“Okay, I’ll say it one more time,” I said. “You have to stop following me. There are personal things I don’t want you involved in. Business things that, yes, would get me kicked off the board running Beckstrom Enterprises. These people don’t see you as just a Hound. They see you as a possible information leak. As someone who probably does drugs to kick the pain, and who wouldn’t take much to become desperate enough to sell what you know, what you’ve seen, for your next fix.”
Yes, I was lying. And even though I was pretty good at it, because some of what I was saying was true and I’d been working on a bulletproof explanation for some time now, I was also hoping he was in enough pain, or distracted enough, he wouldn’t scent the lie on me.
“Nice bunch of people you do business with,” he said. His voice was a little stronger and he didn’t seem to be sweating quite so badly.
“Business isn’t about friendships. It isn’t about nice,” I said. “Everyone has their own interests to protect.”
“And you’re protecting your money.” He rolled his head forward to look out the front window. “Sweet of you.”
“No. I’m protecting the people I care about. Violet. My sibling. The Hounds. And that means you, Davy. But so help me, if you don’t smart up and listen to me this time, I am going to report you to the police for harassment, stalking, and anything else that will keep you from getting in trouble. Or getting me in trouble. Do you understand that?”
“I heard you,” he said. But from the set of his jaw, he wasn’t listening. Stubborn, angry young man.
“I should take you home.”
“Thought you had a job lined up with Stotts.”
When I didn’t say anything, he sighed. “You’re such a hypocrite. All Hounds need a backup. Those are your rules. Yours. I’m your backup tonight.”
“My backup can’t stand.”
“Since when do you need me to do jumping jacks?” he asked. “I just need to watch. I won’t get in the way. You know I’m good at that.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I want to see what happened to Bea. Want to know what I felt, if I really felt it.”
We were on the bridge now, and traffic was light, since it was pretty late and there weren’t any big games or concerts letting out.
“Please,” he said. “I need to know I’m not going insane. That magic . . . that it didn’t screw me up, permanently.” And the last bit was quiet, wrenched out of him like he was angry with himself for even saying it. Or just very, very afraid it might be true.
Magic in me pushed, warmed under my skin, and left a prickly itch behind. The lights on the bridge flickered for a moment, went dark. The magical backup generators for the lights did not kick on.
Davy felt the drop in magic too. He grunted. “What was that?”
Lights, regular electric lights, flicked back on, burned bright.
“I don’t know.” I didn’t. I had ideas. The storm was brewing. They didn’t know exactly when it would hit. They thought we had a few days. They could be wrong.
We were on the other side of the bridge. Davy didn’t say anything. Just waited as I slowed the car, weighing my odds of actually getting him home, out of the car, and locked in his apartment while I used his car to get to Stotts.
Wasn’t gonna happen.
I headed into town.
“Thanks,” he said. He didn’t say anything else until it started raining.
“Wipers are on the left.”
I flicked them on. Glanced at him. His eyes were closed again. Still tired, but the pain seemed to have passed. Maybe the pain was physical. Side effect from his head wound, from his collapsed lung. Appendix or something.
Magic wasn’t the only way people got hurt.
“I noticed Zayvion was there,” he said.
“And?”
“I didn’t think he had an investment in your dad’s business.”
“He’s my boyfriend,” I said. “We have an investment in each other.”
“And Shame?”
“Anyone tell you how nosy you are?” And how damn observant? I thought.
“No. I usually keep my nosy questions to myself.”
“Shame’s mother owns the inn. She used to know my father. They weren’t friends, but she is a smart business-woman. If you were paying that close of attention, you also noticed he’d had a couple beers. I don’t think he was there to enhance his portfolio. I think he was there for the free booze.”
Davy smiled again. “My kind of guy.”
“Do not make friends with him,” I said. “He’s trouble.”
“And I’m not?”
“No, Davy,” I said, angling the car toward Chapman Square. “You’re a good kid. If you’d work on your pain-in-the-ass tendencies, you’d be real nice.”
“Too bad that isn’t going to happen anytime soon,” he muttered. “Real nice doesn’t get you very far.”
“Real nice can keep you from getting beat up,” I said.
He smiled. “Right. Maybe we should both work on it, then.”
Like I said. Pain in the ass.
The blue and red lights of the ambulance glided over the dark, magic-caged buildings that surrounded the area. I spotted the MERC’s cleanup van, and a few people who might have been Stotts’s crew moving around in the shadows. The ambulance was just easing away from the curb, lights on, but no siren. I wanted to follow it, go to the hospital, make sure Bea was all right.
I briefly considered sending Davy along to do just that, but his eyes were closed. Kid was in no shape to drive. From the pace of his breathing he’d be asleep soon.
Police tape and traffic cones sectioned off part of the park, which as far as I could see was empty. I didn’t know what job Bea would have been Hounding. Sometimes a Hound was hired by the city to make sure there wasn’t any magical mischief going down on city property, but usually Jack took those calls. I searched my memory, wondering if he or Bea had mentioned going to Hound Chapman Square.
“Davy?”
He sucked in a quick breath. I’d just woken him. He blinked, sat a little straighter, got his bearings pretty fast, and glanced over at me. “Yeah?”
“Did Bea or Jack say they were doing the park?”
He looked out the window at the police tape. “No. Not at last week’s meeting. Maybe a last-minute jobber?”
“Maybe.” I parked the car a block away. “Stay here. Get some sleep. I’m going to be right over there with the cops—”
“The cursed cop,” he corrected.
“Allegedly cursed cop,” I said. “Stay here. Do not walk out on that street. Do not drive this car. You are too tired, and would probably get yourself killed if you tried to do either.”
He shook his head. “You just can’t give a guy a compliment, can you?”
It wasn’t a promise. But it was all I had time to get out of him.
I left the keys in the ignition and got out of the car. I still wore the void stone necklace. I couldn’t take it off and leave it with Davy. If he touched it, he would know it was a kind of magic unavailable to the common user, and then he’d start digging for answers. Luckily, I could cast magic while wearing the stone—it just made it a little more difficult.
The wind was stronger here, funneled by the buildings, and cold enough I was glad I’d worn my heavier coat. I pulled up my hood and made quick work of the sidewalk. Stotts stood at the end of the block, looking my way.
“Hey,” I said when I got close enough. “Show me where you need me.”
Stotts was a good-looking man. Latino heritage gave him soft eyes, heavy lashes and eyebrows, and an easy smile that had caught my friend Nola’s heart and not let go.
So far, their long-distance relationship was working. But she lived three hundred miles away on a farm, and he was a detective. Stotts had gone out and visited her for a week, but other than that, it was all about the phone.
Well, that and the computer. Nola had finally given in and had a computer with Internet access
installed in her old farmhouse. Love. It finds a way to make a person want to change.
Tonight Stotts was wearing what I usually saw him in—a trench and scarf, slacks, nice shoes. No hat.
Even before he said anything, I knew something bad had happened here. Something wrong. Really wrong. I’d felt this before. But I couldn’t remember where.
“Over here.” He started down one of the paths beneath the old elm and gingko trees. “That Davy Silvers with you?”
“Yes. He followed me to a business meeting. When I got your call, I made him let me use his car.”
“Hmm. Any other Hounds out here?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even know Davy was following me. And Bea didn’t say she was going to be here tonight. Are you sure she was Hounding?”
“Someone was throwing magic around.”
He didn’t have to point to where Bea had been hurt. I could feel it, taste it on the air.
Stotts didn’t give me any more information. And he wouldn’t. Police never wanted to influence a Hound’s initial response and reaction to a magical-crime site. So I didn’t waste my time asking him any more questions.
I cleared my mind, mentally singing my little “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack” song to settle my racing thoughts. Magic pressed in on my head, a heaviness, like the air was thickening for the storm. It wasn’t my dad, and didn’t seem to be coming from the void stone.
Weird.
I set a Disbursement, my latest favorite—muscle aches—and then traced the glyphs for Sight, Smell, Taste.
Magic within me stuttered, like a smooth stone rubbing across my skin. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t comfortable either. I inhaled, exhaled, and urged magic up through my bones, my muscles, my blood. Magic stretched out slowly, thick, heavy. I traced the glyphs again, more to keep my concentration while I waited for magic to respond than out of need to redraw the spell. The heaviness in my head, in the magic, suddenly lifted and magic flooded through me. Too fast. Too much. Too hot.
The glyphs caught fire, wild jeweled colors of raw, deadly magic, licking down my arms, into my fingertips searing the glyphs into the night air.
Magic is fast. Too fast to see. But I wasn’t the only one who saw it.
Stotts lifted his hand and traced a dampening spell—I think Smother or maybe Cancel.
“Wait,” I said. But it was too late. He threw his spell at my spell.
There is a reason why people don’t walk around throwing spells at each other, or getting into wizards’ duels like you see in the movies. Every user casts magic differently from other users. Like handwriting, magic follows the form each user casts for it. When two forms clash, you never know if they will blend, extinguish, or go up like a barrel of gunpowder in a bonfire.
Right now, I was betting on the gunpowder thing. I didn’t have control of the magic pouring out of me. I was a leaky powder keg, and Stotts’s spell was a tossed match.
I clapped my hands, breaking the flow of magic. Yes, it stung. No, it didn’t knock me unconscious. Thank you, training sessions.
Stotts’s spell slammed into mine.
There was a terrific flash—a blast of green lightning—but no sound. Magic clashed and sucked all sound out of the air, leaving behind painful silence.
I inhaled, exhaled.
And then the night was just the night again. No thickness in the air from the encroaching storm, no strangely heavy magic. The night filled with sounds of traffic and, somewhere farther off, a train. I could smell the damp pavement and trees again.
“Allie?” Stotts said. “You’re burned.”
Wrong. I was angry.
“What the hell?” I wiped at the sweat running down the edge of my temple. I was suddenly very, very hot, and very, very cold. “Never get in the way when I cast magic. If you want me to Hound for you, you stay the hell out of my way and let me get the job done. You could have contaminated the entire scene.” Or blown up the block. Or killed us.
I was yelling, or at least I thought I was. The other sounds, things like city traffic and air noise, still seemed rather distant now that I thought about it, like someone had shoved cotton in my ears.
Apparently angry, screaming women weren’t something that fazed Detective Stotts.
“You were burning,” he said calmly. He looked over my shoulder. “Call an ambulance.” Stotts sounded a lot farther away than he should. Didn’t matter. I was good at reading lips. The person behind me whom he was talking to, probably a cop, might have responded. I couldn’t tell.
“I’m fine.”
Stotts gave me a look that could melt the hinges off the doors to hell. “You are burned. And bleeding.”
“I’m Hounding.”
“No. You’re not.”
I took a step and Stotts grabbed my arm. Strong. He was a police officer, after all.
“You are dismissed from this case.” He made sure to stand in front of me so I could see his lips moving. He was not a happy man. “I’ll find another Hound to take the job.”
Someone stepped into my range of vision. I hadn’t heard Davy coming—ears—but he was close enough I heard him say, “I’ll do it.”
I scowled. Hounding for Stotts wasn’t always a hard job. But Davy wasn’t kidding when he said the man was cursed. A lot—too damn many—Hounds had died working cases for the detective.
“You’re injured,” I said to Davy.
He raised his eyebrows. “I had a headache a while ago. I’m good now.”
Liar.
“No,” I said.
Stotts let go of my arm. “That would be fine. Allie, step back.”
I didn’t step back, but I didn’t move forward. Davy followed Stotts closer to the center of the park, stopped, traced a glyph in the air, and then pulled magic up from the network of conduits and lines that ran beneath the streets.
Easy. Like he’d been doing this all his life. Magic answered him, did exactly as it should—followed the lines of the glyph and gave him Sight and Taste and Smell. He paced a large circuit around a couple benches and trees, the wide half circle of brick steps just south of us. Nothing else in the park except the ashes of the old spell that I could only guess still lingered there.
My hands itched and stung, like I’d slapped them against stone. I wanted to cast magic so badly, it hurt.
Instead I wiped the thin line of sweat off my forehead again. Not sweat. Blood. Great. Stotts wasn’t kidding I was hurt. Weird that I didn’t feel it.
I gently ran my fingertips through my hair, searching for a cut. Found one just inside my hairline on the left. A scratch, but deep enough to bleed.
And finding that scratch made me realize how tight and sunburned the left side of my face felt. Which meant Stotts was right about that too. I was burned. But not so badly I couldn’t have finished Hounding for him. Even my hearing was clearing up.
Fine, if I wasn’t Hounding, I was backup. Which meant I needed to keep an eye on Davy. I paced over to Stotts, still angry enough to ignore the pain of the burn and the cut. “You watching?” I asked, meaning, of course if he was watching with magic.
Stotts had his thumb and middle finger pinched together, his hand held out in front of him. I knew he was holding another glyph there, probably something like what he threw at me.
“Not yet,” he said. “I want to make sure he doesn’t go up in flame. Once in a night is my limit.”
I calmed my mind, set a Disbursement again, and traced the spell for Sight. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult. Magic lifted through me like morning fog, soft and easy, and filled the glyph.
It was like someone had turned on the sun. The park broke open into sharp colors and deep shadows. No watercolor people in sight. That was the one benefit of having my dad in my head. Somehow, his presence blocked my awareness of the Veiled—the imprints of dead magic users on the flow of magic—and better yet, he blocked their awareness of me.
I didn’t think he did it on purpose. Knowing him, he’d rather not help me like that.
/> Davy finished pacing the circle. I’d never watched him work before. He was a good Hound, knew when to let go of a spell that wasn’t giving him the information he wanted. Knew how to cast replacement spells quickly and quietly. The whole thing took all of two minutes tops. And in those two minutes, Davy should have gotten a full picture of what had happened magically, and who cast the magic that hurt Bea.
But even from this distance, I could recognize that spell.
A gate. Someone had opened a gate here, and closed it just as quickly. Fast enough the Closers back at Maeve’s hadn’t noticed. Unless it was a Closer back at Maeve’s who had opened it. Could they open gates long-distance?
If they could, I didn’t think they would be sloppy enough to hurt someone and leave a trace of the gate behind.
When Davy turned and looked over at us, I saw it again—the red flash in his eyes. The red eye flash had been happening ever since Tomi knocked him out and used his blood to open the gate in St. Johns that let the Hungers through. I kept hoping it was just an aftereffect of his blood being used to crack open the doors between life and death. I kept hoping it would wear off, and fade away. Didn’t look like it was getting better, and it had been months since he was hurt.
Davy strode over, hands tucked in his armpits as if he was dodging a hard chill.
I let go of Sight, and Stotts released whatever protective spell he held at the ready.
“Bea didn’t cast magic,” he said. “It’s not her signature here. But I can’t tell whose signature it is.” He shivered, looking a little tired again, and a lot cold. Why didn’t he have on a warm coat?
“No idea at all?” Stotts asked.
Davy answered him, but looked at me. “I’ve never seen magic cast like that. The glyph is crushed in on itself. It shouldn’t have worked at all, but magic followed it.”
“Could you tell what kind of spell it was?” Stotts asked. “Or what it did?”
He shook his head. “It might have been a ward of some type. A lock? It doesn’t make sense. Whatever it was, it’s too tangled and fading fast, like someone crushed their own spell to get rid of it. Really fucking weird.”