Binding the Shadows

by Jenn Bennett

  “Everyone stay where you are and you won’t get hurt,” a voice said. Reindeer Boy. His halo gave him away. Three red dots switched on around his googles—around his friend’s, too. Night vision goggles.

  “You. Bartender.” Something slid across the bar top. I thought it was his backpack, but I wasn’t sure. “Open up the register and put everything inside that.”

  A fierce rage caught fire inside my chest.

  “They covered up the binding traps with the paint!” Kar Yee shouted.

  Bold. And stupid. I didn’t need the damn binding traps anymore. Without electricity, they were no good to me anyway. I could just summon up the Moonchild power. But then I thought of my mom’s appearance at Merrimoth’s beach house . . . and hesitated. Only for a moment, but it must’ve been too long for Kar Yee, who didn’t know about my extracurricular talents. In her mind, my caduceus staff was across the room, and the binding triangles were compromised with paint.

  A horrible, throat-closing fear hit my body, vibrating me like a struck gong. I heard myself whimper. Heard screams of the bar patrons bouncing off the carved tiki masks and kitschy tropical decor. But it wasn’t until I’d ducked behind the bar, retracting as if I were a frightened turtle, that I remembered the intensely piquant feeling of Kar Yee’s knack.

  Kar Yee had the ability to cause everyone within a few yards to quake in their shoes: her knack was known simply as fear. Problem was, she had no control over it. All or nothing. She couldn’t direct it to a specific person.

  I knew this. Knew exactly what was happening to me.

  But I still couldn’t move.

  Gods above, I’d never been so frightened. Terror clouded my thoughts and hijacked my body. My heart stuttered inside my chest and goose bumps spread over my arms. My gaze jumped around the darkened bar, searching.

  A metallic rattling drew my attention to the low counter lining the back wall of the bar. The register shook like an airplane taking off from a runway. It rose into the air. The attached monitor slipped, then crashed onto the floor near my feet, cords dangling. I lurched sideways as the black, boxy metal till sailed through the air.

  That piece of shit Reindeer.

  I couldn’t see him, but I heard a crash and his pained grunt.

  “Come on, come on!” The elfy one said, his voice squeaking with fear.

  More grunting. Rubber-soled sneakers slapped against the floorboards, as coins jingled inside the till like sleigh bells. They were robbing us, and I was cowering behind the bar like a small child.

  “Stop!” Kar Yee commanded, forceful as an army sergeant. On the heels of that shout came a sharp sound. The floor shook with the thump of flesh, crack of bone—too similar to the sound of Merrimoth being impaled. Kar Yee screamed and a wrenching, pained sound that stabbed through my heart. The fog of fear lifted immediately.

  I leapt to my feet and zoomed around the bar. When I turned the corner, my feet slid in thick paint. I flew sideways, grabbing the corner of the bar top just in time to stop myself from landing on my ass.

  The thieves were silhouetted inside the open door, red lights from their goggles making them look like dark aliens. “You’re both fucking dead!” I shouted in their direction.

  I reached out for the Moonchild magick. Saw the Tambuku door slam shut as my already-dim surroundings blackened to nothingness. The pinpoint of blue light glowed. With my mind, I began shaping it into a standard binding triangle bordered with sigils, but instead of the numbing silence that usually accompanied the moon magick, I heard . . . voices? Whispering voices. The blue light began fading. I blocked out the whispers and concentrating on the binding—

  Until something slithered down my left leg of my jeans.

  The moon magick snapped away like a broken rubber band.

  Alarmed and shocked, I reached for my pant leg. Nothing. The sensation disappeared. The whispers were gone. A strange dizziness stole over me. I didn’t get dizzy from using the Moonchild power. That only happened when I kindled Heka with electricity. What the hell was going on with me?

  My mind jumped to my mother’s image. Christ, at least I hadn’t seen her again.

  A horrific sob rent the air. My heart twisted. I’d never heard that sound, not in all the years I’d known Kar Yee.

  I scrambled toward the sound, slipping in slick paint.

  My foot kicked something. I dropped to my knees and crawled on all fours on the paint-coated floor. A noxious scent of latex filled my nostrils. “Kar Yee!” I reached out a sticky hand and touched her—where, exactly, I couldn’t tell. It was too dark. But I felt the puffy gold lamé of her jacket.

  She whimpered and said something in Cantonese. Her voice was small and fragile.

  “Where are you hurt?”

  “I slipped. I’m broken up here.”

  Broken. I slid a hand up her coat, searching. She lay on her back—I could tell that much from the feel of the coat’s zipper and the direction of her voice. My fingers touched warm skin. Her neck? She cried out. I snatched my hand away.

  “Broken where?” I asked. “Your shoulders? Arms? Ribs?”

  “My collarbones,” she said between sobs. “Can’t move!”

  “Don’t try. Be still. Stay calm.” The last instruction was for myself as much as her.

  “Cady!”

  I glanced up. Electronic white light floated in the air. Bob jogged toward us, using his cell phone like a flashlight.

  “She says her collarbones are broken,” I told Bob as he wobbled on his feet and began slipping. “Careful!” I wrapped a steadying hand around his shin, leaving a wet splotch of paint on his pants. He righted himself and knelt down with me, shining his phone over Kar Yee. Her eyes were shut tight. Kohl-tinged tears tracked down her cheeks. Her teeth were gritted. Red paint soaked her clothes, skin, and her razor-straight black hair.

  “I’m here, Kar Yee,” Bob said.

  “Help me,” she pleaded.

  He leaned closer, gingerly pulling open one side of her coat. His slicked-back dark hair gleamed in the light of the cell phone. “I can’t heal bone until I know where the break is. We need an x ray first.”

  “Someone call 911—now!” I shouted behind me. “Tell them we’ve been robbed and someone’s injured.” When a couple of voices replied in consent, I turned to Bob. “Sacred Heart’s a few minutes away.”

  “A lot of Earthbounds on staff there,” he agreed. “Maybe someone knew my dad. I’ll ride with her in the ambulance.”

  She sobbed again.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Bob assured her in a calm voice. “You aren’t bleeding?”

  She said no, but who could tell with all the damned red paint everywhere? Assholes. They ruined my binding traps, stole from us, and hurt Kar Yee.

  Then it hit me: this was part of the crime spree Dare had been talking about last night.

  Like Merrimoth’s out-of-control temperature knack, the telekinesis and electricity-zapping I’d just witnessed were not normal, but the boys hadn’t been transmutated. No horns. No fiery halos. Just teenage Earthbounds with enhanced preternatural powers. How the hell was this happening?

  A distant crash sounded from somewhere beyond the door.

  “Stay here with her,” I told Bob. “I’m going after those jackasses.” I pushed myself up, careful not to jostle her.

  “Get them,” Kar Yee bit out.

  I shuffled past the bar, asking if everyone was okay, recognizing a few voices that called back in response. The light was better here, near the window. Stupid ineffectual wards. All they’d done was scorch the doorframe. I threw open the door and took the steps two at time, a black rage pulsing in my veins. When I got to the top step, my gaze fell to the cement. Silver and copper coins fanned out over the sidewalk like ocean spray over rocks. A few scattered green bills fluttered in the wind, dancing when a car on Diablo Avenue zipped past. The empty till sat broken and dented against the brick wall of our building.

  I ran down the sidewalk, scanning both sides of the
street, then abruptly turned around and looked behind me. A few Earthbounds ambled out of a late-night diner. A homeless man huddled under a dirty blanket on a bench. But nowhere did I spy a thieving Reindeer or his elfin cohort.

  They’d gotten away.

  A devastating feeling of loss and disappointment washed over me as angry tears welled in my eyes. Defeated by two scraggly punks, all because I’d used the wrong magical wards and gotten lazy. I should’ve pounced on those kids the second they walked in the bar. After all the shit I’d been through, you think I’d know better than to let my guard down.

  I’d failed Tambuku. Failed Kar Yee.

  Failed myself.

  But while Bob rode with Kar Yee to the emergency room, I pushed away these nagging feelings of incompetence, donned my Responsible Business-Owner cap, and stayed behind to handle everything.

  Dealing with police always made me twitchy. Living under an alias did that to a girl. The two officers who responded to the robbery were both savages—humans who didn’t believe in anything supernatural—so I couldn’t exactly tell them that the hoodlums who robbed us were Earthbounds with crazy, amped-up knacks. I did my best to gloss over the paranormal details. They couldn’t understand how the fuse box had been blown—and I do mean blown, as the thing was smoking and the connected wires melted—but a forensic examiner dusted it for fingerprints anyway and bagged up the dented till.

  While she did, I made a phone call to an electrician to replace the fuse box and get our lights back on, but the soonest he could make it was tomorrow afternoon.

  What a mess. The red paint under the barstools had already dried in spots. The barstool legs were going to have to be stripped, the binding sigils repainted. The floor refinished. Once the cops had taken statements from some of the customers and told me they’d be in touch, I put a sign on the door that said Tambuku would be closed several days for repair. Then I locked up the bar and headed to the Metropark.

  Bob called. The ER was slammed. A local overpass had inexplicably collapsed, causing a multi-car pileup that closed down the highway and brought in dozens of critically injured passengers. He talked to an Earthbound doctor who’d told him that the recent slew of petty crimes around the city was becoming a nightmare for the hospital. Patients arrived with fatal burns, unexplainable plague-like diseases, internal bleeding, and more broken bones than the man had ever seen in his career. I was starting to think that Dare was right to be worried about all this. Not that I was going to change my mind about working for him, but Jesus. There was definitely something weird going on.

  A nurse examined Kar Yee, gave her ice packs and pain meds, and told her it’d be two hours before she could get an x ray. Bob was taking her back to his place, so I hopped in my old Jetta and sped to meet him there.

  Bob lived in his parents’ old house in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Morella. At one time, it was probably a grand, lovely house, but Bob’s inheritance was dwindling, and home-maintenance was not his top priority. I’m sure all his über-successful doctor and lawyer neighbors loved the fact that his gutters were overflowing and his lawn was overgrown, but they were probably all jerks anyway, so I told him he shouldn’t care.

  Ever since the night he’d saved Lon’s life, he’d been going to an alcoholic support group twice a week. I tried to tag along with him every other meeting. I couldn’t be his sponsor, as I’d never had a substance abuse problem, but I figured since I was the one who’d served most of his drinks over the last couple of years, I could take the time to help him stop. He still came to Tambuku every night—which was totally against the support group’s rules—but I made him virgin drinks. And, with his permission, I’d been adding a small dosage of a medicinal tonic I’d brewed up with milk thistle and kudzu root, which was purported to cleanse the liver and reduce his cravings for alcohol. He said it helped; he’d been sober for five weeks now.

  I knocked on the front door and opened it. “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Back here,” Bob called out.

  His house was messy and always smelled like a combination of spoiled picnic basket and elderly shut-in. I suspected he had something dead inside one of the walls—a rat, bat, or cat—and told him to call an exterminator, but he said I was imagining it. (I wasn’t.)

  A long hallway led past the living room to his deceased father’s home office. A desk sat in front of a wall of anatomy books and medical periodicals, and at the far end of the room was an examination table, a glass cabinet filled with half-empty pharmaceutical drug bottles, and some random medical equipment, including a portable x-ray machine. Bob stood in front of a computer screen. Kar Yee reclined on the examination table, which had been adjusted so that she was almost sitting.

  Dried red paint clung to her hair, hands, jeans. It was spattered over her gold coat, which was draped over a nearby chair. She stared straight ahead, unmoving, her arms flopping at her sides. She looked awful. I swallowed hard and tamped down worry.

  “Hey,” I said, padding across the room to stand next to her.

  “I’m never going to the emergency room again,” Kar Yee answered, her voice weary and cracking. “They are all assholes. ‘Put some ice on it,’ that’s what they told me. And the ambulance ride was worse than Bob’s car. A waste of insurance money.”

  “They were understaffed,” Bob said, his focus remaining on the computer screen. “But it’s fine. I’ve already x-rayed her. Pulling the image up now.”

  “I probably have radiation poisoning,” Kar Yee said, blinking lazily.

  I forced a smile. “You sound like Amanda. Before you know it, you’ll be drinking green protein smoothies and riding a bike to work.”

  “Bikes are for schoolchildren and poor people,” she said tartly. “I will saw off my legs before these feet touch pedals.” Her sarcastic snobbery lifted a small weight from my chest. I’d take that over tears any day. “So, did you bring it?” she asked.

  I tugged a brown vial out of my jean pocket—a magical medicinal, fairly strong if unpredictable. “What did they give you at the ER?”

  “Something that should wear off in about an hour,” Bob said. “Let’s wait, to play it safe. If she overdoses right now, she’ll have to spend all night in the waiting room before they can pump her stomach.”

  “I’ll take the risk,” Kar Yee said. “Dope me up, Cadybell.”

  She never called me that. No way was I giving her the medicinal now. I leaned against the examination table and ran my fingers over the long lock of hair at the front of her bob, now tipped in red. “I think you can use WD-40 to get latex paint out of your hair.”

  Her gaze tilted up to mine. “Really?”

  Pity and guilt knotted my stomach. “I’m sorry I didn’t get them,” I said. “Your knack caught me off-guard, and when you fell . . .”

  “They’d destroyed your binding triangles,” she said.

  “I know, but I’ve been experimenting with a different kind of magick. Something that doesn’t require—” I hesitated, wanting to tell her more than I should in front of Bob. “It doesn’t matter,” I finally said. “I should’ve been able to stop them. I’m sorry I didn’t. And I’m sorry you got hurt.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Bob said. “It’s like I told you on the phone—these robberies are happening everywhere. I’ve never known an Earthbound who could short out electricity like that. I thought that was something only you could do, Cady.”

  “Me too,” I admitted.

  “You think it could be magick?” Kar Yee said. “A talisman?”

  I brushed a paint-tipped lock of hair off her cheek. “Something that boosts the potency of the wearer’s knack?”

  “Is that possible?”

  Not that I knew. I mean, there was the Hellfire Club’s transmutation magick. But even if it wasn’t a closely guarded secret only doled out to select members, even if it didn’t bring out the horns and the fiery halos, that kind of magick—a permanent spell cast on a person’s body—couldn’t be replicated in a temporary si
gil worn around someone’s neck.

  “I seriously doubt it,” I told Kar Yee. “But something weird’s going on.”

  “And Tambuku’s not the only business on the block to get hit,” Bob said. “Right before we left the ER, I heard someone saying that the corner shop two blocks away got robbed earlier today.”

  “Diablo Market?” I said.

  “Ooh, they carry that cantaloupe-flavored gum from Hong Kong I like,” Kar Yee said. Yeah, she was definitely doped up, missing the point.

  “Did you hear any details about their robbery?” I asked Bob. “Maybe it was the same kids.”

  “The woman didn’t say. I just know they’re closed for a few days. A lot of broken glass.”

  “Not us. We’ll be open tomorrow,” Kar Yee said.

  Like hell we were. “Let’s not worry about that right now,” I told her.

  A loud knock rapped three times on Bob’s front door. The door slammed shut and heavy footfalls sounded. I peeped my head out into the hallway. Lon’s honey-brown head bobbed in out of shadows. Oh, thank God. Just the sight of him filled me with relief.

  “Hey,” I called out as he approached.

  “You all right?” he said as he reached for me.

  “I’m fine.”

  He held my face in his hands and tilted it up for his inspection, then pulled me against him. I hugged him briefly then led him into the room. “She’s in here.”

  “Hello, Lon.”

  Lon nodded a polite greeting. “Bob.”

  “Hey,” Lon said to Kar Yee, towering over her. “Hanging in there?”

  “This? Pfft. It’s nothing,” Kar Yee said with a silly grin. “How’s my favorite pirate captain? Did you come to give me something nice to look at? A little pirate booty?” She snorted a laugh at her own joke.

  Lon stared at her in horror for a moment then said, “What’s she on?”

  “Dilaudid,” Bob answered from the computer. “She’s just experiencing a mild euphoria. It should wear off soon.”

  “Where’s my future boyfriend?” she asked Lon. “Did you leave him at home?”

  “He’s got school tomorrow.”