And one of these days when he called on it, Life magic was going to take over for good and Terric wasn’t going to come back to being Terric.
Every time he lost control of Life magic, it changed him. Sure, it had been subtle for the first year or so. How he’d forget to laugh or to carry on a conversation without long pauses. How he’d stare out a window and whisper to himself for hours and not remember doing it.
Each time he used Life magic, it took him a little longer to come back to being the Terric I knew and sometimes, such as around repentance holidays, liked.
He’d told me I was just making shit up about him going inhuman.
He was right to think so. I made shit up all the time. But not that shit.
Terric, who still looked mostly human, drew a glyph with his free hand, tracing white magic that glowed green at the edges into the air.
Something brushed my boot.
Plants sprang to life. Vines and flowers and those tropical leafy things that always look plastic in hotel lobbies wriggled up out of the cracks in the concrete and bricks, growing at time-lapse speeds.
“No. Just. Don’t,” I said.
“Shut up and eat your vegetables,” Terric snarled.
Annoying—that was still the Terric I knew.
The plants were elbow high, vibrating with life. Terric showed no sign of backing down.
I hated him for not backing down. I hated him for being right. I needed life. And he could give it to me without it killing him.
Much.
I couldn’t endure the hunger a second more. I cussed and threw my hands out to both sides, palms down. I gave in to the hunger and devoured the plants, greedily consuming, killing. Without moving a single inch, I sucked the sweet life out of every stalk and frond he called up out of the world.
I was pulling on the life around me so hard the concrete under my feet cracked and shifted as I dug down looking for more.
As fast as I could consume life, Terric could call upon it faster. Life magic poured out of him in that alien white light, green and growing, smothering me, drowning me in life.
Somewhere in the back of my head a reasonable part of me was counting down from ten. When I hit one, I’d punch Terric in the face if that’s what it took to get his hands off me and break his magic spree.
We’d both done stupid things when we lost control of magic. Stupider things when we’d lost it at the same time, together.
I’d sort of made it my life’s goal not to use magic with him. Not to let him use magic with me. Because when I did, when we did, Terric wasn’t Terric anymore. He wasn’t human. And one of these days he wasn’t going to recover from that.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
Two and a haaalf.
I curled my right hand into a fist. Time to stop this. Time to stop him.
Before I lost him.
“Terric,” Detective Stotts said from somewhere to my right, completely blowing my concentration. “What is going on?”
Detective Paul Stotts was a decent human being with Hispanic heritage and an unflappable moral code. Today, he was wearing a blue scarf tucked into the collar of his jacket, dark slacks, and a frown. They used to say he was cursed, but that wasn’t true. An awful lot of cover-ups and deaths in this city were caused by magic people didn’t know about, and it was Stotts’s job to investigate those deaths.
It had also been the job of the Authority to keep people, and especially detectives like Stotts, from discovering how deadly magic could be back then. The Authority did that by taking away people’s memories.
Weird stuff used to happen a lot around Detective Stotts. There had been no explanation for it because we made sure there wouldn’t be.
Now everyone had their memories back. Including him. It was a problem.
“About time you got here,” I said. I shoved Terric’s hand off me and stepped to one side to make sure I was out of his reach. I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets to keep from touching him again.
Terric took a step back, blinking hard like he wasn’t quite seeing the real world yet. Not a lot of human in that angelic face of his. Not a lot of my friend.
Had I let it go on too long?
I bent, scooped up the Void stone buried in the plant ashes, and dropped the stone into his hand. He shuddered at the contact of the magic-canceling stone.
“Shamus,” Stotts said. “I haven’t seen you out of a bar for the last month.”
“You’ve been keeping an eye on me? You’re a sweetheart. This”—I pointed at the ox—“is something Terric seemed worried about.”
Stotts glanced at the man. His eyebrows went up a bit. That Bind spell I’d cast was standard back in the day, but much rarer to see now.
“Did you do this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He wasn’t using his inside voice.”
Stotts slid me a scowl.
I so didn’t care.
“Terric?” he asked.
Terric didn’t say anything.
His eyes were closed, hands curled around the stone, pressing it against his chest as if hoping it would fill a hole inside him. His lips were moving so slightly I couldn’t tell what he might be whispering.
He swallowed hard, then opened his eyes.
A lot of light coming out of those blues. Cold, silver light.
“Terric?” Stotts said in his put-the-gun-down voice.
“We got a lead,” Terric said like he was reading someone else’s lines from a note card. “This man, Hamilton, Stan Hamilton, has information on the girl who showed up dead out in Forest Park yesterday.”
By the end of the sentence, he sounded more like Terric. Looked more like him too. Blue eyes blue, white glow gone. Life magic was pushed back somewhere inside him where most people wouldn’t look.
He crossed his arms and made a point of not looking at me. I wasn’t most people.
“I called as soon as I saw him,” he said. “Then Shame got involved. Started a fight.”
“Started? You mean ended a fight,” I corrected. “Like usual.”
“You should know better,” Stotts said.
“Excuse me?”
“There are procedures for using magic on other citizens, Mr. Flynn. Rules that every person in this city must follow now, whether they are Authority or non-Authority.”
“Hello? Choir here you’re singing to.”
“I’m assuming Terric told you to stay out of this matter with Hamilton?”
“Yes, but—”
“Procedure. You will make some effort to follow it from now on.”
I bit down on a smile. My bad habit of arguing with police officers had never once worked in my favor. “We called you, didn’t we?”
“Terric called me.”
“And?”
“This town doesn’t need a vigilante,” he said.
“Vigilante? You got me wrong, mate. I’m too lazy for that kind of thing. Spent a month in a bar, remember?”
“I’ve seen the things you’ve done in the past.”
“Yeah, well, that was the past.”
Right about then another police car pulled up.
“Let’s keep it that way,” Stotts said. “Just to be clear, you’ll let the police do our job and you’ll stay out of it. If you want a fight, do me a favor to take it outside my jurisdiction so I don’t have to explain to Allie or Nola why I threw you in jail. Better yet, go on vacation, get a girlfriend.”
“I’ll get right on that,” I said.
Stotts headed to the ox with a pair of handcuffs. Yes, my spell had held. Because I’m that good.
I didn’t think he really worried about telling his wife, Nola, or her best friend, Allie, that he’d thrown me in jail. It wouldn’t surprise them, anyway. More likely he just didn’t want to deal with the paperwork.
I sympathized.
I turned and made for the street.
“Shame?” Stotts sa
id. “The spell?”
I waved my hand over my shoulder and broke the spell. It pattered to the ground and hissed out like wet coals.
Eleanor floated along at my right, keeping her distance. Smart ghost. Not that there was anything more horrible I could do to her. I hoped.
Terric fell into step on my left.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell I just got in the middle of?” I asked.
“A murder. They think. Ten-year-old. Forest Park.”
“I thought you said we didn’t deal with murderers.”
“We don’t,” he said. “Unless they use magic to do it.”
Fuck. That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. People weren’t supposed to be able to use magic to kill.
I dug in my coat pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit up. The ache to consume was satisfied for the moment, thanks to Terric, but I was still twitchy.
“Let’s just get to the damn meeting,” I said.
“You don’t care about any of this, do you?”
“Been saying that for months, mate.”
“Shame.” He grabbed my arm.
I stopped, turned, and looked at him.
“Someone is murdering people with magic,” he said.
“I heard you. Let go of my arm.”
“And you don’t care.”
“I don’t anything.” I shoved his shoulder. He took half a step back but didn’t let go of my sleeve. “I haven’t been involved in this shit for a year,” I snapped. “Why should I change that now?”
“Because a little girl is dead.”
I nodded and sucked on my cigarette, doing what I could to hide how that really made me feel—angry and sick. And, yeah, helpless. The world was a fucked-up place. There was jack all I could do about it.
“And?” I asked with no tone.
“Jesus.” He exhaled. “What happened to you, Shame?”
“Not everyone wants to be a hero.”
“How about being a decent human being?”
“This is as decent as I get.”
He stared at me a little longer. I had nothing left to say. He let go of my coat. Let go of me. Stormed off to the car.
Didn’t blame him.
I threw the cig on the ground. It was ashes already. Consumed.
I tipped my head and sunglasses down so I could get a good look at the redheaded chick with the sniper rifle on the roof of the building across the street. She had a hell of a view of the alley from up there, an unobstructed shot, and had been following me since yesterday morning, or maybe the day before that.
I hadn’t told Terric about her yet. Thought for sure she’d have taken the shot at him or me when she had the chance, but she hadn’t. So, rule out our imminent death by sniper rifle.
That was good, right?
She was also packing up, so that meant the cops weren’t her target either, and neither was the ox, Hamilton. Huh.
“Haul it, Flynn,” Terric yelled. “We’re late.”
“Like normal?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Yep. He was angry. How human of him.
“Maybe you should take a vacation,” I said as I neared the car.
“Oh, every day’s a vacation when I’m around you, Flynn.”
“Right. I know. But I’m serious. You could take your boyfriend. Is it still Mike? No. Greg? Wait. That was last year’s model. You’ve traded him in for someone shiny and new, haven’t you?”
I ducked into the car and Eleanor passed through the closed door to sit in the backseat.
“Shut up, Shame,” he said.
And just because we were sometimes friends, and that redheaded sniper not killing us had oddly put me in a better mood, I did.
Chapter 3
If you ask me, there are about a thousand better places to have a meeting in Portland than the old woolen mill over in St. Johns. For instance, any place that sells beer.
Obviously, no one asked me.
Terric parked a couple blocks away and started walking without so much as a single word. He hadn’t said anything on the drive over either. Not that I cared. My headache was pounding spikes into my brain. Sure, he’d used magic to make things grow so I could kill and consume so my hunger for death wasn’t back yet. But it wouldn’t be gone long.
I got out of the car and lit a cigarette, smoking as I made my way to the front entrance. Terric stormed inside the building before I’d even made it halfway down the street. I took a look around to see if Assassin Chick was up on the roofs or down the dark alleys.
Nope.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little disappointed.
Ah well. It was, if not fun, at least distracting while it lasted.
Of course a meeting roomful of magic users might be its own little good time.
I threw my cigarette to the ground, then walked into the building. The main meeting room was up a couple flights, and I so wasn’t walking those. I took the elevator at the end of the hall, stepped in, pushed the button, and stuffed my hands in my coat pockets while I waited.
The only other person in the elevator with me was Eleanor. She stood near the buttons and bent a little, her hair flowing down around her face in that sort of underwater slo-mo she had going for her.
She pushed a button, but it didn’t respond to her, so she quickly pushed all the other buttons.
“Worst. Poltergeist. Ever,” I muttered.
She made a face at me.
The door opened and that kind of silence that makes you want to chew gum filled the hall. Mute spell, I’d guess. Couldn’t have a secret meeting of secret magic users and make a ruckus.
As soon as I reached the meeting room at the end of the hall, the Mute spell swallowed me up and let in the roll of voices. Sounded like we had a crowd today. Of course, last I knew it had been a while since the Overseer of the Authority had been here in our little, but dangerously quirky, town.
I paused in the doorway and tipped my sunglasses down.
Crowd was right. Fifty people at the least. Lots of familiar faces.
Bring on the good times.
I pushed my glasses back up, spread my hands wide, and called out, “Hello, party people! Drinks are on Terric!”
I grinned as all eyes turned to me. A lot of people had retired out of the secret magic business over the last three years. It made sense—there wasn’t much of a secret left about magic’s business, and since magic couldn’t do the big world-changing explosive sorts of spells anymore, the gig had lost a lot of financial and political influence.
Most of the people in the room I knew either well or well enough.
Zayvion Jones: tall, dark, and deadly. My best friend and a real goody-goody, though I’d never held it against him. Allie Beckstrom: tall, light, and deadly, she was Zay’s girlfriend and really, the reason we had all survived the apocalypse.
Next up: Victor Forsythe. Dressed casual, which meant no vest with his jacket today. He was one of my teachers and an old-school magic stick-in-the-mud. Clyde Turner: rocking the NY Giants jersey in extra-extra large. A down-to-earth guy who took over the position of Blood magic when my mum ran off to Alaska with her old crush.
Plenty of other people I knew too. Violet Beckstrom-Cooper, slender, but a little icy for my tastes. She used to be married to Allie’s dad and had taken over his magic and tech enterprise. Next to her was Kevin Cooper, a man with an unremarkable face, and a killer’s instincts who used to be her bodyguard.
Melba Maide looked as disheveled as always, which I’d long suspected she did to throw people off her litigious brilliance. She was talking to the Beckstrom accountant, Ethan Katz.
It did not escape my devious little mind that there were only old-timey Authority magic users in the room. No police. No Hounds who used to track illegal spells and, yeah, might still do that, but more often worked with the police as informants. No government officials.
No “normals.”
This appeared to be a magic-user-only invitation. Naught
y. It wasn’t like us magic users or the Overseer to sneak around behind the law anymore. We were purely aboveboard open-book saintly types nowadays.
Well, except for when it came to the things we wanted to hide.
My grand entrance got a mixed reaction from the crowd. A little hatred and amusement, but mostly just long-suffering annoyance. Huh, I must be losing my touch. I could usually get at least one or two people riled up enough to tell me to shut up.
“Everyone.” Terric was on the other side of the room, his coat shucked and already draped over the back of a chair. He had found a microphone. Bastard.
“Thank you for coming.” He tipped his head down and gave me a look. “Shame, shut the door.”
Doorman. Really?
If I cared about the fact that I should be up there at that microphone with him, doing this job with him, I might be angry that he’d pretty much just publically demoted me from Head of the Authority to Guy Who Shuts Doors.
Luckily, I didn’t care about any of it. Right?
I turned, shut the door. Then leaned against the wall and glared at Terric through my sunglasses.
He felt the glare. Even across the room. He lifted his chin and pulled his shoulders back. Then he ignored me.
“You two still fighting?” Zayvion asked.
Zay and Allie stopped next to me. They stood there, arm in arm, Allie just an inch or two shorter than Zavyion’s six foot something. She wore a tank top that showed off those kick-ass magic-born tattoos down her arm and the bands of dusty black ringing her other wrist and elbow. Now that we weren’t on the run for our lives, both Allie and Zay had put on about ten pounds, and lost the dark circles under their eyes.
They smiled more, laughed more, and had that calm, sweet dedication to each other that meant they never walked into a room without holding hands.
I figured kids couldn’t be far off now.
Zay’s hair was buzzed short, and he had on a gray T-shirt that made his dark skin look even darker and set off the stone in the necklace he insisted on wearing. Apparently, the necklace had been an anniversary gift from Allie. Apparently, they were keeping track of those sorts of things now.