Devils & Thieves Series, Book 1

by Jennifer Rush

  “Gunnar Reyes went missing two days ago,” Crowe added. “Still hasn’t been found. So we’re missing two.”

  Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “Your point being?”

  “What if they’re all being taken by the same person?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I believed that—it was still possible Darek and Alex were holed up somewhere together. I knew I had seen Katrina hurl a curse at us less than an hour earlier, and Gunnar was known for disappearing for days on end. Except… the other person I had seen in the woods seemed to have some kind of screwed-up arma power—I had seen the swirls of pale yellow mixed with black and red as he ran between the trees. Could that have been Gunnar? If it was, why would he hurl a hex knife at me? I shook off the thought. Right now, I just wanted to make sure we didn’t start another brawl. “What if we get all the clubs together and try to figure out what the hell is happening?”

  Crowe said nothing, but the amber ribbons of his magic slithered back into his fingertips, and I stood up a little straighter.

  “It’s a reasonable suggestion, Ronan,” my dad said, trying to keep the peace, like any of this shit mattered to him. “If you want to find Katrina, convening the officers of each club seems like the best plan.”

  Ronan was still glaring daggers at Crowe, but his magic was pulling away from the dog at his side, and the animal whined and sat, leaning its head on the enormous man’s thigh. “All right, Agent Carmichael. But if I get even a hint that Crowe’s behind this, I won’t hold back.”

  “Same,” Crowe said in a hard voice. “Ronan, I propose you and I go talk to the Stalkers and the Kings. If everyone agrees, we can meet in the gathering tent after dinner—around eight. It’s neutral ground.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to me. “Will you go get Jane for me? I want to talk to her before we all meet. She’s camped out—didn’t want to make the trip back and forth from her cabin—so she should be in the south field.”

  Circles had formed under his eyes, and I was once again reminded that he hadn’t slept in nearly a day and a half. “Yeah,” I said. “On one condition.”

  His eyebrows rose.

  “You get a few hours of sleep before tonight,” I whispered. I held up my hand when he opened his mouth to argue. “You have to be sharp to pull this all together, Crowe, and you’re human. You nearly died less than an hour ago. You have to rest.”

  For a moment, he simply looked down at me, and every nerve in my body thrummed with awareness of him. “Okay. Once I get this set up and check in with Jane, I will.” He touched my arm as I turned. “And, Jemmie? Thank you,” he murmured. “I mean it.” He trudged away and joined a knot of Devils who had gathered between the tents.

  Without looking at my father, I turned and marched toward the camper grounds. People who didn’t have large family groups, or who simply preferred a little more solitude, were allowed to pitch tents or park their RVs in a wide-open area at the south end of the festival fields. Jane Vetrov sat on a ratty lawn chair outside a rusty old Airstream. Her knobby knees stuck out through tears in her jeans. A Harley T-shirt hung loose on her body and a half-empty bottle of Jack dangled from her fingers. Despite that, her gaze was sharp as she caught sight of me marching toward her. I braced myself as the silver threads of her omnias magic stretched toward me like a giant spiderweb.

  “Trouble?” she asked when I got close enough.

  “Yeah. Four people are missing and everybody wants to blame someone else.”

  Jane looked unsurprised. “And they want me to come tell them what the hell is happening.”

  I nodded. “Will you? They’re meeting in the gathering tent around eight, but Crowe said he needed to talk to you before that. We still can’t find Alex or Gunnar. The Sixes want to blame Crowe for Katrina Niklos’s disappearance, and the Stalkers seem to think he might have kidnapped one of their prospects. It’s kind of a mess.”

  Jane grunted and slowly stood up. “That boy’s a magnet for trouble,” she muttered.

  “He didn’t do it.”

  Her pale eyes met mine. “You sound awfully sure, Jemmie Carmichael.”

  Her magic smelled like steel and machine oil as it caressed the sides of my face. I shuddered and pulled back, and Jane tilted her head, peering at me with sharp curiosity. “You were always a funny child.”

  “Um. Thanks?”

  “Sometimes your parents and the others would come out to my property to drink and cast and talk about the future. They’d bring you along, and while the other kids were playing tag and hide-and-seek in the woods out back, I’d always see you squatting behind a chair or near the wood pile, watching.”

  “I guess I was interested in what the adults were doing.”

  She chuckled. “That’s what your parents said. Nosy little Jemmie. But that wasn’t what it looked like to me. You weren’t watching them. You were watching the air around them.”

  I swallowed and rubbed at my arms. “If you say so.”

  “You used to enjoy being around all of it, but after you hit six, maybe seven, your mom told me you started asking to stay home with a babysitter. She said you’d have a screaming fit if they tried to bring you.”

  It had all gotten to be too much. The older I got, the more the magic overwhelmed me. “Well, I’m here now. Wondering why you’re telling me this. Can we go?”

  Jane didn’t budge. “You’re here now, all right. Only half-in, though. Your energy is split right down the middle.”

  I suddenly thought of Darek, out there somewhere, maybe with Alex, maybe in trouble, and then I thought of Crowe, trying to find his missing people and make sure this festival didn’t end in a gang war. “Can you see my future?”

  She moved a step closer to me, and I inhaled her metallic essence. “Yours in particular? Not unless I touch you, and I don’t think you want me to do that.”

  “It might be nice to have some answers,” I said quietly. “And if you know what’s happening, what’s going to happen, shouldn’t you tell us? People’s lives are on the line.”

  “People’s lives are always on the line, little girl.” She clucked her tongue. “And they always come to me, wanting answers, and then they can’t handle what I see. Sometimes I can’t handle what I see. Sometimes this gift feels more like a curse.” After a long pull from her bottle of Jack, she capped it and tossed it into the long grass by her chair. For a moment, I thought about asking her for a swig, then realized… I didn’t really need it.

  Jane started to walk slowly toward the festival grounds. “Lots of Vetrovs go crazy, you know. You dip your toes in the Undercurrent even once and you can hear it whispering, and we can’t help but go back again and again.”

  From the haunted look on her face, it seemed like she might be listening to its call right now. “Is that why some omnias kindled can supposedly raise the dead?” I asked. “You know how to pull them from the Undercurrent?”

  She clucked her tongue. “Takes more strength and power than I have to do something like that, but yes. Comes with consequences, though. Omnias always does. Soon as we come into the power, no matter how old we are when it happens, we know the day we’re going to die without even trying. You can’t get close to people, because if you touch them, you know how it all ends. Imagine how that would feel. It’s why so many of us prefer to be alone.”

  Suddenly, my situation didn’t seem quite so bad. “Does it ever feel good?”

  “Why does it need to?” she asked, an edge in her voice. “Life isn’t about feeling good. Magic isn’t about feeling good. You have it, you respect it. You use it the best way you can. Or… you don’t. You whine about it, you abuse it, you avoid it, whatever. But it’s always your choice.”

  I was glad we were walking, because I didn’t want to be facing her, letting her look at me and watch me squirm. I didn’t know if she was talking about herself or me, but I knew which one I wanted it to be. “But you met with Crowe and warned him that something would happen at this festival. You help people sometimes.”

  “Is that wha
t I do?”

  I bit my lip, remembering what I’d read in that old journal. “Michael Medici asked for your help, didn’t he?”

  “Did Crowe tell you that?” She grunted. “And how do you think Michael felt when I told him he’d celebrated his final birthday? How do you think he felt when I told him the exact day he’d leave this life?”

  “Did you see how it would happen?”

  “I’ve already explained this to Crowe. I don’t get to see exactly how someone dies, just a certainty about when it will happen. Seeing the future isn’t like watching a movie on a screen, girl. It isn’t like some tapestry hanging in a museum. It’s more like shreds and scraps scattered across the ground. It takes experience and practice to interpret it correctly, and even then it’s fragmented. But I always recognize certain pieces—they tend to stand out.”

  “Was Michael scared when you told him he was going to die?”

  “Ha! No. He was pissed as hell. And he was determined to prove me wrong.” Her pale eyes stared into the distance, at the Medici flag flying over the family tent. “That’s one thing I’m never wrong about, though.”

  I shifted my weight, edging a little farther from her so a careless step wouldn’t bring our skin into contact. “You can predict the future without touching someone, though.”

  “Touch or not, it’s still threads that have to come together to weave a complete future. Now that you’re next to me, I can tell you’re one of those threads, Jemmie. Dangling in the wind. Not sure which way you’ll blow, what you’ll tangle around.” She arched an eyebrow. “Who you’ll mesh with.”

  A warm breeze blew across the field, bringing hints of smoke and honey, along with a confusing mixture of a dozen other things, all magic. “I’m really a part of all this?”

  She stopped. “You’ve always been a part of it, Jemmie Carmichael. You can run as far as you want, but that won’t change.”

  My heart skipped. I’d never actually spent time talking to Jane, and it was for this reason exactly. Mom had told me she always knew just a hair too much. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “If you’re here, better make sure you’re all here.”

  I sighed. “Okay?”

  She leaned in, and I took a step back. “I saw you at the Schoolhouse that night. I saw you practically peeing your pants in fright over a simple binding. I saw you acting like you were terrified of your own magic. If you want to save the Devils and the people you love, I’m thinking you’d better get over that.”

  I scowled at her. “I’m working on it.”

  “Uh-huh.” She resumed her hike toward the gathering tent and said, over a shoulder, “Maybe you should work a little harder.”

  I stayed where I was. Crowe had said all the clubs would meet after dinner. And Crowe hadn’t actually invited me to come—he’d sent me to fetch Jane while he rounded up the officers of the Stalkers and the Kings. I wasn’t officially a Devil. And I’d avoided being formally affiliated with them, because that meant they could ask me to contribute my magic for the good of the club, and I’d always been too scared.

  But today, I’d done a halfway decent locator spell. I’d been ready to protect Crowe with a barrier spell. And I hadn’t had one drink, or even craved one, to help tamp down the sensations that came with being around this much magic. Crowe had told me to push through it, and I had—because Alex needed me.

  Jane was right. I had been only half here. And if I wanted to find my missing friends, I needed to do better than that.

  I ran into Brooke on the path to the parking lot, carrying a couple of kegs as if they weighed nothing. “Hey—did the Curse Kings and the Deathstalkers agree to talk?”

  “As far as I know,” she said. “Crowe’s got his hands full, though. Everyone’s pointing fingers.”

  Most of them at Crowe. Protectiveness surged inside me. I needed to practice a few spells and make a few cuts if I wanted to watch his back. That meant I needed my casting kit, which had been buried at the bottom of my closet for seven years. Practice would also help me to get away from the overwhelming magic of the festival grounds. I might be able to tolerate it for now, but I had only been here for an hour or two, and my concentration was fraying at the edges. I hadn’t been craving a drink, but the more I thought about it, the more it sounded kind of appealing. I wanted to be here—but I needed to pull myself together.

  “Who’s watching out for Crowe right now?” I asked.

  “He said he was headed to the Medici tent to catch a little shut-eye, with Hardy to watch his back.” She gave me a sly smile. “You worried about our pres, Jemmie?”

  I twirled my keys around my finger, trying to look casual. “I just know he’s worried about his sister and Gunnar. He’s trying to take care of everyone. He hadn’t slept in a day and a half.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We stood in awkward silence for a few seconds before I pointed stupidly at my car. “Um. I’m just heading home. Thanks for the update.” I started to step around her.

  “Hey, Jemmie?” Brooke bit the inside of her cheek, looking conflicted. “We’re all hoping Katrina’s okay and all that, but I don’t think she ever meant all that much to Crowe.”

  I suppressed a smile. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Brooke’s cheeks flushed. “No particular reason. See you later?”

  “Yeah.” I fought the urge to grab her by the shoulders and ask her more, but she’d probably end up hitting me in the head with both kegs. “I’ll be there after everyone meets.”

  She nodded and continued her march back to the festival fields.

  I drove home, and as I approached the house I realized more fully that Dad and Crowe had been right about the perimeter protection—it had gone soft. I hoped maybe I could replace it myself instead of asking Dad to do it, but for now I needed to save my energy for more urgent things. I called out for my mom as I walked through the living room, but then realized she probably hadn’t gotten back from working the lunch shift at Denny’s. Thinking about personal barrier spells and vault hexes, I entered my room and turned toward my closet.

  Hands snaked around my waist and pulled me back. With a shriek, I jabbed at my attacker with my elbow and stomped down, hoping to crush a few toes.

  “Ow!” he said, and let me go.

  I whirled around, and my mouth dropped open. The minty scent of my own magic filled my nose, probably caused by my surprise. “Darek?”

  “Yeah,” he said weakly, rubbing at his abs. “Sorry for startling you.”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  He gingerly pulled off his aviator sunglasses, revealing two black eyes and a gash across his left eyebrow that had been closed with three stitches. “Hospital.”

  “What happened?”

  He winced at the shrill sound of my voice and then gestured to the bed. “Do you mind?”

  I watched as he collapsed on the bed and then sat on the edge of it. It looked like every part of him hurt. “I’ve been worried about you. Why didn’t you answer my texts? And do you know where Alex is? A few people saw her leave the festival with you last night, and she hasn’t been seen since.”

  His brow furrowed. “Really?” He frowned. “That’s messed up.”

  “No kidding. But did you see her?”

  “Yeah. I walked her to her car. But then she drove off, and that was the last time I saw her.” With a grimace, he turned onto his back and laid his arm over his eyes to block out the sunlight streaming through my window.

  I probably should have been relieved that my best friend hadn’t shacked up with my… honestly I didn’t know what Darek was. I only knew that if she hadn’t been with him, she was still missing. “Hey—how did you end up in the hospital?”

  “Oh, thanks for your concern,” he said drily. Then he let out a pained chuckle. “You haven’t talked to Crowe?”

  “Huh?”

  “I figured he would have told everyone. But I guess maybe he wanted to keep it between us.”

  “
Darek, just tell me what happened.”

  He lifted his arm off his face. “Crowe saw my connection with you. I thought he kind of looked at us funny when I came into the beer tent last night.”

  I thought back. “I guess he might have.”

  “Oh, trust me. After I walked Alex to her car, I was taking a shortcut from the parking lot to the Stalkers tent when he stepped out from behind a tree. Blocked the path. Dude is big.”

  “Crowe was hiding in the woods, waiting for you?”

  “Who knows if he was waiting for me? Maybe he was spying or looking out for someone else. Whatever. He took the opportunity when it wandered up the path like a clueless idiot.” There was a bitter twist to his voice. “He told me I didn’t belong there. At first I thought he meant on that part of the land, and I apologized. Then he made it clear what he really meant.” Darek’s blue eyes were stark. “He told me to stay away from you.”

  My stomach dropped. “Oh.”

  “I told him to fuck off.” Darek let out a weary sigh. “He didn’t take it well.”

  “He beat you up?”

  “He told me he could kick my ass with a simple blink of his eyes, but he preferred to do it the old-fashioned way.” Darek rubbed at his jaw, which was bruised and swollen. “He did a damn good job, if you ask me.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Crowe. I know he has a temper, but—”

  “I’m a Deathstalker, Jemmie,” Darek snapped. “And I was a little too obviously interested in you, I guess.”

  Everything inside me wanted to argue. Surely Crowe wouldn’t have… but the tiniest whisper of doubt crept in. Suddenly I remembered what Crowe had said about him this morning, how Darek just pissed him off, how he should have killed him when he had the chance. Was this what he meant? Had he actually used me as an excuse to beat on Darek? “Does Killian know?”

  Darek pulled several small objects from his pocket and dropped them on my bedspread. I peered at the shattered remains of Darek’s phone. “Honestly, I’m not sure what happened after the fifth or sixth time he hit me. I woke up in a ditch at the side of Highway Ten just over the city limit. When I crawled out, a passing driver stopped and called an ambulance. I’ve been in the ER getting stitched up. I hitched a ride here when they let me out. I thought you…” He looked away. “I hoped you would be worried.” He held his hand out, palm up.