by Jamie Davis
The man led Winnie to a table and was then joined by Tris and Cait on either side. Beecham was true to his word. Three large men stood between the table and the pub, keeping the eager patrons away. A few minutes later, a platter of assorted appetizers was set on the table, with a steaming casserole of shepherd’s pie right beside it. Winnie smiled at the waitress as she set their table. She seemed pleased and perhaps a bit scared.
The waitress left and Winnie turned to her friends. “It’s like she’s afraid of me, but I don’t know why. She’s served me before.”
Tris pointed to the TV. “What you did was amazing. If I wasn’t one of your best friends, I’d probably be afraid of you, too.”
“Well, thank whoever for Mr. Beecham. I don’t know what I would’ve done if he hadn’t stepped in when he did. That was nice.”
Cait snorted, taking a bite of fried jalapeño. “He’s not being nice. He has the Enclave’s savior in his bar. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was charging a fee at the door.”
Winnie shook her head.
“Don’t believe me? Look.” Cait used a chicken wing to point at the door. Winnie saw a man standing with a wad of cash in his hand. He took a bill from a man waiting outside, then stepped out of the way to allow his entry.
“You know what?” Winnie said. “I don’t care. I’m tired of everyone needing something from me. At least this time, someone is giving me something back. Besides, if I raise a fuss now, we’ll have to go outside. At least here, we have some privacy.”
Cait chewed, grinning around her quesadilla. “Just make sure we don’t get charged for all this food. And we could use some drinks.”
“I’m not drinking, Cait. I think I would pass out if I tried,” Winnie said. “Besides, Tris and I aren’t old enough.”
“Well, I’m of age and plan on imbibing.” Cait reached out to nudge one of their impromptu guards. “Hey, can you ask the waitress to bring me a beer? And ice water for my friends.”
“Sure thing. Your friend kept my father’s home from burning down.”
Cait turned back her friends, grinning. “I could learn to like this. I wonder if we can make it a regular thing?”
Before Winnie could tell Cait she was being absurd, there was a commotion by the door. Someone was shouting.
“But I know her. I’m her friend.” Then, louder: “Winnie. It’s me. Tell them to let me come back!”
Danny tried to push past the bouncer, but the bigger man was losing patience with the boy.
She leaped to her feet. “Let him in. He’s a friend.” She tapped one of the closest guards and pointed to Danny. The guy nodded and started toward the door.
There was a brief exchange, then the guard led Danny back to their table.
He looked awful, like a starving zombie. His headaches had probably returned. Something tickled the back of her brain. The euphoric connection to Danny was back, but somehow different. Now, it felt empty.
Before Winnie could stop herself, she was drawing in energy, allowing the magic to fill her. Someone gasped at the bar. A part of her wondered what she must look like with so much power coursing through her.
But if Winnie kept going, she could fix him again.
Danny embraced her. “Are you alright? I watched that video about twenty times trying to see what happened after you collapsed, but it kept cutting off.”
“I’m fine. I just needed to eat. What about you? Are your headaches back? You should have called me.”
“I was going to, but I thought you were angry.”
“Why would I be angry? I would only be mad at you for not coming back when you needed help.”
“I’m here now. You’re the one who should be careful. You can’t go around manipulating magic like that. It draws attention from the wrong sorts of people. Red Legs, Sable bosses, even hangers-on like the guy who owns this place will all want a piece of you. Do you know what the owner of this bar is doing right now?”
“No, what?”
“He’s out in the street doing interviews with local TV stations and posting statements all over social media, saying the ‘Enclave’s savior’ has come to his bar to refuel and rest up after saving everyone’s lives. The street is packed. There must be over a thousand people, and the crowd is growing. They all want to meet you and this idiot told them all where you were.”
Winnie looked around at all the food and drinks, the several bouncers, and swelling crowd. Most of the people had their phones out and were snapping pictures and videos. For some reason, Winnie hadn’t noticed before. Seeing them now made her want to explode.
She looked at Danny. Again, she felt their connection and the urge to heal him again. But she couldn’t do it. Not with everyone watching. They would record it.
Her anger only grew.
Danny noticed something was wrong and tried to come closer, to hold Winnie close. She pushed him away with more force than intended. He stumbled a bit, stepping backward. Winnie turned to Cait and Tris.
“I need to get outta here,” she hissed between gritted teeth.
“Come on,” Cait said, standing and grabbing Winnie by the arm. “This place must have a back entrance.”
Winnie followed Cait a hallway next to the bar, with Tris close behind. Her connection to Danny broke; he wasn’t coming after them.
She should have healed Danny when she’d had the chance.
The open hole was growing wider, leaving Winnie worse than empty, and making her mad at herself for not filling it when she had the urge.
They stumbled out into an empty alley behind the restaurant. Winnie looked around, still in a daze, trying to work out what to do about Danny.
Cait spun her around. “What’s up with you all of the sudden? Snap out of it. You need to go home and hole up there until this blows over. Tris and I will come by soon. Stay there until we do, and try not to chew your mom’s head off.”
Winnie looked at Cait, barely comprehending what she had said. All she could think of was Danny.
“Stop looking back at the restaurant. You’re scaring me. Look at me.” Cait waited for Winnie eyes to track back toward hers. “Repeat after me. I’m going home, right now.”
“I’m going home, right now.”
“Good, now go.” Cait gave her a friendly shove.
A shout from the opposite end of the alley was a warning shot: people had noticed the ‘savior’ standing there.
Cait said, “Go. We’ll slow these idiots down.”
Winnie nodded, then turned and started walking.
A half-block later she broke into a run, winding through familiar alleys to find her way home.
She had to get away. Hide. Make the world stop collapsing around her.
CHAPTER 25
Winnie arrived at her apartment door still ready to explode: angry at the pub owner’s manipulations; mad at Danny for not telling her that his headaches had returned; upset with herself for not helping him when his need had been so clear.
She put her key in the lock but the door opened from the inside. Her mother stumbled forward and grasped her in a bear hug.
“Oh, Winnie! I was so worried. I was just about to go looking for you.”
“I wouldn’t have been that hard to find.” Winnie pulled away and entered the apartment.
Elaine shut the door, then glared at Winnie.
Great. Here it comes.
“Hiding your talents makes you look guilty. Like you have a problem.”
“I don’t have a problem with magic. If anything, I’m too good at it.”
“You’ve been dabbling in the forbidden. I didn’t even know it was possible to do what you did today.”
“Exactly, Mom. Let it go. I’m eighteen and have been taking care of you for three years. I’ve run the shop and paid the bills. I deserve space.”
“Keep wielding magic like this and you’ll burn yourself out, or worse, kill yourself while trying to manage the impossible.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I�
�ve had to do plenty of things that you wouldn’t understand. I have it all under control.”
“Like your pregnancy?”
Winnie stared at her mother. “How did you know about that?”
“I wasn’t as unconscious as you all thought. I couldn’t talk, but my ears were fine. I overheard you and Tris.”
“Drop it, Mom.”
“When were you going to tell me? When you came home with a new baby?”
Oh my God, she doesn’t know.
“There isn’t any baby, Mom. Not anymore.”
Elaine’s face withered. She hobbled over to Winnie and sat on the sofa beside her. “Why didn’t you tell me … about both things?”
“This is why I told you to drop it.”
“You know I can’t do that. You used to tell me everything about your life, and now I find out that you’re pregnant and already lost your baby. Was it that boy, Daniel?”
“You want all the gory details? Fine. I snuck Danny in one night and we had sex, right here on the couch where we watch TV. I found out I was pregnant after we’d broken up.”
Winnie wanted her mother to feel the same anger and loss she suffered thinking about Kane’s terror upon her unborn baby. But Winnie’s confession would only put Elaine in Kane’s crosshairs.
“There was an accident. I fell down a flight of stairs on a job. After I lost the baby, there didn’t seem to be a reason for you to know any of it.”
Elaine reached out to hold her hand, but Winnie pulled away. Elaine sighed. “So that’s how you want it to be between us. You’re going to do the things you think are right without worrying about what I think. If you want to act all grown up and keep your problems to yourself, pretending you’re alone when you don’t have to be, then I can’t stop you. But you’re going to stop using my illness as an excuse for whatever you’ve mixed yourself up in. That stops now.”
Winnie glared at her mother. She thought this was all about her illness and her medication costs. Winnie admitted that it had started to be for those reasons. But that had changed. There was so much more at stake. She’d defied the Director of Magical Containment and his Assembly, spit in the face of the New Amsterdam Sable boss, and she was reasonably certain that she’d cracked the magical firmament that had destroyed an entire city. Her mother thought this was all about one lost baby. It was so much more than that now.
“I came home to try and flush some of my anger from what almost happened out there today. That mob was coming to kill people, and destroy the lives of others by burning their homes to the ground. We’re in the middle of a race war between chanters and middlings.”
“All the more reason for you to not use such powerful magic. It only draws attention to yourself.”
“Aren’t you even glad that I saved you and those other people on the street?”
“No one else’s life is as important as yours, Winnie. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
The women sat in silence as shadows swallowed the flat. Night was coming and Winnie had things to do. She finally stood and grabbed her jacket from a hook by the door.
Elaine looked up. “Where do you think you’re going now? You just came home. And I think you’ve been through enough. Stay home; let the world go on without you awhile.”
“You’re really saying that if I go, you’ll be worried.”
“Concern for others is a virtue. You should try it some time.”
Winnie whirled around and glared at her mother. She would never understand why she did what she did.
Winnie turned and left the apartment, careful to keep the door from slamming behind her. She wouldn’t give her mother the satisfaction of getting under her skin.
She stalked downstairs and out onto the sidewalk. There were a few people nearby, but no one recognized her in the dark. Winnie kept walking, her mind fixed on simplifying a complicated day.
It had all started going wrong on that mission for Artos. If she hadn’t gone on that run with Tris and Cait, she might’ve been here and could have … could have …
What?
There wasn’t a thing she could have done differently. It was the steel mill on repeat. Artos had sent her on another impossible mission. It had gone to crap and she’d had to save the day. Even Danny’s predicament was his fault, in the end. Artos had entered her life and everything had changed. He was the beating heart of her problems.
Winnie turned on the next street. She was going to the Mender’s Hall to give Artos a piece of her mind. The long walk would give her extra time to conjure some truly excellent insults when she told him what she thought of him and how he lorded his position over everyone else from his tower home.
She was pondering the way she would start the conversation when a familiar limo pulled up next to her. The driver’s window lowered and she saw Mr. Gunderson smiling.
“Miss Durham, if you would be so kind as to step into the back. Mr. Merrilyn would like a word.”
“Fine by me. There are a few things I want to say to him as well.”
Winnie walked to the rear door and yanked it open. A familiar voice came from inside.
“You’ve been a busy young lady. Climb inside. Let’s discuss what you’ve done.”
She ducked her head, entered the back, and sat opposite Artos. He was holding a small glass of something dark and smoky.
“Would you like to tell me about it?”
“Would I like to … ?” She leaned across the empty space. “Thanks to you, I’ve been kidnapped, assaulted, and caught in a riot. I’ve fought with and pushed away every person I care about. You choose what I tear your head off about.”
———
Mr. Gunderson shut the door, returned to the front of the limo, then climbed inside. He pulled away from the curb and into the night’s traffic, unable to hear the raging argument behind him.
CHAPTER 26
The massive hand slapped a table in the back room of the Brass Horse Saloon. The thundering sound caused everyone in the room to jump.
“Winnie Durham must be working for me. I don’t care what it takes or who I have to kick out of the way. I want her in my organization. Now.” Cleaver looked around the room at his assembled men. Each one flinched in shame, at least as Cleaver saw it. Only Cricket held his gaze, because he was a captain. He had balls of steel for such a little guy. The others disgusted him.
“Three teenage girls bested you in a fight. Girls! And you outnumbered them.”
“We weren’t prepared for Durham’s magic. Even still, we would’ve handled it if it weren’t for the mob.”
Cricket was only making him angrier. New Amsterdam locals knew better than to mess with his crew. Now he had three guys who would likely need some sort of medical attention, and the others had all taken a beating, too, battling their way back to the bar across the street. The mob had passed by after a while and the grateful bar owner at the Brass Horse had offered him a place to rest until they were ready to leave. He was probably hedging his bets against the crowd coming back this way.
He didn’t think they were. Not after Winnie had somehow stopped the storms. He pounded his fist on the table, thinking back to the first time he saw the video playing on the TV over the bar. The owner had recognized Winnie and called Cleaver over to see her. They had both stood in awe as she pulled the fire into swirling rings around her body, then sent the massive tongue of fire and dust soaring into the sky.
Cleaver stood from where he leaned on the table and walked over to the large window nearby. He looked up and saw the moon and stars as clearly as he’d ever seen them. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was as if she had cleared the weather completely.
He glanced over at Cricket, watching him from across the room. “I’m missing something here, Cricket. Something I’m not doing to convince Durham to come work for me instead of Artos. So what is it?”
Cricket shrugged on his way to the TV, which played one of the twenty-four hour news stations. A panel of experts were covering the magical imp
lications of Winnie’s video. It was muted but captioned.
He pointed at the screen. “She was dumb enough to get herself recorded doing this, so she’s not a genius all the time.”
Cleaver snorted. “Just when she runs into me.”
“That’s not genius, boss. Some of it’s dumb luck. The rest is stubborn teenage girl shit. I dated this woman once with a daughter about Winnie’s age, maybe a bit younger. She and that girl were always getting in the biggest fights over the dumbest, most mundane stuff. They’d fight every time the mom told her to do anything. She was fine if it was her idea to help out, but ask her for the exact same sort of help the next night and she’d fight your idea like grudge.”
“So I shouldn’t be nice?”
Cricket laughed. “Boss, pardon my disagreement, but you’ve been bossing her around and telling her what she should think. At her age, it’s natural to say no to that sort of stuff. And after seeing what she pulled off today — ” Cricket shrugged “ — maybe the girl’s entitled to another level of teen angst.”
Cleaver looked back outside at the clear night sky and considered Cricket’s words. He had no experience with girls Winnie’s age, and had barely understood them when he was that age himself. “Okay, so we approach her by not approaching her.”
“Huh?”
“It’s like you said about your ex’s daughter. Her ideas are filet, others are chuck. We give her filet.”
“That might work. If you can get her to come to you on her own, without putting the screws to her or her friends.”
Garraldi chimed in. “I guess that means we’re not taking over.”
“No, Garraldi. We’re still taking over Merrilyn’s operation. Miss Durham won’t stop that from happening, no matter what she does. But we can refrain from interfering in her operations, at least for a while. There are plenty of other things we can do to oust Artos from the local trade.”
Cricket gave a low whistle.
Cleaver shot him a look. “If you’ve something to say, Cricket, say it.”
“I’m just wondering about the other bosses, is all. What about Chicago, Philly, or out west? They’re watching this, too. And they’re are all going to want a piece of this action. Everyone will want Durham working for them.”