Devon Monk - Magic to the Bone

“I was just leaving,” I said. So what if I didn’t give my name. Sue me.

His eyes narrowed and the smile slipped. “That’s too bad. You look familiar . . . have we met?”

I got that question a lot, and I had zero intention of telling him I was Daniel Beckstrom’s daughter. But here’s the thing. He didn’t look familiar to me at all. His voice wasn’t ringing any bells and neither was his face. But his scent was familiar. I may not have met this man before, but I had been around him. Close enough and long enough that the smell of him—musky to the point of being sour and peppery—was imbedded in my memory. He carried other odors too—he’d been somewhere with organic death, like at the edge of the river, among fish and rotted things. He smelled of sweat too, like he’d recently done something very physical. What creeped me out was that he also carried the slightest stink of formaldehyde, very faint, like he’d brushed against someone or something that carried that scent. Maybe the big man in the street?

Despite the overriding smells, I knew I knew him. Or had known him. But I couldn’t remember him.

This is where the extra hit—the random double price magic sometimes takes out of me—really sucks. And there was a bad stretch in college where it happened every time I used magic—pain plus memory loss. I shrugged it off at the time, and yeah, I’d turned to booze and drugs to try to handle it. But it didn’t change anything. Unless a person was very diligent about always Offloading to a Proxy, magic left marks. It scarred. And I hated coming face-to-face with my own failings. Knowing I was missing memories, maybe even days or weeks of my life, was the sort of thing that gave me nightmares.

Not to mention the fact that I did not like this man, Mama’s Boy, or no.

“No, we haven’t met,” I said. “Unless you went to Harvard.”

He did a fair job of looking surprised and confused. “The college?”

Right. So we weren’t going to really find out how we knew each other. I’d had enough of this. “Listen, I don’t care what your game is, but tell your buddy out there to keep his hands and magic off me or I will report you both to the police.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Mama stiffen. James’ face flushed with a fury he dampened with aplomb. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve been alone tonight. And there is no magic here. Not in this part of town.”

“No magic,” Mama repeated firmly. “You go now, Allie girl. Go.” She shoved me toward the door, and opened it for me.

“No magic,” she said. Mama was sweating even though the air outside was cold enough to sting my eyes. She was afraid, or lying. I glanced back at James. He stood with his hands in his pockets, relaxed, cool on the outside and burning on the inside, watching me watch him. He was hiding something. I figured Mama knew too, but for her own reasons didn’t want to admit it. I also figured she had a gun and it was time for me to go.

I stepped through the door. Mama closed it so quickly behind me that the doorknob literally hit me in the hip. Every lock snapped into place.

“You go to those men again?” Even through the thick wood door I could hear her yelling at James. “Those worthless men, huh? You go to them? Do what they want like dog to them?”

“My business dealings are my own,” James said.

“Your own! What you do, you do to family. To Mama.”

“Then you should be happy,” James yelled. “I’m the one who’s going to get us out of this hellhole. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to get away from this rotted dump? Have some money, some power?”

“No. Not if that man hand it to me on gold and diamond platter. There is no paying back his kind . They will use you. That kind always uses. We are dirt to them. You are dirt to them.”

“I’m not that stupid,” James said. “I know how to play their game. I know how to give them what they want and take what I want. We all win. We all get what we want.”

“Good.” Mama lowered her voice, but I could still hear her. “I want smart Boy. Boy who pushes pride away. Boy who breaks ties with those men and is not ashamed of his real family.”

There was a pause. Finally James spoke. “Well. Maybe you won’t get what you want after all.” I heard his footsteps pound across the wood floor, retreating deeper into the building.

“You go now, Allie,” Mama’s voice said through the door.

So I did.

This was so none of my business. If Mama needed me for the trial against my dad, I’d happily be there. But I did not want to get involved in her personal life.

It was cold out, so I hit the street at a pretty fast clip, heading toward the nearest well-lit street with a bus stop. Luck was on my side for a change—it wasn’t raining. Dawn smudged cobalt blue over black clouds and faded to a hazy gray by the time I found a bus stop.

Get Mugged would be roasting coffee beans about now, and I’d be there for the first cup. After that, I’d go down to the police station, file my report on Boy’s hit, and then I’d get out of town to Nola’s for a couple weeks before the trial started.

I pictured her little farmhouse and the hundred acres she farmed. In my mind’s eye it was always summer there—the summer I’d left college and landed on her doorstep trying to sort out my life. Nola and I had met in high school. She married her sweetheart her senior year and seemed happy as pie to move almost three hundred miles away to help him run the family alfalfa farm. But with Nola and me, time and distance didn’t matter. She’d always been there when I needed her and I’d tried my best to be there for her too, especially when her husband, John, had been sick with cancer.

There weren’t a lot of people out on the street yet, which suited me fine. Even better was that I didn’t have to wait long for the bus. I flashed my bus pass and settled into the relative peace of the fluorescent lights and rumbling engine.

It had been a strange twenty-four hours. The hit on Boy, seeing my father again after seven years, working blood magic to find a Truth I still couldn’t accept. The feeling of my dad’s blood and words still resonated beneath my skin. Maybe they would for a long time. Blood magic was a powerful branch of spell casting, and except for Truth spells, it was all but outlawed.

My father told me he didn’t hit Boy.

My father was really good at Influencing people to think what he wanted them to think. He was also an expert caster, and probably knew twelve different ways to fake a Truth spell. But it was hard to believe he could lie so completely held blood to blood.

Twenty-four hours had also gotten me hurt and sick from Hounding Boy and, just to make things even more interesting, I’d also gone on a nondate with a nonstalker my father had hired to either protect me or spy on me.

My thoughts circled Zayvion. There was something about that man that made me stop and want to look. Made me stop and want to feel. It wasn’t just the outside of him, which was, I had to admit, pretty nice: shy smile, quiet voice, and a gaze that made me feel like he was looking closer at me than any person had in my life. There were other things, unspoken things, that drew me to him. The long silences. The sense of calm he radiated. His willingness to step in when people were in need, like standing up to Mama for Boy. There was something about him that seemed honor-able, and yes, kind. And just thinking about that kiss sent a thrill through me.

Survival instincts said step away and leave the man alone. Something else, something deeper that was probably my heart, if I indeed still had one, told me to draw near and fold into the warmth of him.

The last time I listened to my heart all I got was a mooch of a boyfriend I couldn’t get rid of for months.