by Devon Monk
Yeah, I didn’t like it either. And the less time I was in Greyson’s eyesight, the better. I turned and walked up the stairs.
Weird, weird, weird.
Only my tennis shoes and Maeve’s boots made noise. Zay was Zay. Silent. Brooding. When he carried himself like that, he was a force, a darkness, a power.
I was glad he was on our side.
Once at the top, Maeve called down to Shame. “Come up, now. Jingo Jingo will be by soon to look in on Greyson. I don’t want him to find you poking at that cage.”
More stairs, and some doors; then we started down the hall.
I rubbed at my arms, trying to banish the image of Jingo Jingo with Greyson.
“Why is Jingo coming by?” It was none of my business, and I really should learn to shut my big mouth and let the senior members of the Authority deal with the big problems. Like the storm. Like the well. Like Greyson.
“He has been working with Greyson. Trying to diagnose exactly how Frank Gordon implanted the disk.
Trying to see if there is any mercy in breaking the spells worked into him.”
“You mean trying to turn him back into a man?” I asked.
Maeve gave me a look that said more than words ever could. “He is trying to find a merciful answer to the question of him,” she said.
Shame clunked up behind us. For a man who had just been moving silently across the marble floor like it was made of thin glass, he sure could make a lot of noise.
“Chase been by?” he asked.
Maeve frowned. “I haven’t seen her in a few days.”
“Huh,” he said, then, “Anyone else thirsty? All that hard work watching Allie Hound deserves a beer, don’t you think?” He moved past his mom, and exchanged a short glance with Zayvion.
I didn’t think the two of them could actually hear what the other was thinking, but I was positive they had a secret code. Zay had even hinted as much, saying he always knew when Shame was up to trouble.
And that look had been more than just a look.
“Ten o’clock, Shamus,” Maeve called after him.
“I heard you the first time, didn’t I?”
Maeve tapped one fingertip against her lips, and watched him go. “He knows something,” she decided. “Is up to something. Zayvion, you’ll watch that he doesn’t stir too much trouble, won’t you? I do not need any more problems right now.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said mildly.
“When that son of mine gets a wild idea in his head, it never ends well.”
She sounded angry, but her body language said more. It said she was worried. Worried she was about to lose something precious to her. Maybe her son.
“He’ll be here tonight,” Zay said. “Sober. He knows this isn’t a game.” I wondered how many times he’d told her that over the years.
“Terric will be here,” she added more quietly.
“He knows.”
Maeve brushed her hair back again. “I thought as much.” She shook her head. “Well. What will be will be. I’ll see you both this evening.” She strolled off, her bootheels clacking across the old wooden floors.
The moth-wing flutter scraped at the backs of my eyes, pressing harder, insistent. It made me think of Greyson, of him watching me, wanting me and my dad in me. I swallowed and tasted wintergreen and leather-my dad’s scents. Great.
I suddenly really wanted fresh air, a shower, hells, to be anywhere but here right now.
My creep-out quota for the day was officially maxed.
“I need air.” I strode past Zay, not waiting to see if he followed. It wasn’t exactly tactful, but he’d watched me fight my claustrophobia before. Stayed out of my way. Boy had smarts.
Maeve had turned the opposite way down the hall, so she wasn’t in my flight path either. I took the first opening I could and walked right out into the main dining area again.
The noise was up, every table filled. The smell of food and drinks and people-perfume and soap and cigarettes-closed in on me.
Out more. I needed much more out more.
I did not run, because I am composed even in full-throttle panic mode. But I made quick work of that room-long legs had their use-and straight-armed that door open.
The evening wind hit like a sharp slap to the face, and I inhaled a huge lungful of cold, misty air.
I didn’t stop at the porch. There was too much roof on the porch, too many railings around the porch, too much building behind the porch. I clattered down the stairs, and jogged across the gravel, looking for out, for space, for air.
“Afraid of the dark?” a voice asked from one side of me.
Okay, yes, I was freaking out from claustrophobia. And yes, I was already a little freaked-out over the whole cold-magic weirdness and empty well. Add to that Greyson staring at me out of his magic-blocked and warded cage, and my dad, or maybe only half of him, shuffling around in my head-or even better, him spending time-shared brain space with Greyson-and what I really needed was just a few seconds of normal.
Instead, I got Chase.
“Chase,” I said, relatively calmly too, considering. “Did you hear about the meeting tonight?”
Zayvion’s ex-girlfriend was nearly my height. If I had seen her walking down the street, I’d think she was a model, not a Closer. Her pale skin was almost luminescent in the low light, and her eyes belonged to a cat, framed by the blunt wedge of dark brown bangs. I’d never seen her use makeup, not that she needed it. I’d never seen her dress in anything other than jeans, T-shirt, and flannel.
Tonight was no different.
“I heard about it.” She took a step toward me, her hands very obviously held with fingers spread, as if she was looking for a spell to grab hold of.
A sound behind me made her look up. She bared her teeth in a semblance of a smile. And not a very pretty one.
“Hello, Zayvion. Still babysitting all the troubled children for Mommy Maeve?”
“I do what I can,” he said. Unconcerned. Zen. “Are you done running away?”
“Running away from what?”
“Greyson.”
Chase held very still. Something moved across her eyes, a shadow, sorrow, pain. Maybe fear. Maybe hope.
“I’ve never run from him,” she said. Flat. Emotionless. What she didn’t say, what none of us was saying, was she still loved him. And she blamed me and my father for changing him into a monster. I was pretty sure she’d do anything to get him back, to see him be a man again.
I know I would feel that way if it were Zay in that cage.
“They wouldn’t let me see him,” she said. “Not without Jingo Jingo being there.”
Zayvion crossed his arms over his chest and strolled closer, his footsteps silent across the wet, noisy gravel. “You’re going to listen to them, aren’t you?”
“Be a good girl and do as I’m told?” She raised one eyebrow. “Have I ever done anything else?” It was a challenge.
Zayvion didn’t reach out for her, but his voice was softer. “It will work out, Chase. We’ll find a way to help him. Trust that.”
That tone got through. She swallowed and looked off over his shoulder. “Trust. Just like that.”
“You’ve been doing it for years. Don’t stop now.”
I could see how much it cost her to look back at him. Could see the emotions she was fighting back. Looked a lot like rage and grief. “No, that’s what you’ve been doing. Trusting. Trusting it will all work out. No matter how blind or stupid that makes you.”
“Trust isn’t a weakness,” Zay said.
“So says the man who begged for the chance to be the hero, the keeper of the gates, user of all magic, light and dark, no matter how much it destroys him. Do you get off on taking the fall, Jones, or are you just too stupid to know that’s what they’re using you for?”
“Are you done?” he asked, a hint of fire rising behind that ice.
She glared at him.
He ignored her. “You joined this fight for a reason.
You joined this fight to make the world better for the people you cared about. Not for me, not for them, but for who you love. Who do you love, Chase? Other than yourself?”
“Fuck you.”
She took a step, but he moved, silent and swift, to stand in front of her. They weren’t touching, weren’t drawing on magic. Yet.
“That’s over. Remember?” he said. “You ended it.
Ended us. For him. For Greyson. And now you’re going to have to risk a little trust to save him. I think that’s a small price to pay, not even a price at all. Or maybe you’re just looking for an easy way out again.”
“You have no right-,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Yes, I do. Don’t turn your back on him. Don’t turn your back on the Authority. Don’t choose that ending.”
And that threat, that anyone in the Authority, even a Closer, could be Closed, got through too.
She unclenched her fists and shook her bangs out of her eyes. “I’d do anything to have him back,” she yelled. She looked down, swallowed a couple times, as if trying to get the rage down. Then she looked back up at him. “I don’t turn my back on anything I love.” She looked at me, then back at him. “But you wouldn’t understand that, would you, Jones?”
She strode off toward the inn, leaving Zayvion and me alone in the rain.
Chapter Four
I touched Zay’s arm and jerked back as if I’d been burned. The anger seething under the surface of his calm was rivaled only by the pain he felt for Chase. I’d always assumed their breakup had been bad, but now I knew it.
There are moments, emotions, that we really don’t want to share with other people. Things we shouldn’t have to share unless we want to. Unless we choose to. This was one of those moments. I shoved my hand in my pocket and tried to pretend I didn’t know how he really felt.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need to go talk to someone?” Punch someone, I added silently.
Zay licked the rain off his lips and tipped his head down so that he stared at the gravel. He inhaled, slowly, then exhaled, pushing his shoulders down from the rod-straight fighting angle, his hands relaxing out of the stiff, magic-ready spread.
Caught in the overhead lighting, he was a study of neon blue and black shadows. The rain on his ski cap glittered like tiny blue stars, and rain trickled a slick line from his temple, across the arc of his cheek, then down to the stubble along his jaw. I waited.
Finally, he seemed to notice the rain, the night, and me. “I’d be better out of the wet,” he said.
He headed for the car and so did I. I wanted out of the wet too. Exhaustion was sucking my reserves. I’d spent a couple hours sparring, then come over here to Hound the well. Even though I’d had a late lunch, and a good latte, I was hankering for a hot, strong cup of coffee.
“Home?” Zay asked.
“Home.” Because home is where the coffeepot is.
He started the car and I thought about sleeping on the way to my apartment, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw Greyson’s gaze and remembered my father pushing around in my mind.
“Greyson saw me in there,” I said. “I think he might have seen Dad in me.”
“I know.”
“You want to tell me why no one else believes me? Why don’t they believe Dad is in me and maybe in Greyson too?”
“Jingo Jingo is the expert. The Authority trusts him on these kinds of things.”
“You don’t believe him.”
“I should. I can’t think of why he would lie about it.”
“So you don’t believe me?”
“I do believe you. I just don’t know why Jingo Jingo would lie.”
Because he’s a freak? I thought. Then, out loud, “Maybe he thinks he has a good reason. Some kind of behind-the-scenes mumbo-jumbo politicking or something.”
Zayvion exhaled. “That could be.” We stopped at a light. “Ever since just before your father’s death, tensions in the Authority have been building. Each discipline seems to think they have a corner on how magic should be used. Each person believes their view correct.”
He glanced over his shoulder and merged into the next lane. “The heads of the Authority-all the leaders, not just Portland’s-are having a hard time responding to the problems fast enough. We had to deal with Dr. Frank Gordon, Greyson, your father’s murder.” He was quiet a moment. “We’re good at emergencies. Still, we didn’t do enough, fast enough. I don’t think anyone, especially not Sedra nor the voices within the Authority, expected things to come to this-to the war that’s brewing-nor knows what to do next.”
“I’d start with the Necromorph doing the Hannibal Lecter thing in the basement,” I said. “Fix Greyson. Make him into a man again and then put him on trial for my dad’s murder.”
“It isn’t that easy. The disk in his throat, and the spells trapping him as both man and beast, have affected his mind. Mercy,” he said quietly, “would be to end his life.”
Silence again. I thought about Chase, how she would deal with Greyson’s death. Not well.
“And even a merciful death wouldn’t be easy,” he said. “Death magic mixed with Blood magic, dark and light magic.” He frowned. “Impossible to Close, and hard to kill.”
“What about Chase?” I asked.
“She wouldn’t Close him. I don’t think she could kill him.”
“Creepy, but not what I’m asking. What happens to her if they Close Greyson, or, uh, kill him?”
“Her memories of him would be Closed.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “Is that your answer to everything? If it might cause pain or inconvenience, just take the memory away?”
“Sometimes it is the only thing that can be done,” he said. “Sometimes people don’t want to remember the pain, Allie.” He glanced at me, his eyes flecked with gold. He was still angry. Angry at Chase, or Greyson, I didn’t know.
I opened my mouth, but my phone rang. I dug it out of my hoodie pocket.
“Hello?”
“Allie, this is Grant.”
“Trouble?”
“Is that really the first thing you ask when someone calls you?” he asked.
I took a breath. Remembered Grant was from the part of my life that had little to do with angry magic users or stolen memories or secret organizations. Grant was from the part of my life that had to do with afternoons in a coffee shop, reading the paper, and really good scones.
“Sorry. It’s been a long day and I haven’t had nearly enough coffee.”
“Take care of half of that for you.”
“The long day?”
“Don’t I wish. Listen, I know we haven’t really discussed this part of you leasing the warehouse, but you have a couple visitors waiting for you in my shop. I don’t mind the business, but I thought you’d want to know people are looking for you.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“I think one of them is a Hound. Looks sick. The other two, a man and a woman. I haven’t seen them here before.”
“Okay, I’ll be there soon.”
“If I’m going to be your secretary, or spy boy, I’d like two weeks’ vacation and an office with a view. Oh, and a watch that dispenses dry martinis.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “I’ll get right on that. Thanks for calling.”
I said good-bye, and filled Zayvion in.
“Still want to go home first?” he asked.
I thought about it. I was damp and hadn’t gotten a shower since before the gym. But if someone was looking for me, especially if it was a Hound who was hurt, I didn’t want Grant to have to deal with that.
Note to self: set up a schedule for other Hounds to hang out at the warehouse and take in the strays. I refused to spend every night down at Grant’s dealing with Hound crap.
I groaned. “Get Mugged,” I finally said. “Do you have time?”
“Until the meeting tonight, I do.”
It didn’t take long to get to Get Mugged. The old coffee shop stood on the corner
like a beacon in a grimy city. Yellow light spilled out from two stories of windows, and the street around it was lined with cars.
Zay found a place to park in the open lot next to the warehouse.
I couldn’t help it. Looking at the warehouse that still leaned a bit but-as we were told by inspectors and code officials-was sound, and knowing that a part of the building was mine, made me feel good.
I’d promised Pike I’d look after the Hounds for him. It was his idea to bring the Hounds together so we could watch one another’s backs. It was his idea to keep track of Hounding jobs and support the police through contract Hounding. He wanted better for Hounds, who too often died trying to escape the pain of using magic.
Just like his granddaughter who hadn’t survived her brush with the Blood-magic and drug dealer Lon Trager a few years ago. I’d helped Hound that case to throw Trager in jail. But when Trager got out, Pike had taken him on, alone. He hadn’t known Anthony, the kid he was trying to set straight, was being used by Trager. Didn’t know Trager was being used by Dr. Frank Gordon, the grave robber, to bind my father’s soul. Didn’t know there was a whole lot of secret-magic-user stuff going on in the background of this city.
Gruff, fair, blunt, Pike was a good man, and my friend. I still hurt when I thought about his death. The warehouse was a physical manifestation of my promise to him.
Pike had gotten his den.
I scanned the street as I got out of the car and made my way over to the sidewalk. A few people walked by, hoods up, or, that rarest thing in Oregon, an umbrella furled. Traffic drove past slowly, tires hissing against wet pavement. It felt like a pretty normal February night.
I inhaled, got that welcome-home scent of deeply roasted coffee, and something salty, like hot cheese and garlic. Grant had started serving homemade soup and sandwiches along with his baked-from-scratch pastries. If he didn’t watch out, he was going to become a sensation.
We strolled up the sidewalk to the front door of Get Mugged and stepped in.
Get Mugged was a lot bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. An open loft took up the back half of the building, and the bottom floor was a combination of bricks, wood, and well-placed lighting. Tables filled the room, clustered by love seats and couches. The tables nearest the windows were plain dark wood, a little scuffed up. Homey.