Natural Mage (Magical Mayhem #2)(44)

She was worried about an intrusion of privacy. I thought she was crazy. Having people look after us was awesome. As far as I was concerned, if they wanted to do my chores, they could snoop as much as they wanted.

“Come in,” I called, staying where I was for the moment.

The door swung open and a head slowly came into view. His eyes darted around the house, probably looking for Reagan, who would try to torment him in some way, before landing on me. And there they stayed, wary.

His body slowly followed his head. Hair styled just so and a face beautiful enough to make angels sing, the maid was surely a vampire. His graceful movements only confirmed it. And based on his nervousness, he’d clearly heard about the other night.

“You’re good.” I threw up my hands in surrender, and his eyes blink-flinched. Had I thrown magic, I totally would’ve had him. “Oh, sorry. I just meant that I won’t do any magic. You can come in. Worry-free.”

And this was what working with Reagan had done to me—think about every situation as a possible life-ending event. Yesterday’s vamp had been greeted by my bug zapper. What would happen when someone went to hug me? Would I sucker-punch them?

The vampire nodded and scooted to the kitchen with his bag of groceries. He didn’t even want to be in the same room as me.

There went my hope of having vampire friends. If I’d ever had one.

I thought about texting my mother, just to check in, but I’d probably wake her up. That would guarantee me a call and a serious tongue lashing. Best to wait until tomorrow and claim forgetfulness for not doing it today.

I stopped near the edge of the living room, deciding which way to go. My room was obviously the no-brainer choice, but if I did that, I’d end up falling asleep. As good as that sounded, I’d wake up early (by Reagan’s standards), and tomorrow would be a long day.

So it was either sit in the backyard with the dummy I’d tried to kill on multiple occasions, or on a porch chair looking over a sea of remembered loss.

The vampire glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes tight and body language nervous. It occurred to me that I was standing in the middle of open space, staring off in the distance—in his direction. He probably thought I was staring directly at him, with crazy eyes and an unhinged personality. The poor guy was clearly wondering if he would make it out of the house un-dead.

“Thanks for ironing, by the way,” I said to lighten things up. “I mean…if you were the one who did it.”

“Of course.” His formal bow turned into another wary stare. When I didn’t say anything further, he scooted into the pantry, where I couldn’t see him.

Grimacing, because that hadn’t gone well, I let myself out the front door and took one of the chairs facing the cemetery across the street. I glanced up at the light, considering whether I should flick it on. It would look creepy sitting here in the dark. I was still within the bounds of the ward, which covered the whole house and backyard, so I was safe even in the light.

Then again, I was looking over a cemetery. Creepy fit in.

The moist chill covered me like a blanket, the neighborhood quiet and subdued, which made sense, given the late hour.

I thought over what Veronica had said. Callie and Dizzy were nervous, which was more telling than all of the visitors who’d come bearing questions. They didn’t rely on their intuition much, from what I could tell, but it was still there, working away below the surface. Their subconscious minds would be processing body language, tone changes, and anything out of the ordinary, feeding the information to their brains on the sly.

They thought something was amiss. And I’d learned to pay attention to that sort of thing.

Movement caught my eye. A grizzled-looking older man clad in black drifted out of the cemetery entrance across the street. Dark clothes hung off his bony frame. He stared at me as he peeled off to the side and stood in front of the wall.

A thrill ran through me as I wondered who he could be. A drug dealer sounded about right, with his rough look and the hours he kept.

Then again, would Reagan put up with that kind of thing across from her house?

I doubted it.

So then what? A thief, maybe? A guy casing houses?

Whatever he was, I knew what he was not. He was certainly not a mage. He didn’t have the satchel, for one, or the pompous strut that said he was somebody. Even Callie and Dizzy, lovely people, had a certain lift to their shoulders and height to their chins.

This character stooped, and not because he was trying to be sneaky, but because he didn’t want to be noticed.

I knew that posture well.

I watched him…watching me.

The scene should’ve been awkward, yet as I stared, and he stared back, I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to see if he did something fantastical that identified him as a magical person of some kind.

And strangely…it seemed like he was waiting for the same thing.

A car rolled by at the end of the street, the engine clunking badly.

The man’s head turned slightly, catching the motion, but it immediately snapped back, like he expected to catch me sprinting away.

That was when I felt something drift toward me along the air currents. It felt…welcoming, almost. A come-hither sort of invitation.

Wisps of colorful magic wafted up over the walls of the cemetery, curling into the air. Light and playful. They fizzled out at a certain distance before more, stronger streams of magic blossomed.