A second white shield appeared several feet beneath the one I was currently crouching on. I had only enough time to understand what was about to happen before the one still crackling around my hand and knee vanished.
I hit the second one gracelessly, and had no time to correct before De Vries dumped me onto my ass on a third one. The third shield tipped and I slid off, dropping five feet to the ground.
I landed on my feet in the mess of broken neon tubing. My knees buckled, but De Vries was there, hooking both arms under mine to break my fall.
“You’re completely insane,” he said. “Did you even have a plan?”
I fought to get my footing back, which was a little more difficult than I wanted to admit. “I had an opportunity,” I said. “Which is better.”
“You’re damn lucky I caught you up there.”
“I know.”
I didn’t want to admit that, but it was true. I wasn’t sure how else I could have survived. I managed to get my feet steady under me and wrestled myself back from De Vries.
There was a smear of blood on his pristine shirt where my shoulder had been. I stared at it, probably for a few seconds too long.
The sirens were getting louder. The world was starting to torque weirdly in my vision. I lurched away, staggering over to the flickering street lamp, and collapsed against it.
I seemed to blink, and De Vries was there, on the other side of the street lamp, cradling his phone against his ear. Blue and red lights flashed against the side of his face, and he was digging past the unbuttoned collar of his shirt.
White light flared, and with two fingers, he seemed to extract a mandala the size of a coin. I watched in dizzy fascination as he pressed it into my bloody shoulder. For just a second, it hurt. Then the pain dulled and all I felt was sleepy, and stupid.
De Vries was still talking, low and fast, calling for cleanup and local Guild intervention. A moment later, he hung up, and the phone went in his front pocket.
He reached for me, trying to get an arm around me again. I slapped it away. I didn’t like him. I could hardly remember why at the moment, but it felt important to keep him away from me.
“You need to help me, D’Argent,” he said, using the same tone of voice Ruff Patch staff used on the injured, growling mutts we tried to rescue. “And by help, I mean stop fighting me.”
“You stop fighting me,” I said. Which didn’t really make sense, but it felt good to have the last word.
He closed his eyes and pressed two knuckles to his forehead, like he had a headache. His fancy-ass watch caught the flicker of the street lamp, flashing like a winking moon in the sky. I swayed, watching it, wondering if it was almost time to go to sleep.
“It’s okay,” he said, and weirdly, I was looking up at him, and his arm was behind my neck. For a second, if I squinted, I could pretend he was Jaesung. “It’s just exhaustion, and a bit of blood loss. You’re going to be fine.”
I felt light. Light as the moment I’d hung in the air at the top of that spell. Light as pixie dust, and whipped cream, and sylphs. When De Vries scooped me up, I thought I might go floating away. Weirdly, I stayed within the bounds of gravity, and he deposited me in the car. I didn’t even smack his hand when he reached around me with the seatbelt and buckled me in.
The seat warmed beneath me, and somewhere amidst the flashing police lights and the low vibration of his voice making yet more phone calls, I closed my eyes.
Chapter 18
helena
The sound of the shower turning off woke me. I came to myself faster this time, reeled in by pain in my shoulder and ribs. I smelled coffee and laundry detergent, blood and ozone.
I rolled onto my side. Or I tried to—blankets were tucked tight around me. I kicked them off. They were thick, and the sheets clung to my legs. The smoothness of the crisp white fabric suggested a not-insignificant thread count.
I sat up, scanning the room. Two beds, thank God, and the curtains had been pulled open to admit a wash of blue morning light. The sheer set were still pulled mostly closed, but when I stood up, I could see a suggestion of the world beyond. Low buildings, flat landscape. We were up fairly high—at least the tenth floor.
The door was back in the direction of the shower, not by the window, so I was in a hotel, not a motel with an easy escape route. I probably could have guessed as much without opening my eyes. The sheets were soft, and the whole bed smelled of detergent. It had also been chosen by my orange-cheese-hating traveling companion.
The TV was on a world news broadcast. I was fine with that. Given what went down last night, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see local news. Now I thought of it, I wasn’t even sure how many of the rogue sorcerers had survived last night. Probably not the first two De Vries had shredded the legs of—they'd bled for too long. The woman pinned to the wall by her own magic? Maybe. If they found a way to plug up the hole fast enough.
I wasn’t sure about the one on the roof, but I could be fairly certain the one cornered by the line chef would be okay, as well as the dude the truckers had taken down, provided they only choked him into unconsciousness.
And Ritter. He was alive. I had been certain De Vries was going to shoot him in the head; there would have been an easy argument for defensive action. But he’d gone for the capture, not the kill. No doubt Ritter was going to get a trial too. I hoped it was as short as mine.
De Vries had taken the bed by the window. The covers had been ripped back, and a sleek overnight bag sat open at the end of the mattress. I slid past the bag on my way to the coffee maker, peering inside suspiciously.
I don’t know what I expected to find besides clothing and toiletries—maybe a laptop, or a secret Guild pager, or his papers of pedigree—but the bag was annoyingly clean of personality. Even his spare shirts and jeans and socks and underwear had been carefully folded into packing cubes, leaving an open spot where I guess his shaving bag fit when he wasn’t using it.
I found his phone charging on the room’s desk, next to the single-serve coffee maker. I lifted it up, tilting the screen to see where the finger smudges seemed to concentrate. After a few failed attempts at unlocking it, however, I gave up and made a cup of coffee.
One of the decaf pods had already been used, but despite his advice from last night, I reached for the caffeinated one. My food had digested. Even if I tired and achy, I was sure my magic had had at least some chance to recover. I wasn’t about to add a withdrawal headache to the cocktail of hurts.
There was still a partial-line of blood on my arm and hand. De Vries might have carried me upstairs and tucked me into bed, but he seemed to know that scrubbing me down or changing my clothes was a step too far.
Not that I had clothes to change into. I’m not sure if I thought they were going to give me an orange jumpsuit or what, but I hadn’t expected to need my own clothes where I was going. I was beginning to see the flaw in that thought process. Jaesung’s old shirt stuck to my shoulder, my jean shorts were streaked in grease, and there was blood on my converse.
I didn’t even want to know the state of my underthings. God, I could have at least brought underwear. What had I been thinking—they’d issue me some Fruit-of-the-Looms along with a Guild-regulation prisoner onesie?
My coffee gurgled to completion. I dumped in all five sugar packets, plus the vanilla creamer cups, and the result was a sickly-sweet shock to my system.
I tossed my cup into the trash just as the bathroom door opened. De Vries emerged, buttoning the cuffs of a dark blue shirt. Freshly shaved, the angles of his face looked sharper, and his damp hair clung in too-dark curls against his scalp. The only part of him that didn’t look completely put together was his feet. He was still in socks, which sort of undercut the intimidation factor.
“Good, you’re up,” he said.
Seeing him forced some of the foggy thoughts to coalesce in my mind—the question that had been bothering me since the moment Ritter walked into the diner.
“How could you not know
your own partner was a vigilante?” I asked.
My question seemed to glance off him, causing no change in facial expression. He deposited a brown leather shaving kit in his bag and tugged out a white button-up, holding it out to me. “Go clean up. We need to get on the road.”
I ignored him ignoring me and folding my arms across my chest. “Seriously, how could you miss that?” I demanded. “You two were together all the time.”
Those eyes were crystal cold. “We were partners for five months, and hardly in each other’s pockets when we were off duty. He was a vetted Enforcer. I had no reason to suspect him.”
“He wanted to kill sanguimancers, not capture them. He went against both common sense and Guild procedure to force us into that fight with the sanguimancers. I can’t imagine that’s the first time.”
De Vries watched me levelly and kept silent just long enough to set me simmering. “Ritter’s son was killed by a sanguimancer five years ago,” he said. “Murdered, as a warning to the Guild.”
I clenched my jaw. It was solid motivation—one that I could understand. I blinked, and in that instant of darkness, I saw my mother’s face, with that tiny hole beneath her eye. I saw the slight gleam of blood, just before it spilled.
My heart went cold, and I pressed my lips together. “People get pissed off when you kill their family.”
De Vries pressed his lips. “I assumed the aggressive pursuits were the extent of his deviance from procedure. He is also not alone in this behavior. I felt confident I could manage him. I had no idea he was assembling an assault team of vigilantes to venture beyond Guild law. In retrospect, it makes sense.”
He sounded far too analytical for a man who had just been betrayed by his partner. Gone was last night’s cold, subterranean fury. He extended the shirt again.
“Change. We should be on our way soon.”
I stared at the proffered dress shirt and gestured at Jaesung’s shirt, which still stuck to my body in places. “I’ll wash this out in the sink,” I said, indicating Jaesung’s shirt, which still stuck to my body in places.
De Vries extended the shirt more insistently. “I’d prefer to keep anything stained with blood away from a person on her way to trial as a sanguimancer.”
The pang surprised me. Last night’s battle had seen us working as allies. De Vries was apparently serious about my standing trial, even if getting there meant he had to protect me with his life.
Part of me had been certain he’d come to some similar realization, that he thought I was a good person whose goal was ultimately to keep people safe. But if he wasn’t willing to trust me with a blood-stained tee shirt, his estimation of my character must not have changed.
It shouldn’t have been a shock. It shouldn’t have hurt. I didn’t even want him to like me. And yet, the pang was there.
His arm dropped back to his side. “I’m not sure what you think this is, D’Argent.” His gaze speared mine. I couldn’t look away. “You came to me of your own accord, and I agreed to escort you to trial under the protection of the National Guild. You’re not a prisoner. You’re not under arrest. I am not your jailer.”
I wanted to laugh. “So you’re just trying to help?”
He gave a slow, undisturbed blink. “Is that so impossible to believe?”
“Considering you burned our operation with the sanguimancers in Duluth, then tried to fucking shoot me? Yes.”
He looked at the ceiling, as if praying for patience. “Ritter turned on the sirens, and I was actually aiming at the sanguimancer. But I suppose you’ll never believe that.”
“It sure looked like you had a bead on my head.”
“Left of it, actually. It wouldn’t have hit you. I’m an excellent shot.”
So I’d noticed. I wasn’t going to admit I’d noticed, but he didn’t seem to need confirmation anyway. He’d said it like a fact.
“So if I’m not a prisoner, what do you do if I run?” I asked.
De Vries tossed the shirt onto the end of my bed and pulled out the desk chair. He kicked his shoes from beneath the edge of the bed.
“I’m not sure why you would, given that you turned yourself in,” he said. “But I suppose logic isn’t why you want to have this argument.”
I bristled. Illogical? Was he calling me illogical? What the actual fuck—he was a Guild Enforcer and the one who’d reported me to the National Guild itself. Of course I felt like a prisoner!
Felt like. I caught myself thinking the words, and bounced hard off of them. It wasn’t just a feeling. It made sense to assume that turning myself in to an Enforcer meant I was turning myself over to Guild custody, which meant I was a prisoner! Didn’t it?
I clenched my fists, hating how much of the Guild’s politics I still didn’t know.
“Let’s say you’d run while I was in the shower,” De Vries said, dropping into the chair. He hiked up the leg of his jeans and wriggled a foot into a shoe. “I come out, notice you’re gone, and wonder why you bothered turning yourself in in the first place. Then I make a call to the Enforcer Sergeant to let him know you split. Then I make another call to the local Guild of wherever-the-hell-we-are, Ohio to let them know an accused sanguimancer is in the area. I give them your description, offer my assistance, pack up, and go downstairs for a sub-par continental breakfast.”
He moved to the second shoe, and I noticed his socks were slightly different heights, like they weren’t a perfect matching pair. Which definitely couldn’t have been right. The guy folded his boxer-briefs.
“Well, I’m not going to run,” I said. It came out like a challenge.
“Good,” he said, calm as you please. He brushed down the cuff of his jeans and reached for his phone. “You’re still not getting in my car with blood-soaked clothes. I’m not in the habit of arming potential threats, even if they promise to behave.”
I hated him. I’m familiar enough with the feeling to recognize it, even in a quick, flash-pan burn. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I tamped down the desire to snarl something petty and stalked to the bathroom, snatching up the button-up on my way past.
All the bathroom’s surfaces were jacketed in steam. I stripped, aware that the moisture licking my skin had probably already come in contact with the previous occupant. Shirt, shorts, and underwear came into the shower with me.
My bra had a bit of blood on the strap, but I doubted De Vries was going to check that. He’d better not.
I probed the wound on my shoulder. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought—the bullet had only grazed me, and though the injury had bled a lot, it wouldn’t take long to scar over, especially with the healing mandala accelerating the clotting.
I scrubbed my clothes with a bar of hotel soap and blasted my underwear with the hairdryer until I could put them on. There was no way my shorts would dry completely, but I set them in the sink with the hairdryer going and turned my attention to the shirt dilemma.
I hadn’t been able to get as much blood out of Jae’s shirt as I’d hoped. The stains had set as I slept, and now the dark gray cotton was mottled over the shoulder and chest. I didn’t care much about how uncomfortable De Vries was with it, but anyone who saw me in that would ask questions.
I grabbed the white button up and slid my arms into the sleeves.
It felt wrong, and not just because the shoulders were way too big and the buttons were on the opposite side. I was used to the way Jaesung’s clothes fit me. Shirts I stole from him didn’t swallow me like this. They didn’t feel stiff and starched and so separate from my skin.
What felt worst was the knowledge that I was swapping one man’s shirt for another. I was leaving behind the past, the lived-in comfort of soft cotton and popped stitching, but also the sense that wearing Jaesung's shirt kept him close, a talisman against loneliness.
De Vries’s shirt lay against my back, cool and white and impersonal. A reminder of the path I’d chosen, and the one I’d given up.
Chapter 19
jaesung
I
scanned the detritus of what had once been a lonely highwayside diner, my heart sinking slowly into my gut. Beside me, Krista was taking in sharp gasps of air and snapping pictures on her phone.
Somewhere after midnight, Eric had gotten the call. Ritter had gone off grid, only to show back up with a pack of vigilantes at the diner where De Vries and Helena had stopped. This diner.
I crossed my arms and stared at the husk of a burned-out pickup. The smell of burned rubber and melting plastic choked the air, but that didn’t bother me quite as much as the scattered blood-stains, or the subtle haze of power that seemed to almost glow off everything.
Now that Kelly had pointed it out, I saw the smudged residue of magic for what it was, glowing, but not really—like the memory of light when you close your eyes. Only my eyes were open, and it was still there, streaky little halos of weirdness around every instance of destruction.
Bullet holes shimmered with it. The crumpled edge of the roof had its own sort of glow, as did the spot beside the truck, where Eric stood beside a massive blood-stain, talking with another plain-clothes deputy of a Guild Sorceress.
“Should he really be telling that chick where we’re going?” Krista asked. She sounded tired.
Most of last night’s drive had been spent answering her questions about what was real and what wasn’t. Despite our best efforts, she still had the idea that anyone could learn magic, and only stopped begging Eric to teach her when he threatened to leave her at a truck stop.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think he’s probably letting on that we’re trying to spring her.” I leaned back against the Range Rover and rubbed my fingers beneath my glasses. My eyes felt too big for my skull, and dry from lack of sleep.
“He was her mentor,” I offered. “They probably expect him to attend her trial. Hell, they might ask him to testify.”
“That’s assuming Guild trials work like muggle trials,” she said. “I can’t believe I just seriously said that.”
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