Feversong (Fever #9)(119)

The nights had been incredible, stretched out next to my best friend who turned me on with his quiet genius and long, lean body. We did everything, made out like the world was ending (which it was) and ground against each other with red-hot desire and young, hungry bodies. But each time his hand slid down to unbutton my jeans, I caught and held it, started a conversation, talked to him about anything and everything until he finally fell asleep. As long as my jeans stayed on I felt safe.

Then I’d lie awake next to him, listening to him breathing, staring at the ceiling, wondering what was holding me back.

I wanted Dancer to be my first. And I wanted to get rid of whatever was stopping me.

I trusted him. He made no demands. Never asked where I was going or when I’d be back. He had his own life and interests and they wholly engrossed him, and we went our separate ways and had separate adventures but came back together and shared our new parts, then had more adventures together. Being with him was as easy and natural as breathing. And we were learning so much from each other!

From the day I found him, I’d considered Dancer mine. That was why I’d been so shocked to discover he’d had his own world all along that hadn’t included me, with friends and girls who crushed on him hard.

I loved him. I hadn’t wanted to, but I did, and it was too late to change because once my heart went somewhere, I couldn’t pull it back. It’s a glitch in my wiring.

I’d decided Ryodan was somehow keeping me from going all the way with Dancer. Didn’t want me losing my virginity to somebody that might die. Not that Ryodan knew I was a virgin. But it would be a totally Machiavellian thing to do: a kind of “Don’t let Dani care too much about Dancer because when he dies, it might screw her head up, and she won’t be nearly as productive.”

I was so irritated by the time I got to his office, thinking about how he was messing up my life—again—that I blasted inside in full freeze-frame, and my vibrations at twenty-something are far more impressive than they were at fourteen. I no longer merely ruffle papers and hair; at high velocity I can shake the glass in walls.

His entire office rattled and shuddered as I stood there, peering at him from the slipstream. Then he was up in it with me, standing close.

“What?” he demanded.

“What do you mean, ‘What?’?” I growled.

“You only blast in here like this when you’ve gotten yourself worked into a tizzy about something. Get it out and over with. I have things to do.”

“Like paperwork? As if you were ever actually doing that. Is your tattoo screwing me up, or is it something else you’ve done?” I got right to the point.

“Screwing you up how?”

“Every blasted time I pass your club, your little compulsion spell tries to suck me inside. Get it off me.” He dropped down instantly and I followed him into slow-mo then stabbed him in the chest with a finger. “If you want to talk to me about something, text me. Don’t use magic on me. I’ve had enough of that kind of manipulation in my life.”

His silver eyes bored into mine. “Each time you pass my club you want to come inside?”

“You put the spell on me. You know how it works.”

He smiled faintly. “I didn’t put a spell on you.”

The instant he said it, I knew he was telling the truth. I can tell when he’s being deceptive and when he’s not. Ryodan’s modus operandi isn’t outright lying, it’s shaping words into twisty little pretzels of obfuscation. His reply was too straightforward to contain any twists.

I stood there wishing I could simply erase the past few moments from the chalkboard of my life. I’d just betrayed to Ryodan that I’d been contemplating him with such frequency and intensity, I decided he must have put a spell on me. And he’d gotten that faintly smug look in his silvery eyes probably no one else but me would have noticed.

One way or another I was getting out of this one with grace. “So your tattoo doesn’t have any effect on me whatsoever?”

“To the contrary. I’m the one it’s a problem for.”

“No spell?”

He sliced his head to the left and that smug glint shimmered a little.

I exhaled gustily and said, “So it is because I can’t stop thinking about it.”

He arched a brow, waiting.

“Shazam,” I clarified. “Each time I drive by here, I start thinking about him. You said you could help me.” These past few weeks, I’d forced myself to put thoughts of Shazam in suspended animation, focusing on saving the world and Dancer, in that order. How could I justify pursuing something I wanted just because my heart hurt so badly it almost made me puke in the middle of the night, when the world was silent and I worried about where and how Shazam was and if he was crying and all alone, when billions were going to die if we failed to save them? How could I leave Dancer? What if he died while I was gone?

When I was a kid, my thoughts were so linear: point a to point b. There was what I wanted and what I did to get it. But when you get older, you suddenly have all these c’s and d’s and z’s you have to factor in, too.

When I first returned to Dublin I’d been acutely aware of how much time was passing for Shazam while I hunted for a way to rescue him and get us both back home. The more time that passed, the more worried I’d gotten that I would go back for him and he’d be gone. Not only would I still not have him, I’d have paid whatever price I had to pay for going back—for nothing.