The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy
Page 6
“Dibs on that futon,” Cora said, scooping up her laptop and her suitcase and letting herself into the spare room with no time for argument.
“Someday I’ll be the only woman on a trip like this, and I’ll get all the best treatment,” Nathan chuckled.
“The couch doesn’t fold out, but the chair reclines,” Nock said with a vague gesture toward the furniture. “Handle that however you want, but do it quietly. Some of us have jobs to go to in the morning.”
“Thank you, Nock,” Elton said, and she waved him away before dropping the blanket and pillow in a heap on the floor nearby.
Nathan eventually fell asleep in a pair of Elton’s sleep pants, since he didn’t have any of his own but still apparently wished to abide by Nock’s wishes. He had claimed the couch for himself, and Elton had found the comfiest spot of rug he could, leaving the recliner for Thomas.
Elton had finally drifted off after much tossing and turning in an attempt to find a bearable position, but he never stayed asleep for long. Once, a soft creaking stirred him, and he opened his eyes to find the armchair empty. He sat up and squinted in the darkness, noting Nathan still sleeping soundly, but when he turned to check the other side of the room, he saw the window next to the fire escape had been pulled open. Thomas stood outside, both elbows resting on the iron railing as he looked out over the city below. Elton saw his shoulders rise and fall in a heavy sigh.
His initial impulse was to roll over, lie back down, and mind his own business. If he was in Thomas’s shoes, he certainly wouldn’t want Elton to talk to him at all, let alone during a moment of solitary contemplation. Not after everything that had happened between them. But Cora had been right—before, in New York, Thomas had seemed concerned about him. Maybe it was just a case of old habits dying hard, but they’d been friends once, hadn’t they? Good friends. Maybe even best friends. Until he’d ruined it.
Elton stood and padded over to the fire escape, keeping quiet so as not to rouse the others, and he crouched to duck through the open window. Thomas turned his head at the sound, but he didn’t speak—only sighed softly through his nose and returned his gaze to the street below them. Elton kept as much distance between them as he could on the narrow balcony, leaning his hands on the railing.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked without looking at the man next to him.
Thomas let out a quiet scoff. “I thought you didn’t want to be friends again.”
Elton frowned to hear his own angry words thrown back at him. “I haven’t been very much of one to you.”
“No shit.” Thomas glanced sidelong at him. “But thanks for helping. Now, I mean.”
“It’s the least I can do. I know there’s no making up for what I did. I can at least stop it happening to anyone else. And I still have someone in Vancouver I can trust. I’ll make sure Lena and Michael got back home.”
Thomas hesitated before answering. “That means something,” he said, less curtly than he intended.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad Nathan led me to you. If we hadn’t been there, you might still be sitting in a cell. You...don’t deserve that.”
Thomas didn’t reply. He laced his fingers together and looked down at them with a frown on his face, and the two of them stood in something almost close to companionable silence for a while. Then Thomas looked over at the blond, his eyes following the lines of color on his bare forearms. His gaze paused on the other man’s empty ring finger.
“Elton,” he said quietly, but he paused before finishing the thought. “Why is Jo in Vancouver, and you’re here?”
Elton sighed. “Because she left me. I deserved it—I was never there. Always chasing Nathaniel fucking Moore,” he added with a dry, humorless laugh.
“Didn’t you want to go back to her?”
“The vacancy had been filled by the time she told me.”
Thomas visibly winced. “Sort of loses her the moral high ground, doesn’t it?”
“It’s fine. She took the cat with her, so I think I came out ahead, all things considered.”
“She made you get a cat? Aren’t you allergic?”
“Yep. But, you know, I gave up smoking because it was bad for my lungs and sinuses.”
Thomas turned his head to hide his quiet snort of laughter. “At least quitting smoking is easy and stress-free.”
“Never once fantasized about leaving the cat in a box on the side of the road.”
For just a second, when they each glanced at the other with faint smiles on their faces, it was as if no time had passed at all. Then Thomas cleared his throat, like he was remembering himself, and he pushed away from the railing.
“We have to be in time to help Hannah and Joel,” he said. “If something happens to them, it’ll be because I let something fall through the cracks. I missed some detail. I spoke to the wrong person. I won’t let them suffer because I made a mistake.”
“We’ll help them,” Elton promised. “I know you probably don’t trust me, but I’ll do whatever I can, and you at least know Cora will, too. And I’m...reasonably sure Nathan is going to keep helping.”
“Cora seems to believe in him. I don’t have any choice but to.” He looked up at the blond with a faint frown. “You, too.”
Elton turned to face Thomas directly, his hip against the cold metal rail. “That’s the best I can ask for, I guess.” He pulled away and paused in front of the window. “Try to get some sleep, Thomas.”
He left his former friend still staring down at the street, but he heard the soft creak of the recliner nearby just as he was closing his eyes.
5
Nathan was allowed a single kiss on the cheek from Nock before they left the next morning—only because he’d managed to actually stay mostly clothed during his stay, she said—and Cora locked her arms around Thomas’s neck for one firm goodbye hug. He only half returned it, one hand awkwardly patting her back.
“You have our numbers, so use them, okay?” she said as she released him. “We’re a team now.”
“I will.”
“We’ll be in contact as soon as we have news about Joel and Hannah,” Elton said. “And I have all your notes.”
“Most importantly, Mr. Proctor,” Nathan interrupted, “you will comport yourself in the manner of a gentleman with regard to all things concerning your host, hm?”
“Get going already,” Nock scolded, shoving Nathan toward the door with both hands. “I’ve got work to do.”
Nathan blew her a kiss over his shoulder as she shut the door on them, and he gave one last resigned sigh before following Elton away from the small apartment.
Once they’d satisfied themselves with some airport breakfast and were safely aboard the plane to Miami, Elton and Cora sat looking over the scrawling handwriting in Thomas’s notebook.
“Even if they’re not in custody already, the Toronto Magistrate will certainly have called Miami,” Elton said. “We’ve already lost two days; we’ll need to head to this address as soon as we land if we hope to catch them.”
“But what if the Chasers haven’t found them yet, and Nathan shows up being all...Nathan, and you being on their radar now too—what if they find these people because of us?”
“I suppose we’ll have to risk that.”
“Or I could just go,” she said, earning herself a skeptical look. “What? Nobody’s been sending my picture all over the damn place. Best case, I knock on their door, tell them it’s time to move house, and we send them on their way. Worst case, I call you guys for backup.”
“Actually, worst case is you get arrested again,” Elton corrected her.
“Oh, she won’t get arrested,” Nathan scoffed from his seat by the window. “I think it’s a splendid idea. Cora gets a bit of practice out on her own, and we don’t draw undue attention to ourselves unless it’s necessary. That suits your sense of caution, doesn’t it, darling?”
Elton grunted his reluctant agreement and looked back at Cora. “But you call us the second anything goes wrong, right?”
Nathan tutted at Elton when he opened his mouth to further argue the issue, and instead kept Cora busy by asking her to recite long lists of herbs and their properties.
They parted ways at the terminal, Nathan promising to have a luxurious suite waiting for Cora upon her return. Cora climbed into a taxi with her large purse stuffed full of spell components and gave the driver the address Thomas had left, and while they drove, her mind ran over and over the list Nathan had her repeating. It was easy to act confident in front of the others, but now that she was by herself, the full weight of what she’d so cavalierly volunteered to do had settled itself on her shoulders. She didn’t exactly have the best track record when it came to facing up against Chasers. Mostly she’d spent those encounters behind a barrier or on the floor. But Nathan believed she could do it, and he wasn’t prone to flattery—not when it came to spellcasting ability, at least—so she had to trust his judgment. There was always a chance that the Chasers hadn’t shown up yet at all, anyway.
That hope was dashed as soon as she saw the black SUV parked in the driveway of the teal stucco house. She stopped the driver before he got too close and glamoured him a payment as she climbed out of the back seat. From her hiding spot behind a tree across the road, she could see two men standing at the door to the house, both of them with their hands flat against the wall on either side of it. Cora could feel the soft pulses of magic even from a distance—they were trying to break whatever wards were keeping them out. That meant she was too late for the easy approach. It also meant that she had very limited time before the Chasers got into the house and made this significantly more difficult. One of the people inside was a witch, too, but Cora couldn’t rely on an unknown to help fight two Chasers.
Actually fighting them probably wasn’t the smartest idea anyway. She sighed. All of the dumb crap she’d done since climbing into Nathan’s Jeep back in Yuma, and this was the first time she felt really stupid. She leaned on her tree and let her cheek smush against the bark while she stared at the backs of the two men between her and the couple she’d promised to help. She had promised, she reminded herself. And fighting wasn’t the only way to get things done.
Cora moved farther down the street away from the house and made a loop, creeping through a few back yards until she could hop the low chain-link fence separating her goal from the neighbors. She inched closer to the back of the house, listening for any changes from the men on the other side, and when she peeked up over the sill of a window, she saw a man and a woman standing in a small laundry room, clearly trying to argue with each other without actually raising their voices. In a rush, Cora tugged her ragged notebook from her purse and scrawled a simple message on a blank page before holding it up to the window and softly knocking.
THOMAS SENT ME
The man urged the woman behind him at the sound on the glass, but as soon as his eyes scanned the note, relief flooded his features, and he pointed toward the back door. Cora slipped inside when he cracked it open, and then both of them hastily resealed the exit with protection wards. Cora crouched to pour a fine line of brick dust along the base of the door before she turned to face the pair. She made a broad gesture toward the rest of the house that she hoped the man would understand and then hurried through the rooms with him in tow, strengthening the barriers as best she knew how. It would have been a good time to have Elton with her.
She frowned and scolded herself for the thought. She could do this. She’d broken out of a Magistrate jail—she could give a couple of Chasers the slip.
“What’s going on?” the man—Joel, she assumed—whispered at her once they’d finished reinforcing the wards. “They just showed up here. How did this happen?”
“Thomas was arrested,” she explained in a hushed voice. “They put him under the cuimne. He sent me here to help you in case this happened.”
“Oh, god,” the woman breathed. She put her hands over her stomach, and Cora noticed for the first time that she was visibly pregnant.
“Crap,” Cora said in an extended groan. “Okay. We have a little time. We need to think.”
“With you here, maybe we could escape out the back and get away,” Joel said, but Cora shook her head.
“They’ll just track you down again. We need them off your tail completely. Somehow,” she finished uncertainly. She flipped her notebook open again, thumbing through the innumerable tabs marking the pages, and she stopped when she spotted an ingredient list given to her months ago in one of Nathan’s dream visits. It could work. Maybe. Cora cast a doubtful glance at the woman’s round belly. A big maybe. But even a big maybe was better than a no.
She turned the book in her hands to show Joel the page. “Do you have this stuff? I have the snail.”
He scanned the ingredient list with a calming hand on Hannah’s shoulder, nodded, and moved swiftly into the kitchen. Cora could hear cabinet doors opening as she pulled her phone from her back pocket and called Nathan, muttering impatiently until he picked up.
“The Lanmò Dòmi mixture,” she said as soon as she heard his cheerful greeting, “is it safe for pregnant women?”
“What? Our girl is in a family way?”
“And Chasers at the door. Is it safe?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever tried. But I would imagine so, in the short-term. The child will simply slow down, too.”
“Okay. Put Elton on.” She followed Joel into the kitchen and searched until she found a large bowl.
A moment later, the blond’s voice took over. “Cora? What’s going on over there?”
“What happens if Chasers find dead witch bodies?”
“Bodies? Cora, what’s happened? Do you need help?”
“What happens?” she pressed, already taking the gathered herbs and oils from Joel and mixing them with her fingers in the bowl. A snap sounded near the door as one of the protection wards came undone.
“It depends. If there are signs of magic, they would have them taken to the Magistrate examiner’s office to be cleared for release. If not, then they’d call the mundane police and do the paperwork when they got back to the station. A basic write-up, the case closing forms—”
“Okay great, thanks Elton,” she said, hanging up on him mid-question and shoving her phone back into her pocket with her clean hand. She opened the small kit in her bag and retrieved the last ingredient, the dried body of a pale brown moon snail pried free of its shell. She ground it up with the herbs and filled the bowl with a bit of water from the faucet, stirring the mixture until the consistency resembled a sludgy, oily smoothie. She poured even servings into a pair of glasses, then pressed one palm over each rim and began a hasty whisper.
“Louche pran yon ti repo, jouk reveye pa yon zanmi.” She cringed even as she spoke. Her accent was still terrible, but she was sure she had the words right.
“What does it do?” Joel asked when Cora offered the couple their glasses. Hannah was holding the tonic as though she expected it to poison her before she even touched it.
“It’ll kill you,” Cora said, immediately holding up her hands as she saw the looks of panic on their faces. “Not really. But it’ll seem like you are. It’s a sleeping draft. They won’t keep chasing you if they think you’re dead, right?”
Hannah didn’t seem comforted. She looked down at herself with one protective hand on her stomach. “But you just had to ask someone if it’s safe for me.”
“If Nathan—if my teacher thinks it is, then it is,” Cora answered, hoping she sounded confident. She didn’t doubt Nathan’s opinion—only her own judgment in using the potion in the first place. “This is the way you both get out of here without getting brain wiped or tortured,” she added. “As soon as the Chasers are gone, we’ll come and get you and wake you up. I promise.”
“Who is ‘we?’” Hannah asked, panic in her voice. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend,” Cora insisted. “Thomas tr
usted me to take care of you. So please.”
Another sharp crack sounded from outside, and then another. They were breaking through.
“We’re out of time, Hannah,” Joel said. He held his wife’s hand and nodded at her. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” the woman answered in a half sob. She hesitated only a moment more, and then they both swallowed their potions. Immediately, their hands went slack, the glasses shattering on the floor, and Cora had to snap out a quick spell to catch them before they hit the floor themselves. She lowered them gently down next to each other and turned to look over her shoulder, whispering the soft words she’d practiced almost every day since Nathan taught them to her.
“Hoona sattaande.”
The spell was barely past her lips before the front door opened. Cora pressed herself against the wall and held her breath as the two men walked by her, one of them letting out a harsh swear at the sight of the bodies. She watched them crouch beside the couple, her head already beginning to ache from the strain of keeping herself invisible. The Chasers checked both bodies for a pulse and inspected the broken glasses, smelling the remaining potion and frowning at each other. Cora’s heart tightened in her chest—it would all go wrong if one of the Chasers recognized what she’d done.
“Poison,” one of them said as he crouched near Joel’s motionless body. “Smells a little floral. Oleander?”
The other shook his head. “Must have used whatever they had around the house. They’d rather Romeo and Juliet than face the Magistrate?”
“The reg’s pregnant,” the man said with a soft sigh. “Better for her and the kid if they never see the inside of a Magistrate building.”
“Fucking waste,” his partner spat. “Anything in there the mundanes will notice?”
“Doesn’t seem like it. Poison is poison. Call it in.”
The standing man took his phone from his pocket and dialed. Both of them turned their backs on the scene, but as they shut the front door behind them again, Cora could hear the man on the phone telling the emergency worker that he’d come across two dead bodies. She crept closer to the front window, careful not to disturb any of the glass and give herself away, and she watched the Chasers until their black car disappeared around the corner. An entire lungful of air heaved out of her in relief as she rushed to the silent couple.