Magic to the Bone

  ‘‘I already called,’’ a deep voice behind me said.

  I stopped and looked over at Zayvion, who was still leaning against the wall, coffee in his hand.

  ‘‘Before you got here,’’ he said. ‘‘They’re on the way.’’ As if to illustrate his point, the distant siren grew louder.

  Convenient, that. But should I take his word for it? I opened my mouth to say something. Mama beat me to it.

  ‘‘You have no right here, Zayvion Jones.’’ Mama’s voice was sharp, and heavy with that muddy accent I could not place. She was more than angry. She was furious. In all the years I’d known her, I’d never seen her so mad, not even when she’d been robbed for the third time in a month. ‘‘My family. My home. My street. Not yours, Zayvion Jones. Not one of your kind.’’

  Zayvion stiffened for the briefest moment. He suddenly seemed much less the harmless drifter and much more a figure of authority. He shot a look at me, those brown eyes calculating something. Maybe trying to decide if I was friend or foe. I don’t know what he came up with, but he leaned back and that edge of authority—of power—was gone, leaving him just a harmless drifter again.

  He shrugged. ‘‘Then you can tell them to leave when they get here. Tell them there’s nothing’s wrong with your son.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ I said, not wanting Mama’s anger to override her reason. ‘‘The ambulance is a good idea. He needs a doctor—someone who can break an Offload pattern or set a Siphon to bleed away the strength of this spell.’’ I walked back over to Boy, the youngest, and rested my hand on his too-quickly beating heart.

  I wanted to help the kid, wanted to tear the ropes of magic from him. But the magic fed off him as if he were the caster. That is the power of an Offload: it makes someone else pay for magic they have not used. I did not have the training to break such a strong spell without risking Boy’s life.

  ‘‘Who, Allie?’’ Mama asked again.

  I shook my head, angry at my father and his company for thinking they could get away with something like this, and worried that Mama might do something stupid—like send out a half dozen of her Boys with guns to even the score. I didn’t want her to do that. Not until I had a chance to do it first.

  ‘‘It was a corporate hit—an Offload for magic used in the city. A lot of magic. For something big. I’m going to trace it back to the caster. I’ll let you know when I find out for sure. Call the cops and tell them.’’

  I strode to the door, angry and a little dizzy. I hoped the Boys would take care of things and see that Boy the youngest got to a doctor, even if Mama was too angry or too stubborn to do so.

  ‘‘I want them to hurt, Allie,’’ Mama demanded. ‘‘I want them to pay for my poor boy. Tell them we’ll go to court, go to news channels, tear them down. Tell them they will pay.’’

  ‘‘They’ll pay,’’ I said as I brushed past Zayvion and straight-armed the door open.

  I was half a block away when the ambulance turned the corner and headed straight to Mama’s. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Mama standing on her front step, waving them down.

  Maybe Boy still had a chance.

  Anger took me a long way, down the street and five more blocks before I hailed a cab. Anger made me not care it was raining, made me not care Zayvion followed me and held the cab door open and slid across the vinyl seat next to me. Anger even made me tell the cabbie to take me to Beckstrom Enterprises as quickly as he could.

  ‘‘You okay?’’ Zayvion asked. When I didn’t answer, he put his hand on my arm—the one with the scars. And his hand felt good there, soothing and warm like winter mint.

  I pulled away. I didn’t much trust him, though I had to give him points for calling the ambulance back there. Boy could very well have died if he hadn’t. ‘‘I’m fine.’’

  He frowned. ‘‘Allie, your neck. It’s bruising.’’

  Great. I’d forgotten to set a Disbursement spell when I cast magic to Hound Boy. That meant I didn’t get to choose how magic would make me pay for using it.

  Lovely.

  ‘‘It’s fine.’’ I pulled my coat collar closer to my jaw. I hated being around people when I hurt. But I’d done this to myself. I always paid my own price for using magic, mostly because I didn’t want to be indebted to a Proxy. If I had remembered to cast a Disbursement spell, I could have chosen how the pain would manifest: a two-day migraine, a week of insomnia, even flulike sickness—something fairly dramatic that I could get over quickly. I hated the slower Disbursement route some Hounds took. Sure it made for a less immediately painful price, but one that lasted much longer and took a harder toll. I’d seen too many Hounds end up blind, deaf, and insane. That is, if the pain pills, booze, and drugs didn’t kill them first.

  I glanced at the back of my hands as new bruises darkened, and tried to take a deep breath but couldn’t because of the sharp pinch of pain beneath my ribs. Great. I was probably bruising inside and out, and wouldn’t be able to move in about an hour.

  The good news just kept coming.

  Zayvion made a small tsk sound. ‘‘You didn’t forget to set a Disbursement, did you?’’

  ‘‘Bite me.’’

  The cab screeched around a corner and I realized I had forgotten something else. I had forked over my last ten bucks for the cab ride to Mama’s and was now completely and totally broke.

  Fantastic.

  I licked my lips, which also hurt, then looked over at Zayvion. He watched me with a Zen sort of expression. He didn’t say anything. Just sat there like he had all the time in the world to wait for me to say something.

  So I said something. ‘‘That dinner you asked me about.’’

  He tipped his chin down and raised an eyebrow.

  My stomach did that flip again.

  ‘‘Yes?’’

  ‘‘You think you could spring for cab fare instead and we’ll call it even?’’

  ‘‘Will you tell me who put the hit on Boy?’’

  ‘‘Are you related to Mama?’’ I asked. ‘‘Are you a cop? Do you have her permission to receive that information? Then no. My work is confidential. I don’t even know why you’re in this cab with me.’’

  ‘‘Maybe I’d like to get to know you better.’’ He gave me that nice smile again, and it did more than just make my stomach flip. Even though he was wet and slouched against the grimy seat of a cab, and even though I had just told him to mind his own business, I found myself thinking about what that soft mouth of his would taste like.

  What could I say? I was a sucker for guys who made solid decisions during a crisis, and weren’t afraid to step up and help people, especially little kids. But what I couldn’t figure out was what stake he had in this.

  When I didn’t say anything, Zayvion looked out the window, calmly watching the streets whiz by at an alarming speed. We were heading downtown fast, the buildings going from gray concrete to glass and iron and steel.

  ‘‘I’ll figure out who did it when we get to wherever we’re going, you know,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Maybe. But why do you care? Do you think you can cash in on this somehow? Are you a reporter slumming for dirt?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘Are you one of Mama’s Boys?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘A cop?’’

  The cab swerved, laid on the horn, and made a nauseating left-hand turn. I brushed my hand over my forehead, wiping away sweat. I suddenly wasn’t feeling so good. Not nearly good enough to be stuck in a cab that smelled like curry and gym socks with a guy I couldn’t get a good read on.

  ‘‘Allie?’’

  ‘‘Listen,’’ I said, trying to be reasonable. ‘‘It doesn’t matter who I’m going to see. I could be picking up my dry cleaning for all you know.’’

  ‘‘We’ll see, won’t we?’’

  ‘‘There is no ‘we’ in this, Zayvion.’’

  He shrugged. ‘‘That could change.’’

  Great. A guy who liked girls who played hard to get
.

  ‘‘Is this how you usually pick up women?’’

  That made him smile again. ‘‘Why? Is it working?’’

  If I weren’t feeling so sick, and so mad at my dad, I might actually enjoy this sort of situation. But not today. Today I had to face a man I hadn’t seen since I was eighteen and had suddenly found myself leaving for Harvard. My father is good at magic. Very good. It took me two years to shed the mind-numbing grip of Influence he had cast. Two years of attending the school he wanted me to attend, learning the skills he wanted me to learn, and becoming the thing he wanted me to become. Two years of being his puppet. And now I was going to stand up to him and tell him I wasn’t going to let him get away with hurting a little kid.

  ‘‘I’m just not interested right now, okay?’’

  The cab stopped at a light, gunned through the green, and jerked to a stop double-parked across the street from a high-rise. The building was forty-eight floors of rough, black stone and dark, reflective windows. Elaborate lines of iron and steel twisted like gothic vines to web the entire structure. At the very top of the building was a spire supporting a massive gold-tipped Beckstrom Storm Rod. There was absolutely no mistaking that the entire building was a harvesting station for the rare storms of wild magic that hit the city.

  ‘‘Leave the meter running,’’ I said. ‘‘I’ll be right back out to pay.’’ I pulled on the door handle, opened the door, and groaned. I felt like I’d just lost a fight with a bulldozer.

  The cold air felt good, then it felt too cold. Shivering made my entire body hurt. Still, I made it through the lead-lined glass front doors, across the cavernous lobby, sparsely decorated with wedges of black marble against white marble, and to the elevator without drawing much attention from the business-suited comers and goers within. Maybe my bruising wasn’t as bad as Zayvion said it was.

  My father’s office was, of course, the entire top floor of the building. And Zayvion, for no reason I could understand, followed me across the lobby to the elevator.

  ‘‘What part of not interested don’t you get, Zayvion?’’

  He held up a hand. ‘‘I have an appointment on the top floor. I also paid for the cab. You owe me ten bucks.’’

  ‘‘How thoughtful,’’ I drawled. ‘‘And the top floor? Isn’t that interesting?’’

  The elevator door opened on a polished wood interior—a warm contrast to the rest of the Art Deco marble and iron decor of the lobby. Zayvion put his hand out and held the door. He waited for me to enter the elevator.

  I hesitated. What if he was part of the hit on Boy? He didn’t smell of old magic, but right now, hurting and angry, my Hound instincts were seriously off. Even if he wasn’t part of the hit, getting in an empty elevator with someone who might turn out to be only an everyday sort of stalker, wasn’t exactly on my ‘‘good girl, you get to live’’ list of smart choices.

  Cripes. I could take him. Even sick. Even sore. Even in an elevator.

  I walked in and pressed the button for the top floor. Zayvion made a little ‘‘what a surprise’’ sound and stood on the other side of the elevator, his hands folded in front of him.

  The door slid closed and suddenly the elevator seemed way too small for the two of us. I took a good deep breath, trying not to think about the walls closing in, the ceiling pressing down, the floor mashing up, until there was no air, no space. My palms were wet with sweat.

  This was not working. Think of happy. Think of good. Coffee was good, even though I hadn’t had any yet today. Flowers were good—flowers in big open fields. Big open fields like Nola’s farm were good. It had been too long since I’d seen her. I’d only been to her big open farm with big open fields twice since her husband, John, died.

  Death was not good. My chest tightened. That wasn’t good either, so I went back to thinking about flowers and big open fields, and the coffee I wished I’d had this morning.

  I hated that I had to see my dad. It had been seven years since he and I had been in a room together. I wished it could be seven more. And having to see him like this—because of what he had done to Boy—made me really mad.

  The one thing Harvard got right was this: anger made using magic impossible. For everyone. No exception. It was good because it simplified some things, like whether or not murder via magic was premeditated. Quick answer: always.

  I worked on thinking calm thoughts and whispered a mantra, drawing upon the remaining magic within me. This time I intoned a Disbursement, and traced the glyph in the air with my fingertip. Magic was invisible to the unaided eye. And unless you were really good at reading finger motions—a lot like reading lips—you never knew what people were up to, so I wasn’t worried about Zayvion seeing that, in about two days, I’d pay for this little magic jaunt with a doozy of a headache. Right now, all I wanted was ten minutes of my father’s time. And maybe his blood.

  The elevator door opened.

  I escaped the coffin on pulleys and walked across the lush burgundy carpet to the single rosewood reception desk, where a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old D cup manned the phone behind a sleek computer console.

  ‘‘May I help you?’’ she asked.

  I leaned down and put my hand on the edge of her desk, which hurt, but also got me a clear shot at eye contact, something essential for Influencing. ‘‘I hope you’re having a wonderful day.’’ I smiled and mentally intoned a boost of magic into my words.

  Her eyes were light brown and lined with green makeup that looked really nice on her. She was pretty, innocent-looking, and with that hint of Influence behind my words, she already resembled a deer caught in a floodlight. No wonder why Dad hired her. He always picked the ones who were easy to bamboozle.

  ‘‘I’d like to see Mr. Daniel Beckstrom now,’’ I said. ‘‘Please show me in.’’

  ‘‘Of course. This way.’’ She gave me a giddy smile and practically skipped down the hallway—no easy feat in heels on carpet—eager to please under the sway of Influence.

  Hells. How could I go months resisting the lure of using Influence, and as soon as I was in the same building with my father, it was the first thing I did? I swore and tried to do some damage control.

  ‘‘Are you sure he has time?’’ I asked. ‘‘I could wait to see him.’’

  ‘‘Oh, no. Of course he has time for you.’’ She glanced over her shoulder and nodded, and I worried that she might run into a wall. ‘‘This is it.’’ She looked forward again, and managed not to hit her head on the wide, dark wood door of my dad’s office. She held the door open for me and smiled like I was a rock star on tour.

  ‘‘Thanks,’’ I said.

  She practically gleamed.

  I stepped into my dad’s office.

  Time, seven years, to be exact, can change a lot of things. The furniture, all steel, wrought iron, and smoked glass, had been upgraded, maybe the carpet had too, but there was still an acre of black marble desk spread in front of the panoramic view of the city, including the river and mountain, when it wasn’t raining so hard. And standing behind that desk, immaculate in a suit that cost more than the building I lived in, was my dad.

  My height or better, my dark-hair, pale-skin looks or better, he held a cup of coffee in one hand and seemed genuinely startled to see me walking toward him. I was going to play that advantage for as long as I had it because the man hadn’t gotten to the top of the magic harvest and refinery technology business thinking slow on his feet.

  ‘‘Allison,’’ he breathed.