She didn’t want to touch them in case she left behind any traces that might be found once the ambulance arrived. She didn’t really know how to tell the spell had worked, anyway—it was kind of the whole point that you couldn’t. Instead she did a quick run-through of the house looking for anything that might rouse suspicion when the ambulance showed up. She didn’t want anything out-of-the-ordinary happening to these two bodies between them leaving the house and Nathan being able to wake them. She didn’t trust herself to get it right—not with Hannah being pregnant. Cora was getting better all the time, but some things were best left to her teacher.
The couple really had been living very low-key. She couldn’t find anything obviously witch-y except for a few sets of grounding tokens in the bedside drawer, which she tucked into her bag for safe keeping. On her way out of the bedroom, a nondescript white envelope caught her eye, and she paused. As soon as she touched it, she knew what it was. The fis scél, unopened. It must have been their first hint that the Magistrate was onto them. She could only imagine the sick feeling in Joel’s stomach when he found it—and what a slimy way to inject dread into someone’s life right before you come to arrest them. She slid the envelope into her bag, too.
With one last anxious look at the couple she hoped she hadn’t accidentally murdered, she let herself out the back door and hid down the street. It took a while for anyone to show, but when she finally saw the pair loaded into the backs of the dark vans come to collect their bodies, she leaned her back against her tree and let out a long laugh muffled by both hands over her mouth. They hadn’t seen her. Her heart was pounding adrenaline through her blood, and she shook her hands to get the tingling out of them. She’d actually stood right next to a pair of Chasers, invisible, and they hadn’t seen her. She understood a little more the thrill that Nathan got when he was on the run. She sat down on the sidewalk against the tree and called him, her skin still prickling with goosebumps.
“Everything going smoothly, my love?” he asked, and she relaxed just a little at the sound of his voice.
“Well, they’re dead. At least, the Chasers think so. They were just taken away in a reg ambulance. So we’ll have to go get them from the...morgue, I guess? The hospital? Where do they take dead bodies?”
“The medical examiner,” Elton answered, and Cora realized she was on speakerphone. She could hear a television in the background. “Cora, if you did what Nathan says you did—”
“Don’t you dare scold her,” Nathan spoke up, sounding farther away than before. “It’s an excellent solution to the problem, and rather a bit of quick thinking, what with Chasers knocking on the door. You did brilliantly, my love.”
“Assuming it worked as intended,” Elton pointed out, and Cora felt a pit of guilt open deeper in her stomach.
“Of course it did; don’t be ridiculous. It’s my recipe. I’m certain you followed it to the letter, didn’t you, Cora?”
“I mean, I was in kind of a rush, but—yeah.”
The conversation was interrupted by a loud, hollow popping sound, and she heard Elton scoff in irritation.
“You’re drinking right now?”
“It’s free champagne, Elton,” Nathan said in a slightly baffled tone. “We’ll have to wait to break out the corpses in any case, won’t we?” He spoke a little louder. “Come along home, Cora. We’re at the fauna hotel—”
“Faena,” Elton corrected, resignation in his voice.
“That’s the one.”
“I’ll be there soon,” she promised.
“If you hurry, there may be champagne!” Nathan called, and Cora smiled as she hung up the phone.
The Faena hotel was a tall, white building lined with teal balconies and rows of mirrored glass windows, topped with a bright yellow sign that Cora suspected would light up with neon once the sun went down. It was a decidedly Miami-looking hotel, like the kind of place a movie might put in an establishing shot near the water. Nathan had texted her that they were in the “Faena Suite,” and when she was welcomed into the high-rise room, she grimaced. This was definitely a place Nathan had chosen. The bright red plush furniture was covered in streaks of pale blue—either made to resemble flowers or coral, she couldn’t quite tell—and everything that wasn’t blinding scarlet was leopard-print and velvet.
“This is...nice,” she said, and Elton’s commiserating frown assured her she wasn’t alone in her judgment.
“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Nathan laughed, an empty champagne flute in one hand and a half-full bottle in the other. “Look here—this pillow has seashells all over it.” He put an arm across the back of her shoulders and led her across the room to the broad balcony windows, gesturing out over the crystal blue water. “But this is worthwhile.” The touch of longing in his voice made her smile as she took in the sparkling waves in the distance.
He passed the champagne flute into her hand and filled it for her with a smile, then tapped the neck of his bottle lightly against the rim and left her to the view.
“Were you really a pirate?” she asked without taking her eyes from the ocean. She had gotten precious few details about Nathan’s life over the course of the last few months, but he usually scolded her and told her to focus during their brief dream-lessons.
“A privateer,” he corrected.
“Which is a pirate with a license,” Elton pointed out. Cora almost laughed at the sight of him in his nicely-pressed black suit on such a garish animal-print sofa, but she kept it together and just took a drink of her champagne instead.
Nathan snorted softly around his mouthful of champagne before he swallowed it. “Just so, yes.”
“Do you miss it? Being out on the ocean like that…sailing the seven seas,” Cora chuckled.
“Occasionally. But it wouldn’t be like it was if I went back now. Although maybe that’s a good thing. No one has threatened to keelhaul me in ages.”
“What’s a keelhaul?”
“It’s when they tie a rope to you, toss you overboard, and drag you along underneath the ship a while. Drowning, barnacles—it’s no fun at all. You don’t always die, but you’re never pretty when you come back up.”
Cora grimaced into her glass. “They did that to you?”
“Not me, no. I was flogged once, but that was the worst of it for me.”
“Flogged?” Cora echoed in disbelief. “Like with a whip?”
“A cat o’nine tails, technically. Look here.” He took a step closer and turned away from her, lifting the back of his shirt with one hand. “I don’t know if you can still see. It has been a while.”
Cora bent down and took up his shirt for him, holding it away from his skin. Looking close, she could make out the rough, faded lines crisscrossing over his lower back. She set down her glass to touch them with her fingertips, following the faint discoloration of his skin.
“They called it Moses’ Law,” he said. “Forty lashes was considered a death sentence, so they mercifully gave us only thirty-nine.”
“Jeez. What did you even do?”
“Gambling.”
“Are you kidding?” She released his shirt so that he could turn to face her and picked up her champagne glass again. “I thought pirates were all about the drinking and gambling and whoring around and stuff.”
“That’s shore leave behavior. On the ship, you could be marooned for stealing a drink of rum from your crewmate.” Nathan gave a soft sigh and took a long sip from the bottle in his hand. “In the end, even privateering had too many rules for me. So I wouldn’t say I miss it much, no. I miss the era more than the sailing, and there’s no getting that back. But there are just as many land-based adventures to be had these days, anyway.”
“Like sneaking into a medical examiner’s office after closing,” Elton said.
“Precisely!” Nathan took a seat beside the blond and offered him the bottle, but Elton shook his head. “That’s one I haven’t done before. Also, has anyone thought what we’re going to do with these people once we revive
them?”
Cora shrugged. “If they’re dead, they can do whatever, right? Nobody will be looking for them.”
“I suspect Thomas will be able to forge them mundane identities,” Elton said. “He’ll still have his connections to get them where they need to go.” He glanced at Cora. “You’ll be glad to know that I made contact with an old friend back in Vancouver, by the way. Lena and Michael, the ones we were too late for, are being put through a rehabilitation program she knows about.”
“That’s awesome,” Cora sighed. “I mean, better it hadn’t happened at all, but, you know.”
“They’ll have help from here on; that’s all we can do.”
Cora nodded down at her champagne. “I’m glad we can do that much, at least. Thanks, Elton.”
“You did much more for those people today.”
“Oh!” She brushed off the compliment and moved to dig through her abandoned bag. She produced the blank envelope from within and presented it to Nathan. “I thought you might want this. I took it from Joel and Hannah’s.”
“Is that the fis scél?” Elton asked. Nathan had already set his glass down to turn the paper in his fingers.
“Let’s see what libel they’ve been spreading about me,” he chuckled, and he pressed the envelope firmly between his palms. “Indraic.” The paper unfolded and flattened itself in his hands without the need for further encouragement. Nathan skimmed the page while Cora leaned on the sofa to look over his shoulder. Even Elton edged slightly closer to see.
The Magistrate’s seal had been stamped at the top left of the paper, right beside the word “WANTED” printed in bold lettering. The blue and gold sigil was familiar enough to her—it had been plastered almost everywhere at her school. The stag at the center seemed to glare up from the page, and the phrases “Libertas Occultō, Pax Conviventiā” framed it above and below. Freedom through Secrecy, Peace through Cooperation, Cora’s instructors had told her. It sounded a little Big Brother-y to her.
“Practicing forbidden magics, mundane exposure, and twenty-plus counts of murder,” Cora read aloud. “Sounds ominous.”
“And like they rounded down,” Elton muttered.
“Maybe after twenty they stop counting.” She peered at the images of Nathan’s face printed underneath the charges. One was a mugshot, which she would have known was old by the slickness of Nathan’s hair and the broad shoulders of his suit even if the placard hanging around his neck hadn’t read “10/30/35.” Despite the photo’s age, Nathan’s signature smirk stared back up at her as if it had been taken yesterday. Beside it was a police sketch that must have been made recently—Cora recognized the silver-wrapped turquoise talisman around his neck and the current style of his hair. It was a good likeness. Maybe one of the Chasers in Toronto had done it?
Below the pictures, the document listed his vital statistics, physical characteristics, and other things that might come in handy for identifying dangerous criminals. Cora’s eyes scanned lower on the page, and she frowned as she reached the end of a section claiming that Nathan may be traveling with two companions: a 35-year-old white male and a 20-year-old Asian female. So much for flying under the radar herself. It was a good thing she hadn’t let the Chasers see her, after all.
Nathan leaned his shoulder against Elton’s and peered up at him, fingers poised to tear the pictures free. “Shall I take these out, darling, and you can keep it in your wallet?”
“You’d have to go away for me to miss you,” the blond answered flatly.
“But you would miss me.”
Elton sighed and nodded toward the paper. “This is going to make our lives more difficult.”
“What’s life without challenges?” Nathan grinned at him but then paused, and he sat forward with one hand on the arm of the sofa. He went so still that both Cora and Elton watched him with curious frowns.
“Elton,” he said, his eyes on the front doorway across the room. “We need to put up wards.” He turned to glance at the former Chaser. “Quickly, yes? We’re being watched.”
Both men got to their feet without another word, and each set about warding the windows and doors in their own way—Elton with marked slips of yellow paper and Nathan with lines of dust or smears of oil. Cora helped as she could by fetching whatever they asked for and following Nathan’s hurried instructions.
“That is a benefit to cheap motel rooms,” Elton sighed when they were finished. “One door—maybe a window.” He turned to Nathan with his leftover papers in his hand. “Now what do you mean, we’re being watched?”
“Couldn’t you feel it? There was something in here with us, or close to.”
“Something?” Cora asked. “What kind of something?”
“I’m not sure,” Nathan answered with a soft pensive hum. “I haven’t had that prickly feeling in such a long time. Perhaps my new friend has some tricks up his sleeve.”
“New friend?”
“That boy,” Nathan murmured, mostly to himself. “Hm. Interesting.” He shook his head, then clapped his hands as though he’d made a decision. “Well. We may as well get something to eat before we go out kidnapping corpses, hm? Shall I have something sent up?”
“Less dessert this time, please,” Cora said. She poured herself another glass of champagne from Nathan’s abandoned bottle while he called the concierge. Elton watched her drink, clearly wanting to ask her if she was really sure about what she’d done, but she didn’t give him the opportunity. She wasn’t going to let doubt get at her before they even knew anything had gone wrong. What was the phrase—when you worry, you suffer twice? She would suffer enough later if she’d been wrong.
When the knock at the door came, Nathan answered it with a smile that faded instantly as he recognized the figure in the hall. Chris Hao stood in the open doorway, right behind the young Chaser with the cold blue eyes.
6
“Tricky thing,” Nathan mused, a more sinister smirk beginning to form on his lips as his eyes moved from the boy to his scowling partner and back again. “It was you peeking, wasn’t it?”
“As if I had to. The most expensive hotel on the coast? You’re predictable.”
“Never been accused of that before.”
Elton and Cora appeared behind Nathan, the girl immediately eased backward by the ex-Chaser’s wary hand. The boy’s gaze flicked back to them, his eyes narrowing faintly as he focused on Elton’s face.
“You should come with me,” the Chaser said. His voice was soft and steady and empty. It ran a chill up Cora’s spine.
“Or what?” Elton answered. “You aren’t going to start a fight here—not in a hotel full of mundanes. You’re a Chaser.”
“You’re mistaken. You’re too important to risk losing because of courtesy. But I hope we won’t have to resort to violence—of any kind. How is your wife, Mr. Willis?”
Elton tensed and took a step forward. “What have you—” He stopped as Nathan tapped his chest with the back of his hand.
“Steady,” he said. “They haven’t done anything. She can’t be a bargaining chip if she’s dead.”
“No,” the boy admitted. His eyes locked onto Elton’s fierce glare. “But she can be a punishment.”
“Since when does the Magistrate take innocent hostages and kill them?” he snapped back.
“Since you changed the game. You killed a Magister’s son. You threw in with Nathaniel Moore. You broke out of jail and almost killed your partner. Did you really think there would be no consequences?”
“You’re new to this,” Nathan said with a dark chuckle in his throat, “so I can forgive a bit of youthful hubris. But you’ll need to back it up. Let’s see what you have, little Chaser.”
Elton didn’t recognize the binding word the boy spoke, but he felt the squeezing around his throat and torso and saw Nathan’s back arch under the force of the spell. Elton’s counter-charm had no effect save tightening the sensation on his neck. Cora dropped to her knees, attempting to speak through the grip and break the bindi
ng, but it was Nathan’s growling spell that finally freed them, and even that seemed to take some effort. The boy hadn’t seemed to exert himself at all, despite binding three people with a single word. This person was dangerous.
Nathan glanced back at Elton with a violent glimmer in his dark eyes. “Permission to act recklessly, darling?”
“He threatened Jo,” Elton answered in a voice tight from the lingering effects of the binding. “Put them in the ground.”
“I do love this new side of you,” Nathan murmured, and a single gesture flung the men at the door backwards against the far wall of the corridor.
Chris hit quite hard, but the boy stayed on his feet as he slid across the hallway. He threw out binding spells that Nathan broke with sneering efficiency, and Elton used the momentary distraction to slip a paper spell from his pocket and slap it onto the floor between them, jerking the two Chasers as they were locked into place on the carpet. Doors were opening down the hall; Cora could hear curious voices nearby growing louder as they approached. The few wealthy guests from the other luxury suites were already waving at a woman passing with her cleaning cart to complain about the noise. They were drawing too much attention—this Chaser might not care if regular people got involved, but she did. Keeping behind the others just as she’d done at the airport, Cora threw her hands out and constructed a simple barrier on either side of the hallway. It was a little easier this time—her practice was finally paying off. The shimmer of blue light would keep the regs from getting too close, but there wasn’t much she could do about how much they would be able to see. It would have to do.
The young Chaser’s lip curled in irritation as he found himself stuck, but Elton’s charm hadn’t silenced his voice. “По моей воле, потоплeнyтсиa!”
The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy Page 7
