by Devon Monk
Like death warmed over. Ha-ha, not funny.
Zayvion walked around the car and slid in the driver’s side.
“So who do you think that man is? Was he there when my father was buried? Does this all have something to do with his death?”
He put the keys in the ignition, started the car, and, thankfully, the heater.
“How about I drive while I talk?”
“Where are we going?”
Score one for the logical mind.
He looked over at me. Nothing but Zen. Well, a little wet. A lot kissable. And just unreadable enough that I didn’t feel safe enough to risk getting too intimate. Yet.
“Where do you want me to take you?”
“Anywhere you’re going to tell me the truth about that man out there, the powerful people watching me, and my father’s grave.”
He frowned. “What about your father’s grave?”
“Did you actually see his body lowered into it?” I said it like it didn’t freak me out that my dead father was missing in inaction. So to speak.
He looked out the front window like he was looking into his memories. Then took a very deep, loud breath. Let it out. “A lot of… people saw his casket lowered into the grave.”
“Nice hesitation,” I noted.
He put the car in reverse and backed out of the cemetery, out through the iron gates, then put it in drive and pulled onto the street. He didn’t say anything more. I didn’t let that stop me from talking.
“Listen, I know we said we’d try this…”
“This?”
“Us,” I said. “At the deli when I came back to Portland. That we’d try us. But I am so done with the mystery-man bit. If you don’t level with me, there is no way I’m going to trust you like-”
“Like you did before?” Zayvion gave me a sad smile. “Trust wasn’t exactly what our relationship was built on.”
“Really?” I said, not believing him. Trust was a big thing for me, and I didn’t get into a relationship without it. “Then what was it built on?”
“Really good sex.”
I had the unfortunate tendency to blush. And I think Zayvion Jones knew that.
He grinned. “Maybe there was some trust going on too. I know that I trusted you. Trusted in your strength. And your stubbornness.”
“Watch it,” I warned.
“Maybe it’s not me you’re afraid to trust right now,” he said. “Maybe it’s yourself.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Because he was right. And I was too stubborn to admit it.
Chapter Eight
Zayvion guided the car down the hill, heading north toward downtown. My chance for a snappy come-back had passed about a minute and a half ago. Instead, I’d opted to look aloof and unimpressed while I waited for the hot rush of blood to drain from my cheeks, neck, and chest.
“As I was saying,” I said, “I’d like you to level with me.”
“That sounds fair,” he said. “But it will take some time. Are you hungry?”
My underwear were giving me the wet wedgie of a lifetime. I really wanted to change into dry clothes before going to the Hound meeting.
“I just ate,” I said. “What time is it?”
He nodded toward the car’s dash and a digital clock. “Ten thirty.”
I bit at the inside of my cheek. I had just enough time for him to take me home so I could score some dry clothes before the Hound thing. And besides, he’d said he’d talk while he drove.
“I have an appointment at noon. Could you take me home so I can change?”
“Sure.”
He didn’t ask what the appointment was. Didn’t ask me where I was going or whom I was going with. I was simultaneously happy and disappointed that he wasn’t interfering in my personal business.
“I moved to a new apartment,” I said.
“I know.”
“Have you been spying on me, Mr. Jones?”
“On you? No.”
“Spying on someone else in my building?”
“That seems unlikely, doesn’t it?”
“Way to dodge the question.”
“Thank you. Speaking of questions, why did you go to the graveyard today? It’s not exactly good weather for it.”
“It’s almost December. Of course it’s not good weather. Who was that man back at the graveyard? Is he part of MERC?”
Zayvion frowned, and our little question volley took on a more serious tone. “Where did you hear about MERC?”
Interesting. So he knew about them.
“Friends on the force mentioned it. Is that it? The MERC team is watching me?”
They had wanted to tag me. Since I said no to that, it made sense that they might want to follow me in a more conventional manner. The weird thing was I had no idea why they wanted to keep such a close eye on me, unless it was because of Trager. I hadn’t worked for them yet, hadn’t Hounded whatever case might put me in the line of danger.
And all I kept thinking about was sixteen Hounds dead in six years.
“Maybe MERC is watching you,” Zayvion said.
“Are you a part of that? Of them?”
He gave me a strange look. “Allie, you know I don’t work for MERC.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Ah.” He Zenned.
No other reaction. Just that: “Ah.”
“How about a little help here?” I said. “Who are the powerful people watching me and what are they watching me for?”
“I shouldn’t tell you that.”
“Because you work for them?”
“If I did, do you think I’d tell you?” He smiled, laugh lines crinkling at the edges of his eyes.
I groaned and thunked my head on the side window. “For all that’s holy, Jones, talk to me. If I’m in danger, I need to know. Is it Trager?”
Zay tightened, looked at me. “Lon Trager?”
I shrugged. “I heard he’s out of jail.”
Zay nodded. “He is.”
“Is that it, then? Trager’s looking for me?”
“It’s… complicated.” He glanced at me, looked back at the road. He was no longer smiling. “I do some work for the… for people. In powerful positions. The man in the graveyard is a part of the… of what I’m… working on. He might have something to do with Trager.”
“Does he have anything to do with me?”
“He shouldn’t.”
“But he could?”
“Anything is possible in this city.” At my glare, he added, “There are a lot of things going on-with people who use magic, with the people who police magic. All of them involve magic. What it is. How it’s being used. Who can use it. And you use magic, so, yes. It could involve you. It could involve Trager, but I don’t know that as a fact yet. It could involve anyone.”
“Was my dad part of what is going on in the city? And before you answer, I know he’s dead, but I know he was a powerful magic user. There’s no reason you can’t give me the truth on this. Was he involved in what’s going on with magic in the city?”
“Yes.” He looked like giving a straight answer hurt.
“So the danger to me-if there is danger to me-may be secondary? Because I’m his daughter?”
“Have I ever told you you are a very astute woman, Ms. Beckstrom?”
“Never hurts to hear it again.” Sweet hells. People who might want to kill me were going to have to start taking a number and getting in line.
“Did you see my father’s body before he was buried?”
If he was surprised by the change of subject, he didn’t show it.
“I saw it at the viewing, yes.”
“Are you sure it was his body?”
Now that surprised him. His heartbeat elevated, and this close, I could tell he held his breath.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“I know you are.” His lips pressed into a thin line. He wove the car through traffic, heading closer to the downtown area.
“I didn’t touch the
body,” he finally said. “I did lean in close to it during the viewing. It wasn’t an imposter.”
“Not a fake? A mannequin or wax dummy?”
“No. The man in that coffin was dead.”
“Are you sure? Absolutely sure he was dead?”
“Allie, I know a dead body when I see one.”
Under other circumstances I might have asked him why, exactly, he was that familiar with corpses. But right now, I just wanted to know what he knew about my dad’s death and burial.
“Why?” Zayvion asked.
“Because his grave is empty.”
No more Zen Zayvion. No more calm and quiet Zayvion of the cool mint fingers and sexy smile. He stopped the car-good thing we were at a stop sign-and didn’t move through the intersection even though there was no other traffic.
He turned toward me. He was wider through the shoulder than he looked, so there wasn’t much room for him to really turn.
Images, no, memories of his body against mine-not on my father’s grave, but some other time, when the heat and strength of his body pressed against me-came back with a quick flash of fire. My stomach fluttered and I swallowed to keep from making any small sound.
Then the image-and the emotion behind it-was gone.
The man before me wasn’t the same as the lover of my memory. Blackness poured like ink through the brown of his eyes, filling his gaze with killing darkness. Then he blinked, and his eyes looked brown again- just brown-and I really, really hoped I was just imagining things.
“How?” he asked.
“Do you think I know? That’s why I’m asking you.”
“No,” he said. “How do you know his grave is empty?”
“I wanted to touch him.” Okay, that sounded creepy.
He blinked a couple more times, like either the sentimental me or creepy me wasn’t lining up.
“Physically?”
“Did you see me carrying a shovel? Of course not physically.”
“So what did you do, Allie?”
“I touched him. With magic. Because, you know, grave robbing is so last season.”
“Allie. This is serious.”
“I know. My dad is dead-or so everyone tells me. But he is not in that coffin. Nothing is. Nothing but stale air.”
Zayvion rubbed a hand over his face and scrubbed at the back of his neck. He glanced out the windshield and seemed to notice we were not moving. He straightened, took his foot off the brake, and rolled through the intersection.
“How can you be sure?” he asked. “A dead body doesn’t feel the same as a living body. Even when touched with magic.” There it was again-his casual acquaintance with dead people. And how they felt when touched with magic. Interesting.
“There would have been bacteria, not to mention bugs of all sorts, so, yes, there would have been something alive if there had been any flesh in that box. There wasn’t anything in the coffin except air.”
“People don’t bury empty coffins.”
“Someone did.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Is this a part of the whole dangerous magic going on thing?” I asked.
The image of the magic glyphs on the warehouse wall came to me. Warnings. Life magic. Death magic. All in my father’s signature.
“Does it have something to do with death magic? Was my dad involved in some sort of… dark magic?” Now that I thought about it, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he were involved in whatever passed as the dark arts.
And no, I didn’t know what that was. It wasn’t exactly covered in my college Business Magic 101, where you learned the proper Proxy-to-potency ratio for advertising illusions.
The line of Zayvion’s shoulders tightened. I’d hit a nerve.
“Where would you get that kind of idea?” he asked, all low and calm, like it was silly to even think there was dark magic. He totally did not fool me.
And that was when it occurred to me that he might be a part of this-whatever this was. He might be a part of the reason why my father was not in his grave, might be a part of the death magic glyphs, hells, might be a part of why I saw my dad’s ghost, or-and at this I felt a chill all the way down to my wet panties-he might be a part of my dad’s death.
It was clear Mr. Jones could be a dangerous man. He’d admitted working for powerful people dealing with “complicated” things.
Even though he remembered our relationship, and I’d asked him if we still had a chance together, I realized I didn’t know him-didn’t know enough about him to warrant trusting him so soon.
Plus, I just was so not up to fighting for my life at the moment.
“Allie?” he asked when I’d been a little too quiet a little too long.
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s just been a long day. I’m jumping at shadows.”
He took a deep breath, let it out. Okay, he wasn’t buying my bluff either.
Note to self: do not play poker with this man.
“Allie, don’t ask me about… dark… about your dad and… things. Things I’m working on. It’s being taken care of by people who want things right… good. For the city, for people. Things I want right. For you. Us.” He squeezed the steering wheel, growing more frustrated with each word of his staccato explanation. “I can’t say more without putting you in a compromising position.”
“Maybe I want you to put me in a compromising position.”
Oh, groan. What was I doing flirting with him? Hadn’t I just decided I couldn’t trust him?
He smiled, a flash of straight white teeth, curve of thick lips, and then gave me a sideways glance. “When you put it that way…”
Yes, I was blushing. Fabo.
Time to reestablish some boundaries here.
“Listen. Just tell me: do you know where my father’s body is?”
No matter how bright those tiger eyes burned, he could not lie to me. I could smell a lie as easy as I could smell other strong emotions, as easy as I could smell the lines of cast magic. I was a Hound. And good at it. So go ahead, I thought, tell me a lie, Zayvion Jones.
“No.”
Not a whiff of change, not a scent of a lie. He was telling the truth.
“But you have some idea?”
“Not yet. Soon.”
Okay, this honesty thing was working for me. I just needed to know one more thing before he closed up again.
“I’d like to know what kind of people I should be worried about spying on me. The police? MERC? My dad’s ex-business partners? My dad’s ex-wives? Lon Trager?”
He didn’t say anything, but his knuckles went yellow from squeezing the steering wheel.
“You don’t have to name names,” I said, “but right now it feels like everyone is after me. And before you tell me paranoia will at least keep me alive, I have a job to do, Zayvion. I’m doing some Hounding for MERC. It’s possible I’ll be putting myself out there in dangerous ways. If I know where the heat’s coming from, I will do my best to avoid it.”
Still nothing.
“If you want me to stay safe, give me the tools to keep myself safe. Tell me who I need to avoid.” Trust me, I thought. Please.
I waited. I am not a patient woman. But I knew if I pushed any harder, he’d close up for good.
“There are… magic users…” he said so quietly, I almost couldn’t hear his voice over the drone of the engine and the rhythmic swipe of the windshield wipers. “Magic users who specialize in knowing when someone is over their head with magic.”
“Like a regulatory agency?” I was thinking FBI or some sort of secret black ops.
“No. Not like that. These people know when a person is using too much or more than they can handle. Know if they’re addicted to the rush, the pain. Know if they’re… abusing magic in ways harmful to themselves or others. When that happens, these people step in. Handle things. Discreetly. Without the involvement of the police, MERC, or the law.”
Holy shit.
“There are magic users out there who decide if oth
er magic users should… what? Be forbidden from using magic?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Be put in jail?”
Still nothing.
“What, Zayvion? They decide if magic users should be-”
“Killed,” Zay said softly.
Holier shit. Magic vigilantes. Worse-secret magic vigilantes.
I took a deep breath and waited for my heart to start beating again.
“Are those people watching me?”
“Yes.”
Holiest shit. I really was going to need to start a Kill Allie Here line.
“Are those the people you’re working for?”
He didn’t say anything.
I took that as a yes. My mind spun with possibilities of who could be spying on me, waiting for me to use magic wrong, use it too much, or make one bad choice. Violet, Grant? Pike, Stotts? Zayvion? How secret were these secret magic vigilantes?
“I want you to promise me you won’t go anywhere in this city alone,” he said. “I want you to promise me you won’t go looking for your father’s body. And that you won’t use magic more than you have to.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I said.
“Allie. Listen to me. These people don’t see the world in any manner but black and white. If you fall anywhere near the gray, they will not hesitate to-”
“Kill me. Yeah, I got that part. Holy crap, Jones. You could have told me.”
“When?”
I opened my mouth to answer him, but maybe it was the blur of movement that caught my eye. Whatever it was, both Zayvion and I took that exact moment to look away from each other and back at the street. More precisely, to look at the red light we were running. And the crosswalk. And the man striding across it.
A man wearing a dark business suit with a lavender hanky in his pocket. He was tall like me, looked a lot like me, but had gray hair. He strode across the middle of the crosswalk, headed right for us, right in front of the car.
My father.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Zayvion slammed on the brakes. I put my hands on the dashboard to brace for impact.
Then I screamed as Zayvion ran over my dead dad.
Chapter Nine
