Gold: A Bandia Novel Part 10

Austin disappears in a burst of gold. I feel a surge of magic as he starts to reappear, but it's Austin's, not mine.

A black shadow forms inside the gold, s.h.i.+fting and turning until Austin takes shape in all his G.o.dly glory. I have to remember to breathe. There's nothing vulnerable or flawed about Austin now. His crooked smile does nothing to mask the perfection of his high cheekbones and chiseled jaw as the golden flecks in his eyes glow. He's so achingly beautiful that I want to look away, but I can't. The plaid covering his waist and hips only serves to emphasize the smooth golden skin stretched tight along the muscles of his chest and stomach. He carries the ancient broadsword in his right hand, but his left hand is extended out to me. I lift my hand to his, marveling at how human his skin feels in spite of its brilliance. "Reach for the sea," Austin says, in a voice that covers me like crushed velvet. I close my eyes against his light and listen to the waves as they crash against the rocks. My breathing gets shallow, but my blood remains still. "Nothing. It's gone." Austin's index finger brushes my lips for an instant.

"Never. Your power will diminish by halves until you can't feel it or call it, but a part will always remain. Make no mistake about it, Brianna, you are magic."

I open my eyes. "The theory of infinite smallness." "What?"

"It's a theory. So long as something has ma.s.s, it can be halved, and halved again in perpetuity. It never really disappears."

"Smaller and smaller pieces?"

"Exactly."

"So find a way to reach that piece inside you. Try again."

I close my eyes, concentrating on the sound of the waves. I can almost feel the water flowing in my veins, but whether it's really there of just a memory, I can't say. Austin squeezes my hand lightly.

I inhale deeply. It's not the sea that fills me, but something richer. Apples and spice and fire mix together in a scent that is at once strange and familiar. I open my eyes and all I see is Austin. He's closer, but I don't remember moving toward him. His golden light is warm as it licks against my skin and sends my nerves into overdrive. "Feel anything?" He asks.

Just you. I swallow. "I'm not sure."

He leans closer, his breath dancing along my neck.

"When was the last time you felt your power?"

"In Blake's room."

"You used your magic against him?"

"Against his suitcase. And a lamp." I s.h.i.+ft my weight, stretching toward Austin. He doesn't try to stop me. If anything, he pulls me closer.

Austin grins. His lips are so close. "Poor lamp. That was the last?"

I shake my head. I shouldn't be embarra.s.sed that I kissed Blake, but I am. It wasn't my finest moment.

Aggrieved ex-girlfriend gets revenge by making out. Austin's lips are in my hair, as soft as his voice, a whisper. "When was the last time?"

He's going to make me say it. I step away from Austin, biting my lip. "When Blake and I kissed. We nearly bonded again."

Austin drops my hands and steps away. The crease between his brows is a deep line, marring his golden face. He no longer looks like a G.o.d. He looks like something altogether more dangerous.

"I stopped it."

I don't know if he hears me. There's a brilliant flash of gold light, and then nothing but spots in my eyes. "Austin?" By the time the spots clear up enough to look around the beach, there's no sign of him.

Just me and the rocks and the waves and the air. So potent, but just out of reach.

TWENTY.

I eat dinner in the kitchen by myself. According to Mick, Austin hasn't come back to the house. Fine. I don't want to argue with him right now anyway. He was the one who had the brilliant idea to send me to Blake's room to prey on Blake's supposed feelings for me. What did Austin expect?

Screw them both. On to Plan B. I take out the cell Mick gave me. It takes a few tries before I remember the number, but I finally do.

Joe answers on the second ring. "h.e.l.lo."

"Are you in Cath?"

"Might be. You?"

"I might be outside the bakery on Main Street at ten o'clock."

"Tonight?"

"Will you come?"

"You should lay low."

"I will."

"Nah, you won't. Don't suppose I can do anything to change your mind though."

"Thanks."

Mick gives me the keys to the sedan with only a little prodding after I tell him I'm meeting Joe. The whole driving on the right side of the car is only weird for first few miles or so. By the time I get into Cath, I feel like I could get used to it.

The bakery is in the center of the block, making it easy to disappear into the shadowy alcove by the door, the street barely illuminated by the old fas.h.i.+oned gas lamps that dot each street corner, as the sun finally drops behind the building. It's quiet except for peals of laughter that occasionally drift out of a pub a block over.

The air is damp even though we're a few blocks from the ocean. If this is summer, I hate to think how cold winter must be. I hear footsteps approach before I can make out anyone in the darkness.

I peek around the corner, instinctively reaching for the wind, but find only the cold, impervious sky. The shadowy figure that approaches is tall and thin, with hair teased even higher, the right shape for Joe, but I duck back into the alcove until I can be sure.

He stops in front of the bakery and looks into the window.

"Joe?" I whisper.

He turns and walks the rest of the way to me, his hands buried deep in the pockets of a long black coat that covers him to just below his knees. Joe nods toward the pub. "Drink? It'll be warmer." His voice is tinged with an Irish accent I haven't heard before.

"I didn't realize you had an accent."

"It's like a bad penny."

I follow him across the street. We duck inside. The pub is about halfway full, and we make our way to an empty table in the back.

Joe surveys the restaurant twice. "You shouldn't be out like this. Too risky."

"Are they all coming here?"

Joe nods. "Friday."

At least Blake didn't lie about that. I have two days before the Sons descend on Cath. "Looking for me?"

"Nothing's changed. They're always looking for your kind."

"Why did Blake come early?"

Joe takes out a cigarette from the red packet in his pocket. "Not much gets by you." He stares at the thin cylinder, but doesn't put it in his mouth.

"You don't have to lie for him. I know about Portia."

Joe's irises get smaller, and I can't escape the feeling that he's looking through me. "You're taking it better than I expected."

"What did you expect me to do? Burn down the village?"

His cheeks redden.

"Oh my G.o.d, you did." He really thought I would fly into some violent rage. "Give me some credit."

He sticks the unlit cigarette between his lips. "I do. More than you likely deserve."

"I couldn't. Burn it down, I mean."

"You d.a.m.n well could."

"No." I turn my palms up. "I really couldn't. My powers are gone."

Joe orders a cup of coffee from a pa.s.sing waitress. The quiet expression on his face never changes. He waits for me to continue. "And?"

"Did Blake ever tell you what happened that night he fought Austin on the beach in Del Mar?"

He shakes his head. "Just that you broke the bond."

"It was more than that. Blake was dead." It doesn't get easier to say the words. "I killed him."

I doubt much surprises Joe after a few centuries of living with the Sons, but the cigarette falls from his lips and lands on the table before he can close his mouth.

"I found a way to bring him back. Obviously. I mean he's not dead." G.o.d, I'm rambling. "But it's draining my magic. I'm not a bandia anymore. Not like I was."

Joe smiles. "You were never the conventional type."

"Well now I'm not the conventional anything. Do you think it will make a difference to the Sons? I'm no threat now."

"Brianna?" A guy's voice calls across the pub. "Brianna Paxton?"

I panic at the sound of my name. Both Blake and Joe said the Sons weren't going to be here until Friday. But plans change. I search the room for a familiar face, and stop when I get to a boy two tables over. He's cute and I know I've seen him somewhere before, but I don't place him right away. He waves and stands up, leaving two other boys at the table to their pints as he walks over to me.

I recognize him now, Braden Finley, baseball player and senior cla.s.s stud. His dark hair is shorter than I remember, in a close-cropped buzz cut, but his easy-going smile and perfect white teeth are hard to forget. He goes to Rancho Domingo High, or at least he did before he graduated this past spring. His locker had been next to Haley's, and he used to ask her out to lunch every day whether he had a girlfriend or not.

I wait for him to get all the way to our table before I say anything. "Braden? What are you doing here?"

"b.u.mming around Europe before I start college in September. This is wild. What about you?"

"Staying with a friend." Austin's hardly a friend, but it sounds better than the truth: hiding out with a dethroned G.o.d and trying to figure out how to realign myself with a bunch of demiG.o.ds before they make good on their threat to kill me. Or Liam does.

Braden eyes Joe. "Him?"

"Oh. No. Austin Montgomery?"

Austin went to a different school in R.D., but Braden nods like he knows exactly who I'm talking about. "I knew I should've made my move when I had the chance."

"I'm pretty sure you did." The day I came to school without my bracelet to keep me invisible, Braden had asked me to lunch instead of Haley.

"That's right. Shot down." Braden laughs easily. He nods toward his table. "You want to join us for a beer?"

"Maybe later?"

"Ouch. Shot down again!" His smile doesn't fade. He pulls a phone out of his pocket. "Give me your cell so we can sync up while we're both in town." When I don't do anything, he holds his hands up. "Just to hang out. It's nice to see someone from home. Someone who speaks English I can actually understand."

I can't argue with him. It is nice to see someone familiar. Someone who doesn't want to kill me or use me or hurt me or ask me for more than I can ever give. We exchange numbers before he walks back to his friends.

Joe watches him the whole way. "How do you know that guy?"

"From school. You haven't met? I should've introduced you."

Joe lifts his chin toward the table. "I know that bloke he's with."

I follow Joe's gaze to a tall boy with dark, spiky hair sitting at the far end of Braden's table. Either his eyes are rimmed with black eyeliner, or he has the darkest lashes I've ever seen. It's hard to tell from here. When he lifts his beer, I recognize a hint of a Greenpeace tattoo on the part of his forearm bared by the pushed-up sleeve of his sweater. "Did you two serve together?"

Joe laughs. "You might say that."

Wait. Joe looks eighteen, but he's been alive for centuries, which explains how he managed to spend time on an anti-whaling s.h.i.+p in the nineteen-seventies. The guy with Braden doesn't look any older than me. "He's giolla?"

"Not surprising, really. What with the Gathering and all."

"The Gathering?"

"Austin moved the gateway. The reopening always sparks a Gathering of the descendants of the G.o.ds. That kind of thing will draw others."

"Austin didn't open the gateway. Liam did."

Joe's face looks blank.

"Pwil?"

Joe's face still doesn't change, but his fingers shake ever so slightly as he picks the cigarette off the table. "Bad time to be powerless."

"Why? What does the Gathering mean?"

"It means you won't be able to avoid the Sons, or even the other bandia. Pwil will call you all to the gateway and attempt to force a battle." He puts the unlit cigarette back between his lips.