Fire and Ink

Chapter 1

Fire and Ink

By K.L. Noone

“I’m in love with him,” David Stanton announced, “and he’s not happy,” and finished off half his beer.

His younger brother’s matching pint paused mid-air. “We are talking about Colin, right, because—”

“Yes!”

“Oh, good, because this would’ve been a much angrier conversation otherwise. I like Colin.” Brian set the glass down and frowned at him. So did his half-pastrami and onion rings. They collectively disapproved of his shortcomings. The entire sandwich shop, bright under green awnings and frequented by just about everyone in the neighborhood, leaned in sunny yellow walls and home-brewed craft beer to eavesdrop.

“I know,” David said to them all, and put his own poor underappreciated pint on the table and put his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands. “I know.” He got the irony, too. Of the two of them, Brian had been the dramatic one: the wilder childhood, the rashness, the forays into hexweed and—once or twice—worse drugs, while David had steadily bailed him out, helped get him through school, and concurrently run the white witch and neighborhood healer’s shop. They’d grown up and switched places very recently, somehow, three months recently in fact.

This judgment was unfair. He knew it was. Brian these days put minor empathic skills to use as a counselor, primarily for troubled new-to-magic teens, and had his own apartment and a healthy amount of admiration from various social workers and civil authorities. That recklessness lay in the past. David’s own recklessness, apparently, had only been biding its time.

Brian was a counselor, he thought. Good. His little brother could damn well counsel.

And had excellent, if annoying, instincts. “Why do you think he’s not happy? We’re going to come back to the whole love part. You. You being head over heels in love. I mean, wow. But anyway Colin first.”

“Colin first.” David emerged from behind his hands. Didn’t even bother poking back after the teasing. He wasn’t romantic. He knew that, too. “Of course he comes first. I don’t know what to do.”

Three months ago David had brought home an actual therianthrope. A proper shapeshifter, brimming over with innate natural magic. Incredibly rare. Exceptional. Only maybe thirty in the world. Astonishing even for a witch, especially so for an unremarkable local witch.

He’d thought he was rescuing a lost kitten in the rain. He’d found Colin Rue, pretty-eyed and mischievous and wounded and stunningly, dazzlingly kind.

He’d known who Colin was, at least once his new kitten had decided to trust him and transformed into a human-shaped vision of enticing, long-legged winsomeness. He’d heard a few of those rumors. Fireflower drops, parties, decadent kept-kitten nights, a pet of wealthy and charming and seductive sorcerers and warlocks and enchantresses. Bartering those magical reserves, that natural power-source, for s*x and luxury and lavish living.

He’d never expected Colin Rue to be scared, brave, and generous under much-practiced flippancy.

Even if he had, he hadn’t expected Colin to want to stay with him. Not with anyone. Not after—

David gritted teeth and held back fireball-related urges every time he thought of it. Even now.

He stared at his sandwich. Surreptitiously drew a tiny inkless sketch on his napkin: not fire but a scorch-mark. It made him feel marginally better and then worse because normally he prided himself on having control.

Good older brother. Local witch. Advice dispenser. Nice person. Reliable.

He drew another tiny scorch-mark beside the first. His magic lay in his hands. In his art.

Colin liked his hands. Said so, at least. Liked those hands on him, stroking him, overwhelming him with glorious sensation. David liked this as well: he could give Colin that. Could make him feel good. Safe. Cherished. Often swept away by ecstasy. But mostly simply anchored and adored.

After escaping from the warlock who’d kept him in a binding collar for eight months, during which Colin had been forced into obedience, into bed, into giving up his magic and his body—even after that, on first meeting, his kitten had looked at him and very gently cured David’s headache without being asked. Had offered to run, taking himself and his enemy out of David’s life. Had told him that he, David Stanton, was a good man.

Colin Rue on his own—not anyone’s forcibly collared or carelessly kept pet—liked books, and reading, and sushi. Colin kissed him with a sort of shy delight in the mornings, like someone who’d done a lot of kissing but had never known what a kiss could mean before David’s lips.

David hadn’t known either. All new. Shining like rainbows when he’d been living colorblind.

“Where is Colin, anyway?” Brian raised eyebrows at him. “Did you invite him to lunch?”

“He’s out doing…cat things. Shapeshifter things. I don’t know exactly.” Admitting this hurt. “Making rounds of the neighborhood. Talking to the local familiars. He said he’d be back this afternoon.” This hurt more: Colin hadn’t wanted to spend time with him.

“The familiars? Is that safe?”

“He says it is.” Animal familiars were generally not the brightest, but they were ferociously devoted to the witch or wizard who’d infused them with magic and awareness. Given this, David had been skeptical; Colin had only smiled, feline and secretive, and bitten his ear.

Over the last three months they’d not been exactly keeping Colin’s presence a secret, but they hadn’t been advertising either. Colin wasn’t a fugitive, but would be a scandal, a story, a subject of rumor and desire, and had that warlock’s resentment hovering in the background. They’d discussed plans, nestled naked together in bed.

It’d been unlikely that any cheerfully nosy neighbors would connect his slim quiet partner with the heedless and hedonistic explosively powerful shapeshifter who’d vanished from the supernatural party scene over a year ago. Unlikely, but not impossible, given well-meaning chatter. They had alerts, both magical and not, set up for mentions of a feline therianthrope; no one’d said anything so far.

Colin did use his own name—though he avoided drawing attention to it—for ease of remembering to answer, and he didn’t transform in front of anyone other than David, and Brian once or twice, though Brian would remove his own tongue before spilling a confidence left in his keeping. Most of David’s clients knew either the witch’s assistant-s***h-boyfriend who helped to mix magical ink with barely-hidden fascination or the fluffy brown tabby kitten with striking silver-streaked eyes that liked to sit with sick children and purr.

Those children always felt better after that. Amazing. Like magic.

He shredded an unfortunate onion ring into an unrecognizable heap of fried bits. “He told me it’s a sort of magical creature thing. Shapeshifters, descendants of the original Twelve, birthright and fealty and whatever, so they won’t tell anyone if he explicitly asks for that. Which he has.”

Brian whistled, low and impressed. “Don’t spread that around, it’ll fly about as well as Scorpius the Mad’s lead balloon.”

“Yeah.” Familiars should be loyal to their creators. If Colin could command that loyalty instead…He eyed another onion ring. It squared up to its task of comfort, whether that meant eating or evisceration. “You see the problem.”

“No,” Brian said. “I mean, yeah, I see like twelve problems, including the one where you’d be a terrible power-hungry dark warlock and make us all eat our broccoli at dinner—”

“It was good for you!”

“—but you trust Colin, right? And people trust you. Dependable. Honorable. I’m not saying it wouldn’t ruffle some feathers, metaphorical and literal, but you’ve also got tradition on your side. He does have that lineage. People respect that. Even if, sorry in advance, he’s kind of got a reputation, they still do. Respect the heritage, I mean. And you.”

“I know.” He ate the onion ring. “I get it.” It’d be a problem—it’d be about fifty problems. Brian had been underestimating—having to do with available power and potential abuse of such, but not insurmountable given his own established honesty and Colin’s illustrious ancestry.

“I want to go back to the part where you think he’s not happy.”

“He’s not. I can…I just…I can tell.”

“Can you? Or are you looking for trouble?” Brian stole an onion ring, ignoring his own fries. To add insult to injury, the sun popped out to slant blinding light across his beer glass. A few more customers wandered in, ordered, took seats. David recognized one of his clients, though she didn’t look over, and he did not wave.

He did sigh, took a French fry off his brother’s plate, and consumed it. With force. “Maybe. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just…he had a life. Before me. Parties and clubs and designer jeans and—and warlocks and witches who could pay for all that, who wanted to give him trips to Tahiti or the giant ruby ring of Parsley the Great—”

“I think you meant Parslav.”

“You know who I mean!” He wanted to kick his sibling under the table. Refrained, only barely. In this mood he might accidentally set Brian’s leg on fire. “He says he doesn’t care. He says he doesn’t want to do that anymore, being someone’s trophy, being bought for a weekend. I believe him—I think he believes it—but…”

“But you worry that he misses that life.” Brian’s eyes met his: darker, more cocoa-rich than David’s own hazel, but firm as the earth beneath their feet. “Not the p*****t for magic and s*x and s*x magic part, but the kind of life he was used to. Not a local witch’s cottage on the outside of Los Angeles suburbia. Where you’ve got him helping strengthen house-wards and purring at customers.”

David opened his mouth to say yes and discovered that he couldn’t say anything at all.

“I’ve met Colin,” Brian added, holding his gaze across forlorn bread and shredded napkins. “He wouldn’t hide it if he weren’t happy. He’d tell you.”

“I think he would, but…” But Colin had needed a refuge. Had needed space to breathe. Might not want to jeopardize that.

“Then trust him.” Brian offered up a smile: the same smile he’d use on an anxious teenager in need of comforting, David recognized. “He’s a cat, y’know, bro. He’s not going to be shy if he’s annoyed with you.” Utterly optimistic. Positive in outlook. Evaluating available knowledge.

Colin and Brian, he remembered abruptly, were nearly the same age. They’d both been through roughness, though in different ways, and had come out the other side. Colin was technically older, but only by a year. Closer to Brian’s age than his own. Surreal vertigo twisted his stomach for a moment, but it didn’t matter.

That comparison was inaccurate, anyway. Shapeshifters didn’t age the way humans did. Colin had suggested, with feline poise but some doubt, “I’m twenty-six?” when asked. He’d have more or less a normal human lifespan, he’d said, but shapeshifting morphology could be fluid and unpredictable and influenced by mental states. If he was twenty-six he looked younger.

He looked a bit less so these days. David poked the remains of his sandwich, which refused to divine answers, and didn’t eat it. Colin had thought he might end up slightly older after that ordeal. After captivity and a collar and escape. He had.

Fireballs again. At his fingertips. In his gut.

He took a deep breath. He liked being the mature one, dammit.

“I can…try talking to him.”

“You can try believing him,” Brian suggested. “If he’s told you he doesn’t want that life anymore, you have talked about it, so you know that much. Even if he’s still working out what he does want. Which of course means I get to ask you the big question, which is—”

“Since when am I even capable of falling in love. Go on, say it.”

“Nope.” His brother did kick him, but fondly so. “I know you love people. Your wise and insightful younger sibling, for instance.”

“Didn’t know I had one of those.” But he nudged the onion rings that way when Brian reached for them.

“You like quiet,” Brian admitted around crumbs, “and you think spending all day at an exhibit on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic curses is somehow a thrilling first date, but you’ve got, like, the world’s biggest heart. When you care about someone you throw that whole heart at them. Which sounded less disgusting in my head.”

The Egyptian exhibit in question had happened over a year ago and involved a gorgeous young surgeon David had inadvertently met while spending an afternoon sketching at the beach. Lucas had come out of the water dripping and golden and sun-splashed and intrigued by the bearded artist who’d caught him and his friends poised on surfboards, but had been somewhat less enthused about David’s ideas for a real first date. They’d not had a second one.

He’d not bothered dating much after that. He’d not bothered dating much ever, in fact. Tended to let things happen when they happened. No rush, no disruption.

And then Colin Rue had turned up under his car. Reshaped his life. Made it jump up and tap-dance.

He grumbled, “Can’t even picture how I’d throw a heart at someone…” and took another one of Brian’s fries.

“I think,” Brian observed, “that you, y’know, telling him you love him might solve both your immediate problems. You’d know if he was happy with that. And he’d have a reason to be happier.”

“I can’t tell him.” Fried potato turned to hopeless ash in his mouth. “If he thinks he owes me—if he’s only here because—”