by Kat Simons
“Yeah. I know. The Boss. But my friend here doesn’t want to talk to the Boss. So you can send him our best, and we’ll be on our way.”
And then, like clockwork, the shotgun appeared in Black Coat’s unfortunately capable-looking grip.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Okay. Webber is coming with me. He’s gotta okay.”
Cary frowned. Behind her, she’d heard Jon suck in a breath at the gun. He moved an inch closer to her and touched her coat.
She reached back and patted his arm, frowning. Not at the gun—though she felt sorry for the surrounding cars—but something Black Coat had said… “Why does Jon have to go with you?”
“Because. It’s the only way. They won’t let me in otherwise. I can’t do enough. I don’t have anything. But if I bring him, then they’ll have to let me in.”
Well shit. This kid was trying to find his way into the Boss’s gang. That meant he’d be rash and desperate and stupid.
“Listen,” she said, “there’s probably a very good reason why you want to be part of this group, but you’re not going to do it by taking Jon. Sorry. You’ll have to find another way. Or better yet, don’t bother. I’d be willing to bet you’d be happier, and live longer, if you stayed away from the Boss and his people.”
“What the fuck do you know, lady? Just shut up and hand Webber over, or I will shoot you.”
Cary shrugged. “Go ahead. You’re not getting Jon.”
“Don’t mess with me, lady.” He raised the shotgun but the barrel shook.
“Kid, have you ever even fired that gun before? Have you ever seen anyone shot? It’s ugly. Especially shotgun wounds. Big holes. Lots of blood. Very gross.”
“Cary,” Jon hissed.
“Don’t call me kid,” Black Coat shouted.
She opened her mouth but someone else spoke before she could comment.
“You might want to put that gun away.” Deacon stepped from behind a pickup truck and leaned casually against the front bumper.
“Who’re you?” The point of the gun swung toward Deacon.
Cary scowled. He was really going to have to stop doing this.
“My name is Deacon. And you are?”
“What do you want? Stay out of this, mister. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“I’m afraid it does. You were pointing a gun at my lady.”
“Yeah? Well tell your lady to hand Webber over now. Or I’ll shoot her.”
“No, you won’t,” Cary said. She glared at Deacon, trying to warn him with her eyes not to talk again. “You won’t shoot anybody. You’re barely old enough to hold a gun.”
“Shut up, lady.”
To her relief the gun swung back toward her.
“Just shut up!” the kid said again, his gun wavering. “I will shoot you.”
“If you shoot me, that man behind you is going to jump you. And if you shoot him, I’m going to kill you.”
It wasn’t a hollow threat. Somewhere deep inside, some part of her knew she would kill if Deacon got hurt. She wasn’t sure how she’d do it because when she wasn’t protecting someone, her fighting skills left a lot to be desired—despite her friend Lucy’s best efforts. That didn’t seem to matter to the part of her that knew she’d follow through with her threat.
She was going to be pretty worried about that part of her once this was done.
The kid must have seen something in her expression because he lifted the gun higher and fingered the trigger. “You wouldn’t. You can’t.”
“Put the gun down and no one gets hurt,” Deacon said.
“He’s right, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid!”
Deacon pulled away from the truck and took a step closer to Black Coat.
“All right, then,” she said, bracing herself in front of Jon. “If you’re so keen on shooting someone, shoot me.” Better she got shot at and Deacon took the kid down than the kid shooting Deacon.
“Cary?” Jon’s voice was a quiet whisper now.
“It’s okay. Mr. Big Gun here probably can’t aim that thing anyway, can you? Kid?”
“I said—”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t call you kid. Except you are. You’re just a kid. A kid without the guts to fire that gun.”
“Shut up. Just shut up!”
“No. You’re so big and bad? You want to play with the Boss’s gang of thugs? Then shoot me.”
“I will.”
“Do it. Shoot me.”
“Shut up or I will.”
“Do it! Come on! Shoot me.”
The gun went off with a crack that made Cary’s ears ring.
The buckshot scattered but slowed almost instantly after leaving the barrel. All of the tiny pellets curved to the right like a flock of birds, still moving fast enough to hurt if they hit someone, and plowed solidly into the side of a blue corvette leaving a hole the size of a dinner plate.
Someone was going to be pissed. She stared at the hole. A hole created after the buckshot had slowed down. Ouch.
The sound of metal clattering on tarmac pulled her attention from the hole in the car. The shotgun settled harmlessly on the parking lot cement. A very angry looking Deacon had wrenched the kid’s hands behind his back. Fortunately, despite the gleam of fury in Deacon’s golden eyes, the rest of him appeared in control. The boy was disabled but didn’t seem to be in severe pain. He didn’t look comfortable but at least he wasn’t screaming in agony.
“That was so cool,” Jonathon said, stepping from behind Cary. “The way he knocked the gun away from Paul.”
“Who’s Paul?” she asked.
“The guy who tried to shoot you. Deacon totally took him down.”
Cary stared at Jon, her eyebrows raised.
“What? Oh, yeah, thanks. What you did was cool, too.”
“Uh huh.” Nice. Fickle teenagers. Yesterday, he couldn’t wait to throw a book at Deacon. Today, Deacon was the big hero even though she was the one willing to get shot.
“Are you okay?” Deacon asked.
“We’re fine,” Jon answered. “Cary’s indestructible.”
“Uh, no…” she started.
Jon ignored her. “Hey, Paul.” He edged closer to the struggling gunman. “You want to get me, you gotta go through my friends.”
“Don’t taunt him.” Cary stepped close to Paul and made him look her in the eyes. “As you can see, trying to get at Jonathon is a mistake. Take my advice. Forget about joining the Boss. You will live a lot longer.”
“What do you know about it?” Paul snarled, still trying to act tough despite the awkward position Deacon had him in.
“I know that this kind of work will get you killed.”
“How’d you do that? You’re a witch, aren’t you?”
“No. You’re just a bad shot. But the guy who owns the corvette is going to be really ticked off about the hole in his car.”
“You want to call the police?” Deacon asked.
“No! No, don’t.” Paul started to shake in Deacon’s grip.
“You know you really shouldn’t try to shoot people if you aren’t prepared to go to jail for it,” Cary said, still in Paul’s face.
“You don’t understand. They’ll kill me. I tried and failed. They’ll kill me.”
“Who?”
“You know who, bitch!”
“Watch it,” Deacon murmured, wrenching Paul’s arms a little higher. The kid winced and dropped his gaze.
“Great,” Cary said. Just great. Now she had to protect the kid that had just tried to shoot her. How the hell was she going to do that and still keep Jon safe? “I don’t suppose you had a backup plan? A place to run away to in case you failed?”
“Cary? What are you doing?” Deacon’s voice dropped half an octave, adding to the air of menace already surrounding him.
“Well, I can’t just turn him over to people who might kill him.”
“He tried to shoot you.”
“Yeah, but I did kind of provoke
him.”
“She did,” Jonathon agreed.
“He brought a shotgun to this little kidnapping attempt,” Deacon said. “He intended to use it.”
Paul shrank under the weight of Deacon’s voice, looking younger and more scared by the second.
“He’s just a kid.” She glared at Paul when he opened his mouth. “Yes, you are. You’re what, sixteen years old? You’re a kid. And you should never have picked up that damned gun. No, don’t speak unless it’s to tell me you have somewhere to hide for a while.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Paul muttered. “I’ve got a brother lives in—”
“Don’t tell me,” she interrupted, raising her palms to stop him. “Don’t tell anyone where you’re going except your parents. Just hide.” She got closer and put her nose to his. “But if I ever see you again with a gun in your hand, if I even so much as hear of you threatening the life of someone, I’m coming after you myself. I will track you down. And you will wish the Boss’s men had found you first. Do I make myself clear?”
Paul nodded, wisely choosing not to speak.
Cary straightened. “Fine. Then get out of here. Leave the gun. You won’t be needing it.”
“But it’s my dad’s.”
“Tell him it was stolen.”
Deacon reluctantly let Paul go and the kid tore off across the parking lot, disappearing at the far end into the trees surrounding the school.
“Was that a good idea?” Deacon asked, scooping up the fallen shotgun.
“I have no idea.”
Deacon turned to stare at her, his eyebrow quirked. “That was a pretty scary threat. Did you mean it?”
She shrugged. “I was bluffing. I hope he believed me, but I wouldn’t know how to begin tracking him. And I’m not sure I could hurt a kid anyway—not on purpose.” She turned to look at Deacon. “But I know people who could if it became necessary.”
“You think I could?”
There was no expression in his face, in his voice. But she could tell by the tension thrumming through his body that her answer was important to him.
“You think I would?” he said quietly.
“I think you’d hurt someone who tried to hurt me.” He’d made that much abundantly clear.
“True.”
“But I don’t think you’d purposefully hunt that kid down and kill him now,” she said. “People who rescue animals for a living don’t do things like that.”
At least, she was pretty sure they didn’t. She was sure Deacon could be deadly if the occasion called for it. But she didn’t sense in him the kind of killer it would take to hunt down and murder a sixteen-year-old.
His expression never changed. “Don’t be so sure. If he turns into the thug he’s promising to be, if he crosses my path again and threatens people close to me, I won’t be as gentle as I was this time.”
She held his gaze, though it wasn’t easy to do, and nodded. “That doesn’t make you a cold-blooded killer. Dangerous, yes. But not cold-blooded. It makes you like me.”
That got a reaction. His eyebrows shot up. “Like you?”
“A protector.”
12
The next morning Cary drove Jonathon to school while Deacon discretely followed Sally to work. Sally left with orders that, “They had to eat something besides pizza and donuts for dinner that night,” and asked Cary to pick up the groceries.
Cary glanced at Jon, then back at the road. What did you feed a growing thirteen-year-old boy besides pizza?
When she was his age, she’d already been dieting, so she’d lived off of microwave chicken and canned green beans. She still couldn’t look at a green bean without her stomach rebelling. It was only after she’d screwed up her system with constant dieting and spent years getting her metabolism back in order that she decided eating properly did not have to involve denying oneself pizza occasionally.
Or more than occasionally if the situation called for it.
But none of that helped with figuring out what Sally considered a “healthy” dinner for Jon. He looked like he needed more than soggy green beans and dry chicken.
She pulled into the parking lot at his school a minute before the first bell. When Jon started to open his door, she said, “Wait. We’ll go in after everyone’s settled.”
“Go in late?”
“I warned your first period teacher. It’s safer this way.”
“Cool. How late can we be?”
“Don’t get your hopes up. I told her we’d sneak in five minutes after the bell.”
Jon rolled his eyes and mumbled, “Hardly worth it.”
Chuckling, she searched the lot. When she couldn’t see any potentially innocent bystanders, she stepped out into the cool November morning air.
She’d parked as close as she could get to the school entrance but that still left them with half the parking lot to cross. The principle wasn’t fascinated enough by Cary’s job to risk the wrath of the faculty by asking one of them to give up their parking spot for her, so Cary had to take her chances. As they made their way toward the main building, she kept her gaze moving, checking for shifting shadows, listening closely for a hint of sound. She let her senses open so she was aware of the area all around her.
And still the three witches managed to surround her and Jon before Cary knew they were there.
The spine tingles she got when danger was near hit her at almost the same instant as the witches made themselves visible. Cary shook her head. That was some impressive trick. Her Protector instincts usually reacted faster than that. Which meant the three women were very dangerous.
She pulled Jon close, wrapping her arms around him and keeping him in front of her. With the witches circling them, it felt safer to wrap herself around him rather than pushing him behind her, even though it didn’t make a practical difference to her ability to keep him shielded. She had a momentary twinge, the ever-present-but-mostly-suppressed fear that she might fail this time, that Jon would get hurt because she wasn’t a good enough Protector. She forced it down. No time for doubt now.
Facing the witch in her line of sight, she said, “What can I do for you ladies?”
The woman was around Cary’s age, maybe in her late twenties, early thirties, with the bleached blond hair, blue eyes, and deep tan Cary associated with Californians. She was wearing black leather pants, a cropped blue t-shirt that matched the color of her eyes and showed off impressive abs, and a long black sweater that brushed the ground. When she smiled, she revealed a row of blindingly white teeth.
“You know what we want,” the blonde said.
“The boy will not be harmed,” a second witch said.
Cary glanced to her right. This one was black: her skin, her short hair, her eyes, even her sexy, stylish trouser suit—which she worn without a top under the jacket as only a small breasted woman could get away with. The only break in color was the ruby red of her full lips. She looked young, a bit younger than the blonde, but something about her eyes hinted at an age beyond the evidence of her flawless skin.
“You’ve no reason to keep him from the master,” the third witch said.
This one’s voice was so deep it vibrated through Cary’s bones. She turned to her left. The third witch had skin the color of rich mahogany, brown-red hair down to her narrow hips, and hazel green eyes surrounded by lashes so long Cary couldn’t help but feel a little envious. The witch wore an ankle-length, fitted black skirt and a snug green sweater under a cropped black coat. This one was even more beautiful than the others, and looked even younger, twenty at the oldest.
Cary frowned. That one was the leader. The most dangerous one. The one with the strongest power.
She turned, with Jon still safely circled in her arms, to face this third witch. “You call your employer ‘master’? I thought everyone just called him the Boss.”
“He is more than merely our employer,” the red-haired witch said. Her gaze flicked to Jon. “He’s good to work for, child. He can provide you with anything you migh
t ever wish.”
“Like a long life that doesn’t involve evil and breaking the law?” Cary asked before Jon could speak.
“Who said we break the law?” the blonde asked.
“I notice you’re skirting the whole evil issue,” Cary said.
“You waste your energy, sister,” the black-haired witch said, ignoring Cary’s comment. “There’s no need.”
“And alone,” the leader said, “you cannot hold your shields against the power of three.”
Cary raised her brows. Did the witch realize she’d just referenced an old TV show with that line?
Three witches working together was a powerful alliance. There was an innate balance to three spellcasters which increased their effectiveness exponentially. But that was true of seven witches as well, so the “power of three” comment seemed overly dramatic.
The fact that, like so many others, they thought Cary was a witch was also a little strange. Actual witches should know better. Her friend Angie could tell the difference. Cary wasn’t going to enlighten them, though.
“Sorry, ladies,” she said, with a quick glance back at the school entrance, “but Jon’s going to be late for class. No time to talk. You’ll just have to tell your ‘master’ we’re not interested.”
“You’re very arrogant,” blonde said.
“And troublesome,” black-hair said.
“And involved in a situation you shouldn’t be,” leader said.
Cary grinned. “Yeah, that’s me. Now, if you’ll excuse us.”
But she could already feel their powers building and swirling in the air. They began to chant in unison, low and in an ancient, magical language Cary hadn’t learned fully yet.
So much still to learn and never enough time. She sighed.
A breeze lifted dirt and pebbles from the tarmac, churning the dust in an ever-increasing cyclone around her and Jon. The wind tugged at Cary’s braid and a few stinging chunks of dust prickled the back of her neck. The witches lifted their arms and threw their heads back to face the sky. Their chanting grew louder as they invoked some unnamed spirit or god to join with them and power their incantation.
