Devon Monk: Hell Bent

“Shut up, Shame,” he said.

And just because we were sometimes friends, and that redheaded sniper not killing us had oddly put me in a better mood, I did.

If you ask me, there are about a thousand better places to have a meeting in Portland than the old woolen mill over in St. Johns. For instance, any place that sells beer.

Obviously, no one asked me.

Terric parked a couple blocks away and started walking without so much as a single word. He hadn’t said anything on the drive over either. Not that I cared. My headache was pounding spikes into my brain. Sure, he’d used magic to make things grow so I could kill and consume so my hunger for death wasn’t back yet. But it wouldn’t be gone long.

I got out of the car and lit a cigarette, smoking as I made my way to the front entrance. Terric stormed inside the building before I’d even made it halfway down the street. I took a look around to see if Assassin Chick was up on the roofs or down the dark alleys.

Nope.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little disappointed.

Ah well. It was, if not fun, at least distracting while it lasted.

Of course a meeting roomful of magic users might be its own little good time.

I threw my cigarette to the ground, then walked into the building. The main meeting room was up a couple flights, and I so wasn’t walking those. I took the elevator at the end of the hall, stepped in, pushed the button, and stuffed my hands in my coat pockets while I waited.

The only other person in the elevator with me was Eleanor. She stood near the buttons and bent a little, her hair flowing down around her face in that sort of underwater slo-mo she had going for her.

She pushed a button, but it didn’t respond to her, so she quickly pushed all the other buttons.

“Worst. Poltergeist. Ever,” I muttered.

She made a face at me.

The door opened and that kind of silence that makes you want to chew gum filled the hall. Mute spell, I’d guess. Couldn’t have a secret meeting of secret magic users and make a ruckus.

As soon as I reached the meeting room at the end of the hall, the Mute spell swallowed me up and let in the roll of voices. Sounded like we had a crowd today. Of course, last I knew it had been a while since the Overseer of the Authority had been here in our little, but dangerously quirky, town.

I paused in the doorway and tipped my sunglasses down.

Crowd was right. Fifty people at the least. Lots of familiar faces.

Bring on the good times.

I pushed my glasses back up, spread my hands wide, and called out, “Hello, party people! Drinks are on Terric!”

I grinned as all eyes turned to me. A lot of people had retired out of the secret magic business over the last three years. It made sense—there wasn’t much of a secret left about magic’s business, and since magic couldn’t do the big world-changing explosive sorts of spells anymore, the gig had lost a lot of financial and political influence.

Most of the people in the room I knew either well or well enough.

Zayvion Jones: tall, dark, and deadly. My best friend and a real goody-goody, though I’d never held it against him. Allie Beckstrom: tall, light, and deadly, she was Zay’s girlfriend and really, the reason we had all survived the apocalypse.

Next up: Victor Forsythe. Dressed casual, which meant no vest with his jacket today. He was one of my teachers and an old-school magic stick-in-the-mud. Clyde Turner: rocking the NY Giants jersey in extra-extra large. A down-to-earth guy who took over the position of Blood magic when my mum ran off to Alaska with her old crush.

Plenty of other people I knew too. Violet Beckstrom-Cooper, slender, but a little icy for my tastes. She used to be married to Allie’s dad and had taken over his magic and tech enterprise. Next to her was Kevin Cooper, a man with an unremarkable face, and a killer’s instincts who used to be her bodyguard.

Melba Maide looked as disheveled as always, which I’d long suspected she did to throw people off her litigious brilliance. She was talking to the Beckstrom accountant, Ethan Katz.

It did not escape my devious little mind that there were only old-timey Authority magic users in the room. No police. No Hounds who used to track illegal spells and, yeah, might still do that, but more often worked with the police as informants. No government officials.

No “normals.”

This appeared to be a magic-user-only invitation. Naughty. It wasn’t like us magic users or the Overseer to sneak around behind the law anymore. We were purely aboveboard open-book saintly types nowadays.

Well, except for when it came to the things we wanted to hide.

My grand entrance got a mixed reaction from the crowd. A little hatred and amusement, but mostly just long-suffering annoyance. Huh, I must be losing my touch. I could usually get at least one or two people riled up enough to tell me to shut up.

“Everyone.” Terric was on the other side of the room, his coat shucked and already draped over the back of a chair. He had found a microphone. Bastard.

“Thank you for coming.” He tipped his head down and gave me a look. “Shame, shut the door.”

Doorman. Really?

If I cared about the fact that I should be up there at that microphone with him, doing this job with him, I might be angry that he’d pretty much just publically demoted me from Head of the Authority to Guy Who Shuts Doors.

Luckily, I didn’t care about any of it. Right?

I turned, shut the door. Then leaned against the wall and glared at Terric through my sunglasses.

He felt the glare. Even across the room. He lifted his chin and pulled his shoulders back. Then he ignored me.

“You two still fighting?” Zayvion asked.

Zay and Allie stopped next to me. They stood there, arm in arm, Allie just an inch or two shorter than Zavyion’s six foot something. She wore a tank top that showed off those kick-ass magic-born tattoos down her arm and the bands of dusty black ringing her other wrist and elbow. Now that we weren’t on the run for our lives, both Allie and Zay had put on about ten pounds, and lost the dark circles under their eyes.

They smiled more, laughed more, and had that calm, sweet dedication to each other that meant they never walked into a room without holding hands.

I figured kids couldn’t be far off now.

Zay’s hair was buzzed short, and he had on a gray T-shirt that made his dark skin look even darker and set off the stone in the necklace he insisted on wearing. Apparently, the necklace had been an anniversary gift from Allie. Apparently, they were keeping track of those sorts of things now.

“You know how he is,” I said. “Stick up his ass.” I leaned toward Zay just a bit and pulled my glasses down. “Which he enjoys.”

Allie just rolled her eyes. Green, with a glint of mischief tempered by that lingering sadness that made a man’s heart skip a beat or two. Dark hair brushing right at her shoulders, pale skin. And yes, a beauty.

“We haven’t seen you around much lately,” she said. “What have you been doing?”

“Who. Ask me who I’ve been doing.”

“You have a girlfriend?” Didn’t sound like she believed me.

“I have a beautiful, full-bodied flaxen vixen at my side every night.”

“So, a bottle of whiskey?” Zay asked.

I grinned. “Ah, now. Do I look like a lad who’d kiss and tell?”

Zay gave me one of those looks of his that could wound a man who still had a heart. “You’re in a slump, Shamus. If you don’t pull out of it, I’m going to pull you out. By your nostrils.”

“I like how you think I’m afraid of you, Jones. What are you going to do? Throw magic at me?”

“Yes,” Allie and Zay said at the same time.