by Paul Duffau
She glided across the mat to the small barrier that defined the training floor as separate from the spectator section, paused to turn back and bow her respects, and backed off the training floor.
Kenzie jogged lightly on the balls of her bare feet toward the changing rooms. As she passed Jackson, she slowed and spoke.
“I asked my father, and he said it was okay. Next door, in the yogurt shop. I told him you’d be keeping an eye on us.”
Jackson nodded, his face impassive, but Kenzie could feel his uneasiness with the arrangement as if he sensed the parts that she had left out. She had asked, laying out her case that it was a study date with “Michael,” not anything else. When he balked, she’d pointed out that Jackson would be there, and promised to only go to the highly visible eatery.
She hustled into the narrow changing room, quickly swapping the dobok for jeans and a cotton shirt with ruffles along the sweetheart neckline, the front plunge curling in from the shoulders to a point. Kenzie shrugged the garment on and adjusted it to make sure her bra didn’t show. The sleeves flared at the middle of her biceps with a matching ruffle. She slipped on her socks and running shoes. Kenzie dropped her workout clothes into her gear bag. Her hand wavered, then reached into the small zip pocket on the end.
Kenzie pulled out the necklace she had secreted from the Glade and considered it. The open setting in the middle of the heart-shaped leaves intrigued her, like a work of art that was nearly, but not quite, perfect. The past several evenings, when she knew that her parents would not interrupt, she would take it out and stare at it as though, if she tried hard enough, she could divine its purpose. It defied her inspection.
Today, she had smuggled it from the house, uncertain of whether she had the guts to wear it. Now it sat lightly on her hand, untarnished, and she still couldn’t make up her mind. An impatience grew inside her, and she pictured Mitch shuffling his feet and fussing at his watch.
Annoyed with herself for dithering, she quickly reached behind her neck, holding back her ponytailed hair with the backs of her hands, and closed the clasp. There was a very quiet click when the hasp snapped shut, and Kenzie waited, muscles tensed to react if there was embedded magic in the necklace.
The murmur of Jules’s and Mitch’s voices, too indistinct to make out individual words, brought her back to the moment.
Kenzie gathered her stuff and exited the confining space.
Jackson was standing guard, arms held loosely at his sides, scanning the pictures above the wall of spectator seats. The instant she appeared, he pivoted, first to face her, and then continuing until he had ascertained the position of everything in sight. His gaze lingered on Mitch, and a cloud of discontent emanated from him.
She followed his gaze. Mitch was the opposite of the shuffling goof she thought she’d see. He exercised a quiet animation as he spoke, rolling his head and shoulders side to side in short arcs. He finished his point with a lift of his hand. To Kenzie’s surprise, a slender smile appeared on Jules’s face. The black belt nodded to Mitch and then inclined her head in Kenzie’s direction.
Mitch jerked around. Kenzie could see him stiffen as she walked to him. He glanced down, and then his gaze darted up, tracing the lines of her body. A hint of heat touched her cheeks as she noted that his eyes slowed their movement at the top of her blouse.
Kenzie knew she should be offended, but instead her hurried walk took on a hint of a sashay. Still, as she got closer, she wondered if her bra showed through anyway, or whether . . . or whether . . . or whether . . .
His eyes sought hers, realized she had been watching him watching her, and his face matched hers, a hint of a flush coloring his skin.
Kenzie smiled, and Mitch visibly relaxed.
Jackson fake-coughed. “Study session, right?”
Kenzie did not even deign to recognize him as she met Mitch by the door. “Ready?” she asked, drawing close.
He’s taller than I thought.
“Sure,” said Mitch.
He reached for the door, but Jackson pushed past him and pulled it open first. The security man sidled into the doorway and gave the parking lot a hard-eyed sweep. Only then did Jackson finish opening the door.
Jules glanced at Kenzie but spoke to Mitch first. “A pleasure to meet you, Mitch.”
He nodded as she turned her attention to Kenzie.
“Next week, Kenzie, same time.” Something in the tone forced Kenzie to focus on Jules. “Please remind Mitch that your private lesson ends at four. I’ll make sure next time that the door is actually locked.” A smile softened the mild rebuke.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Amusement curled Jules’s lips, transforming the woman’s face. “Go, I’ve got to get ready for the next class.”
Mitch hustled out the door first. Kenzie followed him into the heat of the sun, with Jackson behind her. She let the rays warm her skin for a second before heading right to the shop two doors down that offered coffee, sweet treats, and frozen yogurt.
A shadow fell in beside her. “You look nice,” Mitch said, repeating what his lingering ogling had already told her. He reached for the handle of the coffee shop door and pulled. The smell of roasted coffee permeated the air.
“Thanks,” Kenzie said.
The place was modestly busy. Jackson staked out a table in the corner and pointed to one next to his.
Kenzie nodded.
“What do you want?” she asked Mitch. She swung her pack down and unzipped the front pouch where she kept her money and ID.
Mitch raced her getting money out to pay for the yogurts and won. “My treat?”
A barista with blond hair tinged red at the tips took their order. Kenzie ordered a coffee, black, for Jackson. Mitch paid and dropped a spare dollar into the tip jar.
“Be back in a second.”
Kenzie dashed over and dropped her bag at the table that Jackson was saving for them. “Watch this?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She rejoined Mitch. The barista placed the coffee on the wood counter with a bored sigh while a second employee scooped out yogurt: spearmint for Kenzie, vanilla in a cone for Mitch.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
A furrow creased his forehead. “Why?”
The question flustered her. Thoughts dashed through her head as she remembered the pain she’d felt when she touched him, the hassle that must have come with his reckless charge to help her, and deep inside by her heart, a recognition that her cloistered existence left her with no idea how to interact with Mitch right now.
Cloistered.
She had seen the word in a short story for English class and felt the pain of the protective life, of lost opportunities.
“I thought maybe my father had scared you.”
“Your dad?” Confusion crossed Mitch’s face.
The bored girl serving them passed over the desserts. They had put chocolate sprinkles on hers, and multicolored sugary specks on Mitch’s.
“What about your dad?”
She picked up Jackson’s coffee and turned away from the counter, headed for their table. “I thought that maybe he might have, I guess, scared you off or something.”
Her voice faltered toward the end. In a flash of intuition, she saw Mitch had no idea of what she was talking about. The furrow deepened, and she could see Mitch sorting everything he knew. . . .
Oh, hell.
She had to tell him first. She didn’t know why, except that she didn’t want to keep secrets from Mitch.
A voice in the back of her head whispered, Really? and the image of the Glade of Silver Night rose in her mind.
She shook her head hard once to rid herself of her internal hall monitor and spoke quickly. “He’s a lieutenant with Seattle PD.”
Mitch had turned with Kenzie. Now he stopped dead, face losing color. He stood slack-jawed.
“Oh shit,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“He’s not that bad,” she lied. She searched across the restaurant, found Jacks
on staring at them with hard suspicion.
“Keep walking.”
Kenzie took the lead, and Mitch followed her. She could feel his reluctance. Reaching the tables, she forced herself to smile, her lips twisting to sell it.
Jackson’s face was grim. He wasn’t buying it.
“Here’s your coffee,” she said, bending a knee almost like a curtsy, setting the paper cup in front of him.
“What’s goi—”
Her hand now free, she inscribed a spell in the air, her thumb and pointer finger coming together in a movement that resembled the closing of a zipper or the pulling of a thread.
Jackson’s voice faded away, and he grew disinterested. His hand reached for the coffee.
She wheeled to face Mitch. “We have to talk.”
“No kiddin’.”
He was pale, switching focus from Jackson, to Kenzie’s hands, to her face. He flopped into the padded booth. The cone wobbled, and Kenzie worried that the frozen mess was about to land in his lap.
“Scoot.” Kenzie sat next to him.
A squadron of hummingbirds were flitting inside her, and her hands shook. She put the yogurt down and clasped them together and squeezed.
Mitch shifted away from her, creating some space. “I told him everything,” he said.
Distress carried plainly with the simple declaration.
“I know,” said Kenzie. Even clasped, her hands showed a visible quiver. “I know.”
They both took a deep breath at the same time. Kenzie let the air out first, and spoke to Mitch, careful to keep her voice down so Jackson wouldn’t hear. The spell she had laid on him made him lose focus and drift, but he would remember anything he heard.
“He told me, actually, yelled at me. He said he went out to answer a call at your house. It’s all because you rushed out into the street to save me—”
“That’s not exactly my fault!”
“I didn’t say it was. Would you listen?”
Mitch’s jaw was set, but he dipped his head once, agreeing.
“You didn’t have any choice about telling him, you really didn’t.” Her mouth dried out, and she tried to swallow, something to get the rest of the words out.
Mitch gave her time.
“You said nothing made sense yesterday. It’s going to make less sense today.”
She stopped again.
Telling an ordinary person about magic carried defined consequences, none of them pleasant. If she were lucky, they’d only banish her. A shudder shook her shoulders as she considered the ultimate penalty for being an apostate.
Mitch saw the movement and lifted his hand as if to comfort her. Before it could touch, he dropped it back to his lap.
Kenzie blinked, and blinked again, and then talked in a low voice, rushing to get all the words out before she lost courage. She focused on the melting mint yogurt in front of her.
“The day those thugs tried to kidnap me, you hurt yourself trying to help me, hurt yourself, and I couldn’t leave you there like that, so I cheated. I used . . .”
Her voice broke.
Keep talking, don’t stop, tell him. . . .
“I used,” she said, and nearly lost her nerve. Quick is best, she thought, and carried on, “Magic, a spell that I had heard of, but never used. And it worked, but I used so much energy, too much energy, I thought I’d hurt you instead of healing you, and then you were okay. I had to get away, so I put you to rest, and ran like a coward and hid in my room.”
Mitch’s long fingers closed around her clenched fists, gently and protectively covering them. His touch galvanized her skin, a different kind of magic.
“You are pretty frickin’ amazing.”
She twisted to face him, to see if he was mocking her. He met her with a steadiness, a little wide-eyed maybe, but she couldn’t blame him.
Looking at him, she lost her train of thought for a moment. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she recovered. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”
Mitch laughed with a hint of bitterness in response, and said, “Seems like everyone but me already knows.”
Kenzie winced. “Just me and my dad.”
“And Hunter,” said Mitch.
“Who is he?”
Mitch gave her a worried glance. “You don’t know?”
Kenzie felt control of the conversation’s momentum shifting to Mitch. Obviously, she was missing something, and internal warning bells were sounding. Beneath Mitch’s calloused hand, hers began to shake.
“No.”
Mitch quickly explained the flash of light with Hunter. The warning bells shifted into a full-fledged clamor when Mitch told her of Hunter’s reaction.
He concluded with, “And that’s when I met the lieutenant. He knew all about me, which seemed weird, and I couldn’t stop talking.”
He paused.
“He used a spell or whatever you call it on me, didn’t he?”
Kenzie dipped her chin. “Probably.”
She drew a deep breath to center herself, as Jules had taught. In a moment of insight, she realized Harold had taught the same thing, just differently.
“What do you know about Hunter?”
Mitch hesitated. “Know or guess? His family has bucks, he’s smarter than crap, and the girls hang all over him. He’s about my only friend. That’s what I know.”
Kenzie waited.
“What I guess?” Mitch waved his free hand, fingers together in a small circle. “He’s like you. He does stuff with his hands, kind of like you but not quite the same, and everybody starts agreeing with him. He did it with the cop that showed up after I shocked him, before your dad showed up.”
Kenzie watched Mitch drill down in concentration. The hummingbirds had left her stomach, replaced by circling vultures. The Family would never let Mitch know that they existed. Their survival relied on staying at the outer fringes of light.
Her next words hurt, but she had to warn him.
“They’ll kill you if they think you know about them. The Family will.”
Mitch’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. He was ahead of her. “Yours or Hunter’s?”
“Probably . . . both?”
“And what happens to you?”
“I can protect myself.”
“Un-huh.”
Kenzie snatched her hands out from under his and balled them in her lap.
How come he never did what she expected? she wondered.
While Kenzie sorted her thoughts, Mitch cleared his throat. He shifted to Jackson.
The spell was wearing off.
Wary amusement lit in Mitch’s face. “None of this makes any sort of rational sense, you know that?
Kenzie shrugged. Nothing ever made sense except when she was at the Glade and could be herself, all of her, without having to hide anything.
“Can you sneak out Friday night? Tomorrow?”
The recklessness of the question totally gobsmacked her.
Numbly, she nodded and said faintly, “Sure.”
In her head, klaxons replaced the bells as her good sense shouted, What are you thinking?
Chapter 21
It smelled old.
Mitch let go of the door, and it swung shut, a dark scythe cutting into the sunlight, until the click of the latch left him in the gloom. In the middle of the room was a long oaken counter, easily six feet wide and thirty feet long. Curved drawer pulls gave an approximation of the size and depth of each container, some so small as to be designed to hold stamps, others large enough to fit a cadaver. Shelves made from plank oak lined the wall, glass jars and jugs arrayed in haphazard order to the left, a wall of ancient-looking leather-bound books to the right.
It took another few seconds to adjust.
The glass jars bore yellowed paper tags with faded handwriting. He took a hesitant stride to the left, almost against his will, impelled by curiosity. The first jar on the shelf at eye level held some kind of plant leaf. The writing, slender and looping, had three lines. The first looked like the
Elvish runes from Lord of the Rings. The second line, written in English, read “Elf Leaf.” The last line had “Rosemary” in parentheses.
“The stuff you buy in the supermarket will never do.”
Mitch recoiled from the jars, spinning to face Mercury.
The older man beamed, and shuffled around the end of the countertop, extending his hand as he did so. He wasn’t in a suit; instead, he wore a formless gray shirt that bagged heavily over the shoulders and past the waist. His pants were black, thick cotton that made swishing sounds as he moved. Mitch would have sworn he saw slippers on the man’s feet.
“I’m glad you decided to come.”
Mitch squinted at the man in the low light, met the steady gaze of the green eyes, and made no effort to shake hands.
“It looks more like a weird-ass store than a museum.”
Mercury emitted a sad sigh as his right hand returned to his side. “The proper response upon being greeted by a friend is to say hello.”
“Who says we’re friends?”
Mercury raised a bushy eyebrow. “Fair enough, I suppose.” He shrugged, and an impish smile broke up the lines on his face and rearranged them into an expression of warmth. “Let’s go over to the back room, and we’ll chat there.”
Mercury led the way, opening a door that Mitch hadn’t seen on his first inspection of the interior. Mitch stopped at the doorway. The room, running longwise to his left, was bright. The wall directly in front of him had a row of windows that received abundant light tinged golden with morning sun instead of the hot yellow of the afternoon.
A trick of the window glazing, Mitch decided. He noted the wildness outside the window with a frown before being distracted by the oddities of the room.
The space looked more like a garden parlor than an office. Plants grew from odd pots; some vines wound up to the high, arched ceiling before traversing across. Mitch recognized some of the flowers, periwinkle and rose. A pair of large orchids occupied places of honor on either side of an old-fashioned wood desk. Between the blooms sat a thick ledger book, the kind used a couple of hundred years ago. He half-expected to see a quill and inkwell. They would have fit with the ledger. Instead a simple pencil sat on the desk next to the ledger and a pair of straight-backed chairs shared the near corner of the desk.