"What—the stove? Oh, it's some sort of solid fuel in a can, sort of like a candle but it burns hotter. It's possible to use one in making an improvised explosive device," she added thoughtfully.
"I am shocked you know how to do that."
"Really, though, there's not much point, as a Molotov cocktail is easier and faster." Max scooped stew into a metal camping bowl and handed it to him.
After they had eaten, she insisted on going out and setting up more traps. They stumbled around in the dark, using flashlights to put wires where Max said they should have wires. There was absolutely no light at all in the great, dark, wild world except the small splashes of their flashlights and the brilliant stars overhead.
"Is this safe?" Gio asked after the third or fourth time that he put a foot in an unseen hole and barely saved himself from falling with the shifter-swift reflexes he was still getting used to. "We could see better in the daylight."
"So could he," Max said quietly. With the flashlight resting on a fence rail, she was working busily, snipping and twisting wires together. "From what you say, we have to assume that we may be observed later. We have an extremely short time to get everything done before you are discovered. So we can't waste any. Night is our best opportunity for working unseen."
She looked up, abruptly seeming to realize that they had been going all day with hardly a pause. "If you want to go sleep, that's fine," she added. "This is what you're paying me for. You don't have to stay out here with me."
"And leave you to do all the work? Appalling. I would be ashamed of myself."
He glimpsed Max's crooked smile in the reflected glow of the flashlight beam, along with the twinkling of her dimples. "And they say chivalry is dead."
By the time they staggered in to bed, they had set up Max's booby traps in a dozen different locations around the cabin. As Max pointed out, they had no idea where their target would show up or how many of their traps he was going to be able to spot, so they had to hedge their bets as much as possible. They were both exhausted and covered with dust, and Gio looked ruefully at his hands, scratched and bleeding in a dozen places.
Some of the small scratches had already begun to heal. He still wasn't used to that.
"Here," Max said, tossing him a box of wet wipes. While he cleaned his hands and face, she spread out air mattresses and sleeping bags. "There's ibuprofen in that box if you need any, and sandwiches in the cooler."
"What now?" Gio asked. He had almost grown used to the dull ache of the medallion, like a hastily swallowed gulp of too-hot coffee, but the fresh pains in his shoulders and hands were going to interfere with sleeping. Sacrificing machismo for practicality, he shook two pills into his scratched palm.
"Now," Max said, "we catch a magician."
MAX
Max wokewith sunlight splashing through the uncovered windows of the cabin and shining in through the partly collapsed wall.
They had only gone to bed a few hours ago, so it was unsurprising that Gio was still sleeping, but this was late for Max. She propped herself up on her elbows and took a quick look around the cabin, bathed in morning sunshine and blue shadows. Nothing had changed. She had thought about setting watches last night, but decided to rely on her sharp jaguar senses and various traps to alert them if someone tried to attack in the night. There was no sense in starting out sleep-deprived, and from what Gio had said, it could be several days before anyone showed up.
She looked over at Gio, visible as a tangle of golden hair and one shoulder. The T-shirt was rucked up over his bare skin, so she could glimpse a corner of the scar-like pattern. As he had told her, it covered the back of his shoulder as well as the front.
Gio twitched in his sleep and moaned. Max sat up and reached over to put a hand on his shoulder.
She was aiming for the T-shirt, but he stirred and so her hand settled on bare skin. Touching him felt like an electric shock. She had never realized that a palm on bare skin could be so erotic. He was very warm to the touch, and the urge to keep running her hand over his shoulder was almost overwhelming.
"Hey," she said, giving him a gentle shake. "I think you're having a nightm—"
She broke off in shock. There were scattered patches of gray on his skin, blotchy blemishes that she was positive hadn't been there yesterday. She would have tried to convince herself it was the light, but they were visibly spreading in front of her eyes, and their texture was pebbly, rough and hard. Then abruptly the skin beneath her hand cooled and hardened, and she jerked her hand back to discover that half his shoulder had turned gray as well. Some of his hair was like that now, fine strands that looked like the work of an incredibly talented sculptor.
That was what this was, she thought, stunned. Sculpture. He was turning to stone before her eyes.
"Gio!" It was difficult to put her hand back on his arm; she had an irrational fear that it would spread to her, too. But she had to wake him up. She gave him a hard shake. His arm was still warm; it felt like sun-warmed rock beneath her fingers.
Gio gasped and his eyes snapped open. Max gasped, too. Instead of their usual rich brown, his eyes were bright gold, and the lashes were fine spires of gray stone.
Then he jerked to a sitting position, and the stone vanished, his skin turning its normal golden tan once again. The last thing to change back was his right hand, which—buried in the sleeping bag and invisible to Max until he sat up—had turned to rock halfway up the arm, and also developed stone claws. Gio flexed it several times until all the gray was gone and it was back to its usual color. The scratches from yesterday had healed to pink lines.
He raised his gaze to Max. He looked tired, with blue smudges under his eyes. His eyes were brown again.
"Sorry you had to see that," he said.
Although the situation itself wasn't funny, the comment startled a laugh out of her. "You sound like I caught you masturbating."
Gio managed a smile. "That might have been easier to explain."
