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The pieces of paper mocked me. I glared at the pile of invitations, wishing the elementalists would just give up. Anytime soon would be great. The stupid fancy paper said otherwise. I was tempted to set the heavy stock on fire right then and there. Maybe it’d help mend my confused heart and mind.
I grinned and decided to roll with it, shoving all of them off my workbench in my lab at Biomystic Security and straight into the trash bin. Then, I used the magic inside of me, letting it curl out, and with a simple thought, the trash bin lit up with flames. Imbued with my magic, the fire caused the flames to flicker with spots of purple dancing with the red and orange. The heat fanned against my skin and comforted me.
Snickering, I enjoyed grim satisfaction as it crawled through my body at the sight. Now if it were only so easy to purge everything else going haywire in my mind. I didn’t even know where to start. Scratch that. I knew exactly where I wanted to start: the elementalists.
They were stubborn, but so was I. I had no intention of meeting with them. Unfortunately, they didn’t know how to take no for an answer. I’d been telling them to go fuck themselves since they’d showed themselves at Shanton’s campsite. They’d been refusing to listen, and since then, had become a curse to remind me of who I could have been, but wasn’t. I’d been proud of who I became, getting to where I was on my own, but they were a reminder that I was still not fully myself. I want to discover myself on my own—without them. They didn’t need me when I was born, and I didn’t need them now that I was nineteen.
Being stalked for a month, invitations always sitting there, no matter where I went, was pushing me over the edge. I already had enough going on as it was. I didn’t want to deal with them too. Through our initial meeting, I knew they wanted to fit me into their mold. That was never going to happen, not with my experiences and knowledge there to prevent that. No mold of theirs was going to be enough for me.
I sighed and ran a hand through my brown hair, knowing that when I went home tonight, another invitation was going to be waiting. At least they weren’t leaving them in my apartment. Never in my apartment. They either hadn’t been able to break in or they were at least being slightly considerate, because I would hunt them down and destroy them if they went into my territory.
If only the elementalists were my only issue, then I’d be okay. I’d be sane. Instead, I had to deal with confused emotions that seemed to randomly bubble up inside of me. I didn’t want to deal with them. I wanted to shove them back, ignore them, pretend they never existed. It’d make my life so much easier. I needed to focus on my projects and not on the fact that the guys had promised me dates and then disappeared.
I saw them around, even talked with them briefly, but it was like the whole ‘taking you out on a date soon’ promise never happened. It hurt. It really did. To their credit, they’d been busy. Once word got out about how we’d helped Shanton get his hands on an ancient artifact, people came to us for all their little problems. From what I could see, everyone was stressed and always running out the door. So I barely saw the guys, and I no longer fit in their schedule. That really burned.
The sound of bubbling water drew me out of my deep thoughts, and I rushed over to my current project, adding some more herbs to the boiling mixture. The air filled with the scent of mint and the air ventilation sucked it toward the ceiling. I held back a yawn as I watched the mixture roll around in the water, some bubbles popping from the aggressive heat.
I needed to get this part done, and then I’d be at a good stopping point for the night. I eyed the door, expecting to see Lombardi there, being all judgmental. Even I knew I was overworking myself. The problem was this was time-sensitive. Once I reached a certain point, I needed to move quickly to place all the safeguards on the device I was secretly calling Magic Be Gone, or MBG. The safeguards needed to be in place, otherwise, anyone could use it, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen.
Besides, I had the time and desperately needed to keep my mind off the others. There was a growing ache, and for the first few days I didn’t even realize it was because I missed the guys. Once it dawned on me what I was feeling, I grew angry and frustrated. They were here, in the same fricken building, and I still managed to miss them. I shouldn’t have allowed them to get so close. I shouldn’t have believed them when they promised to take me out on dates, to build a relationship. My past had taught me better—people lied all the time.
They definitely changed their minds once we got back from that assignment with Shanton. Probably realized how ridiculous the notion was to date one girl, and a nineteen-year-old at that. To them, I was a child.
I shook my head, trying to break my thoughts. The little insecure girl in me was coming up with theories, and I hated her for it. They were good theories, like, maybe they only told me they were interested because we were in a stressful situation at the time. Granted, they had taken me out on a date and we got to relax in a hot spring, but we’d also just come out of that crazy maze, barely alive. High-stress situations created high emotions. They could have been running off of that when they told me they all wanted to date me.
And now that we were back and they’d been able to calm down, that wasn’t the case anymore. Maybe they regretted telling me that and were using their jobs to stay away from me.
Not wanting to dwell on theories, I bit my lip hard enough to come back to reality. I couldn’t get lost in those assumptions, it hurt to think about it. It actually physically hurt me to think they didn’t really want me. Somehow, they’d all crawled into my heart and settled down, finding a spot. I didn’t even know how they did that, easily stripping away the independence I fought tooth and nail for.
Either way, they weren’t here now and it sucked, only making me angrier. I wanted to get into trouble with Davies, and hash things out with Rhett. I wanted to make Venni smile and draw out Alijah’s protectiveness. I wanted to tease Elliot and turn him into a guinea pig. Someone needed to piss Lombardi off so I could watch him exact retribution. Hell, I’d take dealing with Shanton’s cocky determination too. There was something alluring about a man who did what he could to get what he wanted, and Shanton did that without throwing others under a bus. All I wanted was to spend more time with them, get to know them.
Sighing, I rubbed my face. I wanted fricken company. To feel a man pressed against me, lips on my heated skin, hands roaming my body.
“Shit.”
I was horny.
Hissing caught my attention, and I swore as I dove to the pot and took it off the hot plate. Scalding hot water splashed over the rim and drenched my hand. “Fuck!” I nearly dropped the pot, risking the loss of hours of work.
When I released the pot onto the lab bench, my hands were shaking, skin red.
“Damn, Sparks, what the hell?” Ami said. She grabbed my hand and tugged me to the sink, turning the water on. When it was lukewarm, she held my hands underneath. “I come in to check on you only to see you nearly killing yourself? What are you doing anyway?”
I blinked several times and glanced at the open door. I didn’t even hear her come in.
“Thinking too hard, apparently,” I mumbled.
She snorted. “You shouldn’t daydream when you’re working.” She let go of me and when I went to remove my hands she said, “Don’t. You need to leave it under there for a while.”
I nodded as she dug through the cupboards.
“What are you looking for?” I asked, not liking her going through my stuff. Everything was right where it needed to be.
“Where do you keep the cream for burns?”
“Drawer right in front of you.”
Ami dug out the tube of cream and placed it on the counter with a small clank. Turning, she leaned her butt against the counter and stared at me, her gray eyes hard. Words were on the tip of her tongue, she just didn’t know how to say them. She was practically fighting with herself by the twitching of her expression.
“Don’t try to be tactical now,” I said when she showed no sign of speaking up.
She let out a breath of air. “Good. Laila Porter, you are a complete idiot.”
“Wha—”
“You’ve been down here for days. You’re exhausted and yet you keep pushing your limits and now you’re hurting yourself. We’re going out tonight, we’ll have some fun, and then you get to go home and rest.”
“Can’t I just go home?” I asked.
“No, because then you’ll go to your lab and keep working. I’m going to tire you out.” She smirked and tucked a strand of her black hair behind her ear. She’d recently had it cut into a pixie style and it looked good on her, the slight curls adding soft waves and making her look more feminine and innocent. Considering she was a meathead, this put her at an advantage while people kept dismissing her. It gave her an edge out in the field.
“It’s Thursday,” I said.
“So?”
“No one goes out on Thursday but the creeps.”
She shrugged. “Then maybe we can start a bar fight. I need a good fight.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s not happening. You know I don’t fight.”
“Aw, Sparks, I’ll protect you,” she pleaded, leaning closer to me. “Please. Pretty please.”
I laughed and used my soaked hand to shove her away, getting her work shirt wet. She laughed as she grabbed my hand and shoved it back underneath the water.
Ami refused to let me take my hand out from underneath the water for a few more minutes and then helped apply the cream. The redness had already started to lessen as it healed, my magic doing what it could. I couldn’t heal much on my own, but I could do enough to get rid of the discomfort, and the burn cream would do the rest. My hand was going to be red for a few more hours, but at least I wouldn’t have any blisters. A human would have had to go see a healer, but I wasn’t human.
Staring at my current project, I longed to keep working. This one was dangerous, but once I finished, it’d be worth it because then our human meatheads had a way to survive when they came up against powerful magical beings. The original idea was to have it contain both magic and energy users, but that was too complicated. So I narrowed the focus onto magic-users since they were the hardest to contain when they were powerful.
I didn’t want the situation with Elliot to happen again. In late August, he was put into a coma after getting hit by a magical attack. He was one of the few pure humans working for us, and while he was somehow one of the elites, he was still more vulnerable than the other meatheads. In general, we were faster, sturdier, and had other gifts, whether with magic or energy, to fall back on for help. Even our bodies healed faster.
But a pure human like Elliot didn’t have that.
I wanted to create something for them. I glanced at the pot I was now going to have to dump and start all over. Hours of work destroyed. I needed that potion to help me with the next step. I swallowed a scream of angry frustration. The last thing I wanted was Ami thinking I needed a psych evaluation.
“Get out of your head!” Ami said.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Fuck this, this is an intervention, let’s go.”
“I need to clean up.”
She narrowed her eyes and glanced around my lab. “Five minutes. I’m going to clock out and come right back. You better be ready to go.”
I believed her and got to work as soon as she left, making sure to lock up behind her. By the time she came back down, intending to drag me out, I was ready to go. I smirked at her, but she just shook her head and still managed to drag me out of the building.
