by Devon Monk
‘‘Allie, your father was very powerful in the world of magic.’’
‘‘And you’re trying to see where I fit in all that?’’
He nodded.
‘‘I’ve told you—I didn’t fit. Wasn’t a part of it—whatever ‘it’ was. Disowned, remember?’’
Zay nodded and looked over at the window, avoiding my gaze. ‘‘That’s good to know.’’
What had gotten into him? I hadn’t tried to be public with my dropping out and estrangement from my father, but there had been a couple slow news days, so it wasn’t like it was a secret.
‘‘What did you think?’’ I muttered. ‘‘That my dad and I were out to take control of all the magic in the world?’’
Zay turned to look at me so fast I thought his neck was going to snap.
‘‘Sweet hells, Zay. I was joking,’’ I said. ‘‘Joking. What is going on in that head of yours?’’
Nola’s voice called out. ‘‘Allie, Zayvion. Breakfast.’’
Zay looked down at the floor and rubbed at the back of his neck. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him embarrassed before. ‘‘Sorry. That was funny,’’ he said unconvincingly. ‘‘Let’s go get some coffee.’’ He pulled into his jeans and shirt, then escaped the room without looking at me.
Weird. Weird. Weird.
I tied the robe closed and tucked my hair behind my ears. Maybe I’d been onto something just then. Maybe my father had been out to control all the magic in the world. He already owned patents to most of the systems that made magic available. So what else was there to control? Who else was there to control?
I thought about Cody. I thought about him pulling magic through me, like I was a flesh-and-blood conduit for it. No one should be able to do that. I shouldn’t have been able to do that.
And I certainly shouldn’t have been able to heal him.
Were there other people who could do things with magic that they shouldn’t?
A shiver ran down my arms and the nauseating pangs of panic rolled in my belly. I’d been in so many bad situations lately, even the hint of something going wrong put me full into fight-or-flight mode, and it was exhausting. I shook my hands to loosen my shoulders and neck, and took a few good breaths to clear my head.
Coffee first. Then, if I still felt like it, I could panic.
I walked out of the room and made my way to the kitchen and the low sounds of unfamiliar voices.
Nola, Zayvion, and Cody were all in the kitchen. Zay stood at the stove, drinking from a coffee mug, and looking calm and unperturbed as always.
The unfamiliar voices were coming from a small TV set on the counter. Right now it was some woman talking about foot fungus.
‘‘I’ll get you some food,’’ Nola said. ‘‘Why don’t you sit next to Cody.’’
I looked over at the kid. His blond hair was damp and brushed down tight against his head. He’d obviously just taken a shower. It looked like Nola had found a spare pair of sweats and a flannel shirt for him. He was about Nola’s build, but I did a quick reassessment of his age. Slight of frame and delicate features, yes, but not because he was a kid. I’d put him in his mid-twenties, maybe even early thirties. His head was bent over the kitten in his hands. He completely ignored the bowl of cold cereal on the table in front of him, and, as far as I could tell, everything else.
‘‘So your name’s Cody.’’ I sat in the chair across from him where I could keep my eye on Zayvion. ‘‘Remember me?’’
Cody looked up from the kitten and smiled a bright, lopsided smile. ‘‘Pretty colors,’’ he said. He held up his hand and waved it in the air like he was pushing finger paints around. He frowned when nothing happened.
‘‘There’s no magic here, Cody,’’ Nola said, and it sounded like she’d been saying that for a while.
Cody stopped waving and put his hands back around the kitten.
‘‘Cody?’’ I said. ‘‘Do you remember me helping you? Do you remember talking to me down by the water?’’
Cody started rocking in the seat of his chair.
Oh. I looked over at Nola. ‘‘I didn’t know,’’ I said.
She nodded. ‘‘Well, it should make it easier to narrow down where he came from. I can’t imagine someone isn’t looking for him.’’
‘‘I still think we should check to make sure he didn’t escape from a penitentiary,’’ Zay said.
He pulled a couple pieces of toast out of the toaster, dropped them on a plate, and layered a thick wedge of cheese between them. He walked over to the table and sat down next to Cody, across from me. Good. Now we could both keep an eye on each other.
‘‘Penitentiary?’’ Nola asked.
‘‘Zayvion thinks he might have gotten in trouble with the law.’’
Nola placed a plate of homemade bread, butter, cheese, and apples in front of me. ‘‘I’ll get you some oatmeal,’’ she said.
‘‘Don’t bother. This is perfect, thanks.’’
She moved over to the stove, poured a cup of coffee, and handed it to me.
‘‘What kind of trouble do you think he was involved with?’’ she asked Zayvion.
Zay chewed, and slurped coffee. ‘‘Forgery. There was a high-profile case a few years back. A young man who committed a string of forged magical signatures. Covered up some pretty big Offloads, Proxy abuses, blackmail, and embezzlement. Landed him in prison.’’
‘‘Was he mentally challenged?’’ Nola asked.
Zay shook his head. ‘‘If he was, it was never mentioned in the news articles. Still, there were rumors that once he was out of the public’s eye, the people whom he had indicted before he was sentenced dealt out their own kind of justice.’’
‘‘They mentally damaged him?’’ she asked. ‘‘How is that possible?’’
‘‘Tried to kill him, but were not successful. It’s hard to kill someone with magic. Takes an incredible amount of power, and intense focus and control.’’
‘‘And the price is too high,’’ I said.
‘‘What’s the price?’’ Nola asked.
Questions like that made me realize she really did live in a world without magic. ‘‘Death. If you take a life, you have to give a life.’’
‘‘Oh.’’ Nola looked over at Cody, who was still rocking.
‘‘And,’’ Zay added, ‘‘despite all those risks, they apparently didn’t want to get their hands dirty by killing the old-fashioned way.’’
‘‘Do you really think he might be the same person?’’ Nola asked.
We all looked at Cody, who rocked faster and hummed.
‘‘They say he was a genius,’’ Zay said. ‘‘An artist who could manipulate magic and make it become anything he wanted it to be.’’
‘‘Nobody can make magic into anything they want,’’ I said, hoping it was true. ‘‘There’s a limit to what magic can do, a limit to any user’s ability.’’
Zay shrugged. ‘‘Some say magic isn’t as cut and dry as people think. It’s only been in use for what? Thirty years?’’
‘‘Isn’t there a name for people who are naturally talented at magic?’’ Nola sat at the table. ‘‘I heard it’s rare. Aren’t they called Servants or something?’’
‘‘Savants,’’ Zay and I said at the same time.
Cody stopped rocking. He looked up at each of us, his blue eyes wide, frightened. Then he dropped the kitten next to his cereal. ‘‘Kitten likes milk. See?’’
Kitten did indeed like milk and went to town, greedily lapping it up from around the floating cereal.
‘‘Hmm,’’ Nola said. ‘‘It might be easy to find out where he came from, but I’m not so sure it will be as easy for you to get him back there.’’
‘‘Who said we were taking him anywhere?’’ Zayvion asked.
‘‘I do,’’ I said. ‘‘I think he needs to go back to wherever his home is.’’ Wherever he’s safe, I thought.
‘‘And if I disagree?’’ Zay said. ‘‘How are you taking him without a car?’’
‘‘I’ll drag him in with me to the police, and let them take care of him.’’
Nola held up her hand. ‘‘Wait. The news is back on. This is what I wanted you to see.’’
I glared at Zay and he looked at me, unperturbed. But when I heard my name on the news, I turned to watch.
It is strange to hear your own name on the news. I suppose people might think it’s an exciting thing, but really, the news mostly covers tragedies, scandals, and misfortune. Any time your name is associated with one of those things, you were in a world of hurt and probably didn’t want the whole world to know about it.
Hearing my name spoken by a reporter, a stranger who did not know me, was weird even though my name had been occasionally mentioned alongside my father’s in the media. This time felt very different. This time made me feel vulnerable, exposed, violated.
A picture of my dad next to an intelligent-looking dark-haired woman who I assumed was one of the wives I’d missed out on flashed on the screen. Then the screen filled with a picture of me, from a dedication ceremony I’d attended with my father during my precollege days. In the photo I was smiling and had absolutely no idea what a huge mess my life was about to become.
The news ended with the reporter reciting a phone number, and summing up that I was a person of suspicion in the case of my father’s death and any information on my whereabouts should be immediately reported to the police.
The reporter gave the camera over to the weather-man, and I sat back in my chair, acutely aware that Nola and Zay were staring at me.
‘‘Shit,’’ I said. I supposed the only good thing was they didn’t say I was armed and dangerous and should be shot on sight.
I expected Zayvion to say he told me so—Bonnie had ratted me out to the cops and they were looking for me, just like he said. But he sat there quietly, which was pretty decent of him.
‘‘Well,’’ Nola said. ‘‘I think we need to think this out and make a plan of what to do next. Allie, do you have any ideas?’’
‘‘I still think I should go to the police. Turn myself in.’’
Zay sat back in his chair and watched me from over the edge of his coffee cup.
‘‘I’m innocent,’’ I said. ‘‘I didn’t do anything.’’
‘‘Can you prove that?’’ Zay asked quietly.
‘‘Of course I can.’’
‘‘You have an alibi for where you were after you and I left the deli?’’
I opened my mouth to tell him of course I did, and he could shove it. But my recollection of what had happened from when I left my dad’s office to when I woke up at Mama’s was spotty at best. Even the deli seemed a little foggy to me.
‘‘I went home,’’ I said.
‘‘Did anyone see you there?’’ Zayvion asked. ‘‘Did you make any calls? Talk to anyone in the halls?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘No witnesses. No calls to trace. Not good,’’ he said. ‘‘Then what?’’
‘‘I left.’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘I couldn’t stand the smell of the building.’’
‘‘Doubt that will hold up in court, but fine. Where did you go, and who saw you go there?’’
This is where the really big black holes and gaps of time filled my head. The hit I Hounded on Boy had kicked in pretty hard by then. I was hurting and maybe even a little delirious. I was lucky I hadn’t wandered around town bleeding out of my ears and singing show tunes. For all I knew I might have done just that.
Or maybe I’d gotten angry and confused. Maybe I’d found my way back to my father’s office, managed to ride the elevator without having a panic attack, gotten past his perky, nosy secretary, and somehow summoned the strength to draw enough power, through the protection wards—and cast a killing spell—to kill him.
It just seemed so incredibly unlikely. But it also seemed incredibly unlikely that I couldn’t remember nearly a full twenty-four hours—the twenty-four-hour span when my father was killed.
‘‘I can’t remember, exactly.’’
Zay said nothing. He didn’t have to.
Nola rubbed her hand between my shoulder blades and gave me a gentle pat. ‘‘I suppose this is a bad time to remind you what I think about using magic.’’
‘‘Yeah, Nola.’’ I managed a small smile. ‘‘I know what you think about using it. And right now, I see your point.’’ I looked back over at Zayvion. ‘‘So maybe I don’t have an alibi. But do they have any evidence that I went back to my father’s place? Do they have any evidence that it was me who killed him? A security camera? Some eyewitness in the lobby or something?’’
‘‘They have Bonnie’s testimony that she Hounded the hit and it was your signature on it.’’
‘‘Bonnie hates me and would do anything to make me hurt.’’
‘‘Can you prove that?’’ Zayvion asked.
I rolled my eyes. ‘‘Maybe. Probably. We haven’t hidden our hatred or anything. People know about it. The bank job she and I handled—all the people involved in that know how she feels about me.’’
‘‘That would help,’’ Zay conceded, ‘‘but it won’t change the fact that the police brought in three Hounds to sniff the hit, and that Violet hired a separate Hound independent of them to check too.’’
‘‘Violet’s my dad’s current wife?’’ I asked.
It didn’t take him long to figure out I was not joking. He nodded.
‘‘Okay. What did her Hound say?’’
‘‘They all said it was your signature, Allie.’’
Five Hounds sniffing the same hit would find subtle differences if there were any. If five different Hounds said I did it, even I would think I did it.
But I had zero recollection of killing my father. I’d think a person would remember such a thing. I think I would remember it, memory loss or no memory loss. I would have felt it. I would have tasted it. It would still be in my hands, in my lungs.
‘‘How do you know all this, Zayvion? Are you a cop? A reporter? How do you have all this inside information that I don’t have?’’
‘‘Allie, I’ve told you all that. Don’t you remember?’’
That hit me like a punch to the gut. I did not remember. If he had come clean about who he was and what he did and why he was always following me around, it had fallen down the same twenty-four-hour black hole growing in my head.
I opened my mouth to tell him ‘‘How about we just pretend I don’t remember and you can tell me again,’’ but Cody let out a piercing, childlike scream of glee that reminded me why I never wanted to have a child.
He stood and pointed at the window, and once he ran out of air he filled up again and kept on screaming.
Nola moved around the table and put one hand on his outstretched arm. ‘‘You need to be quiet now, Cody. Use your inside voice. Use your words. Tell me what’s wrong.’’