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  “No. Absolutely not. I’m on the city council. I’m a Marsden, for God’s sake. I can’t do this. I won’t.” She drew into herself, as if draping layers of protection around her slim form.

  The cracks in her armor were too easy to see, in the slight tremor of the pale hand at her throat, the way her eyes darted all over the room, landing everywhere but on him. Vadim knew he’d have to be careful or those cracks would become breaks. He wanted to blackmail her, not destroy her.

  “Look,” he said, and then he paused, unsure how to continue.

  “How did you even find me? You shouldn’t be here. I never bring anyone here. You need to leave.”

  “You weren’t at your apartment so I took a chance you might be here. Been a long time since I was in this part of town. It hasn’t changed much.” He had to get her calm before she shattered.

  “Did you work for a family here?” She spoke slower, drawing out every word with care.

  Good. That was good. It meant she recognized she was spinning out of control and needed to get a grip. “No,” he said, but he refused to elaborate. “I’m gonna turn the lights out and you’re gonna practice turning them back on.” He glanced around the room, finding a small control panel near the doorway. He walked to it, in no hurry and giving her plenty of room, and held his thumb on the button until the room was dark.

  “I told you, I can’t do this.” A hint of the franticness returned to her voice.

  “I did my homework on you. Watched a bunch of the clips on your site. Debating in council meetings. Answering questions from reporters, from voters. Giving speeches. You are letter-perfect and always in control.” As he spoke he moved to the center of the room.

  “Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?”

  “If you can handle all that, I find it hard to believe you’d let a little magic defeat you, Elizabeth.”

  “I told you not to call me that!”

  “Yeah, but Councilwoman Marsden is such a mouthful. What do your friends call you?” He flashed the lights with a gentle push of energy.

  “You are not my friend.”

  A vision of her on the dance floor spurred him to put a little heat in his next words. “What do your lovers call you?”

  “You damn sure aren’t my lover!”

  Vadim knew he should pull back but he couldn’t help himself. “You were eager enough last night. Normally I don’t mix business with pleasure but for you I’d be happy to make an exception.” Long, playful pulses of the room lights underscored the tease.

  “Stop doing that.” She gestured at the lights and took a step.

  “You make it stop.”

  “I can’t.” Anguish twisted her features into those of a scared animal. But still beautiful. Painfully so.

  Some inner weakness he thought he’d crushed years ago urged him to go easy on her. Calla’s brother Jason had his own issues with magic, but they had nothing to do with fear. Elizabeth Marsden seemed terrified to tap into that part of herself. It made him angry for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint.

  But he couldn’t coddle her. There was no time. Magic Born children spent years developing their abilities. He needed her ready in months. That wasn’t near long enough, but he believed she could handle it. He’d seen flashes of the steel in her. She just needed to direct it toward the magic at her fingertips.

  “Start with intention,” he said. “Focus on what you want.”

  “I want you to leave. If I focus hard enough, will you disappear in a puff of smoke?”

  There it was, the steel in her voice. Vadim smiled. “It’ll take more than that to get rid of me.” He kicked the lights into a seizure-inducing rhythm. “If you want the lights to stop, focus on it. Gather the energy inside of you, the magic. You know what it feels like.” He stepped closer, bringing his hand up and closing it into a fist slowly. “Gather it, and then push it out. Send it into the lights and tell them what to do.”

  She buried her face in her hands, long streamers of dark red hair falling past her shoulders. “This is insane. I can’t do this.”

  “Telling something what to do?” Vadim laughed. “Giving orders is second nature to you, Councilwoman Marsden.” He emphasized her title and name.

  She pushed her hair back, clasping her hands on top of her head. “This is not who I am. Don’t you understand that? I can’t be...I can’t be this.”

  “You may not know how to use it but it’s still in you. Part of you. I’m betting it makes itself known, doesn’t it?” The look on her face confirmed it. “Wouldn’t it be better to know how to control it? Direct it, use it, rather than fight it?” The lights were giving him a headache now but he kept it up, whispering to the wires with the force of his will. Such simple magic had been so ingrained in him for so long, he wasn’t sure if he was explaining it well enough to her. They’d have to muddle through with his best efforts. Bringing another person into this wasn’t a good idea. “Just try to focus, Elizabeth.”

  “I told you not to call me that!” She flung her hands in the air. If he’d been standing close she would have hit him.

  “Then tell me what to call you because I’m not gonna keep spitting out Councilwoman Marsden every time I want to address you. Come on, work with me here.”

  “Work with the man who’s blackmailing me?”

  “I’m not exactly having fun here either, Red. So let’s trade. I tell you to give me another name to call you, and you tell these lights what to do. That way we’re both giving orders and we both get to feel like we’re in charge of something. Does that sound appealing to you?”

  Her legs wobbled. She caught herself before she fell, instead sinking gracefully to the floor. “Just make this stop, please. I can feel it.”

  “Good! Tell me what the magic feels like to you.”

  She slapped the floor with one hand, the other pulling her hair to one side. “Like another heartbeat only louder. Harder. In time with the flashing.”

  “So make it steady. Focus on it and make it steady.” He knelt at her side. The temptation to place a comforting hand on her shoulder was powerful. Irritating. He ignored the impulse and kept pushing. “Tell it what to do, Beth.”

  Red hair flew as she shook her head violently, eyes shut. “No one calls me that.”

  “Are you focusing?”

  “Shut up, you idiot.” The strain brought out tiny lines at the corners of her eyes, sweat popping out at her hairline.

  “Because this is bringing on a migraine. I’d like for you to stop it.”

  “You bastard,” she snarled.

  “Terms of endearment already? I really feel like it’s too soon for that, Liz.”

  Her body shook with effort. “Nope. Not that, either.”

  “You’re no Betty.” He struggled with the urge to put his hands on her. “Is it Lizzie? Not sure if that fits, either.”

  “It’s Lizzie.” She gasped, moving jerkily to her hands and knees. “This hurts so much.”

  “That’s because you’re fighting it. Take control, Lizzie. Show it who’s boss.”

  She cried out, a spasm twisting her body. Vadim moved in front of her and took her hair, drawing it out of the way. He tipped her chin up with one finger, the other hand still twined in the silk of her hair, and met her eyes. “Focus. Clear your mind of everything else and focus.”

  “I can’t.” A sob wrenched out of her, jagged and desolate. “I can’t do magic.”

  “The hell you can’t. You’ve been doing magic for two, three minutes now.”

  Her face crumpled. “What? No.”

  “I started the light show but you’ve been the one keeping it going. That’s why you feel it so acutely. Take control of it, Lizzie. You can do this. You were born a witch, just like me. It’s in your blood.”

  She lowered herself into a seated po
sition. Not caring about questions of why or what happens later, Vadim pulled her into his arms. Despite her height, she felt so small, so fragile. “The magic belongs to you. Not the other way around. So take control and bend it to your will.”

  Her body shook. She squeezed her eyes shut, a look of total concentration wiping away the fear. It took several minutes and there were a few times her body tensed so hard he thought she was falling into panic again. Gradually, the lights began to slow until it was several seconds between each pulse. Then darkness covered the room.

  It took another full minute for her breathing to sound normal. Still, he held on to her tight, reluctant to let go. He knew as soon as she was herself again he’d be ducking the slap of her hand.

  Lizzie surprised him though. Avoiding his eyes, she pushed him away and stood, straightening her sweat-drenched clothes and mussed hair. He followed suit, waiting for more name-calling, threats, whatever way she chose to lash out.

  With her back to him, she turned her head to speak over her shoulder. “You are to stay away from my office. Both in city hall and my district. The apartment is off-limits, as well. We’ll meet here, only after dark. Make sure no one follows you.” She paused. “Since you let yourself in, I’m sure you can see yourself out.” She left the room, spine ramrod straight and hair a cloud in the dark behind her.

  Vadim knew when to keep his mouth shut. Whatever internal metaphorical river she’d just crossed, he was happy to be grateful and not look a gift horse in the mouth. It made him curious though.

  Lizzie Marsden made him curious about a lot of things.

  The earlier rain had fizzled itself out into a heavy mist by the time Vadim took a seat on an eastbound train. Blackmail had never bothered him before, but this was already turning into a bad bit of business. One minute Lizzie seemed made of steel, the next he held her shaking in his arms. What the hell was he supposed to do with that? He really had watched the videos of her he’d mentioned. She carried herself with graceful aplomb and a layer of ice noticeable even on news footage. He supposed she’d needed that to protect herself from exposure. But what was beneath all that elegant frost? He wanted to know. He’d never thawed himself an ice queen before.

  Too bad he couldn’t do that now. He’d been bluffing when he teased her about mixing business and pleasure. Not that he was opposed to such an arrangement normally, but this time he had a feeling it would cause the whole enterprise to blow up in his face. That made Lizzie Marsden an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  * * *

  She should have gone back to the apartment. Back to work and reading reports. Back to...but there was no turning back the clock. No pretending Vadim Bazarov hadn’t blown her entire existence into chaos. And she still didn’t know what he wanted.

  Anxiety gnawed at Lizzie with sharp animal teeth, scraping on her nerves and tapping on the inside of her skull. She moved from room to room in the big old house, examining framed photos and art on the walls, knickknacks on shelves layered in dust. Most of the house was shuttered, the furniture covered in white sheets. Her presence stirred up the dust along with memories. One made her sneeze. The other sent her careening back to the solar for another drink.

  The bottle she’d brought from home was heavy in her hand as she held it over the glass. She stared at the liquid inside as it changed from a deep gold to light amber and back, over and over for nearly a minute. Then she realized she was making the lights flicker again and dropped both bottle and glass. She watched in horror as the liquid spread across the floor, a growing mass she had no means of stopping.

  The lights flashed in time with her heartbeat, bright as lightning against her lids when she shut her eyes. Focus, that’s what she needed to do. Focus on the vibration of magic inside and tell it what to do. She’d done it once, surely she could do it again.

  Lizzie struggled and fought but she could not untangle the magic from the panic. Like the ever-larger spill on the floor, the panic and anxiety consumed everything. Recalling Vadim’s words, the way he pushed her as if positive she could handle it, didn’t help either. Nothing could stop it once its teeth were in her, tearing and pulling at her calm until she was nothing but a quivering mess of hysteria. Unable to think clearly. Sometimes barely able to think at all.

  Flying apart and hating it so damn much, she clung to the only solid thing that ever helped—pain. Tears obscured her vision as she slapped herself, hard, the sound cracking open the silence of the empty room. She beat her fists on her thighs, not caring if she left bruises. Surely hitting herself hard enough to leave marks would stop the panic from eating her alive, stop the screaming in her head.

  Soothing darkness eventually covered her like a balm. The scratching at her nerves stopped along with the flashing lights. Lizzie lay on the cold floor, staring blankly out the bay windows at the rain. She floated in a wordless, blessedly unfeeling fog, everything burned away by the pain.

  It never lasted, but she would take what respite she could get.

  Sometime later she began to crawl out of it, not quite ready to face people but steadier than before. The first thing she did was search the kitchen for supplies to clean up the spilled liquor, nose itching from the smell. From there she went room to room, slowly and methodically cleaning the house of years of benign neglect. Try as she might to shove thoughts of Vadim Bazarov and magic out of her head, it didn’t work.

  He had called her a witch and believed she could learn. That disturbed her, but not nearly as much as the thought that she wanted to believe it too.

  Chapter Six

  Every other Monday was food-rations day at the zone commissary. Because his last name started with a B and no one was allowed to pay someone to stand in line for them, Vadim was forced to haul his ass out of bed early on ration days. For years he’d had the money to buy his own food and necessaries but he continued to collect his allotment, taking it straight to either the orphanage or the hidden railway station. Mingling with the other A-, B- and C-named Magic Born and yawning into his coffee, he waited for the pallets to be brought into the building.

  The sickly-sweet odor of rotten vegetables announced the arrival of the food. Muttered complaints soon became loud outrage as the condition of the rations became apparent. Vadim dropped his paper coffee cup into a trash can and pushed his way closer to the front.

  A woman to his left said, “Look at this shit! How are we supposed to eat this?”

  The fruit and vegetables were soft and rotted, most of them covered in slime and gray-green fuzz. Mold also spotted the bread. Boxes and cans were crushed, the contents leaking out. The meat looked and smelled like something out of a nightmare.

  Vadim swallowed his nausea and searched the crowd for a DMS agent. The usual officer in charge of ration distribution was nowhere to be seen. Grant and his ugliest smirk stood in the office doorway, flanked by a pair in uniform with stun batons out. A young man with tattoos of origami cranes in flight on both arms approached the agent. Vadim tensed at the sight of the anger in the man’s face. This was about to get stupid.

  “The formula’s ruined!” The young man shook with rage. “It looks like every canister is dented! There’s powder everywhere!”

  Vadim winced. Others around him spoke words of dismay, anger. A woman he knew to have a six-month-old adopted child began to cry.

  “You know what they say. Shit happens.” Grant sounded positively delighted. “There was an unfortunate accident with this round of rations. Guess you’ll have to buy your own if you want to eat the next two weeks.”

  “How are we supposed to afford formula, you piece of shit?” The young tattooed man lost it, rushing at Grant. He never stood a chance. The uniforms had him down on the ground and screaming with their stun batons in moments.

  Grant watched impassively as the would-be assailant was carried off, cuffed and under arrest. He stepped forward and addressed the crowd. �
��You people want to eat? Want your little brats to eat? Then you turn over the punks taking their magic off the zone. That shit stops. Now.” The agent grinned. “Have a nice day.” He retreated into the office, a thrown tomato barely missing his head.

  The woman who’d spoken to Vadim earlier tried to rush the uniforms but he grabbed her. He spoke to her in a low voice. “You’ll just get arrested, don’t.”

  “We can’t let them get away with doing this to our babies!”

  An ugly undercurrent worked through the crowd. Whispers became shouts as anger spread. The guards looked eager to use their stun batons. Worried the situation could get out of control and turn into a riot, Vadim found himself working with a handful of others to draw the crowd back and talk down those who were angriest.

  One man shoved Vadim as he tried to lead him out. Vadim said, “Cool it, okay. Just go home. Don’t give these fuckers the satisfaction.”

  “We don’t all have your money, Vadim,” a sallow middle-aged man in worn, patched clothing shouted. “How are we supposed to eat?”

  A woman in somewhat-better dress stepped up. “How about getting a job instead of getting high all day?”

  Oh, shit, Vadim thought. It didn’t take long for Magic Born to start turning on each other. It never did when things got this bad. “We’ll figure something out. Just go home, go to work. Go do whatever it is you do and wait.”

  The pair looked about to get into it again. Vadim got between them and gave a hard glare to each. “No fighting! I said leave so get the hell out.”

  The crowd finally began to disperse, slowly and full of complaint. Not that he could blame them. This was a shit move for Grant to pull. Vadim rubbed his temple, wondering what the hell he was going to do.

  A crying mother approached him, trepidation in every line of her body. “The babies need formula, Mr. Bazarov. Please don’t forget that.”

  “They’ll get what they need,” he said. “Babies and children first, but nobody’s going hungry.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Go on home.”