“I know,” I say. “But there’s something you don’t know about him.” Her head turns part of the way toward me. So I tell her what he told me about his blackouts.
“God,” she says when I finish. “That explains a lot.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“But it doesn’t help me trust him. More like the opposite. He can’t even trust himself.”
“I know,” I say. “But maybe it’ll be worse if we abandon him. Maybe we can help him. Stop him from doing something he doesn’t want to do.”
“I’m not sure we’re qualified,” Laney says.
“Oh okay, I’ll get him an appointment to see a doctor,” I say.
Laney sighs. I’ve made my point. If not us, who else? “Fine,” she says. “But only until we get to New Washington, then he’s on his own. That’s where you’re headed, right?”
“Well I was,” I say. “Until that sister of yours brought me way off course.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Laney says.
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it up to me,” I say.
“Hmm,” Laney murmurs, her breaths deepening.
“Goodnight,” I whisper.
“Mmm-hmm,” she says, drifting away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Laney
Sometimes we have to do the things we want to do the least. In this case, that’s apologizing to Bil Nez. I haven’t been entirely fair to him, although in my defense I didn’t have all the facts because he didn’t tell me. Blackouts? Gosh, I can’t even imagine. Waking up and not knowing what you’ve done for the last few hours? That would be scary.
Even still, I don’t want him to get the idea that I like him in the least. Because I don’t.
“Look, Bil, I’m sorry about what I said last night. I know you did what you had to do to survive. And, uh, thanks for saving Rhett all those times.”
Hex cocks his head to the side, staring at me like I’m nuts. Maybe I should’ve practiced my apology on a tree.
I jump when a voice from behind says, “And you.”
Whirling around, I reach for my gun, but leave it strapped to my side when I see who it is. Speak of the devil.
“Morning, Bil,” I say. How did he sneak up on me so easily?
“Morning.”
“What did you mean, ‘And you’?”
“I saved your life, too. Once.”
I chew on the side of my mouth. Maybe I should have made it a silent apology. “I guess you heard all that?”
His wide grin gives me the answer.
“So do you accept?” I ask.
“I’ll think about it,” he says, turning and traipsing back toward the clearing.
Grumbling, I follow after him, catching up.
“So,” he says when I settle in beside him.
“So,” I say.
“You and Rhett, huh?”
I fire him a look, but he stares straight ahead. We’d gone to sleep after him, and I woke up before him. How did he know what happened in between?
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I say evenly.
“Right. Well, I know they say once you go black you’ll never go back, but if you ever change your mind, I can show you that brown ain’t so bad either.”
I stop, controlling the urge to hit him, while he moves ahead of me, chuckling under his breath.
“Don’t let him get to you,” Rhett says, appearing noiselessly from the side. Hex bounds up to him and then past him as if he’s not even there.
“Why do people keep sneaking up on me?” I say aloud.
“Maybe because it’s easy,” Rhett says.
I barge my shoulder into Rhett and vow to pay closer attention in the future.
He laughs and says, “Good morning to you, too.” His smile is a mile wide and I think I know why.
“Rhett, about last night…” I say.
“It was a mistake,” he says, and my head jerks toward him. He’s joking, like it’s April Fool’s Day and I’m the fool. His smile is a mile wide. “We fell asleep together,” he says, like it’s no big deal. “It’s not the first time.”
“I kissed your hand,” I point out.
He raises his hand to his mouth, says, “So if I kiss it too, is that like one degree away from making out?”
“Only if you use your tongue,” I say. He laughs. “Seriously though, I don’t want to force you into anything. It almost feels like I’m taking advantage of you after what you’ve just been through.”
“Please. Take advantage of me,” Rhett says. It’s my turn to laugh. And maybe blush a little.
“Be serious for two seconds,” I say.
“Like you always are?”
Fair enough. Seems the queen of one-liners has a reputation to protect. I don’t say anything.
Rhett moves closer, wrapping one of his huge paws around my shoulder, pulling me into his side. His body radiates heat, the way it always does. A human furnace. “Last night was my choice,” he says.
“So I had no say in the matter? Right when I was thinking I could’ve rejected you straight out.”
He ignores me. “And nothing even happened.”
“Unless you count our one-degree of separation make-out session.” The queen is back.
“And anyway, we’ve kissed before. On the lips.”
“Oh, I’m surprised you remember that,” I say.
“I’ll never forget it.”
“Damn. Then I guess there’s no need to remind you what it felt like,” I say, feeling flirty and confident all of a sudden. Rhett’s chin angles toward me and he leans in, closer, closer.
Our lips lock, tenderly at first, and then harder, faster, more urgent, like every second we spent apart is giving weight to this one epic kiss.
So of course that’s when Bil Nez decides to make a reappearance, as if he purposely came back just to annoy me. God give me patience.
“At this rate the day’ll be half over before we leave,” he says.
“You in a hurry?” I ask, releasing Rhett and pushing past Bil.
“Getting back to home base beats being the third wheel with you two,” Bil fires at my back.
I couldn’t agree more.
~~~
With a surprisingly sane Bil Nez leading the way, we make good time. Although we stick to back roads where we can easily hide if we happen upon any witch gangs, our pace is steady and quick. I hate to admit it, but without Trish’s shorter legs to slow us we’re a lot more efficient.
“I wonder where she is,” I say, thinking out loud.
“Your sister?” Bil Nez says.
As if I want to talk to him about Trish. “Never mind.”
“You’re the one who spoke,” he says. “Not me. I was more than happy to continue on in silence.”
“Awkward silence,” I mutter.
“More like angry silence,” Bil says.
I whirl on him. “And don’t I have the right to be angry? You abandoned us right before we got ambushed. Maybe things would’ve been different if you’d stayed. Maybe together we could’ve made a difference.” I take a step toward him, feeling my face go red. I don’t care. “But you had to do your freaky-Bil thing and go all rogue on us. That’s why I’m angry.”
Bil’s face is a blank mask. Any sign of his usual confident jokey manner has been washed away under the force of my verbal onslaught. I can sense Rhett giving me a death glare from the side. But this time I don’t feel bad. The heat of my anger will boil me alive if I don’t let it out.
I expect Bil to react the same way he did last night. Avoidance. Perhaps he’ll turn away, walk apart from us the rest of the way to New Washington.
“You should be angry with me. And scared. I can’t be trusted. Maybe I didn’t want to admit it before, but I will now. I have blackouts. There, I said it. You’re better off without me to worry about. I’ll point you in the right direction and then we’ll go our separate ways.”
With that, Bil starts off down the road, leavin
g me gawking at his back. I never, not in a million years, would’ve believed Bil would admit what he just did. Doing so must’ve been the hardest thing in the world.
Either I grow a conscience or, if I already had one, my conscience makes an appearance, because I find myself running after him down the road. “Wait!” I shout. What am I doing?
“It’s not your fault,” I say.
He takes another few steps and then stops. He doesn’t turn around. “I killed them,” he says. “I’m not sure who else you could possibly blame. And I did abandon you guys. I did. And you know what? It wasn’t even during one of my blackouts. I waited until Rhett had gone to keep watch and you were asleep and I left.”
“Why?” I ask. A simple one-word question that suddenly feels like the most important question in the entire universe.
“Because I was worried what I might do to you if I stayed,” Bil says, finally turning around. His dark eyes seem to get swallowed up by his even darker eyebrows, becoming black dots that penetrate to my very core. “That’s the truth.”
And I know it is. It’s like all the false layers of bravado have been stripped away from him and he’s been left as raw as a piece of sushi.
“Stay with us, Bil,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows. “But what if I—”
Cutting him off, I say, “I want you close to keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t do anything stupid. If I have to tie you up to stop you from running off, I will.” I allow myself a grim smile.
He grins back. “Thanks,” he says. “And I’ll try not to kill you in your sleep.” With that, he turns and continues on, leaving Rhett and I to share a nervous look.
Hex munches on a flower he pulled from the side of the road, looking bored.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rhett
I hate wizards.
Of the trifecta of magic-borns, I hate wizzes the most. They’re stubborn, arrogant, and as smart as software designers; always one step ahead, never acting with passion or on impulse like the witches and warls do.
And this one’s in a class of his own.
“Harooz manna fey rahhh!” the tallish, bearded man shouts from behind the Dumpster. Or at least that’s what I think he says, although it’s gibberish to me. And what’s with wizzes always being exceptionally tall and sporting beards that the Amish would be jealous of?
So much for avoiding the magic-born by taking back roads. We’d barely just reached the mini-mart, excited to scavenge for some food, when the wizard made his appearance.
“Get down!” I yell. Following my own command, I duck, dropping flat to the cracked cement parking lot ground just as sparks fly from the wizzes long, white fingers. Laney and Bil throw themselves down beside me.
Big mistake.
The attack doesn’t come from the air, but from the earth, which undulates like a bucking snake, rolling across the lot toward us. I clamber to my feet just as the cement wave hits my feet, catapulting me into the air like a daredevil on a trampoline.
Laney’s and Bil’s arms and legs whack me and kick me and I think I bonk heads with someone.
But then the wiz utters more nonsense—“Garba fatata wayy tooo biig!”—which either means he thinks I need to go on a diet or that he’s going to create a magical golden spear out of thin air and chuck it at my head. Unfortunately, it’s the latter.
As the razor-sharp instrument spins toward my nose, I twist in midair, flinging out a foot in desperation, hoping I don’t end up with a lance through my heel. Even as I tumble to the cement, I feel the tip of my sneakers connect with the shaft of the spear, knocking it aside and changing its trajectory.
Or so I think.
That’s big mistake number two.
Did I mention I hate wizards?
Instead of glancing off harmlessly, the spear suddenly turns rubbery, wrapping itself around my legs like a boa constrictor, tethering them together as I finally return to earth, skidding across the rough lot and scraping off a layer of epidermis from my arms. And even as my scraped-up arms burn I’m wondering where Hex has wandered off to. So nice of him to go chasing squirrels when I’m about to be squeezed to death.
No, not just me. Laney, too. She’s also been caught by the snake-like weapon, trapped next to me.
Bil somehow avoided it and has managed to get his crossbow out, firing bolt after bolt at the wizard, who deflects them aside with a casual wave of his hand.
I whip out my sword and slash hard at the strange multi-functional golden spear, which is more like coiled rope now. My magged-up blade glances harmlessly off the wizz’s magical weapon, despite the multitude of powerful potions built into the steel. Whatever defense spells the wiz infused into the spear/rope thingy (yes, that’s a technical witch hunter term), they’re significantly stronger than my sword.
Crap. Double crap.
“Harooz manna fey rahhh!” he chants. I really wish he’d stop saying that.
The ground rolls and leaps beneath us, throwing Laney and me and our new ropy friend into a death spiral. Relying solely on instinct, I let my taut muscles and tendons take over, managing to land on my shoulders and arms rather than on my head, while Laney slams on top of me, and not in a good way. Her knee catches me where the sun don’t shine and I let out a groan, awkwardly somersaulting out of the tumble. Simultaneously, I wrench hard at the ropes with my fingers and they fall away almost the moment I touch them. Strange, I think, until I realize that Bil’s jabbed a knife into the end of the wizz’s weapon. Whatever magic is in his knife is apparently effective against the wizard’s defenses.
Good for us; bad for the wiz.
I charge him, my legs churning beneath me, pumping like I’m running a straight deep route to the corner of the end zone. His blue eyes widen and he mutters more curses, his hands extended in front of him, his fingers wiggling slightly.
Cutting to the left, I dodge something gelatinous that sprays from his fingernails, hoping Laney or Bil don’t get hit by it. Cutting to the right, I narrowly avoid getting impaled by a flurry of metal nails that buzz past me like bees. And then I hit him, jamming my sword deep into his gut with as much force as I can muster.
Bzzzz!
An electric shock buzzes from the wiz and through the sword, tearing into my hands, shaking me violently and sending searing waves of pain through my body, my glasses tilting at an angle on my face, making it hard to see. “Ahhhh!” I yell, realizing too late that if the wizard was able to protect his spear/rope weapon, then surely he’d be able to protect himself.
I’m done for.
Hex comes out of nowhere, either by design or because he got bored with the squirrels, barreling from the side and launching himself at the wizard. In midair he becomes a hawk, his beak smashing through whatever magical defenses the wiz has surrounded himself with.
The electrical current stops running through me, although I continue to shake for a few moments longer, wishing I had a comb and a mirror to flatten my hair, which is surely standing straight up.
The wiz is screaming, whacking at Hex, whose brown wings are beating at the man’s face in a flurry of feathers. I stand, straightening my glasses and tightening my grip on the sword, hot and sore and angry.
Once more, I stab him, and this time there’s nothing to stop the sharp blade from sinking into his skin.
He cries out, forming words that sound eerily similar to his strange magic language, but are really just grunts and groans. And then he takes his last breath, his beard so long that it hides the blood and ichor, even as I remove my blade from his gut.
Laney and Bil join Hex—who’s sniffing at the organic remains of the wizard—and me.
I try to think of something funny, and force a grin onto my lips.
“What are you grinning about?” Laney asks.
“The fact that Bil Nez saved you,” I say.
“He saved you, too,” she says, glaring.
“He did,” I say. “Thanks, Bil.”
“No problem,” he says.
“You would’ve done the same for me.”
Laney starts to respond, probably some kind of snarky retort, but Bil cuts her off. “You can crack jokes and throw insults all you want, but you know it’s true. If it had been reversed, you would’ve risked your own life to save mine. Admit it.”
She opens her mouth, but then closes it. Bending down, she scratches Hex, who’s not a hawk anymore, under the chin. “And you saved us all, didn’t you boy?” He licks her face and she laughs. Standing, she turns and heads for the mini-mart. Under her breath she mutters, “Thanks, Bil Nez.”
Once she’s stepped through the shattered storefront window and is out of earshot, I say to Bil, “That’s the closest you’ll get to a real thank you from her.”
“I’ll take it,” he says.
“You know there’s more to her than fire and thorns, right?”
“How poetic,” Bil says, a hint of his usual sarcasm creeping into his tone. “Yeah. I know. She’s angry at a lot more than me.”
“You’re just the only one here for her to take it out on,” I say. “Although I have to admit I’m happy to not be her target for a while.”
“Glad I can serve some purpose,” Bil says.
Realizing something, I raise my eyebrows. “You haven’t…left us...for a while,” I point out, hoping he’ll get my meaning.
“That’s what worries me,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because that means I’m due for another blackout,” he says, turning to follow Laney through the window.
“Or it could mean you’re getting better,” I say. But if he hears me, he shows no sign of it.
I crouch next to Hex, petting his back while he wags his tail. “Sometimes I wonder if things would be easier with just the two of us, like the old days,” I say.
He gives me a look.
“You’re right, boy. I don’t mean that at all.”
The sun is bright but the day is coldish, sporting a stiff wind and the smell of rain. Dark clouds threaten in the distance. I clean my bloody sword on a nearby patch of grass, cringing when the red and green mix together and make me think of Christmas.