out my angst and doing a few side twists to send my ponytail bouncing. After having learned it was possible to set a circle without drawing it first, I had spent three months learning how, knowing it might be my only chance to escape Algaliarept. I had kept my practice to three in the morning, when I knew Nick was asleep—and I always drew directly off the line so it wouldn’t go through Nick first—but maybe it was waking him up anyway. He hadn’t said anything, but knowing Nick, he wouldn’t.
The rattle of the gate opening brought me to a standstill and my shoulders slumped. The zoo was open, a few runners straggling out with red cheeks and exhausted, content expressions, still floating on a runner’s high. Damn it. He could have called.
Bothered, I unzipped my belt pack and pulled out my cell phone. Leaning against the car and looking down to avoid the eyes of the passing people, I scrolled through my short list. Nick’s was second, right after Ivy’s number and right before my mom’s. My fingers were cold, and I blew on them as the phone rang.
I took a breath when the connection clicked open, holding it when a recorded woman’s voice told me the line was no longer in service. Money? I thought. Maybe that was why we hadn’t been out for three weeks. Concerned, I tried his cell phone.
It was still ringing when the familiar choking rumble of Nick’s truck grew loud. Exhaling, I snapped the cover closed. Nick’s blue, beat-up Ford truck jostled off the main street and into the parking lot, maneuvering slowly, as the cars leaving were ignoring the lines and cutting across the expanse. I slipped the phone away and stood with my arms over my chest, legs crossed at my ankles.
At least he showed, I thought as I adjusted my sunglasses and tried not to frown. Maybe we could go out for coffee or something. I hadn’t seen him in days, and I didn’t want to ruin it with a bad temper. Besides, I had been worried sick the last three months about slipping my bargain with Al, and now that I had, I wanted to feel good for a while.
I hadn’t told Nick, and the chance to come clean would be another weight off me. I lied to myself that I had kept quiet because I was afraid he would try to take my burden—seeing as he had a chivalrous streak longer and wider than a six-lane highway—but in reality I was afraid he would call me a hypocrite since I was forever on him about the dangers of dealing with demons, and here I was, becoming one’s familiar. Nick had an unhealthy lack of fear when it came to demons, thinking that as long as you handled them properly, they were no more dangerous than say … a pit viper.
So I stood and fidgeted in the cold as he parked his salt-stained, ugly truck a few slots down from mine. His indistinct shadow moved inside as he shuffled about, finally getting out and slamming the door with an intensity that I knew wasn’t directed at me but necessary to get the worn latch to catch.
“Ray-ray,” he said as he held his phone up and strode around the front. His lean height looked good and his pace was quick. A smile was on his face, its once-gauntness muted into a pleasant, rugged severity. “Did you just call?”
I nodded, letting my arms fall to my sides. Obviously he wasn’t prepared to run, as he was dressed in faded jeans and boots. A thick fabric coat was unzipped to show a bland, flannel button-down shirt. It was neatly tucked in and his long face was clean-shaven, but he still managed to look mildly unkempt, with his short black hair a shade too long. He had a bookish mien instead of the hint of danger that I usually liked in my men. But maybe I found Nick’s danger to be his intelligence.
Nick was the smartest man I knew, his brilliant jumps of logic hidden behind an understated appearance and a deceptively mild temperament. In hindsight, it was probably this rare mix of wicked intellect and harmless human that attracted me to him. Or possibly that he had saved my life by binding Big Al when he tried to rip out my throat.
And despite Nick’s preoccupation with old books and new electronics, he wasn’t a geek: his shoulders were too broad and his butt was too tight. His long, lean legs could keep up with me when we ran, and there was a surprising amount of strength in his arms, as evidenced by our once frequent, now distressingly absent, mock wrestling, which more often than not had turned into a more, er, intimate activity. It was the memory of our once-closeness that kept the frown off my face when he came around the front of his truck, his brown eyes pinched in apology.
“I didn’t forget,” he said, his long face looking longer as he tossed his straight bangs out of his way. There was a flash of a demon mark high on his brow, gained the same night I had gotten my first and remaining one. “I got caught up in what I was doing and lost track of time. I’m sorry, Rachel. I know you were looking forward to it, but I haven’t even been to bed and I’m dead tired. Do you want to reschedule for tomorrow?”
I kept my reaction to a sigh, trying to stifle my disappointment.
“No,” I said around a long exhalation. He reached out, his arms going around me in a light hug. I leaned into the expected hesitancy of it, wanting more. The distance had been there so long that it almost felt normal. Pulling back, he shuffled his feet.
“Working hard?” I offered. This was the first time I had seen him in a week, not including the odd phone call, and I didn’t just want to walk away.
Nick, too, didn’t seem eager to leave. “Yes and no.” He squinted into the sun. “I was up sifting through old messages on a chat-room list after finding a mention of that book Al took.”
Immediately my attention sharpened. “Did you …” I stammered, pulse quickening.
My quick hope squished to nothing as he dropped his gaze and shook his head. “It was some freak wannabe. He doesn’t have a copy. It was all made-up nonsense.”
I reached out and briefly touched his arm, forgiving him for missing our morning run. “It’s okay. We’ll find something sooner or later.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “But I’d rather it be sooner.”
Misery hit me, and I froze. We had been so good together, and now all that was left was this awful distance. Seeing my depression, Nick took my hands, stepping forward to give me a loose embrace. His lips brushed my cheek as he whispered, “I’m sorry, Ray-ray. We’ll manage something. I’m trying. I want this to work.”
I didn’t move, breathing in the smell of musty books and clean aftershave, my hands hesitantly going about him as I looked for comfort—and finally found it.
My breath caught and I held it, refusing to cry. We had been months searching for the counter curse, but Al wrote the book on how to make humans into familiars, and he had a very short print run of one. And it wasn’t as if we could advertise in the papers for a ley line professor to help us, as he or she would likely turn me in for dealing in the black arts. And then I’d really be stuck. Or dead. Or worse.
Slowly Nick let go, and I stepped back. At least I knew it wasn’t another woman.
“Hey, uh, the zoo is open,” I said, my voice giving away my relief that the awkward distance he had been holding himself at finally seemed to be easing. “You want to go in and get a coffee instead? I hear their Monkey Mocha is to come back from the dead for.”
“No,” he said, but there was true regret in his voice, making me wonder if he had been picking up on my worry about Al all this time, thinking I was upset with him and drawing away. Maybe more of this was my fault than I had guessed. Maybe I could have forged a stronger union between us if I had told him instead of hiding it from him and driving him away.
The magnitude of what I might have done with my silence fell on me, and I felt my face go cold. “Nick, I’m sorry,” I breathed.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, his brown eyes full of forgiveness, unaware of my thoughts. “I was the one that told him he could have the book.”
“No, you see—”
He took me in a hug, silencing me. A lump formed in my throat, and I couldn’t say anything as my forehead dropped to his shoulder. I should have told him. I should have told him right from the first night.
Nick felt the shift in me,