InDescent Page 7

  She didn’t argue, just vacantly studied her lap. When she looked up, her gaze strayed to the bookshelves. “Who’re in the photographs?”

  Jackson glanced at them. A softening went through him. “People I care about. You know. Friends, family.”

  “But there’s one you care about more than the others.”

  Breath going shallow, Jackson forced himself not to look at that one. He kept watching Mikaela. “What makes you say that?”

  She shrugged. “Just a hunch.” Finally looking away from photos, she scanned Jackson’s body quite brazenly. “I very much enjoyed how last night went. Did you?”

  “Yes, if you mean the part that involved us.” Jackson tried not to let his face betray his growing bafflement. By slight degrees, this meeting kept getting weirder—just as last night had.

  Feeling restive, Jackson got up and stood in front of his guest. Strange how he felt simultaneously drawn to Mikaela and wary of her. The mixed reaction was disconcerting. Strange, too, how she evinced both an interest in him and a clinical detachment.

  Her open scrutiny continued. Jackson couldn’t help but be excited by it.

  “Is your cock getting hard?” she asked.

  The question alone made it harden. “Uh, yeah, now that you mention it.”

  “I can tell.”

  Which meant, she’d been ogling his crotch. Which in turn meant, Jackson got even more excited.

  “How does it feel?” she asked.

  “Like I need to pull my zipper down and free it.”

  The strangeness of their exchange registered in a portion of Jackson’s mind, the small, bright corner his libido hadn’t yet overshadowed. Such personal, lewdly suggestive questions…yet spoken in such a detached tone. But the realization made no difference in his body’s response. The blatantly sexual attention he’d gotten over the past couple of weeks had kept his pump primed. All he could think about was letting go.

  Maybe it was a good thing he didn’t get out more.

  Mikaela leaned forward. She undid the button on Jackson’s waistband. First pressing her mouth against the swell of his shaft, she then lifted the zipper’s tab with her tongue, grasped it between her teeth, slowly pulled it down. The curving bulge of his cock pushed through the V-shaped opening in his jeans. More blood flowed into it. Jackson knew he could come with very little coaxing.

  “How does it feel now?” Mikaela turned her eyes up to his face.

  “Better. Worse.” Angelina’s warning whispered to him from that bright mental corner. He had no desire to pay attention.

  Mikaela tensed her tongue until it peaked and dragged the tip along the cloth-sheathed arch of his cock. It stiffened, began to straighten. When Jackson reached down to pull his still-growing erection out of his boxer briefs, Mikaela nudged his hand away.

  “Tell me what it’s like,” she said and then murmured, as if to herself, “I want to remember.”

  Jackson ignored the peculiar addendum. He just wanted more action. “A growing, clawing thickness and tension. Like some living thing is attached to my body. Twisting inside of it. Twisting outside of it. Heavy and demanding and clamoring for contact with something. Something, anything that will calm it.”

  That was it, the source of his lack of willpower. Need. A need implanted by somebody else, somebody far away, who wasn’t around to satisfy it.

  At that moment, his phone began to trill. Jackson ignored it at first. He wanted to concentrate on Mikaela’s actions. She’d begun sliding the elastic of his briefs ever so slowly over the taut head of his cock, darting her tongue at it, lightly tracing its rim with her fingernails. Still, the phone’s summons kept distracting him. When the answering machine clicked on, the caller disconnected.

  Immediately, Jackson felt his compass start to turn south. Mikaela didn’t need to be told her persuasions would now be ineffective.

  “Seems your concentration has been broken,” she said, rising from the couch. She didn’t sound disappointed or frustrated or resentful. She didn’t sound as if she had any attitude whatsoever about this unfortunate development.

  “‘Fraid so.” As Jackson put himself back together, Mikaela moved away from him. He grabbed her wrist. “Please, leave me your address and phone number.” He still wasn’t sure he’d like to see her again. His attempt to hook up smacked of desperation.

  Don’t do anything rash.

  “All right.” Mikaela went straight to his desk, found the message pad, and wrote on it. “Shall I just leave it here?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, that way it won’t get lost.”

  Jackson approached her and lightly flattened his hand on the small of her back.

  “Your hand is hot,” she said in that same affectless voice.

  Withdrawing it, Jackson briskly rubbed his palms together. “That ain’t all that’s hot.”

  “Well, isn’t this where you say, ‘I’ll be in touch’?”

  “I’m not sure what to say.”

  With uncanny accuracy, Mikaela turned and put a hand on Jackson’s shirt-covered chest, right over the tattoo of the Trident, and gave it a rub. “I have to leave.”

  Jackson touched his chest. The Trident had delicately pulsed and flared when she’d put her hand on it.

  What was going on?

  “Just wait here a minute while I go to the bathroom. Okay? Then I’ll walk you to the door.”

  Trying not to jump to any conclusions, Jackson strode down the hallway to relieve himself. It helped get his cock to relax. But not his nerves. Mikaela was…different somehow. Now that he thought about it, she’d been on the eccentric side since he first met her. But the fey nature of her temperament seemed more exaggerated yesterday, and still more so today. It wasn’t a big, screaming change but noticeable enough to make him uneasy.

  When he returned to the living room, he didn’t see Mikaela where he’d left her. In fact, he didn’t see her anywhere in the apartment. She didn’t respond when he called out her name.

  Three even knocks sounded at the front door. Scowling, Jackson went to it and opened it. The sight that greeted him made him step back. His scowl immediately broke. Surprise, delight and confusion overcame him.

  “Adin!” He couldn’t believe it. “Hey, did you happen to see—”

  Without a word, his friend stepped inside, grasped Jackson’s head…and kissed him. It was a shocking, hard slam of a kiss. The floor seemed to tilt like the deck of a ship. Mind spinning, Jackson felt the man’s lips flatten against his. It all happened within seconds.

  Something was very wrong here.

  Jackson shoved the other body away from his own. “You’re not Adin,” he whispered. Disturbed by the realization, he felt a headache throbbing to cruel life in his forehead.

  His statement was met by a cryptic smile.

  The phone again trilled at his back. Jolted by the sound, he reflexively whirled around. Fuck it, he thought as he was about to make a dash for the handset.

  When he turned back to the door, the impostor was gone.

  Stunned and panting, Jackson bolted outside and looked around. Nobody there. No vehicles, either, except the usual ones.

  Jackson forked his hands into his hair and stared blankly at the walkway. What had he gotten himself into? Cool it, he told himself. Okay, recent events were rapidly yawing from puzzling into mind-boggling—he’d faced similar situations before—but everything had an explanation.

  He ambled back into his flat, closing and locking the door. The phone sat silently on the kitchen counter, as if waiting for him. He lifted it but didn’t bother hitting star-sixty-nine to see who’d called. It was more important at the moment to make another connection. Afterward, he had to get to the shop.

  Tapping the speed-dial number he used most often, he dropped into one of the chairs at the dining table. Thank God there was a quick pickup.

  “Hi,” he said. “It’s me.” A succinct but adequate greeting.

  “Jackson, I’ve been trying to call. Did yo
u just get in?”

  His eyes closed as he sank into the voice. His headache began to recede. “Kind of. Why didn’t you leave a message?”

  “I hate leaving messages when I don’t know who’s going to be there to hear them.”

  Drawing thumb and forefinger over his eyes, Jackson breathed out a chuckle and wagged his head. “Jesus, Adin, it’s not like you’d have to leave a phone-sex message.” And then another thought, disturbing in a different way—Just the sound of your voice is like phone sex. “You didn’t happen to call from your car, did you? You’re not in town?”

  “No, I’m at home. Why?”

  “I thought I saw you.” Jackson’s gaze drifted to those heart-melting photos on the bookshelves. He suddenly felt lonely. It was an unwelcome feeling, one he sometimes had to battle, and he hated it. He particularly hated that the feeling was provoked by this friend who was more than a friend, this lover he couldn’t see often enough, and this discomfort that assailed him whether he was with or apart from the one person whose company he constantly craved.

  Angelina had been right. Of course. She knew him too well not to be right. He’d been searching for a substitute.

  Suddenly, life seemed to be bombarding him with curve balls he could neither bat away nor catch.

  Faint noises came through the handset, indications of a person doing ordinary things. So close and yet so far away.

  “Jackson, I don’t like the way you sound.”

  “I’m okay. There’s just some peculiar stuff going on.”

  “There’s always peculiar stuff going on around you.”

  Jackson could see the other man smiling. The image prompted him to smile. “Yeah, but I understand that stuff. I can control it.” Rising from the table, he drifted through the living room.

  “So I take it you can’t control whatever is going on now?”

  “I don’t know yet. I don’t even know exactly what’s happening.”

  Trying to avoid looking at the photographs—he didn’t need more heartstring tugging—Jackson stopped at his bank of bookshelves. He touched a rare and splendid illumination of the Sefirotic Tree, its frame wedged between copies of the Zohar and the Book of Yetzirah. After tracing its elaborate design, his fingers skimmed across the spines of other books. There was so much to know, and even more that couldn’t be known…

  He regarded two more mystical illustrations, these from Khunrath. One depicted his cave of wisdom; the other, his Hermetic fortress. Jackson’s brows drew together as he studied them. The second in particular seemed to draw him in.

  Adin’s voice broke his reverie. “So tell me about it.”

  After a glance at the photos, which was inevitable, Jackson stepped away from the bookshelves and sat at his desk. His gaze alit on the message pad, where Mikaela’s address and two phone numbers were written in a hand that seemed both fanciful and aggressive, ethereal and earthy. Feeling a ripple of apprehension, he touched the paper.

  “It’s too complicated to get into. Especially over the phone.”

  Jackson never begged. But now he was seized by an impulse to say, I miss you so fucking much it’s making me stupid. I need to see you. I know it’ll make me a different kind of stupid, but Jesus, please—

  “You’re not curious about why I’ve been trying to get in touch with you?” Adin asked.

  “Just to catch up, I assume.” Jackson’s heartbeat accelerated. It suddenly pissed him off royally that some creature had dared impersonate the man to whom he spoke.

  “Not this time,” Adin said. “I wanted to let you know Celia’s going to the U. P. because her mother’s in the hospital and she needs to look after her dad. And to remind you I haven’t come for a visit since your birthday in March. So, are your hands too full for a houseguest?”

  Under the circumstances, wanting him here seemed inexcusably selfish. Jackson knew some process he didn’t yet understand had been set in motion. Ivan, the coven, Mikaela. Nezrabi’s Prism. Still, his yearning for Adin’s presence seemed to stretch over the hundreds of miles that separated them and clutch at the man’s shirtfront. He sure as hell didn’t need to be reminded that he hadn’t seen his lover-of-choice since March.

  “Not if you’re the houseguest,” Jackson said. “How soon can you be here?”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  Gladly. Jackson heard him talking to Celia, his live-in girlfriend. She knew about the two of them, knew they’d been friends for over a decade and had only recently acknowledged that their feelings for each other went beyond the limits of platonic. To this day, Jackson found it ironic that Celia’s understanding and acceptance had come so much more easily than his own. This new phase of his relationship with Adin was still, as much as Jackson hated to admit it, like a dirty little secret. But he couldn’t either deny or give up the unadulterated joy it brought him.

  He closed his eyes. There, in the blackness behind his lids, he saw Adin framed in a moment from last November, kneeling on his haunches before the couch, his back hunched and hands spooned on his lap. Jackson saw those bewitching blue eyes trained on his face, felt his own gaze lower under the sheer force of their beauty. Coward that he was, he’d stared at the glass of Jack Daniels he cradled, seeking refuge in its safe, neutral amber. Then he’d heard Adin’s placid voice form one sentence quite distinctly. No haste, no self-conscious slurring of the words.

  I love you.

  To this day, Jackson had not been able to say it back. Or even let himself share the feeling. It was hard enough accepting their physical attraction. Of course he cared about Adin. Yeah, he’d finally allowed himself to revel in the sex. But he’d never been romantically in love with anybody, much less his best male friend. And he sure as shit didn’t relish the idea.

  Adin’s voice returned to the phone. “How about day after tomorrow? I could be there by late afternoon, early evening. I know it’s a weekday, but I can keep myself busy while you’re at the shop.”

  Jackson’s gaze locked on the notepad. His ballooning guilt couldn’t be ignored. “Listen, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I told you things are unsettled around here, and until I can figure out—”

  “Don’t you get it?” Adin broke in. “That’s all the more reason I want to be there. Just change the bedding. I don’t know whom you’ve been fucking lately.”

  Jackson smiled, even though he was thinking, Even I may not want to know whom I’ve been fucking lately. Or what I’ve been fucking. “Leave it up to you,” he said, “to know when to use ‘whom’.”

  Adin chuckled. “The objective case doesn’t get enough respect.”

  “Neither does frankness,” Jackson murmured. He took a small, shaky step toward correcting that. “I miss you. A lot.” It was an understatement. He’d been missing Adin far more than he’d let himself realize.

  The pause at the other end was noticeable; the voice that followed it, rich with feeling. “Now I wouldn’t stay away even if an asteroid with your name on it were hurtling toward earth.”

  “That just might be the case, buddy.”

  Chapter Five

  Incunabulum or not, the Book of Paths was perilously close to being pitched across Ivan Kurtz’s living room. “Fucking gibberish,” he muttered, leafing back and forth through the slender volume. Going through it first thing in the morning did nothing to enhance his comprehension. Even a fresh mind couldn’t process this crap.

  It was a cobbled-together mess of at least five different languages, interrupted all over the place by arcane symbols. The hand-drawn illustrations did nothing, as far as Ivan was concerned, to illuminate the patchwork of text. He understood some words and phrases. Temporal Gate, Spatial Gate, Astral Gate. The Darkening Cold Tunnel. Here and there were names of archangels and demons, references to natural materials and stars and the four ancient elements. A term kept recurring, Shebra’felim, which seemed to be attached to some significant being. Beyond that, Ivan had no clue what it meant.

  Wiping his damp expanse of forehead, he realized h
e had three options. First, he could tote this puzzle to the university and ask for some scholarly help in understanding it. Almost immediately, he scratched that possibility. Those academics would get in such a lather over the book, they’d want to keep it in protective custody for Christ-knew-how-long and pass it around from one specialist to another. Nope, that wouldn’t do. Second, he could try to persuade Bothu to perform his necromantic gig and get answers from the stiff who’d led him to the Prism. That might work. Third, he could dispense with all inquiries and simply devise his own spell for casting Spey into Nezrabi’s world. The Book of Paths called it the Omnimodus Speculum or Vas Universitas—whatever those damned Latin phrases were. In his frustration, Ivan was no longer sure.

  He put the book back on the table beside the crystal sculpture. It seemed to taunt him with its gleaming stillness, its facets and filaments, its spangled central orb. Trying to think out a resolution, he lit a cigarette. Then he huffed out a chuckle.

  Of all the people Ivan knew, only his intended victim might be able to comprehend that damned guidebook. Oh, the irony.

  * * * *

  Rising early, Jackson drove to his woodshop and put in a few hours of work. It was enough to add the finishing touches to a hope chest and make some progress on that bookcase-with-stairs project, which was nearly completed. He felt too preoccupied to put in a whole day. Dropping into a gliding rocker that was also ready to go, he wondered how to proceed with his life outside of work.

  Thus far, only one thing was obvious. He couldn’t let himself get distracted by Adin’s presence. Well, not too. Mikaela’s revelation—in fact, her very appearance in his life—required his attention. Especially since that appearance coincided with Ivan’s acquisition of the Prism.

  The Prism of Nezrabi. Jesus, how could an inept pig like Ivan Kurtz… He closed his eyes and shook his head. It was too incredible. There must be some mistake.