“We’ll have to watch him,” Aaron told Kai. “He’ll try to sneak out tonight, when it’s darkest.”
Kai nodded. “The Keys will be waiting for him.”
Aaron raked his hand through his hair, mixing ash from the burned paper into his red locks. “This is going to be difficult.”
“It might be time for Plan C.”
My insides went cold. Plan C? Did Kai mean killing the Keys of Solomon team before they could harm Ezra?
Kai noticed the look on my face. “Ready to go home?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “Of course not.”
He and Aaron stood there, waiting, but I had no idea what they expected from me. The seconds stretched into a full minute before Aaron spoke.
“Tori, aren’t you going to ask?”
“Ask what?”
He waved a hand. “About any of this!”
My mouth hung open. “I … I mean … I thought I wasn’t supposed … to …”
I trailed off as Aaron’s expression morphed into disbelief—and Kai’s tightened with anger.
“She doesn’t want to know,” Kai told Aaron cuttingly. “Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it, Tori?” Stalking to the stairs, he called back, “Aaron, we have work to do.”
Aaron sighed. I swallowed hard, my hands twitching as though I could reach out and scoop the three mages back together—as though I could stop the chain reaction the Keys had set in motion.
My eyes stung. “Aaron …”
He gazed at me for a long moment, and I could feel the weight of his assessment. He was evaluating something … evaluating me.
Sighing more heavily, he turned away. “I’ll get some cardboard to cover that window.”
As he walked out of the living room, I could still feel the weight of his judgment. I didn’t know what he had been evaluating me for—tenacity, commitment, competence, how much of a liability I might be?—but I was certain he’d found me lacking.
Chapter Fifteen
I stood in the kitchen, alone.
Ezra had barricaded himself in his room, probably planning how to give his friends the slip and flee the city. Kai and Aaron were in the midst of their own planning, the nature of which they’d chosen not to share with me. They were huddled in Kai’s room, though Aaron had trekked downstairs several times to dig through boxes.
Everything was falling apart.
The house’s front window was covered with cardboard and duct tape. I’d peeked through the door a few minutes ago, expecting to see half the Keys guild out there, but the same black van was still parked on the street. Burke and his team were waiting for us to make a move, then they would attack—and I still didn’t know why.
Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it, Tori?
My eyes started burning again and I blinked rapidly. I was ignorant. Willfully, deliberately ignorant. Since my first chilling experience with Ezra’s temper, I’d decided I didn’t want the truth. I didn’t want to know anything that might change how I felt about him.
And now, because of my determination to keep my happy bubble unblemished, I had no idea how to stop this collapse of everything important to me.
Hands braced on the counter, I closed my eyes. I could see it again: Ezra’s crimson power, identical to demonic magic. The scars that raked his torso, identical to wounds inflicted by demonic claws. His face in that mugshot, hollow and sickly and scarred.
I’d seen one other photo of young Ezra. Hidden in the bottom drawer of his dresser was a picture of him and a girl, both around fourteen or fifteen. In it, Ezra was happy, healthy—and unscarred.
A year or so after that photo had been taken, Ezra had suffered irreparable damage to his left eye, lost weight and health, and been arrested for theft in Portland.
His arrest, I suspected, was only significant because of the time and place: sixty miles from “Enright” and four months after an “extermination.” That mugshot tied Ezra to the Enright extermination—whatever that was.
And that summed up everything I knew or could guess, because I’d made no attempt to learn a single thing about him.
I opened my eyes and pushed away from the counter. Hiding from this had made me weak and useless. No matter how frightening the truth, I couldn’t be ignorant any longer. I needed answers—and then maybe, just maybe, I could help fix this before I lost one, two, or all three of my best friends.
First, I needed to get everyone back together and, if possible, in a better mood. I surveyed the kitchen, then rolled up the sleeves of my sweater.
I’d just put the casserole in the oven and was opening the fridge when a shadow darkened the doorway. Ezra stood a step outside the kitchen, his curls rumpled like he’d been running his hands through them in frustration. Had he been wearing those snug, dark-wash jeans before, or had he changed into “run away from home” clothes?
“Hi,” I said softly.
His eyes skimmed over me, somehow wary. The despair I’d glimpsed earlier lurked in them and in the unhappy slump to his shoulders.
“I’m making dinner,” I informed him. “About to start the salad. Want to help?”
Something in him relaxed, and a faint smile appeared on his lips. “I’m not allowed in the kitchen.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Second rule, my dear mage. Second rule.”
He chuckled and stepped onto the forbidden tile floor. “You might regret this.”
“Pfff. It’s just vegetables. How could that go wrong?”
Grinning, I passed him ingredients—lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, cheese. Kai must’ve been planning to cook this week. He was the only one of the three bachelors with an even mildly adventurous palate when it came to home cooking. Aaron would live off baked chicken and boiled broccoli if we let him.
Ezra got out a cutting board while I searched the pantry for croutons. When I emerged, our eyes caught and a dart of anxiety made me falter. I’d sworn to stop avoiding the truth, and here was Ezra—the source of all truth. It was just the two of us. The perfect time to ask. Ezra, what are you?
Four little words. I could do it.
My mouth opened obediently, but no words came out. As that subdued wariness returned to his gaze, I hurriedly passed him a colander to wash the lettuce, then moved on to chopping vegetables.
I’d cooked in Aaron’s kitchen enough times to know my way around—and to know it was too damn small for anything. It was a tight L shape with a dinky island in the middle, nowhere near enough counter space, and about half the square footage required for two people to coexist.
Our first collision came thirty seconds in. Ezra and I bounced off each other, laughing, and I squeezed past him to rinse off the cucumber. He almost clobbered me while reaching for the paper towel. I got out a big bowl, only for him to bang his head on the cupboard door I’d left open. I babbled an apology, but he was grinning in amusement.
My heart lifted. With a bounce in my step, I threw all the ingredients into the bowl. I asked him to pass me the bottle of dressing; he knocked it over, splattering ranch on the counter. We both reached for the dishcloth and collided again.
Laughing too hard to help, I stepped back to let him wipe up the spill. The timer on the oven beeped. He passed me the oven mitts—no mishaps this time—and I pulled out my cheese-and-noodle concoction, the breadcrumb topping perfectly golden brown.
As I set it on the stovetop to cool, Ezra hovered at my shoulder, peering at the bubbling cheese.
“Don’t drool on me,” I warned as I ensured the casserole dish was sturdily placed.
“Too late.”
Yelping, I twisted to look at my shoulder. He laughed—then grabbed the oven mitt out of my hand before I dunked it in the casserole.
“Kidding. I was kidding!” He set the mitt on the counter. “I have my salivation strictly under control, I swear.”
Casting him a suspicious squint, I looked around for the little dish of freshly chopped parsley I’d prepared as a garnish. “You should try to sound like you’re joking when you make
a joke.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Oh, there was the parsley. “Can you grab the plates?”
He opened the cupboard and reached up. Humming tunelessly, I grabbed the small dish, turned toward the casserole—and accidentally jabbed my elbow into his taut stomach. The air pfffed out of his lungs and he stepped back sharply.
“Sorry!” I exclaimed, whipping toward him and knocking into his arm.
The four plates tumbled out of his grasp. They hit the floor—
—and the room whooshed as I was whisked away.
Ceramic exploded everywhere with an ungodly crash, but I couldn’t see it. Ezra had pulled me clear of the spraying shards, and my face was mashed against his chest, his arms around my waist, my toes brushing the floor. My head spun from the sudden movement, and I tried to remember exactly how I’d ended up face to chest with him.
He loosened his arms and I slid down a few inches, my feet settling on the floor. I gawked at him, my eyes wide. His reflexes were insane. They were impossible.
“You okay?” he asked worriedly, craning to look around me at my bare feet. “You didn’t step on any shards?”
“I didn’t have a chance,” I said faintly.
He smiled, then pressed his thumb to a spot beside my mouth and swiped it across my cheek. “You have salad dressing on your face. How did you manage that?”
My shock stuttered into something else—a hyper-awareness of his touch on my skin, his hand on my side, our bodies so close. My fingers gripped his t-shirt, fists pressed to his chest, but I didn’t remember moving them.
I wanted to say something witty, but my brain had nothing to offer. “Is it gone?”
He peered at one of my cheeks, then the other. “Yeah, you’re good. I’m in trouble, though.”
“You are?” Damn, I sounded breathless.
“Four plates at once. Aaron is going to extra-ban me from the kitchen.”
By all appearances completely unaware that he’d left me flushed and breathless, he shifted his attention to the mess on the floor and started to step away.
My hands tightened on his shirt and the fabric pulled taut between us. He stopped.
I stared into his mismatched eyes, my pulse racing. Soft, dark brown curls tumbled across his forehead, tousled and begging for fingers to tangle in them. His mouth shifted questioningly.
My fists clenched around the gray fabric. “Ezra …”
His brow creased, and my gaze darted between his eyes, so different from each other. One warm, gentle, sparking with quiet humor. The other pale, cold, unnervingly intense. Two eyes, two sides. Part of him was different. Part of him was dangerous.
The question seared my core, and the words tumbled from my mouth.
“Ezra, are you a demon?”
His eyes popped wide. A storm of emotion rippled over his face, then his expression shuttered into a mask of pain and disbelief.
“No.” The word came out hoarse, catching in his throat. “No, I’m not—how could you even think—”
He pushed my arms away, tearing his shirt out of my grasp. He was backing up, shaking his head, his face closing, his emotions shutting down. His searching stare flicked across me, then he spun around, grabbed the back door, and wrenched it open. As he stuffed his feet in his shoes, his other hand snapped out to grab something sitting on the counter beside the exit.
The door swung shut behind him, and I flinched in anticipation of the bang.
The latch clicked quietly, then silence.
I stood there, arms poised at chest height even though I no longer held his shirt in my fists, my lungs locked and throat burning. What had I done?
Chapter Sixteen
Someone thudded down the stairs from the upper floor, and a moment later, Aaron wheeled into the kitchen.
“I heard a crash.” He spotted the mess of broken plates. “Oh shit. What hap—”
The high-pitched snarl of an engine—a familiar sound—interrupted him. I heard that sound every time Kai put his motorcycle through its paces. The engine roared, and the noise rapidly diminished as the bike raced away.
Blank confusion bubbled through me. Kai was upstairs. So how was his bike—
Aaron jerked like he’d been shocked. “Where’s Ezra?”
Tearing my eyes off the door, I gaped at Aaron. “He—he just—”
Tires squealed from the front of the house, accompanied by the surge of a larger engine. My head snapped around. Aaron charged into the living room, and I stumbled after him as he ripped the cardboard off the window. The curb in front of the house was empty—the Keys’ van was gone.
“Kai!” Aaron bellowed. He rushed onto the front landing and pulled on his shoes. “Ezra is gone and the Keys just took off after him!”
Footsteps thundered down the stairs. Kai skidded to a stop at the bottom and almost collided with Aaron.
“What happened?” he yelled furiously as Aaron shot into the living room. “He wasn’t planning to sneak out until later! How did he—”
“He took your bike.” Aaron snatched his car keys off the coffee table, and I realized that’s what Ezra had taken from the counter—Kai’s keys. “We gotta move fast. Those bastards are right on his tail.”
Kai seized his shoes from the front landing but didn’t stop to put them on as he raced after Aaron. They whipped past me, heading for the back door.
Snapping out of my standstill, I bolted to the front landing, grabbed my shoes and purse, and ran after them. They’d already vanished out the back as I leaped over the broken plates. I rammed through the door, stumbled on the porch, then pelted across the yard. The gate was swinging on its hinges.
Headlights bloomed as Aaron’s car started. It backed off the gravel pad, tires spitting rocks into the fence. I sprinted after the car, and as it lurched to a stop so Aaron could shift into drive, I yanked the passenger door open and dove inside.
I landed on Kai’s lap. He grunted in pain.
“Close the door!” he ordered.
Aaron was already accelerating as I tugged the door shut. Kai pushed me against it so he could get both hands on his phone, the screen glowing as he pulled up an app.
“Which way?” Aaron growled, slowing as he reached the alley’s end.
“North. He’s heading toward the guild.”
Aaron spun the wheel, the force of the turn throwing me into Kai. “He wants to get a weapon before he books it. That gives us a chance to catch up.”
I peeked at Kai’s screen. On it was a map with a blinking GPS dot.
“You have a tracker on your motorcycle?” I asked him disbelievingly.
He passed me his phone and reached down to awkwardly pull on his shoes. “Tori, what happened?”
My stomach shriveled to the size of a raisin. “I—I asked him …”
“Tori!” Aaron barked commandingly as he shifted gears. The car tore up the road, streetlamps flashing past, and I flinched as he blew through a yellow light.
“I asked him if he’s a demon,” I whimpered.
Aaron wrenched his eyes off the road to stare at me. “You what?”
“I didn’t mean it like that!” I blurted desperately. “It came out wrong. I meant to ask if he was Demonica, and it just—I said it all wrong.”
“Why would you ask him that?”
“Why would I not?” I shot back, my own anger sparking. “Ezra is stronger than a human, he’s faster, he can make everything go cold and dark. And he has a secret power that looks exactly like demon magic.”
Kai snarled like an angry dog—which was a lot scarier when I was sitting on his lap with no escape. “You’ve ignored everything about him this whole time, but when you finally decide to ask a question—”
“Where is he now?” Aaron interrupted.
Kai took his phone back. “He … he’s stopped. In Oppenheimer Park.”
“What? Why?”
“The Keys must’ve caught him. Ezra knew better than to bolt right under their noses, but he ob
viously wasn’t thinking about anything except getting away.”
My heart clogged my throat, choking me.
Aaron cursed and put his foot down. I clutched the door, petrified that I might go through the windshield, but the streets were deserted even though it was only nine o’clock. Why was it so—oh. I sucked in a breath. We were back in the demon zone, which was still on lockdown. We must’ve passed a barricade while I was freaking out.
On our left, squat apartment buildings with shops on the ground level were abruptly replaced by dark trees and scattered streetlights. Aaron slammed the brakes, took the corner on two wheels, then jumped the curb in front of a bus stop. The wheels spun on grass as the car shot between two trees.
He wasn’t the first vehicle to drive into the small park—a black van was stopped just ahead, its headlights illuminating four figures in the center of the grassy square.
The car slid to a stop a few yards from the Keys’ van. Aaron flung his door open as I felt for the handle behind my hip. My grasping fingers yanked the latch and the passenger door popped open, dumping me out of the car. Kai leaped over me and sprinted toward the figures.
I shot up. The car was still running, both doors hanging open.
Thirty feet in front of the vehicles, the three Keys stood shoulder to shoulder, facing Ezra. Kai’s bike was lying on its side a yard in front of the van’s nose, giving me the horrible impression that the Keys had gone for a round of bumper cars with the bike to unseat Ezra.
The aeromage didn’t appear injured. He was pacing back and forth six yards away from the Keys, but not like he was frustrated or nervous. His sharp, aggressive movements reminded me of an attack dog pacing at the end of its chain.
As Aaron and Kai ran toward Ezra, Halil turned. His big, ugly sword was drawn, and he swung it upward. A wall of fire leaped off the blade and roared across Aaron and Kai’s path. Oh hell. Halil was a pyromage.
Kai jerked to a halt but Aaron charged right through the flames. He burst out the other side, his clothes charred, and slowed to a cautious walk.
Demon Magic and a Martini: The Guild Codex: Spellbound / Four Page 14
