by Devon Monk
I wondered if the spells were being drained like the well. I reached out to touch the cage. The spells were strong. Whole.
Greyson growled, animal gaze fixed on my face.
He saw me. Or my dad in me. I was sure of it. And I was sure Greyson was not blind to what was going on in the room.
“You are mine.” His voice was little more than shadow scraping skin, but I felt it to my bones.
“Like hell,” I whispered. I pulled my hand away and I released the magic, letting my senses snap back into more normal ranges. I walked away from the cage, away from the murderer in the cage, even though doing so made me want to run. Got three steps before I found Zayvion stood so near me, I almost ran into him.
“Not good,” I said quietly.
He frowned, then brushed his fingertips down my cheek, tracing the whorls of magic and wiping away the sweat.
Sweet hells. Hounding the room hadn’t been as easy as I thought. I was exhausted. I blinked, my eyes staying closed a little too long, and realized if I blinked again, I’d be asleep.
Zay’s hand ran over my right arm, a warmth, a comfort. He drew me farther from the cage, and a little bit of his strength flowed through our connection and into me. I felt more awake.
Still, I wanted to take his hand and tell him we had to leave now. Before the cold, sticky flow of magic inside me got worse. Before Greyson got better at seeing me. Before that cage fell apart. Before the storm hit.
But I did not do that.
He stepped away from me, and I did from him too. We had business to take care of. Maybe even a city to save.
Like superheroes.
Right.
“I don’t see anything out of place,” I told Maeve. “But I’ve never Hounded the room under normal circumstances. If you were bringing me in to see if someone had cast a spell to purposely change the flow of magic in the well, I didn’t see anything that could accomplish that.”
She visibly exhaled. Oh, she had been very, very worried about what I would find. And that worried me. If she thought it was that likely someone would come in here and mess up the well, I was more than a little terrified at their security measures.
“It’s a start. Thank you.” She strode across the room to the staircase, and Zay and I followed.
“Did you think someone broke in?” I asked.
“No, but not all members of the Authority have the same agendas. There is always the chance someone has played their hand.”
Why can’t the secret, powerful magic users all just get along?
“The meeting is at ten o’clock,” she said. “Upstairs. I want all three of you there.”
Shame scoffed.
“Yes, even you, Shamus Flynn. You’ll not shirk your duty this time.”
This time? That sounded interesting.
Still crouched in the center of the room, Shame straightened, then strolled toward the stairs. He wasn’t looking at his mom, or at us. His eyes were on Greyson. And Greyson’s eyes were still on me.
Shame frowned, tipped his head to get a better angle on Greyson’s gaze. Followed it. Right to my eyes. Raised his eyebrows when he found Greyson’s gaze ended at me.
Yeah, I didn’t like it either. And the less time I was in Greyson’s eyesight, the better. I turned and walked up the stairs.
Weird, weird, weird.
Only my tennis shoes and Maeve’s boots made noise. Zay was Zay. Silent. Brooding. When he carried himself like that, he was a force, a darkness, a power.
I was glad he was on our side.
Once at the top, Maeve called down to Shame. “Come up, now. Jingo Jingo will be by soon to look in on Greyson. I don’t want him to find you poking at that cage.”
More stairs, and some doors; then we started down the hall.
I rubbed at my arms, trying to banish the image of Jingo Jingo with Greyson.
“Why is Jingo coming by?” It was none of my business, and I really should learn to shut my big mouth and let the senior members of the Authority deal with the big problems. Like the storm. Like the well. Like Greyson.
“He has been working with Greyson. Trying to diagnose exactly how Frank Gordon implanted the disk.
Trying to see if there is any mercy in breaking the spells worked into him.”
“You mean trying to turn him back into a man?” I asked.
Maeve gave me a look that said more than words ever could. “He is trying to find a merciful answer to the question of him,” she said.
Shame clunked up behind us. For a man who had just been moving silently across the marble floor like it was made of thin glass, he sure could make a lot of noise.
“Chase been by?” he asked.
Maeve frowned. “I haven’t seen her in a few days.”
“Huh,” he said, then, “Anyone else thirsty? All that hard work watching Allie Hound deserves a beer, don’t you think?” He moved past his mom, and exchanged a short glance with Zayvion.
I didn’t think the two of them could actually hear what the other was thinking, but I was positive they had a secret code. Zay had even hinted as much, saying he always knew when Shame was up to trouble.
And that look had been more than just a look.
“Ten o’clock, Shamus,” Maeve called after him.
“I heard you the first time, didn’t I?”
Maeve tapped one fingertip against her lips, and watched him go. “He knows something,” she decided. “Is up to something. Zayvion, you’ll watch that he doesn’t stir too much trouble, won’t you? I do not need any more problems right now.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said mildly.
“When that son of mine gets a wild idea in his head, it never ends well.”
She sounded angry, but her body language said more. It said she was worried. Worried she was about to lose something precious to her. Maybe her son.
“He’ll be here tonight,” Zay said. “Sober. He knows this isn’t a game.” I wondered how many times he’d told her that over the years.
“Terric will be here,” she added more quietly.
“He knows.”
Maeve brushed her hair back again. “I thought as much.” She shook her head. “Well. What will be will be. I’ll see you both this evening.” She strolled off, her bootheels clacking across the old wooden floors.
The moth-wing flutter scraped at the backs of my eyes, pressing harder, insistent. It made me think of Greyson, of him watching me, wanting me and my dad in me. I swallowed and tasted wintergreen and leather—my dad’s scents. Great.
I suddenly really wanted fresh air, a shower, hells, to be anywhere but here right now.
My creep-out quota for the day was officially maxed.
“I need air.” I strode past Zay, not waiting to see if he followed. It wasn’t exactly tactful, but he’d watched me fight my claustrophobia before. Stayed out of my way. Boy had smarts.
Maeve had turned the opposite way down the hall, so she wasn’t in my flight path either. I took the first opening I could and walked right out into the main dining area again.
The noise was up, every table filled. The smell of food and drinks and people—perfume and soap and cigarettes—closed in on me.
Out more. I needed much more out more.
I did not run, because I am composed even in full-throttle panic mode. But I made quick work of that room—long legs had their use—and straight-armed that door open.
The evening wind hit like a sharp slap to the face, and I inhaled a huge lungful of cold, misty air.
I didn’t stop at the porch. There was too much roof on the porch, too many railings around the porch, too much building behind the porch. I clattered down the stairs, and jogged across the gravel, looking for out, for space, for air.
“Afraid of the dark?” a voice asked from one side of me.
Okay, yes, I was freaking out from claustrophobia. And yes, I was already a little freaked-out over the whole cold-magic weirdness and empty well. Add to that Greyson staring at me out of his magic
-blocked and warded cage, and my dad, or maybe only half of him, shuffling around in my head—or even better, him spending time-shared brain space with Greyson—and what I really needed was just a few seconds of normal.
Instead, I got Chase.
“Chase,” I said, relatively calmly too, considering. “Did you hear about the meeting tonight?”
Zayvion’s ex-girlfriend was nearly my height. If I had seen her walking down the street, I’d think she was a model, not a Closer. Her pale skin was almost luminescent in the low light, and her eyes belonged to a cat, framed by the blunt wedge of dark brown bangs. I’d never seen her use makeup, not that she needed it. I’d never seen her dress in anything other than jeans, T-shirt, and flannel.
Tonight was no different.
“I heard about it.” She took a step toward me, her hands very obviously held with fingers spread, as if she was looking for a spell to grab hold of.
A sound behind me made her look up. She bared her teeth in a semblance of a smile. And not a very pretty one.
“Hello, Zayvion. Still babysitting all the troubled children for Mommy Maeve?”
“I do what I can,” he said. Unconcerned. Zen. “Are you done running away?”
“Running away from what?”
“Greyson.”
Chase held very still. Something moved across her eyes, a shadow, sorrow, pain. Maybe fear. Maybe hope.
“I’ve never run from him,” she said. Flat. Emotionless. What she didn’t say, what none of us was saying, was she still loved him. And she blamed me and my father for changing him into a monster. I was pretty sure she’d do anything to get him back, to see him be a man again.
I know I would feel that way if it were Zay in that cage.
“They wouldn’t let me see him,” she said. “Not without Jingo Jingo being there.”
Zayvion crossed his arms over his chest and strolled closer, his footsteps silent across the wet, noisy gravel. “You’re going to listen to them, aren’t you?”
“Be a good girl and do as I’m told?” She raised one eyebrow. “Have I ever done anything else?” It was a challenge.
Zayvion didn’t reach out for her, but his voice was softer. “It will work out, Chase. We’ll find a way to help him. Trust that.”
That tone got through. She swallowed and looked off over his shoulder. “Trust. Just like that.”
“You’ve been doing it for years. Don’t stop now.”
I could see how much it cost her to look back at him. Could see the emotions she was fighting back. Looked a lot like rage and grief. “No, that’s what you’ve been doing. Trusting. Trusting it will all work out. No matter how blind or stupid that makes you.”
“Trust isn’t a weakness,” Zay said.
“So says the man who begged for the chance to be the hero, the keeper of the gates, user of all magic, light and dark, no matter how much it destroys him. Do you get off on taking the fall, Jones, or are you just too stupid to know that’s what they’re using you for?”
“Are you done?” he asked, a hint of fire rising behind that ice.
She glared at him.
He ignored her. “You joined this fight for a reason. You joined this fight to make the world better for the people you cared about. Not for me, not for them, but for who you love. Who do you love, Chase? Other than yourself?”
“Fuck you.”
She took a step, but he moved, silent and swift, to stand in front of her. They weren’t touching, weren’t drawing on magic. Yet.
“That’s over. Remember?” he said. “You ended it.
Ended us. For him. For Greyson. And now you’re going to have to risk a little trust to save him. I think that’s a small price to pay, not even a price at all. Or maybe you’re just looking for an easy way out again.”
“You have no right—,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Yes, I do. Don’t turn your back on him. Don’t turn your back on the Authority. Don’t choose that ending.”
And that threat, that anyone in the Authority, even a Closer, could be Closed, got through too.
She unclenched her fists and shook her bangs out of her eyes. “I’d do anything to have him back,” she yelled. She looked down, swallowed a couple times, as if trying to get the rage down. Then she looked back up at him. “I don’t turn my back on anything I love.” She looked at me, then back at him. “But you wouldn’t understand that, would you, Jones?”
She strode off toward the inn, leaving Zayvion and me alone in the rain.
Chapter Four
I touched Zay’s arm and jerked back as if I’d been burned. The anger seething under the surface of his calm was rivaled only by the pain he felt for Chase. I’d always assumed their breakup had been bad, but now I knew it.
There are moments, emotions, that we really don’t want to share with other people. Things we shouldn’t have to share unless we want to. Unless we choose to. This was one of those moments. I shoved my hand in my pocket and tried to pretend I didn’t know how he really felt.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need to go talk to someone?” Punch someone, I added silently.
Zay licked the rain off his lips and tipped his head down so that he stared at the gravel. He inhaled, slowly, then exhaled, pushing his shoulders down from the rod-straight fighting angle, his hands relaxing out of the stiff, magic-ready spread.
Caught in the overhead lighting, he was a study of neon blue and black shadows. The rain on his ski cap glittered like tiny blue stars, and rain trickled a slick line from his temple, across the arc of his cheek, then down to the stubble along his jaw. I waited.
Finally, he seemed to notice the rain, the night, and me. “I’d be better out of the wet,” he said.
He headed for the car and so did I. I wanted out of the wet too. Exhaustion was sucking my reserves. I’d spent a couple hours sparring, then come over here to Hound the well. Even though I’d had a late lunch, and a good latte, I was hankering for a hot, strong cup of coffee.
“Home?” Zay asked.
“Home.” Because home is where the coffeepot is.
He started the car and I thought about sleeping on the way to my apartment, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw Greyson’s gaze and remembered my father pushing around in my mind.
“Greyson saw me in there,” I said. “I think he might have seen Dad in me.”
“I know.”
“You want to tell me why no one else believes me? Why don’t they believe Dad is in me and maybe in Greyson too?”
“Jingo Jingo is the expert. The Authority trusts him on these kinds of things.”
“You don’t believe him.”
“I should. I can’t think of why he would lie about it.”
“So you don’t believe me?”
“I do believe you. I just don’t know why Jingo Jingo would lie.”
Because he’s a freak? I thought. Then, out loud, “Maybe he thinks he has a good reason. Some kind of behind-the-scenes mumbo-jumbo politicking or something.”
Zayvion exhaled. “That could be.” We stopped at a light. “Ever since just before your father’s death, tensions in the Authority have been building. Each discipline seems to think they have a corner on how magic should be used. Each person believes their view correct.”
He glanced over his shoulder and merged into the next lane. “The heads of the Authority—all the leaders, not just Portland’s—are having a hard time responding to the problems fast enough. We had to deal with Dr. Frank Gordon, Greyson, your father’s murder.” He was quiet a moment. “We’re good at emergencies. Still, we didn’t do enough, fast enough. I don’t think anyone, especially not Sedra nor the voices within the Authority, expected things to come to this—to the war that’s brewing—nor knows what to do next.”
“I’d start with the Necromorph doing the Hannibal Lecter thing in the basement,” I said. “Fix Greyson. Make him into a man again and then put him on trial for my dad’s murder.”
“It isn’t that easy
. The disk in his throat, and the spells trapping him as both man and beast, have affected his mind. Mercy,” he said quietly, “would be to end his life.”
Silence again. I thought about Chase, how she would deal with Greyson’s death. Not well.
“And even a merciful death wouldn’t be easy,” he said. “Death magic mixed with Blood magic, dark and light magic.” He frowned. “Impossible to Close, and hard to kill.”
“What about Chase?” I asked.
“She wouldn’t Close him. I don’t think she could kill him.”
“Creepy, but not what I’m asking. What happens to her if they Close Greyson, or, uh, kill him?”
“Her memories of him would be Closed.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “Is that your answer to everything? If it might cause pain or inconvenience, just take the memory away?”
“Sometimes it is the only thing that can be done,” he said. “Sometimes people don’t want to remember the pain, Allie.” He glanced at me, his eyes flecked with gold. He was still angry. Angry at Chase, or Greyson, I didn’t know.
I opened my mouth, but my phone rang. I dug it out of my hoodie pocket.
“Hello?”
“Allie, this is Grant.”
“Trouble?”
“Is that really the first thing you ask when someone calls you?” he asked.
I took a breath. Remembered Grant was from the part of my life that had little to do with angry magic users or stolen memories or secret organizations. Grant was from the part of my life that had to do with afternoons in a coffee shop, reading the paper, and really good scones.
“Sorry. It’s been a long day and I haven’t had nearly enough coffee.”
“Take care of half of that for you.”
“The long day?”
“Don’t I wish. Listen, I know we haven’t really discussed this part of you leasing the warehouse, but you have a couple visitors waiting for you in my shop. I don’t mind the business, but I thought you’d want to know people are looking for you.”
“Do you know who they are?”
