Devon Monk - Magic on the Storm

“Are you going alone?” he asked.

“No. Davy’s going with me.” Davy’s head lifted at the mention of his name. His eyes, for the briefest of seconds, flashed red.

It might have been my imagination. Or it might have been magic.

Weird.

“You have the keys to your car?” I asked.

Davy fumbled in his jeans pocket, held out a set of keys with a plastic frame attached to it. In the frame was a picture of him and Tomi in one of those photo booths. They were kissing, Tomi’s hand stretched out to try to cover the camera.

I put my hand on Davy’s arm to help him down the porch steps.

“Stotts, right?” Shame asked.

“Yes.” We were already on the gravel. “I’ll have my phone on.”

Davy walked with me, not nearly as light on his feet as he usually was. He breathed a little too hard, and was covered in sweat even though all he was wearing was a T-shirt and jean jacket in the below-thirty-degree weather.

We made it to his car, and he didn’t even argue when I helped him slump into the passenger’s seat.

I got in the driver’s side, started the car, and got us across the parking lot and onto the access road.

“Talk to me,” I said. “How badly are you hurt?”

His eyes were closed, his head against the headrest. He’d tried to buckle his seat belt, pulling it across his chest, but given up short of actually clicking it into place.

He didn’t say anything until I hit the road that ran parallel to the river and would get me to one of the bridges and back across the river to Portland.

“Ever since I got out of the hospital, I’ve felt it,” he said quietly. “When Hounds are hurt. I told you that, right?”

He had. Well, he’d told me he could tell when Tomi was hurting. But he sure as hell hadn’t mentioned how debilitating it was to him. “You said you felt Tomi. You feel the other Hounds too?”

“Sometimes. When the pain’s big. When it’s magic.”

“Is it always this bad?”

“No. Headaches. Muscle aches. But this. .” He was quiet for a little bit and I noticed his breathing was more even.

“It felt like I was on fire. And where there wasn’t fire, I was numb. Freezing.”

“You Proxying for anyone?”

“No.”

“None of the Hounds? Not even Tomi?”

His breathing hitched, and it took him a little longer to answer. “No.”

I didn’t smell a lie on him.

“Where were you when this happened?”

“Here.”

“The car?”

“Yes.”

“Driving?”

“Parked outside the inn.”

“Davy, how many times do I have to tell you to stop following me? That was a private business meeting between a lot of investors who want their interests in Beckstrom Enterprises kept quiet. If they find out I have a Hound on my heels, it could seriously damage my dad’s company.”

I’d kept that lie ready for months now.

He mustered a small smile, but still hadn’t opened his eyes. “You don’t like your dad’s company.”

“No, but I like Violet and her baby having enough income to keep them out of the poorhouse. Hells, everything I’ve done to get the Hound warehouse up and running was funded by my stake in that company. And my dad is dead. It’s my company now.”

“Like they’d kick you out if I followed you.” This time he turned his head and opened his eyes. Red flashed there again, and I smelled a different scent on him. Something sweet like cherries, but different, muddied by other smells. Magic. That was certain. But whether he was using it, or it was being used on him, I didn’t know.

How long could the effects of what Tomi had done to him last? It would help if I knew exactly what Tomi had done to him, but the only one who knew that was caged in the basement of the inn, and he was not the talkative type.

“Okay, I’ll say it one more time,” I said. “You have to stop following me. There are personal things I don’t want you involved in. Business things that, yes, would get me kicked off the board running Beckstrom Enterprises. These people don’t see you as just a Hound. They see you as a possible information leak. As someone who probably does drugs to kick the pain, and who wouldn’t take much to become desperate enough to sell what you know, what you’ve seen, for your next fix.”

Yes, I was lying. And even though I was pretty good at it, because some of what I was saying was true and I’d been working on a bulletproof explanation for some time now, I was also hoping he was in enough pain, or distracted enough, he wouldn’t scent the lie on me.

“Nice bunch of people you do business with,” he said. His voice was a little stronger and he didn’t seem to be sweating quite so badly.

“Business isn’t about friendships. It isn’t about nice,” I said. “Everyone has their own interests to protect.”

“And you’re protecting your money.” He rolled his head forward to look out the front window. “Sweet of you.”

“No. I’m protecting the people I care about. Violet. My sibling. The Hounds. And that means you, Davy. But so help me, if you don’t smart up and listen to me this time, I am going to report you to the police for harassment, stalking, and anything else that will keep you from getting in trouble. Or getting me in trouble. Do you understand that?”

“I heard you,” he said. But from the set of his jaw, he wasn’t listening. Stubborn, angry young man.

“I should take you home.”

“Thought you had a job lined up with Stotts.”

When I didn’t say anything, he sighed. “You’re such a hypocrite. All Hounds need a backup. Those are your rules. Yours. I’m your backup tonight.”

“My backup can’t stand.”

“Since when do you need me to do jumping jacks?” he asked. “I just need to watch. I won’t get in the way. You know I’m good at that.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I want to see what happened to Bea. Want to know what I felt, if I really felt it.”

We were on the bridge now, and traffic was light, since it was pretty late and there weren’t any big games or concerts letting out.

“Please,” he said. “I need to know I’m not going insane. That magic. . that it didn’t screw me up, permanently.” And the last bit was quiet, wrenched out of him like he was angry with himself for even saying it. Or just very, very afraid it might be true.

Magic in me pushed, warmed under my skin, and left a prickly itch behind. The lights on the bridge flickered for a moment, went dark. The magical backup generators for the lights did not kick on.

Davy felt the drop in magic too. He grunted. “What was that?”

Lights, regular electric lights, flicked back on, burned bright.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t. I had ideas. The storm was brewing. They didn’t know exactly when it would hit. They thought we had a few days. They could be wrong.

We were on the other side of the bridge. Davy didn’t say anything. Just waited as I slowed the car, weighing my odds of actually getting him home, out of the car, and locked in his apartment while I used his car to get to Stotts.

Wasn’t gonna happen.

I headed into town.

“Thanks,” he said. He didn’t say anything else until it started raining.

“Wipers are on the left.”

I flicked them on. Glanced at him. His eyes were closed again. Still tired, but the pain seemed to have passed. Maybe the pain was physical. Side effect from his head wound, from his collapsed lung. Appendix or something.

Magic wasn’t the only way people got hurt.

“I noticed Zayvion was there,” he said.

“And?”

“I didn’t think he had an investment in your dad’s business.”

“He’s my boyfriend,” I said. “We have an investment in each other.”