Devon Monk - Stone Cold

“Make room, Boy Scout’s here,” I muttered to Eleanor.

“Shame.” He stopped at the table, glanced down at my plate of sawed-off waffles, strawberries, and whipped cream. “Breakfast? Why are you eating breakfast here? Now?”

“Mum kicked me out. What’s wrong with here and now?”

“For one . . .” He glanced back across the diner, then at me. “This place is a dump. And secondly, you promised you’d go with me to a meeting today.”

“ I promised?”

“Okay, fine. I promised. Allie and Zayvion want you there. Us there,” he corrected.

Allie and Zayvion were our friends, and also Soul Complements to each other. Zayvion had run with Terric and me when we were young bucks growing up in the Authority under Victor, and Allie was the daughter of one of the Authority’s richest, and more conniving, members.

The Authority wasn’t the same after the apocalypse. No need for a secret organization to keep the darker uses of magic secret since magic had been tamed and fully revealed to the public.

“Busy. Sorry.” I hacked at the waffle with the wholly inadequate knife. Switched to the fork and shoveled waffle and whipped cream into my mouth. Chewed. And chewed. And kept on chewing.

Tough didn’t describe this mouthful of particleboard. Kevlar had more give. And taste, come to think of it.

“Just . . . come, Shame,” he said. “Allie wants you there.”

Ever since Allie had gotten pregnant, she was all sorts of unpredictable in the emotional department. I found it endlessly entertaining. Terric had taken to tiptoeing around her and doing everything she asked of him, and Zayvion had threatened to tie my spine in knots if I riled her up again.

I spit the waffle into the napkin. “If I don’t?”

Terric raised an eyebrow. “You need me to threaten you?”

“Might be amusing.”

“I can promise you the follow-through would not be.”

Had some fire behind those words. Man could deal out the hurt when he wanted to. Apparently my not going to see Allie and Zay would make him want to.

“What the hell kind of meeting is it, anyway? You and I are no longer employed by the Authority.”

“We aren’t the head of the Authority,” he corrected. “It doesn’t mean we aren’t a part of it.”

The killer at the booth had finished his coffee and small bowl of oatmeal. He tossed cash on the table, pushed up on his feet, glanced over at me when he thought I wasn’t looking, and walked out the door.

Damn it. He knew I was tailing him.

I could kill him from here. Without even standing up. Without even laying a finger on him. I could reach out, let the Death magic inside me pop his heart, blow his brain, drain his lungs.

Just the thought of it made my heart race.

Eleanor glared at me and shook her head, then pointed at Terric as if she was going to tell him what I was thinking.

I still hadn’t quite figured out why she was so concerned about me. I was, after all, the bloke who had killed her and then hog-tied her spirit to my mortal coil. Another bad life choice.

I took a couple even breaths and shouldered into the death hunger, pushing it away. Terric was saying something, but I was a little busy, thank you, trying not to blow a kill zone a block wide.

Finally the hunger released and my heart came back down to human rhythms. It was painful and heady and I was still starving.

“. . . drunk?” Terric asked.

“Yes.” I had no idea what he was talking about. Hoped it was that we should get a pint or two.

While I’d been wrestling with my inner death, Killer Guy had strolled out of my reach.

Great. There went two weeks of hunting down the drain hole, thanks to Mr. We-had-a-date.

“Still drunk or already drunk?”

“What? Neither. Cover that for me, will you?” I said. “I left my cash in my other coat.” I stood, wavered a little. I really needed to consume something, or someone, real soon now.

Eleanor pointed at Terric. Life, she mouthed.

I ignored her.

Why not? she mouthed.

“Reasons,” I said to her.

“What?” Terric asked. He’d dug a bill out of his wallet and slipped it between the salt and pepper shakers.

“For the meeting,” I said. “Why are we going? Is it about Davy Silvers?” I strolled toward the door and he followed. March meant rain, and today was no exception. I stepped out into the downpour.

Terric flipped his collar before taking the plunge to the sidewalk. “Weren’t you listening?” he said. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. No. Nothing new there. We still haven’t found Davy, Eli, or where the government has them stashed.”

“So, what is it about?”

We strode down a block or so to his car—double-parked. Every heartbeat from the people around us was a finger plucking rhythm against my spine. Forty-seven lives in the office building, twelve in the coffee shop, eight in the bank.

He didn’t say anything more until we got into the car.

“How’s Eleanor?” He couldn’t see her unless he drew on magic to do so, but lately he made it a point to ask about her. Which she loved.

Women.

She smiled, then made pointy motions toward him again.

“Still dead,” I said.

She slapped me in the back of the head. Ow. Brain freeze.

“Also, angry.”

“What about?”

“Who can tell? Female things?”

She took another swing at me, but I leaned forward out of her reach, fake-checking my bootlaces.

Terric glanced over. “What is wrong with you today?”

Time to change the subject. “I could ask you the same thing, mate.” I straightened, checking to make sure Eleanor was done with the smacking. She crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her tongue out at me.

I gave her a wink and a grin.

Terric started the engine. “What do you mean?”

“You’re avoiding my question. You didn’t get in until five this morning. You paced until six. It’s what, nine o’clock?”

“Ten thirty.”

“You’ve had three hours of sleep, which is the most I’ve seen you get all week. It’s not like you to miss your beauty shut-eye.”

He locked his jaw. Uncomfortable subject. I should probably just leave it alone.

So of course, I didn’t.

“Come on, now, Ter. Gotta new guy working your night shift?”

He stopped for a light. Pedestrians without umbrellas took their time crossing the street.

“I’ve been . . . keeping busy,” he hedged. “Looking into things.”

“Do these things have names? Social Security numbers? Memory foam mattresses?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Look at you,” I said. “All mysterious and secretfying. Please tell me it is both a deep and shamefully dark secret you’re hiding from me.”

“I’m not hiding anything. Nothing you need to know, in any case.”

“Those are not quite the same thing, are they?”

“Close enough.”

I glanced out the side window. As I did so the blur of light surrounding him flared. Huh. Maybe it wasn’t a new boyfriend on his mind.

Maybe it was magic. He had too much Life magic in him just as I had too much Death magic. And neither of us had much control over those magics.

There was a solution for this. We needed to use magic together, let the two magics cancel each other out. Of course, we both hated that because every time we used magic together, we lost a little more of our humanity.

Lately, I’d begun to think that hate it or not, maybe we should just use magic together anyway. And, yes, that was the exact opposite of what I’d tried to do over the last two years. But in small enough doses, it might be safe enough for us to use magic with each other, for each other. The same way carcinogens are safe in small doses.