Magic Rises

painless.”
    “You told me once that we don’t have a choice in what we are. We do have a choice in who we are. I’m the person who must get on that boat or I won’t be able to ever look Maddie’s mother in the eye. Will you please draw my blood?”
    Doolittle sighed. “Of course I will.”
    * * *
    “Kate?”
    Curran’s voice slipped through my dream. Mmmm . . . I smiled and opened my eyes, still half-asleep. Curran leaned over me. My handsome psycho. When I came back from speaking with Julie, I crawled into bed. I awoke a couple of hours later when he slid into bed next to me. He pulled me close, his body so warm against mine. We made love and I fell asleep on his chest.
    “Kate?” Curran repeated. “Baby?”
    I reached over and touched his cheek just to make sure he was really there. “You should stay in bed with me.”
    “I’d love to,” he said. “But I just spoke with Barabas.”
    “Mm-hm.” He really was ridiculously handsome in a gruff, kill-anything-that-moves way. Exactly how I liked it. “What did he say?”
    “Saiman is waiting for us in a conference room. He says he owes you a favor and Barabas called him to invite him to the Keep on your behalf.” Gold flared in Curran’s eyes. “Would you care to explain this, because I’m all ears?”
    Ten minutes later Curran and I marched down the hallway toward the conference room. When you live in a building with excellent acoustics populated by people with supernatural hearing, you learn to argue under your breath, which was precisely what we were doing.
    A month ago I’d gotten a late-night call from the Mercenary Guild informing me that Saiman had been kidnapped. An information broker and a magic expert, Saiman was a shrewd businessman who had his fingers in all sorts of pies, from illegal gladiatorial combat to a shady import/export business. He charged exorbitant prices for his services, but because I amused him, he had offered me a discount in the past. I had consulted him a few times, but he kept trying to entice me into his bed to prove a philosophical point. I’d put up with it until he had the stupidity to parade our connection in front of Curran. The Beast Lord and I had been in a rough spot in our relationship, and Curran didn’t take that exhibition well, which he expressed by turning a warehouse full of luxury cars Saiman had slipped past customs into crushed Coke cans. Since then, Saiman, who feared physical pain above all else, lived in mortal fear of Curran.
    Saiman maintained a VIP account at the Mercenary Guild for times when he needed to use brute force, so when some thugs decided it would be a good idea to hold him for ransom, his accountant put the call in to the Guild, which in turn called me. I’d dealt with the kidnappers and rescued Saiman. In return he owed me a favor. Yesterday I’d called him and told him that I would like to collect.
    I had successfully managed to hide the incident from Curran precisely because I knew he would go ballistic. Explaining all this now proved a little complicated.
    “The clerk called and said Saiman was kidnapped. What the hell was I supposed to do, leave him there?”
    “Let me think . . . Yes!”
    “Well, I didn’t.”
    “He doesn’t care about you. If you died saving him, he wouldn’t give a shit. Nobody even knew where you went.”
    “Jim knew where I went.” Aaand I shouldn’t have said that.
    Curran stopped and stared at me.
    “I took backup,” I told him.
    “Like who?”
    “Grendel and Derek.”
    Curran’s eyebrows came together. He realized that Derek knew and hadn’t snitched. I shouldn’t have said that either.
    The best defense is a vigorous offense. “You’re overreacting.”
    “You left in the middle of the night to rescue a man without any shred of conscience who cares nothing about your safety, who schemed and manipulated to seduce you, and when he found he couldn’t, acted like a coward and put you in danger. How am I supposed to react?”
    “Last time I checked, I was a big girl, all grown up and able to put on my shoes and swing my sword all by myself. You don’t have to like it.”
    “Kate!”
    “He owes us a favor. A big favor.”
    “I don’t need any favors from him,” Curran snarled.
    “Yes, you do. Do you remember that warehouse of luxury cars you demolished?”
    Curran just looked at me.
    “How did those expensive foreign cars get into the country?”
    The realization hit Curran like a ton of bricks. His scowl