by T. K. Thorne
Time freezes. The people in the room double into rippling shadow-figures. Helpless, I watch as a shadow-Angola sets down his coffee cup in slow motion and picks up the gun from the table, stepping toward me and holding the muzzle an inch from my forehead. His finger starts to squeeze the trigger.
From me erupts what looks like a corona burst of roiling hot gases. Angola screams, his face beginning to melt. The inferno widens, engulfing the room, including Segal and Kaleshia. And it keeps expanding—
No!
Reality snaps back and with it the realization that I’ve also drawn Iron magic. Without my conscious awareness, I’m already starting to swirl it with the living-green.
Angola’s face tightens. “I do what I have to.” He sets down his coffee cup and picks up the gun, stepping over to stand before me, the muzzle an inch from my forehead.
I fight for control of the forces inside me. The quantity of both magics that churn there feels unlimited. I have no idea the reach of such an inferno—the house, the block, farther?
My finger and thumb stab, searching for the handcuff keyhole.
“In front of a child?” I ask, desperate for seconds I don’t have.
“She won’t remember it.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
It’s the hardest thing I have ever done—to clamp down the compulsion to expel the black and gold magic burning inside me that edges toward conflagration. Perspiration weeps down my face, salting my tongue. My hands are cold, stiff. The bite of the steel on nerves has numbed them, especially my right one, the one bent to the limit allowed by the cuffs while I try to execute the delicate maneuvering to get a tiny key in a tiny lock hole. I have to be close, but the muzzle of Angola’s gun at my forehead is even closer. I’m going to die or the magic is going to erupt and kill Segal and Kaleshia and God knows who else.
The key finds the hole. If it’s not double locked, I just need one twist, but there’s not enough time—
With a loud, wordless scream of rage and fear, Segal launches himself at Angola. Surprised, Angola turns toward him. They both crash to the floor.
Knocked off its course, the gun fires—a sharp bite into my right shoulder.
The handcuffs are unlocked, but still closed. I drop a knee in Angola’s bladder. He groans, incapacitated for a moment.
“Get Kaleshia out!” I shout at Segal, scrambling to my feet and wrenching off one of the loosened cuffs.
Lawrence appears, his gun arcing from me to Segal, trying to ascertain the threat. I grab a kitchen chair with my left hand and throw it at him. My right, useless, hangs at my side, the cuff dangling from it.
The chair in Lawrence’s face knocks him off balance, one hand tangling in the vertical back rungs and buying Segal seconds. Segal takes them, scooping Kaleshia into his arms and running with her down the hallway toward the rear door. Ahead of him, the back door flings open. Tracey’s bulk fills the doorway. I’ve never been as glad to see anyone in my life. Lawrence disentangles himself from the chair and whirls to face Tracey.
Tracey meets Segal and Kaleshia. With a shove of his bearlike arm, he pushes them behind him, giving them a path to the back door.
I can’t stop Lawrence and Angola at the same time. Angola is closest to me. He rolls to his side, his gun hand lifting—
I kick his wrist, knocking it aside, but he doesn’t release the gun. Instead, he brings it back in a swing and smashes it against the side of my shin, taking my leg out from under me. I fall across him, trying to ignore the pain in my shin and grapple for his gun with my left hand. Without much effort, Angola throws me aside.
Another gunshot freezes me.
Lawrence’s back is to us, but the view down the hallway is enough to see a hole in Tracey’s shirt. Even with a bulletproof vest, a gunshot, especially at close range, will knock a man down.
But Tracey Lohan is not a normal man. He staggers back a step and then launches straight into a stunned Lawrence. That’s all I have time to see, and I pay for the moment of distraction. A hand grabs my hair, yanking my head back. Still on his back, Angola presses his gun to my neck.
I have no idea if he intends to shoot me or hold me as a hostage, but I’m not waiting to find out. I slam my left elbow into his armpit. There are a lot of nerve endings in an armpit, I have learned.
Crying out, Angola rolls onto his side, his arm and gun cradled beneath him, out of my reach. Adrenaline courses through me. I scramble to my feet, this time stumbling down the now empty hall. I’m not sure where Tracey and Lawrence ended up, but I’m sure Angola is going to come after me. Killing me is priority one now.
Crouched low, I stagger toward the back door. Escape that way beckons, but I’m not leaving Tracey. Gunshots follow me, biting holes into the plaster walls on either side of the narrow hall.
Making a sharp left into my bedroom, I belly dive for the bed, reaching inside the pillowcase for the five-shot revolver I keep there. Pain stabs my shoulder for the first time since I realized I was hit. Orange spots dance into my visual field. I roll off the bed, putting it between the door and me. A trail of crimson blood stains the white cover.
Crouching, I grip the gun in my weaker hand, resting it on the mattress, and aim it toward the doorway. The throbbing right arm doesn’t work. The left is shaking.
Breathe.
You can do this.
Breathe.
I’ll get one shot, one chance. I lift the muzzle until the front sight is roughly between rear sights, though it won’t stay put and dances like the spots in my vision.
Angola, no doubt thinking me trapped and unarmed, steps into view in the doorway. I fire twice. The first shot hits his collarbone, spinning him. Recoil jerks my weak hand off target. My second shot digs into the wooden doorframe beside him.
He disappears. By the time I get around the bed and peer out into the hall, it’s empty. The back door is standing open.
Angola Simone is gone.
Tracey!
Hugging the wall, I stumble back toward the kitchen, trying to ignore the now excruciating pain in my shoulder. I talk to myself to keep focused. Don’t blunder into the room. Check it first. You can’t help him if you dance out into plain view and get shot yourself. Use your head.
At the entranceway to the living room, I position myself behind the right edge of the wooden frame, exposing just my gun barrel and only what I need to let my left eye peer down the sights and take in the situation.
Tracey turns to face me. Behind him, Lawrence lays on his stomach, hands cuffed behind him. He looks unconscious.
“I wanted to do that,” I say, dropping my arm and panting out the words. “I hope you hit him hard.”
“I did.” He eyes the seeping blood on my arm. “You’re shot!”
“I’ll live. You okay?”
“Vest caught the bullet. Angola?”
I sink into my sofa, snatching a handful of tissues to slap on my shoulder. “Wounded, but he got away, unless Hobart snagged him.”
“I told Hobart to intercept Segal and Kaleshia and get them to Becca and Jamal. I imagine Angola took off through the woods.” We exchange a look of frustration and foreboding.
Police sirens sound in the distance.
“I better call it in.” Tracey pulls out his radio and gives his individual call number and the address. “Shots fired. 10-24. Need paramedics and a supervisor.”
“Crap,” I say leaning back against the pillows. “We better get this story together before Lieutenant Faraday hears it.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Tracey and I are working off a two-week suspension for failing to notify the dispatcher and call for the TACT team to handle a hostage situation. The days off are mild punishment compared to Faraday’s scathing tongue-lashing. We survived that.
There are now two warrants out for Angola’s arrest for Attempted Murder of a police officer
as well as one for Kidnapping. Yet another search of House of Iron came up empty.
A handful of days into our suspension, I am sitting at Alice’s kitchen table, one arm in a sling. Alice places her hand on my shoulder as she bends over to put a cup of tea before me.
“Oh, my!” she says.
“What’s wrong?”
She hovers a hand over my belly. “May I?”
I nod, and she rests her hand on my abdomen, closing her eyes. After a few moments, she beams down at me.
“A girl.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are pregnant, dear.”
“How is that possible to know—?” I catch myself. Magic, of course. Witch magic.
A tumble of confused emotions assault me. Primarily panic. What have I done?
“Don’t tell anyone, please. I have to . . . think about it.”
Becca, Alice, and I knock on the door of a one-story house on the eastern side of town. It’s middle class, smaller than the older homes on Southside, but the yard is well kept with pink climbing roses along the fence.
Mrs. Bourdages waves us in. Her husband sits on the sofa, an acoustic guitar in his lap. Other than the spread of toys, the room is neat and perfused with the unmistakable smell of melting chocolate. I breathe in the intoxicating odor, but my attention is on the boy sitting on the floor, playing with toy action figures.
Daniel looks up and sees us. “Gran-gran! Becca, Rose!”
He runs to Becca first, grabbing her legs and pressing his face against her. She squats, getting eye level with him. Her memories of the time she was locked away in her own mind have only sporadically returned, but Alice and I have told her how Daniel appointed himself her caretaker.
“I missed you, Daniel,” she says, hugging him.
My newfound tear ducts get into gear.
“I missed you too,” Daniel says and looks over his shoulder at his foster parents.
“It’s okay to love a lot of people, Daniel,” Mrs. Bourdages says at his worried look. “The heart can make room as big as needed.”
“Indeed,” Alice says, approvingly.
Daniel turns to her for a hug and I’m next.
Mr. Bourdages is on his feet and extends his hand. “Welcome.”
“Would you like some coffee?” his wife asks. “Or tea? I’m about to take some chocolate chip cookies from the oven.”
Two hours later, Tracey joins Alice, Becca, and me at Children’s Hospital. We ride the elevator to the cancer floor. I can feel Tracey’s gaze on me. We have not spoken about what happened between us. I meant what I said about no promises, and he is giving me space. Alice has been true to her agreement to let me work out the pregnancy thing myself.
Segal sits on a reclining chair beside Kaleshia’s bed, a book open in his lap.
Kaleshia starts when we walk in. I worry that the sight of me might trigger the terror she has lived through.
“Hi,” I say. “You know the bad guys are gone, right?”
She nods.
“And your brother is a hero.”
Her eyes widen.
“He risked his life to save me and you.”
“Really?” she says, awe in her voice as she turns to Segal. “Deon, you’re a superhero, just like Spiderman and Wonder Woman?”
Segal grins. “Sort of, I guess, but don’t look for me to be swinging on a line outside your window.”
“Young man, I think I have something of yours.” Alice pulls a small object from her purse and offers it to Segal. “A finger drive, I believe.”
“Thumb drive,” he says with a grin. “Yeah.”
I smile, not sure if this is part of Alice’s fake persona or not.
“What’s on it?” Tracey asks.
Segal smiles. “The original database before I started messing with it. I made a copy.”
My mouth drops in surprise. “Then we get to see the real results of the zahablan trials?”
“That’s right,” he says. “Soon as I get back to work, but I’m not leaving this place until Kaleshia’s treatment is over.”
“And you have to finish the story,” she says, pointing to the book.
It’s the one I gave Segal for her, our copy of The Glob. I’ll get another one for when Daniel visits.
Alice moves closer to the bed. “That’s a very good story,” she says, leaning over her to look at the pictures and putting a hand on Kaleshia’s arm.
“Oh,” Kaleshia says. “That’s nice.”
I step between them and Segal to distract him and give Alice time to do what she is doing.
“I think she’s going to be fine,” I tell him. “That is one strong little girl.”
He grins. “Yeah, Cheerios is something else.”
“When you get well,” Alice says to Kaleshia, “we expect a visit. There’s a young boy I think would like to meet you. He likes superheroes too.”
While we wait for the elevator in the hall of Children’s Hospital, I stare out a large window at the western skyline stained with magenta and orange streaks. I want to hold that image and paint it later.
Lawrence and the man Tracey took out who was guarding the back door of my house are both in jail. Whether or not they stay there depends on whether they are House of Iron or just employees. I still don’t know if Jason is involved in any of this, but no matter what he feels for me, his first priority is to protect his House.
Angola is out there. I don’t believe he will mess with the drug trials again, not after the publicity, but it’s open season on me.
I rest a hand on my belly. I fully expected to die when we marched into Angola’s web and not to have to worry about actually having a child. Now that I haven’t died, I have to decide what I’m going to do. For up to ten weeks into the pregnancy, there’s a pill combo I can take to induce an abortion. I made a visit to a clinic shortly after Alice’s pronouncement and have the pills in my purse. It’s not fun and involves painful cramping, but my life would be back to being mine. I wouldn’t have to worry about being a mother and a detective, or changing diapers, or that my child might hold the powers of a Y Tair and the potential to destroy city blocks. Not to mention worrying about keeping her alive and out of House of Iron’s clutches.
I step back from the others who are taking in the beautiful view, dig in my purse and pull out the bottle, staring at it for a long moment, thinking about what Angola forced me to acknowledge in myself—what I am capable of. Then I take a deep breath and chuck the bottle in the trash dispenser by the elevator.
Looking back at the crimson city skyline, I keep the hand on my belly. I made a child for the sake of the Houses, to keep a unique people from dying out, but now it’s not about them. It’s about her. Silently, I make a promise to the child growing in me. I will do everything in my power to make sure she gets a chance at life and whatever it holds for her.
—END—
T.K. Thorne’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama. “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” In her newest novels, House of Rose and House of Stone, murder and mayhem mix with a little magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch. Both her award-winning debut historical novels, Noah’s Wife and Angels at the Gate, tell the stories of unknown women in famous biblical tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, Last Chance for Justice, the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list. Her newest nonfiction is Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days. T. K. loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She writes at her mountaintop home with a horse in the back yard and a cat and dog vying for her lap.
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