“You’re lucky that’s the worst you got. Drugs? Seriously?”
“Oh, of course,” Nathan grumbled in a mocking tone as he plucked his saturated pack of cigarettes from his pocket, “whoever heard of going out and having a good time in Miami?”
“Just get cleaned up,” the blond said through a tight jaw, and he steadied himself on the door frame for a moment before making his way back to the bed.
“Did you guys...get in a fight?” Cora whispered as Nathan stripped off his soaked shirt. “Like, a real one?”
“What? Of course not. Elton and I bonded last night.”
The girl wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips in skepticism. “With handcuffs?”
“The handcuffs were an added bonus.”
Cora wanted to question more, but Nathan was unzipping his jeans, so she escaped back into the room and approached Elton again. He sat on the stained blankets, his hands pressed into the edges of the mattress. A film of sweat covered every bit of skin Cora could see, and his face was pallid.
“Are you sure you’re fine? You don’t look very fine,” she said. She was already moving to gather up the poultices she had made before, and she settled the jars on the bed nearby and tugged encouragingly at Elton’s open collar as she sat beside him. He complied without argument, allowing her to help him ease the shirt down over his shoulders and off. The fact that he was allowing her to help without a fuss was answer enough for her.
Her eyes moved to the dark patterns on the sheets as she opened her first jar. “Is that all yours?” she asked in a soft voice. The man’s bandages had been soaked and dried, and he flinched as she began to peel them away from his skin.
“Yes.”
Cora’s lips parted in a silent gasp at the sight of the wound under the bandages. One of Elton’s talismans had been plastered over a portion of it, but the surrounding flesh was ragged with deep cuts and puncture wounds, their edges an angry red.
“Oh my god, Elton,” she whispered. She hitched up onto her knees on the bed beside him to get a better look, and at her light touch to check his clammy forehead, he reached up one hand and tugged at a corner of the talisman. It gave a soft hiss of steam as it came free, but the start allowed Cora to ease the rest of it loose with only a faint wince from the blond. “This looks infected,” she said, flicking her wrist to unstick the talisman from her fingertips and sending it fluttering to the floor.
“That wouldn’t surprise me,” he sighed. “It’s a bite.”
“A bite?” Cora echoed. “Something bit you and did this? What the hell did you get into last night?”
“He was a sight to see, all trussed up and waiting,” Nathan said as he reappeared from the bathroom, bending to scoop up a discarded pair of pants from the floor. “I almost didn’t want to let him loose.”
“Nathan, this is serious,” Cora scolded, and Nathan tilted his head at her with a capricious smile.
“So am I.”
She returned her attention to Elton as Nathan finally put on some pants. All the conversation had roused Nichole, but she seemed content to offer them a sleepy good morning and to watch them quietly without leaving the comfort of her blankets. While Cora tended gingerly to the open wounds of her companion, he gave a short, quiet huff and began to explain himself.
“I went to the factory last night. I wanted to deal with Maduro quickly—find out what was really happening and put a stop to it.”
“I take it that didn’t go very well,” Nathan said with a chuckle, peering over Cora’s shoulder to inspect her work.
“He was there, but so was something else. Some kind of creature, protecting him.” Elton sucked in a soft hiss as Cora prodded at a particularly tender cut.
“A creature?” Nathan repeated, his interest clearly piqued. He slid onto the bed beside the blond on the pretense of listening more closely. “What sort of creature?”
“Nothing I know how to name,” Elton answered. “It was huge. It looked like a dog, or a werewolf, but it stood on two hooves, and it only had one eye. It moved faster than I could see.”
“That sounds gross,” Cora muttered, but Nathan was tapping his lips with one pensive finger.
“Your friend has a pet,” he mused. “Or had, I assume.” He paused at Elton’s sour frown. “You did kill him, didn’t you? That’s what you went there to do.”
“I went there to find out the truth,” Elton countered. “I wanted to know for sure what he’d done before I took that step.”
“You thought you’d just walk in, demand to know what he was about, and then ask him very nicely to sit still while you killed him for it?”
“Not exactly,” the blond said through gritted teeth. Cora could tell he was embarrassed—Nathan always made everything look easy, and sometimes you could forget that you weren’t an almost-immortal legend, too. “I was just going to threaten him,” Elton clarified, and Cora felt the muscles in his shoulder go tight at Nathan’s bubble of laughter.
“Threaten him? The millionaire human trafficker under the protection of a corrupt government? And who are you?” Nathan put a quieting hand on the other man’s knee as Elton started to protest. “I don’t mean to imply you aren’t dangerous. You’re deliciously, scandalously dangerous. But even if you’ve never heeded a word I’ve said ‘til now, darling, heed these—you can’t threaten someone without a reputation.”
Elton paused, and Cora slowed the steady movement of her salve-smearing hands, her brow furrowing slightly at the words.
“You were very threatening and scary with that boy in Toronto, weren’t you?” Nathan went on. “And what happened? He turned right around and killed someone else anyway. After you specifically told him not to.” He shook his head with a scolding click of his tongue, then leaned his weight forward into his hands and eased closer to catch Elton’s eyes. “And do you know why he did that?”
“Because he was a murderer.”
“That’s thinking like a Chaser,” Nathan tutted. “He did it because he didn’t believe you. He didn’t know you, so he didn’t think you would actually follow through. It’s the same with this one—why should he think that you’re a threat to him? You’re no one.”
“We can’t all be Nathaniel Moore,” Elton grumbled, but he started slightly as Nathan lifted his chin with one long finger, a dark smile pulling his lips.
“Oh, my darling; yes you can.”
The blond was still for a moment, feeling Nathan’s words sinking into him, but then he brushed the other man’s hand away with a gruff scoff. “What are you talking about?”
“This is how you get a reputation. You killed a Magister’s son, so the Magistrate certainly knows who you are. Now you have to make those people on your list know. Make them believe you. Make them tremble to think you’re coming for them.”
“How?” he asked. The question put a wicked glimmer in Nathan’s black eyes.
“By making an example, of course. This man who owns the factory—you want to kill him?”
“If he’s done what I think he’s done, yes.”
“Then you do it so grandly that people can’t ignore it. You put your name to it and let the world know what you’ve done. Stories spread, and the next time one of these untouchables hears that Elton Willis is asking after him—maybe it gives him just a moment’s pause. Then you give the next one two stories to fear.”
Cora shuddered as she returned her attention to emptying her last jar of salve onto Elton’s back. It might have been the most ominous pep talk she’d ever heard, but Elton didn’t look worried or disgusted—his irritated brow had softened to a pensive frown. The blond shifted under her touch and glanced back at her to check her progress.
“I need to make you something to help with this infection,” she said, hoping to clear the air of all the murder planning. She piled up some pillows near the headboard and pressed Elton’s good arm to urge him back to a comfortable recline, helping him settle without too much pressure on his injury. “You need to rest,” she insisted.
Then she turned to look over her shoulder at Nathan with an accusatory stare. “And no more villain speeches from you until his fever goes down.”
“Yes, doctor,” he chuckled, and he turned his attention to entertaining Nichole while Cora dug through his apothecary case for the ingredients she needed. She consulted her book, measured carefully, and poured Elton a murky green tonic that puffed out smoke and turned crystal clear as she finished her softly-spoken incantation. The blond drank it without hesitation or complaint, and Cora felt a little wiggle of satisfaction in her belly at the thought that he trusted her so much. She wasn’t just an apprentice anymore—not as much as she was before, anyway.
Once Elton was settled and Nathan had been downstairs to fetch coffee, the three of them sat on one bed with their cups in their hands. For a while, the only noise in the room was the soft chatter of the YouTube video Nichole was watching on Cora’s phone and the girl’s toes bouncing lightly against the other headboard as she stretched on her stomach. Elton let his paper cup rest on his thigh, his breath purposefully slow and deep and his gaze soft out ahead of him. Cora’s eyes kept drifting to the barely-sealed skin of his shoulder, threatening to break back into an open wound at any moment. He could have gotten killed last night. He called Nathan reckless, but Nathan had spent the evening drinking in a bar, and Elton had been doing a solo B&E at a human trafficker’s slave factory. Maybe time to let go of pretending he was the responsible one.
“So,” Cora started, hesitant to shift the quiet mood but unable to keep from asking any longer, “what exactly is the plan from here? Joel and Hannah are waiting, Nichole is waiting—once we get them where they’re going, I assume you’re going to try to kill this guy again? Just gonna bring some anti-dog-monster spray and hope for the best?”
Elton snorted out a faint laugh, but the wince that followed showed his regret. “I was actually hoping you might have some ideas,” he said as he rolled his head toward Nathan.
“The thing you described isn’t a creature I’m familiar with,” Nathan admitted. “At least, not from the details you gave. It would be very helpful if I could see it myself, but I’m not inclined to take that field trip blind.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the plastic lid of his cup, and flicked his eyes over to Cora. “Have you been doing any fortune-telling for those gullible regs on your website?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I mean, kind of. Mostly I make stuff up.”
He sucked his teeth at her in mild annoyance. “A missed opportunity to learn, my love. Would you like to see if you’ve the skill for it?”
“For fortune-telling? Is that a real thing?”
“Divination is a magic as old as mankind’s fear of the unknown—which is to say, of course, that it’s as old as mankind itself. With the right insight, you could peek inside that factory for us without ever having stepped foot there.”
“Well that sounds helpful. How do I do it?”
“There are nigh infinite varieties with which you might experiment—I recommend hepatoscopy, personally.”
“Which is what?”
“Augury by inspecting the liver of sacrificed animals.”
The girl’s lip curled. “Yeah, hard pass.”
“It’s the oldest form, and the purest,” Nathan argued.
“Where do you expect us to sacrifice a sheep,” Elton cut in, “let alone find one to be sacrificed in the first place?”
“This is Miami,” Nathan snorted. “Give me an hour, and I’ll find a Santería practitioner or twelve.”
“We’re not killing any livestock.”
“I suppose,” Nathan admitted with a dramatic sigh, “that we might explore other, less bloody avenues.”
“I’m surprised you’re on board with this at all,” Cora said with a glance toward Elton. “Divination seems like the kind of magic you’d write off as bullshit.”
“It is bullshit. It’s guessing with cards ninety percent of the time. But some witches do have the skill for limited augury or distant sight—so who’s to say you aren’t one of them? And if it helps us stop Maduro, then it’s worth a try.”
“That’s surprisingly encouraging,” Cora chuckled. She leaned her elbows on her crossed legs and looked at Nathan. “So what options do I have other than animal body parts?”
“Oh, a veritable cornucopia of various mancies to choose from, even excluding the yucky ones.” Nathan counted on his fingers as the list rolled off his tongue. “Oneiromancy, libanomancy, acultomancy, cartomancy, macharomancy, pallomancy, cleromancy, gastromancy—”
Cora reached out and put a hand on Nathan’s knee to stop him. “You know I don’t know what any of those are, right?”
Nathan shot an accusing look in Elton’s direction, as though he was responsible for the gap in Cora’s education. “Does the Magistrate not teach Greek anymore?”
“You know, I heard they mentioned that at the last PTA meeting, but I think I was in jail at the time.”
“Sarcasm is beneath you, darling.”
“Anyway,” Cora interrupted, “can you tell me what they are in English? Can’t I just do a Tarot reading or something?”
“Cartomancy,” Nathan corrected. “It can be useful, yes, if a bit banal. Though not for our current purposes. You could see our villain’s love life unfolding before him, but that wouldn’t help us get a look at what’s inside that factory. So something else, I think,” he mused, tracing the tips of his fingers over his mouth in thought. After a small purse of his lips, he looked back at Cora as though assessing her aptitude. “Catoptromancy. Scrying,” he added without waiting for her question. “Into a mirror. How does that sound?”
“Not a crystal ball?” Cora teased.
“Clunkier, and quality is harder to find,” Nathan answered without missing a beat.
“Then I guess magic mirror it is.”
“Excellent.” He was on his feet before the word even left his mouth, and he moved across the room to open the arms of his apothecary case, squatting easily on the floor as he tugged open a couple of tiny drawers. Cora couldn’t help shaking her head as she watched him. Less than an hour ago, he’d been passed out in the shower. He sure was chipper for someone who had apparently spent the night drinking and snorting coke.
Nathan chose a short, wide candle made of white wax, and then he cleared away the toiletries on the bathroom counter with one broad sweep of his arm, cluttering toothbrushes and various tubes into a pile in the corner.
“This isn’t ideal,” he admitted as he turned to wave Cora closer to him, “but we can get you a proper mirror if it turns out you have the talent. The girl obediently slid off the bed and peeked around him into the mirror.
“I’m going to see the future in a crummy hotel bathroom?”
“You’re hoping to see the present, not the future. Much easier.” He set the candle just in front of the mirror, then paused to inspect the setup with a pondering frown. He huffed softly through his nose and returned to the nearest bed, urging Nichole up for a moment so that he could drag the blanket off of the mattress. He hung it up across the open archway separating the vanity from the bedroom with a few pins from his case, turning the tiny space in front of the mirror into a closed, black room.
Cora watched a small flame flicker in his palm at his soft word, and he lit the wick with it and placed the candle carefully at the bottom of the mirror, just to one side of the faucet. Nathan put his hands on her shoulders and guided her to stand in front of the gently moving flame.
She peeked up at his reflection and whispered, “Is it going to tell me if I’m the fairest one of all? Or maybe I should say ‘Bloody Mary’ three times?”
He gave her cheek a soft flick with one finger, but he had a smile on his lips. “Pay attention,” he said. “Eyes front.”
Cora did as she was told, focusing on the changing shadows in the mirror as the candle flickered. Nathan’s voice was low and quiet beside her ear.
“Relax,” he said, and she purposely released her shoulders un
der his hands. “For now, picture somewhere you’ve been. Somewhere you know well. Hold that thought, and watch the mirror. If your mind wanders, let it, but keep your eyes focused. You should begin to see.”
“See what?” she breathed, not willing to speak above a whisper.
“Whatever it is you’re meant to see. Just give it a try.” He gave her shoulders one gentle squeeze, then slipped out beyond the blanket curtain, leaving her alone in front of the candle.
Cora took a deep breath and let it out slowly, locking her eyes onto the mirror just above the little flame. She pictured Nathan’s old apartment back in Yuma—the worn recliner, the thin carpet, and the scorch mark on the wallpaper from her first experiment with fire spells. She could still smell the burning incense and hear the soft hiss of his oxygen tank, his bracelets jangling on his wrist as he waved a hand at her ineptitude in teacherly frustration. She had spent every spare moment she had in that apartment for over a year, desperate for the solace her friend’s lessons had been in the middle of her otherwise dismal life. By the time Elton showed up and disrupted everything, the small apartment with the scent of sage and old soil had felt more like home than her own bedroom.
She did her best to hold onto the image of the living room as she stared into the mirror, but she couldn’t help other thoughts slipping into her head. She wondered what the chances were of this working at all, and what she was supposed to be seeing, and she worried about her success meaning they were all going to break into a factory with a murderous demon guard dog.
She stood for what felt like hours, determined to keep her focus, and just when she thought she ought to push open the curtain and tell Nathan she wasn’t a scryer after all, she heard a voice, softly, like a conversation at the end of a long hallway. She strained her ears to listen, and the picture in her mind of Nathan’s dusty apartment seemed to shift onto the mirror itself, the furniture blurring into a different room than the one in her memory. Everything was just barely out of focus, as if she had only to turn a lens to see clearly. A woman stood with a clipboard by an empty wall where Nathan once kept his small bookshelf, talking to a man in the kitchen doorway.
The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy Page 15