Cold Burn of Magic

by Jennifer Estep

  But I didn’t hear any of that—not one thing.

  That skittering sound came again, and I finally realized what it was—someone had banged into the shelf of cleaning supplies in the storage room above me. A low, muttered curse confirmed my suspicions.

  Someone was in the library.

  If it was one of the librarians who’d come back to start on the inventory, then I was screwed. But if it was someone else, well, I was still screwed. Because there was no reason for anyone to be in here besides me.

  Unless they were after me.

  My heart pounding, I crossed the basement and ducked into the space under the stairs. Still being as quiet as possible, I drew my sword.

  “Here,” that low voice muttered again. “There’s another door. Let’s see where it goes.”

  The door at the top of the steps creaked open, and a square of light appeared on the basement floor. Someone stepped into the square. I couldn’t tell who it was, but he was wearing a sword, judging from the long shadow poking out from his hip.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs as the shadow eased down. I tightened my grip on my own weapon and waited.

  Thanks to my sight, I didn’t need any light, but the shadow grumbled, then pulled out a phone, using it as a makeshift flashlight. He held the phone out, shining it over the basement. Finally, the shadow spotted my lamp and headed over to it. I left my position under the stairs and snuck up behind him.

  The shadow reached for the lamp, fumbling for a switch, but the touch of his fingers was enough to turn it on. I raised my sword, ready to cut him down.

  “Finally,” he muttered again. “I was starting to think this was some sort of dungeon—”

  A terrible suspicion filled my mind, causing me to pull my blow at the last second. Instead of ramming my sword into his back, I slammed the hilt into his shoulder, making him stagger forward. His knees hit the edge of my cot, and he landed face-first on the tangle of sheets. He flipped over just in time for me to press my sword up against his neck.

  Felix blinked up at me.

  I let out a breath, lowered my sword from his throat, and stepped back.

  “Felix!” I hissed. “What are you doing here?”

  He gave me a guilty look. “Um, well, you see, it’s actually a funny story—”

  “It was my idea,” another voice said.

  I whirled around. Devon stood at the top of the stairs, a sword strapped to his waist. He came down to the basement, his green gaze scanning over everything from Felix still sprawled on the cot to my piles of worn clothes to the small, pitiful knickknacks I’d packed into my suitcases. His face was neutral, so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but anger spurted through me all the same. He didn’t get to see this. He didn’t get to see this part of me—the real me.

  But I couldn’t exactly attack the guy I was supposed to protect, so I slid my sword back into its scabbard and leaned against the wall, as though I didn’t care what Devon thought about me and my things.

  Still, I couldn’t help wondering why they were here. “What happened to the monster movie marathon?”

  Felix winced. “Yeah, marathon might have been a bit of an exaggeration. It was more like ten minutes of slime action before we took one of the SUVs and followed you to the pawnshop. And then here.”

  My eyes narrowed. “You followed me? Why?”

  Felix looked at Devon, and I realized he was the ringleader of this little party.

  For a moment, Devon looked as guilty as Felix did before the emotion melted into stubborn determination. “Because I wanted to. You know everything there is to know about me and Felix. Well, we wanted to know more about you. I wanted to know more about you.”

  “Why?” I sniped. “Grant’s reports weren’t enough?”

  His mouth tightened.

  More anger sizzled through me. I was the one who broke into people’s homes. I was the one who rifled through their most prized possessions. I was the one who saw the dirty little secrets they wanted to keep hidden in the bottom of their hearts.

  I didn’t like it now that it had happened to me.

  I threw my hands out wide. “Well, then, take a good long look around,” I sniped. “Because this is the life of Lila Merriweather. And ain’t it grand?”

  Neither one of them said anything. We could all hear the bitterness in my voice.

  But Felix, being Felix, couldn’t be quiet for long. “So what were you doing down here?”

  “Packing up the rest of my stuff,” I said, my tone tight and clipped.

  “How long have you been living down here?” Devon asked. “Since your mom died?”

  I didn’t answer him. I didn’t even look at him.

  He sighed. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Lila. I just wanted to see where you lived. What it was like. What you were really like.”

  Once again, his green gaze swept over the small cot, the empty metal rack, the worn-out suitcases that I was still hoping to stuff a few more ragged things into. He saw everything—he saw too damn much.

  “It’s . . . smaller than I thought it would be,” he said in a kind voice.

  “Well, I think that it’s, uh, cozy,” Felix chimed in, snapping his fingers. “Yes! Cozy is definitely the word for it.”

  He smiled at me, but I stared at Devon, watching the play of emotions across his face.

  “Cozy? I think you mean craptastic. We don’t all get to live in mansions,” I snapped.

  “I know that,” Devon snapped back, realizing I was really talking to him. “I just . . .”

  “You just what?”

  “I’m just . . . sorry for you,” he said. “That you had to live like this. That you didn’t have anyone to look out for you. That you didn’t have anyone to take care of you.”

  White-hot rage roared through me. If there was one thing I didn’t want, it was his pity. Sometimes, I thought pity was the most heartless thing in the world. All it did was make people feel superior to you, happy, safe, and smug in the knowledge that someone had it worse than they did.

  Yeah, my life hadn’t exactly been great since my mom had died. Okay, okay, so it had sucked out loud, but I’d managed. I’d survived in my own way on my own terms. I’d certainly done better than Devon, Felix, or anyone else in the whole stupid Sinclair Family would have.

  But here Devon was all the same, giving me a pitying look, like I was an unwanted puppy someone had kicked to the curb. Like I was the saddest thing ever.

  “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me,” I snarled. “It’s not much, but at least I earned it. What have you ever done but live the perfect little life?”

  “I’m sorry,” Devon repeated. “I didn’t mean to upset you—”

  “Of course not,” I cut him off. “Because you’re a good guy, a good soldier, a good son, and you never upset anyone, right? Grant was right about you. Everyone loves you, and you have everything so damn easy, don’t you? What have you ever had to work for in your entire life? I’m guessing the answer is nothing.”

  By this point, his face had gone as hard as the brick walls around us. “Oh, I get it,” Devon said, his voice even colder than mine. “I’m just some spoiled Family brat, so I couldn’t possibly have any problems, could I? Well, it’s not easy living my life, either. Especially not now.”

  “You mean when someone’s trying to kill you?”

  Devon opened his mouth like he was going to say something else, but he clamped his lips shut, glaring at me. I gave him an evil look in return.

  Felix stepped in between us, his hands held out wide. “Ding, ding, ding. Separate corners, please. This round is finished. Why don’t we start over? Devon and I are sorry we followed you, Lila. We shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why do I hear a but in there?”

  Felix grinned. “But now that we’re here, we might as well help you pack. It’s the least we can do, right, Devon?”

  He didn’t respond, so Felix rolled his eyes and elbowed him in the side.

  “Right?”


  “Yeah. Sure,” Devon finally muttered.

  “Lila?” Felix asked.

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  His grin widened. “See? It’s not so hard to play nice now, is it? So where do you want us to start?”

  I didn’t really want their help, but I still had stuff to pack, and since they were here, I might as well use them, like Felix had said. So I told them what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to hide, and the three of us got to work.

  Felix picked up and folded the clothes he’d knocked to the floor when he’d fallen onto the cot, while Devon moved my mini-fridge, lamp, and metal rack into the back corner of the basement. He also stood the cot up along the wall and stacked cardboard boxes full of books in front of everything, while I tried to creatively fit the rest of my belongings into the two suitcases.

  We worked in silence for several minutes, but Felix kept shooting me little glances, obviously dying to ask me more questions.

  “What was foster care like?” he finally asked, giving in to his undeniable urge to chat. “You did that for a while, right?”

  I shrugged. “Some of the homes were good, some of them were bad, but most of them were pretty indifferent.”

  “Indifferent how?” Devon asked, the first time he’d spoken since our fight.

  I shrugged again. “Too many kids and not enough hours in the day for the adults to see to them all. Most of them focused on the younger kids who needed them more. After a while, I stopped trying to get anybody’s attention. It was easier to keep my head down and blend in.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Felix said in a tentative voice.

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Then why didn’t you stay?” he asked, gesturing out at the basement. “Surely, it would have been easier than doing all of . . . this.”

  “I got into a fight with one of the older boys. He’d been taking food from some of the younger kids, and I told him to stop. He thought because he was bigger and stronger than me that I’d be an easy target. I showed him how wrong he was.”

  “What did you do?” Devon asked.

  “I busted his nose and told him that if he ever took anyone’s food again, he’d be drinking through a straw for six months. He got the message.”

  Devon grinned. “I would have liked to have seen that.”

  Despite our fight, I grinned back at him. “His nose swelled up like a grapefruit. It was awesome.”

  “I’m sensing a but in there,” Felix said.

  “But the couple who ran things didn’t like fights, so I got shipped to another foster home,” I said. “This one was actually a lot better. The Hendersons had a four-year-old girl of their own, and she was the sweetest thing ever.”

  The Henderson family. I still thought about them sometimes. I’d been with them for two months, and it had been a good two months—until the end.

  “What happened?” Devon asked in a soft voice, picking up on my sudden sadness.

  “They were a nice couple, but they didn’t have a lot of money, and they lived in a bad part of town, near the lochness bridge. You know where that is?”

  Devon and Felix both nodded.

  “Anyway, they had this teeny-tiny backyard. One day, their daughter was out there playing, laughing and running around. Then, suddenly, she wasn’t. I couldn’t hear her anymore, so I went out to check on her, only she was down on the ground, flat on her back, with a copper crusher wrapped around her chest.”

  Devon and Felix both winced. They knew that copper crushers were nasty creatures, oversize boa constrictors really, with shimmering, copper-colored scales who could coil themselves up tight enough to crush rocks—and human rib cages. And if they didn’t kill you with their coils, then they could do it with their bite, since their venom was highly poisonous.

  “So I snatched up this plastic baseball bat she’d been playing with, and I started hitting the crusher with it. The mom came out into the backyard just in time to see me hit the crusher a final time before it let go of the girl and slithered away. She thought it was just a very large garden snake. Of course, the little girl told her mom that it was really a monster, but the mom didn’t listen to her. The next morning, I got shipped out to another home.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Felix said.

  I shrugged. The fear in the Hendersons’ eyes had been one of the worst things I’d ever seen and felt with my soulsight—because they’d been afraid of me. But I couldn’t blame them for it. Nobody wanted a violent kid in their home, sleeping down the hall from their little girl.

  “Why didn’t you tell the parents what it really was?” Devon asked.

  “I tried, but they were mortals. These folks knew about monsters, but they didn’t want to think about them being in their backyard. They thought they were doing the right thing sending me away. The Hendersons were just looking out for their kid. Their real kid.”

  Devon and Felix shared a guilty glance. They didn’t ask me any more questions, but I decided to fill in the rest of the blanks. Might as well get it all out in the open. Hopefully, after tonight, I’d never have to talk about it again.

  “After that, I went to one more foster home—a bad one.”

  “What happened?” Felix asked.

  “One night, the husband tried to sneak into the room I was sharing with two other girls,” I said. “I broke his nose, too. He called the cops, but I told them what he’d been about to do to me and those other girls. So they took him to jail instead of me. After that, I decided that I’d had enough. I packed up my stuff and left that same night. I’ve been on my own ever since.”

  “But what about Mo?” Devon asked. “Why didn’t you go live with him?”

  I made a face. “Mo offered, he always offered, but I didn’t want to be around anyone then. Not even him. Besides, he’s a total slob.”

  I made the bad joke so they wouldn’t realize how hard it was for me to talk about all this. I’d wanted to stay with Mo, but I also hadn’t wanted to be a burden and have him reject me like the Hendersons had done. Yeah, I knew that he wouldn’t have, but I couldn’t keep myself from worrying about it all the same. Because if Mo had turned his back on me, then I would have had nowhere to go and absolutely no one to help me. So I’d decided to lean on him as little as possible.

  I realized that the guys were staring at me, so I quickly finished up my story. “After that, I found this spot in the library, and I decided that I’d just stay here where no one would bother me. And it worked.”

  “Until I came along,” Devon said.

  “Yeah. Until you came along.”

  I made sure not to look at him. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking or feeling right now. Because I didn’t know what I was feeling myself.

  “Well,” Felix said in a cheery voice. “I, for one, am glad that Lila came along. Although I bet Reginald and the pixies aren’t, given how much more food they have to fix now.”

  “It probably takes them half the morning just to make enough bacon for her,” Devon chimed in, his voice taking on a lighter, teasing note.

  “Half the morning?” Felix said. “They probably start cooking at midnight just to get ready for breakfast.”

  “Hey!” I said, throwing a pillow at Felix. “I do not eat that much bacon.”

  “Oh no,” he said, ducking it. “Just your own body weight in it. Every single morning.”

  I grumbled and threw another pillow at him, but Felix laughed and batted it away, and I found myself chiming in with his and Devon’s chuckles.

  We all went back to work, but a funny thing happened. I realized that I was glad they had come along, too.

  It didn’t take us long to finish packing my things. I managed to stuff everything into the suitcases except for the furniture. Devon had stacked boxes three deep around the cot, the mini-fridge, the old washtub, and the other items. I didn’t know if they would disappear in the sale or not, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t need them. Not anymore. In fact, part of me wondered if I�
��d ever come back here again.

  I looked at every single part of the basement, from the water spots on the ceiling to the cracks zigzagging through the walls to the curling linoleum tiles on the floor, trying to imprint it all on my mind, in case this was the last time I ever saw it. Maybe it was weird, but I was going to miss this place. It had been the closest thing I’d had to a home since my mom died.

  “Lila?” Felix said. “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  Felix took one suitcase, while Devon grabbed the other. Together, the three of us trooped up the stairs, through the storage room, and out into the main part of the library. I stopped again, staring at everything, from the shelves of worn paperbacks to the battered toys scattered on the tables in the children’s section to the old computers that lined the checkout counter. A hard lump filled my throat. I’d spent so many afternoons here with Mom, reading stories and browsing through the books together. I supposed that’s why I had decided to live here in the first place, so I could be close to the ghost of those good times.

  “Come on,” Devon said. “We parked down the street.”

  I closed my eyes a second to hold back my tears, then nodded and walked past him, heading toward the front of the library. It wasn’t the entrance I usually used, but it was on the side of the building closest to the street, and I didn’t want Devon and Felix dragging my heavy suitcases any farther than necessary.

  The glass double doors loomed in front of me. We were fifty feet away from them. Forty . . . thirty . . . twenty . . .

  Something flitted in the shadows outside, racing across the entrance and then vanishing on the other side.

  I froze. “Stop.”

  Felix pulled up short, almost ramming into me from behind. “What? What’s wrong?”

  I peered out the glass, my hand dropping to my sword. Using my sight, I looked out through the doors again. All I saw were shadows. But someone or something had been there a second ago. A finger of unease crept up my spine, and I realized how isolated Devon, Felix, and I were in the library. It would be the perfect place for an ambush—or another assassination attempt.