Alpha Magic (The New York Shade Book 4)

by D. N. Hoxa

  Jamie had parked the car in front of the wide street that marked the beginning of the Pack territory. The entire neighborhood belonged to the Conti Pack, and they were all werewolves, which meant they’d all smelled us long before we’d gotten out of the car. Carter would hear about it soon. All I had to do was wait.

  “Shouldn’t we call him?” Malin asked, resting against the hood of the car. I did the same and Jamie followed.

  “No, he’ll be here. He knows.”

  Even before I’d finished speaking, Carter Conti turned the corner at the other side of the street. He was all alone, for which I was thankful. His twin brother Chris wasn’t bad, but I had no idea what to even say to him other than a thank you at this point. Carter walked slowly, taking his sweet time, and I noticed a black backpack was in his hand. My backpack, hopefully. I’d left it behind at Chris’s house two nights ago. I had a change of clothes, and my money in there.

  “Does he always wear white?” Jamie asked while we watched him.

  “I don’t know, probably. I can’t remember.” But the times I could remember what he was wearing, it had been white. This time, though, he had a black leather jacket over his white shirt.

  “It suits him.”

  “Hey, knock it off,” Malin complained.

  “What? I’m just saying. If it wasn’t for what the bloodsucker did, I’d still be Team Carter here,” Jamie said. Last night, she and Malin had actually argued about which team they were on, until Malin had insisted that they were both going to be Team Damian because he’d practically given his whole life for mine. I’d just sat there and listened, too stunned to even say anything. What would be the point? They would have kept at it until they were done, anyway.

  “It’s fine, let her have it. He can hear her, anyway,” I reminded both of them, and I could swear I saw a smile playing on Carter’s lips, even though he was only halfway to us still. He was really taking his time.

  “So what? He’s heard me before. And, by the way, if you’d been Team Carter, too, you wouldn’t have even had to leave,” Jamie insisted, jamming her finger into my shoulder as if I didn’t already know she was talking to me.

  “By the gods, Jamie—he can hear you!” Malin whisper-yelled.

  This time, Carter laughed, and he actually started walking faster. I just shook my head. What could I say? They were my best friends and I wouldn’t have had them any other way.

  “Hi, Carter,” the girls said in unison when he was close enough. There were no scars on his face from the battle. Werewolves healed incredibly fast, but he would have a few of them on his body. Good thing I couldn’t see. Even though I knew the reason why Carter and his Pack had gone after the Uprising that night, I still felt like it was my responsibility. It was incredible how much guilt a soul could take, now that I realized it.

  “Ladies, good to see you,” Carter said, his voice dripping charm. The bags under his eyes were a lot more pronounced than usual, but he really did look and sound okay. A very welcome relief. “Sin, you’re alive.”

  “You, too. How nice,” I said with a smile and nodded at the street. “Walk with me.”

  “We’ll be right here. Don’t take long,” Jamie said when Carter and I turned to the right. I didn’t want to go into Pack territory at all if I could help it, and Carter didn’t object. I flipped Jamie off with my hand behind my back. She probably did the same, but I couldn’t see it.

  “This is yours,” Carter said, handing me my backpack.

  “Thanks. I forgot I even left it here until I saw it.” I hadn’t been very focused on…anything during the day, really.

  “How are you? You look good,” Carter said, tucking his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  “I look like shit. These scars are going to take forever to heal.” Unfortunately for me. “But I’m fine. How about you? How many people died?” Malin and Jamie hadn’t had this information.

  They’d been interrogated by the Guild but only for an hour because they’d claimed they were just passing by when Adams’s spell knocked them out cold. They hadn’t been directly involved in the battle, and the Shade had done what Malin said it would do and erased all evidence of them ever using magic around the neighborhood. So it had been an easy lie. Still, the Guild hadn’t told them anything about what happened with the others.

  “Eight,” Carter said with a nod, pressing his lips together.

  “I’m so sorry.” Eight people was a huge loss. Even one would have been a huge loss.

  “It’s okay. The Uprising is gone for good. Their lives weren’t lost in vain,” Carter said. “I heard about what happened.”

  I flinched involuntarily. “How did you hear that?”

  “Some people. Word travels fast among my kind,” Carter said with a laugh so fake it hurt my ears. I noticed he wouldn’t even look at me at all. I felt like shit all over again. “I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong about him.”

  “I told you he wasn’t the ruthless killer people thought he was.” They’d all heard the rumors—I had, too, but Damian wasn’t nearly as bad as people thought.

  “Oh, no, I’m not talking about that. He is a ruthless killer. I mean I was wrong about what I thought you meant to him.”

  “Ah.” My mouth clamped shut for a second.

  “So does that mean you’re leaving now? I’ve got a sneaky suspicion you are.” He stopped walking and stepped in front of me. We were already far enough away from the car and the Pack neighborhood that nobody would be able to hear us. “Please tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You're not,” I forced myself to say quickly before I chickened out. “You knew from the get-go, Carter. And after the way things went, well…I have no choice, really.”

  He sighed. “You should have just stayed at the house, Sin.”

  “And then what? All of you would be dead.” Just the thought of it made me shiver.

  “Are you insinuating that you saved us all? Wow, your ego must be the size of Everest now,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in the joke, not like it usually was.

  I smiled anyway. “I saved your ass and you know it.”

  He grinned. I felt a bit better. “You’ve been checking out my ass, haven’t you?” I couldn’t stop the laugh that burst out of me. “That’s okay, it’s a very nice ass. I understand why you’d have trouble keeping your eyes off it.”

  “Oh, please. I’m a professional. I would never go around checking people’s asses—even nice ones.”

  He winked. “Sure you wouldn’t.”

  I laughed again. He could always get me to laugh, the asshole. “Not to ruin your mood or anything, but did you by any chance find out what happened to your dad?”

  His smile didn’t falter, which I took to be a good sign. “Yes, actually. They caught Benjamin Boyle alive, only barely. He told the Guild everything. Is in the process of telling them everything.” Well, wasn’t that great news.

  “And?”

  “Apparently, my dad was Adams’s partner when the Uprising first started. It was supposed to be…something else, something different, like an organization that would fight for darkling rights legally, and when Adams changed his mind about what they stood for and started building an army, my dad wanted out. So he killed him, made it look like a suicide. End of story.”

  “Shit,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, Carter.”

  “Don’t be. I got to help kill Adams. It’s…closure,” he said with a grin. “And you helped, too. I’ll be forever grateful for that, Sin. I just really wish you wouldn’t leave.” He took a step closer to me, and it was all I could do not to step back. “You have a good life here. You stand for something. You’ve got friends. You’ve got me.”

  “I know. And I’m forever grateful for that, but I can’t stay, Carter.” I offered him a smile. “That doesn’t mean we won’t always be friends. They have phones these days. We can keep in touch. If you need help with anything, or I do, we can always reach out, right?”

  Something that looked like disappointm
ent flashed in his eyes, but it was gone so fast, I was sure I imagined it. I really did feel like shit for having to tell him this, but I didn’t want to lie. This was how I felt. I never wanted to lie again. I’d done it for so long that I wanted nothing to do with it anymore. The world had enough liars as it was, anyway.

  “Absolutely. You can call any time. And if at some point, for whatever reason, you change your mind, I’ll always be here,” he said, then put his arm around my shoulders and wrapped me in a hug. I hugged him back. It felt really good. Carter was a good guy. A great guy, even.

  “So what’s next for you? Are you coming back to the Pack?” I asked when we let go of each other and started walking back to the girls.

  “Not right away, but I will eventually. For now, I’ll stick to killing maneaters. It suits me. Helps let out the bad feelings. I like it,” Carter said.

  “Lucas is going to be so pissed,” I said with a sigh. Lucas and Kyle were our partners. We had been a team for a little while there, and it had been great. I hated that I had to leave them all like this.

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll find your replacement within hours. There’s plenty of Alpha Prime Marauder sorceresses around these days,” he said, making me laugh again.

  “I hope you find one that isn’t as stubborn as me, though.”

  “That’s gonna be the easiest part,” Carter said. “I meant what I said, Sin. If anything changes, you know where to find me.”

  “I know, Carter.”

  “Because I can give you the world, you know,” he said, and his shoulders were already shaking so badly while he tried to hold back his laugh.

  “Shut up,” I said, blood rushing to my cheeks instantly.

  “And the moon, actually.” Asshole. That’s what I’d said to Adams two nights ago, and I could already picture Carter the very moment I said it, just waiting for the right time to rub it in my face.

  “Please, stop.”

  “And the entire fucking solar system!” he shouted, and it was impossible not to laugh, damn him. The entire street roared with our laughter, actually, and I noticed the girls staring at us, mouths wide open. We were so close to them they could hear us perfectly.

  I fisted Carter on his arm. “Stop it.”

  “Oh, man. That’s like one of the highlights of my life. Just the way you said it, so violently, and then the way you looked at him, I mean…hooh!”

  “Shut up or I’ll kick your ass. I promise I will,” I said, then bit my tongue because the sight of him all red in the face, shaking with laughter, made me want to laugh again.

  “What the hell are you two laughing about?” Jamie asked, eyes wide and full of hope.

  “Nothing. He’s just being an asshole, that’s all,” I said and cleared my throat. “Well, we’re good to go now.”

  “It was nice seeing you, Carter,” said Jamie, shaking his hand.

  “It was nice seeing all of you, too. We should hang out sometime, you know? Talk about how awesome our mutual friend here is, right? So you can tell her all about it over the phone and make her life miserable.”

  The girls laughed. I pretended I was annoyed so I just rolled my eyes.

  “By the way, you have to show me the spell for the floating clothes in Malin’s bathroom. I’m dying to do it to my brother,” Carter told Jamie.

  Her smile fell instantly.

  “What spell? What floating clothes?” Malin asked, narrowing her brows.

  “He’s just kidding!” I said and practically pushed Carter away toward the Pack neighborhood. A much bigger crowd had gathered in the wide street now, and they were all looking at us like the concept of privacy was Chinese to them. I almost flipped them off, just to spite them.

  Carter only laughed harder. He couldn’t care less about his whole people watching, and he hugged me again.

  “I know you’re going to miss me, but you’ll be okay,” he whispered in my ear.

  “I really am going to miss you, though,” I said and patted his back. “And I really gotta go now.”

  “Yeah, okay. Good luck,” he said and waved at the girls before he turned around and walked back to his people.

  “That looked like it went well,” Malin said as we got in the car.

  “It really did.” Better than I’d hoped. “Where the hell are Kit and the little ones?”

  Kit and the little ones were nowhere to be seen. We had to wait for five minutes until they came back to the car, which pissed Jamie off to no end. She kept making comments about them the entire way back. I wanted to go back to my apartment for a shower and some clothes, but the girls wouldn’t hear it. They insisted that since they weren’t going to see me for a while, I needed to stay with them tonight, too. I had no complaints about that.

  When we got to Malin’s apartment and ordered some pizza, I finally convinced myself that it was time to call Damian. So I borrowed Malin’s phone, locked myself in her guest room, and stared at the screen for a solid two minutes. My stomach turned. My heart hammered in my chest. I had no idea what to even say to him, but I could always start by apologizing for not calling him before now. It had been a dick move on my part, but maybe he’d understand? I sure hoped so.

  Finally, I pressed the call button and held my breath.

  The phone rang. And rang some more. Damian didn’t pick up.

  The state of my body didn’t change—I still had butterflies in my stomach and my heartbeat had tripled and my palms were sweaty, but now for an entirely different reason. Things got really bad when Damian didn’t pick up the phone, and it seemed to happen every goddamn time I called him. Where the hell was he? He hadn’t disappeared again, had he? He wasn’t in trouble or in a different freaking world altogether…unless the Guild had done something to him?

  With half a heart, I called Moira’s number. She always knew where Damian was. The last time we’d spoken to each other over the phone hadn’t ended very well for me, but I needed to know.

  And she picked up after the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Sin,” I said because I wasn’t sure she had Malin’s number. “Where is he?”

  “Hi, Sin,” Moira said, and her voice wasn’t even hostile at all. I had no idea how the hell that had even happened, but okay. “He’s actually in a meeting with the Guild right now.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes,” Moira said, her voice still as sweet. “They’re giving him the details of his first job and he has to leave right away.”

  “Leave…like, leave the City?” My heart was now completely still.

  “Yep.”

  Fuck. “Right now, as in tomorrow morning, or—”

  “No, right now, as in as soon as he takes the job from the Guild. So if you want to talk to him, I suggest you go see him right away before he leaves.”

  My eyes were squeezed shut and I took a second to breathe. “Where exactly is he meeting with the Guild?”

  “Three buildings down from the Protection Unit. It’s their private offices.”

  I nodded to myself. “Thanks, Moira.”

  “Yeah, no problem, Sin.”

  I was going to hang up the phone, but it just bugged me so much I had to ask. “Why are you being nice to me?”

  “For fuck’s sake!” she shouted. “I can be nice to people. I am a nice person!”

  “Yeah, right.” She wasn’t.

  “Whatever. Bye.” And she hung up. I found myself smiling but not for long.

  Damian was already leaving. Tonight.

  I didn’t even remember walking out of the room at all, only when the girls saw me. They were sitting on Malin’s new couch, this one hot pink, with pizza boxes on their laps, while the hellbeasts were on the floor devouring theirs.

  “What? What happened?” Jamie asked, panicked by the look on my face.

  I sighed and went to sit with them, tears finally stinging my eyes. Now they wanted to come, the fuckers. This was going to suck.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The darkness
hid me well. I sat on the fire escape of the second floor, in a dark narrow alley across from the Guild’s private offices. It didn’t look like offices at all, just a four-story building with white walls and blinds drawn in front of the windows. There were no guards outside and I was too far away to feel for a ward. The dark wooden entrance doors were closed, and nobody had come out of them in the five minutes I’d been there.

  Saying goodbye to the girls had cut me to pieces and set those pieces on fire. It had to be done, but I still felt like the evilest villain in the world for having to leave. What if they needed me? What if I wasn’t there to help them if they did? What if I needed them? Because I would. I would need them every day.

  But it was okay. I could come visit. They lived here and they had phones. Better yet, the New York Shade didn’t seem to hate me anymore. No more nasty smells, no more garbage being thrown my way, and I’d reached the Guild’s building within thirty seconds after leaving Malin’s apartment. By the looks of it, the Shade and I were buddies again. I reminded myself of that and breathed a little easier.

  Kit scratched my cheek to tell me that he was bored.

  “Go play with your kids,” I told him, pointing behind me at the dumpster where Dalia and the little ones had gone. He still didn’t budge.

  It almost felt like he wanted to say something, and I was a nervous mess. I needed a distraction, so I used my Talent and took his magic. It’s not like it was illegal to do anymore. The Guild knew about me. I wasn’t planning on hiding it from anyone now. I was so done with that.

  Just as my magic started to work, I felt a bit of a burn on the back of my neck, as if to remind me that I had that thing under my skin. That’s right, the Guild would be keeping track of every time I used my magic now. So long as they didn’t stop me, it would be fine. I didn’t have a choice in the matter, anyway.

  Suddenly, when Kit started speaking, I could understand him just like he was speaking English, which was always weird. You don’t see many squirrels talking to people—even in movies.

  “You’re not very bright, you know. I’ve been trying to talk to you since you left Malin’s,” he said with an exhausted sigh.