by Lori Drake
“Oh.” Beside me, Dan focused on the painting for a moment before moving on. “I guess it’s okay.”
Okay, he said. I’d been completely drawn in to that breathtaking work of art. I’d had a moment. But to him it was just okay.
Feeling a little vindictive, turned my attention back to my brother. “Maybe I’ll take you by the Jackalope later. I think it’s more your speed.”
“Jackalope? Is that some local pumpkin thing? Or a bar?” He sounded hopeful at the thought of a bar.
“Pumpkin thing?” I blinked over at him, uncomprehendingly.
“You know, like Halloween. Jack-o-Lantern, Jackalope. Never mind. What’s a jackalope?”
“It’s a rabbit with antlers. But I was talking about the store. It sells all kinds of artisan goods, locally crafted and imported from Mexico.” Tourist. Trap.
“Oh, okay.”
I sighed. It wasn’t quite as much fun insulting him when he didn’t know I was doing it.
“Those don’t really exist, do they?” he asked after a pause. “Rabbits with antlers? That sounds almost as terrifying as the ones from Monty Python with nasty big pointy teeth.”
“Only in folklore, as far as I know. Did you make up your mind yet?”
The last person in front of us was clearing out of the way, and from behind the counter Penny the barista chirped, “Hey, Emily! Haven’t seen you in a few days. Who’s your friend?”
The young woman eyed my brother in open appreciation. I could almost feel him puffing up beside me, but when I glanced his way he was playing it cool. I caught him winking at her though. This was really getting old.
“My brother. Don’t get too excited. He’s unemployed and has a kid on the way.”
Beside me, Dan made a strangled noise and started coughing. Finally! Got him.
Penny laughed. “Fair enough. Well, good luck with the job search. We’re hiring a busboy, but I don’t imagine that’s what you’re looking for.”
I perked. “Really? I wouldn’t rule it out. Could we have an application?” I spared another glance over at Dan. His face was turning a lovely shade of pink.
Penny obliged, fishing a pre-printed application pad out from under the counter and tearing the top page off to slide across the counter. I thanked her, then got on with the business of ordering rather than tormenting my brother further. Once she’d given us a number for our table, we headed off to find one.
“So, you’re really not going to tell me what’s in that envelope? Was it the consulting fee? You said you’d share,” Dan said, sliding into a chair. He seemed to have mostly recovered from the embarrassment at the counter.
“It’s not money, and trust me, you don’t want any part in it.” I studied him thoughtfully for a moment, frowning to myself. “Then again, you might get presented with one yourself if you stick around town.”
“Was it a restraining order? Because I’m only like six states shy of a full set,” he quipped, draping an arm over the back of his chair and slumping down a bit. The man made slumping an art form, I swear.
“Do you ever take anything seriously?”
“I try not to. It’s really boring. What was in the envelope? Now I have to know.”
Sighing, I reached for the salt shaker on the table and fiddled with it, accidentally knocking it over. Salt spilled across the table, and I winced, pinched a bit, and threw it over my shoulder. I’m not that superstitious, but the way things were going lately… it couldn’t hurt. “It was an application for the state registry.”
“State reg— Ohhhh. You told him about what happened, eh?” Grimacing, he shook his head.
“Of course I did. I had to.” Frowning, I set the salt shaker back in the caddy, tucking it in beside the pepper.
“I wouldn’t have.”
“Yeah, but evasion and obfuscation come naturally to you. Some of us have to work at it.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Fortunately, our food arrived quickly so the conversation was fairly brief. I had ordered soup and half a sandwich, while he had ordered a burger and fries.
I looked between our plates. “Do you work out?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Not really,” he said around a mouthful of cheeseburger. Naturally.
I changed the subject again. “Okay, so if you’re going to be staying at my place for a while, we’re going to need some ground rules.”
“You know I love rules,” he commented, mouth still full. That was sarcasm, for those following along at home.
“I’m serious. First, stay out of my room. You’ve got full run of the rest of the apartment, but that’s my space.” I pointed my spoon at him for emphasis.
“Alright, what else?”
“No pranks. I don’t want to end up glued to the toilet seat or trying to fry hard-boiled eggs in the morning.”
He snickered a little, no doubt recalling these and other things from our childhood. But he nodded his head in acquiescence, nonetheless.
“No girls. If you’re going to hook up, do it somewhere else.”
I thought he was going to protest that, but he merely smirked and nodded again. This was going better than I expected.
“Last but not least… you need to get a job.”
His eyes went wide and he set his burger down. “Whaaaat? Oh, come on…”
“Don’t ‘oh come on’ me. You don’t have to be a busboy, but you need to do something. I’m not going to slave away at work all day while you sit around the house eating cereal from the box and watching TV. It’ll be good for you. Work builds character.”
He groaned. “Ugh. God, you’re channeling Dad.”
I reached across the table and stole a French fry from his plate. “Yeah, just be glad it’s not Mother.”
Dan drummed his fingertips on the table, watching me for a moment. A long, calculating moment. “Define ‘job’?”
“Um. A task you perform, legally and preferably out of the house, for which you receive payment, minus state and federal withholdings.”
“Okay,” he said, quickly enough that it gave me pause.
I was still trying to figure out what the loophole in my definition was when a familiar voice said from behind me, “Well, what do we have here?”
I glanced back, flashing Tall Dark and Witchy a smile. “Hey, Hector, fancy meeting you here.”
Across the table, Dan looked like he was having a fight-or-flight moment. His fingers gripped the edge of the table and he had his chair half pushed back.
I lifted my brows and made a downward gesture with my spoon. “Oh no, you don’t. You and Hector are going to hash this out by the time I finish my lunch, because I’m tired of being caught in the middle. Hector, grab a chair.”
Power flared around Hector, a glowing nimbus of magical energy wrapping around him. He cast a tentacle-like magical appendage out to float a chair across the short distance between the nearest empty table and ours. It happened quickly enough that it turned a few heads, but the mundies quickly went back to their meals, probably uncertain if they’d really seen it happen. He really must have been fired-up to make such an open display in a public place. But he used his hand to spin the chair around and straddled it, parking his narrow behind on the padded cushion.
Dan had actually flinched when Hector started to cast, but he recovered quickly and seemed to relax again, picking up his burger and biting into it as though he weren’t concerned at all about Hector’s presence. Say what you will about my brother, he has great big titanium balls. It’s a wonder he can walk, much less sit comfortably.
“It’s so good to see you again, Daniel,” Hector said, a little too warmly.
“Dan,” my brother corrected, automatically. “And you too, I guess. How’s Christina?”
“So kind of you to show concern. She is as well as can be expected, under the circumstances.” Hector folded his arms along the top of the chair back. “Your sister has been quite adamant that you had nothing to do
with what happened to her and Tori. I’ll admit, I wasn’t inclined to believe her.”
“Well, you should. Because I didn’t,” Dan said, but I picked up on something he missed, and it had my intention more focused on Hector than before.
“Oh? What happened to change your mind?” I asked.
He smiled. “Oh, nothing. Well, a little something I suppose. A little birdie whispered in my ear. I found what she had to say very interesting.” Again, that telltale glow sprung to life around Hector. Tendrils of power rose from the floor behind Dan, reaching up to toy with him. One tapped him on the shoulder, and when he glanced back it tapped his other shoulder.
Once he figured out what Hector was up to, he rolled his eyes. “What are you, twelve? Gah, not the hair!” He reached up to swat at the unseen force, but his hands just passed through it ineffectually.
Hector laughed but relented. He even stopped casting, throwing back his head and laughing loudly enough to draw attention from nearby tables. I met at least one pair of eyes and made the universal symbol for “crazy” with my index finger pointing at my head.
“So it’s true, you really are bound. Who was it? A jealous lover? Jealous husband? Parole officer? Jealous parole officer?” Hector was enjoying this way too much. If anyone was going to make fun of my little brother, it’d be me.
While Dan shot daggers at Hector with his eyes, I played the big sister card and stepped in. “Hector, don’t be an ass. Do you actually want to talk about anything, or just gloat?”
“Mostly just gloat,” he admitted. “But if it helps, your brother here can consider himself cleared in the eyes of the coven.”
“Do I even want to know what little bird whispered that to you?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“I wouldn’t tell you if you asked,” Hector said, getting to his feet.
“Wait.” Dan looked up at Hector with a pained expression. “I know you don’t like me, and I guess you’ve got good enough reason for that, but we’re all on the same side here. Do you think maybe you could help a brother out?”
Hector leaned over, putting his hands on the table and looking into Dan’s eyes. The expression on his face shifted from amused and carefree to hard as a rock in the span of a heartbeat. “You are not my brother, and I wouldn’t undo your binding if God himself asked me to. Save your breath, Daniel. You’re going to need it to scream when Joseph catches up to you.”
Dan frowned but didn’t shrink in the slightest. “I don’t even know what his problem is. Nothing happened between me and Christina.”
“Neither do I,” Hector replied. “But I don’t really give a shit.” With that said, he turned and walked away, heading for the exit.
I watched him go, then looked back at my brother who seemed to have lost some of his appetite. “Can I have some of those pointers now, oh great and wise social guru?” I asked, stealing another French fry.
Sometimes I just can’t help myself.
Chapter 23
Dan and I spent the rest of the day at the police station, poring over evidence with Escobar. What little evidence we had, anyway. By this time, we’d managed to build a rough timeline for each incident. The photos of all the witches, dead or not, were posted up on a whiteboard in the squad room, along with whatever tenuous connections we had been able to come up with between them. I’d tried to put Escobar’s old partner on the board, but for whatever reason, he wouldn’t let me—not until we could link her to the others in some meaningful way, or somehow prove that she’d burned out before she died. It’s a really hard thing to prove after the fact, so I had a feeling we might never know for sure.
For the most part, our victims were as different as any random sampling of the population might be. The only thing they seemed to have in common was that they were all witches. Only two, Tori and Christina, were in the same coven. We weren’t sure if William Hines was in a coven, but Gabriel Sanchez wasn’t. Most witches belong to some sort of coven, even if it’s more of a family thing the way the Davenport Coven is. There’s safety in numbers, after all. But witches can be loners like anyone else, and not every witch is lucky enough to have a whole family of practitioners to support and teach them either. When two witch parents have a child, that child is a witch. I used to think I was an exception to that rule, but after the previous night all bets were off.
When a witch and a mundane have a child, it’s almost always mundane—that’s why my mom was so pissed at Dan, and why she resented my existence so much. The Davenport bloodline can be traced back to Salem, and to the Old World before that. But that… whatever it is that makes a witch a witch… it can pop up randomly from two seemingly mundane parents if either of them has a little witch blood in their family tree.
It was late when Dan and I got home. He’d actually proven himself pretty helpful over the course of the afternoon, and his arcane knowledge was more impressive than I expected. He’d spent a couple of hours just brainstorming, considering the types of spells that might do what was being done, and how they’d be performed, just to try and give us a better idea of what we were up against. He was convinced that it was a person, not a creature, that was behind all of this. I was inclined to believe him. The question was, what kind of awful person would pull so much magic through a witch that it would burn them out? Was it intentional, or a side effect? And what exactly were they doing with all that ill-gotten magic? We had a lot of questions, but precious few answers.
We were running out of time, and I could feel the pressure mounting. How long would the assailant wait before giving up on Gabriel and moving on to someone else? Had it happened already? How could we protect anyone without knowing when or where they might strike next?
Dan chattered at me all the way home, but I barely heard a word he said. By the time we made it into the apartment, all I wanted was to be alone. I hadn’t been alone for longer than a bathroom break in over twelve hours, so I dumped the files on the dining table and gave Dan instructions for feeding Barrington on my way down the hall. I dumped my coat, gloves, and scarf on the floor as I made my way across the bedroom to face-plant on the bed. My phone started buzzing almost immediately, and I had to resist the urge to hurl it across the room. What if it was important?
“Hello?” I probably sounded both weary and wary. It was an unknown number.
“Hi, could I speak to Emily please?”
“Speaking.”
“Oh, hi Emily. This is John Warren. We met last night?” It wasn’t a super familiar voice, but the list of men I’d met the previous night was short. Only one of them had ended up with my phone number. Okay, so really there was only one of them on the list to start with.
It was the witch, the one that had come to our rescue and cast the binding on Gabriel. “Ahh, right. What’s up?” I rolled over onto my back and pushed at the heel of one shoe with the toe of the other to pry it off. It landed on the wooden floor with a quiet thud.
“I was just wondering what became of the man last night. Is he okay? I could sense him for a while, but then he just… vanished.”
Witches could sense others they’d bound? That was interesting. It also meant that, even bound and banished, my brother was still there lurking in the back of our mother’s mind, like an itch that wouldn’t go away. That seemed fitting. Poetic justice, if nothing else.
“Yeah, he’s fine. We’ve got him in a warded room. That’s probably why you can’t sense him anymore.” I pushed the other shoe off and wiggled my toes, feet still hanging off the edge of the bed.
“Oh, okay. Well, I’m glad,” he said, and there was a bit of an awkward pause afterward.
“Was there something else?” I admit I was a little intrigued by the fellow. What was his story? What had made him come forward when others hurried away?
“Oh. Uh, no. I mean, maybe. I’m kind of curious about what you did to him. I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that before.”
“Yeah, you and me both. I’ve never done anything like that before. It just kind of happe
ned.”
“Oh, I see. That’s very interesting.” There was an unmistakable note of speculation in his voice. “Would you like to see if you can do it again?”
My brows went up. “Is that an invitation?” It hadn’t occurred to me to try it again; the incident had scared the piss out of me. I wasn’t even sure if I could do it again on demand.
“It could be,” he said, backing away from the commitment a little bit. “There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to. She might be able to help. She’s a very wise woman. Knows many things, has seen many things.”
I was somehow both tempted and wary all at the same time. “I don’t know…”
“It’s up to you. In fact, consider it an open invitation. You’ve got my number.” I liked that he didn’t put the screws to me or anything. Most of the men in my life are just so damn pushy. “Anyway, I’ll let you go.”
I hesitated a moment, then said, “John?”
“Yeah?”
“What about what was happening with Gabriel? The man we rescued. Have you ever seen something like that before?” It never hurt to ask.
“Only in nightmares.”
“No prophetic tendencies, I hope?”
He chuckled, and I smiled in spite of myself. “Nope. But if I develop any, I’ll let you know.”
“It was really great of you to help. You didn’t have to do it, and I just— Thank you.”
“Running into burning buildings is kind of my thing. Take it easy, Emily.”
“You too.” I hung up and dropped the phone onto the bed beside me, stretching out and lacing my fingers together behind my head. I lay there for the better part of an hour, staring up at the ceiling and letting my mind wander until I heard a light, timid knock at my door.