by Devon Monk
I was broke, broken, and wondering if I still had a home to return to.
I knocked on the bright blue door that looked like it had gotten a new coat of paint recently. It was only when I was standing there for a while that I wondered what time it was.
With the morning cloud cover—not that unusual for July in Portland, Oregon—it was barely light. So it must have been just after dawn.
Too early to unload my troubles on anyone.
But I didn’t know where else to go. I turned and sat on the porch, leaning against the side of the house, numb, nauseous, and exhausted.
The slide and click of locks behind me broke into the quiet.
I could feel more than hear the door open.
“Random?”
I looked over my shoulder.
The man who had always seemed as tall as a tree in my childhood still stood four inches above my disappointing five-foot-ten. He was lean and neat as a librarian, his straw-brown hair cut short without even a flash of silver in it yet. He peered at me from his small wire-rimmed glasses, his navy blue bathrobe draped over a T-shirt and flannel pants.
“Hey, Mr. Spark. Sorry it’s so early.”
He nodded like it was perfectly normal to find me, unannounced, on his doorstep before the sun was up. It hadn’t been all that unusual for me to wind up on his porch like a lost Frisbee when I was a kid. But I wasn’t a kid anymore.
“Come on in. I don’t know why you knocked. You still have a key don’t you?”
Did I? Yeah, now that he mentioned it, my key ring was somewhere at the bottom of my duffel. “I just…it’s been a long day. Long bad day.”
He strolled to the kitchen. “Coffee to start?”
I followed him through the living room. “Thanks. Yeah. Okay. Is Duncan home?”
Mr. Spark was my best friend’s dad. He’d been the closest thing I had to a father. Duncan, who had told me we were best friends when we met in first grade, was the closest thing I had to a brother.
“He’s in his room. Want me to wake him?”
“No, it’s early. I just…” I just wanted to know that something in my life was still normal. Like me being here in this house, a part of this family.
Mr. Spark worked at the counter, setting up the coffee pot and filling it with the roast he liked to grind himself. He didn’t say anything. His quiet nature was one of the things I’d always liked about him. While Mrs. Spark might scold Duncan and me about leaving our gear all over the living room or for bleeding on her carpet while she simultaneously patched us up and shoved cookies in our faces, Mr. Spark was steady, quiet, and unflappable.
It made me wonder why I’d never told him I was marked.
Broken. Less than human.
No, I knew. I hadn’t wanted to disappoint him. Hadn’t wanted to admit I was that badly flawed.
When the coffee stopped grumbling, he filled two mugs and handed me one with a spoon. He sat across from me at the old reclaimed barn door table, the raw sugar and little pitcher of real cream between us.
Duncan and I had carved our initials in the table legs when we were ten. Mrs. Spark had grounded us. Mr. Spark had complimented us on our penmanship.
“Are you okay?”
I stared at my black coffee, then added two heaping spoons of sugar and a lot of cream. He’d left me just enough room in the cup to make it all work.
He knew me. Had practically raised me. And I was about to tell him I’d been hiding something from him, lying to him all my life.
When someone unofficially adopted you, they couldn’t just as easily decide to let you go, right?
“Random?”
“I got kicked off the team.”
“Okay. Can you tell me why?”
He didn’t demand, didn’t instantly assume I’d done something wrong, nor that my privacy wasn’t important. If I said I couldn’t tell him why I’d been let go, he’d never ask again.
But I had a vague memory of my agent saying he’d make sure the press release was fair to me. I didn’t know if that meant it was going to announce to the world that I was secretly a wizard or just that training camp hadn’t turned out how I expected and I was no longer being considered by the Avalanche.
“I’m done. I’m out. I can’t play anymore. Not in the NHL.” The words were clipped and climbing as the panic started kicking in. As the realness of my life started kicking in.
I wanted to yell what I was, shout out my failure. Then never, never say it again.
“Just because one team didn’t work out—”
“You don’t understand.” Panic made my words weird and manic. I was having a breakdown in the middle of the kitchen where my only birthday parties had ever been celebrated.
“Help me understand, Random. I’m listening.”
“I’m…I’m n-nothing! I’m stupid. I can’t play. I’ll never p-play!”
His raised eyebrows and concern that etched lines at his mouth and eyes made me stop. Made me breathe.
I didn’t remember standing away from the table. Didn’t remember bending my knees, setting my shoulder forward, ready for the hit that would knock me off my skates.
Mr. Spark hadn’t moved. He did now, though. He took a sip of his coffee then tipped his head to tell me to keep talking.
What was there left to say?
The truth.
“I’m marked.” This came out soft, faint, dead.
I wanted to puke.
His expression didn’t change, but his color did. He went flat white before color rushed back to his face.
“You…you’re.” He ran his fingers through his hair as he swallowed and swallowed.
“I’ll go. I can just g-go.”
“Random. Son. Sit down and give me a minute. Just. Drink your coffee. Let’s both drink our coffee.”
It was the son that did it. He was the only one who had ever called me that and meant it.
I dropped back into the chair and pulled my cup between my palms.
He lifted his cup, took a drink, his eyes focused at a middle distance.
I couldn’t bear to see what he thought about me so I stared at the tablecloth. It was blue with little yellow daisies on it and only covered the middle of the table. I knew he had picked it out.
“First, you don’t need to call me Mr. Spark, Random. I like it when you use my first name. Kit likes it too. So let’s go back to that, okay?”
I nodded. I hadn’t been sure he would still want me to call him Sean.
“Okay, good. Do you want to tell me what happened in Colorado?”
I shook my head.
“Did you shift during camp?”
“I’m not a shifter.”
Silence stretched between the snap of the old wall clock’s second hand.
“Random? Look at me.”
It took everything I had to raise my eyes.
“I love you. Nothing has changed about that. Nothing will ever change that. We’ll figure this out. Together.”
Tears stung the edges of my eyes. He had told me he loved me ninety-six times. Even though I was twenty-two years old, I had hoarded those words each and every time he’d given them.
He had said them when I was seven and my mother signed over my guardianship to the Sparks. He had said them after he’d caught me sleeping on the hallway floor in front of their bedroom door, again, and I’d admitted it wasn’t because it was more comfortable, it was because I was afraid they’d leave in the middle of the night without me. He had said it when I’d been drafted by the Avalanche.
Hearing it now changed everything. Settled everything. Put roots in my shattering world and held it tight.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Okay.”
He reached over and patted my forearm.
“Good. So, then. Are you a sensitive?”
“No.”
His mouth fell open with a soft, “huh.” That was the only indication of how surprised he really was.
“So. Wizard?” he mused. “I don’t s
uppose you have any spells that would keep the English Ivy from taking over my rose beds do you?”
I huffed out a laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
He smiled and refilled our mugs from the carafe on the table, then got up to toast a couple bagels. This was normal. My home was still normal. I belonged.
As the mountain of worry lifted off my chest I realized how tired I was.
“Why don’t you take this in to Duncan?” He held out a plate of bagels. “I’m going to shower, then we’ll go over the details of what happened in Colorado together. Should I expect a call from your agent?”
“I don’t know. He said something about a press release. I can’t remember.”
He placed the plate into my hand. “I’ll check into that so we know.”
“Thanks. Thanks, Mr…thanks, Sean.”
“Ran.” He shook his head. “Of course.”
I accepted the bagels and his help and walked to Duncan’s room on autopilot.
I pushed the door and shuffled through the crumpled mounds of dirty clothes to the lump snoring under the blankets on the bed. I balanced the plate on top of the clutter on his dresser, then crawled onto the other side of his big king-size bed and yanked one of the blankets out of his death grip, wrapping it around me.
My back was toward him and I was fully clothed, hugged up to the edge of the bed. I still had on my shoes. I didn’t care.
“Jerk,” he mumbled, rolling away from me and hogging all the rest of the blankets.
“You missed me,” I said.
I was already asleep before he had a chance to reply.
Two
“Can you read my mind?” Duncan asked. “Quick, what am I thinking?”
“No. And about hockey.”
“Whoa.”
“You’re always thinking about hockey.”
“Not always.”
“Was I right?”
A grin that reminded me of a dog with a stick spread over his face. “No.”
“Liar.”
“Can you tell when people are lying?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Can you see the future? The lottery numbers? Can you tell who’s going to win the Stanley Cup?”
“No. Yes. No.”
His reddish eyebrows dipped down. I’d never really thought he looked much like his dad. He took more after his mom—reddish hair, freckles over pale skin, and a nose that had a bend in the middle of it. But he was tall like his dad. With a lot more muscle and wide shoulders that made him intimidating on the ice.
“Wait? Really? You know what the lottery numbers are going to be? Why haven’t you said so? Oh, wait. That’s right. You’ve been a lying jerk all your life.” He didn’t have to lean over the table much to punch me in the shoulder.
He did get his height from his dad—a disgustingly unfair six foot three.
I didn’t bother dodging the hit, though I totally could have. The smooth plastic tables at Burgerville USA weren’t that wide. But I wasn’t about to risk spilling my marionberry milkshake if he decided to follow up the missed punch with a tackle.
It had happened before. More than once. In public.
He was a second-marked: Canidae shifter.
“Shut up,” I said. “Who taught you to hit? A three-year-old?”
“You taught me to hit, idiot.”
I had too. Duncan had always been bigger than me, nicer than me, more patient than me. He’d gotten teased in first grade for being a wolf shifter. After one too many dog jokes, I’d spent a week convincing him he should fight back, then all weekend teaching him how to land a punch.
We’d both had to wear long sleeved shirts to school for the next few days, because we’d taken the “who can hit the hardest” thing a little too gleefully.
“What did you think I was going to do, Ran? Hate you because we had something more in common?”
“I’m not a shifter.”
“No, but you’re marked. Like me.” He shoved the rest of his burger into his mouth, chewed. “Didn’t you ever want to tell anyone? Tell me? You could have told me.”
The hurt in his voice hit me harder than his punches ever had. I stared at my purple milkshake and felt sick.
“I just wanted to play hockey.”
The guitar riff of Miserlou piped through the place and Duncan tapped his thumb on the table to the beat.
“You can play hockey if you’re marked. I do.”
I picked up my straw wrapper and smashed it into a tighter ball. “Not pro.”
“And that was worth it? A chance at the NHL was worth lying to…everyone?”
“It wasn’t lying.”
He snorted.
“I don’t use magic. Well, only twice before. That’s it. I thought as long as I didn’t use it, I was still human, you know? Maybe if I got the chance to play in the NHL, to prove I was good, I’d tell people? Show them a marked can play the same as anyone else. Can play better.”
Those clear hazel eyes stared at me, unrelenting, pinning me to my bones. He’d been doing that more now that we were in our twenties. It was so self-assured it was a little disconcerting from a guy who had figured out how to laugh two different colors of Kool-Aid out his nostrils.
It was a boss look, a coach look. Like he was top of the pile and you weren’t. It wasn’t mean, just…strong.
“You weren’t ever going to say anything to anyone.”
“You don’t know that. I was going to say something. Maybe when I retired. Or…hell. Fine!” I tossed the little ball of paper into the puddle of mustard on my hamburger wrapper.
“I wanted to tell you. I would have told you. I would have.”
“You’ve had a few thousand chances to do it. Why didn’t you?”
“I hate what I am.”
“And me?”
“What?”
“You hate me too? Hate all us freaks?” His voice was dead level now. Like he was used to hearing the answer to this. Maybe not used to hearing it from me, but like he knew what was coming.
Except he didn’t.
“Don’t be stupid, Duncan. You’re not a freak. I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you. I don’t care that you’re marked. I’ve never cared about that.”
“But you’re too good for it? Too good to be infected like someone like me?”
“No.” I stared at the fries I wasn’t going to finish. “I’m not too good. I’m…crap for lying to my best friend for my entire life. To everyone for my entire life. So that’s crap. I’m crap.
“I didn’t want anyone to think I used magic to get what I wanted. To play. I’m not even something cool like a shifter. Or useful like a sensitive. Who wants a wizard in hockey? Fragile, skinny, breakable, useless wizards.”
“You are not fragile,” he practically growled. He flicked a finger at my burger basket. “But you are skinny. Eat your fries.”
“Shut up, moose. Wizards only make good doctors and counselors and school teachers. Wizards only make good artists and musicians and cheerleaders.”
“Cheerleaders?”
“Lucy Trapp in senior year?”
“Oh, yeah.” He gave a dreamy sigh. “Yes. Wizards should always be cheerleaders.”
“Wizards don’t play sports. They’re as non-physical as possible. They’re walking magic dispensers that make weird shit happen, you know? Brainy nerds. But I just…I just want to play hockey.”
“So you lied.”
The music moved on to something slower and the milkshake felt like a rock in my gut. I was starting to think lunch was a terrible idea. Maybe coming home wasn’t that great of an idea either.
Mr. and Mrs. Spark, I mean Sean and Kit, told me over and over that I was still welcome in their home. Kit had hugged me so hard with her rugby arms, I’d thought I’d bruise. They wanted me here, but I wasn’t so sure about Duncan.
“Does your mom know?” He pushed my basket closer to me again.
I leaned back in the metal chair and shook my head. If she k
new, she had never talked to me about it. Of course, she would have had to be around enough for us to actually have a full conversation. She’d checked out of my life as fast as she could. I hadn’t seen her in four years. Hadn’t talked to her in three.
Since I had been smaller than Duncan when we first met, he had shoved all his old hockey stuff at me and insisted I was going to play the game with him.
Sean, who had competed in short track speed skating, had agreed. He had taught me how to skate and signed me up right alongside Duncan for our first Mite league. Hockey became my everything. It was where I belonged. It was where I was challenged to be better than I was. It was my brotherhood and my family.
Until this year when I’d been called to the Avalanche’s training camp. Then it had been my dream come true.
I’d had a shot at the NHL.
And I’d screwed it up.
“Does she?” Duncan repeated.
“I never told her. I don’t do magic, so I don’t think she knows.”
“Giant wall of color solid enough to stop a puck sound familiar? Ran? Random? Dude. Stop staring at your food, it’s weird.”
I glanced back up at him. He was still mad at me, but there was something else in his eyes. Curiosity. Maybe something more.
“Okay, I did that magic,” I admitted.
“And twice before.”
“Yes.”
“And you never told anyone.”
“No.”
“Not even my dad?”
“No.”
“How did you?” He waved his hands around as if trying to shake the words out of the air. “How did you keep it a secret so long? There had to be a million times it would have been so easy to use it. A million times you could have used it for something awesome.”
“I knew it would ruin my life.” I tried to smile, but it sort of drooped off my lips into a frown. “And it did.”
Duncan inhaled a breath so hard, his nostrils flared.
I got ready for the yelling.
He exhaled and choked on a laugh. “You look like the saddest bunny in sad bunny town.”
“Saddest what?”
“Big blue eyes. Fluffy ears. Where’s your fancy top hat house, sad bunny?”
“Screw you. My ears do not fluff. If anyone’s ears fluff around here, it’s yours.”