Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  “No,” she answered. He nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “You’ll tell me…?” she asked.

  “As soon as I’m sure you’ve got a good chance of catching Carter in a good mood. Hard as it’s going to be to know you’re done here and that you’re going to leave.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said. “I don’t stay. You can’t be disappointed when I leave.”

  “Is there someone?” he asked.

  “Would I let you kiss me if there were?” she answered.

  “I didn’t…” he started, then caught the look in her eye. The ground flew away beneath her feet and her shoulders found one of the pillars in front of the hotel, and he kissed her, hard. He had a physicality to him that made him so comfortable with touch, with the feel of his body pressed against hers, but he didn’t kiss like the pretty boys that came to dance with the gypsy girls. They’d all kissed dozens of girls and had stopped meaning it so long ago.

  He kissed like he meant it, and it scared her. Like the only time she could steal the truth from him was with his mouth on hers.

  Someone coughed and she grinned, turning her face away.

  “Good night,” she said, dropping her forehead against his chest until he stepped away from her. He tugged at her hair once more and then nodded.

  “Good night,” he said. “Unless… do you want me to walk you up to your room?”

  “I’m a big girl and I’m carrying nine knives,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  He laughed.

  “The best part about you,” he said, then shook his head. “Good night. Sleep well.”

  She smiled to herself, leaning against the cement pillar for a moment longer as he walked away, glancing over his shoulder once with a look that said if she’d given him an inch he would have come rushing back, but she knew better. That was a look she’d seen many, many times before.

  She lay in bed for a long time staring at the ceiling.

  She’d taken a hot shower and changed into her own clothes again, then sat on the end of the bed with her cell phone in her hands. Once more, she had no one to talk to and it was much too late. Finally, she’d put it away and lay down, but sleep was not easy coming.

  Eventually, she managed to curl up on her side and doze off, but it couldn’t have been more than fifteen or thirty minutes before her phone rang.

  “Hello?” she asked on the third ring, before she’d been able to see who it was.

  “It’s time,” Lange said. “Abby says he’s in between demons and had a good kill. Can you get to Carter’s apartment on your own?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “I’ll be driving,” he said. “So I’ll probably beat you there, but it will be slower if I come get you.”

  “No, I’ll meet you there,” she said. “What time is it?”

  “You don’t want to know,” he said. “These are Carter’s hours.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Becca said, rubbing her face. “I’ll see you there, soon.”

  The concierge downstairs offered to hire her a cab, but she had no cash and she didn’t like them. Jackson had been more right than she’d realized about how much she preferred a Makkai driver.

  The rain had arrived at some point, and the sidewalk was wet. The streetlights lit up the fine mist as it came down, and a man went by her, whistling and jingling keys. She didn’t look back at him, just continued on down the street.

  “Pretty girl,” someone said as she crossed off of the block where her hotel was toward Carter’s apartment. She shook her head.

  “This is a bad idea,” she said without stopping.

  “Pretty girls shouldn’t be out here on their own,” the voice said. She turned, sliding her hand into her pocket and taking hold of her focus stone. There he was, a man leaning against a building.

  She gave him a firm look and turned to continue on, but now there were footsteps behind her.

  It’s hard not to have the hair on the back of your neck prickle when someone is walking behind you like that, even if she did have a red copal in one hand an a throwing knife in the other. She eased a trickle of power into the red copal, little enough that it would decharge without causing a problem to the crystal or her thigh, and she turned again.

  “I’m not the kind of girl you think I am,” she said, drawing the knife and letting it rest against her leg where it would catch light. He hesitated.

  “I like a girl with teeth,” he said, starting up again. She tipped her head.

  “I’ve got more important things to deal with than you,” she said. “But you aren’t going to lay a finger on me.”

  He moved like someone who had heard all kinds of things before and didn’t believe any of them.

  She held the knife out directly in front of her, level, flat, easy in her fingertips.

  “You ever met someone who practices with throwing knives when she gets bored?”

  He paused again.

  “You’re afraid,” he said, showing his teeth in something that might have been a smile on someone else. “You haven’t got what it takes.”

  There he might have had her. She wasn’t actually sure. But she remembered she had a desert rose in her pocket. She smiled and took a step back, taking out the bead of crystal and putting it to her forehead. She closed her eyes and she focused.

  This was a trick a lot of Makkai had learned in childhood. One that someone had discovered maybe twenty or thirty years ago and that had spread like wildfire.

  One on one, it worked against most regular people, especially if they weren’t expecting it.

  She focused on the desert rose and there, just outside of herself, she felt the human mind in front of her. She couldn’t tell much about it - she wasn’t that gifted - but she could feel it nonetheless.

  “You praying, girl?” the man asked. She laughed softly and swatted at him with her mind. She didn’t turn to watch him slide to the ground. There wouldn’t be any cars through here, and she figured if he got mugged, he deserved it.

  She continued on to Carter’s apartment.

  Lange was standing outside of the garage when she got there.

  “You have any problems?” he asked.

  “Nothing I couldn’t manage,” she answered.

  “Abby said to tell you to show me what you have in your pockets,” he said.

  “That’s not going to happen,” she said.

  “How about just that one?” he asked, indicating the one where she still had a hand. She narrowed her eyes.

  “This is a trick to get me to give you clues about gypsy magic,” she said. He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Abby can’t see you. Remember? She…” He narrowed his eyes. “She said I needed to know just how dangerous you are.”

  “And the contents of my pocket are going to show you that?”

  “She said you left a man laying unconscious in an alley on your way here.”

  She stiffened, and he held up a hand.

  “He’s a bad dude. I might just go kick him a few times to make sure he feels it in the morning, when we’re done here. And Abby didn’t see what happened, because, you know, she can’t. But she said that I needed to understand.”

  Becca watched his eyes, then closed her hand around the selection of crystals she carried with her that particular evening and pulled them out, opening her palm so he could see them.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “That’s it,” she answered.

  “You carry knives,” he said. “Why didn’t you use one of those?”

  “Could have,” she said. “Thought about it. But this was cleaner.”

  He shook his head.

  “Put them away. You really are dangerous.”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah. You should know that.”

  He smiled.

  “You should know that she’s not trying to scare me off,” he said. “She’s trying to prove that you can take care of yourself.”

  Becca blinked on
ce.

  “Are you telling me you have a psychic interfering in your love life?”

  He looked up at the sky.

  “Constantly.”

  Becca looked up at the sky, as if there was something to see there, but her face just got wet.

  “We should go in,” Lange said. “Abby only gave me a small window.”

  Becca nodded and followed him into the garage and up the elevator. He knocked on the door to Carter’s apartment and they stood.

  For quite a while.

  “Are you sure he’s home?” Becca asked.

  “Shhh,” Lange answered.

  They waited some more.

  Finally the door opened. Carter didn’t bother standing in front of it, walking away even as it was still swinging open.

  “I’m only talking to you because Abby has leverage,” he said, going to sit on the couch. “What do you want?”

  “I want an update,” Becca said, walking into the room and going to stand in front of him. He looked tired. Maybe even hung over, but definitely exhausted. He rested his forehead on his thumb and index finger for a moment.

  “Any impression I gave you that I owe you a thing… No, wait. I didn’t. I made it very clear that I owe you nothing.”

  “I know you’re busy and you’re important,” Becca said. “But I’m here and I’m not leaving. This goes a lot faster if you get over your pouting.”

  He turned his head, just rolling it across his fingers, to look at her with his head fully sideways.

  “I don’t like you anymore.”

  “I’ve never been particularly bothered either way,” Becca answered. He nodded.

  “I talked to Peter,” he said. “He’s expecting you. Doesn’t mean he’s going to see you, but he’s expecting you.”

  “All right,” Becca said. “I’m sure Lange can tell me how to find him. What else do you have?”

  He laughed, his eyes closed, the noise a man made when he was empty.

  “That’s all there is,” he said. “Though.” He looked up, straightening slightly. “Just a word to the wise. Bella knows Peter. And so does Jackson. But he’s going to like you. A lot. You should be very, very careful to never be in a room alone with him.”

  “You associate with creeps like that?” Becca asked, taken aback. Carter laughed and tipped his head back so she could see little more than his chin.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think that Peter has ever been with a woman. He’s obsessed with magic.”

  He didn’t move again, and she let that sink in, then looked at Lange, who shrugged.

  Her call.

  “All right,” she said. “If I need more from you, I will come back.”

  Carter remained unmoving and eventually, she turned to leave.

  Lange watched her through his hair.

  “Lange is staying,” Carter called as she was about to speak to him. “Part of the deal. I do something for him, he does something for me.”

  “Thought you said it was Abby with the leverage,” Becca said.

  “Don’t get involved in politics you don’t understand,” Carter said. “Just be gone. And don’t come back. I’m tired.”

  Lange gave her a small, apologetic nod and she answered it with a tight-lipped smile. She got it. He’d done what she’d needed him to do. Now she was on her own.

  She mouthed a goodbye to him and left, getting out her phone to call Billy, and then thinking better of it. She would call him in the morning. Tonight she would just sleep by herself at the hotel.

  “What did he tell you?” Billy asked once he was able to focus enough to hold a conversation again outside of the city. He had the trailer today, and it made everything four times more challenging.

  “Go to New Orleans,” she said. “See Peter.”

  Billy huffed.

  “That’s got the air of a brush-off,” he said and she grinned.

  “I know,” she said. “But I think it’s still the truth.”

  “Took a full day to get that?” Billy asked.

  “How was the hunt?” she answered.

  “Not bad, not bad,” he said. “Easy ghost to catch up with. Figuring out what made him tick took some doing, but nothing Dawn couldn’t handle, once we got it. Pay was decent. Keep us running for at least another few weeks.”

  Becca felt a bit bitter for a moment that she’d missed out on the pay, a sort of painful irony given the opulence that the Gray seemed to be accustomed to.

  “I’m glad,” she said. “Where are we headed next?”

  “New Orleans, sounds like,” Billy said. “Get this wrapped up and done with.”

  “I’m not sure it’s going to be that simple,” Becca said. Billy laughed.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It never is.”

  They went to New Orleans.

  Peter wasn’t there.

  Come back later, they said.

  How much later, Bella answered.

  No one would tell her.

  They traveled through the winter, here and there, taking work where it came up, doing other things that no one would pay for and no one would ever know about. It was a good season, except that the entire tribe spent the whole time watching for Bella to show some symptom of dark magic working against her.

  Through the late spring and into the summer, they camped at a big campground in Georgia where a large number of tribes would stay unless something important came up requiring that they travel. Becca buried an orange peel outside the trailer.

  In March, she went with Bella and Jackson to New Orleans, where they found someone who told them that Peter was there, but even after two weeks of looking, they never managed to find him.

  They gave up and went back to the festival through May, when Becca’s mom came to stay for a week. It was the first time she’d seen her mother in a year, and they laughed and danced and had a wonderful time until her mother felt the wind change and got into her car and drove away again.

  In June they went to New Orleans again, but had no more luck than they’d had the first times. She called Lange, but there wasn’t much he could tell her.

  “He knows you’re looking for him,” he said. “Could be he’s busy, could be he’s avoiding you. I don’t really know.”

  “Why would he avoid us?” Becca asked.

  “He’s one of us,” Lange said. “I can’t even count the reasons I can come up with quickly, not to mention the ones if I sat down and thought about it.”

  Becca frowned at the phone glumly.

  “All right,” she said. “How is everything there?”

  “Same as ever,” he said happily. “Crazy and everyone’s angry.”

  “Glad I’m here and not there,” she said.

  “That makes one of us,” he answered.

  When they got back to the campground, they were on their way. A pack of werewolves had been messing with livestock in Michigan for weeks, but there was a rumor that they’d started going after hunters, and that meant that Bella needed to go up to look into it.

  “It’s so strange,” Grant said, sitting next to her on a bench as Jackson handed Reece and Tiffany their pendants.

  “Hmm?” Becca asked, glancing at Dawn. Her friend had been quiet, for the past few weeks, and the ceremony for bringing the two novices into the tribe hadn’t helped anything.

  “It feels like that was me like… weeks ago,” he said. “The year has been so…”

  “Chaotic,” Becca said. “There’s been too much fear and no one really paid attention to how fast it was going by.”

  “Yeah,” Grant said. “And at the same time, it was a lifetime ago. The stuff I’ve seen since then…”

  She grinned.

  “Getting weaponized moss slime all over you does tend to stick with you.”

  “I know,” he said. “And that’s just the funny one.”

  She grinned wider.

  “Yup.”

  He shook his head.

  “I thought I was so ready,” he said. “They do, too.”
>
  “They are,” Becca said. “They just don’t know it yet.”

  He looked at her funny and she winked.

  Things had gotten a little easier between them as they’d settled into the fall’s work. Her mother had pushed her at him a few times, called him cute, remarked on his eyes and his character, but it hadn’t been anything sincere. Her mother just liked to talk about boys and Grant was the closest thing to a boy that was officially in Becca’s life.

  He seemed to have finally come to understand, though, how intense their lives could be, and how trivial and fleeting a romance was, in light of it. The danger that Bella was in had grounded him significantly, as well.

  Dawn came to sit down on Becca’s other side, still looking pale and drawn.

  “What’s going on?” Becca whispered softly. Dawn shook her head.

  “I wish I knew. It just feels wrong. Feels too quiet.”

  Becca looked around the circle of Makkai, all of whom were talking amongst themselves or eating or throwing bits of things at the fire.

  “We’re quiet?” she asked. Dawn gave her a half-hearted smile and nodded.

  “It isn’t us,” she said. “It’s something else.”

  Becca frowned, but the two new members of the tribe were standing, and it was time to go greet them. Reece was a strapping big boy, the kind who threw cattle around for a living, when they weren’t pulling wagons or chopping down trees. He had a merry face, though, and eyes that promised mischief. Becca liked eyes like his. Tiffany was much like Becca in build, solid, with almond-shaped eyes that were dark and insightful, happy. She seemed a little withdrawn compared to Reece or Becca, though. Maybe it was the way she moved that reminded her of Dawn.

  Jackson held up his hands.

  “I haven’t gotten to tell my story yet,” he said. “There should always be a story, when we bring new members into the tribe.”

  Becca looked at Dawn and grinned. Jackson hadn’t been telling as many of the stories as he once had, and it was good to see him do it again.

  They found seats again, and once more Reece and Tiffany took their seats apart from the rest of the Makkai, separated by a default that meant that they weren’t part of the tribe until they felt like they belonged there. It was a tough transition for some, Becca understood, though she hadn’t felt that way herself.