by Bob Dattolo
Oh my fucking God, this is ridiculous. I rubbed my temples before sitting back, “Captain Garrison? You want me to spill the tea on what happened and how I found him and drove, I don’t know, ice picks into his temples? Here’s the truth. I was sitting on the park bench the last time I talked to him. I was sitting there the last time I saw him. He left me behind. I haven’t even told my friends about meeting him. I haven’t tried to search his sites since everything started coming down. I did search for other people and other articles like his since then but haven’t found anything that looked promising. I haven’t seen him since that morning when he left me, perfectly alive. I haven’t paid anyone to go after him. I haven’t asked anyone to go after him. Until you mentioned him possibly being killed, I didn’t know that he was dead. I assumed he was alive and hiding away in case our father found out about things. I wasn’t involved in any way with him being killed. With him being alive, on the off chance you’re fucking with me. With him getting a splinter. Or even a foot rub. My sole involvement with him was me DMing him, us talking on the phone for like two minutes, talking in person for maybe ten minutes, then searching for things on him afterwards for some ridiculously short period of time before I stopped. While I have thought about him over the past few days, I haven’t made any attempts to find him, see him, find where he lives, call him, nothing. I haven’t even specifically looked up his name in case that would somehow trigger people.” I spread my hands, “Does that answer your question? If not, please feel free to ask me and I will answer you one hundred percent honestly.”
More looks over my shoulder. I don’t know what he did, but some of the scents started backing away as more subtle sounds reached me.
“You’re telling the truth? You did not have him killed? Or kill him?”
“I did not. Now, is he actually dead? I can Google his name and find out, but like I said, I’ve been trying to avoid that.”
“He is dead. Very.”
“And my name came up how?”
He eyes darted to my phone, “Phone records for one. We couldn’t quite put two and two together until we started looking into things. Then…the fact that he was torn apart…”
“Okay, that tells me stuff without telling me stuff. By torn apart, I have to assume you mean he was torn apart by a dragon. Your comment about two and two means that you figured out that he was in fact my brother. Half-brother. Or whatever. I don’t know if you found that before or after realizing I called him with a burner phone that we bought under someone else’s name. Which…hmm, that means you figured out he was attacked by a dragon then figured out who his father was. Probably figured out that the call that morning was for some homeless guy that couldn’t have possibly been involved. I don’t know where in that you connected my name unless someone gave you a hint or pushed you in my direction?”
No reaction. Not even a twitch. Shame.
“Okay, nothing there.” Closing my eyes, I sat back, “I’m not sure where to go with this. If I’m a suspect, you had to be able to connect the two. I’ve only searched for his name on this phone. So unless you tracked it back to where we’re staying, which is in Parece’s name? That’s a possibility, although that seems a little twisted. Maybe tracked videos of us talking? That’s a possibility. I’m not sure how you’d have been involved, though, I don’t think you’d be on tap for just any dragon attack. Which means you were probably brought in when my name came up since you had an involvement with me before. To me that either means you connected the dots in some sort of convoluted manner that I can’t begin to guess at, or else someone planted something. Dropped my name somehow. Something was left behind. Something. Considering there’s no way he would have left anything with my name lying around, that means someone else left it. Can you grunt if I’m even in the ballpark?”
No grunt.
I opened my eyes again and finished my coffee, “No feedback? I’m thinking we need to leave here again.”
He nodded, “You have been in place for a few days. How close do you think those parents are to finding you?”
“I don’t know. It’s a mystery, honestly. I have to think they’re paying someone to get into our phones, but we haven’t had them on recently. They could be tracking money, but we have a bunch of cash now and haven’t used cards at all. So…yeah, no clue that way. Unless someone’s following us and may have caught up with us again.” Okay, could Levi be behind this? Is he here again? Tilting my head, I stared at him, feeling him out, “Does the name Levi Winters ring a bell with you?”
There’s the tick.
“Fucking hell. He’s really following us all over the damn place!”
He touched his phone, almost a nervous habit, “Why do you say that?”
“Please, you didn’t deny it. You’ve heard the name. I don’t know if he dropped my name or you somehow figured he’s involved or not, but you’ve heard it. And not because I killed his parents at Reggie’s house.” There’s a bit of shock. “Yeah, I learned that right before the trial. What a fuck-up. Levi rather has it out for me even though I saved his ass in the trial. I probably shouldn’t have, but I did.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. Go talk to the girls and let them know what’s up. I don’t want any shit from Levi. Not at all. I want to get the fuck through the academy and graduate and get on with my life. I spent the last nine years in agony and a virtual prisoner, so now it’s time to live. I have the second year of that hellhole coming up, so I need to be concentrating on surviving that and not some dick that doesn’t like that I killed his rapist parents.”
He pulled his spell back and contemplated me for a moment. “You’re a remarkable girl. You have interesting insights into things.”
“Thanks?”
“You’re welcome.” He collected his phone and stood.
“That’s it? You’re not arresting me? I know a bunch of your guys left, but you have two left directly behind me.”
His eyes darted up again, “Can you tell me about where they are?”
I sniffed again, making it obvious this time, “Based on what I can pick up? You have a guy behind me on my right side. Maybe 35 feet back. You have a woman on the other side, she’s maybe 45 feet back. She has a faulty headset. I can hear static from time to time. I didn’t hear anything from him, so I can’t tell that way.”
More shock from him. “Interesting. I’ll have to check into that. Now, what would you have done if we arrested you?”
“Challenged you to a dance-off. Loser gets arrested. Winner gets foot massages for a week.” Yay, I got a smile from him! “Umm, go with you? At least until I figured out what the hell is happening?”
“You wouldn’t have fought?”
“Not particularly. Now, if I thought you were putting in mortmagi? Draining me of magic? I would have fought. Since your truth spell isn’t running any longer, I’ll just tell you that I’m being honest here, if I thought murdering every man, woman, and child in this state would keep me from having those fucking things pounded into my head again? I’d start with the slaughter and not stop until this entire fucking state is devoid of higher life forms. I had both in once. I had one in during a challenge in the academy. Never. Again. So, you want to arrest me and bring me in for questioning and all of that? I’d go. You want to torture me? Then I’ll go down fighting, no matter who I have to tear into confetti.”
He blinked slowly, “That…truth spell?”
“Don’t even pretend, Captain Garrison. You came in suspecting that I was responsible for a murder. Yet you’re not arresting me. That means that you have to have proof. Something that would stand up to the court. All of that. That means you have a truth spell. You don’t have anyone downwind that I can see that could have picked up my scent to know that I’m telling the truth, although maybe you do, and I simply missed it. So that means spell. You also got up and had no reason to keep it going after turning your recorder off. So…yeah, there you go. That’s my extra bit of honesty. I
’m a peace-loving bring-em-all-together sort of dragon, yet I’ll wade through body parts and pools of blood to my fucking chin if I need to without losing a bit of sleep over it. I just pray I never need to do that.”
“You know? You and me both.”
Then the bastard walked past me and left me behind. I purposefully didn’t watch him go so that I couldn’t pick out the two that I smelled. Or figure out if I missed anyone. Although I was listening rather intently.
Not that I dropped my spell. No sense risking things. That stayed up another 20 minutes before I sighed, grabbed my empty plate, and headed back to the room. I have to talk to the girls when they wake up.
Chapter 14
“How sure are you that he was your brother?” Parece squinted at me, as if trying to see details that I’m leaving out.
“Umm, not sure? Not really. He seemed to recognize who I was, like I said. Then what Garrison said? Or didn’t say? I’m not quite certain, just pretty damn certain, that he’s my half-brother. He was also killed, and my name came up even though it sort of shouldn’t have been possible.”
“And you think Levi?” Samantha pushed her empty plate away.
“That’s my guess. Garrison recognized the name, which I don’t think he would have. He wouldn’t really have been involved with the deaths of the parents beyond Reggie being involved and me being responsible for the magic they were tracking. Plus, like I said? I’ve been seeing or smelling him everywhere we’ve been.”
Angelica frowned, “That’s funny. I thought I saw him in Texas at one point, then wrote it off. I didn’t get a great look at him, so figured there was just no way. I wasn’t able to smell him.”
“I’ve smelled someone that I thought could be him a few times. It’s just been faint enough to not really be sure at all.” Parece finished the last of her eggs, “If he’s really following us and murdered this Joel guy to get you arrested, then what’re the chances he’s telling Samantha’s parents where we are? The other parents?”
“I have no idea.” I hated saying that. “I guess it depends on what he’s up to. Did he really murder a norm to get me in trouble? If so, does that mean that he’s spreading the word to have us get hunted? It’s a possibility. I’m just not sure what it means, you know? If he’s doing that, do I just leave? Do we all leave? We haven’t heard anything different in the voicemails to make us think anyone knows where we are, so…what do we do? I really like it here.”
“Me too.” Samantha handed her empties to the waitress as she came by. “The beach is amazing. The clubs are cool. The guys are hot as fuck. I’m not against moving on. If we do, what do we do? How is Levi following us? I haven’t seen him on the road, have any of you?”
“Not me. Nothing.” Parece looks around as if trying to spot him. “Could he have a spell on us somehow?”
“That’s possible. I’m not sure how he’d learn something like that, though.”
Samantha’s response made me hold my breath for a moment, “Are tracker spells possible? I thought they were pretty difficult?”
“They are. Very. Casting them on someone is difficult as hell. I’m not sure he’d be able to do that.”
“What if he has one on the truck?” My question caused a bit of shock from them.
“Does…does anyone know any spells that can help look for something like that?” Angelica obviously didn’t. “I know that we can pay for that to be checked for. Do we try to do that?”
I haven’t picked up anything like that, but it’s not like I was checking for something on the car. Lord knows that I’ve felt magic all over the damn place as we’ve travelled. Do I tell them that I can do it? “Why don’t we go check it out and see if any of us can pick something up?”
“How, though? I don’t know of any spells like that? I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen one like that.” Parece looked to the others, “Either of you?”
“Not me.” Angelica grabbed her phone and stood, as if expecting us to join her.
“I’ve seen someone do a spell like that, although I was crazy young. I don’t have anything like that in my grimoire.”
Fucking hell. “I can go check out the truck. Maybe I can…I might be able to find something. Maybe.”
The three of them looked at me, then at each other. “You might have something? The girl that didn’t have magic like three months ago?”
“Umm, yeah?” I’m not sure what else to say to Samantha’s question than that.
She looked at the others. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t get it, but let’s give it a shot. Worst case scenario, we hire someone and see if they can find something. If there’s nothing there, then maybe it’s something else that we’re just not thinking about.”
Thankfully, they dropped the idea of me being able to do this. Now I just need to see if I can do it and if I can avoid them asking me about how I did it.
We reached the truck about 20 minutes later, and I didn’t know what to do. Like at all. How do I do this and make them believe that I’m following a spell? Assuming I can do it at all? Dammit to hell, this is hard. I so don’t really want the truth to get out there about magic. That’ll be freaking devastating, it really will. That means that I have to get more grimoires so that I can hide what I’m doing and say that it’s from this book or that book. Or maybe write my own with the spells that I come up with? That might work. Then it wouldn’t even read as a lie.
Instead of starting in, I moved around the truck, sniffing. The others did the same once they realized what I was doing. “I don’t smell Levi anywhere near the truck. No one else, either. Other than the cars next to us.”
“Me either.” Samantha leaned in to sniff the door handles closer, “Nothing at all.”
Nods from Parece and Angelica.
Dammit, now I have to do something here?
What do I do? Do I hide that I’m doing anything? Or skip that since they know I’m trying to do magic? Do I make it weak? Or skip that since they already know that I’m powerful?
Fucking hell, this is hard.
Not having a clue how to handle things makes this really, really difficult. I wish I hadn’t come up with that idea with them there. I could have snuck here and tried it on my own and then come up with some sort of plausible explanation for how I found it. Or just wipe it out and we leave and then Levi can’t find us.
Assuming there’s really something in place.
Dammit!
My hair lit up, although I kept it a little lower than normal to not draw attention to us. As the power built, I tried to envision what I wanted.
“You really know a spell to find other spells in place?” Parece gave me a look like she knows I’m lying or skirting the truth.
“Umm, know it? No. I think I can get it to work, though. Maybe.”
“Uh-huh. This grimoire that got destroyed. It’s apparently pretty powerful.”
“It was.” Pure honesty. “I’m livid over it getting wrecked. I never even got to read all of it, although it wasn’t colossal like some that I’ve seen. It had some really good things in it, though.”
“I see.” She gestured at the truck, “Then by all means? Let’s see if you can do this.”
My God, she sounds so earnest, yet we both know that she’s yanking my chain. She doesn’t at all believe what I said, even though it was the truth. I just sidestepped the living hell out of things.
I can’t tell from Samantha or Angelica. They may believe me, or they may not. They’re not really reacting either way. They’re not stupid, though, so I’m thinking they’re probably on the fence and leaning towards me not really telling the truth.
The spell failed when I tried to cast it.
“Fuck, that didn’t work. Hold on.”
More power flowed out.
“Dammit!” None of them reacted as I hit the hood.
This time I let the power build longer and focused more. Sure, the first two failed on purpose, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have more power in this thing.
&n
bsp; That promptly failed.
Parece grabbed my face and turned my head to stare directly into my eyes, “We’re not stupid. Cast the fucking spell and we see if someone is tracking us. Just fucking do it.”
Angelica sighed from the side of the truck, “Seriously. Stop wasting time and just do it.”
Oookay. By the look on Samantha’s face, she’s of the same mind.
So none of them really believe me. Wonderful. Isn’t that wonderful?
I’m so tempted to respond in some way or to have it continue to fail, but I don’t think I can play it off correctly. If I do it successfully, though, they’ll know I was fucking around. Which they already assume anyway.
I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Lying and getting caught will be worse than just doing it.
The magic flared around me, and I felt an immediate tingle as light came from under the truck.
They each caught that and backed away, “What the fuck is that?”
Moving to the back of the truck, I got down and looked at the glow, “Umm, there’s a tracking spell on the spare tire.” Another glow hit me, sort of hidden behind that one, “And then there’s another one on that shock thing right there.” I pointed to where the smaller glow. The others had joined me in looking, so they got a face full of magical effect.
“What the fuck do we do with that? Can you break them? I know I can’t.” Samantha tapped the spare tire where it’s hoisted up under the truck.
“Maybe? I don’t really know how I do that, so hold on a sec.” The spell continued running as I touched the tire. I can feel it now, the spell, and it’s freaking annoying to me to think that asshole has been tracking us around the country. Assuming it’s really him that’s doing it. I have to think it is, yet I can’t really be sure. I don’t think I can create a spell that’ll tell me that, although maybe? I’ll have to play with that when no one else is here.
I tried crushing the spell again and again, but nothing happened. Finally, rage began bubbling up and I grasped at it with magic and clenched my hand mid-air, shattering the spell. Then did it again and destroyed the second.
