The Magic Read online

  I could understand, though. Dax did the same thing to me, and it drove me bonkers.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. There could be more of them coming.” See? I had a perfectly good reason to be bossing you about. That should fix it.

  He looked around quickly and then looped my arm around his shoulders, and I hobbled along beside him.

  “So how did you kill all those people?” he asked as we worked our way along back to where we’d stashed the bike.

  “I don’t understand how it works, but you know those heat-seeking missiles you told me about? I become kind of like that. Like I lock in or something, and then I can do crazy things to get to my target.”

  I kicked a piece of metal, which went skidding across the ground, and we paused for a second, waiting for someone to jump out at us. When the attack didn’t happen, we continued on.

  “Can you do that stuff like at will?” he asked softly, his curiosity overriding his fear of a new threat.

  “Yeah,” I answered, my ego overriding my concerns.

  “Dude, you’re like…badass.”

  “Nah, I’m not that cool.”

  “Seriously, you could probably even kick Moobie’s ass.”

  “I mean…I don’t know… Maybe.” I certainly wasn’t going to tell him I’d lain awake at night pondering that exact thing. I would’ve shrugged, but the pain was still lancing through me. “I guess if you think so,” I added when he stopped gushing about how cool I was. I mean, come on. Didn’t he have any more wonderful things to say about me? This was a bit nicer than the look of revulsion I’d feared he’d have.

  I was still waiting for more compliments when we go to where we’d stashed his bike. The branches had all been pulled off it—probably the Newco soldiers’ work.

  Bookie left me a few feet away leaning against a tree while he bent down and examined it.

  “Look what they did to my bike!” Bookie said as he stood. Then he simply stared at it for a moment. He looked almost as upset as when he’d seen my blood on the ground, but I tried to not take it too personally.

  “The tires look sort of funny, but can’t we ride it on those silver circles?”

  “No. Those circles are called rims, and we can’t ride on them.” I chose to believe his huff of disgust was over his ruined bike and not my question.

  I still didn’t see what the difference would be—they were round like the tires—but I trusted his judgment.

  “Cover it back up. We’ll have to walk home.”

  “You can’t walk. You’ll bleed out before we get there.”

  I shifted my arm around on the bad side. Not nearly as painful as it should be. “I’ll make it.”

  “Seriously?” He was back to looking at me like I was crazy.

  “Yeah. There might be some other pertinent details I should fill you in on, stuff dealing with some spells and a strange little wizard.”

  “A wizard?” he asked, as he piled the branches back up onto the bike. It was funny how his worry over my ability to walk disappeared with an interesting subject.

  “I’ll fill you in on the walk. But I must remind you that you are in no place to cast judgment.” I waved my hand at the pile of branches that still needed to be replaced. “Hurry up and cover it. I’m getting hungry already, and I’m going to need help walking for a while.” This bossy thing was a pretty hard habit to kick once you got started. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Dax.

  * * *

  We were halfway back to the farm when I heard the roar of bikes in the distance. I’d been walking of my own volition for the last two hours, which was good because Bookie and I looked at each other at the same time and jumped into the bushes.

  I heard them coming toward us full throttle, and then the engines started to slow. Bookie bent around the side and peered through a gap in the brush.

  “Fuck,” he said softly, but I wasn’t worried about our company hearing, as their engines were too loud.

  “How many?” I rotated my shoulder, trying to see how much pain it would set off while I tried to churn up the heat in my chest. I wasn’t at full blast, but I could get through another fight…if it wasn’t a bad one.

  “Two with him.”

  “Him?”

  He looked at me, his eyes going rounder than they normally were. “Dax.”

  “Ah shit.” We both sat there until the engines quieted.

  He’s going to kill us, Bookie mouthed to me.

  Why you?

  “Because I disobeyed orders with you,” he whispered.

  Oh yeah. I nodded. Forgot I’d told him that tiny lie about Dax ordering everyone to stay at the farm. “I’ll go first,” I whispered back, hoping the sounds of the bikes were enough to cover our voices.

  “I should.”

  “This was my idea.”

  “No, it was my idea. You just came along.”

  I looked at Bookie. He’d just come back from the dead. What if his newly undead body couldn’t handle the stress? “I’ll go. What if the confrontation does something to you? You did just die.”

  His eyes narrowed as if I’d just insulted him. “No, I’ll go. You almost died, too.”

  “Almost isn’t the same.”

  “I don’t want to be treated differently.”

  “Were either of you planning on climbing out of the bushes anytime soon?” Dax asked as he stepped around the bushes and in front of where we’d crouched down.

  “We weren’t hiding. We got tired and were taking a break.” We both stood up and moved back to the trail.

  Dax didn’t reply to that, but the narrowing of his eyes led me to believe it was probably for the best. He shifted his gaze to Bookie. “Where’s your bike?”

  “Got a flat.”

  “Bookie, head back with the other guards.”

  Bookie looked at Dax and then me. Stubborn refusal was written as clear on his face as the words on the books we’d had to leave behind.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” I said before Bookie had a chance to protest. Making my eyes as large as his were a minute ago. I hoped he got the message that I could handle this. Last thing I needed was someone making what had happened sound worse than it was. This was a story I needed full control of.

  I held my breath until I saw Bookie nod. Dax called out to the other two guys from the farm, “Take Bookie home.”

  Neither of us said anything until the bikes were revving up and pulling away.

  “Are you going tell me?” Dax asked, his eyes scanning me.

  There would be no way to hide I’d gotten shot from Dax. Sure, I’d removed Bookie’s wrap miles ago, but he was looking right at where the bullet would’ve exited had it gone through me. I’d lost too much blood for him not to smell it on me with those beast senses of his, and the back of my shirt was covered in old blood.

  He didn’t wait for an answer before he was behind me and pulling up my shirt. I was guessing he was looking at a newly formed scab.

  His fingers ran adjacent to the entry wound, leaving shivers in their wake. “Bullet wound.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “It wasn’t too bad. Bookie was able to pull it out with his fingers.” I just didn’t plan on telling him that Bookie was up to wrist in the middle of my back so his fingers could reach the bullet.

  Dax didn’t say anything, but his level stare had me squirming.

  “I suppose it’s possible that it hit my heart, but no big deal, right? I’m still here.” I tried not to go too hard on myself about how lame that sounded. My magic didn’t extend to words.

  “So the spell worked.” He didn’t sound as happy as I felt about the fact.

  I took a deep breath of pine trees and newly fallen leaves, tilted my head back, and looked at a sky through eyes that should’ve seen nothing. I’d cheated death. One day the devil might come wanting his pound of flesh, but until that day, I was going to be living large.

  “What happened?” he asked as I turned to look at him.

  “We w
ere coming out of the library and they were waiting for us.”

  “Did you really think this was a good idea?” His voice, the way he was staring at me, already told me what he thought.

  I didn’t care if he was angry. “I didn’t get out of Newco to get locked down again.”

  I waited for him to say something even as my breathing got ragged. That was what Dax did to me, though. My body didn’t seem to care whether the intensity pouring off him was from anger or lust.

  “Who was it?”

  “Who what?” I asked, while I tried to remember the last time we’d touched.

  “Your attacker. It’s not like you lack for enemies.”

  “Yes, my cup does runneth over in that department.” I ran down the list of events as I tried to not get distracted by his energy and memories of naked skin.

  “Come on. I’ll take you back to the house.”

  I didn’t budge. “Don’t you want to fight with me?” And then maybe we’d get all sweaty and have make-up sex like they did in my books. Fights always led to sex—like, guaranteed.

  “No.”

  He walked back to the bike, climbed on, and waited for me while I was still trying to figure out what went wrong.

  “How many attackers were there?”

  Maybe he wanted to wait until we got back to the house to fight? Maybe he wanted to be closer to the bed?

  “How many?” he asked again.

  “Four,” I said as I climbed on the back.

  “How did only four take you down?” he asked, instead of starting up the bike.

  Was there hope yet? “I don’t know.”

  “You turned your back on one of them, didn’t you?”

  Oh yeah, this should do it. “It was an accident.”

  “How many times have I told you not to do that? How many?”

  “Not enough?” I asked, waiting for the anger to really build. The grass in that little clearing looked nice and soft too.

  “Don’t do it again.”

  Really? That was all I got? The bike coming to life was my answer.

  We drove through the gates way past sunset, and I knew he wasn’t going to stay when he pulled the bike up to the front steps of the house.

  “You’re not coming in?” I asked as I climbed off the bike.

  “I can’t.”

  “Okay,” I said, keeping my chin up. I wasn’t going to beg him—that was for certain. “Just thought you’d need to eat.”

  “I’ll be back,” he said, as if he knew what I’d been thinking.

  “It’s not a big deal. You’ve got…stuff to do out there, I’m sure.” I waved my hand toward the forest.

  “After what happened today—”

  “I’ve got to go eat. I’m famished.” Oh, no. If he wasn’t going to hang around to fight, and then have make-up sex, I wasn’t hanging around for a lecture.

  “Dal, at some point, we’re going to need to have an honest moment.”

  Honest? Like what kind of honest? Feelings and shit? Was that what he meant? He looked as if the moment was serious. What did he want to talk about? What if it was bad?

  “I am having an honest moment. ‘I’m starving’ is as honest as it gets,” I said, and turned to the house before he said anything else that might make me have to think too much.

  Chapter 5

  I’d gone to sleep alone in Dax’s bed, and I woke up the same way. Was he searching the forest for bad guys or avoiding me? It wasn’t like I’d asked to use his room. He’d told me to use it.

  Other than waking up in the wrong bed and room, Bookie rising from the dead, and me living in spite of a bullet to the heart, things felt pretty damn normal. I mean, yeah, I was a little stiff, but as long as you could look past all that nearly dead stuff, things were really quite normal.

  I rolled out of bed, did some minimal upkeep to make myself presentable, and closed the door to Dax’s bedroom. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to admit, but I felt like I was home. As I walked on the braided rug that covered the wide wooden planks of the hallway, and let my hand brush against the rounded brass doorknobs as I passed, I took two steps to my right and listened to the loose floorboards creak. I tilted my head back and breathed deeply of the smell of bacon and eggs rising up from the downstairs buffet. The sounds and smells were all the same, but the vases in the hall were empty of the flowers Fudge would pick, reminding me it wasn’t quite right.

  I leapt off the last couple of steps and landed with a familiar thud in the living room.

  I looked at the buffet line that was winding its way through the dining room. When Fudge used to cook, it would normally extend all the way into the living room. I eyed up the platter of bacon over a particularly short somebody’s shoulder. There had to be a worthy piece on there somewhere. What were they doing? Throwing the bacon on to take the chill out of it and calling it quits?

  If this kept up, there wouldn’t be a line at all. I walked past the people and straight to the source, half expecting to see Fudge, despite the lousy cooking. There was a short, stodgy guy in her kitchen. Dodger was his name. It was ridiculous to be mad, but I was anyway. A feeling of him trespassing into Fudge’s domain overwhelmed me.

  The last time I’d seen Dodger was before I left for the Rock. He used to be in charge of digging ditches, and they wondered why his food tasted like dirt?

  I grabbed a plate from the stack sitting on the counter, destined for the buffet, not wanting to witness this interloper in her place for any longer than necessary.

  I wasn’t completely crazy. I knew it wasn’t his fault. Still, I couldn’t help but want to grab him by his collar and drag him from the room.

  I loaded a pile of bacon onto my plate and then started scooping on eggs that looked a tad too soft for scrambled.

  “Wait your turn with the rest of them,” Dodger said, swiping at me with a spatula but missing by a foot. Dodger was not only a horrible cook but slower than a turtle on dry land.

  “That’s not how things work here. I get bacon on demand, so adjust your expectations.” I eyed the spatula, wondering if it was going to be swinging at me again and if it would make good acquisition practice. But I’d have to delay my breakfast if I did that, and it wasn’t like Dodger would be good practice.

  “Everyone waits in line!”

  “Nope.”

  Dax walked in and grabbed a piece of bacon from my plate and then a biscuit from the pile on the counter.

  “She’s trying to cut line,” Dodger complained.

  “She’s allowed to.” Dax made a plate for himself and then walked out. He hadn’t hugged me or kissed me or said the words all the girls in my books wanted to hear. What he’d done was so much better. I plucked a couple more pieces of bacon off the tray with a saucy grin and gave an I dare you to say something to me look.

  I made my way out to the back porch to find Bookie there waiting on my bench.

  His eyes shot all over the place, as if he was checking to make sure no one was listening, before he asked, “Is he mad? He didn’t look mad when I saw him.”

  “No. He seems to be handling it quite well.” Too well. It hadn’t gone anything like it did in my books, but I didn’t need to tell Bookie that.

  “Good. I hate when Dax is pissed off at me. Are you going to eat all that?” He reached for a piece of bacon before I answered.

  His chin went up, as if he were using it to point to something behind me. “Who is that strange man walking across the yard?”

  “Huh?”

  I looked up and saw that most of the people getting ready to start the day on the farm were looking in one direction and at one person. It was a man that looked too old to be alive.

  I squinted, not believing what I saw. “Bitters?” The guard at the gate had probably not thought anything of letting him in. Bitters might be more powerful than he looked, but that didn’t change the appearance that he was harmless. Dax better have a word with that guard about not trusting appearances. No one was supposed to be let
in unescorted.

  “The Bitters?” Bookie asked, having just heard about him on our partial walk home from the library.

  Bookie didn’t look back at me, as Bitters had his full attention. Some people had it like that, a thing that naturally drew others. Sometimes it was because they were attractive, and it was a gift that faded with age. Then there were people like Bitters, where there was just something. It wasn’t how they looked, and he didn’t need to speak. It was a hammer that hit you over the head and said pay attention. Or maybe it was the donkey following behind him without the need for a harness, and the crow sitting on his shoulder, which was catching a ride, while seeming to converse with its host.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “How did he get here? He was halfway across the world the last time Dax and I saw him.”

  “So it’s him?” Bookie sounded excited at the possibility.

  “Yep. Come with me and I’m going to introduce you to your very first wizard.”

  I shoved a couple more bites of breakfast in my mouth and then abandoned my plate to find out what was going on, Bookie following me over.

  “Dal, so nice to see you!” Bitters looked at me with such a warm smile that you’d never imagine this was the same man who had yelled at me and kicked me out of his shack in the past. He looked more like the kindly old grandfather now.

  “Bitters.” Of course, he didn’t just accidentally end up here, so being nice had to come with a motive.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Bookie,” I said.

  Bookie reached out his hand to shake Bitters’, and I tried not to stare as they did. It wasn’t as if Bitters had a reason to curse Bookie.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Moving in.” Bitters expanded his arms, as if embracing the surrounding farm.

  I looked at the stuff piled up on the donkey. Well, that explained what he was doing on this side of the world.

  Bookie coughed and then said, “You’re moving in?”

  This had bad idea written all over it. “Why?”

  “A debt owed should be a debt paid. That Grounding Spell I did for you, when neither of you bothered to tell me the type of juice you were putting out. It’s been screwing up everything I’ve done since.”