Lover Behind Enemy Lines Read online

  “I think it was Franklin Roosevelt who said that the worst thing about what we fear is the fear itself. For everything else there’s always a solution, but first we have to get over our being afraid.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “It feels wrong for you to be the wiser one of the two of us.”

  He chuckled. “Taka grumbles about that too. You seem to forget that for however long you’ve lived, you’re only human.”

  “You might be right. I think Taka is done printing the spell, so I should go up. Have you seen Angelo? I need his help with this.”

  “He was working out in the basement with Drew earlier. I’ll go downstairs and tell him to get to Gallagher’s fine accommodations.”

  “Thanks. That would be great.”

  As I went up the stairs, I stuck my hand in my pocket and squeezed the satchel of magic powder. Today I would find out if I’d lost my mind entirely, or if Nathan Gallagher truly had the soul I’d loved such a long time ago. Whatever else would happen after I found that out, I had no way of knowing or even guessing—I was only human, after all.

  Chapter Three

  BY the time I got to the second floor, Taka was already standing in the doorway of his bedroom with a sheet of paper in his hand. He didn’t look all that happy, which was a pretty usual thing for his formerly single self. “I really don’t like this.” He gripped the paper hard enough to crease it.

  I reached out a hand and waited for him to deposit the printed spell there.

  When he finally did, he sighed. “There’s nothing I can say to dissuade you, is there?”

  “No, there isn’t. But in case I start acting against our interests and that of Aashi, you know what to do.”

  “That’s easier said than done. I don’t want to lose you, Claw.”

  “I don’t want to lose you either. I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

  “Hope is a lame strategy.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  “Hey, guys,” Angelo called out as he climbed up the stairs. “Ginger said you wanted to see me?”

  I nodded. “I need you to do your human lie detector thing for me with Nathan Gallagher. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Is he finally talking?”

  “Not really.”

  Angelo frowned. “Than what am I testing the truth of?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Taka muttered and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I already know and I don’t want to know.” He frowned.

  “You’re scaring me.” Angelo started to look uncomfortable. “Maybe Drew should be—”

  “I should be what?” Drew called up from the stairway. In mere seconds he was there by his man’s side. “What exactly do you need my angel for? And why wasn’t I included in it, whatever it is?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We might as well call Ginger up here too. It looks like we’re having a party of it, anyway.”

  Taka did just that, and a few seconds later, there we were, the full Team 32, ready to get busy.

  “I should go in and explain first, and then you guys come in too. If we all make our entrance just like that, he might get intimidated and pull out of our agreement,” I whispered and turned to unlock the door.

  “What agreement?” Drew hissed as I finally got inside the bedroom.

  I left them to bring each other up to speed after I got in.

  “So, what’s your answer?” Nathan asked as soon as he saw me.

  “Let’s do it. We’ll do the questioning first, and my housemates want to be here for it all.”

  “Of course they do. Are you guys a ménage-à-however-many-of-you-there-are, or what?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “So none of them is your squeeze?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  He tried to shrug and come across as nonchalant. “No particular reason.”

  He could have been still playing me, so I didn’t give it much thought. “Okay, so they’re going to get in here now. Cool?”

  He nodded.

  When I opened the door, they all took a quick step back. They’d had their ears glued to it, if my guess was any good. I couldn’t suppress the smile that elicited. When I nodded for them to get in, they put their game faces on and walked in one by one. There weren’t many good places to sit, but they leaned against the walls or the furniture in the bedroom. Angelo was leaning against a side table at the foot of the bed, his gaze aimed at Nathan.

  I reached out the paper Taka had given me, so Nathan could look at the text. “Is this the spell you know of as Napeva’s Tooth?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll need you to voice your answer,” Angelo said calmly.

  “Yes, it’s the spell I know of as Napeva’s Tooth.”

  “Is there any way to counteract it?” I asked then.

  “Yes. Napeva’s Mercy. It helps if either one of us lies and suffers the pain of punishment, or if we simply want to terminate our agreement.”

  Angelo kept his gaze trained on Nathan. “All true so far.”

  “Do you intend to cast any other spell on me but Napeva’s Tooth?”

  “Aside from Napeva’s Mercy at some point, no.”

  “Are you entering this agreement of your own free will, with no interference from anyone—related to you or not?”

  “Yes, of my own free will. Nobody else can influence my will in such a way.”

  “But in some ways, someone can,” I concluded.

  He shrugged.

  “How exactly does Napeva’s Tooth work?”

  He sighed. “Every time one of us lies to the other, we get a toothache. The more we lie, the more it hurts. Every wave of pain will be easily noticeable. For each toothache, we’ll get a band of red around our wrists. It can’t be washed away or concealed with anything.”

  Taka looked dubious. “Is that part of the original spell?”

  “Yes,” Nathan answered, looking only at me. “Read the text carefully. It’s in there.”

  “All true so far,” Angelo piped up.

  “And by casting Napeva’s Mercy, does the liar lose all pains and lines around their wrist?” I asked Nathan.

  He shook his head. “Only one of them. The counterspell needs to be cast as many times as lies were told.”

  “Will you leave me in pain if I were to lie to you at all?”

  “No,” he replied without missing a beat. “As soon as I’d be able to tell you’d lied, I’d cast the counterspell. When there’s only one line on the liar’s wrist, you cast the spell twice to dissolve it entirely or just once to have a clean slate.”

  “Why do you want to enter this agreement?”

  “I need to get out of this bed. In order to do that, I need to be able to trust and be trusted by one of you. You seem the most likely.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled. “Just a gut feeling.”

  I looked in Angelo’s direction.

  “Still true,” he replied to my unspoken question.

  “You guys could use Angelo’s gift instead,” Taka chimed in, ever the helpful friend. “Then we wouldn’t need to trust this guy at all.”

  “That would sort of defeat the purpose of the whole thing.” Nathan shrugged. “You guys might believe this lie detector guy always tells you the truth. But I can’t trust him simply because you do. So it wouldn’t give me faith in anything said to me.”

  “It feels like a setup,” Taka countered, and squinted at Nathan.

  He looked Taka in the eye. “Look—I pissed you off. I get it. You don’t want me here. Trust me: I don’t want to be here like this either.”

  “All true,” Angelo observed.

  “I don’t trust you,” Taka gritted out. “Spell or no spell.”

  “You won’t have to. You’ll simply have to look at my wrists. That’s the whole point.”

  I sighed. “Okay, guys. Are we all in agreement that we can do this now?”

  “He needs to say the words of the s
pell out loud,” Taka countered. “Read them from the paper.”

  “I can do that,” Nathan said.

  Angelo looked into Nathan’s eyes. “You won’t cast any other spell on Claw before, during, or after casting Napeva’s Tooth, aside Napeva’s Mercy?”

  “Not without one of you guys’ consent.”

  “He believes that to be true. It’s the best we can hope for,” Angelo muttered, seeming not entirely happy about this either.

  “Okay. Cast away,” I said before anyone decided to put in their two cents.

  I left the paper in Taka’s hands, who came close to the bed and turned the page so that he and Nathan could see the words. I simply stood by the bed, where I’d been.

  As Nathan’s intent to cast a spell made his magic energy wake up, I felt a clear pressure on my temples. Wow, he was strong. Much, much stronger than he had been when he’d broken into our home. I didn’t know if he knew what the difference was or why, and I didn’t intend to mention it—not yet, at least. When the energy took the intent of the spell, I felt it as a spear going through me. It almost burned with intensity.

  Everyone in the room felt its power, if the tense silence was anything to go by. I did my best to not change my expression, and gritted my teeth until the casting was over. I’d gone through much worse over the years. But the power he was radiating right now was just this side of scary. And I had to wonder when it would tip the scales in the other direction. After a few seconds, that power seemed to change targets.

  Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them. “Well, that felt intense. For some reason, there was a lot more power behind it than I would have expected. Did any of you do that?”

  I pulled up both of my sleeves. “No.” No red circles appeared on either. “You don’t know why there was more power in it than you expected?”

  “No,” he answered, and we all stared at his wrists.

  Taka leaned in closer to them, seeming determined to make out any new red line. The handcuffs were padded on the inside, and his arms were held in a decent position—nothing purposely painful, so he didn’t have marks on his wrists so far.

  “Seems to be working as intended, I guess?” Taka muttered, still frowning at Nathan’s wrists. “So from now on, whenever either of you lies to the other, you’ll feel pain and get a red band around one of your wrists?”

  “Exactly,” Nathan answered. “Now, will you guys be kind enough to free my hands for the incoming discussion? They’re really starting to hurt.”

  Taka was still looking at me. “Technically he addressed us all, not you in particular. If he’s lying, would the spell still work?”

  “It would if I lied about anything while addressing Claw as part of a group. I could lie to show my point, but I’m rather reluctant to.”

  “You can cast Napeva’s Mercy right after to alleviate the pain,” I said.

  “I could. But I’d rather not waste my energy on useless spells. From the strength of the first one, the counterspells will need just as much power to work properly. I need to make sure I have enough bullets for when it counts.”

  He was also used to being drained, most likely, since his sister was still doing that. I guessed that Nathan wasn’t entirely sure just how many bullets he did have.

  “Seems reasonable and sounds true,” Angelo observed.

  “Great.” I looked at Nathan. “Do you promise to not leave this house without my consent if we uncuff you?”

  “Yes. Scout’s honor.”

  “It seems you’re honest. But it’s also a binding statement. If you change your mind five minutes later and decide you want to go, any trust we might build between us will be ruined. You do realize that.”

  “I do,” he replied. “I can now trust the fact that what you tell me is the truth, or I’ll know if you lie. I had my reasons to come here in the first place; that’s obvious enough.”

  “And yet you’ve been denying it.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Because I could. Now I can’t—not without showing obvious signs of it. So I won’t bother to deny it.”

  Taka squinted. “And will you share your reasons with the rest of the class?”

  “I’ll share some of them with Claw. And then, depending on how that discussion goes, I’ll consider sharing them all. Does that sound like a fair agreement?”

  “Guys, what do you think?” I asked my teammates, looking each one in the eye.

  Did they trust me enough to be the one to handle Nathan and however much reliable info we could get out of him? If they wouldn’t, then I’d have to find a delicate balance between what I was going after and what we—as a team—would decide on. But I silently hoped they’d still trust me enough to be their team leader and a true part of this team; even if I didn’t fully trust myself on the topic.

  Their faith in me meant more right now than mine did, for various reasons. One of them was the fact that if I was going to defect and follow Nathan wherever he’d want to go, then I needed to be able to get him out of the house first and then go after him. I felt like a traitorous bastard for contemplating it and doing some planning depending on that tangent. But it was what it was.

  I’d gone without love for a hundred and sixty years. Now, Nathan Gallagher—the brother of our enemy—made my heart skip beats and armies of butterflies flutter in my stomach whenever we looked in each other’s eyes. I accepted what I felt for what it was and did my best to reconcile my code of honor with what I knew I would do: follow Nathan wherever he would lead me. I just hoped he’d choose wisely for both of us, even if he didn’t know he was doing so. And I didn’t plan to let him know about it, either. Right now, what mattered was to build and strengthen a bridge of trust between the two of us and hopefully reaffirm the one between my team and me.

  My teammates looked at each other for a few seconds before Taka spoke.

  “We trust you, Claw. We’ll give you some privacy, but we’re right outside the door should you need us.”

  “That sounds good to me,” I finally said.

  I watched them get out of the room, one by one, and as I did, I hoped against hope that their trust wouldn’t ultimately go amiss where I was concerned. But there was something more I needed to find out before I contemplated allowing the dice to fall where they may. I had to know if Nathan’s soul was truly the one I suspected it to be. Maybe if he wasn’t, then my feelings for the man would lessen. My obsession could slowly dissolve if only I could separate the feelings that had been dormant for so long from the attractive and fiery man I was looking at now.

  So after they were all out and the door closed behind them, I got the satchel of magic powder that Aashi had so generously given me. I wondered if it was going to be the instrument of my ultimate betrayal of her and what we’d been fighting for together for so long. Life was nothing if not ironic.

  I fixed my gaze on Nathan as I held the satchel in front of me. “This magic powder is going to tell me if you’re the reincarnation of someone I used to know. It’s important for me that I find out if you are that soul or not.”

  He checked my wrists. “And it won’t hurt me in any way?”

  “In no way at all. It will simply let me know if you are or aren’t that reincarnation.”

  “And what difference does it make if I am? I’m not the same person come back to life if I am a reincarnation, right?”

  “No, you’re not. You’re still you. But if you are a reincarnation, then maybe other things are likely to be as they were then.”

  He seemed suspicious but also curious. “Things between us?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this person was important to you?”

  “Very much so.”

  “I get the sense that you’d rather not say in what precise way they were important to you, though. Am I right?”

  My throat felt suddenly dry. I had to clear it a couple of times before I could speak. “You are.”

  “Can you use it with or without my consent?”

  I
nodded.

  “But you’d rather I consented to it for some reason. Why?”

  “Because it seems fair that you would also know what the result is. It might help strengthen the trust between us.”

  “And you want that—for the trust between us to grow stronger?”

  “I do.”

  He watched my wrists with a lot of care. “You know, it occurs to me that a strong enough person could not show signs of having a toothache. But you couldn’t camouflage away the red bands around your wrists. So you’re telling the truth about this whole thing, apparently. Which brings me to my next question: why did you want your buddies out of sight for it?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “You people don’t strike me as the shy types. There’s another reason behind you keeping this between us, isn’t there?”

  I sighed. “There might be.”

  “But you’d rather not say, huh?”

  “At least at this point, yes. Trust me, nothing about any of this is meant to hurt you in any way.”

  “I trust the lack of red bands around your wrists. So let’s do this thing.”

  I pinched some powder between my fingertips and set the satchel down on the side table. Then I let the powder fall in my open palm and walked to the side of his bed. After sitting down, I got my palm close to his face and blew.

  He closed his eyes when the cloud of sparkly particles flew in front of his face. I watched it glimmer in a mesmerizing way, and then his face seemed to absorb it. His eyes stayed closed for a few seconds, and nothing happened. A tremor of fear shot through my body. Would it not work? Or was the answer to my question: no?

  “Open your eyes, please,” I whispered on a hunch.

  As he slowly did, his light complexion and blond hair dissolved into a face I hadn’t seen in such a torturously long time. The dark eyes stayed the same, but his complexion grew darker and his hair became a luscious black. Thick black eyelashes and finely arched eyebrows framed those wonderful eyes set in a considerably younger-looking face. I had the distinct impression that my heart stopped beating. I tried to inhale, but air eluded me. I reached out, unable to stop myself. When my fingertips touched his cheek, the illusion vanished. The sweet face of my beloved Menewa disappeared once more, leaving behind the frowning one of Nathan Gallagher. But one second was enough for me. I’d been waiting for such a dreadfully long time for this one second. Air rushed into my lungs and I shuddered as I exhaled, trying to control my heart rate.