Black Wolf (22 page)

Everything,
the rugs, the blankets on the bed and thrown over the loveseat, the
curtains, was black or dark purple or grey or silver or
combinations of them. Anything not upholstered was black metal and
glass and silver. His favourite colours.

"Jesus. That
the size of our whole apartment!" And what was in it would have
paid the rent on that apartment for at least two or three months,
he was sure.

"Like it?"
Gisela asked.

"Like it? It's
even more unreal than the rest! Let me believe it first! I've only
been gone for four or five weeks, how the hell did you manage to do
everything you just showed me? And why the hell would you..." He
ran out of words.

Kevin
chuckled. "Because you're special and we wanted to do something
special for you. It's absolutely and totally yours, everything in
there. As for how... a dozen or so people working together, with a
little magic thrown in, can accomplish a lot." He gave him a gentle
push into the room.

"This has to
have cost a fortune!"

"Not as much
as you think. Money wasn't a big consideration anyway."

Jess collapsed
on the loveseat, sinking in deeply, trying to assimilate this.

"You don't
like it?" Gisela asked, frowning.

Kevin laughed
again. "I think he's overwhelmed. Maybe nobody's ever given him any
good surprises before. Mine's a mirror image, more or less. Tell
you what. You stay here and come to grips with the fact that this
is really truly yours, and I'll get back to painting the bathroom
downstairs."

"And I'll go
get your stuff," Gisela said, darting away.

"Why?" Jesse
repeated.

"It's not an
attempt to bribe you into staying, although the thought crossed a
mind or six. Just to do something nice for you. You deserve it. And
since you don't have anyone else to do it for you, we did."

"That doesn't
make sense."

"We
wouldn't've done it if we didn't want to." The blonde departed, and
Jess heard him on the stairs down.

Gisela came
only long enough to deliver his backpack before she was gone
again.

Jesse ran a
hand over the blanket under him, thoughtfully. There was a lot of
the silky stuff in the house, used for everything from clothes to
sheets to curtains, like in this room... his room. It still made
his skin tingle faintly, less so now than on his first visit to
Haven; not an unpleasant sensation, but a little unsettling.

What was it,
anyway?

More calm now,
he explored more closely. Behind the closet doors that folded back
like a curtain of dark wood, there were hooks and shelves and
drawers and bars and hangers—and clothes. A few things he knew he'd
left here on his last visit but others he'd never seen, made of
that silky stuff in the wild styles he'd seen Coven Sundark and
others in Haven wearing, all black, purple, or silver-grey.

He hesitated,
but temptation won. He shed his jeans and T-shirt, and tried on a
pair of loose black pants made of the silky material. They fit
perfectly, unsurprisingly, though a drawstring waist did leave a
lot of leeway. He found a grey shirt, with loose gathered sleeves,
and pulled it on. Whisper-light, and totally seamless, like the
pants. And a vest, also black. He gazed at himself in the
ornately-iron-framed mirror, smiled at his reflection. It made him
look abruptly younger, really seventeen. The slight tingling of the
material was a distinctly sensual thrill, all over his skin...

If he wanted
to, while he was here, he could forgo his usual clothes entirely,
stay entirely with the new stuff...

Could, except
he lacked the courage to even leave it on long now. It felt too
much like deception, trying to pretend that he belonged here.

I could be
like them. I could learn, if I stayed here always.

Damn it all,
even though I've been telling myself over and over not to care,
admit it. I care. Very much. They're my friends, even if they don't
know everything about me. Well, I don't know everything about them,
either. That's fair.

He liked the
Jesse looking back; that was the Jesse that should have been. He
laid the fingertips of one hand against the glass, wishing with all
he was that he could step through and trade places.

Could you wish
on a mirror? Maybe it was a magic mirror.

"Hey, mirror,"
he whispered. "Do you grant wishes? Can you make me like that Jesse
instead of me?"

The other
Jesse just gazed back, but his dark eyes, grey-blue-green with a
blue starburst around the pupil, looked very sad and lonely, and
much older than the face they were in.

Jesse shook
himself. "What am I doing, talking to a mirror? I'm losing it. The
insanity around here is getting to me." He started to turn away;
motion in the mirror made him turn back. Somewhere in the shadows
behind the other Jesse, something was moving. Startled, he glanced
behind him. Nothing there. Only in the mirror, a night-coloured
wolf formed from the shadows, and pressed its head to the other
Jesse's thigh.

Although Jesse
stood frozen between fear and surprise, the other Jesse glanced
down, laid a hand on the wolf's head, and met Jesse's gaze with a
smile utterly and quietly content. His other hand he reached out to
lay flat against the glass. Jesse, instinctively, feeling tears in
his eyes, laid his own over it.

It wasn't his
new bedroom behind the mirror Jesse, but a hilltop, with a dark
lake visible behind it. A place that turned up constantly in
Jesse's dreams, though he had no recollection of ever having been
anywhere that looked like that.

"God," he
whispered, and it was a prayer. "Please..."

The wolf
whined. Jesse could hear it, not quite audible, like a memory, but
very clear. It stirred restlessly, then turned and ran off to one
side.

"Can I hear
you too?" Jesse whispered. "Can you talk?"

The other
shook his head slowly, still with that gentle smile, but the
contentment was gone, with the wolf. His eyes were sad again, as he
bowed his head, and let his hand fall.

The reflection
shivered, like a stone dropped into a pond. When the ripples
stilled, it was a perfectly ordinary reflection of him and his new
room.

"This," he
told the mirror, "is getting freaky. And part of why it's freaky is
that I've been around this weird place so long that a mirror that
does what it wants isn't enough to make me want to run screaming
back to the city. Can you show me Shaine? Are you that kind of
magic mirror?"

No
response.

"Guess not.
Should I ask Kevin about this, I wonder? Nah. If he doesn't know
already, then it can be my secret."

He spent
another moment just gazing at his reflection. As oddly natural as
it looked... He sighed, switched back to jeans and T-shirt. It
simply wasn't him.

16

"Kev?"

Kevin raised
his head from his math homework, knowing it was Jesse hesitating in
the doorway even before he looked. "What's up?"

"Can I ask you
something? Without you getting mad at me?"

"If it's that
touchy, I won't promise to give you an answer, but I can promise
not to get mad about you asking it." He sat up, an invitation for
Jesse to come sit on the bed. His desk rarely got used for
homework; sprawling on his bed was both more comfortable and easier
than trying to clear enough space.

Jesse stepped
around the not-yet-unpacked boxes, and perched on the edge of the
bed, running a hand over the silky blankets. "It's about this
stuff. It's not... natural, is it?"

Kevin winced
inside, old fears rousing. He ignored them resolutely. "That
depends on what you mean by natural," he said, choosing his words
carefully. "But if you mean did we buy it somewhere that made it by
conventional industrial means, then no, it isn't."

"Then what is
it?"

"Most people
call it magesilk. Because only a mage can make it, and the parallel
has been drawn before of a spider spinning silk. Besides, it
generally turns out feeling a lot like silk."

"You made all
this."

"Lori and I
did, yes. In a sense, it's more natural than anything you could
buy. Woven out of sunlight or moonlight, purely with a mage's
gifts."

"Out of light?
But light's not..." He stopped short.

Kevin smiled,
despite the effort to keep his voice steady and his body relaxed.
"Light's not supposed to make gates that cover forty minutes' walk
in a few steps, either. That's what a mage works with, light and
fire. Witches like Cynthia and Naomi and Nick, they can do a little
with all the elements. Mages can do a lot more, but only with our
element." He got up, and moved to one window-seat. There was plenty
of electric light in the room, of course, but sunlight and
moonlight were always easiest to work with. "The moon's bright
enough. Come here."

Jesse came.
Absently, Kevin glanced at the lamp by the bed and turned it off,
then flipped the switch near the door that controlled the overhead,
so the only light was that of the waning moon and stars—not enough
to allow him to see, but he didn't really need to be able to. It
was one of the first skills he'd mastered under Tomas, how to catch
the light in his hands so it pooled like water, then use hands and
will to weave the delicate strands of pale moonlight into a piece
of whisper-light magesilk a foot square. Jesse's fascination
tickled against the edges of his mind. Kevin offered it to him.

"See? That's
too flimsy to last long, I didn't put much effort into it. Or I can
make it dark." He ran a finger over the silk in Jesse's hands,
turned it black. "I could change the shape, or make it heavier, or
make the colour anything I choose. Because it's my will influencing
the light. And when it's not needed anymore..." He passed a hand
lightly over the cloth, and it melted back into moonlight.

"It only comes
from a mage?"

"As far as I
know, yes. Why?" He glanced in the direction of the lamp, and it
switched itself back on, followed promptly by the overhead light.
Poor night-vision was just part of life for an elf, but he wanted
to be able to actually see Jesse's reactions. Missing subtle body
language, important in anyone but especially in a werewolf, could
have big bad consequences.

Jesse
shrugged. "Nothing. It's just... I'm sure I've seen Shaine sell
scarves and stuff that feel the same, when we're really low on
cash. I've asked him a couple of times where they came from, but he
won't give me a straight answer."

"Shaine's no
mage," Kevin said. "A mage living in the city is more likely than a
healer or a witch, but Shaine isn't one."

Jesse blinked.
"And you know this how?"

Oops...

"Um, well, I
gated to the city to chase off something nasty that could sense
you'd been in Haven and was attracted to that?"

"Uh-huh. And
this happened when?"

"Way back in
November."

"Back in...
that freaky night I had, when I just couldn't lose that guy?"

"Mmhmm. Flynn
had a hunch, got a focus, and I gated." He hated leaving out the
part of the wolves in it, but that would lead to longer
explanations he wasn't quite comfortable getting into. "At the
time, I didn't think hanging around to say hi was a good idea."

"Probably just
as well, I was less used to weirdness. Thank you forever, I was
getting really scared."

"That was what
it intended. I did get a look at Shaine, and he shows as perfectly
ordinary ungifted to mage-sight. Jess... we didn't think you'd mind
the magesilk. Lori and I make things for friends, all the time.
That's one of my favourite parts of being a mage. If I'd thought
you'd mind..."

Jesse shook
his head, slowly. "That's not it. I'm just... trying to figure
things out."

"You're always
welcome to ask."

"I don't think
I know the right questions."

"Not about
everything, true. Some things it's better to find out in your own
time."

"Would you
tell me if I asked you to?"

"I don't know.
I'll tell you anything you want about mages, but most other things
I'd be more likely to send you to one of the others to ask. Like
Cynthia for witches, or Flynn for seeing. Just like they'd send you
to me if you asked about mage stuff."

"That makes
sense. Why do mages only work with light? What about the other
three elements? Is there something like mages for them too?"

Jess had been
picking up magic theory, hm? "There is for earth, healers like
Gisela. Wind and water, none we know of. As for why we're limited
to fire..." He hesitated. Should he tell Jesse that not all of
Haven was human? Even if he told of only one of three? Or should he
let it slide? "Mages aren't human, exactly."

Jesse gave him
a wary look, but didn't react in any of the myriad panicky ways he
could have. "Not human?"

"Someday I'll
learn to keep my mouth shut." It felt like walking a knife-edge,
one where he didn't know what lay on either side. "'Human' is a
rather tricky word to define, but we aren't, quite. Or maybe it
would be better to think of us as a human subspecies. Although most
of the stories about us are, uh, highly exaggerated." Pure
nonsense. "The name we use, currently, is elves. Any elf can do a
few things. There aren't many mages, although it does tend to run
in my dad's family. Elves have a natural affinity for fire and
light, although a few other things, like telekinesis and telepathy,
tend to go with it to varying degrees. And a high metabolism,
that's why I eat so much. Mages are even worse than other elves for
that. Elves also have no night-sight to speak of, but we can see
heat patterns—infrared, basically. And mages have something called
mage-sight that lets us see anything that's living or magical."