by K. F. Breene
“Exactly,” I rushed to say, pushing the advantage. In the back of my mind, I was scratching this complex off the list of areas I would visit…ever again. “I’m out of your jurisdiction. I don’t even live in the magical zone. Your rules don’t apply to me. When here.”
His eyes dipped to my lips then back up, the flicker so quick that I half wondered if I was seeing things. “I can feel the magic in you,” he said accusingly. “Unless you are here for other reasons…it is beneath you to reside in this place.” His words dripped with disdain, and though he didn’t turn to survey the shopping complex, his tone gave the effect that he had. His gaze delved into me, searching. For what, I had absolutely no idea. “But you are correct. It is mutual soil. I can’t do to you what I would like.”
Shivers washed down my body, and I flicked off the safety on the mace. If he could sense magical power, it meant he was either a Sensor, and I was moderately in the clear, or he had a shitload of power himself. Those who were close to the pinnacle of power could quite literally get away with murder. The only things I had going for me were a bottle of mace, a good sprint, and witnesses.
“But you can rest assured—” He stepped forward, the movement so fast that I instantly panicked.
I yanked up the mace, aimed, and pressed the button in one quick movement.
He dodged to the side, his reactions superhumanly fast and his movements so smooth they looked oiled. His hand sailed up out of nowhere to slap the bottle away, but he stopped before he made contact.
Because nothing had sprayed out.
Cold liquid bubbled out of the spout and dribbled over my fingers.
“Freaking Daisy and her crappy hookups,” I muttered, before doing the only thing I could think of: I threw the bottle at his face and looked around for help. But despite the half-full parking lot, no one else was around.
Of all the rotten luck!
He batted the bottle away lazily, and a tiny smile ghosted across his lush lips. He straightened up slowly, eyeing my hand.
“You’ve got a bit of problem there,” he said, and I could detect the faint accent again, though from where it came, I couldn’t say.
I braced myself to run, but what was the point? At the speed he could move, I wouldn’t even get one foot off the ground before his fingers were wrapped around my neck. Fighting was pointless, too. I had a couple years of martial arts training, plus a couple months of boxing, but I was rusty, and this guy was way beyond what I could handle on my best day. He’d bat me down like that bottle of mace.
Please don’t drag me into the magical zone and make an example of me…
“Sorry about the attempted macing,” I blurted, trying to keep it light and respectful. Maybe smoothing the ol’ ego would help. “You scared me. And also, sorry about stepping out in front of you earlier. That was my bad. You have places to be. I’m nobody. I shouldn’t keep you…”
His stormy, vicious gaze beat into me, and a small crease formed between his brows. My words trailed away into a thick, suffocating silence. The desire to run was so strong that I could barely breathe.
Without warning, he pivoted.
I jumped and lashed out. My fist sailed through empty air.
With my heart trying to punch through my chest, I panted and stared after him, incredulous.
He was walking away! He didn’t even glance back. After stalking me through the complex and basically threatening me because I’d stepped out in front of his car, he was choosing to ignore my obvious attempt at violence.
Was he off-kilter, or was I? Because my brain was having a hard time with the logic on this one.
He paused by his door. “You said you were buying that blanket for a sick kid?”
I lifted my eyebrows and tried to work my brain around to the change in topic. “Yes?”
“Was that true? The blue blanket?”
“It’s turquoise,” I corrected him without thinking.
“Why that one and not the other?”
I couldn’t stop blinking in confusion, which made me uncontrollably blunt. “Just so we’re clear, spying on people as they make life decisions is not appropriate whether we’re in a dual-society zone or not.”
“Choosing a blanket is a life decision?”
The fear for myself bled away instantly. All I could think about was Mordecai’s situation. “For the kid, yeah. It is.”
He rested a large arm on the edge of the door and his other hand on the roof. “Then why not go for the fluffier one?”
I shifted uncomfortably.
Usually, I didn’t mind admitting I was dirt poor. I couldn’t even get handouts. The non-magical government said I didn’t qualify because I was technically magical, and the magical governing body didn’t give a shit about me or my situation because I wasn’t useful or powerful. I’d set up camp in the crack of the two uninterested societies, my meager earnings just enough to keep me and my two wards off the street. I was doing what I could, and it was for a good cause. Why would anyone be embarrassed about that?
But…for some reason…I didn’t want to share my nitty-gritty with this guy. I didn’t want him shining a light on my life and commenting on what he saw. For once, I didn’t want to admit that I was essentially the dog poop ruining important people’s shoes.
I lifted my chin defiantly. “Because he likes cheery colors, and turquoise will fit the bill.”
His penetrating stare made me squirm, even from that distance. Finally, he nodded with a flat expression, then sat into his car and closed the door behind him. Without another glance, he revved the engine, and the car lurched forward.
Body shaking, I watched the Ferrari head back to that service driveway as the fake or too-old mace dried on my fingers.
He had stopped his business earlier to follow me. He’d admitted he couldn’t kill me outright here, which meant he’d thought about killing me in the first place. And now he had my license plate and could easily find out where I lived.
The question was, would he? And if he did, what was it about me that had triggered such a hardcore reaction? I was a nobody, and this was the Wild West of San Francisco—if he was really that important, he could’ve just run me over and kept going. Stopping and tracking me like prey, then letting me go, spoke of a big cat playing with its food.
I had no illusions of my place on the food chain in this duo. And now he knew how to find me.
5
Alexis
“How was your day?” Frank asked as I fitted the key into my front door lock later that evening. His thinning gray hair streaked across his balding head in a bad comb-over. His thin lips pressed into a slightly downturned line and his watery blue eyes were draped in loose skin.
I slumped against the door, really not in the mood for Frank’s idle chitchat.
“Kind of crappy, actually,” I said, wiping moisture off my forehead. Fog rolled and boiled around us, August one of the worst months for it in San Francisco. While Valens, the Demigod at the pinnacle of our magical governing body, could affect the weather, he didn’t bother in the dual or non-magical zones.
“At lunch, some rich, handsome guy stalked me around a shopping complex—”
“That doesn’t sound crappy,” Frank interrupted. “A pretty girl like yourself? Rich and handsome is what you deserve.”
Frank had lost touch with how the world worked.
“You must’ve missed the word stalked, but sure—”
“We don’t call it stalked, honey, we call it interested. You need to alter your perceptions a little, is all.”
Or maybe Frank was just creepy.
“What have I said about calling me ‘honey,’ Frank?”
“See, now, that’s just it.” He waggled a gnarled finger at me. “You’re too prickly. You need to loosen up if you ever hope to land a husband.”
I laughed, and a woman with short hair gave me a wary look as she passed by on the sidewalk.
I quieted and analyzed my keys. It was best to keep my head down. The non-ma
gical government couldn’t kick me out of the neighborhood because it was a dual-society zone and I was closer to the magical line than not, but if all the Chesters banded together, they could make my life hell until I had no choice but to leave. I couldn’t afford that option.
Best to keep my weird on the down-low.
“The last thing I want is a husband, Frank,” I whispered, turning the lock. “I already have two people to look after; I don’t need one more.”
“Ah.” Frank nodded like it all suddenly made sense. “One of those bra-burning feminist types, huh? You don’t need a man. You want to roar. I get it.”
“But do you?” I leaned against the door as a smile crawled onto my face. For reasons unknown, it tickled me how out of touch Frank was.
“Sure, sure. Women’s lib. Flag burning. Damn shame.”
“Nope. Those are different things.”
He waved the thought away. “Someday, when you realize that it’s a tough world out there, you’ll come to your senses and want a man to take care of you.”
“Well, if you know any rich ones who want to actually take care of me, or even know how to use their words as opposed to creeping me out with penetrating stares, send them my way, would ya?”
“You may have missed your chance. Earlier, at the shopping mall.”
“That guy didn’t want to take care of me, Frank. He wanted to scare me. Or…actually, I’m not really sure what his end game was, now that I think of it. But it certainly wasn’t to propose and take me away from this charmed life.”
“Ah now, it ain’t all that bad.” Frank reached out to chuck my chin.
“Stop that. No touching, remember?”
“Right, right.” Confusion stole over Frank’s expression. “No touching, right.”
“Anyway.” I put my hand on the doorknob. “I was late getting back to work and my boss gave me a warning. One more and I’m done.”
Frank stared down at his shoes for a moment. “No touching, no… Where am I?”
I grimaced and turned the knob. Frank was about to slip into one of his episodes. He would head home for some alone time, where, much to his cohabitants’ dismay, he’d likely move everything around and open all the cabinet doors.
“See ya around, Frank.” I nodded at him and slipped into the house.
Mordecai sat wrapped up in his inadequate blankets on the worn couch. He looked up from a book at my entrance, and his smile revealed straight white teeth that I was forever proud of. I’d been hounding him to keep those pearly whites in tiptop shape ever since I took over this outfit. His light hazel eyes sparkled with happiness in his dark face, the contrast exceptionally striking. He’d be a real looker when the treacherous journey through puberty finally ended.
He fitted a bookmark into the roughed-up paper before closing the volume.
“What’s today’s lesson?” I asked as I dropped my purse onto the small stand by the door.
“I’m reading a really neat book about trees. Did you know that they can communicate with each other?”
“Really?” My keys clinked as they fell into the bowl next to my purse. “Do they use sign language with their branches?”
“They communicate through fungi in the soil.”
I added my shoes to the others neatly placed by the door and crossed the trampled brown carpet to the tiny kitchen with its cracked flowered countertop and scuffed linoleum. “That right? What do they say to each other?”
I heard him grunt before his skeletal form drifted into the kitchen after me. A knit cap covered his tightly curled hair, still falling out in patches. If I could just keep us fully stocked with the anti-morphing serum, his body wouldn’t have to constantly fight the shifter magic snaking through his genes.
Mordecai was a rare case among shifters. He had plenty of magic to shapeshift, but the human part of him treated that magic like a virus. The surge of magic it would require him to shift would send his body into defense mode, putting him in shock. He’d never shifted because of this.
Thankfully, he had enough power to keep from shifting, even at the full moon, but a war constantly raged inside of him, depleting his energy and inviting in other sicknesses. Shifters could heal at amazing rates in animal form, and somewhat in human form, but that mostly just kept him alive. It did nothing for the pain.
That was where the anti-morphing serum came in.
Lesser-powered shifters used it to control the urges to change at inopportune times, especially at the full moon. For Mordecai, it dulled his body’s reaction to the magic. It calmed the internal fight, and relieved much of the pain. Not all, but a lot of it.
Unfortunately, it was incredibly expensive, and without magical medical insurance, we often ran out for a good week before I could get more.
I’d appealed to the shifter pack he’d come from, begging for their help. That had been about as useful as asking a starving man to share his steak. The current pack alpha wouldn’t hear it. He’d taken over after Mordecai’s father and mother had died, and didn’t want to risk their kid rising up to steal his mantle.
I’d explained that I wasn’t asking for the somewhat risky medical procedure that would cure Mordecai’s health issue (huge dream), just asking for a steady supply of the anti-morphing serum to keep him healthy (small dream). No go. It turned out that killing a kid outright was frowned upon, but letting nature take its course was considered acceptable.
Fucking shifters.
I’d then appealed to the local Demigod’s office, asking for help.
I’d been told it was a shifter problem, and to take my concern to them. When I explained I had, they returned with “It seems his fate has been decided.”
Fucking Demigods.
So here we were. Nestled in the crack of both societies, just trying to stay alive.
I plastered on a smile to hide the fear and sorrow filling my middle. “Through fungi, huh? Neato-mosquito.”
He sat at the round table straddling the line between living room and kitchen. “You sound like your mom.”
I frowned at him. “Not cool, man.”
His carefree laughter warmed my soul. “How was your day?” he asked.
“Normal.” No need to worry him. He wouldn’t have the same regressive view as Frank about being stalked, and he’d blame himself for my being late at work as soon as I showed him the blanket, which would ruin the surprise. “You?”
“Good. I straightened up a little in between lessons.”
“Yes.” I glanced at the crumbs littering the yellow countertop and the pile of dirty plates and utensils in the sink. “I saw the shoes.”
“That’s as far as I got.”
I nodded, pain stabbing my heart. Maybe I should’ve just given him my blanket. San Francisco didn’t get that cold, after all. It wouldn’t have killed me, and then I could’ve put that thirty bucks toward more of his medicine.
Thirty bucks toward the four hundred and fifty total I needed for the serum.
“How’s this online school? Any better than the last one?” I asked, keeping my voice light.
“A bit. It’s still a little slow.”
“Or you’re just a little smart.”
He grinned and shrugged.
“So trees are your new object of study?” I looked through the fridge, picking out the items closest to going bad. I wasn’t a great chef, but I was a creative one. Give me a few ingredients, however odd, and I’d make a dinner out of it. I’d learned from the best and had a crapload of practice.
“Yes. Trees first, then on to the ocean.”
“Are you still doing history?”
He leaned his elbows onto the table and his smile dwindled. “I’m keeping pace, but…”
“You have to keep that up.”
“Why? It’s mostly about Chesters.”
“You shouldn’t use that term. It’s not polite.”
“Fine, whatever, but all the stuff in the books is about them. Magical people have only been in the open for the last hundred
years, but we’ve existed since humans have. Why can’t I read up on our history?”
“You can. You should. But you need to do both, remember?”
“They don’t teach human history in magical schools…”
“Yes, they do.”
“Only in high school, and then only the essentials.”
“That’s because they are elitist assholes. You need a thorough understanding of your world, Mordecai. And that includes human history.”
He let out a frustrated sigh. “Fiiiine.”
He might’ve been the sweetest kid on the planet, but he was still a teenager. I personally couldn’t remember how long puberty lasted, but apparently fifteen wasn’t out of the woods yet. More’s the pity.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, crossing his arms and leaning back.
“No idea. I’m just looking over all these super-tasty ingredients.”
“Your grimace says you’re lying.”
Didn’t I know it. I wasn’t a huge veggie fan in general, but I absolutely hated half of the ones laid out in front of me. Whoever had cultivated Brussels sprouts should be shot.
But beggars couldn’t be choosers. Una down at the Natural Earth Shop, a non-magical crack-dweller who had made a nice little life for herself, was kind enough to give me some produce and other essentials. It was much better than starving.
“Need me to chop something?” Mordecai asked, wrestling his hands out of the blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
“Yeah.” I pulled a few potatoes out of the bottom cupboard. “Handle those, will ya?”
The front door slammed, rattling the glasses. “Bitch better have my money!”
“Daisy’s home,” Mordecai murmured, sticking a hand out for a peeler.
“Jesus. What’s up with her?” I delivered a cutting board, peeler, and knife as Daisy’s petite frame stalked by with balled fists.
“Bitch clearly owes her money, and she wants it,” Mordecai answered.
I gave Mordecai a chastising look. “No swearing.”
“You swear all the time.”
“That’s because I’m a surly adult and the owner of the roof over your head. Do as I say, don’t do as I do.” I stepped out so I could see down the short hallway that led to the two bedrooms in the back. “Daisy?”
