buddy?”
He didn’t answer, so I unlocked my phone, then went to the secret file where I’d stored the video. I wasn’t going to watch the whole thing, just a couple of seconds, the ones where Craig smiled down at me before he kissed me, and then I was going to delete it.
“Whatcha doing, Ro-Ro?” He fluttered his wings against my ear, and I fumbled the phone and somehow hit the volume button on the side so that Whitney was no longer the loudest voice in the room, but a deep guttural panting and a softer whimpering sound filled the air. Fred laughed as I hit the side buttons and the sounds went louder before softer. “Studying the game films?”
“Deleting the video you never should’ve taken, jerk.” And this time, I did. Sent it off to the space where digital trash cans emptied. I set the phone face down on the table, and Fred moved to flutter in front of the oven.
“The cookies smell good.” Now he was kissing up, because I still hadn’t completely forgiven him for his tomfoolery with the video.
Victoria hissed as Fred whooped like a rodeo cowboy and hopped onto her back like he was going to ride her. She bucked, he whooped again, and she took off around the house. “Good heavens, Fred. Could you leave the cat alone?” I shook my head and checked the cookies while Fred and Victoria weaved in and out between my feet and underneath the table. Finally, she caught a burst of speed and rammed Fred’s head into the bottom of a chair, and he toppled off her back, rolled along her spine and landed on his ass on the kitchen tile.
“Here kitty, kitty!” He did an admirable Nicholson in the Shining impersonation as I pulled the cookies from the oven and lifted them for a sniff. And like the bipolar Fae he was, he hovered over the tray of treats and folded his wings under his snout while he batted his suddenly long eyelashes. “You got a cookie in there for old Freddy?”
I chuckled. “Sure.”
He took one and gobbled it in a single bite, fanned his mouth with his wing, then immediately reached for another.
“Fred? You’ve been around for a while before me, right?”
He paused in the act of snarfing down another cookie. “Are you asking my age or if I’m immortal?”
I was curious about one, assumed the other, but I shook my head. “I was just wondering if you might know or have an idea why the Fae would be working with the Rogues. Do they have an established relationship?” If so, that should’ve been included in the literature. Someone should’ve damned sure mentioned I wasn’t just going against Rogue witches but also against ages old Fae magic.
Fred chewed his third cookie thoughtfully. “I think to understand the answer, you have to understand the Fae world, Ro.” He transformed to a pulse of light with a face. A quite handsome face—so beautiful, glowing eyes like glittering orbs, a chin and jawline that could’ve been chiseled from granite, light blue hair with a tuft hanging over his forehead. Fred was a hottie. “This is me, what I look like.”
Whoa. And I meant that. “Then why are you a dragon?”
He didn’t answer but fluttered into position on my shoulder in his dragon form. “Fae are instilled with magic. And the simple answer is, we sell it to whoever has the most to offer in return, so if the Fae are working with Rogues, it means the Rogues have something the Fae want or need.”
Hmm. He munched another cookie as I slid the rest onto a plate and carried them to the sofa where Vic curled into a ball beside me with Fred settled in the space at her belly. They looked cozy and comfy, quite the opposite to the earlier scene in the kitchen. All of a sudden, they were BFFs, or maybe Fred had found some catnip and took a roll. Their relationship puzzled me. But not enough for me to worry about. I was just happy to have a few moments of peace.
Fred pulled a beer from his dimensional pocket and chugged half the bottle. “How many more of those do you have in there? Doesn’t it weigh you down when you’re flying?”
He chuckled and hiccupped, scenting the air with the scent of barley and hops. “It’s a dimensional pocket. I’m reaching through time and space, not carrying anything with me. Didn’t we talk about this already?”
We had, but I still didn’t get it.
He laughed. “Just don’t cross the street to the convenience store for a while.”
“Fred…” There had been a lot of inexplicable phenomena since Fred came on the scene.
“I can neither confirm nor deny any allegations.” His non-denial was confirmation enough.
I laughed. There were definitely things about Fred I didn’t want to know. Things about Fred I didn’t understand. Things about Fred I didn’t care to discover. Ever. “You would be dangerous if you were one of the bad guys.” Mostly, I was just thankful Fred didn’t play for the other team.
He turned to me, grinning like he’d just eaten a big bowl of whatever dragons ate, then cocked a saucy eyebrow. “What makes you think I’m one of the good guys?”
Well. Didn’t that just say it all?
Chapter Thirteen
I walked into TIME with my head held high, my butt-whipping still fresh news, in my mind anyway, and when I stepped out of the elevator on the training floor, I looked around. A thousand eyes—okay maybe more like ten since only five people were around—followed me, and I stared back like a badass. Like I dared anyone to mention it.
Then, a pair of hands reached out of the door to the portal room and yanked me inside. And I knew those hands, recognized the gentle pressure of them on my waist as he pulled me against him.
“Hello.” I couldn’t have wiped the smile from my face with an industrial squeegee and a big bottle of ammonia. And he smelled like citrus and something divine that made me think of sunny beaches and sandy surf. My face and everything south of it warmed as he looked down at me.
“Hello, beautiful.”
The kiss was quick, nothing more than a brush of his lips across mine, but the swoon was real. “Were you waiting in here for me or do we have a new mission?”
He pushed my hair off my forehead with the tip of his finger, and his tongue poked out, wet the corner of his mouth. It was distracting and alluring, and I couldn’t focus on more than the glistening spot at the lower half of his lip.
“No new mission. I wanted to see you because I can’t stop thinking about you.” Now he pulled the lip I couldn’t stop staring at between his teeth. No possible way he didn’t know how adorable he was. Probably heard it all the time.
And the way he used words made me glad I was the one he spoke to.
“Better be careful. If we keep making out at work, people are going to talk. And you’re head of the… department?” It came out like a question because I wasn’t sure of the breakdown in hierarchy around here. I only knew he was chief analyst of the Ferguson line.
He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, and stern was just another look to love when this man was wearing it. “They screw with me, I’ll sign them up for classes with Miss Cage.”
I had to assume that since he’d mentioned her, he’d heard about my session with her. Embarrassment washed over me, and I looked down. I’d made so many mistakes before I figured out who and what I was and suffered through the shame of not knowing how to control my powers, but this was worse. That was didn’t know. This was not prepared. Weak. Pathetic.
“Now that’ll kill some confidence.” I would know, thanks to Artie.
He tilted his head again. “I heard.”
“I figured.” And I rolled my eyes because I didn’t appreciate being the topic of anyone’s juicy conversations. This place was worse than the National Enquirer.
Like he was in tune with my emotions, he softened his expression and smiled. “We aren’t all just coworkers here. Most of us are related in one way or another, so your only choice is to ignore the gossip, because no way are we ever going to be able to stop it.” They could gossip all they wanted about me and Craig. Hell, I’d given them tidbits to share because I wasn’t one bit ashamed of being with him. But having my ass handed to me by some superstar hotshot trainer was a wholly different story. Probably because I’d thought I was the superstar hotshot these days, and I didn’t like being proved wrong.
