September 2018.

A sorcerer pushed open the door of the diner, both of his hands on the metal handle that bisected its glass. Holding himself upright. He raised his shockingly blue eyes, seeking out and pinning me into place in the red-vinyl booth situated at the far corner. 

My heart fluttered oddly, even as my rational mind immediately snapped to assessing the situation.

Three exits.

The first required a vault over the stools and the laminate counter, then a quick dash through the kitchen beyond. This had the added advantage of putting me within reach of the shotgun gathering dust under the cash register. A shotgun I was fairly certain was illegal in Canada. I hadn’t researched the country’s gun laws, though, because guns rarely worked against the magically inclined. The Adept.

So even with his magic as drained as it felt, a gun might backfire if I tried to use it against the sorcerer currently blocking the second exit.

His hair was dark brown, his chiseled jaw shadowed with stubble. His black suit and rumpled white dress shirt were streaked with dirt. No tie. No objects of power on him. Not that I could feel, anyway. But I picked up magic in people more consistently than I did in artifacts.

The sorcerer looked as though someone had tortured him, drained his magic, then just tossed him from a vehicle and sped off — including a scrape on one of his cheekbones that was so sharply defined it might have cut glass.

Cheekbones? Cut glass?

That was an absurd thought.

The second exit was through the sorcerer himself. And by the way he stumbled as he stepped into the aisle between the booths along the windows and the red-vinyl-topped metal stools that lined the counter, he was slow. Likely so drained that I’d be on the sidewalk before he even reacted to my passing.

He placed his hand on the back of the nearest booth, earning a disconcerted glance from Harry Morris, co-owner of Cowichan Kayak and Tubing. Harry had just started eating his lunch — a burger with all the fixings, including bacon. He ordered the exact same thing every Friday.

The sorcerer straightened, visibly reining himself in, smoothing his demeanor. But he stood out among the small-town locals even more than I did, and I’d put a lot of time and energy into being accepted, even if I couldn’t truly fit in. He was going to draw the attention of everyone in the packed diner. And then I’d be forced to make a choice instead of just sitting in the booth and gazing at him as if in awe. As if struck by … something. 

It was his magic, or lack of it, that intrigued me.

Yes. That had to be it.

Of course, that didn’t explain the way I felt. Amped up, stomach churning, heart rate spiking. But at the same time, sedate, easy … languid.

He flexed his hands. His fingers were long and unadorned, though distinct tan lines indicated that he’d recently worn rings on each finger, as well as spent significant time in a sunny climate. The rings had most likely been filled with his power. Practical adornments that had been stripped along with his magic.

I forced myself to focus on everything that was wrong about the situation and what my options were now that I’d allowed the sorcerer to close the space between us. I was down to my third possible exit. I could go through the window. A relatively easy move, which would in no uncertain terms let every Lake Cowichan local currently lunching in the diner know that I was more. More than human. More than I wanted them to know.

It would draw far too much attention, though it wasn’t the mundanes — those without magic — that concerned me. Rather, such actions might allow the powers that enforced the secrecy of the Adept world — or the members of the Collective themselves — to become aware of my continued existence. Gaining the notice of either would mean a prison sentence. Just not necessarily one that came with a barred cell.

All three exits required me to run. Through the town, north along the lake, all the way home. Grabbing our go-bags, climbing into the Mustang, and leaving.

Leaving.

Leaving everything I’d spent the last ten months cementing, the previous five years making possible — risking exposure, and occasionally my life, to earn the money necessary to build … a new life. An actual life.

The sorcerer took two more steps my way and his expression shifted, causing him to falter as if he’d just gotten a read on my magic. He had just figured out that I represented everything he’d lost, every iota of power that had been stripped from him. He stumbled, resting his hand on the back of another booth.

“Can I help you?” Mary Davis asked him, still chewing a bite of her chicken salad. Mary, along with her husband, Brett Davis, was a local real estate agent. They had held the listing on the property I’d purchased over eighteen months ago, even before the disastrous job in San Francisco that had nearly been my last.

The sorcerer ignored Mary. I was his sole focus. His sole desire.

In his obvious state of need, he might kill me to get the power running through my veins. And I realized with something like shock that I was fully capable of just stepping out of the booth and letting him have me. Letting him consume me.

At that ridiculous thought, my strange physical reaction to the sorcerer’s appearance resolved into unmistakable, unbidden desire. That warmth curled through and settled in my lower stomach, informing me instantly that I’d only ever felt a shadow, the barest hint, of lust before.

I knew I should have been reacting. I should have been moving. Instead, I was just sitting there, staring at him as if he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. As if his beauty had knocked every rational thought right out of my head, dampening every instinct.

Behind the long counter, Brian Martin, co-owner and operator of the Home Cafe, paused after placing a piping hot plate of tuna casserole in front of Lani Zachary. The ex-air force technician, now a mechanic, had cropped her dark hair short at the beginning of the summer, and her bangs were just long enough to brush her eyebrows now. She was perched on her habitual stool, eating at the counter. Brian, a barrel-chested and balding, soft-spoken man in his early fifties, frowned at the sorcerer, wiping his hands on his white cotton apron.

Lani swiveled on her stool, following Brian’s gaze. Her hazel eyes narrowed as she traced the sorcerer’s focused intent back to me in the corner booth.

I was going to have to act. I was going to have to make a choice. Otherwise, people were going to get hurt. Hurt in a way that would draw unwanted attention.

I wasn’t ready.

I just wasn’t ready. I’d wanted more than ten months. I’d been hoping … thinking that we might be able to stay. That Christopher, Paisley, and I might be able to put down roots in this small town, tucked away from all the powerful Adepts who’d want to use us, to control us if they knew we existed. If they knew what we were capable of doing.

The sorcerer was five steps away. He didn’t seem quite so unsteady on his feet now.

Was this what looking into your future was like? A slow, torturous stroll punctuated by indecision, and yet … desire? A dreadful aching desire to reach forward and embrace what was coming, no matter where it took you.

“Can I help you?” Brian asked from behind the counter.

Lani plucked her napkin from her lap, placing it down beside her plate. Her own latent, untapped magic was coiling within her, but so quietly that the sorcerer wouldn’t be able to feel it under everything emanating, beckoning from me.

I naturally and continually dampened my magic, of course. But a sorcerer of his power level would be able to trace any residual, even subconsciously. He could have followed the path I’d inadvertently laid along the roads I walked every few days in my almost obsessive need to create habitual routines.

Lani was going to reach out. She was going to touch the stranger’s shoulder, holding him back from closing the space between us.

Then the violence that the sorcerer was barely keeping contained was going to explode all over the diner — taking those with whom I was building tentative relationships with it.

I set down my soup spoon, unaware that I’d still been holding it. I slid out from the booth.

The sorcerer hesitated, sweeping his hungry gaze down to my ankles and white sneakers, then up all the five foot ten inches of me — pale bare legs, sundress, wide shoulders. Long neck and green eyes, and red hair that fell in a straight sheet down to the middle of my back.

“Hello.” I spoke as if I knew him. As if I’d been waiting for him.

And for the moment that the word hung between us, I thought it might just be true. I might have known him forever, though I was just meeting him for the first time.

Brian and Lani exchanged glances, their combined concern easing from protective to simply wary.

Oblivious to everything around him, the sorcerer closed the space between us far quicker than he’d been moving previously. He was taller than me, maybe six foot one. I had to tilt my head to maintain eye contact.

He reached out, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck, his thumb across my throat. His grip was harsh.

But though I was completely unaccustomed to being touched, even gently, I didn’t break his hold. I didn’t try to step away.

Frustration, restlessness, and a fierce need filtered through his touch, picked up through my latent empathic ability. I kept my gaze locked to his, slowly raising my hand and hovering my fingertips by the road rash on his cheek. “You’re hurt.”

His frustration turned to confusion. Then, as he felt the magic that hummed through my skin no matter how tight a rein I kept on my power, it shifted into amazement. Even awe. He gasped, his pupils expanding and his expression softening into a different sort of hunger.

A hunger much closer to the need, the desire, that was already brewing in my lower stomach.

“Hey!” Brian shouted.

“Are you here to kill me?” I asked in a whisper. “Or am I supposed to kill you?”

The sorcerer frowned. His grip loosened, hand falling away from my neck, severing our empathic connection. “I’m … I don’t know.”

(END OF PREVIEW)

Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1) releases tomorrow, April 30, 2019!! YAY!

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