Devon Monk - Magic to the Bone

I needed an attitude adjustment myself, something to get my mind off him, off what it had felt like to be with him. Sarcasm usually did the trick.

“So. You’re saying you don’t want me dead because you want me in bed?” I said. I thought it would come out a lot funnier than it did.

“That’s not what I said.” He put the car in gear again and drove down the alley to a cross street.

“Your kiss said you wanted me in bed.” That was better.

“You mean the kiss you started?” Zayvion shook his head. “Maybe that’s all you were saying, but I was saying I was open for more than just sex—maybe a real date that didn’t involve blood, bruises, that incredible odor you’re wearing, or unconscious people in the backseat. But if it’s just sex you’re offering, I wouldn’t turn it down.”

“Right. Is there anything else a man really wants from a woman? Wrap it up in pretty words all you want, Jones. You can’t tell me you’re any different than any other man I’ve dated.”

“Maybe not. But you are different than any woman I’ve ever known.”

Oh. That was sweet too.

“You don’t get involved with women on the run from the law?”

He paused before answering. “That, actually, is none of your business. You can’t take a compliment, can you? Let me say this as straight as I can. I like you. A lot. Enough to follow you all over this town, even when I’m not getting paid for it—in the rain, I might add. Enough to get you out of town before you’re killed, enough to quit my job, and you have no idea how much hell I caught for that. I like you enough to do what it takes to keep you safe.”

“You are a cop, aren’t you?”

“If I were a cop, would I be taking you away from the police to keep you safe?”

“Who said I need someone to keep me safe?”

Zayvion gave me a who-are-you-kidding glance.

“Careful, Jones.”

“Fine. Maybe you don’t think you need someone looking out for you, but you’re wrong.”

“No, I’m not.”

“And stubborn. Like your father.”

That shut me up. It was just not my day for snappy comebacks. Probably because he was right. The car rattled over potholes and jostled the kitten awake in the backseat. The little thing started mewing and wouldn’t stop.

“What’s with the cat?” Zayvion asked.

“She belongs to the kid.”

“Do you know his name?”

“He was sort of babbling, but I think he said Cody Hand.”

I glanced at Zayvion. If his mood had just been warm, flirty, and fun, it had suddenly parked square in the middle of pensive, cool, and serious.

“You know him?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “No.” His mouth might be saying no, but his body language was saying oh, hells, yes. His body language might even be saying they were good friends—cousins, pals. Or maybe his body language was saying they were enemies. Close enemies.

“No?” I asked.

“I know of a man named Cody the Hand. He had a knack for magical forgeries. Landed him in the state pen, I think. But that was seven years ago.”

“Anyone who forges, or creates, original art with magic is called a Hand,” I said quite unnecessarily. “Maybe this kid is just a regular kind of magic artist.”

Zay nodded and the rest of his body language said he wasn’t so sure this kid was just a regular kind of anything.

“What? You want me to frisk him for ID?” I asked.

“It wouldn’t hurt.”

I rubbed at my face, which made both my face and my hands hurt. I tried to work up the desire to touch the kid’s garbage-and-blood-soaked clothes again. I wondered if I would feel the magic I’d painted in him. I wondered if it would burn through me again. Trap me. Scar me. “I don’t know how to frisk anyone. I’m not a cop.”

“It’s easy. Just like they show in the movies. Pat his pockets.”

He was so not joking.

I twisted in my seat and looked back at the kid. He really did look better. No, he looked fine. His skin was pale, but he had a healthy pink across his cheeks and he was sleeping so hard he was snoring. Didn’t look like a mastermind magic forger to me. Looked like a sweet kid who fell on hard times.

I braced my foot on the floorboard and pushed up and around so I was sitting on my knees. I reach around the bucket seat to feel the front pocket of his jeans. No wallet in the first one and, thankfully, no garbage worse than what I was covered in, and no hint of magic. I reached back a little farther to check his other pocket.

The stupid kitten pounced, all claws and teeth and hissing fury, and tore the hell out of my left hand.

I yelled and shook my hand until the ball of fur tumbled to the floor, where it trembled and mewed and looked pitiful.

“Are you hurt?” Zayvion asked.

“No.” I lied. My hand looked like I’d lost a fight with a killer rosebush. The cuts and punctures probably weren’t very deep, but that cat had been scratching around in filth and garbage.

Great. On the run for my life, I try to do a good deed and now I need a tetanus shot. Maybe something for rabies, too.

Stupid cat. Good things did not come in small packages—mean things did.

I sat forward in my seat again. I tucked my bleeding hand under my tank top, hoping the cotton would help to stem the blood flow, but my sweat, cat piss, garbage, and river water made the cuts hurt more.

“Anything?” Zayvion asked.

“Nothing in his front pockets and I am not rolling him over to pat his butt. Think about it, Jones. What are the chances of me running into some infamous, escaped forger left for dead along the river on the one day I would go down there to stroll through garbage?”

“Amazingly low.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And besides, he doesn’t look old enough to be an infamous forger. He’s only a kid.”

“True,” he said. “And that cat doesn’t look like it can do any harm. It’s only a kitten.”

“Bite me, Jones.”

That got a smile out of him. “That sounds promising.” He glanced over at me and I met his look, straight on. Dared him to offer.

He looked like he was about to, but said, “I can get the kid to a hospital and have him checked out. They’ll run his fingerprints and see if he’s on file or missing from anywhere. But first, I’m getting you out of town. You said you had a friend?”

And it wasn’t like I could make up a phony address. I really had nowhere to go except to Nola’s. And besides, magic or no magic, Hounds, or no Hounds, Nola could take care of herself, and I was tired and feeling more bruised and achy by the minute.

“Head east.”

“How far?”

“Burns.”

“Your friend lives three hundred miles away?”

“You said you wanted to take me outside my father’s range of influence. I don’t think he has much pull in cow country.”

Zayvion grunted. “Good thing I have a full tank.”

I leaned my head against the window. “When the skyscrapers turn into barns, and the barns turn into mountains, and the mountains turn into rangeland, wake me up.” I didn’t intend to really fall asleep.

But I did anyway. It just wasn’t my day.

I’d like to say my dreams were troubled. Filled with grief and anxiety-driven images. But I did not dream, did not even feel like I had really gone to sleep until a bump in the road knocked my head a little too hard against the window and I snorted awake.

Oh, so ladylike of me.

Zayvion was a quiet driver. No music, no tapping his fingers, no chewing gum, or yakking on the cell phone. He chuckled when I woke.

I turned my head, my neck stiff from leaning in one position too long. The marks from the tips of my right fingers to my temple were cool and tender, both hands still stiff and swollen, especially the left one with its black bands and cat scratches. Otherwise I seemed very much whole.