Page 42 of That Mafioso Magic
“It is. I don’t smell it on him anymore. But something happened to him,” Shi said.
I looked at Sage, trying to figure out what was going on when I begin to feel my cell phone buzzing, then ringing inside my pocket. I pulled it out and didn’t recognize the number on my screen. I answered. “Hello?”
“Mr. Elias.”
Holy shit, the voice that flowed through my phone was unmistakable. Salino Laurent. How in the hell had he gotten my personal cell phone number and furthermore, why was he calling?
“How did you get my number?” I asked.
“I gave you my blood, you didn’t think I’d have you investigated? Anyway, getting your number was easy. I’m calling because I figured you are with Sage now. Am I correct in that assumption?” he asked, and if the sound of a voice was a fabric, his would be satin. Sage’s would be silk.
“Yeah, so?” I replied, feeling a little bit defensive of Sage.
“Good, I’m on my way to your location now. Can you please inform Sage’s protection detail of my arrival?”
“Tell that son of a bitch that he isn’t welcomed here,” Shi said, having overheard our conversation with her exceptional shifter hearing.
“And you tell that bitch that if she doesn’t want Sage to die, then they better welcome me with open arms,” Salino replied, having heard her response loud and clear with his powerful vampiric hearing.
“Are you threatening Sage?” Shi growled.
“On the contrary, I want him to live, more now than ever. I knew the moment it happened, the connection between sire and child is something very intimate,” Salino said.
I had to blink as what he was saying was starting to settle into my mind. “What? Wait a minute… are you saying that Sage is… no, can’t be. You didn’t bite him and give him your blood to drink,” I stated.
Salino laughed. “Whatever magic you worked on Mr. Tamir, well, it also worked in my favor, Mr. Elias. He is mine and if you don’t want all of your efforts to fail, then you will allow me to complete the ritual for his transformation. I will be there in ten minutes.”
I looked at Shi, speechless. “I… I…”
“Tell him to come,” Shi said. “He will be granted entry, because I need to see if this shit is true.”
I cleared my throat. “You heard her, right?”
“I did. I’ll be there shortly.” With that, Salino ended the call and I stared at my cell phone for a few seconds before I placed it on the bed next to me.
“How did this happen?” Shi asked me.
I shrugged. “How the fuck should I know? I told you I’d never done this shit before and the grimoire doesn’t exactly tell you about side effects or symptoms,” I snapped. “This is still all new to me, Shi. But I do know one thing about magic and spells that powerful… well, there is a price. This… whatever this is that happened to Sage… it’s the price.”
“Fuck you and your price, fix this!” she yelled.
“Stop yelling at me. I did the best I could,” I said, climbing off the bed and walking over to where I had sat the grimoire down. “I don’t even know if it can be fixed.” I picked the book up and sat down to look through it.
Shi began to pace the room, her hand going to her lip. “Sage isn’t going to like this shit one bit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Like you said, we save him first and deal with the consequences later,” I said.
“Oh, you don’t get to throw that back at me. It was bad enough with the deal you made, but this is some next level shit. Do you know what it means for Sage to be Salino’s child? What he will demand of Sage? It means Sage will belong to him as all vampires belong to their sires. Sage will hate this,” Shi snapped.
“Look, I did the best thing I could. The only thing I could find in this entire book that I believed would save him and it did. He may be changed, but he is still alive,” I said.
“Yeah, we just don’t know what that means yet,” Shi stated.
“Does he still smell like a shifter to you?” I asked. “I can still sense that in his aura and his magic too, so that is the same.”
Shi took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She nodded. “He’s still our king. The lion in him is still there.”
“Let’s take this one step at a time, then,” I said and continued to look through the book again. I would only see my spells and the spells Sage and I could do together. The grimoire hadn’t generated new spells yet.
