by Anna Abner
He slipped down the hall to rummage around in his bedroom, closing drawers with force. Too curious to stop herself, she peered around the doorframe to see what he was doing. Cole stared intently at a fancy, glass-topped case. The kind in which she might display antique pocket watches or exotic butterflies preserved in resin blocks, but his case was crowded with knives. Lots and lots of knives. Short, long, folding, serrated, hooked. Some had fancy grips. Some were nothing more than sharpened rectangles of gray metal.
Talia got a nervous cough in the back of her throat, and she hurried into the kitchen before he caught her spying.
“Okay,” he said, reappearing with a backpack and a pocketknife in each hand. “I tried to take a shower, but some well-meaning person turned off the water. Probably my parents. They worry about wasting money. Do you mind if we shower when we get to your place? I don’t want to deal with stuff like water and power today.”
“Of course.” She followed him out, but all she could think was knives. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
Who needed that many knives? Cutting himself in order to cast had become a kind of ritual.
They headed back into Auburn and toward her house in awkward, eerie silence.
As she pulled into her driveway, she felt hollow and a little creeped out, to be honest.
Talia let herself into the front door and surveyed the dark, quiet interior. Her house looked the same, but it felt different. Like her abduction had tainted it. Because whether Cole had been acting or not, she’d bought his performance.
“Why don’t we just stay here?” she asked. “We’ll make my living room our new headquarters, and we don’t have to go back to the murder house.”
He sighed as if exhausted. “Because they know where you live. Think what a nightmare a siege of casters would be. For you and your neighbors.”
She thought of old Mr. Everly next door. “I see what you mean. Okay. Fine. Do you want the first shower?” she asked.
“No, go ahead.” He didn’t sit down or relax with the TV on, but stood in the middle of her living room scanning for signs of trouble. And with his hands on his hips, his biceps straining under the crusty, castoff tee, she believed he could handle just about anything.
Suddenly self-conscious, she slipped into the bathroom, risking a final glance at Cole. Their eyes met. Flushing, she snapped the door closed.
She hadn’t showered with a strange person in her home in…well, maybe never. As she peeled off her clothes, her nerve endings shivered to life, sending chills up and down her limbs. She imagined she heard him breathing on the other side of the cheap wood.
“Everything okay?”
Talia leapt against the sink, banging her wrist. An electric jolt of pain ricocheted up her arm. Holy crap. He was standing right outside the door.
“Yep,” she called, shaking the sting from her wrist. “All good in here. How about you?”
“No trouble so far.”
His footsteps crossed the hall. Relaxing a tick, she turned on the shower and hopped in. She’d never cleansed herself so quickly. Shampoo, body wash, a few swipes of a disposable razor, and she was done.
Blissfully clean, Talia wrapped herself in a pink, cotton robe, gathered her things, and slipped out, leaving Cole a spare towel and a whole bunch of hot water.
“Your turn,” she called, rushing further down the hall to her bedroom.
It was ridiculous to worry about dressing to please Cole, but she couldn’t help wondering what he’d like to see her wear. More shorts? Jeans? A mini dress she sometimes wore to clubs?
She chose a pair of tan capris, a strappy blouse with a decent vee down the front, and a pair of silver hoop earrings. She turned confidently away from the closet mirror and packed an overnight bag of essentials including her cell charger, toothbrush, and extra clothes.
Just for one night. Then she’d be home again, back to what passed for normal these days.
Cole took a little longer in the bathroom, so she carried her stuff into the kitchen and added some snacks to her overnight bag. She opened a couple cloth grocery sacks to fill them with towels, sheets, and some dishware to make the murder house livable, but she paused at the kitchen counter with a box of crackers in her hand.
Barely audible noises coming from the bathroom had her imagination racing. Water splashing. A heavy footfall. Soft, toweling sounds.
Talia swallowed with difficulty, picturing Cole’s tall, lean body dripping wet and shiny clean. Having already seen his bare chest, it was easy to imagine the rest of him.
She was so deep in her fantasy she didn’t hear the man on her stoop until he kicked her door down. The wood ricocheted against the wall, and the knob buried inside the drywall. Harvey, a follower of the DC, didn’t waste time with small talk.
“Cole,” she tried to call, but too late.
“Lapsus,” Harvey said with a sadistic smile on his face, his male spirit companion hovering beside him.
Talia tumbled onto the rough carpeting, and not by choice. At least he hadn’t put her to sleep.
“What the hell, Harvey?” she exclaimed. “I’m the victim here.”
But he wasn’t buying it.
Where was Hugh? It scared her that he’d been missing so long. And now when she needed his help, he was gone.
“That’s a lie,” Harvey said.
She struggled to her feet. “The hell it—”
“Confuto.”
Damn if her voice didn’t just click off. Her lips continued moving, the words continued to scroll through her thoughts, but no sound came out. Not even a whisper.
And she regretted not screaming for Cole’s help sooner.
“Miss, I am here.” Hugh appeared over her, unflappable and solemn as ever. She sensed him feeding her power, but without a spell circle and glyphs, it did no good.
She needed Cole.
The bathroom door whipped open, and Cole barreled down the hall, fully dressed in jeans and a blue button-down shirt.
She jerked upright, terrified he’d be hurt by the caster.
But she needn’t have worried.
Harvey opened his mouth to cast on her again, but Cole tackled him out of his spell circle before he uttered a single syllable.
Harvey curled into a pathetic ball as Cole pummeled the other man’s ribs.
“You don’t hurt her.”
She had the ludicrous instinct to remind Cole no one could see him, let alone hear his growled threat. Good thing she couldn’t speak or she’d be giggling hysterically. It must be the abject terror making her giddy.
Panting, Cole stood, but it was Talia whose breath stalled. She lost the urge to laugh altogether. He was a tall, muscular superhero. Her hero.
Clean-shaven and dressed in fresh clothes, he didn’t look like a battle-scarred refugee anymore. He looked good. Tall and muscular with straight black hair falling into his green eyes, he brought up all new sensations in her body.
“Are you okay?” He gripped her shoulders. “Did he cast on you?”
She tried to convey through gestures that she her voice was gone.
He dragged her to the very edge of Harvey’s spell circle. “Stay here for a second.” He collected one of his pocketknives and slashed open his left forearm.
Talia struggled to cry out, No. Don’t hurt yourself on my account. But her voice was missing.
“Everything okay over there?” Mr. Everly scowled at them from his porch. “I heard a lot of noise.”
Though her whole body trembled, Talia smiled and waved her friendliest smile. Appeased, he locked himself inside his house.
“Look at me.” Cole’s deep voice startled her.
As she brought her attention to him, she was caught in his stare. His eyes weren’t as simple as green. No, the edges were honeyed brown. And there, near the centers were microscopic rings of cobalt.
His magic zapped her, pushing and pulling through her body, setting her off balance.
Her eyes fluttered closed. “That feels amazing,” she w
hispered.
“Thank God,” he exhaled, falling back a step. “I wasn’t sure I could break it.”
She made several nonsense sounds, just to double check her voice was real.
“They found us.” Cole hurried inside and returned carrying their various pieces of luggage. “We have to go.”
“But I knew him,” Talia said, staring at the blood smearing her front stoop. Harvey’s blood. “He was in the cabal. He was nice to me.”
Cole rushed around her and piled the bags in her backseat. “Do you have everything you need?”
She bent and, after checking that his pulse was normal, dragged Harvey by the shoulders through the front door. It wouldn’t be smart leaving a wounded stranger on her doorstep. She’d unlock her front door, and he could let himself out when he came to.
“Let’s go.” To her horror, he scuffed out Harvey’s spell circle as they crossed it. Now she’d never know what glyphs he used.
“Hurry,” Cole prodded.
This is my life, she thought, reversing her Honda onto the street. Running from casters, hiding in obscure places, living out of a sack. Only two weeks had passed since she’d had a great job, friends, and a bed to crawl into every night. And rogue necromancers had never even crossed her mind.
“Head to my shop,” Cole said.
“Are you okay?” she asked. She wasn’t okay. She was a jumpy mess. She’d known the cabal would retaliate after she ignored their latest assignment, but she hadn’t expected to be cast on quite so quickly or so violently. Or for the person attacking her to find such pleasure in it.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Changing the topic,” Talia said, pulling her car into traffic on Western Blvd. “Cause my life just flashed before my eyes.” She laughed as if she were only kidding, except she wasn’t.
Harvey had cast on her? The last time she’d seen him he’d been carrying a fruit platter into their meetinghouse. His attack on her was mind-boggling.
She dredged the bottom of her brain for a question. Any question. “What kind of business do you own? Sorry, I forgot.” Because she couldn’t focus on the very real danger they’d barely escaped.
Cole seemed relieved to talk about something benign, as well. “Comic books,” he said. “Graphic novels, card games, action figures, posters. Anything you can think of having to do with comics.”
“What made you want to open your own business?”
“It wasn’t a childhood dream or anything.” Cole chuckled, a low rumble. “But the comic shop was going out of business and I just couldn’t imagine it not being there anymore. The Repository was my favorite place to hang out when I was in college.”
“That was kind of you.” He was a nice guy. A genuinely nice man.
“It was stupid,” he said.
A laugh burst at his unexpected response.
“The shop was in all kinds of financial trouble,” he added. “Hardly anybody came in. It was a lot of work finding new customers. Luring back the old ones. Getting people in Auburn excited about comic books again.”
Talia looked at him, a quick glance from the corner of her eye. Amazing. New respect bubbled up inside her for the hardworking comic book nerd.
He didn’t deserve what the cabal had done to him, or what they planned for him.
“And somehow,” she said, “you still find time to cast as if you were born to it.”
The idea of a normal human being crossing over to the other side and returning with new, supernatural abilities fascinated her. Born a necromancer, she couldn’t imagine what that transformation was like, but her curiosity was bursting.
“Well.” He shifted again as if talking about himself made him uncomfortable. “I’ve been casting about ten years. And I study magic, so I end up knowing a lot of stuff others don’t. That’s why the Raleigh coven keeps convincing me to show up to meetings.”
“I’ve heard of the Raleigh coven,” Talia said. A bunch of witches and casters who met once a month in the city. “I’ve never attended a meeting, though.” It had always struck her as a group of housewives looking for a slightly cooler book club, but if Cole Burkov was a member maybe it wasn’t as lame as she’d assumed.
“You should,” he said.
She snorted. “After this fiasco I don’t think they’d let me within fifty yards of their meeting place.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t be in this mess,” Cole said, “if you had actual caster friends.” Before she could answer, he gestured straight ahead. “Pull in there. You’ll see the signs.”
Talia parked in front of a strip mall as her phone chirped the call of a whippoorwill. Her stomach clenched. It was her mom, making their morning connection with news, no matter how inconsequential, about Sylvester.
Cole snatched the phone out of her hand. “No calls.”
“What?” She tried to snatch it back. “Give me my phone.”
“You’re supposed to be kidnapped. Have you forgotten what just happened?”
She gave him a frustrated scowl. “Okay, be straight with me. What kind of abduction is this? The tied up in the basement kind of abduction? Or the kind where we’re lying low, but I still have access to my phone and car keys? Cause I really need to know that upfront.”
His mouth twitched as if fighting a smile. “Who’s calling you?”
“My mother,” she said grudgingly. “Are you some controlling jerk? Are you going to tell me how to dress next and which of my friends are appropriate?”
He returned her scowl with one of his own. “No.” He handed her the phone. “But there are ways of tracking you through that thing. Non-magical ways, and I want to reduce the number of surprises I have to deal with before this is all over.”
“Understood.” She answered the call. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hey, there. Any updates?” she asked in a gravelly voice made worse by nonstop crying.
“No, nothing new.” The same old guilt tore through her. She couldn’t say anything truthful to her mother. Didn’t dare. So, she pretended not to know who had Sylvester, pretended she wasn’t being blackmailed. “What about you?”
“I did laundry today and folded up all of his little things,” her mother said. “T, I sat on the couch and couldn’t stop sobbing.”
“Are you feeling better now?” she asked, a sympathetic sting in both her eyes.
“No,” she sighed. “Not particularly.” She added in a rush, “I’ve got to go. Agent Gallo is coming by later to brief us.” Gallo was one of the FBI agents investigating Sylvester’s abduction.
“Let me know what he says.”
“I will.” Mom’s voice dropped even lower. “Bye.”
Talia averted her gaze, not able to meet Cole’s scrutiny. He may be her hostage—or she was his—but that didn’t mean he was privy to all her in’s and out’s.
Avoiding any further questions, she got out of the car and strolled toward a row of shops. It was immediately clear which one was Cole’s. It was the storefront she couldn’t keep her eyes off. The windows were plastered with fun, flashy posters. The neon sign was big and bold. In the front display were male and female mannequins in full superhero costumes frozen in battle poses. Even though she’d never read a comic book in her life, it was the kind of store she’d love to browse.
Then, as they neared, something out of the ordinary caught her eye, and she bee-lined for a pyramid of tiny stuffed bears, bouquets of flowers, and homemade comic-themed well wishes. The front doors of The Repository were covered in sympathy and good luck cards.
“That’s sweet,” Talia mumbled, reading a few. Come back soon. We miss you. The shop isn’t the same without you. “So many people were sad when you went missing. The fire chief…the mayor of Auburn…the cast of The Carolinas. Aw.”
Chapter Eight
Talia sniffed a bouquet of sickly sweet smelling carnations.
“It’s nice,” Cole agreed, scrutinizing the cards stuck to his door for a moment before turning away. “Come on. I lost my keys, but the rear
exit is magically locked, and we can get in there.”
He led her around the back of the strip mall to a nondescript, unmarked metal door beside an electrical panel.
Many times Talia had considered locking her house magically by drawing spell circles on each doorstep, but she’d never tried it. Fascinated, she got real close to the floating neon glyphs only casters could see. Opening her phone, she snapped photos to study later.
Beside her, Cole pulled his folding knife, sticky with blood, from his pocket.
“Don’t.” She waved the weapon away. “I’ll do it. I don’t want you cutting yourself.” Talia slid her phone into her purse and then drew a circle and four marks with a pencil. “Hugh? We need to break Cole’s seal and let ourselves in. You up for it?”
“Whatever you wish, miss.”
Cole’s barrier spell was complicated and strong. She got the idea he didn’t want anyone—magical or otherwise—getting through his security system.
After fifteen minutes of nonstop casting she was getting antsy, and Hugh was flagging. “What have you got in there, huh? Gold bars? State secrets?”
“I have to bleed for every spell I cast, so I make them count.” Cole nudged her out of her circle. “I can’t watch anymore.” He glanced at her spirit companion. “Would you?”
Hugh inclined his head.
Cole pulled at his freshest wound until it split anew, and blood bloomed red. He cast, and the neon spell marks clicked off one by one. Finally, both deadlocks scraped free, and the door swung open an inch.
Talia walked into a shadowy storeroom that smelled of old books and candle wax. Peeking out from the corners was a large spell circle painted onto the concrete floor, nearly as large as the room itself. The storeroom was full of crates and boxes of comic books, plus a couple posters, and some fragrant candles arranged over cupboards.
Cole shut the door behind them and cast the security spell back into place. No one was getting through The Repository’s rear door without a whole lot of mojo.
He channeled Hugh and since she shared his circle, his spell sent her a tiny echo of power that sizzled along her nerve endings, foreign and dark. Instinctively, she moved out of the circle, and the heady sensations dropped away.