Barbed Wire Heart

by Alexes Razevich

  His voice trailed off.

  “What happened?” I said urging him to say what he clearly didn’t want to.

  “Some asshole drugged me,” he said between clenched teeth. “Snuck up from behind and put a rag over my nose and mouth. The next thing I knew, I was tied up in that room with you.”

  Dee wasn’t one to curse, not unless he was very tired, very frustrated, or very, very pissed off.

  “I was jumped,” I said. “Someone threw a bag over my head and drugged me with something that smelled like cleaning fluid. I’d scanned the guy who grabbed me when he approached and hadn’t picked up on magic or caught a danger signal. I walked right into it.”

  My story didn’t seem to comfort him. His face stayed pinched and dark. He was pretty clearly working up to saying something but wasn’t quite ready yet.

  “In the room,” Dee finally said, his voice low, “I couldn’t undo the ropes.”

  That was bad, bad news. Dee had an arsenal of protection and escape spells he kept at the ready for those cases that involved magical folk—some of whom weren’t very nice.

  “You were drugged,” I said. “It fuzzed your mind.”

  “Yeah, probably,” he said and went quiet again.

  At least he had a possible reason why his magic hadn’t worked. I hadn’t caught any sign of bad intentions from my little old man on the street and had no excuse for falling into the trap. Worry that something was wrong with me rolled around in my head all the way back to Dee’s house. I finally realized worrying wouldn’t solve anything and gave it up. There wasn’t a doctor for psychics I could go to for a cure if something was off with me. My only option was to just get on with it.

  I had a new thought.

  “Dee. What if we’re up against someone that’s stronger than we are?”

  He blew a derisive little puff of air between his lips. “Whoever or whatever we’re up against—it’s definitely stronger than we are.”

  Dee lived on Pine Street in Manhattan Beach. He’d bought the place just before we got together. In magic, the pine tree represents a slew of good things—rebirth, immortality, strength in adversity, and overcoming hardships through optimism and inner strength. I thought Dee chose his house based on the street name as much as anything else, though he denied it. It had to be though, because the house didn’t fit him at all—at least not the Dee I knew.

  His home was one of those two-story, red-tile roofed Spanish-style houses that stretched nearly property line to property line with just a bit of open land in front and on each side, though the backyard was decent-sized for the neighborhood. It was much too large for one person, in my opinion, but then I liked the coziness of my much smaller beach cottage. He tended the landscaping outside himself—which made sense since he drew power from the earth. His furniture was new and starkly modern—a light-colored linen couch with low, square arms, a big flat-screen TV mounted on the opposite wall above a low Japanese wooden chest with a frosted glass front that held his components.

  There were two black leather slingback chairs and one of those lift-top coffee tables that converted into a sort of TV tray for eating. Two oak Empire-style chairs for when extra seating was needed, stood against a wall.

  Dee was a chameleon on the street, equally believable in jeans, a white T-shirt, and work boots; a perfectly tailored, bespoke suit; or anything in between. His home definitely said he was a single man who liked his peace and his creature comforts. No one who didn’t know him extremely well would guess that upstairs, behind a bespelled door only he could open, was his wizard’s lair. Rows of bottles holding the ingredients for spells and potions, his gazing bowl, boxes of amulets and talismans, all filled shelves and tabletops. There was also a library to make a lesser wizard weep.

  Another upstairs room had been turned into a second library for his large collection of hard and softcover books about equally divided between fiction and non. No e-reader for him. Dee like the heft, feel, and smell of paper.

  His three-car garage housed his Audi, his goalie gear and skates, and a long wooden workbench where he sometimes made fetishes and other magical things.

  A complicated man, Diego Adair. A man of many parts.

  “Beer?” he said.

  “Sure,” I said, and followed him into the kitchen.

  Evidently the people who lived in these sorts of houses weren’t expected to cook much. His kitchen was a small U-shaped affair with not a lot of prep room. He did manage to make an acceptable meal in it, but I’d rather cook in the spacious and recently remodeled kitchen at my house. I think secretly he preferred it, too.

  He grabbed two Tecates from the fridge, handed me one—no glass—and led me back to the living room.

  Beer and Sure were the only two words we’d uttered since Dee had confirmed that whoever was behind the Aunt Mich thing—whatever was really going on—was a stronger wizard than he was. Stronger than our abilities put together, which was fairly scary to contemplate. One of us had to start the conversation going again.

  “So,” I said, “do you think you could find Aunt Mich in your looking bowl?”

  He sat on the couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table. He looked casual and relaxed, but I felt the agitation roiling inside him.

  “We don’t know that she wants to be found,” he said. “It’s not a good idea to go messing around with a person’s free will.”

  Okay, so he was sour over someone getting the better of him and nervous about the strength of our opponent. I was more than a little upset myself, but we had one week to find Aunt Mich or, I don’t know, find ourselves going up in puffs of smoke or something. We needed to move along here.

  I almost sat in one of the sling back chairs but opted for the far end of the couch. Not too close, just near enough to provide confidence that the other was there but room enough to not feel mentally squeezed.

  “I didn’t get the impression from Petra that her aunt had left of her own volition,” I said, “but—"

  Dee took a pull on his beer.

  “But, what?” he said when I didn’t finish the sentence.

  “But I’ve been off lately. Psychically, I mean. I didn’t pick up on the connection between John Broadhurst and Aunt Mich.”

  Or the connection between you and Sudie, I thought but didn’t say.

  “I let myself get grabbed off the street,” I said. “Didn’t sense even a hint of danger from a lost old man asking for directions.”

  “Which wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed at the rink and waited for me,” he said.

  I glared at him. “Really? After all that happened, your instinct is to scold me?”

  He regarded me over the top of his beer bottle. “Just stating the truth.”

  I fumed for a few moments but gave it up pretty quickly. He wasn’t wrong.

  Dee set his beer on the coffee table. “There’s probably nothing wrong with you. Whoever got the two of us down in that bomb shelter has control over some strong magic. He probably blocked you from feeling the warning signs you normally would have picked up on. You haven’t lost anything.”

  It sounded plausible. It even felt right. Still . . .

  I hiked up one shoulder in a bit of a shrug. “That doesn’t explain why I didn’t feel the connection between Broadhurst and Aunt Mich.”

  He gave me a level stare. “What? You never have an off day?”

  I shrugged.

  “You missed a connection between two people that there was absolutely no reason to think were connected,” he said. “No big deal, unless it makes you happier to think you’re losing your powers and to beat yourself up over it.”

  I glared at him. “You can be very annoying, you know that?”

  “Part of my charm.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Not so much.”

  His face grew serious. “It’s probably the same thing—someone with a lot of power is blocking your psychic reach. Do you want some help?”

  Magical help, he meant. A little spell to
gin up my natural abilities and maybe get us closer to figuring out what was really going on here. Sounded like a plan to me. Plus, it seemed like a good idea for Dee to get back in the saddle himself, as it were.

  “Sure.”

  He disappeared upstairs to gather the things he’d need.

  I called after him, “Why do you think whoever grabbed us snagged us both? How did they know we knew each other? Why do they want us working together?”

  Dee came back carrying a purple candle and a stick of incense. He set both on the coffee table in front of the couch and sat next to me, the sides of our legs touching.

  “Did you hear my questions?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, snapping his fingers to first light the candle and then the incense. “Let’s talk about it after.”

  When both candle and incense were burning well, Dee put two fingers between my eyebrows and gently pressed while he recited the spell.

  That old familiar feeling knocked inside my head.

  I grabbed Dee’s hand as the vertigo hit and leaned against him to keep from tumbling. There was something about Aunt Mich and Petra that was just outside my reach, something important, a critical truth I almost knew.

  “It’s gone,” I said, and let loose of his hand. “Maybe I need a jolt of stronger magic.”

  “Maybe so,” Dee said, and kissed me.

  16

  I woke the next morning in Dee’s bed, alone. His warm, fresh air-cloves-and-dark-chocolate scent lingered on the sheets. I would have happily lain there all day, but I could hear him rattling around downstairs and I needed to pee.

  I used the bathroom, got dressed, and went downstairs to see what he was up to. I rounded the corner and saw him wearing boxers and nothing else, holding open the fridge door. The sight made me draw in a quick, sharp breath. Damn. He really was lovely.

  He heard me and turned so I could see what he’d been looking at—practically bare shelves.

  “I was thinking scrambled eggs for breakfast,” he said, “but no eggs. No bread for toast. I do have tea, if you’d like some.”

  “Someone should take better care of you.” I slipped my arms around his waist.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Are you offering to do my grocery shopping?”

  I laughed. “Hardly. I was thinking more along the lines of you should take better care of you. You can have groceries delivered. Order ‘em online and they show up at your door.”

  “Thanks. I’ll consider that for the future. In the meantime, what are we going to do about eating this morning?”

  “Uncle Bill’s?” I said, suggesting a near-by restaurant for breakfast.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll get dressed.”

  He headed upstairs and returned a few minutes later wearing ray cargo shorts, a light blue tee, and black flip flops.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded.

  He took down the wards that guarded his front door and spelled it open.

  The door flew back, banging against the sidewall.

  A monster pushed its way into the house. It shouldn’t have been able to cross his threshold, but it had.

  Startled, it took me a moment to take it in. Well over seven feet tall, it had the body of a man but the head of an Irish elk with huge, palm-like antlers that spread out on either side of its head. The antlers were so large the beast had to turn its head sideways to get in the door. A rank odor like rotting vegetation rising off the thing made my eyes water.

  The monster barged into the house, grabbed Dee around the waist and lifted him off his feet into the air. Dee was trying to talk, to cast a spell probably, but the beast was squeezing him so tightly, he couldn’t get words out. His face was turning red. All this happened in seconds.

  Anger shot through me. No one—no thing—was going to hurt Dee while I was around. I spun, ran back into the living room, and grabbed one of the extra-seating oak chairs pushed up against the wall. I’m strong for a skinny girl. I swung the chair hard and smashed it into the beast’s side. The monster roared. I couldn’t tell if the sound was anguish or laughter. I hit the beast again, aiming for the same spot.

  The monster dropped Dee who crumpled on the floor breathing hard, trying to catch his breath. The beast turned toward me. I was still holding the chair. Suddenly it seemed a weak defense and it was. With one swipe of its massive arm, the beast knocked the chair from my hands. It clattered against the floor when it landed.

  Dee had pulled himself halfway to his feet. I walked backwards as fast as I could, keeping my attention on the monster. It lumbered toward me, a glint in its yellow, goat-like eyes, the black bar of its pupil as dark as a cave. The living room I’d retreated to wasn’t all that big. I’d have my back against a wall soon.

  Dee’s voice rang loud and harsh, spell words tumbling out like rocks down a hillside. My heart pounded as hard and as fast as his words. A sound like an approaching train roared in my ears.

  Dee advanced toward the back of the beast, still intoning the spell. I didn’t know how it was possible, but he was now as big as the beast that lumbered toward me with an evil, lopsided grin on its face. Its teeth, wet with saliva, were long and came to sharp points at the end. The thought of those teeth piercing my skin sent adrenaline shooting through my veins.

  Dee yelled a final word. A brilliant light flashed in the room as lightning leapt from his fingertips and struck the beast in the back. The sharp, chlorine-like smell of ozone filled my nose.

  The beast screamed and wheeled toward Dee.

  Lightning flashed from his fingertips again and struck the beast in its chest where its heart should be.

  Stronger smell of ozone. Of burned fur and flesh.

  The monster staggered back. I jumped to get out of its way. The beast roared and, pain-maddened, twisted and lunged toward me.

  Dee had grown so tall he had only a little clearance under his twelve-foot high ceiling. Lightning burst from his fingertips a third time and struck the back of the beast’s neck. The monster screamed and turned away from me toward him, rage evident in the way the beast held itself and moved.

  Dee’s face was calm, almost placid, but I felt his concentration and focus as stiffness in my muscles. He rotated his hand and said something I couldn’t hear over the roaring in my ears.

  The room filled with angry bees that swarmed directly to the monster. The beast shrieked, batting madly at the swarm. Dee swung around and spelled the front door open again. The monster saw the daylight streaming in and lumbered as fast as it could out to the front yard, the bees hot on its backside.

  Dee slammed the door and reset the wards. Dee, who was suddenly just Dee-sized again.

  I sunk down to the floor, my back against the living room wall, and stared up at him.

  He sank down next to me. “What the fuck?”

  I nodded. “It’s going to take a bit for my heart to stop racing.”

  He slipped an arm over my shoulder and pulled me close.

  “It wanted us both,” I said quietly, knowing it as surely as I knew anything. “We’re together in the search for Aunt Mich now, and as much as whoever grabbed us wants her found, someone else really, really wants her to stay hidden.”

  The skin on the back of my neck prickled and the hairs stood on end.

  “No,” I said. “That isn’t right.”

  Dee waited while I felt this new knowledge and ran it around in my mind to make sense of it. It didn’t make sense, but, helped along by Dee’s boosting spell, I knew I was right.

  “Whoever sent that beast very much wants Aunt Mich found.”

  17

  “If they want her found,” Dee said, “they have a funny way of showing it.”

  I nodded, agreeing.

  He licked his fingertips lightly, and I saw they were singed. From the lightning, I presumed. Seeing Dee in full wizard mode had been exhilarating, reassuring, and terrifying all at the same time.

  After a long moment I said, “The bees were a nice touch.”

&n
bsp; “Thanks,” he said, and laughed under his breath without much humor. “It seems everything is afraid of a horde of angry bees.”

  Another silence set in. I leaned against Dee’s side. He shifted to enfold me in his arms. Tears filled my eyes, threatening to overflow. I’d been scared half to death by the monster. The tears were born of relief that Dee and I were still alive as much as anything.

  He was just as glad to be alive, but I felt him second-guessing himself, wondering if he’d made a mistake in only running off the creature; if he should have inflicted some more serious damage to stop it from coming back; if he should have bespelled the beast to compel it to say who had sent it and why?

  I felt him shrug it off. I knew his emotion and thoughts as clearly as if I’d slid into his mind to read them: What was done couldn’t be changed. No point in obsessing on the woulda/shouldas. There’d be time enough later to think it through and prepare in case the beast showed up again.

  It was such a Dee way of thinking that I had to smile. That ability to shake off indecision made him a great goalie and a strong wizard.

  “You swing a mean chair, lady,” he said.

  I smiled and put my head on his chest, so I could listen to his heartbeat for a moment, then shifted around to see his face. “The lightning shooting from your fingers thing, can all you wizards do that?”

  “No,” he said, and left it at that.

  I let the rest of my questions go and listened to his heartbeat a while longer. I liked that sound. It made me feel that eventually, all would be right with the world.

  Dee idly played with my hair, his mind busy on other things. I tried to concentrate on his heartbeat, the feel on his fingers in my hair, but my mind wouldn’t stop spinning any more than his could. How had the creature come to be at Dee’s house? Had it come on its own or been sent? Was that the beast’s true form or a disguise? What did the beast have to do with the murders?

  The whole thing was screwy. I felt strongly that someone had sent the monster and that person wanted Aunt Mich found. So why send a monster that would have killed Dee and me if it could have gotten its way? Had the beast really only meant to scare us? Why? There was a person behind this, a mind directing the action. A mind I wasn’t sure was completely sane.