by Abbey, Kit
He didn’t look up until Jones cleared his throat and his only reaction was to look mildly annoyed, and to push his paperwork to the side.
“Caspien,” he said, although his eyes were trained firmly on William. “This is unexpected.”
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” said Jones.
Jamison-Smith raised them both slowly. “Weren’t you supposed to kill that boy?”
“Change of plans.”
The older man sighed. “I told Mr. Grey that giving you a second chance was a mistake.”
“And I’m sure you’d like to live to tell him I told you so.”
“Indeed. What is it you are here for? Money? Are you going to run?”
Jones jerked his head towards William. “They removed his powers. How do we get them back?”
Jamison-Smith gave an elegant shrug. “I can’t imagine why you think I’d know anything about that.”
No. Enough. There had been a time when William had been happy with the tiny scraps of information these people fed him, but that time had passed. He no longer had the ability to conjure up whatever weapon he could imagine, but there was a silver letter opener on the desk and that would do just fine.
He didn’t move with any real speed, just calm deliberation. He plucked it from amidst the paperweights and ornate pens and walked around the desk.
“Do you mean to threaten me?” Jamison-Smith scoffed. “If you think-”
William clapped one hand over Jamison-Smith’s mouth to muffle the scream, and with the other he jammed the letter opener into his leg as hard as he could. Jones calmly closed the study door with a firm click.
“Answer the question,” said William.
Jamison-Smith stared wide eyed at the letter opener still lodged in his leg.
“You’re mad,” he said, his voice octaves higher than it had been. “Grey Corp will hunt you down like dogs.”
William was about the pull the letter opener free and jam it back in somewhere else, but Jones made a discrete noise and placed a wicked looking knife down on the desk. Some distant part of William’s mind noted that it was the same knife that had given him his scar.
He didn’t even need to reach for it. Jamison-Smith shook his head wildly. “Alright, alright! Stop it. I’m not going to suffer this indignity for the sake of information that won’t even help you!”
“You let us judge what information is or isn’t helpful,” said Jones.
Jamison-Smith’s hand was hovering over the letter opener like he wanted to pull it out but couldn’t bring himself to. He spat the facts out one after the other; “Madeline tried to run away in the 80s. They made her brother take her powers away, but he was soft and undid it after a few weeks. That’s it. That’s all I know.”
William remembered the photograph on Madeline’s desk.
Jones tapped the desk. “What’s her brother’s name?”
“Lachlan.”
“And what happened to him?”
“I don’t know.” Jones reached over and grab the knife, and thinking he was about to be on the wrong of it Jamison-Smith tried to push himself back and began talking fast. “I don’t know! He’s not dead, they kept him alive to stop Madeline from trying to run again, but I have no idea where! Somewhere down south, maybe.”
But his panic wasn’t necessary. It didn’t look like Jones was even listening anymore. He looked a William and said, “time to go. Now.”
He was out the door almost before he finished speaking. William scrambled to follow. Jamison-Smith’s voice followed them down the hallway, “there’s nowhere for you to run! You’ll pay for what you done!”
William suspected he meant what they’d done to him personally, not what they’d done to Grey Corp. He seemed like that type.
“What’s wrong?” William was struggling to keep up with Jones. They barrelled past a maid who gave a little shriek, reached the top of the stairs. Jones stopped short, and held an arm out to stop William.
Rowan stood at the foot of the staircase, looking up at them.
“Caspien.” She shook her head. “You’ve really done it this time.”
“I’m not going to argue with you Ro,” said Jones calmly. “William,” he continued in the same even tone, “run.”
“What?”
“Run!”
Jones grabbed a fistful of his shirt and threw him away from the stairs, and he finally got the point. They ran back the way they’d come, past the terrified maid and past the study door. At the end of the whole was an enormous window overlooking the yard and the Illuded tree.
“Jump!” said Jones, but he didn’t even pause to see if William was going to follow the command. He lifted him by the collar and the loose waistband of his jeans and bodily threw him through the glass.
It shattered around him, and there was the curious sensation of being air born, and then there was the all too real sensation of hitting the ground. He cried out in pain, and knew without having to look that something bad had happened to his leg.
Jones landed lightly next to him, you’d think he’d just hopped down off a little step letter, and he was grabbed William by the shoulders. “Get up, get up!”
His leg was a useless thing, radiating pain down to his toes and up to his shoulder.
“My leg,” he sobbed.
“Forget your leg, get up!”
Jones hauled him to his feet, ignoring William’s cry as his body automatically attempted to put weight on his injured leg. It buckled, but he did not fall. An arm firmly under his shoulders, Jones half carried, half dragged him around the house. They arrived in time to see Rowan stepping out the front door.
Jones cursed and stumbled. He dropped William and for a moment the blinding pain in his leg distracted him from the many, many sharp little pains coming alive all over him. It was the grass beneath them. She’d Illuded it into glass. It was like trying to run across razor blades. Within seconds his arms were slick with blood. With a low growl Jones managed to stand, he grabbed William tightly-
Surely it wouldn’t hurt like this every time. He looked down at his arms, which were covered in stinging, throbbing burns. But of course it wouldn’t. The next time there wouldn’t be any silver, and he’d wake up with a full belly instead of burns.
He gagged, and the sound made Jude stir. He sat slowly. “You didn’t kill me.”
“No,” he said. “I guess I not.”
Jude looked down at his wedding band. “Part of me wishes you had.”
-and threw him free of the grass and onto the gravel driveway. Rowan’s Mustang was parked within arms reach, and William used it to pull himself to his feet. Jones had clearly decided that there was only one way to deal with an Illuder, and standing around waiting to see what she did next was not it. He rushed her, moving almost too fast to track, so fast the razor sharp grass didn’t have a hope of slicing his feet to pieces. Rowan had just enough time to Illude a gun, (she couldn’t hold two illusions at once, the grass turned soft and grassy once more), but not enough to shoot Jones before he slammed into her, carrying them both across the threshold and back into the house.
There was gunfire. One shot. Two.
William had never felt so useless in his life. Without the car to lean on he wouldn’t even be able to stand. Was it unlocked? Could he leave Jones behind? At least one of them should get away, right? How long did they have before the reinforcements Jamison-Smith had undoubtedly called arrived?
The tried the Mustang’s door. Unlocked. But no keys. Damn it.
Jones came staggering out of the house. Obviously wounded, and badly, but still moving with remarkable speed. “We need to go.”
“You didn’t kill her did you?”
Jones shook his head. “Come on!”
William gestured to the car. “No keys. I can’t walk.”
Jones growled in frustration. He was literally soaked in blood; he stopped in front of William for only a few seconds, but already it
was pooling around his feet. “You don’t have a choice, come on!”
William tried. He really did. But there was just no way his leg was going to support his weight, even if it didn’t hurt like nothing else William had ever experienced. Jones took two fistfuls of his own hair like he wanted to pull it out. They could hear Jamison-Smith yelling inside of the house.
“I’ll go get her keys,” said Jones.
But another car was coming down the driveway. Something blue and Asian. Jones tensed, prepared for more fighting. William struggled to stand.
But it wasn’t anyone from Grey Corp who got out of the car after it came careening to a sudden stop.
“Holy hell,” said Percy. “It’s Caspien Jones.”
“Percy.” Jones nodded, like this had been his plan all along. “Quick, give me a hand with him. We have to get out of here.”
Percy looked down at William, and then up at the house where his father could still be heard shouting. He shrugged and knelt to grab William under the arms. Quickly, and with no care for his injured arm, he and Jones manoeuvred William into the back seat.
Jones held his hand out for the keys and without hesitating Percy tossed them to him.
“You got tall,” said Jones as he started the car.
“You got old,” Percy replied.
At this point, William passed out.
Chapter 59.
William woke up on a couch that smelt like garlic and with a leg that felt like it had offended a man with a sharp knife. He whimpered in a very unmanly fashion, and immediately hoped no one had heard that. No such luck.
“We did what we could for your leg,” said Percy who was sitting on a fold out chair. “considering that Cas wouldn’t let us take you to a hospital or anything.” William looked, and saw that his leg had been strapped into a makeshift splint. It was not pretty. “We googled messed up legs and found some DIY splinting instructions.”
“Oh,” said William.
“And by we, I mean Mark and I. Cas was no help. All he did was steal our bed. Here.” He held out a couple of little white pills and a glass of water.
William managed to sit up and accepted both. The couch took up most of the small room. There were a few battered fold out chairs and a TV on a stand made of milk crates. Pizza boxes littered the floor, (that explained the smell) and an eclectic assortment of movie posters covered the walls.
“Where’s Jones?”
“Out,” said Percy. “He said he’d be back in a few hours, and that you’d be leaving then.”
“Ok,” said William. He didn’t ask how, exactly, he was supposed to leave given the state of his leg. Instead he said, “thanks for helping us out.”
Percy shrugged, and grinned. “Anything to annoy Grey Corp. And by Grey Corp, I of course mean my dad.”
William gave a half-hearted laugh. “Any pizza left in those boxes? I’m starving.”
“There probably is,” said Percy, “but I would not recommend eating it. Mark’s gone to find some food that hasn’t gone all green and fuzzy, he’ll be back soon.”
William nodded. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how his life had gone so badly awry.
Percy regarded him with great curiosity. “So what did you do?”
“Jones threw my out a second storey window.” William looked morosely at his leg. “I wish I could say that’s the worst he’s ever done to me.”
“Not your leg, what did you do to piss off Grey Corp?”
William hesitated. “Didn’t Jones tell you?”
Percy shook his head. “He barely said two words to us. Just that bit about not taking you to a hospital, even though you should clearly be in a hospital, and then this morning when he left he told us to make sure you stayed here until he came back and got you.”
“Oh,” said William. “Well, they wanted to kidnap a little girl, and I really didn’t want to kidnap a little girl. So Mr. Grey decided that Jones should eat me, to like, you know, teach me a lesson. He’s a werewolf. Did you know he was a werewolf?”
“Sure, everyone knows that. You don’t look like very eaten,” said Percy.
“I guess he decided not to eat me.”
“Luckily for you. But why?”
“Why what?” William knew what Percy was asking, but he wasn’t sure how much he should disclose. He was all tied up with Grey Corp, even if he wasn’t technically an employee. He was Grey Corp adjacent. How trustworthy was he, really?
“Why didn’t Cas kill you?” Percy seemed to understand the source of William’s hesitation. “You don’t have to say anything else if you don’t want. I would never tell my father, but Mr. Grey has ways of getting stuff out of people, you know?” He shrugged. “So maybe it is for best you don’t say anything else. I’m already going to be in enough shit when my dad finds out I helped you at all.”
“You won’t be in too much trouble will you?” William couldn’t think of a polite way to ask if his dad would have him fed to a werewolf, or whatever the werewolf equivalent was now that Jones was AWOL.
“Doubt it. He’ll just rant and rave at me a bit. Lock me up in my room for a few months until I get out and come live with Mark until Grey Corp finds me and sends me back home whereupon I am locked up again until I get out and come live with Mark and you see where I’m going with this.” Percy looked at his watch. “Cas’s been gone for an hour or so, he should be back soon.”
William was more eager to see Mark and the food he’d gone in search of, and at that exact moment he heard a door open.
“Come give us a hand Percy!”
Percy moved out of William’s view.
“Is he awake yet?”
“Yeah.”
Their voices dropped down too low for William to hear, but he suspected that Mark was lamenting the presence of Jones and William in his life. William didn’t care how much Mark didn’t want him to be there, just so long as Mark wasn’t planning on keeping all the food to himself. Percy reappeared, and handed William a McDonald’s bag. William eagerly dug out a tray of hotcakes and tucked in.
“So, Rowan’s your Aunt?” he said around a mouth full of hot cake and syrup.
Mark chose this moment to enter the room, and he rolled his eyes at William’s display of manners. “What happened to your neck?”
William licked syrup off his finger. “Jones tried to kill me. It’s something of a hobby for him.”
“Technically Rowan’s my cousin,” said Percy, after he’d swallowed his mouthful of McMuffin. “But I’ve always called her Auntie. My parents pretty much raised her, and it was my dad’s influence with Mr. Grey that got her out of all the unpleasantness unscathed.”
“Unpleasantness?”
“Well normally when your husband is executed, oh sorry, I mean ‘fired,’ you at least get demoted, but my father intervened on her behalf. Some say she was in on it, other’s say they acted without her. I was just a little kid at the time, so what do I know?”
“Um,” William wiped a smear of syrup off his chin. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Percy wiped his fingers on a napkin. “You don’t know about a lot of things, it seems.”
“So everyone keeps telling me.”
“In 2012 Cas and Rowan’s husband Jude tried to kill Albert.”
William choked on his mouthful of hot cake. “They what?”
“They tried to kill him. No Albert, no magic.” Percy shrugged. “No magic, no Grey Corp. There weren’t the first to try it.”
William’s breakfast was forgotten. Mark reached over and stole his hash browns. “People have tried to kill Albert before?”
“Oh yes. And all of them were caught and all executed. Except Cas.”
“Why not him?”
“I suppose he was too valuable. Not many people can survive being made a werewolf. I think that was his punishment; being turned. Well, that and having to be the one to kill Jude.”
William was surprised
his head didn’t cave in with the force of all the pieces falling into place. He thought of the vision he’d had back at the Jamison-Smith mansion and spoke slowly. “Jones killed Rowan’s husband?”
Percy nodded. “Jude actually did get eaten, unlike you. It was a horrible time. Before that, my house was a happy place. Jude and Cas were always around, laughing and joking. And Aunt Ro was so happy. After....” He trailed off. “It was a horrible time.”
William could relate.
Chapter 60.
It was late afternoon by the time Jones returned. While William was hovering only a few rungs above invalid, Jones injuries already seemed a lot better. The burns were scabbed over and his bruises faded to sickly yellow. The only thing that seemed to be bothering him a little was his side, where Rowan had managed to shoot him.
He was once again in possession of the Charger, (William’s suggestion that they might want to somehow acquire a less conspicuous car was met with a reaction like when soldiers tell their buddies to go on without them in war movies), and he stood by the door impatiently while Percy and Mark helped William into the back seat. The back seat had ample space for a bunch more cassettes and spare clothes and Jesus was a machete? But it did not offer nearly enough space for William to stretch out in. He ended up in a half sitting, half lying kind of position, with the door handle pressing nastily into his back and his splinted leg propped up by a few pillows donated to the cause by Percy. His leg was already throbbing, and tendrils of painful heat snaked outwards from the injury.
“Don’t tell anyone we were here,” said Jones as he climbed into the car.
“They’ll figure it out either way.”
Jones gave a half nod that conceded that Percy had the right of it.
“And whatever they do to us when they find,” said Mark, “that will be your fault.”
“It will be fine,” said Percy. More to Mark than to Jones. He laid a hand on Mark’s chest. “I promise.”