I breathed it up. It rose along my spine with every inhale. Until it got to my shoulders—then it rolled along my arms into my hands. I lifted them. Pointed them toward Melody.
“Something’s happening,” she said.
Officer Reid looked at her. At me. He saw what I was doing. Frowned. Moved out of range of my hands. Burns crawled away.
Melody’s eyes widened. “Rude. Oh, God.”
“I’m trying something.”
“Try faster.”
The magic flowed from the center of my palms in a wash of watery light. It spilled over her, head to toe.
She shrieked. Curled in on herself.
The slap of flip-flops and a girl’s voice sounded behind me. “Hey, jerk—leave her alone.”
I couldn’t afford to break eye contact with Melody to look at her. I knew she couldn’t see the magic. Only Melody in pain. “I’m not touching her.”
“She’s hurting just the same.”
“I’m helping her.”
“You’re creeping her out. You’re creeping me out.”
“She’s under the influence,” I said. “Not sure what she took, okay?”
“That’s why she attacked the cops?” the girl asked.
I nodded.
Not that the cops were behaving like cops who’d been attacked. They ought to be taking her to the ground. Or overreacting with a taser. Anything but what they’d done.
Melody met my gaze. “Rude?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask what for. She blinked. Her eyes turned from blue to red and back again.
A wave of nausea started in the soles of my feet and sped up my legs and gut and chest and throat and head before I could take another breath. The beating of my heart became a roar of blood that filled my ears. Until the girl behind me screamed. She screamed and screamed until I thought my head would explode.
I rushed to Melody. Wrapped her in my arms. Put myself between her and everyone else. Hoped to God that if she hurt anyone, it would be me. No one else.
I held on with all I had. Her heat poured into me. Ripped the air from my lungs. I gasped for breath. Couldn’t speak a word.
My knees turned to rubber. My body tipped to the left. I couldn’t balance. I refused to let her go. She fell with me.
The sidewalk rushed up to meet us.
CHAPTER TWO
I breathed in the scent of sulfur. Coughed so much my chest and throat felt full of broken glass. If I’d had anything in my stomach, I’d have thrown it up.
Instead, I opened my eyes to slits. Got a glimpse of slick, buckled concrete and a pair of empty red stilettos, one heel snapped in half.
Melody’s shoes.
I planted my palms flat on the ground and pushed up to my elbows on shaky arms. I expected carnage all around. Blood and gore. Melted people everywhere. But no. As in, nobody but me on the sidewalk and no evidence that anyone else—human, faery, or half-demon—had ever been there at all.
I was alone.
The streetlights had gone out for the entire block. On the street, cars in the lanes had smashed into each other. Parked vehicles at the curbs on both sides had their windows blown out. A crew cab pickup had come up over the curb and rammed into the tree with the Otherworld gate. Sliced it clean in half, which was impossible. But the oak’s cut edges were blackened and the top half of the tree had flattened the truck’s roof and busted the windshield.
I stood up. Wobbled while my legs decided whether to hold me. Once they’d mostly made up their mind that I could stay upright, I lurched toward the pickup. Searched inside for the driver. If the impact hadn’t killed him, I could pull him out. Except he wasn’t there.
Impossible again. The driver couldn’t have escaped. Not with the roof crushed like that. There wouldn’t have been time to jump out before he’d run up on the curb, either. What Melody had done—what the fuck had she done?—it’d happened too fast.
My brain started to glaze over. I could pass out again any minute. I leaned toward the truck. Braced my hands against the driver’s door. Screamed like a bastard and fell onto the curb so hard my teeth clicked together. I bit my tongue. Tasted blood.
The tips of my fingers seared as if they’d been burnt crisp. I turned them over to look. Everything except my pinkies? Lobster red, even in the dark. I couldn’t see well enough to tell for sure, but I’d been burned before and these felt worse than your usual sunburn. Second-degree, maybe.
How hot did the metal on that truck have to be to cause that? Damned hot. How had it gotten that way? Melody. The only explanation. Holy ever-loving God.
I rose again, careful not to scrape my fingers on the concrete. I checked all the cars in the road for people. Didn’t find anyone. Didn’t touch anything.
Nobody new drove by. No one came out of any of the nearby houses or businesses. No sirens rent the air.
I didn’t understand. Not any of it.
Thunder rolled overhead. I glanced up. Clouds moving in fast from the Gulf of Mexico, covering the moon and stars and filling the air with the scent of impending rain and salt.
I turned back the way I’d come and stopped on a dime. The pub had been reduced to piles of brick and wood, shattered glass and bent metal. I ran toward it, picking up speed with every stride. Skidded at the edge of the rubble. Listened for moans or cries or any sound at all. Heard only another rumble of thunder.
“Hello?” I called.
No answer.
I climbed into the wreckage with as much care as I could summon. Found the first pile of stuff big enough to cover a person. I thought twice before touching anything with my bare skin. Took off my shirt and used it to push aside bricks and beams and electrical wiring until I got down far enough to confirm there were no people in the pile.
“Hello?” I called again.
This time, the sound of my own voice freaked me out.
I hustled out of the rubble and onto the sidewalk. Made my way to the place I’d lain on the concrete. Without the streetlights and with the clouds blocking the sky, I shouldn’t have been able to pick out the exact spot by sight. But I could. The outline of my body, bleached white on the gray walk.
Magic had knocked me on my ass. Magic had saved it, too. I’d been running a spell when Melody’s mojo hit me. A spell to blunt her power. It’d worked, all right—not to stop her, but to shield me.
I hunkered down. Touched the spot with the back of my hand. It felt cold. A complete contrast compared to everything else.
I raised my wrist to my forehead. Cold there, too. And clammy.
What’d happened here? This whole block? This whole place? What had Melody done?
Why hadn’t anybody come to see what’d gone down? Why hadn’t anyone come to help? Why was I the single, shell-shocked survivor?
Not survivor. Wrong word. Because it implied that everybody else had died. And as far as I knew, they hadn’t. They’d vanished.
The world started to shake. No, I was the one shaking. Any second now, my legs would give and I’d collapse and maybe lose consciousness again. The thought of that happening at all—and the idea of it happening in the middle of this magic-ridden, deserted place—caused me to move again.
I walked the three blocks to where I’d parked the Explorer back when the evening and everything in it had been SOP. I didn’t see a soul. Once I passed block number two, the car windows were more or less intact. My truck sat where I’d left it, back right window cracked, but otherwise no worse for wear.
I used the unburned pinkie on my right hand to hook the keys in the left front pocket of my shorts, unlocked the door, and slid behind the wheel. The clock on the dash read 4:13 AM. It couldn’t have been later than 1:00 when Melody elbowed me in the ribs with that worried look on her face. Which meant I’d been out of it for at least an hour, and maybe two, after she blinked and the world went pear-shaped.
I flipped on the overhead light and confirmed the second-degree burns on m
y fingertips. Tilted the rearview mirror so I could get a look at my face to make sure it wasn’t burned or cut up. I didn’t feel anything, but that could be shock. One-hundred-percent shock.
My face bore striking similarities to the extra-white spot on the sidewalk. Pale, as if I’d seen a ghost. Or lived through something apocalyptic.
I started to look away and froze.
There was nothing white about my eyes. As in, they had no whites. They were one-hundred-percent pupil, and those pupils were black.
I heard someone suck air like they couldn’t get enough. Hyperventilating from zero to sixty in ten seconds. Then I realized the overachieving breather was me.
I panicked harder. Looked everywhere—anywhere—for a solution. There. On the passenger side floorboard. The paper bag filled with a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and chips. My midnight snack.
I dumped the food and breathed into the bag until I could inhale and exhale steady enough to let it go. The dash clock read 4:27 AM.
My eyes were black. Black.
There was something wrong with me. I had no idea what. No idea what it meant. Only that I needed to find out. Yesterday.
I fished the cell from my right front pocket with my right pinkie and dialed Oscar’s number again with my knuckles. I prayed for him to pick up. He didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe something awful had happened to him, too, when Melody blinked. Maybe he needed me to help him.
The first fat drops of rain spattered the windshield.
I turned the key in the ignition and left rubber on the road. Headed south toward Highway 59, which would take me through downtown to the inside loop and Oscar’s house.
As soon as I drove out of the dark zone, the sky opened up. I had to turn the wipers on high to see at all even with the working streetlights. With every passing block, I wished I couldn’t make out the empty cars crashed or left in the road. Twice, I had to get out of the Explorer and push them out of the way so I could get through. The warm rain soaked my clothes. Even my socks. The air conditioner chilled me to the bone.
The houses I passed? All of them dark. Not just middle-of-the-night dark, my gut told me. Empty. Like the cars. Like whoever had been inside sleeping before The Blink had gone up in magic smoke. My rational brain kept insisting that couldn’t be true. That I should stop and check for proof.
My instinct refused to let my foot off the gas unless I had no other choice. It said that I was a lot more alone than I’d figured when I came to outside the club. Possibly, the only dude left in town. And if anyone remained inside the houses, they had to be monsters. Bloodthirsty. Lying in wait for somebody dumb enough to check for proof.
I forced myself to take a deep breath and blow it out slow before I started to hyperventilate again. It slowed my heart down, but it didn’t do a thing for my jittery hands or my chattering teeth. I white-knuckled the wheel—without considering my burned fingers. It hurt like hell. The highway loomed ahead. I fought the urge to punch it up the entrance ramp in case of more abandoned cars.
Good thing, too. I’d have rear-ended a Mustang just outside the halo of the nearest street lamp. A Mustang with a dog in the back seat.
I slammed on the brakes and gaped. The dog was huge. Some kind of sheepdog, maybe? White with black spots and hair hanging in its eyes. Both front paws pressed against the back window. Barking like crazy.
I pulled onto the shoulder. Really, I couldn’t pull anyplace else. I could get by, just barely. Be back on my way to Oscar’s in a heartbeat.
That dog? The first living thing I’d seen since The Blink. The Mustang’s doors and windows were closed. The dog had no way out. If I left him there, he’d be trapped.
Rain pelted me as I got out. Tried the ‘stang’s passenger door. Locked. Which meant going back to my truck for something to pop the lock, and three tries before it gave. The car smelled like the tree-shaped pine air freshener that hung from the rearview mirror and the large coffee still steaming hot in the cup holder. And the clean dog. Who looked at me like he couldn’t decide whether to defend his territory.
“Hey,” I said. “You want out?”
He held my gaze. The weirdest thing for a strange dog to do unless it meant to eat me for breakfast. He woofed once.
I pushed the seat forward. He pushed toward me. I backed away slow and steady. Gave him room to climb out into the rain, going from shaggy to soaked and pitiful inside a minute. All six feet of him. If he stood on his hind legs, he’d be able to rest his paws on my shoulders.
I expected him to bolt. To careen across the freeway on probably the only night he wouldn’t get run over doing something like that. To become another sad, lost dog. Instead, he hugged my side. I backpedaled another step. He matched it.
He was scared. I knew exactly how he felt.
“Okay,” I said. Opened the door to the Explorer.
He bounded inside. Splattered and shook water all over the dash and the seats. Settled in at shotgun. Woofed again.
He watched every move I made. Sliding back into the car. Shutting the door. Wiping my face. He sniffed my hand when I reached over to pet him. Let me feel around for a collar under his wet fur. Let me get close enough to read the tag.
“Zachariah?” I asked.
The dog raised a brow.
Zach’s tag had an address engraved on the flipside and a last name, too. Morgan. If he had any idea what’d happened to his Morgans, he had no way to tell me.
“We can’t stay here, boy.”
He looked at me.
I drove away as fast as I dared. I steered around twelve cars on that stretch of 59 before I took the ramp over to the Loop. Wove around six more before I took the exit to Oscar’s place. I didn’t see another soul the whole time.
Oscar’s one-story, red house was dark. The McMansions on either side of it, too. His lawn sprawled beneath the long, low-hanging branches of a live oak. His Honda crouched in the drive. I pulled in behind it. Checked my phone for a reply to the text I’d sent Oscar.
Zip. Zilch. Nada.
I looked at Zachariah. Oscar wouldn’t thank me to bring a wet, shaggy dog inside. But I couldn’t leave him in the car. Because of how I found him. And also because the whole world appeared to have come down to him and me. We ran up the walk to the porch. Zach shook himself off again while I used my key in the lock. He bounded inside as soon as I pushed open the door.
The electrical switch in the middle of the entry way worked just fine. The overhead lamp flooded the space with a wash of light. Illuminated all the usual stuff—a table in a small nook that held the glass bowl where Oscar kept his keys, the umbrella stand, and the collection of sneakers and flip-flops lined up against the wall.
I focused my seer sight on everything. Nothing Otherworldly here.
I raised my voice. “Oscar?”
Crickets.
I went through the rest of the house room by room with Zach hot on my heels, his nails clicking on the hardwood floors. The living room—mismatched sofa and recliner and coffee table with the big TV at the far end of the room. The kitchen, where a single glass of whisky sat half-drunk on the breakfast table. Oscar would never have left it like that. Waste of good, he’d have said.
A close look told me the whisky hadn’t been magicked or poisoned. Nothing there but single malt. I downed it in one burning swallow that warmed my chest and let me breathe a little slower. Other than that, it didn’t help at all. It didn’t undo what Melody had done or bring Oscar running.
I checked the rest of the house. Bathroom: nothing. Ditto the bedroom. And then there was the study, which was all wrong. Not magically wrong. Something else.
Not the furniture—it still held a big, maple desk, a thick, brown rug, a brown leather sofa, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases that spanned the entire room. Any other time I’d been in there, hundreds of times over the years, Oscar’s desk had been littered with layers of books. Grimoires. Books of Shadows. History and folklore. Everything magical or with the potential to help him decod
e magic. Regardless of whether something specifically bad was going down, he always wanted to learn the next thing. You never knew when it might come in handy to stop a bad guy or save your life. The code he lived by. The one he taught me to live by, too.
And now? The desk was spotless. Not a single book. Not even a speck of dust. Every volume had been re-shelved.
I made my way to the nearest bookcase. Stopped halfway there when I heard a thud— Zach had hopped onto the sofa. Wet dog on leather. Oscar would be pissed.
One problem at a time.
The books had been put back in no logical order that I could make out, and I ought to know. He’d made me organize the books when I first started working with him. Said it’d be a good idea for me to get familiar as soon as possible. If he’d put the books back all willy-nilly, he’d been in a hurry. Or he’d wanted to make it harder for unwanted visitors to find stuff.
That second thought would never have occurred to me on your basic day. Oscar didn’t have unwanted visitors. No one got in unless he invited them. If they tried, the house would cherry pick from their brains the thing they feared most and show it to them in full color, 3D, surround sound. They ran after that. Always.
The only people who ever needed to find books in here? Oscar. Me. My buddy Kevin. Oscar wouldn’t have arranged things to make it harder for any of us. So he had to have been in a hurry.
I told myself that. But I didn’t believe it. I believed the other thing down to the marrow of my bones without any reason.
Which meant it had to be true. Seer’s intuition. Oscar had said it would happen sooner or later and that I wouldn’t have control over it for a while. I’d been all psyched that I’d know when my Chem teacher would throw pop quizzes. It never occurred to me that my first intuition would happen like this.
Once the intuition came, other stuff would follow. Like the ability to have visions. Not just of the future, but of the past. Of the present—what other people were doing across town or on the other side of the world or in the faery realm.
That was a lot of power. A lot of responsibility.
Think.
Demon (The Faery Chronicles Book 2) Page 2
