by Paul Duffau
“You’re not a cop.”
Silence. Through the open curtains of the window, he could see his uncle yelling at the television, but none of the sounds made it past the walls.
Finally, Mercury talked, the first to break the barrier Mitch had imposed between them.
“I can show you a badge that says otherwise.”
How the hell could Mitch explain what happened? He didn’t know himself—nothing that made any sort of sense.
“You got hurt trying to help,” Mercury said, goading him to talk. “Which means that the girl wasn’t the only one in the fight. Correct?”
“I’m done.” Mitch stepped to the door and found his right arm restrained in Mercury’s powerful grip. He twisted against the pressure of the enclosing fingers, but they tightened on his bicep. Mitch reversed direction, turning into the grip and then sweeping his arm up and around to force the hand loose. The hand came free, only to slide down to Mitch’s chest. Mercury leaned, and Mitch’s back slammed into the house. He tried to push back but found himself pinned between the wall and hands of granite.
“Don’t,” warned Mercury as Mitch drew back a fist.
“Let go of me. . . .”
“I will, but first I need you to listen.”
Mercury’s eyes seemed to catch the light of the dying sun with a glow that reminded Mitch of the girl before she touched him. A pit opened in Mitch’s gut.
“Since you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you what I can reasonably guess. You nod when I get it right. Got it?”
Air sucked out of him, Mitch nodded, slowly lowering his upraised fist.
“Good man.”
The hands relaxed slightly, but the pressure stayed on center mass and held him.
“The men attacked, you saw it, you ran to help. Nod.”
Mitch bounced his chin a half inch.
“You fought with at least one man, probably the second, got hurt. Nod.”
He hesitated this time, then replied. “I fricking tripped and fell into the guy’s legs.”
Mercury nodded this time, acknowledging the bitterness in the words.
“You gave her time to escape.”
Mitch blinked, but nodded.
“You got hurt in the attack. Not a little scrape, either. Nod.”
He glared, but his head dipped.
“And the girl, she did something you can’t explain. She made the wounds disappear, didn’t she.” A pause. “Did she speak?”
“Some foreign word.” The words came reluctantly, as though he were betraying a secret, something private between himself and McKenzie. His face warmed, and he looked away from Mercury. From the corner of his eye, Mitch observed the cop as vexation crossed his face.
The pressure on Mitch’s chest relaxed.
“Thank you.” Mercury let go completely and stepped away from Mitch. The cop let loose a long sigh.
“I suppose you know that you can’t tell anyone about this, right?”
The corners of Mitch’s mouth turned down as his nostrils flared.
Mercury saw the expression and shook his head. “Go ahead, then. If you’re lucky, whoever you tell will believe that you’re crazy.”
“I’m never lucky.”
Mercury turned his head fractionally to the side, leaning into Mitch’s face to make eye contact. Mitch stood taller, peering over the top of the white-haired man. He shoved off the wall with his shoulder blades, thrusting his chest into Mercury’s. Mercury backed off, and Mitch slid sideways into the space created, easing toward the door.
Mercury stepped back again, restoring a buffer between them. “Think carefully before you tell anyone, Mitch. You witnessed an attempted abduction and interrupted someone’s plans.”
Mercury dug through a pocket, procured a card.
“Call me if you need help.” He extended a hand, holding the card by a corner.
Mitch took the card, grabbing the corner opposite Mercury’s fingers, and glanced at it. He could do better with his laptop and home printer. The card had the word “Mercury,” a phone number, and the title, “Investigator.”
“You don’t have a first name?”
“Does it matter?”
Mitch watched Mercury turn to leave. He was unaware of the tension in his shoulders until it dropped away. The man reached his car, a boring Ford. Mitch tensed again as Mercury stopped, car door partway open, and turned back. Even from fifteen yards away, those orbs danced with energy.
“Just a thought, Mitch,” the cop said, raising a finger and inscribing an intricate pattern in the air. “It takes guts to run to the sound of guns.”
The words settled on him like a gossamer net, but instead of entrapping him, they wrapped him in a fold of comfort. A nugget of emotion, pride, moved through him.
With that, the cop settled into the car, and Mitch turned to go inside.
The blare of the television, some dumb reality show, hit him as soon as he cracked open the door, closely followed by the smells from the kitchen.
“What he want? You going the same damn road your dad went?” demanded his uncle, tossing out twin accusations without ever shifting his full attention from the smack-talking from the set.
“I’m not crazy.” Or lazy and stupid, he thought.
“What dija you do, then?”
“Nothing.”
“Cops don’t come ’round for nothin’.”
“He came to pin a medal on my chest.”
His uncle glared at him. “Smartass, just like your dad.”
Your brother, Mitch thought, but didn’t say it, expecting to be hit for thinking it, but his uncle had already shifted back to the show.
Mitch strode down the hall to his room, shutting the door firmly. The light was too bright, so he switched it off. Lying on his bed in the dark, he let his thoughts roam. He rolled onto a hip and checked his back pocket for the permit, pulling it out and rotating it between his fingers and thumb. Finally, he got up and put it under the foot of his mattress with the stun gun.
As he dropped off to a fitful sleep, he saw her again, dressed in gold, the hair with a hint of waviness to it, held back by the ponytail, a cute nose. Then the touch, and his heart ached.
Who the hell are you, McKenzie Graham?
Chapter 6
The next day, Jackson, Kenzie’s new bodyguard, picked her up for school, waited for her after school, drove her to martial arts, watched her there, drove her home, and only let her out of his sight when she fled to the bathroom or her bedroom.
Jules noticed.
“What’s going on, Kenzie?” she asked, pulling her aside and earning a reproving frown from Jackson. The rest of the class filed out past them.
Kenzie fibbed, because it was easier than telling Jules that she was under house arrest.
“Somebody threatened my mom, so Dad’s being extra cautious.” She held Jules’s gaze while she lied. Some lies she had practiced so long they seemed true. This one she had to work to sell.
Jules wasn’t buying the manure that Kenzie was offering, but, thankfully, didn’t press her.
Her mother had reacted to the attack in an entirely predictable fashion—by overreacting. In a flurry of activity, Sasha Graham ordered her husband to find a bodyguard for McKenzie and both of them launched investigations. Her dad launched a quiet operation with his trusted underlings at the police department. Her mother researched angles from the tech company she ran, pulling in its resources behind the scenes.
In the meantime, Kenzie was stuck with Jackson.
He carried himself well, and as befit his job, his eyes never stopped moving. He stepped outside first and then held the door for her with one long arm while the other hand rested at his hip. He kept his body angled so that he could scan in both directions. She noticed as she passed close to him that he had a clean scent, as masculine as the ropy muscles that flexed under the wine-colored sports shirt he wore with khakis.
Kenzie followed him out into the afternoon. The cheerful chatter from the busy sidewa
lk greeted them as it blended with the street noise from Rainier Avenue as cars accelerated away from the stoplight.
Jackson led her to a silver Audi, parked in the first space directly in line with the studio. He hit the button to unlock it while they were still ten feet from the vehicle. He secured her into the passenger seat, walked around the vehicle, and slid behind the wheel.
Seconds later, he pulled out of the parking space and headed for the exit from the parking lot, dodging pedestrians headed for the Safeway that anchored the other end of the strip mall.
“Home next?”
“Yeah.”
He made the turn onto the avenue, and the silver car joined the herd, blending into the mix of upscale autos on the road.
Kenzie absorbed the view out the window. The sun was shining again, the fourth day in a row, which seemed like a new record for Seattle in April. Perfect running weather. An ache in her chest reminded her that she hadn’t run today. One day, but she missed the endorphin rush already.
“Stop the car,” she said. She tried to make her voice carry the authority of her mother’s, but it lacked weight, emerging with a shrill note instead.
Jackson’s concentration did not break. His focus swept from the dash to his mirrors to the road ahead. The car didn’t betray a flicker of change.
“Did you hear me?” Mentally she kicked herself for the dumb question.
“You have good technique,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.
Kenzie turned from the window and faced Jackson. “I’m going to run home.”
Jackson kept the car in the right lane, slowing to leave space for cars turning in front of him. He shook his head.
“Kenzie, no can do. That’s the one spot that you’re most vulnerable—showed up like a neon light during the threat assessment session we did with your folks. Until your father gives me the all clear, we drive, even if it’s across the street.”
Kenzie’s lips curled down. She’d be stuck with Jackson until her mother relented, whatever her father thought. She lifted her right hand up from the armrest to the door release, fingers resting on the lever. Sighing, she dropped her hand back and shifted to her left to fiddle with the sound system with her other hand.
“Thank you.”
Kenzie glanced up, saw Jackson give her a brief smile.
“I didn’t want to have to stick you in the back and set the child-proof locks.”
Kenzie ignored him and chose a song, and then hit Play, ratcheting up the volume. Turning back to the window, she pressed her temple to the cool tinted glass as “Be Your Everything” resonated inside the vehicle. The lyrics wrapped around her, and the heaviness in her chest grew. She told herself she needed to run, she’d forget if she ran, let the movement take her away.
What kind of idiot runs out into the street like that?
No answer came to her, just slow-motion pictures, earnest and yet somehow tragic, as he said hi through the veil of pain. Then the sensation when she touched his chest, felt the deeper pain that didn’t show.
Hands clasped unconsciously against her stomach below her belly button, she stared at the world gliding past her, normal people doing normal things, and wished she could be a part of it.
The church windows spied on her, knowing her. They were tall and rounded at the top, with smaller circular windows set above them, each with wooden muntins separating the panes of glass. They watched without blinking, all the people in their crosshairs. Above them rose the cross, set on the top of the bell tower. The tower, rising from a bald, barreled roof, was capped in wood, freshly painted and bloodred. The cross strained her vision, outlined in black against the intense blue of the April sky.
The large brass bell in the tower had been removed from the old church a generation ago after the congregation had fractured.
No sign announced the church, no mention of denomination or times for services. Instead of open doors, a keypad stood anachronistically against the grim gray-blue basalt block of the foundation walls, allowing entry to the chosen. Kenzie’s skin cooled as the rock stole her body heat. She waited for her parents to make their way up the steps. She shivered. Until midsummer, the walls held the chill of winter; it would be cooler still inside.
The earliest lie she remembered being taught surrounded this old building: the imperative to tell others, Meat, that it was a church—an exclusive one for the wealthy, but no different than a thousand similar houses of worship in Seattle. Only the adults held the codes to get in.
Once, a couple of years ago, Kenzie had surreptitiously watched her father entering the digits that would unlock the door. Memorizing them, she had tried them later, feeling pleased with the snick of the lock opening. She had pulled open the door barely wide enough to weasel through, then shut it behind her, hearing it latch. In the musty and dim interior of the entry alcove, Kenzie had seen that the heavy wooden doors, darkly stained and inset with etched stars, were shut. Beyond those doors lay her target, The Incantaraus, the book that held all the spells, charm-making, and potions known to the congregation.
She had taken precisely one step into the alcove before a Linius ward had captured her, weaving her into a cocoon that left her barely able to breathe and blink. Instant panic had made her squirm and thrash to remove the enmeshing spell, to escape. All the movement had accomplished was to leave a sheen of sweat on her skin. Kenzie had forced herself to take several deep breaths to quell her initial panic. Thinking rapidly, she began to form canceling spells, an unraveling spell, and, getting desperate, the only banishing spell she knew. Her attacks on her bindings squandered a profligate amount of energy, but without the proper focus, the magic dissipated into ethereal wisps lacking the power to accomplish the simplest task.
An hour later—it seemed so much longer!—the lock had buzzed and clicked, and her father entered. Kenzie sagged against the wall, too exhausted to stand.
He stood and assessed her. His eyes displayed no humor. “Well, I’m glad it’s not Meat, at least.”
Humiliating.
After he had released her from the Linius ward, he had driven her home. She held her tongue, but the voice in the back of her head wondered what would have happened to an ordinary stranger who’d stumbled into the church.
Kenzie shoved the memory away as her mother and father met her at the pad. She felt a twinge when she followed them across the threshold to the alcove, alert to the protective spells hung by the Council of Protectors. After her foray, the wards had been changed and strengthened. Her parents hung their coats while she waited.
The inlaid stars on the massive doors glowed as the three of them approached, Kenzie in the lead, and soundlessly the doors hinged open as though waiting for them.
Kenzie stepped into the nave, seeing row upon row of empty pews flanking the long aisle to the open altar at the front of the church, which sat devoid of decoration. The polish on the hard benches gleamed in the light from the clerestory.
She kept walking, and the view in front of her rippled and ran like watercolors bleeding off the bottom of a canvas. A lightness touched her skin, sending quivers of excitement along her nerve endings as she entered the transition. Three more steps and the colors ran back up the canvas, the hues lifting up until they touched the glittering stars above her and spread to the far reaches of the woodland.
The tightness of her jeans and blouse, her dressy shoes, even her undergarments, disappeared, replaced by the delicate touch of silken fabric as her clothes transformed into a flowing robe. Glistening white, it signaled her status as an enchantress, a woman of power, but not a wizard—yet.
Kenzie paused, feeling the comfort of mossy earth below naked feet, and offered gratitude to the magic.
Spread before her, lit with the light of a perpetual moon, lay the Glade of Silver Night, home to the Gathering, home to the Family.
Chapter 7
Hunter Rubiera scowled at him in disbelief.
“You need better dreams, bro,” he said with a sad shake of his head.
“Any dream that involves a pretty girl and you on your back should not end with you bleeding.”
Mitch hid his face while Hunter offered his advice, but watched him from the corners of his eyes. He was working on their joint project in the school robotics lab, the heat from his face obscured. Spying the problem with the bounce that had almost tipped the machine on the last trial run, he added tension to the suspension of the robotic arm. He turned the robot ninety degrees, placing it back on its base on the lab bench.
He hadn’t told Hunter everything, leaving out the stun gun, which was sitting under his mattress at home, and the learner’s permit, burning a hole in his mind and pocket. He was an idiot for carrying it, he knew, but the impulse to keep it close overrode common sense. He stopped short of mentioning anything as random as instantaneous healing.
“You done messing with that yet?” Hunter asked.
Mitch traced the linkages. “That should work.”
Mitch and Hunter had paired up the first day of the semester and quickly discovered that their skills complemented each other’s: Hunter a genius with electronics and controls, Mitch nimble and clever with motors and mechanical systems. Now Hunter switched on the remote control, also hand-built, and tapped the joystick. The mechanical arm jerked. The motion attracted the attention of the other nerds at nearby tables. They muttered then returned their attention to the robots they were building.
“Easy.”
Hunter shot Mitch an amused grin. “No worries.”
He manipulated the arm, increasing the range of motion with deft adjustments on the remote. The mechanism responded precisely to each command.
“Pretty sweet job, Stumble. You might not be able to walk without running someone over, but you can build the hell out of stuff.” He worked the pincers, opening and closing the four-fingered claw, slowly at first, speeding up as he got the feel of the modifications that Mitch had made.
“You know, if I were under a pretty dream girl . . . ,” Hunter started.
The articulated metal turned sideways, the artificial fingers closing in a mechanical pinch in the direction of an intensely concentrating girl bent over her own contraption a few feet away.