Night Magic

by Jenna Black

  One thing I was sure of: there had been no witnesses to the shooting other than Aleric. No non-Nightstruck witnesses, at least. Sane people stayed inside at night, and we’d been too deep in the darkened square for anyone to see it from a window. One way or another, Aleric was the source of this anonymous tip. Which was better than it coming from Piper, but not by much.

  “Friend or not,” I said implacably, “you’re a detective, and I’m going to do exactly what both my mom and my dad would advise me to do under the circumstances. Sorry, Sam.”

  I was worrying him. He’d expected me to talk to him and give him an easy alibi so he could just dismiss the tip as the bullshit it was. My refusal to talk made it seem like I was hiding something, and he didn’t like that one bit. However, he was obviously not in the position to force me to talk to him. Not yet, at least.

  “If you change your mind, give me a call,” he said, handing me his card. “Anytime, day or night. I really want to help.”

  I took the card and nodded. “I know you do, and thanks. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

  He hesitated a moment before turning away, probably hoping I would have an instantaneous change of heart. I didn’t.

  * * *

  I was completely freaked out when Sam left. I probably wasn’t going to be arrested based on nothing but an anonymous phone call, but that didn’t make me feel any less panicked. My life was complicated enough without becoming a fugitive from justice on top of everything.

  When the hotel phone rang, I was so wired I jumped and almost screamed. The sound seemed shockingly loud—and ominous.

  Who would be calling on the hotel phone? Surely anyone who wanted to reach me would call me on my new cell phone, though less than a handful of people had that number. And anyone I hadn’t given that number to would not know I was staying at this hotel.

  I bit my lip and stared at the offending phone as it rang again. Maybe it was just the front desk. Or housekeeping. Some innocuous hotel business that I’d laugh about later. Yeah. That had to be it.

  I continued staring at the phone until it stopped ringing, then blew out a sigh of relief. Relief that was premature, because after about a ten-second pause, it started ringing again.

  “There is zero reason to answer that,” I told myself, and I knew I was right. In all likelihood, it wasn’t for me. And if it was for me, it was someone I didn’t want to talk to. I should just unplug the phone so I didn’t have to listen to it ringing and go right back to panicking over Sam’s visit.

  I crept indecisively closer to the phone as its shrill ringing grated on my nerves. I wanted to follow my own advice and yank the cord out of the wall, but I wasn’t sure that would make me feel much better. If I didn’t answer, my mind would start churning away thinking about all the possibilities. Which would be pretty amazingly useless—and downright stupid if the call was a wrong number or something trivial I hadn’t thought of.

  Maybe it was some telemarketer who’d somehow got hold of the wrong number.

  I didn’t believe my own reasoning. I knew who would be on the other end of that line if I picked up, knew it with a gut-clenching certainty no amount of logic could counteract.

  I picked up anyway, holding my breath and not bothering to say hello, praying for that telltale silence then click that meant it was a telemarketer. No such luck.

  “Surprise!” Aleric said with exaggerated cheer.

  My knees went weak and I sank down onto the bed. For a moment, I actually thought I was in danger of throwing up. I glanced out the window just to assure myself that the sun hadn’t somehow set while I wasn’t looking. But no, it was still daytime, the sun bright and high in the sky. I supposed he was calling from the square.

  “What’s the matter?” Aleric asked with a laugh. “Cat got your tongue?”

  At that moment Bob, no doubt sensing my distress, rested his chin on my lap and whined softly. I grabbed hold of his fur with my free hand, and it took a concerted effort to keep the grip light enough not to hurt him.

  How had Aleric found me?

  I reminded myself that it was still daytime, that he was stuck in the square and couldn’t get to me. Finding me would do him no good when we were going to move to a new hotel as soon as Dr. Gilliam got back from her shift.

  None of that kept me from breaking out into a cold sweat. Hang up the phone, a very reasonable voice inside my head urged me.

  “I’m getting the feeling you’re not very happy to hear from me,” Aleric said. “I find that … disappointing.”

  I managed a snort at that, digging up my voice and my courage. “I’ll bet. I can’t think of any good reason why I shouldn’t hang up on you right now.”

  “Don’t you want to know how I found you? After all, you do seem to be doing your best to dodge me. Not that your best is good enough, obviously.”

  “You’re calling just to tell me how you found me? I know you like to brag about how brilliant you are, but…”

  “It isn’t just the Nightstruck you have to be wary of if you want to avoid me, Becket. I’m very good at finding ways to convince people to cooperate with me. For instance, a little birdie told me you had a chance to catch up with your old friend Sam Bellows not too long ago.”

  Bob whined again, and I realized I’d been squeezing too hard after all. I let go and settled for resting my hand on his warm, soft body, taking comfort from him as if I were a five-year-old and he my teddy bear. I wanted to jump to my feet and run screaming from the room, but reminded myself one more time that just because Aleric knew where I was—and who’d been here to see me—didn’t mean he could get his hands on me.

  “Would you be shocked to hear that I phoned in an anonymous tip to the police about you?” Aleric asked.

  No, of course I wasn’t surprised. “I figured it was you. I’m not an idiot.”

  “I could argue, but I suppose I should let you cling to at least one of your illusions.”

  “I could argue,” I countered, “but you’re really not worth the trouble.”

  He laughed. “Do you miss me?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Don’t worry, we’ll be together again real soon.”

  “In your dreams,” I said with as much bravado as I could scrape up.

  “It can happen one of two ways. You can do it the easy way and just come back to me. I’m sure you’re not under the same level of lockdown as Piper. You can get away if you want to.

  “Or you can continue to be difficult about it, and things will get unpleasant for you. Again. I’d rather not put you through that if I don’t have to.”

  “Then don’t!” I snapped, once again urging myself to hang up. However, as much as I didn’t want to talk to Aleric, I didn’t think refusing to listen to him would improve my situation. I needed to get the clearest picture possible of what I was up against, and since Aleric did love to hear himself talk, it was possible he’d reveal something I needed to know.

  “Come back to me,” he said. “It’ll be easiest for everyone that way. I promise I’ll do a better job of making you happy the second time around.”

  I closed my eyes and fought a wave of longing I wished I didn’t feel. We both knew that I’d been plenty happy to be Nightstruck, that Luke had dragged me away from that life kicking and screaming. And it certainly would be easier for me if I could duck away from all the grief and guilt and sense of responsibility.

  “It’s not going to happen,” I said, my voice uncomfortably hoarse.

  “Look, you’re being very clever with all this moving around you’ve been doing, and so far I haven’t been able to find you fast enough to get to you. But if you don’t come to me of your own free will, I’ll make sure you get arrested for shooting Piper. They’ll lock you up nice and tight, and you won’t be a moving target anymore. Do you really think you’ll be safe from me behind bars? That I can’t get to you if I want?”

  Between his army of Nightstruck and his terrifying constructs, I had no doubt Aleric could get to me anywhere as long
as he knew where to look. Maybe I really was making things unnecessarily difficult for myself by fighting him like this.

  “How hard do you think it’ll be for me to convince Piper to accuse you?” Aleric continued. “I bet she’d be more than willing.”

  “They wouldn’t believe her,” I argued weakly. “She’s already told them it was some Nightstruck guy.”

  “I bet they’d understand how she’d be reluctant to admit it was her very best friend in all the world who shot her. And even if they didn’t, it might be enough to get you arrested when there’s that anonymous tip on record, too. And if it isn’t, I’m sure I can come up with more evidence to incriminate you. After all, you are the one who shot her.”

  True enough, but not something I was about to admit on the phone. I seriously doubted Aleric was recording me, but there was no reason to be stupid about it.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Aleric said, his voice taking on a cajoling tone. “Just come back to the square, and your life will go back to being easy and carefree and fun. I really do miss you, and I bet somewhere deep down inside you miss me, too.”

  I shuddered. Just thinking about him touching me made me want to hop into a hot shower and scrub off a layer or two of skin in a futile attempt to get clean. There was no part of me that even remotely missed him. At least, I was pretty sure there wasn’t.

  “Well it’s been lovely catching up,” I forced myself to say, “but I’ve got some packing to do, so I’m gonna have to say good-bye.”

  “Before you go, let me tell you about the carrot. I think you understand the stick part of this equation pretty well.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with your carrot!” I snapped. I was glad we weren’t having this conversation face-to-face, because I probably turned beet red when I thought about what I’d just said. I braced myself for Aleric to make fun of the double entendre, but he either missed it or was just too focused on the job at hand to bother with it.

  “Your father isn’t dead,” he said.

  Tears instantly sprang to my eyes, and my throat squeezed completely shut. I could barely breathe, much less find my voice to shout out my opinion of Aleric’s blatant lie.

  “My Nightstruck brought him to me after his encounter with Billy, and I’ve been keeping him in the basement of one of the abandoned houses I like to visit.”

  “Bullshit,” I finally managed to croak out.

  “Hey, you thought Piper was dead, and it turned out she wasn’t. Why shouldn’t you believe me when I tell you your dad’s alive?”

  Well, for one thing, I’d seen my dad die right in front of my eyes. I’d assumed Piper was going to die, but she hadn’t been dead when I’d left her. The same had not been true of my dad when the Nightstruck dragged his body away.

  “If you had my dad locked up in a basement somewhere, you’d have told me before now.”

  I could almost hear his nonchalant shrug. “Would you have cared if I told you while you were Nightstruck?”

  “Yes!” I bit out. “I still loved my dad!”

  “Tell yourself that if it makes you feel better. But he would have been useless to me as leverage against you while you were Nightstruck.”

  “Then why did you keep him alive?”

  I knew my dad was not alive. I knew it. But I wanted it to be true so, so badly. I had never wanted to be convinced of something so much in my life.

  “Just in case he might turn out to be useful someday.”

  Even wanting to be convinced, that wasn’t a remotely convincing answer. If he thought my dad might be useful to him someday, but wouldn’t be useful to him while I was Nightstruck, then logic said Aleric had suspected I’d escape somehow. Aleric was not the kind of guy who made contingency plans or expected to fail at anything.

  There was no way my dad was alive, and realizing that brought on a fresh wave of crushing grief. I didn’t know how to absorb the reality that I would never see my dad again.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” Aleric said, trying to sound gentle—something he sucked at. “I’ll give you a day or two to think about it, then I’ll get back to you. I’m sure I can find you again. And who knows—maybe next time, I’ll get a fix on your location before dawn. Then we can be reunited without your having to spend any time in jail first.”

  He hung up before I had a chance to demand proof that my dad was alive. Which was just as well, because I knew there was no such proof forthcoming.

  * * *

  I thought I’d been panicked after Sam’s visit, but that was nothing compared to how I felt after talking to Aleric.

  The fact that he’d somehow located me was disturbing enough, but paired with his threats, it was downright terrifying. It was all too easy to imagine the police showing up one day with a warrant for my arrest based on updated testimony from Piper. And because Aleric was a vindictive bastard, he’d probably try to get Luke and Dr. Gilliam arrested for harboring me.

  I winced as I realized that once again, Luke and his mom were in danger because of me.

  My next realization, which made me go cold all over, was that they both seemed to have relaxed their guard around me. It used to be Luke was always by my side when Dr. Gilliam was at work, but today he’d felt confident enough in me to go down to the gym for a workout. If I wanted to save the Gilliams both from Aleric and the police, the best thing I could do was to slip out now, while I had a chance.

  The thought started gathering momentum in my brain as I hurried to pack a bag with my meager belongings. I had no idea how I could protect myself out on the streets, but I could worry about that later. Surely I could find somewhere to hole up for the night incognito.

  I slapped myself in the forehead as I came to the obvious conclusion that instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself day after day, I should have been working on a plan to get myself out of Philadelphia. If I was outside the quarantine, where the city didn’t change at night, then Aleric really couldn’t get to me, and there was no threat that I’d become Nightstruck again.

  My mind was racing so fast, flitting from one unfinished thought to another, that I became completely oblivious to my surroundings. So much so that I somehow managed to miss Luke getting back from his workout and coming through the door from the adjoining room. When I turned to get the last of my clothes out of the dresser, I finally noticed him and let out a choked scream.

  He was leaning against the door frame between our rooms, his arms crossed over his chest. Damp with sweat, his hair curled enticingly at the base of his neck. His similarly damp T-shirt clung to the lines of his chest, and somehow he managed to make even saggy gym shorts look sexy. I shouldn’t have been noticing how hot he looked, not when he was glaring at me like that, but I couldn’t help it.

  I glanced over my shoulder at my duffel bag, which sat on the edge of the bed and had a pair of jeans hanging out of it—I hadn’t exactly been packing neatly. My face burned with a blush that declared my guilt, but I tried to deflect it with a logical explanation.

  “I’m just getting a head start on packing for tonight,” I said.

  Which made perfect sense, seeing as we changed hotels or rooms every night. But he’d obviously been standing there long enough to see how quickly and furtively I was moving, so I probably couldn’t have sold him on the explanation even if my face hadn’t turned into a giant neon sign shouting: I’M GUILTY!

  Luke just stood there staring at me. It was clear he was pissed as hell, but I also saw a hint of hurt in his eyes. I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to how he and his mom would feel when they discovered I was gone, though to be fair I’d only hatched this barely half-formed plan of mine a couple of minutes ago, and there were a lot of thoughts I hadn’t gotten around to yet.

  “Were you going to leave us notes this time, or were you just going to disappear without a word?” Luke asked. The look he was giving me was so cold I half expected frost to start coating the room.

  I bit back a defensive answer. He had ever
y right to be pissed, especially if he thought I was running because I wanted to go back to being Nightstruck. I took a calming breath and, facing him as boldly as I could, told him about Sam’s visit and Aleric’s call.

  I’d thought maybe he would understand once I told him everything, but his face remained closed off, his voice not much warmer.

  “You were going to run away because you were afraid my mom and I would get arrested?” he asked incredulously. “Here’s getting arrested,” he said, holding his right hand out palm up, “here’s getting caught by Aleric and his crew.” He held up the other hand at the same level, then dropped it dramatically lower as his right hand flew upward.

  When he put it that way, well, of course the scales didn’t balance. My instinct to run away hadn’t been based on logic, just on knee-jerk panic. So really I didn’t have a leg to stand on defending myself, but that didn’t stop me from trying.

  “If I can get out of the quarantine zone, then there’d be no way Aleric can ever get to me and force me to open another gate,” I said, well aware that that had been an afterthought. But probably a pretty good afterthought, and one that should have occurred to me earlier.

  “Uh-huh,” Luke said, stalking into the room and giving the connecting door a gentle slam. The sound made me jump, though if he’d wanted to Luke could have slammed it hard enough to make the entire room shake. “And you thought this was such a good idea you had to run off half-cocked without talking it over with anyone. It’s just a coincidence that you came up with this idea while my mom and I were both out of the room, right?”

  Damn it, he had me again.

  I shoved my duffel bag out of the way with more force than necessary and plopped down on the edge of the bed. Predictably, Bob immediately started nosing my hand, asking for a pet. With a frustrated huff, I complied.

  “I panicked,” I admitted, finally able to let go of the fight. “I’m afraid Aleric can convince Piper to tell the police I was the one who shot her. If that happens, they’ll probably arrest me, and that’ll make me a sitting duck.”