by Devon Monk
“I’m not joking. People really think he’s cursed.”
“Do you?”
I took another bite of bread to give me time to think. Stotts could prove by numbers and odds why Hounds tended to die when they worked for him. But a small, suspicious side of me wasn’t buying it. I didn’t think foul play was involved. I did think Stotts had a knack for being around when Hounds pushed too hard, made the wrong choice, or finally gave up all together.
“I don’t know if it’s a curse. I don’t believe in curses. But. .” I rubbed my fingers back through my wet hair and slouched in the chair. “Something. If nothing else, he’s a magnet for bad luck.”
“And you are working for him because. .?”
“I’m bad luck?” I grinned. “Because I made a promise to Pike that I would look after the group of Hounds he was leading. Make sure they checked in with each other, keep track of who was working with the police, with Stotts, so we’d know who was alive and who was dead.”
“Sounds kind of lonely and grim,” she said.
“Not really. It’s a support group, I guess.”
“And you’re leading it?”
I couldn’t parse her change of tone. “Yes?”
She grinned. “I can’t believe I heard that out of your mouth. You, taking responsibility for others. Good job.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I drawled.
“No, really.” She leaned forward, a twinkle in her eye. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you step up like this. So respectable.”
“Forget I said anything.”
“No, it’s good. And you must have really cared for Pike to promise to look after everything for him.”
“Not everything. Just the Hounds. Have I talked about Pike much?” I asked.
“No. You’ve mentioned his name a couple times. What was he like?”
“Sort of what I wished my dad could have been. Not that he was the nicest guy around. But he was. . fair. He always told it to me straight. Didn’t lie. Even when he knew I wouldn’t agree with him.”
“I’m glad he was in your life,” she said.
Which was just what I needed to hear, because I was glad he was in my life too. I’d just never been able to say that to anyone. See how great best friends were? Even if they were also incredibly annoying.
Someone knocked on the door. I straightened, dug my thumb in a circle at my temple, waiting out the spike of pain. I should have taken some aspirin. “Did you invite someone?” I asked, trying to remember if I had locked the door after opening it the second time.
“No.”
“It’s probably Zayvion,” I said. “I have a. . meeting to go to today.”
I recited a mantra and walked over to the door, clearing my mind. I wasn’t going to call on magic unless I had to.
The locks were not set. I leaned forward and looked out the peephole.
Zayvion Jones stood there, staring right back at me as if he knew I was watching him. He had traded his slick leather jacket for that ratty ski coat thing, had a forest green beanie pulled tightly over his dark curls, and his jeans had been worn down to threads and a couple holes in the thighs.
Street drifter, Zen master, killer, magic user, Zayvion Jones.
I let go of the breath I’d been holding and opened the door. “Hey.”
“Afternoon.” His gaze took me in, from wet hair to soggy shoes. “Are you ready?”
“Almost. Come on in. I need to change. Do you want some soup?”
“Smells fantastic.” He stepped in and shut the door. Then he purposely set the locks, holding my gaze with that calm, Zen look of his.
Yeah, yeah. Let’s see you go through my day and remember every detail, smart guy
, I thought. “You have something to say?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good. Have some soup.” I wandered down the hall, stopping in the bathroom to take one or three painkillers. I listened to Nola and Zayvion’s pleasant greetings as I walked into my bedroom and dug for dry clothes.
What did one wear to the first class of secret magic training, anyway? Nonflammable jammies, perhaps?
I doubted it much mattered. So new jeans, a gray sweater, and black boots. I brushed my hair back and put a hat over most of it, then strolled out to the living room.
Zayvion sat at the table, in the same chair I’d been in just moments ago. He was slouched back a little, his long legs stretched out, smiling that shy-boy smile at Nola. He looked comfortable there, at my table, in my home. Sexy.
An electric tingle warmed my stomach. I liked seeing him here, at that table, my table. I like the idea of being with him. But with my dad in my head, Hounds to baby-sit, and secret magic classes to attend, it seemed like the chance for that, for us, was still a long way off.
“Hey.” I tried for bright and cheery, but it came out a little too soft. Like maybe I’d just realized I’d lost something.
Zayvion straightened in his chair, and Nola, on the couch, looked over.
“Ready?” I asked.
“I am.” He stood. “Thanks for the soup. It was wonderful.”
Nola stood too, exposing the old-fashioned manners she’d been raised with.
“It was great catching up with you again.” Here she shot me a mischievous look.
“Wait a minute.” I scowled. “You two weren’t talking about me, were you?”
Zayvion shrugged into his coat. Zipped it. “Your name might have come up.”
“Have a good meeting.” Nola gave me a quick hug. I shot Zayvion a questioning look, over her shoulder.
He blinked and poured on the Zen.
“Promise I didn’t tell him all your secrets,” Nola said.
“Better not. Two can play that game, you know.”
“What? With whom? Oh.” A rosy blush fanned across her freckled cheeks. “You’re horrible,” she laughed.
“Remember that,” I said with a straight face. “You do not want to play boyfriend chicken with me, missy. I aim low.”
I tugged my wet coat off the back of the door, rolled the locks, and opened the door. “I should be back in a few hours. I have a dinner date tonight with Violet, and I’ll talk to her about Cody. Don’t worry about cooking.”
“Is her number around here in case I need to get a hold of you?” she asked.
“On the computer, in the address book.” I so had to get a new cell phone. Kevin had told me he might have a suggestion for a phone that would work longer than fifteen minutes, and Zayvion had said the Authority might be able to supply me with something. I pulled my notebook out of my coat pocket, flipped to a blank page while I was walking out the door, and scribbled
Ask Kevin/Zayvion about cell phone.
I clipped the pen on that page, so that every time I put my hand in my pocket I’d know there was a note waiting for me to take care of it.
Zayvion paused, still one step inside my apartment, and said something so quietly to Nola even I couldn’t hear it, before he walked out the door behind me.
Nola shut the door, and I slowed my pace until I was sure I heard her set the locks. “I didn’t realize you two were such good buddies,” I said.
Zayvion tipped his head but did not drop the Zen act. “She and I had some time to talk,” he said evenly. “When you were in the coma.” He said the last part quietly, as if there wasn’t quite enough air to fill in the words.
“You like her?” I asked.
“Yes.”
We didn’t say anything more as we tromped down the stairs to the parking area behind the apartment building.
Zay unlocked the passenger’s-side door, and we both got in the car.
“Dinner with Violet?” he asked once we were on the street and heading northwest.
“I need to talk to her about a couple things. Business things,” I said, “and about Cody Miller.”
“What about Cody Miller?” Zay suddenly seemed very interested. Odd.
“Nola’s trying to foster him out on her farm. Away from magic. She’s running into red t
ape. Something about psych tests.”
Zayvion was impeccably calm. Blank. Zen.
“You already knew about this, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Whoa. A straight answer. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’ve been worse.”
“So, about Cody?” I asked.
“The Authority is involved with clearing him so that he can be fostered by Nola. I haven’t been. . updated on the details.”
“Now, there’s the obscure, subject-dodging man I know,” I said. He gave me a look I pointedly ignored. “What should I tell Nola?”
“You can tell her that you found out Cody should be released soon. As soon as the psych eval is done.”
“Psych eval? Is that the story?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “Allie, if you are going to become a part of the Authority, you are going to have to learn how to keep a few secrets. So, yes. That is the story until we hear otherwise.”
“And that’s all the story you’re telling me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I like that.”
“Too bad.”
I scowled at him. I not only didn’t like being in the dark, I didn’t like that he was comfortable keeping me there. “Is there a list of who I can and cannot talk to about the Authority? I work with the police on occasion,” I said. “Can I talk to them?”
“The police don’t know about us. Detective Stotts shouldn’t either.”
“Shouldn’t?”
“We are fairly sure he doesn’t know about the Authority.”
“Why?”
“Because he hasn’t done anything to try to stop us.”
“You know, that makes it sound like you’re on the wrong side of the law.”
“You can talk to Violet if you want.”
“Way to avoid my observation,” I said.
“She knows about the Authority.” He continued like I hadn’t even spoken. “But she doesn’t know everything. And there are some things that would be best not to tell her. Things that would put her in danger. Like Cody being under evaluation with us.”
I rubbed at my face. “I give up,” I said into my palms. “One slip of conversation and someone’s going to get hurt? How do you keep track of it all?”
“Spreadsheet.”
“Right. So how do you know who knows what?”
The clouds grew darker the farther north we headed to the Fremont Bridge. He was silent awhile, maybe thinking about how to explain it to me, or maybe just paying attention to navigating the thicker traffic.
By the time he turned onto the bridge, it was raining steadily. The windshield wiper squeaked. “It’s not that difficult,” he finally said, picking up our conversation once we had merged with I-5 traffic. “The majority of people in the city, in the world, do not know about the Authority.”
“And why not? Why not just come out and come clean so we can all move forward with the same information?”
“The older uses for magic, the ancient spells, are far more dangerous than the simple magic approved for release to the masses. The older uses for magic-dark magic, light magic-have always been hidden from the world. The few times in history those magics have fallen into the wrong hands, wars and worse have nearly destroyed mankind.”
“Wait. Magic was approved to be released?”
He glanced at me. “You didn’t know that?” He shook his head. “Your father. .” He left it at that, then went on. “When the technology reached such a point that the common man could access magic safely-”
“Relatively safely,” I interrupted.
“Relatively safely,” he agreed, “and not without price or pain. When that technology was released, only certain magics, glyphs, spells, were ‘discovered’ and tested by the pioneers in the budding field of magic.
“And all of that happened under the control of the Authority,” he said. “Mostly.”
“So the Authority has been hiding magic for hundreds of years?”
“Thousands.”
Wow. “What changed?”
“Your father and James’s father, Perry Hoskil, invented the technology to channel and access magic. And they brought it to market, released the notes on their study of uses-spells and glyphs that allowed the users to make magic bend to their will.”
“My dad started this?” I mean, I knew he was one of the driving forces of the Beckstrom Storm Rods, and had found a way to draw magic out from the deep natural cisterns where it pooled. I guess I’d never really thought that he was more than a driving force behind the way to make money off it. I’d never thought of him as an innovator. And certainly never thought of him as the beginning of the common man’s access and awareness of magic beyond superstition, religion, or the things conservative people always wrote off as esoteric nonsense.
“Yes,” Zayvion said, “your dad started this.”
“And the Authority was okay with that?”
Here Zayvion smiled. “That’s one of the things I like about you. You know the right questions to ask. No. The Authority was not okay with what he or his partner, Perry Hoskil, were doing. But there are divisions in the Authority. Lines and boundaries that limit how much high-level magic users can influence and interfere with one another’s experiments and studies.
“Even though it is an ancient field of study, not everything about magic has been discovered, tested, proved. Like space, like the oceans, like the human body, there is still so much we don’t know about it. So much to learn.”
I couldn’t help myself; I smiled. That man had a hunger for knowledge, a respect for it. I’d always gone for the intellectual types. Well, not always. There were those years in college where brawn, not brains, got me in bed, but it hadn’t taken me long to get tired of the pretty-on-the-outside, empty-in-the-head guys like that.
“By the time what Beckstrom and Hoskil were doing was discovered, the damage had been done. Magic was no longer a secret. Magic was now in the hands of the untrained masses.”
“Why didn’t the Authority go public then? They could have established themselves as experienced managers, or at least educators.”
“From what I am told”-he raised an eyebrow, maybe to remind me that he wasn’t around thirty years ago when this all happened-“there were worldwide gatherings of the Authority to discuss a course of action.”
Traffic slowed. Maybe an accident. More likely congestion from merge lanes and exits. The rain drew a veil of evening over the afternoon light.
“The argument to go public,” Zayvion continued, “and reveal the mastery of magic was strongly championed. And so were many other arguments, factions of the Authority taking sides, for and against, including the ancient Order of the Aegis, who adhere to the oldest written laws that magic should never be revealed to the uninitiated. Never. Your father came very close to being Closed when the vote was taken to allow his transgression to stand or to remove him. Magic was very nearly erased from common use.”
That was a lot to take in all at once, but the painkillers and soup were giving me a little of my brain back.
“Oh, come on. People wouldn’t willingly give up magic once they had a chance to use it.”
“I didn’t say willingly. But enough engineered failure in the budding technology would prove magic was a wildly unmanageable, unsafe, and, if the members of the Authority did their jobs correctly, perhaps even an unreal resource.”
“Engineered failure,” I said. “Do you mean deaths?”
“That was one option.”
Holy shit. These people really did play for keeps.
“Instead it was agreed to allow magic, the safest form of it, to be accessible to the common man. There was money to be made off of it, and like you just said, members of the Authority were in the perfect position to educate, train, and manage the change in the world.”
“So it all ended happily ever after.”
He frowned. “When magic is involved, there is never a happily ever after. You
know that.”
And the way he said it, chills washed down my skin. He was right. I knew that. Magic could lick the happy out of a lollipop.
“There are still members of the Authority who disagree with the decision to allow magic to go public. Your father’s actions were the crack in the ice, and ever since then the Authority has been fracturing, splitting apart. If some of the factions have their way, there will be a war. The Authority will shatter.”
“And that’s bad, right?”
His lips pressed into a grim, flat line. “You have no idea.”
I dug around in my head a little, expecting a comment or reaction out of my dad, but he was silent as a shadow. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t think I was possessed. The last time he was this quiet was when Zay and I had been at dinner.
Interesting.
Traffic, which had been crawling, growled back up to freeway speeds. We crossed the Columbia River and within a short while were on the opposite shore in Vancouver, Washington. Zayvion turned east along the river.
“Is it far?” I asked.
“We’re almost there.”
I don’t know what I expected Maeve’s place to be like. Where would secret classes that taught the secret ways of magic be held?
Another fifteen minutes or so and Zayvion slowed and took a road south, toward the river. We crossed the railroad tracks into an abandoned industrial area, and pulled up alongside a long building with identical rows of windows that lined the upper, middle, and ground floors. It sat parallel the length of the train tracks and the river.
I could feel magic radiating like a subtle warmth from the place.
About a half dozen cars were parked along the far chain-link fence that separated this lot from a scrap metal collection site next to it. There were no parking places near the building, which was strange since there was room for several. Instead, big raised boxes and whiskey barrels of plants and flowers took the lion’s share of the parking space, green even in January, filled with sturdy bushes with red and white berries dotting twigs.
“Talk about out-of-the-way,” I said as we parked.
“Used to be right in the middle of everything,” he said. “It was a railroad boardinghouse and inn. Train used to go right through here.”
“It doesn’t anymore?”