“Do you still have the book?”
“Yeah.” I nudged my backpack with a boot.
“And you’re sure they won’t mess with the mundanes?”
I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice as I replied. “Kinda their whole schtick, isn’t it? Protect the ignorant from magic. Kill the blood Sorcerers and anyone who works for them. Even if they have no choice.”
“Stay put,” Morgan said. “I’ll contact you when I’ve lost the tail.”
He cut the call. I stood for a moment, staring at my pile of stuff, processing the command. What the hell was I going to do until he got here? Krista and Jaesung might let me stay, but I didn't know how long it would take Morgan to lose his Guild pursuers. The longer I was here, the more chance I gave the Guild to get me good and surrounded.
I shoved my phone back into my hoodie pocket then trudged back down the stairs. It was like walking into a brick wall, the atmosphere was so different. I paused on the stairs, taking in the scene. Krista stroked the face of the limp mutt with gentle fingers, her orange head bent near its ear. Sanadzi’s hand lay across the dog’s prominent ribs and the light of her smile had gone out.
Then I saw Jaesung. He leaned against the pillar beside the examination table in a black hoodie, red sweatpants, and the same pristine white shoes he’d worn yesterday.
He’d shoved both hands in his pockets, and eyes dull behind his glasses. Unlike Krista and Sanadzi, he noticed my movement on the stairs and glanced up. A small shake of the head confirmed my assumption. The one-eyed dog was dying.
I eased down the stairs, positioning myself on the unoccupied side of the examination table. Fat tears rolled down Krista’s nose as she stroked the hair along the dog’s muzzle. I listened to the labored breathing, glancing at Sanadzi’s drawn face.
“We can’t save them all, baby,” the vet said to Krista. “Sometimes they wanna go.”
I closed my eyes, gripping the side of the examination table as my mother’s face flashed behind my eyelids. Fine-boned and hard-eyed. The blood on my hands, in her hair. The little hole that didn’t seem big enough to change anything.
There had been so much death in the past few days. I wasn’t sure I could watch more.
The presence loomed on my right an instant before I felt the light touch on my elbow. I opened my eyes and inhaled, trying to calm shaking hands as I glanced up at Jaesung. My nose was level with his collarbone, and he smelled like sweat and cold air, a hint of burning leaves. Up close, his eyes weren’t as dark as I’d first thought.
I followed the tacit instruction. Together, we climbed the stairs and left Krista and Sanadzi to their grief.
He pulled the door shut behind us and dumped his backpack. I struggled with the silence, sure there was something I should say. But Jaesung just headed for the kitchen. He ejected a pod from the coffee machine and selected a green-labeled one from the carousel. I slid onto a barstool, an uncomfortable witness.
The machine gurgled. Jaesung slid his fingers under his glasses to rub at his eyes.
“Sorry you had to be here for this,” he said, voice muffled by his hands. “We don’t lose dogs often, but it really sucks when we do.”
My heart jolted. He and Krista and Sanadzi were the ones in pain. Why was he apologizing to me?
“No, it… I mean, it happens,” I said. I paused a moment, wondering what Mom would say. Normal people said something at times like these. “If you had to rescue them, they were already in bad situations.”
Jaesung leaned his elbows on the bar across from me, looking down at his hands, but he seemed to be listening, accustomed to the dance of normal human interaction. Playing his part. I licked my lips and went on.
“Everyone loves the stories about people and animals bouncing back from hell, but most of the time it doesn’t work like that. Most of the time they just drag that hell along behind them. It wouldn’t be inspiring, I guess, if everyone beat the odds.”
I glanced up to find Jaesung watching me, his chin cupped in both hands, fingers curled in like he might bite his nails. It wasn’t a look I could read, and it lasted a second too long. At last, he looked away.
“I never know what to say to them,” he said. “I mean, I’m sad, but Krista and Sanadzi get invested, you know? We’ve had Lulu a week and she was touch-and-go from the start. I just… I guess I don’t let myself attach the way they do.”
I nodded, relieved to hear a sentiment I could recognize. “Yeah. I’m like that too,” I said. “Like you, I mean. It takes me a long time.”
Jaesung sucked in his lip and spread his hands out in front of him. The veins were prominent today, and I traced his knuckles in my head, sketching the length of his fingers and the muscle of his thumb, the shell-like gradient of his fingernails. He had draw-able hands. I glanced up at him, considering his full mouth and the little scar on his chin. He had draw-able everything, really, and there was something malleable about his movements now, like his muscles were warm and ready to work.
What had he been up to besides class? I glanced at the backpack he’d dropped by the door, then back at the pile of my things on the coffee table, thinking of my sketchbook. It had been a long time since I’d sketched a person. One who wasn't dead.
“Did you hear from your family yet?”
I twisted back to him, fumbling for a lie that wasn’t a lie. “Yeah, my cousin got ahold of me. They ran into some delays, so it’ll take them a few days to get here.”
“That sucks,” Jaesung said. “I mean, not that I’m, like, super eager for you to go or anything, but it’s no fun to have everything up in the air.”
I lifted my eyebrows and nodded.
Jaesung went back to the coffee machine and took his drink. “Do you want one?” he asked. “Tea, I mean. Or coffee, I don’t know.”
I looked at the steam rising from the mug. “You’re one of those?”
“One of what?”
“You drink tea hot.”
Jaesung lowered his cup and gave me a challenging look. “Yes. I drink it hot. Like it’s been drunk for thousands of years before white people chucked ice at it.”
“If you lived in the South, you’d chuck ice at it too.”
He shrugged. “To be fair, we drink cold tea in Korea sometimes. We don’t put sugar in it, though. Ever.”
I cocked my head. “You’re actually from Korea?”
He nodded, circumventing the bar and walking past me to the stool next to the wall. He collapsed onto it and leaned into the brick. “Yep, born in Seoul. Came to the U.S. when I was nine.”
I leaned back. Miami had a diverse population, and I was decent at detecting non-native accents, but nothing about the way Jaesung talked suggested he wasn’t a native speaker. He had a better vocabulary than I did.
I glanced at the top of the fridge, where a pair of jars sat half-filled with quarters and bills, and decided to end that line of questioning.
Jaesung chuckled, having seen me look. “She learns.”
A clatter came on the stairs and a moment later, Krista burst through, an orange blur making a bee-line for the stairs to the third floor. Jaesung tensed, leaning forward as if to stand up.
“Shit,” he said. We made our way to the stairs, but just as I took a step down, I heard a voice that was not Sanadzi’s.
“…not sure what kind of dogs you have. I’m looking for something big. Great Dane or Irish Wolf Hound.”
Sanadzi sounded tired. “No, sorry. we’ve got a German Shepherd mix and a lab, but nothing that size. I’m sorry, now isn’t a great time—if you’d give me your contact information….”
Jaesung tapped me on the shoulder. “What?”
I turned around and shoved past him back up the stairs. “I should check on Krista,” I said.
“Okay…?”
But I knew that voice. I’d heard it last night, in a one-sided conversation with the people who had killed my mother—that tenor with its smoker’s rasp.
I pulled the door shut and c
rouched next to the circle of plexiglass, my pulse shuddering behind the notch in my collarbone. Jaesung made it to the bottom of the stairs and disappeared into the garage. All I heard were murmurs, but after a moment, the light below squeezed off with the rumble of shutting garage doors, and I knew he was gone.
It was no comfort. I also knew he would be back, and next time I wasn’t sure he would be alone.
Chapter Eleven
I slept on the couch another night, memorizing two more mandalas before I fell asleep. The next morning, I rose at the respectable hour of 8AM and put in a full nine hours of scrubbing and medicating, feeding and organizing, and making myself familiar to the dogs at Ruff Patch. Maybe they could smell the hound in me, but even the ones Krista insisted were timid sniffed at my hands and let me stroke their ears.
Though both Sanadzi and Jaesung were gone most of the day—Sanadzi to her actual vet office and Jaesung to class and "practice"—Krista kept up a constant stream of chatter that kept me from panicking about the Sorcerer.
The Guild must have traced the plates on Jaesung's truck. That would explain how he’d found me, unless he'd used a magical tracker. Or Jaesung really was a Guild spy. With any luck, the Sorcerer would have assumed I moved on after last night, but just in case he was keeping eyes on the place, I avoided any task that took me out the open garage doors.
"Poor, cold Miami girl," Krista teased. She'd recovered from her shock the night before and, considering I'd made good on my words to Jaesung and checked on her, seemed to consider me "good people". She'd said as much to Eugene when he called.
It was still hard not to think about Morgan, about the Sorcerers trailing him and the fact that, unlike me, he didn't have a book to use as collateral. The thoughts made working a relief. Even if it wasn't what I wanted to be doing, at least it was progress, and that kept me from driving myself crazy. By the time Sanadzi arrived that evening, I'd polished every bit of stainless steel, swept every inch of concrete, and sanitized all the unidentifiable veterinary instruments.
"Girl, you're staying," she said, approaching where I sat in a folding chair next to the kennels, tugging at a jumble of leashes. "I like a clean-freak."
"I'm not really a clean freak-"
"Na-ah-ah!" She held up a hand. "Don't tell me that when I'm about to offer you a job."
I set down the leash. "A job? I'm not—I mean, my family—they're coming."
Sanadzi squatted in front of me, picking at the knot for a second before dropping it again. “Yeah, Jae told me about your people this morning, but it's not a paycheck and 401k kind of job. It's volunteer work, with housing benefits. You could work afternoon and night with Jaesung, or keep working days with Kris. Just till your family makes it into town. Or longer, if you guys are planning to stay.”
I tugged at a knot in the leashes, wondering if I could stand the normalcy for a few more days. I was sure the Guild wouldn't hurt them, even if they knew where I was. It was a better offer than I could have imagined.
I glanced up at Sanadzi, whose face had softened from her blinding smile to something more like how she looked at the dogs. She was rescuing another stray. "Thanks.”
Krista insisted we go out to one of the local pubs to celebrate the new-hire. Though my brain fizzed with warnings, it was hard to deny people who just wanted to be nice.
I took a long shower, and changed into jeans and a warm top. I’d bought it for the length—which hung almost past my butt and concealed the butterfly knife in my pocket—but the white fabric was kitten-soft and I liked the thin red stripes.
By the time we’d made the mile walk through town, I thought I’d never stop shivering. A pool of light spilled across the wet asphalt in front of Rinkenburger’s Pub, where patrons smoked in fleece-lined jackets and college sweatshirts. I was glad to see the pub, but only for the instant it took to recognize it as a tactical disaster.
A bouncer guarded the door. Windows opaque with steam suggested both a crowded room and a lack of ventilation. That meant exits were sparse.
Krista and Jaesung rushed up to the heavy door, lifting their ID’s to the red-coated man. The door guard wore a beanie, gloves, and an earring, but unlike the bouncers in Miami, he looked somewhat pleasant. Krista was waved through, and they gave Jaesung a large black X over the back of his hand.
I hesitated. I didn’t want to go into a bar when I didn’t know the layout—not when it was so busy, and not when I’d have to show my fake ID to someone who could be watching for me. But Krista turned around to look for me, Jaesung was already disappearing into the crowd, and there was a divine smell coming from inside.
My stomach growled, betraying logic for the promise of meat. I extended my hand and the bouncer drew an X.
Jaesung had stopped around the middle of the room to squint at the TV mounted above the bar. I peered over just in time to see the Packers leading the Saints.
Sound hit me like a punch. The crowd around the bar boiled up from their seats. Before I thought about it, I jumped back. If there’d been room, I would have crouched, ready to spring either toward the threat or away from it. Instead, I plowed backwards into a table. The outer ring of my tattoo burned.
I heard a yelp, then the sound of cracking glass. Beer splashed down my calf and something tangled around my foot. The table toppled beneath me.
I had an impression of graying beard and baseball cap as an older man tried to save both me and his beer at the same time. Two women in boots and puffy vests pulled me to my feet. They looked like mother and daughter—the older thin and tan, the younger athletic and blond—and their grip on my arms was firm. I repressed the instinct to fight. They were helping me. Not restraining.
All the same, when I regained my balance, I twisted from their grasp and stepped back, hands up.
They were a nice midwestern family. Jeans and leggings and college sweatshirts—the man’s hat had a fly-fishing logo on it. There was something impossibly wholesome about them, as if they got up every morning to a rooster’s crow and dressed up on Sundays. They probably had a dog, and a tractor. I bet they cut their own Christmas trees.
I felt sick.
The parents were righting the table as the girl, who was about Krista’s age, asked me if I was okay. She’d knelt to pick up the contents of the purse, but seemed more concerned with my welfare than the state of her scattered makeup.
My heart punched my sternum—a desperate animal battering its cage. These were nice people. A nice family. A father and a mother and a daughter enjoying a night out, like it was the most expected thing in the world. Like it was so. Fucking. Easy.
I wasn’t certain if the feeling rising in me now was adrenaline or rage, but it swelled, pushing my lungs aside and leaving no room for air. Static seemed to fill my brain, occluding everything that wasn’t fight, run, escape. I had to get out of here.
A man's arm hooked around my shoulders from behind, crossing over my collarbone. I grabbed his sleeve and reached back, prepared to throw him right into that nice midwestern family’s nicely righted table.
“Go Saints!” Jaesung’s voice at my ear halted me.
It was his forearm pressing against my collarbone, his hand death-gripping my shoulder, his jacket pressing into my shoulder blades. He shifted his weight to the side, and I realized his free hand had anchored itself at my belt. It wasn’t the perfect counter Morgan had taught me for Judo-like throws, but given how unyielding that arm was around me, it might have worked.
Worse, it told me he’d known what I was about to do.
But, apparently, his sports exclamation was all the little Henard family needed to excuse my behavior. They cheered too, concern dissolving into relieved laughter.
There was static building up in my body, a feeling like imminent lightning. The charge seemed to crackle across my skin.
A waitress appeared with replacement beers, followed by another with a dustpan to sweep up the glass. Together, they erased the evidence of what I’d done, and the ebb and flow of the crowd a
round us went back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened. As if I’d never walked in, or never existed.
My heart still hammered against Jaesung’s forearm, cheeks prickling. I let go of his sleeve and pushed myself away, half expecting sparks to crackle over his wool jacket.
He smiled, but his eyes were serious when he said, “You good, Miami?”
I clenched my jaw and nodded. My Spellhound tattoo itched, as if the hound’s spirit trapped inside me wanted to run, escape the encroaching lightning. But I would make myself look more abnormal by running now, and I couldn’t do that if I wanted to stay.
‘Wanted’ maybe wasn’t the right word. I didn’t want to stay with these people, who in a handful of hours had kicked the struts from my belief that even normal people weren’t all that good.
Krista appeared at my other side. “I found them!” she called, pointing to a raised area in the back corner. Beyond a waist-high barrier, three standing tables lorded above the rest. I would have picked the corner one, protected on two sides, but Sanadzi had chosen one in the middle. I didn’t like it—it would have a good view, but if I could see her, it wouldn’t take long for a Guild toady to spot me either.
Sanadzi stood next to a big man in a red button up and leather jacket. From the arm draped over her shoulders, I knew it had to be Eugene. He was not at all what I’d expected. His brown hair was both shorter and neater than Jaesung’s, and though closer inspection revealed eyes and cheekbones that must have come from the Korean side of his family, the rest fell somewhere between linebacker and lumberjack.
We climbed up to meet them, and though electricity still prickled through my veins, I forced an apology for the scene.
“It’s okay, baby!” Sanadzi shouted over the noise. “Folks here get rowdy when we play the Packers. I should have remembered you didn’t like crowds!”
I winced, wondering what Krista had told her about my behavior on the train, and slipped in next to her. The humidity of the room was sinking in, and as Krista and Jaesung worked at the toggles of their wool coats, I unfastened my beer-streaked jacket. I moved in, turning my back to the wall. The cool wood felt good, solid and dependable, covering me from at least one direction.
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