Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  There were so many crystals. And sometimes the impurities in them moved them into another list, if the impurity was stronger than the crystal, like gold.

  “I’m trying,” Becca said.

  “Let’s hear what you remember,” Billy said.

  She listed them in alphabetical order, because that was their order on the list Dawn had given her, and it was as good a way as any to remember them.

  “Dioptase,” Dawn said, filling in where Becca missed one. “Garnet.” “Lapis lazuli.”

  “Not a real crystal,” Becca complained, more to be difficult than to actually argue. The value of lapis was contested, because even Makkai usually just used it as a pigment.

  “Only for amateurs,” Dawn answered. Billy laughed.

  “Keep going.”

  She got to the end of the list: “Zircon,” and she blinked, feeling strained.

  “Not bad,” Billy said. “When you can do them in order of hardness without Dawn having to give you any of them, you can start water.”

  She shook her head. This was something that even the old women who had trained her hadn’t ever required she do. The intense crystal magic tended to be something you could do at night in front of a campfire with another Makkai around to use as reference. The idea that you needed to have it all at your mental fingertips was an extreme one, but Becca wasn’t going to complain out loud. She was riding with Bella. You just had to expect it to be harder.

  That didn’t mean that she was going to go along with it without at least being difficult. Otherwise, they’d start inventing things for her to do, just to keep everyone busy.

  “You want to play cards?” Dawn asked, reaching down into her travel satchel and bringing out a deck.

  “Yeah,” Becca said. “What do you want to play?”

  “Rooster in the Corner?” Dawn asked.

  “Sure,” Becca said, accepting the hand of cards Dawn dealt her. Billy turned on the radio and whistled as he drove.

  “How was your first day?” Becca asked, sitting between Grant and Dawn on the bench that night as they ate dinner out of wide, shallow bowls. Stew. Colin had set up a pot to cook it as soon as they’d pulled over, then he’d gone grocery shopping with Katy. They were staying on gypsy land tonight, a man who cared for several dozen acres of farm land that had been in his family for two and a half generations, but they still fed themselves. More, the family that lived here was joining them, sitting across the fire from Becca, with Bella and Jackson. They always ate well, but tonight was a fest. Jackson would tell a story of meetings among friends, and they would stay up late drinking and talking. They’d leave late, day after tomorrow, probably, unless whatever was pulling them across the country were particularly time-critical. Becca hated guessing.

  “Quinn says that one in ten cars going by has something in it that we would kill, if we knew it was there, and we spent the entire day profiling them to figure out the ones where it was most likely,” Grant said.

  “I told you you had to watch her,” Dawn said.

  “So that isn’t real?” Grant asked.

  “Car profiling seems sketchy to me,” Becca said.

  “And one in ten is way too high,” Dawn agreed.

  “Okay,” Grant said, “because I was thinking that, but she was so intense.”

  “Oh, she’s committed,” Dawn said. “Always committed.”

  Becca looked over at her and Dawn shrugged.

  “So who’s your dad?” Becca asked Grant.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Bella said that your power stone was because of your dad.”

  “Oh,” Grant said. “He was Bella’s protector while she was young. His stone was calcite, too.”

  Becca looked at Dawn.

  “Bella was young, once?” she asked. Dawn gave her a quick look and shook her head.

  “What was she like?” Becca asked Grant. Grant shrugged.

  “Dad doesn’t talk about it much,” he said. Becca frowned, tipping her bowl back to drink the broth. Billy had a wife and children somewhere. Three of them, little. Every few months, Bella would set camp and release everyone who wanted to go home. They would camp for a week or two, maybe three, and then everyone would come back and they would move on again. That was all the time Billy got with his family.

  She wondered what it was like having a father who was gone all the time, off on adventures. Not that she even knew where her own dad was, but Makkai had tight families and being gone like that was strange.

  “Who was the queen?” Becca asked.

  “Jasmine for a while,” Grant said, picking up a stewed tomato out of his bowl to suck on it.

  “Oh,” Becca said. That was one of the stories they didn’t tell.

  Jasmine had been a queen like Bella, full of power and importance, but she’d died after only a few years. A hellcat had come out of nowhere and attacked her while everyone else was away on a hunt, and she was focused on what they were doing.

  The story that they didn’t tell got worse from there. The tribe had found a new queen, and she’d only lived six months. Five queens in ten years, in all, all of them killed violently in the middle of other things. Bad luck? Incompetence from the protector? Fate? No one guessed, but everyone knew that it was the protector’s job to keep everyone safe. The queen, as powerful as she was supposed to be, was still his responsibility.

  Grant’s dad would have lived with that. With people looking at him and wondering how much of it was his fault.

  It had kept going until Bella had taken the tribe. Becca had heard whispers, once, that no one else would take it.

  “Was he Bella’s protector?” Becca finally asked, her voice quiet. Dawn elbowed her, but she didn’t look. Grant nodded.

  “For a few years,” he said. “And then he came back to us.”

  That would have been around the time that she’d married Jackson. Becca nodded.

  “She knew,” she said.

  “What?” Grant asked.

  “She knew,” Becca said again. “She knew what was going on.”

  Dawn elbowed Becca again.

  “What?” Becca asked. “She was here while it was going on. You think Bella would have kept him if she thought it was his fault?”

  There was a long silence. None of them ate. Bella’s head came up, across the fire from them, taking the three of them in as if she knew what they were talking about.

  “She knew,” Dawn agreed quietly after a minute. “Whatever there was to know, she knew.”

  “Thank you,” Grant said. “No one ever said that.”

  Becca nodded.

  “So did you get Billy to tell you anything about where we’re going?” Grant asked.

  “I don’t think he knows,” Becca said.

  “He doesn’t,” Dawn said. Becca turned to look at her hard.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” Dawn said.

  “What?” Becca asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” Dawn said.

  “Then why say it?” Becca asked.

  “Because you asked,” Dawn said with a coy smile.

  Grant chuckled.

  “I’m going to go get a beer,” he said. “Roger brews it himself. Do you want some?”

  “Yeah,” Dawn said.

  “No, thanks,” Becca said.

  Grant stood and went over to the long boards where the bulk of the food was.

  “He likes you,” Dawn said.

  “I’ve known him all of twenty-four hours,” Becca said.

  “So?” Dawn asked. “How many boys have you fallen in and out of love with in that much time?”

  “None,” Becca said defensively. “I don’t fall in love.”

  Dawn grinned.

  “He likes you.”

  “I’m here to hunt and to learn and to travel,” Becca said.

  “I don’t know if you end up together, but the two of you are going to be tangled up together for a long time.”

  “I don’t believe in divinations,” Becca
said. Her aunt did them, and Becca had once asked her about them.

  “It’s just a feeling,” the woman had told her. “You either trust it or you don’t.”

  Since Becca didn’t trust anything that was just a feeling, she rejected it out of hand.

  “I’m not doing divinations,” Dawn said. “I just… There’s something about you. And him.”

  “Just a feeling,” Becca said wryly. Dawn shrugged.

  “I’m just saying.”

  Becca shook her head.

  “I know plenty of people, if I wanted to see someone. I’m not going to get involved with someone I travel with.”

  “You mean the only ones you see on a regular basis,” Dawn said. Becca shrugged.

  “Not interested.”

  “For how long?” Dawn asked. “How long do you plan on doing this?”

  “As long as I can,” Becca said. “What about you?”

  “The rest of my life,” Dawn said. Becca thought that sounded a bit fatalistic, but let it go. Dawn continued. “Are you going to be alone for all that time?”

  Becca shook her head.

  “I’m seventeen,” she said. “I’ve got so much time. Why are you pushing this?”

  Dawn shook her head.

  “I just look around at all of our friends and I know… their lives are complicated. And then I look at Bella and Jackson…”

  “You think they’re happier because they get to do this together,” Becca said. She couldn’t argue that it didn’t make sense. She shook her head. “I’m seventeen. I don’t want to get married until I’m at least twenty-five.”

  “How old was your mom?” Dawn asked.

  “Twenty-two,” Becca said. “She traveled with a tribe for a little while.”

  “And then what?” Dawn asked. Grant came back with the beers and Becca shook her head at Dawn. She wasn’t going to keep talking about this in front of him. It was too awkward.

  “What?” he asked, sitting down again.

  “Nothing,” Becca said.

  “What?” Grant asked again, looking at her hard. He had an odd face, lips a little too full, gray eyes that were so faint she couldn’t actually be sure what color they were, thin, wispy blond hair cut short, and a nose that looked like it had been broken at least two or three times. She could see how someone would find it attractive, though.

  Oddly, she thought of Lange, the man in Texas with Argo and the finfolk. Her first hunt. He had a look that was much more attractive to her, the dark on dark with sharp features everywhere. Sexy as hell.

  Grant had sincere, earnest features that just weren’t her thing.

  Becca wasn’t a beauty. She had pretty hair, thick and with an unruly curl that suited her, but she didn’t have a beautiful face, and she was too solidly built to be striking, there. Not like Bella. Becca didn’t have unrealistic expectations of boys swooning over her, and frankly she couldn’t care less.

  Her oldest aunt had had six children by the time she was thirty-two. She had hips like a water mammal - take your pick - and gray hair that had gone from unruly to fizzled some time before Becca had known her. Becca’s three aunts each had at least three kids - Aunt Essie had eight - and while Essie was a horse trainer and fit and tidy as a teenager, they all had a look and a feel to them that they were always on the lookout for the next great meltdown. Becca had no heart for that. She didn’t like babies, and she wasn’t a big fan of kids. She didn’t want or need a husband, at all. A boyfriend could be fun, but it was all downhill from there. She didn’t even want to risk it. She liked the independence her own mother had. Becca was an only child.

  “What?” Grant asked again, louder. She shook her head.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Sorry. Was thinking about something else.”

  He frowned, but he didn’t ask again.

  Jackson stood and held his arms out, bringing the level of conversation around the fire down to where he could speak.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” he said. “We don’t often get to spend time with family like this, so we’re going to spend an extra day. If you have family within four hours, you can leave now and get back at dawn, the day after tomorrow. Any further than that and we need you to stay. Roger and Glennanne are offering real beds to anyone who wants one, but you know the rules. Some of the other locals will be here at proper nightfall with instruments and more food, so don’t wander too far.”

  He clapped his hands once, over his head, and turned to go back to sit with Bella, who had her head turned in toward Roger.

  Becca looked at Dawn.

  “I thought we were in a hurry,” she said. Dawn didn’t answer her.

  “Does she read lips?” Grant asked.

  “Don’t think so,” Becca answered. “But I’ve been wrong before.”

  “I’ve got to say, I’m a little disappointed,” he told her. “I’m looking forward to our first fight.”

  “I remember,” Becca said. “I hadn’t been with the tribe for very long before mine. I hope yours goes better.”

  “Why?” Grant asked. She gave him a brief explanation of what had happened, and he shook his head.

  “That’s intense.”

  She nodded.

  “Not the worst I’ve seen, either. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are a lot of fun, and nothing compares to what happened to Dawn with the wraiths,” Becca shivered, “but it’s not as glamorous as you make it out to be in your head.”

  “So you don’t have any idea why we’re stopping,” he said. She shook her head, glancing around the ring. The conversations had resumed, but none of them had the same vigor or volume they’d had before Jackson had spoken. She nodded.

  “Everyone is thinking the same thing,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Grant asked.

  “Something big is going on, and no one has a clue what.”

  The day at Roger’s farm was like a festival. They ate, they played games, they sang, and they danced. It was a great day, except that Bella and Jackson stayed in the house with Roger the entire day. That evening as the sun set, Becca’s phone rang. She frowned.

  “Lange,” she said, answering it.

  “Hey,” he said. “Long time.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Argo has some stuff for you,” Lange said. “He wants you to come get it.”

  Becca waited for Lange to say something that made sense, but it was clear he was going to make her drag it out of him.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I told him,” Lange said playfully. “He says it’s a peace offering and a bonus for the work you did for him last year. He heard it got complicated, with kids and stuff.”

  “He used the words ‘peace offering’?” Becca asked. Lange laughed.

  “No. No, those are mine. That’s why he called me to call you, instead of him calling Bella directly.”

  “Called you?” Becca asked.

  “Oh,” Lange said. “Yeah. Figured you’d’ve heard. I’m in New York now, pretty much full time. I still work for Argo, when he makes me, but I’m out of there.”

  “Oh,” Becca said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” he said cheerfully. “So are you going to go or not? I need to know what to tell him.”

  “I’ll tell Bella, but I can’t imagine she’s going to say yes. We’re kind of busy,” Becca said.

  “You want to call me back?” Lange asked.

  Becca rolled her eyes.

  “Fine. I’ll call you back after I get a solid ‘no’ from Bella.”

  “Make my day,” Lange said and hung up. Becca shook her head and started walking up toward the house.

  “What’s going on?” Dawn asked, falling into step.

  “Argo wants us to stop by and get something that he wants to give us as a bonus or something from us doing the finfolk thing last year. I don’t know. I promised Lange I’d ask before I told him no.”

  “He wasn’t any more specific?�
�� Dawn asked. Becca shook her head.

  “He said ‘stuff’. Like Argo cleaned out his storage locker and figured he could dump it on us.”

  Dawn laughed.

  “That sounds like him. Except that Argo would just throw it all out and not ever think of us,” she said. Becca nodded.

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  Dawn laughed.

  “He wants to see Bella.”

  “Lange is in New York, now,” Becca said.

  “Is he?” Dawn said, tipping her head to the side to look at Becca. “What else did he tell you?”

  Becca gave her an exasperated look.

  “Nothing. He just isn’t actually with Argo anymore.”

  “And he thought that was important enough to tell you?” Dawn asked.

  “I don’t know. It just came up. He’s old.”

  “He’s hot.”

  “Hush.”

  Dawn giggled to herself and Becca glowered back, just for good measure, then they were at the house. She could see Bella and Jackson at the rustic kitchen table with Roger and Glennanne and several men and women Becca didn’t know by name. Bella gave her a small signal to come in.

  “… thought we had this beat,” one of the men said, sitting up awkwardly in the way of people who have been caught at something.

  “What is it, Becca?” Bella asked.

  “It’s not important,” Becca said, suddenly on the spot.

  “Speak,” Bella told her, not impatient, though some of the faces at the table weren’t so kind.

  “Lange called,” Becca said. “He says that Argo has some things he wants to give us.”

  Someone snorted like they would have spat if they hadn’t been inside.

  “I told him that you’d say no, but I promised I’d ask first anyway,” Becca said, trying to back out of the room. Dawn was in the way. On purpose, it would seem.

  “We’ll go,” Bella said. “Thank you.”

  The ‘thank you’ was a dismissal, and now Dawn let Becca past, scampering under the view of so many impatient people.

  They walked back down toward the campsite, quiet, as Becca thought about that. Something important was definitely going on, and they were going to go out of their way to go see Argo in the middle of it.