by Devon Monk
It was three o’clock, a little late for lunch, and a little early for dinner, so the place was mostly empty.
Zay and I took a table by the window and Shamus strolled in behind us. He plucked a menu off the stack by the cash register, and read it while walking over to the table.
“Think it’s the burger today.” He sat in the remaining chair and folded the menu.
“Big surprise,” Zayvion said over the top of his glass of water.
Shame held up one hand, and caught the waitress’s attention.
She was over in a jiffy, took our orders—burgers and sodas all around—and then was off.
Shame cracked his knuckles. “So, how did sparring go today?”
“She’s improving,” Zayvion said.
“She won,” I said, clearly.
Zay just smiled. I really was getting better. Good enough I knew I could hold my own in a fight. Good enough I was doing more than just knife training—we’d moved on to the machetes Zay and his crew use to hunt down magical nasties. Zay had let me work with the katana, a beautiful blade, heavy with the weight of old magic. Training, being aware of every muscle in my body working in concert to my command of magic, made me feel powerful. And I liked it. A lot.
“Very nice, Beckstrom,” Shame said. “Zay’s a hard man to take down. Not that he’s much of a challenge for me, of course. I could take him with one spell tied behind my back. And now that he’s all soft from his time off, he’d go down in a hot second.”
“Are you done?” Zay asked.
“Done?” Shame said.
“Not talking about Terric.”
Shame glared at Zayvion. Zay sipped his water, patient as time. Shame finally gave up, and rubbed his mouth across the palm of his fingerless glove. With his other hand, he cast a very subtle Mute spell. The people around us, not that there were many, wouldn’t be able to hear our conversation. Handy, that.
“Mum said Sedra’s calling . . . them . . . down. Said it’s about the storm, but I think there’s more going on.”
Zay folded his fingers and propped his elbows on the table. He stared at Shamus, waiting for him to talk.
“I think there’s something wrong with the wells,” Shame said.
Zayvion’s eyebrows rose. End of reaction. “All of them?”
Shame took a drink of water. “Like I know? I don’t have access to all of them. But the one beneath Mum’s place . . .” He shook his head.
Zayvion did not look pleased. Then he pulled on the somber mask of Zen, of calm, of duty, and simply looked emotionless.
Well, that was helpful.
“Want to tell the new girl what can go wrong with the wells?” I wasn’t a complete idiot. In the time I’d been taking classes from Victor, Liddy, Maeve, and Jingo Jingo, I’d realized that Portland has four natural wells of magic beneath the ground. That was unusual. Other cities had wells—usually one. Sometimes two. Rarely three. But the Portland area had four wells, one of which was beneath the Flynns’ inn, which Shame’s mother ran, just on the Vancouver side of the river, and all of which were a hard-guarded secret.
The waitress hurried over, three plates balanced across her arm. She placed everything on our table, plunked down a carrier of condiments, and left us to our meal.
“So?” I asked. “What can go wrong with the wells?”
Shame took a huge bite of burger, pointed at his mouth, and gave me a shut-up-and-let-me-eat look while he chewed.
Closers such as Zayvion, Chase, and, apparently, Terric could take away the memories of any people they judged were a harm to themselves or others when using magic. Judge, jury, and executioners, Closers had the final say about what people remembered about magic. It made me uncomfortable. Shame told me once that Closers take away Hound memories if Hounds stumble across magic they shouldn’t know about.
I’d asked him and Zayvion if I’d ever been Closed. It would explain a lot. It would explain why I randomly lost my memories when I used magic.
They’d both said no. Shame told me he didn’t think anyone in the Authority was really interested in me before my dad’s death. And while Zayvion hadn’t exactly agreed with that, he said he had never seen or heard of anyone being ordered to take my memories.
I wasn’t sure if I was glad about that. If my memories were taken by a person, there was still a chance I could get them back. If they were taken by magic, I could kiss those parts of my life good-bye.
Still, I didn’t know what could go wrong with the wells that the Closers couldn’t handle. They could just erase any memories about them if someone outside the Authority found something out.
I looked at Zay. “Well?”
“If Sedra is calling in more Closers, it might have something to do with the gates, not the wells,” he said.
“They’re closed, right? No openings in the last two months? Since my . . . test?” What I didn’t say was since there had been a huge fight, and Cody Miller’s spirit had sacrificed himself to close the gateways between life and death.
“Wild storms can blow the gates open,” Zayvion said.
“Neat. So you Closers have some work ahead of you, but it’s not a big problem, right?”
“It is very, very difficult to close a gate during a storm,” Zay said. “Magic doesn’t work right in wild storms. It can be hard to access, or come too quickly and foul or mutate spells. And if the wells are also affected by the storm . . .” He shrugged.
“Can enough Closers contain it?” The Authority was tight-lipped about membership. I wasn’t even sure how many people were a part of the Authority in Portland, much less other cities, or the world. And I had no idea how many of those members were Closers.
Shame shoved french fries in his mouth, mumbled, “Lunch,” and gave a nod toward my plate. “Save the world on a full stomach.”
Fine. If they didn’t want to talk about it, I’d find out when I went to see Maeve later. I took a bite of my burger. Juicy, hot, nothing fancy, but as soon as I got a bite of it, I discovered I was starving.
The door opened, letting in the brisk wind and a man and woman.
The man was at least six feet tall and wide as a football field, his long, shiny black hair pulled back at the base of his neck. He wore cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a black and red Blazer jacket, even though it was February and cold, and moved with that island-warmth vibe of his birthplace. Detective Mackanie Love.
With him was a blade of a woman. Thin, unsmiling, dark and cool as a rainy midnight, she was wrapped in a gray coat and gray scarf that did nothing to soften her angular but pretty features. Detective Lia Payne.
I used to run all my Hounding jobs that dealt with illegal use of magic past them before Detective Stotts and the MERC, a secret branch of the law that dealt with magical crime, came into my life. We were maybe not fast friends, but friends just the same.
Just as I spotted them, they spotted me.
I smiled and waved.
“Tell me you did not just wave down the cops,” Shamus whispered.
“Tita!” Mackanie strolled over, a smile on his face. He took in my company, with what seemed to be friendly interest.
Zayvion Jones looked Love in the eyes, but had slouched into his slacker-drifter bit he did so well, and Shame motioned under the table, breaking the Mute spell before Mackanie got too close.
“Food any good today?” He stopped between Zay’s and Shamus’s chairs.
“Good enough that it’s almost gone,” I said. “Have you met Zayvion Jones and Shamus Flynn?”
“Jones and I have met.” He nodded at Zay.
“Detective Love,” Zayvion said.
“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, Mr. Flynn.” He held his hand out to Shame. They shook.
“Pleased to meet you,” Shame said with very little tone inflection. He’d fallen into his sullen goth-boy act pretty fast. What was it with these two and the cops?
Oh yeah. Most of what they did would probably be considered illegal if the world ever knew magic coul
d do what they could make it do.
“So, you talked to Stotts today?” Love asked me.
“Should I?”
“He knows how to find you, yah?”
“He has my number. There a case he wants me on?”
“Not sure. He’s got your number, you got no worries. But that warehouse of yours. There’s a worry. I hear they’re gonna condemn it.”
I grinned. That warehouse of mine was the building next to Get Mugged. Grant had decided to buy it, and agreed to let me lease two of the floors for an office, a meeting space, a couple bunks, a kitchen, and a workout room for the Hounds. To say it had been a learning experience was a serious understatement. I’d never repaired or renovated anything in my life. Yes, I hired a contractor to do the big fixes, but then I dragged as many Hounds into manual labor as I could.
Not one of my brighter plans. Hounds are loners. Working together was so far out of their natural tendencies, it was laughable.
And with how much I’d spent doing it, I think it would have been cheaper to just knock the place down and build from scratch. But Grant loved the “vintage” feel of it, and so did the ghost hunters who were renting out the bottom floor. Therefore, the old building remained as it was, standing proudly. Well, leaning proudly, anyway.
Plus the location—right next door to my favorite coffee shop—was pretty hard to beat.
“Too late to condemn it,” I said. “Paint’s dry by the end of the week, and the landline’s being hooked up tomorrow.”
“So you got emergency response plugged in, in case of trouble?”
“No drug use allowed on the premises. No guns. No brawls. No troubles.”
He just stared at me. Yeah, we all knew that things went to hell when too many Hounds got together for too long.
“Fine,” I said. “Yes, I’ve set things up.”
“Good, then, good,” he said. “You Hound, Flynn?” he asked Shame.
“Wash dishes at my mum’s restaurant, Feile San Fhomher.”
“Maybe that’s where I’ve seen you, yah?”
He shrugged. “Unless you worked juvie a few years back.”
I turned and stared at Shame. He had a record? “You have a record?” I asked. See how tactful I could be?
“Did some tagging when I was fourteen.”
How come I figured it was a lot more than that?
“Gang?” Love asked.
“Just art and anger.”
“You get that out of your system?” he asked.
“Let’s just say I’m not fourteen anymore.”
Love grinned. “Yah, live and learn. I got some eating to do, though this place’s got nothing on your mom’s blackberry cobbler.”
Maeve’s inn was a working restaurant. Which meant a lot of people went there, including cops who had no idea she was one of the voices in the Authority and her entire inn and restaurant was built over a secret, hidden well of magic.
This kind of stuff gave me a headache. There were layers and layers of who knew what in this city. Zayvion said he had a spreadsheet to keep track of what secrets were spoken where. I had yet to see it.
Every time I thought these things out, I was more impressed that the Authority hadn’t been discovered yet. Of course, they had one ace in the hole no one else in this city had. Closers, who could get in your head, make you forget anything they wanted you to forget—like a secret you shouldn’t have heard or maybe how to use magic. They could Close away your desire to stay in the city. Take away your life, and give you a new one if they decided the situation warranted it.
Kill you, if you got in their way.
I glanced at Zay. He was drinking his Coke and trying hard not to look over at Love’s partner, Payne, who sat in the booth across the room. She was staring at him.
She caught my gaze and gave me a considering look, her mouth pressed together in a thin line. I wondered how, exactly, she and Zayvion knew each other. I remember Mackanie Love being there when Frank Gordon had dug up my father’s body and tried to kill me. Zay had been there too. So it was possible that their only connection was Zay being a witness to that crime. But if I remembered right, Love and Payne had been looking for Zay prior to that.
Interesting.
I stretched my foot under the table and rested it against the side of Zay’s tennis shoe.
The contact let me concentrate on his emotional state: tense, which was not at all what I’d have guessed from his body language, with a side order of worry and dread.
He must have sensed my curiosity because he gave me a sideways look and sat up, pulling his foot away from mine.
Like that would stop me from finding out why he was all worked up over Payne.
Even though it had taken only a couple seconds, I’d sort of lost track of the conversation Love and Shame were having. I had a hard time listening in to Zayvion’s emotions and listening to the real world at the same time.
I tuned back in just in time to hear Love say, “. . . lunch. Later, Tita.”
“Bye,” I said, wondering if I’d just made a lunch date with him.
Love rambled over to Payne. She stopped staring at Zayvion and stared at her menu instead.
“You don’t like the police, do you?” I asked Shame.
Shame flicked up a couple fingers in a dismissive motion. “They do good work. I just like them better when that work has nothing to do with me.”
“Juvie?” I asked.
“It happens.”
“Would have thought your mom had some pull to keep you out of there.”
“She did,” Zayvion said. “So did his dad.”
Shame looked up at me. He didn’t grin, but there was a sparkle in his eye. “They let me sweat it out for a week. Said it’d help me rethink my priorities.”
“Did it?”
“Yes. I decided my first priority was not getting caught.”
“You are a man of questionable morals, Shamus Flynn,” I said.
“You have no idea. Well, then.” He stood, stuck one hand in his jean pockets, and brushed hair out of his eyes with the other. “Thanks for lunch. I have to run. See you soon.”
I had a mouthful of fries. Zay was finishing his too. I held up my hand to tell Shame to stop, but he spun and was across the room, weaving between a noisy crowd of college kids pouring into the place. He was out the door before I could call his name.
The waitress saw my hand and came over with our ticket. Zay reached for it, but I got it before him. “You cover next time.”
“How about we just make Shame pay for a month?” he said.
“Does he ever pay for anything?”
Zay finished off his Coke. “Nope. That’s one of his special talents.”
I pulled out the cash, left it and the ticket propped next to the condiment basket. I stood. “Ready?”
For a second, just the briefest of moments, a wave of dizziness hit me. The entire building felt like it shuddered, like a liquid earthquake rumbled far beneath my feet, and echoed up my body and rolled through my head.
“Allie?”
I rubbed at my temple and the sudden headache. “Headache.” But it couldn’t be from magic use.
The last time I’d used magic was two weeks ago. A Hounding job that had nothing to do with the police or Detective Stotts. I had tracked back a spell for a lady in my building to make sure no one was putting Attraction on her car. Turned out no one was. The parking tickets and the speeding and seat belt violations were all nonmagical and all her.
Maybe this was just a regular headache? Regular people did get regular headaches. I was regular people too.
Zay put his hand on my arm and I walked with him out the door. The headache hung on despite the cool air. By the time we were halfway across the parking lot, the pain was less, and I felt stable on my feet. Normal.
Zay’s hand was still on my arm. I didn’t have to concentrate to feel his concern.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just a little dizzy. It’s gone.”
He did
n’t let go of me until we were next to his car, which he unlocked. “Maybe you should stop wearing the void stone.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Can it make me dizzy? Give me headaches?”
He shrugged. “No one holds magic in their body like you do. It’s hard to know what the long-term effects are.” He paused, looked at me over the top of the car. Probably saw my panic as I scrambled to get the necklace off.
“It won’t bite,” he said.
“Right.” Visions of the stone sucking magic out of me like a leech filled my mind. “Nothing about you secret magic users or your secret magic toys is dangerous.”
I tugged the length of leather off over my head and held it out in front of me like I had a snake by the head. The void stone swung in the breeze, a dark heart wrapped in copper and silver wire like fire and moonlight, glass beads flashing like stars.
Zay grinned. “Want me to tie it in a knot or kill it and put it in the trunk?”
“Shut up.” I ducked into the car and plunked the thing down into the empty cup holder.
Magic stirred in me, a tingling warmth that grew hot, flushing across my skin, then sinking back down, warming my bones and filling me. It moved within me with promise, with desire. I closed my eyes, wanting to lose myself to it. Wanting to use magic in every way I could.
But that would be bad. I had enough magic inside me, I could burn down a city.
And I didn’t want to do that. I liked the city.
I took a deep breath and worked on letting the magic move through me without me touching it. I am a river and magic is the water. It pours through me, but it does not change me. I closed my eyes and repeated that litany until the magic backed off and settled like a layer of lead over my bones.
Several minutes had passed. Zay had already started the engine and was heading toward Maeve’s through traffic that was starting to thicken up for pre-rush hour. It was still light out, and a misty rain ticked against the windshield and roof. Other than the rub of the windshield wipers and the hum of the engine, it was quiet in the car.
I knew Zay could Ground me to help me keep the magic at controllable levels and could ease the pain I carried from using magic. But ever since we’d stepped into each other’s minds, we’d tried not to use magic together.
