Call Out

by L. B. Clark

  Brian kissed Dylan again and then patted her hip to tell her to get up. Dylan rounded up all the toiletries and whatnot out of the bathroom while Brian and I made a final sweep of the hotel room, making sure we had everything packed and ready to go. That done, we carted everything out into the hallway. Dylan dragged the boys’ rolling cases, and Brian tried to juggle his and London’s carry-ons as well as his guitar. I shouldered my backpack, took London’s from Brian over his protests, and dragged my own rolling case out behind Dylan, leaving Brian to glance over the room one last time and shut the door behind us.

  London sat on the floor in the hallway, back to the wall, knees up, head buried in his hands. As we spilled out of the hotel room, he raised his head just enough to peer up at us. I expected him to get up, but he just sat there looking defeated. It should have roused my sympathy and concern, but all I felt was vague annoyance. Not knowing whether the feeling came from my own exhaustion or was some echo of London’s emotions ratcheted the annoyance up to irritation. I knew it wouldn’t take much to push me over the edge to pissed off, so I sat London’s backpack beside him and kept walking.

  Halfway down the hallway, I felt a hand on my arm. I knew it was Dylan even before I turned my head to glance at her. She’d ditched London’s suitcase, I noticed. I also noticed that she didn’t look annoyed or irritated or pissed. Maybe it really was just me.

  “We should probably wait for the boys,” she said.

  I nodded, and we both stopped to wait. I looked back to see Brian crouched down beside London, talking to him in a tone low enough that his voice didn’t carry down the hall. He didn’t look irritated either. Guess I was just feeling bitchy. Good to know.

  After a moment, London nodded, rubbed his eyes, and let Brian help him to his feet. He slung his backpack over one shoulder, took hold of the suitcase handle, and followed Brian down the hall. He still wouldn’t look at me, but I suppose I’d kind of given him a reason, now.

  Brian and Dylan led us out to the car, making small talk about the hotel along the way. The place was still beautiful, still luxurious, but I knew I’d always associate it with the frantic search for Dylan and everything that went along with it. Maybe one day I would be able to look back and find good memories tucked in among the bad ones, but with the way things were going right now, I kind of doubted it.

  Once we were crammed in the rental car, with a pile of backpacks between London and me in the backseat and Brian’s guitar riding between Dylan’s feet, Brian asked Dylan again to tell her story.

  “I’d like to start at the beginning,” Dylan said, “but I don’t remember the beginning.”

  “What do you mean?” Brian asked.

  “I remember getting on the plane. I remember landing. I even remember riding the little train from the gate to the main building in the airport. But then there’s a big blank space.”

  “Like a blackout?” I asked.

  Dylan nodded, and then said, “Yeah, pretty much. The next thing I remember, I’m sitting in a chair in a room that looked like Walt Disney threw up. I don’t think I ever want to see Mickey Mouse again.”

  “I can imagine,” I told her.

  “Anyway, they kept me bound and gagged most of the time. Sometimes I was tied to the chair and sometimes just tied hand and foot and left on the bed or the floor. They would move the gag to feed me or let me have water, and they’d untie me to let me use the loo, but otherwise...yeah. Three days of not moving sucks.”

  “Did they hurt you?” Brian asked, reaching for her hand.

  Dylan threaded her fingers through his, resting their joined hands on the console between them. “Sometimes the redhead would mess with me. She wanted me to know what she was capable of, Vanessa said, though I’m not really sure why.”

  “She wanted you afraid,” London said, his voice rough with emotion. “She wanted us to know you were scared.”

  “But you weren’t,” I said. “Not much, anyway. At least not that we knew about, not until right before we showed up.”

  “The redhead....”

  “Julia,” Brian interrupted.

  “Whatever. She wasn’t around much at first, and as long as it was just Vanessa, I really didn’t see any reason to be scared. I guess I didn’t believe she’d do anything to hurt me,” she said, reaching up to touch the knot on her head. “Still can’t believe she did, actually.”

  “You never said what happened to her,” I pointed out.

  “Brian did this crazy wrestling move thing on her until she passed out.”

  “I hope you at least kicked her on your way out the door.”

  Dylan made a small, amused sound. “I would have if I’d been sure I could do it without falling down. I tried to rescue my necklace from her and nearly fell on my face. Took a little while to get used to the whole upright and mobile thing again.”

  “You should have said something,” Brian added. “I’d have been happy to help you out with that kicking thing.”

  Dylan laughed, and Brian answered with a smile. They were so freaking cute it should have made me ill, but I was way too happy for them to mind.

  “You did get your necklace back, right?” I asked. Brian had bought the necklace – a delicate rose gold pendant – for Dylan just after they’d met, during the day we’d spent in Key West. It was one of her most prized possesions.

  “Brian got it back for me,” she said, reaching up with their joined hands to touch the necklace through her shirt.

  “Good,” I said.

  We all lapsed into a brief, easy silence for a few minutes before London asked, “What Julia did to you...what was it like?”

  For several minutes, Dylan stayed quiet. When she answered, her voice was low, so quiet that her words were almost lost beneath the hum of the engine and tires on the road.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” she said.

  “You don’t have to....” Brian began, but Dylan cut him off.

  “Yeah, I do. I do have to,” she said. She took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “She started out small and worked her way up, but even at the beginning it was scary because it didn’t make sense. Magic isn’t real, or at least that’s what we’re taught. But I got to experience it up close and personal.”

  “What do you mean she started out small?” I asked.

  “What she did was she made me feel things.”

  “Emotional things?” Brian asked.

  Dylan shook her head. “Physical.”

  “Pain, in other words,” I said.

  “Not just pain,” Dylan answered, turning to stare out the window at the neon lights.

  Not just pain? Oh. Oh, yuck. I know I wouldn’t want to feel pleasure at Julia’s metaphysical hands. I thought again about the overwhelming desire that had landed me in bed with London, and wondered if Julia had used that pleasure-inducing ability in their fight. The thought that magical lust had pushed us to have sex made me want to hurl. Or punch Julia in the face. Or maybe hurl in Julia’s face.

  “So, yeah,” Dylan continued. “First it was just this creepy-crawling sensation, like caterpillars walking all over me.”

  “Ew.” I shivered. I’m not a girly-girl, but bugs are so not my thing.

  “Yeah, exactly. She moved up to itching, which was really annoying. And then to aches like you get with the flu. Then she switched gears, and that’s when I started to get scared. I think that might have been this morning.” She was quiet for another minute or two, watching the city go by. “Tonight was the worst though. I...I’m not even sure how to describe it.”

  “It’s kind of like a really bad electric shock,” I said.

  Dylan turned to look at me. “That’s what she got you with?” I nodded, and Dylan frowned. “But it didn’t hit me nearly as hard as it did you.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe for me she turned it up to eleven. One point twenty-one gigawatts of pure pain, all at once, all for me.”

  London startled all of us with a strangled laugh. “You nearly fucking d
ie, and instead of poetic reminiscences about white light and heavenly beings, you describe it with one of the geekiest, most mixed-up quotes I’ve ever heard.”

  Brian glanced at London in the rearview mirror and flashed him a smile. “Told you,” he said.

  “You did,” London admitted. His smile faded then, and he turned again to look out the window.

  I wondered what it was Brian had told him, but I knew better than to ask. What I did know was that whatever it was had made London close himself off again and brought gloom crashing back in to replace his momentary cheerfulness. And when London ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

  Emotional darkness squeezed its way into the car, making the last few miles of our drive seem endless. Days later, we made it to our hotel. Brian texted Adrian to let him know we were there, he and London picked up their room keys, and then helpful bellmen took charge of our baggage and led us up to our rooms. London stayed as far away from all of us as he could, even insisting on taking a separate elevator. Brian, of course, wouldn’t let him go alone, so Dylan and I accompanied the bellman and left the boys to follow.

  We stepped out of the elevator to find Adrian waiting for us. He and Dylan had met briefly a couple of months before when the band’s tour had taken them through Dallas. I’d been swamped with school and hadn’t been able to make it up to see Brian and meet his friends. Dylan had only gotten a handful of hours with her boyfriend and a few minutes with the rest of the band and crew.

  Despite the brevity of their previous contact, Adrian greeted Dylan like an old friend, with a brief embrace that didn’t quite count as a hug. He introduced himself to me, and we shook hands. Dylan used Brian’s key card to let us into his room, where we had the bellman leave all the luggage. Soon after the bellhop disappeared back downstairs, London and Brian showed up. A few minutes later, Kent, or Kenny as the boys tended to call him, joined us, too.

  London still kept his distance, all but ignoring his friends. Watching him, I noticed that he was concentrating hard on regulating his breathing, a tried-and-true trick for controlling the emotions.

  Adrian leaned against a wall, arms folding tightly across his chest like he was cold. He listened to our conversation – small talk, mostly, with a couple of questions about everyone’s well-being – and even chimed in a time or two, but he never took his eyes off London. Maybe ten minutes passed before he interrupted Kent in the middle of some story.

  “London, what’s going on?” he asked.

  London, who’d sunk down into an armchair in the corner, just shook his head.

  “It’s been a hell of a day,” Brian said. “He’s having a hard time of it.”

  “I can tell. He’s bleeding.”

  Brian and I both turned to look at London, who looked fine except for the tenseness and exhaustion he’d been carrying since we left the Dolphin.

  “Uh...magic. He’s bleeding magic.”

  “Shit,” London breathed. “I forgot.”

  I looked back and forth between London and Adrian, then glanced at Dylan. She looked as confused as I felt. “Forgot what?” I asked.

  “Adrian’s a sensitive,” London said, pushing himself up out of the chair. “He can sense magic.”

  Adrian shrugged. “What he said. I knew he was a practitioner the first time I met him. I can tell when he uses his abilities, which has happened like...twice since I’ve known him. And right now, I can tell it’s, like...radiating off of him.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” I said. “If you can sense all that, how the hell did you not know about Julia?”

  “Not know what about Julia?” Adrian asked, his forehead crinkling in puzzlement.

  Silence reigned for a moment before Brian answered. “She’s the one who took Dylan. And she has some seriously scary magical abilities.”

  Adrian’s eyes widened, and Kent let out a startled, “What?”

  “I’ll explain everything,” Brian promised, “but first I think we need to get London to bed.”

  “I’ll second that,” London said, but he made no move to leave.

  “It’s okay,” Brian said, gesturing for London to come forward. He levered himself out of the chair, paused for a moment, and then took first one tentative step toward us and then another. When he drew near, Dylan shivered, I moved nearer Brian, and Kent took an involuntary step backward. Adrian seemed baffled.

  “What am I missing?” he asked.

  Brian looked at Adrian, tilting his head a little to the side in a contemplative pose that reminded me, oddly, of the dog in the old Victrola ads. God, I needed sleep.

  “You don’t feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  London turned and looked at Adrian for a moment. A moment later, he stepped forward and rested a hand on Adrian’s shoulder. Adrian laid his own hand on top of London’s. His expression never changed.

  “You don’t feel...sadness like a...heavy, waterlogged blanket?” I asked.

  Adrian looked at me like I’d grown an extra head. He opened his mouth, probably to ask me what the hell I was talking about, but he was distracted by London wrapping him in a bear hug. Adrian hugged him back, not asking any more questions, at least for now.

  As the only one unaffected by London’s bleeding magic, Adrian volunteered to help London move his gear to his – London’s – room across the hall. While they were gone, the rest of us discussed sleeping arrangements. Kenny offered to let Brian bunk with him so Dylan and I could have Brian’s room, but I knew Dylan would want to be in Brian’s arms tonight. He also offered to move in with Adrian and let me have his room, but Brian vetoed the idea of my being alone. We were discussing the dubious merits of a rollaway bed when Adrian knocked and Brian went to let him in.

  “London okay?” Kenny asked.

  Adrian nodded. “Modern medicine is an amazing thing. He’s out cold.”

  “That was fast,” Dylan said.

  “Yeah, but he was dead on his feet. The sleeping tablet was probably overkill, but now would not be a good time for him to have to fight with his insomnia. And he figured if he was all the way under, maybe he’d stop leaking magic all over the place.”

  Brian and I both spoke at once. He asked, “Did it work?”

  At the same time, I asked a different question. “Why does it matter? It can’t affect us if we’re not in there with him.”

  “Yeah, it worked. And even though he never came right out and said it, I’m pretty sure that London assumed he wouldn’t be sleeping alone,” Adrian said, giving me a meaningful look.

  “I guess that settles the question of sleeping arrangements,” Kenny added.

  I sighed. I didn’t mind sleeping in the same bed as London, but the idea of waking up beside him kind of worried me. Still, it was the best option. For everyone else, at least.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Like London, I had little trouble falling asleep. I was drained emotionally, mentally, and physically. I prayed the briefest of bedtime prayers, snuggled against the warmth of London’s bare back, and tumbled headlong into sleep.

  I dreamed, and at first they were just dreams, a jumbled up mish-mash of disconnected thoughts and images. At some point, though, the dreams changed, becoming more vivid and coherent.

  London and I kissed, and I felt an unpleasant stinging all over, like my whole body had just regained circulation and was experiencing pins and needles. I looked down and saw tiny flames dancing over my skin. I heard a woman laughing, an evil, sinister sound, and when I turned toward the laughter, I saw Julia, charred skin a harsh contrast against the white of the wedding dress she wore. She waved a massive pink plastic wand, and my skin began to burn....

  I woke with a start. A soft, low voice made shushing sounds in the dark room, and a rough hand brushed over my forehead and stroked my hair. I let myself be comforted, sliding back toward sleep, and then all at once I was wide awake.

  Who the hell was petting my hair? London – and the other boys in the band, for that matter – might have musicians’
calluses, but the roughness of this hand was different. It was the sort that comes from years of manual labor, like gardening or working on cars.

  “It’s just me,” a familiar voice said, as if he’d heard me wondering. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Ashe? What are you doing here? And how did you get in?”

  “I figured you and Stretch could use a friend right about now. Looks like I was right, too,” Ashe said. “Now, you go back to sleep so I can. The rest of your questions can wait until morning.”

  I wanted to protest, but a sense of serenity rose up to wash away my concerns and curiosity. I recognized the feeling as a more subtle version of London’s calming trick. If I had never experienced London’s version, I might not have even noticed that Ashe was using magic on me. He was good.

  I slept, this time without nightmares, and when I woke, I found Ashe dozing in the chair by the bed. As much as I wanted answers, I wasn’t rude enough to wake the man. I left him and London both sleeping and went about getting myself awake and dressed.

  One of those cup-at-a-time coffeemakers sat on top of the mini-bar, and for half a second I was tempted to brew myself a mug. The thing looked like it belonged on the set of some kind of sci-fi movie, though, and I wasn’t entirely sure I could figure out how to use it, especially after the fitful night’s sleep I’d gotten. I decided to skip the coffee and see what the mini bar had to offer. Cursing the powers-that-be who had apparently never heard of Dr. Pepper, I settled for an overpriced bottle of juice. I contemplated the snack selection for a moment before remembering that we were staying on the concierge floor of the hotel. Surely there was a lounge somewhere with better food.

  I wandered down the hall to the lounge, lingered over coffee and pastries, and wandered back to the room with a steaming Styrofoam cup in each hand. Ashe was awake, and he had figured out the coffee pot, though he was swearing a blue streak under his breath about the tiny cups and the small-batch brewing. He looked up as I stepped into the room, his attention focused on the huge cup of coffee in my hand. I handed it over without a word, and he flashed me a smile that gave me a glimpse of the handsome devil he must have been in his younger days.