“Meaning I’m interested, Oz, the Great and Terrible,” he says, his lids drooping into a naughty bedroom sort of a look.
“Interested in what?” I quip back, my mouth going dry as I try to maintain my composure. I’m being coy here, but I can’t help it. Either I’m hitting on a delusion created by my own brain or else some weird wizard dude from another world is moving in for the kill. Regardless, it’s a bit of a strange situation, isn’t it?
“Fucking,” he says with a loose shrug of his shoulders. “Or, we could make a baby.”
My mouth drops open, but no words will come. None.
What. The. Actual. Fuck?!
“Oz,” Taavi growls, peeking his head back in the door. “We can’t loiter here for long. Even during the day, this forest is not an ideal place to stop. Please, come bathe, so we can eat.”
“Think on my proposition,” Stryker says, smiling as he exits the cabin, striding over to the fire in his boots and blue military jacket and then tossing the birds to the forest floor with a dramatic sigh.
“That psycho just asked to make a baby with me,” I whisper at Taavi. His face tightens up, and his eyes narrow, but he nods, like that isn’t all that unusual of a request for someone I met yesterday. “Seriously? I figured at the very least that you’d be pissed off about that.”
“Wizards are rare,” Taavi says with another sigh, glancing over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing even further, until they’re nothing but slits. “It’s not uncommon for a wizard to proposition another like that.”
“If wizards are rare, then why the hell do we keep stumbling into them?” I ask, thinking of Stryker, Isaac, and Bain. “I mean, there was the witch dude—”
“Witches and wizards are not the same thing,” Taavi says, leading me between the massive trunks of trees, past fern fronds in a rainbow of colors, and mushrooms of questionable origin. Some of them even glitter. In a place like this, that can’t be good.
“I used to think wizards were the male version of witches. That’s not the case here?”
“Witches pull magic from the earth; wizards pull magic from inside themselves.” Taavi pauses at the edge of a creek, looking up and down the bank, and then lifting his head to scent the air. After a moment, he bends down and dips his hand in the water, swirling his fingers around. He grunts, as if in approval, and then stands back up. “You’re safe to use the water now.”
“You’re not going to look away, are you?” I ask, and he shakes his head.
“I’m sorry, Oz, but I cannot. It’s too dangerous. Don’t worry about me though: I certainly won’t be propositioning you for a child.”
“Yeah? Why not?” I ask, remembering the intensity in his stare, the words growled out from low in his throat. Mine. Mate. Breed. Taavi ignores me, eyes scanning the limbs of the trees for danger. Just to spite him, I kick the silver shoes off, and his eyes widen. He bends down quickly to retrieve them, tucking them under one of his strong arms.
“It’s forbidden for wizards and their guardians to engage in romance or sexual activity of any kind,” Taavi says, looking back at me. “No matter how strong the pull.”
“Are you saying we have a pull?” I ask, tearing my dress over my head. I’m not wearing a bra underneath, but Taavi doesn’t look at my chest. His gaze is focused on my face, even as I shimmy out of my shorts and underwear. Two days of walking with no shower … I need this.
“No,” Taavi tells me, sounding like he’s speaking the purest of truths. But what was it he said to Stryker? Taavi isn’t a faerie, he can lie, and it’s likely he’s doing just that.
I step a toe into the water, and then stumble back.
“It’s freezing cold!” I groan, dipping my toe in again. “There’s no way I can bathe in this.”
“You’re a wizard, Oz, start acting like one.” Taavi keeps his gaze neutral, focused on my face, or the trees, or the water. He definitely doesn’t look at my breasts or anything lower down. “Heat the water up, but be quick about it. In Oz, strange things live in the water.”
“Things worse than the kelpie?” I ask, but the way he grunts tells me that there are much, much worse creatures than that out here.
“Fuck.”
I’m naked, so all that cool palm slapping and arm flinging might look a bit less, uh, badass if I were to do it now. But I’m also not getting in a bath of ice water. No freaking way.
Exhaling sharply, I try what I did last night, slapping my palms together and imagining the water heating up to a pleasant bath-like temperature. Instead, a lightning bolt crashes down to the bank just across from me, and I let out a little scream.
