by Devon Monk
“Aren’t you something, Cody?” he said in his snake voice. “I don’t know how you survived. A death for a death is the price. Why aren’t you dead?”
Cody couldn’t talk. Cody couldn’t tell him that the older, smarter part of him had done something, something special with the magic in the coins, something special with the magic in the little bone. He couldn’t tell him that the older, smarter part of him had found a way so they wouldn’t die. And he couldn’t tell him that the lady with magic inside her had made him all better again.
“You don’t know, do you?” the Snake man asked in a sorry voice that was not sorry. “Well, maybe we’ll find out together.” He smiled, but it was only on the outside. Inside he was hating. Hating Cody.
Maybe if Cody sang a song the Snake man would go away.
“Snake man, Snake man, bake a cake man.”
But the Snake man did not go away. He reached into the little room. Cody wailed, wishing the older, smarter part of him would come back. He wasn’t brave all alone. He was too small to be brave. Too small for anyone to hear him. Too small for anyone to care.
Chapter Fourteen
There is something wonderful about silence, about blackness. For one thing there is no pain. For another there is no fear, just gentle drifting and casual ignorance of reality’s harsh light.
But silence cannot stretch on forever. Sounds punch their way through, muffled at first, a man’s voice, a name. My name. And the sound of my name carries so much more—it tells me who I am, and that I am not dead just yet.
I wonder if I’m breathing. Inhale.
Air, light, sound, taste, smell, and pain—hells, the pain—chew the silence to shreds and I am awake.
“Damn it, Allie, breathe. C’mon, babe. I can’t do this. You can’t do this to me.”
I opened my eyes—okay it took a few tries—but I finally got them open. I felt like I’d just spent the last month in a meat grinder.
“There.” Zay’s voice was shaking, his words coming out too fast. “Good. Good. Don’t give up. Don’t go away. Stay here. Good. Good.”
I blinked. I was going to open my eyes again, honest to goodness, but the silence was so easy, so soft, so empty.
Zay swore and dug his hands into my ribs, sending off shock waves of pain. “No. Fuck it, Allie. Come back to me.”
If I had fallen into a vat of hot mint, I couldn’t have felt more permeated with the sting of it.
Ow.
The darkness skittered out of my reach, all of its soft, welcoming nothingness covered by a warm, wet layer of mint. And the mint flowed toward me, gently forcing me to step back, to turn, to remember I was not breathing and that was bad. To take a breath.
I opened my eyes.
Zayvion’s face, ashen-green, sweat glittering in the tight black curls across his forehead and running wet lines down his cheek, hovered over me.
“Look at you and those beautiful eyes. Good job, babe. You’re doing really good. Take another easy breath. Perfect.” He smiled. “I am Grounding the hell out of you, Dove. You need to let go of the magic, let it rest, let it fall back into the earth. Can you do that?”
Oh sure. And after that maybe I’d show him my amazing high-wire trapeze act.
“Just keep looking at me.”
I blinked, but this time I could open my eyes again.
“Good. I’m going to talk you down into a trance, all right? I’ll be right here. You’ll be safe. You’ll be warm. Comfortable. You’re safe with me.”
I listened as he droned on, and every so often reminded me to breathe. And then he guided me to feel every part of my body from the top of my head to the soles of my feet and told me to exhale and envision all of the magic pouring out of me into the ground.
I did. And I was awake. For real this time.
Zay was still above me, still sweating, still shaking, and still looking a little sick around the edges.
“Hey,” I tried to say. It came out breathy and all vowel.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling, babe?”
Oh, like I could do cartwheels uphill.
“Bad,” I said. “Turd.” I’d meant to say “tired” but it didn’t come out right. Zay didn’t seem to notice.
“That’s okay. That’s good,” he said. “I’m going to help you sit, then get you to bed. Ready?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. The room spun. Eventually I figured out it was me moving, sitting up, and not the world doing a lazy Susan.
Smart, I are.
Zay sat there with me, anxiously brushing my hair away from my face until I looked back into his eyes again.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Help me up.”
With him doing most of the heavy lifting, I was on my feet and, with his arms supporting me and his voice a constant babble of encouragement, I was across the living room, down the hall, and lying back thankfully, so very thankfully, on Zay’s bed. The strange thing was I didn’t have on any clothes.
He fussed with my pillows, and I realized some of the moisture on his cheeks wasn’t sweat. It looked like he had been crying.
“Zay?”
“I’m here.” He lowered closer to me.
“What’s wrong?”
His face went blank, still, frozen. Then he hung his head. “Nothing,” he said. He laughed, choked, then looked back up at me. “Everything’s okay.”
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “Zay. I don’t remember.” I hated saying it, but I had a really bad feeling I had missed out on something big.
“You were shot. Do you remember that?”
I remembered pain. I remembered terror. Anger.
“Right here.” Zay gently cupped my left side, just beneath my ribs. “I think the bullet went all the way through, but I haven’t gone looking for it yet. You bled pretty hard.”
“Bled?” It seemed that unless Zay had stitched me up or cauterized the wound, I should still be bleeding.
He nodded. “You healed. Like you did to Cody, I think. Magic closed the wound. Does it still hurt?”
I felt his finger brush downward from the top of my rib cage, lost feeling for some time, then felt his finger again toward my hip bone.
“It’s numb,” I said. As a matter of fact, I was feeling a bit numb myself.
“Who shot me?”
“A hit man named Dane Lanister. Do you know him?”
“No.”
“Are you sure you’ve never seen him before?”
I raised my eyebrows. “As sure as a part-time amnesiac can be.” Oh, good, the shock was wearing off.
Zay grinned. He leaned down and kissed me, not hard. I tried to kiss him back, but was too damn tired. He tasted like salt, sweat, tears, and the bitter tang of fear. Even so, he tasted good, familiar.
“Did you catch him?” I asked when he had pulled away.
“No,” Zay said. “You were pouring magic at him in a spell I have never seen before. Do you remember that?”
I shook my head.
“I had cast a Holding spell at the same time.” He gave me a long, level stare, like maybe that should mean more to me.
“And what happened?”
“Do you remember Bonnie disappearing with Cody?”
“In the field?”
“Right.”
“So Dane—the man who shot me,” I said, “disappeared?”
“Yes.”
Which meant either Zay and I had created just the right combination of spells to physically move mass—a preposterous notion—or he had one of those stolen disks, a less preposterous notion.
“Who is he?” I asked. “Who does he work for? How do you know him?”
“I don’t know who he’s working for right now, but I’m guessing it’s the same person Bonnie’s contracted with.”
The person who has the disks. The person who has Cody—the only person who saw who killed my father. The only person who could clear my name.
“How do you know him?” I asked again.
Zay stood and walked over
to his dresser. He dug out a sweater and pulled it on over his long-sleeved T-shirt. “I’ve seen him off and on in my . . . career.”
“How magnificently vague of you.”
Zay tugged a stocking hat down over his head. “Thank you.”
“He tried to kill me. I deserve a better explanation.”
“There are more than one faction of magic users who do not follow the law, Allie. You’ve run into some—you’ve Hounded long enough to know what some people are willing to pay in exchange for power. The kinds of things they are willing to do.”
“Cut to the chase. We both know there are creeps and hustlers out there. Are you talking about black-market magics?”
Zay pulled his coat off a chair. “More than that. Dane runs with a pretty influential group. I’m not going to tell you their name.”
“Why? So in case I’m captured they can’t torture the information out of me?”
He gave me a long, silent stare.
“Oh. Well, isn’t that nice. So you’re talking serious psychopaths? Why would they want me dead?”
“I don’t think it’s only about you, Allie. It’s about who gets to control the tech—or maybe who gets to control your father’s company, which controls the tech. You just happen to be in their way.”
“Violet isn’t involved in this, is she?”
“If she is, she’s on our side.”
“We have a side?”
“Damn right we do.”
I pushed the covers off my legs and broke out in a sweat. Hells, I was tired. Still, I pushed up so I was sitting, and the covers slipped off. Oh yeah. I was naked. I tugged the blanket up over my chest and held it there. I was suddenly very dizzy. That was enough aerobics for the moment.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To call in a few favors. You can’t stay here long. Not after the amount of magic you poured out. I set some Diversion spells, which should confuse anyone hunting you for about an hour.” He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “This won’t take me long. Rest. When I come back, we’ll need to leave on foot. Think you’ll be able to do that?”
“Which part? Resting or running?”
“Both.”
“Is there an option C? Take a vacation somewhere sunny, and drink a lot of rum until the world unfucks itself?”
Zay paced over to me, pulled the covers back over my legs, leaned down, and kissed me. He was trembling a little. Tired, I figured, or hurting. I wasn’t the only one who had thrown a lot of magic around.
“It’s good to have you back. Be here when I come home.” Then he turned and left the room.
Even tired, even burned out, I could feel spells unweave as Zay left the room. I heard the dead bolts on the door snick shut.
I suppose he meant well. My knight in ski-coat armor and all that. But I was not about to stay here and wait for him to find some way to save me. Because as soon as that Diversion spell wore off, anyone looking for me wouldn’t have to wonder where I was. They’d know, because I glowed.
I was tired of running. I wanted to be one step ahead of this problem for a change, instead of a mile behind. And the only thing I had on my side was Cody. If he had indeed seen who killed my father. Instead of waiting here to get found out, I was going to do a little hunting of my own.
First, though, I needed clothes.
It took a while, but I put on my bra and jeans, a sweater of Zay’s, and a pair of his socks too. While I was at it, I borrowed a stocking hat out of the half dozen he had in his sock drawer and put that on.
Then I sat on the edge of the bed and indulged in my new hobby of breathing heavily and waiting for the room to stop spinning.
C’mon, Allie. Suck it up and get moving. I bullied myself to my feet, waited for the vertigo to pass, and walked out into the living room.
Blood. Everywhere. Blood covered the carpet in a wide, wet pool. Blood painted the wall and the side of the couch.
Holy shit.
I pressed my hand over my side, couldn’t feel the pressure, but could feel the edges of a scar. So much for wearing a bikini again.
Okay, I’ll be honest. I wanted to cry. There is nothing so freaky as seeing your own blood poured out like spilled cans of bargain-basement paint. There is nothing more sickening than realizing that your world has changed so much that people have actually tried to kill you. It made me feel vulnerable, and threatened to freeze me with fear. Where could I go that I would be safe? There was nowhere in this world I couldn’t be found. Not here. Not my apartment. Not even Nola’s. At any moment, around any corner, there could be someone with a gun pointed at my head.
I stared up at the ceiling and inhaled and exhaled, fighting down panic. I was good at fighting panic—I rode elevators—and had a healthy aptitude for denial.
When panic stopped squeezing my throat and I could breathe more evenly, I looked away from the ceiling. I refused to look at the floor or walls or furniture covered in my blood.
I was light-headed but I walked over to where the coat I had borrowed from Nola hung, checked it to make sure it was clean and that it had my little book in the pocket, then put it on.
I buttoned it up and went around the other side of the couch to avoid getting my shoes wet. I paused at the door. Zay had cast a hell of a spell. It practically vibrated out of the walls. He’d walked through it. There had to be a way to unweave it enough so I could get through it without breaking it, because if I broke it, I’d be a kill-me-now neon sign.
The very idea of drawing on magic, even a thin tendril of it, made my stomach turn. Every inch of me felt raw and empty. I was pretty sure the ability to cast magic had been blown out of me. I didn’t know how long it would take me to recover from that.
Using magic to unlock the glyph was out of the question. Maybe he had it set so that anyone crossing it from the outside in would be stopped, but anyone crossing it from inside the room to outside would be okay.
Nothing to do but try. I put my hand on the doorknob, unlocked it, slid the dead bolt. Turned the handle. The door opened. I couldn’t sense a change in the spell. I put my fingertips in the doorway, didn’t feel any changes, put my whole hand, then my arm through so my hand was over the threshold. Nothing.
The ward was set outside in, bad. Inside out, good.
Thank you, Zayvion Jones.
I stepped through to the hall and shut the door behind me. The building didn’t smell so good anymore; the heavy odors of people living too close together hit my sinuses and made me feel like choking. It was probably just an aftereffect of channeling so much magic—my senses were blown open. The lights in the hall seemed too bright, and a moth in the ceiling light sounded like a jumbo jet.
Of course, for all I knew, I could be running a fever, or bleeding internally from the wound. Just because the hole had closed didn’t mean the healing had worked any deeper. I pressed my arm against my side, trying to decide if it felt squishy, or in any way like there was more fluid under the skin. Swollen, which, I supposed, was to be expected. Internal bleeding?
How the hell should I know? I was not a doctor.
But I was walking okay, tired, dizzy, but not in excruciating pain. That had to count for something, right?
The doors on either side of the hall were shut and I didn’t hear any noise through them. Even though I couldn’t remember the moment I was shot, I figured gunfire would stir a few people out of bed. Unless they had all gone to work already. Or maybe Zay had fancy noise-dampening spells too.
Possible.
There were two doors at the end on the hall. The stairwell and the elevator. I had to pick one. I wanted to go down the stairs. But I didn’t want to wear myself out. Hells. Elevator, for the win.
I could do this. I’d done elevators a lot lately. I was great at elevators. And not one had sent me plummeting to my death. Yet.
I pressed the button and walked to the side of the doors, so I could see someone getting off the elevator before they saw me. The bell dinged and the doors open
ed. I waited for someone to step out. Listened for movement. The door started to close again, so I got moving and stuck my hand against it to hold it open. The door reopened and, sure enough, the elevator was empty.
I stepped in. The coffin closed down around me.
Strange how it never mattered how badly you hurt, you could still feel another pain—like the morphine needle when you’d broken a bone. And no matter how tired I was, I could still manage enough adrenaline to freak out in an elevator.
I pressed L for luck and leaned against one wall, the brushed bronze of it cool against my cheek. I stared at the numbers as they slowly blinked downward, broke out in a sweat, inhaled through my nose, exhaled out my mouth. The sound of my breath was accompanied by a high, panicky moan. I thought about calm rivers, summer days, soft sunlight. It didn’t work.
I wanted to run out the doors when the elevator opened to the lobby, but I couldn’t move that fast. Like wading through a bad dream, I pushed myself to walk across the elevator floor and finally, finally made it into the lobby.
My heart pounded too fast for so little exertion. Panic probably had something to do with it. I gritted my teeth to keep from making any sound. I could do this. I just needed to get outside. To get some fresh air.
I heard sirens and didn’t care. I just wanted to get to the door and get outside. The door was glass and iron and let in the cool gray light of a slate-sky morning. Seeing that cloudy light made me feel better. The world—the real world with sun and wind and cars and people who didn’t break into apartments with guns—was right out there. I pushed through the door, out into the cold, out into the wind, out into spaciousness with no walls and no ceiling and no guns I could see, and took deep, gulping breaths. I shivered and wiped the sweat off my face. Eventually I realized the sirens were growing louder.
The sirens were real. There were more than one. There must have been a bad accident. I glanced around to get my bearings, and checked out the name of the apartments: Cornerstone. The building and street weren’t familiar. Sirens kept getting closer, louder. Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was the gunfire and somebody had reported it. Maybe they were coming for me.
I kept my hands tucked in my pockets and my head down as I walked toward the street corner. The cross street was Stark, and that helped some. I knew which side of town I was on—the east, on the other side of the river from my apartment and downtown.
