Magic in the Shadows

Chapter Fourteen

So here’s something I never thought I’d see. My apartment with three people in it, laughing without my being there.

I tried to open the door, but it was locked. And I was glad about that.

I knocked. Who should open the door (after ample time to look through the peephole to see who was on the other side) but Zayvion.

He opened the door wide and stepped aside with a warm, relaxed smile on his face. “Welcome home,” he said.

My heart caught at the sound of those words on his lips.

“You and I have issues,” I said.

“Apparently,” he said.

Nola and Shamus were laughing in the living room. Something about dogs, and Nola going on about Jupe’s disastrous skunk-hunting expeditions.

“What’s wrong?” Zayvion glanced down the hallway behind me, then shut the door.

And when all I could do was shake my head, he took the three steps necessary and wrapped his arms around me. I should have pushed him away. I was still angry at him for hurting Cody. But he held me, my face tucked into his shoulder, didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask anything. Just afforded me a little time to pull myself together for what I knew I had to do.

Nola walked out of the living room. “Allie? I was just going to pour us all coffee. Do you want a cookie?”

That’s what I smelled-homemade oatmeal cookies.

“No.” I pushed away from Zayvion and smiled for Nola. “It’s been a bad day. I found Davy Silvers-he’s one of the Hounds in the group-hurt over in St. Johns.”

Nola’s face shadowed with concern. “Is he okay? Do we need to take him to the hospital?”

“I already did.” I looked at Zayvion, who watched me with a dark intensity. “There’s blood in your backseat. Sorry.”

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Is he?”

“I don’t know yet. Some of the Hounds are at the hospital, waiting to hear if he’s going to be okay.”

“Should we go down there too?” Nola asked. “How was he hurt? Was it an accident?”

“No. It was magic.”

Zayvion didn’t move, but Shamus, who had been sitting in my living room with his feet on my coffee table, stood up and strolled over.

“Well, it’s been a fine afternoon,” he said to Nola. “And a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Robbins.” He shook Nola’s hand. “But it’s getting late, and I see that you have things needing your attention. I hope we’ll get a chance to see each other again before you head out of town. Maybe catch a pint out at O’Donnel’s.”

“I’d like that,” Nola said.

Shamus turned to me. “Good afternoon, Allie.”

I nodded.

Then he slugged Zayvion in the shoulder. Zayvion didn’t so much as flinch. “See you soon, won’t I?” he asked.

“Of course,” Zayvion said with smooth Zen calm.

I had a feeling they had both just said a lot more to each other than was obvious.

And then Shamus let himself out. I could hear him whistling down the hallway and down the staircase.

Nola was no dummy. Even though she didn’t know a lot about magic, she knew when the mood in the room had suddenly changed.

“Do you two need some time in private to talk?” she asked.

Can I just say that I loved her? Honest. Down to earth. No bullshit Nola. Loved her.

“If you don’t mind,” I said.

“I’ll be back in the bedroom if you need me.” She walked off, and Zayvion and I both stared at each other until we heard the bedroom door shut.

“Tell me why you Closed Cody,” I said.

“Because it’s my job.”

“Don’t,” I warned. “I am so not in the mood.”

He held still a moment, considered me. Finally, “He’s been a part of the Authority for a long time. But he wasn’t Closed. Someone put a hit on him, years ago, when he was turning witness for those magical forgeries he was involved in. We don’t know who did it, but they broke him, his mind. And just a few months ago James used him to work Blood magic, Death magic, dark magic, to kill your father and hurt you. . ”

Zayvion took a deep breath, looked away. His gaze finally returned to my face. When he spoke, he was very calm. “The Authority approves of Nola looking after him. And Sedra. . she thinks living away from magic will be the best thing for him. Might even give his mind some time to heal, if it can heal. But before he could be given into Nola’s care, he had to be Closed. The traumas and the memories of how to use magic taken away. So no one can use him again.”

“So you just erased the parts of his life that you didn’t think were good enough? That you didn’t think he could handle? How kind of you to make that decision for him.”

Um, yeah. Sarcasm. I had it.

“I don’t need your approval to do my job,” he said, flat, cold.

We spent a little time glaring at each other.

“Are you going to tell me what happened to Davy?” he asked.

I didn’t know whether the change of subject was a peace offering. But it was common ground, maybe better ground, for both of us.

“I found him half dead in Cathedral Park. Tomi Nowlan, his ex-girlfriend, the Hound, was there with a knife and a burnt circle of ash.”

“The disks,” he said.

I nodded. “She was working dark magic, I think. Shadowed colors in indigo and red. And then things, creatures came out of the circle.”

“She opened a gate.”

“And that’s bad, right?”

He nodded. “The creatures are called the Hungers. They exist only on the other side of magic, in the realms of death.”

“Well, I think they’re setting up a vacation home in Cathedral Park.”

He spared me a brief smile. “I need to go.”

“Are we going to hunt them?” I asked.

“No.

We

aren’t going to do anything,” he said. “Shamus and I will take care of them. It’s what we’re trained to do.”

“No,” I said. “Hell, no. You are not going after those things alone. I am going with you. I have to learn how to kill a nightmare sooner or later, right?”

“Allie. .”

“Consider it on-the-job training.”

“Bad idea.”

“Why? Keeping me in the dark about these things will not keep me safe,” I said. “Not anymore. Not if I’m going to be a part of your world.”

“Nola?” I said over my shoulder.

Zay caught my wrist. “Allie, listen. The disks are involved. The only person out there that we know of who has a disk is the Necromorph. He knows your dad is in your head. And he is willing to kill you.”

“I can handle myself.”

“That’s not my point.”

“Then point,” I said.

“Did you ever think that hurting Davy, involving Tomi, and calling you to the park to watch Tomi release the Hungers might have been planned? Might have been a way for the Necromorph to draw you to him?”

“That’s crazy. If he had wanted me there, why didn’t he show up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe something didn’t go the way he expected it to.”

I thought about Tomi’s shock. How she had seemed really out of it. So much so that even her spell casting had been jerky. Maybe she was the weak link in the Necromorph’s plan.

“He doesn’t want me, Zay,” I said.

“No, he wants your dad. And you’re giving him to him.”

Nola came out of the bedroom. “Did you call me?”

“Yes,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

“Going to tell me what you’re up to?”

“We’re going to go Hound the place where Davy was hurt. I gave a bunch of people my home number. Two men Hounds named Sid and Jack. One woman Hound named Bea. And also the nurse at the ER. I asked that they call me if they hear about Davy, or if they need someone to sit down at emergency, waiting to hear about him. Do you mind handling phone duty?”

“I can do that. But first.” She strode into the living room and then came back. “Take these with you.”

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a cell phone. Or a gun. Nope. Nola dropped two palm-sized cookies in my hand. Oatmeal chocolate chip, and still warm.

“Come home safe,” she said.

I took the cookies. “Lock that door and do not open it for anyone but us. Call 911 if something funny happens. Call Stotts too, if you need to. Be careful, okay?”

“Me?” she said. “It’s not me who’s mixed up to her eyeballs in magic.”

I gave her a quick smile and then headed out the door, not waiting for Zayvion to catch up to me.

“What?” I asked him once he was striding alongside me.

“Aren’t you going to share those?” He pointed at the cookies.

I bit into one of the warm cookies. Delicious and moist and buttery. “Absolutely not. You probably already ate a dozen of these.”

“Your point?”

We jogged down the stairs. “So, how hard is it to take care of these Hunger things?” I asked.

“It’s not easy. Hardest to do it so no one notices. I think you should stay here.”

“Not on your life.”

We hit the lobby at a fast walk. “How hard will it be to find them?”

“We know how they move.”

“And what, exactly, do they do?”

“Hunt people and magic. Then consume. Kill.”

Comforting. “Car’s this way.” I dug in my pocket and tossed him the keys. He caught them and we strode out the door to the back parking lot.

I realized last time I’d been in this building with Zayvion, he’d been nearly passed out from exhaustion. “You are feeling okay, right?” I asked as we hit the cold late-afternoon air.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Shamus has his uses.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“Like mitigating burn-out. He’s really quite good at what he does. Just don’t ever tell him I said that. I’ll deny all knowledge that this conversation ever took place.”

I shook my head. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Like the brother I never got around to killing.” He flashed me a bright smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Killing?” Shamus walked out from behind some bushes in the parking lot. “You mean the brother who has saved your sorry ass a hundred times. A little respect, here.”

“That was respect. You’re still alive. Do you have everything?” Zayvion asked.

Shamus pulled one hand from behind his back. A strange collection of leather and silver and glass dangled between his fingers. “I’m always ready with the ass saving, now, aren’t I? Apologize.”

“Sorry you can’t stop thinking about my ass.”

Shamus grinned. “True. It’s just so tight and muscular. Want me to shove these in your trunk?”

“I’d rather you put them in the car.” Zayvion opened his car, and motioned for me to get in the passenger’s side while Shamus put the contraptions in the trunk. Zay walked around and stood by the open trunk with Shamus, like two men comparing guns or tackle boxes or something.

Satisfied with the inventory, they slammed the trunk shut, and Shamus crawled in the backseat while Zayvion got into the driver’s seat.

“There might be some blood back there,” I said.

Shamus shrugged one shoulder. “What’s new?”

Zayvion took a moment to adjust the seat for his legs, and the mirrors. “Safety first,” he said.

“Always,” Shamus agreed.

Zayvion started the engine and turned the car toward St. Johns.

“So, tell me what to expect,” I said.

“Blood, death, horror.” Shamus sat forward so he was nearly between us. “The usual.” He pulled out his cell, hit a button.

“Who?” Zayvion asked.

“Who do you think?” He sat back and answered the phone. “Chase, darlin’. Want to do a job?”

At the mention of Chase’s name, Zayvion tightened. It was only for a second before the Zen took over and he looked relaxed, calm again. But I could tell it was an act. That woman bothered him.

“Should I be worried?” I asked while Shamus kept right on talking behind us.

“About the hunt?”

“Yes. And Chase.”

Zay stopped at a light. Even though it felt like the longest day ever, it wasn’t even dark yet. It was three or four at the latest, and as light as a cloudy day in Oregon could be. To the west, a patch of blue sky opened up, and sunlight shot down in liquid gold, painting the wet city in van Gogh fire. It seemed strange to be going out hunting nightmares in such nice weather.

“Chase is a Closer,” Zayvion said. “She’s good at her job. You don’t have to worry about her.” The light turned green, and Zay moved along with traffic, angling north toward the St. Johns Bridge.

Why did I not believe him?

“The hunt isn’t something I want you to be involved in. At all,” he added, like maybe I hadn’t heard him before. “If we’re dealing with Hungers, they are creatures that have crossed through the gates from death to life.”

“Like the Veiled?”

Zay shook his head. “The Veiled are the thoughts and memories and bits of magic users’ souls impressed on the magic that runs beneath the city. They aren’t so much dead people as a recording of people who were once alive.”

Recordings with burning fingers that like to eat magic.

“What did the Hungers used to be?” I asked.

“Some say they are failed spells from the ancient days when magic was first used by mankind. Some say they are the fears, the panics, the horrors of all the world’s tragedies, the nightmares of mankind’s dreaming mind. Some say they are hunters, killers, creatures that dwell in the world beyond the gates, hungry for the blood and magic of the living world.” He shrugged. “Your basic denizens of death.”

“Huh,” I said.

“What?”

“I was just trying to remember the last time I had a conversation with someone who used the words

dwell

and

denizens of death

in the same breath.”

“Your point?” he asked.

“You are a seriously strange man, Zayvion Jones.”

That got a surprised grin out of him. “You don’t know me very well, then.”

Well, well, look at who had gone all Mr. Tough on me. It looked natural, easy on him. I had a feeling there was a side to Mr. Jones that I hadn’t seen yet. The bad-boy hunter side. And I liked it.

“So, the Hungers?” I prompted.

“Right. Cross over from death. It happens, but not very often, and usually only one at a time. You saw more than one?”

“Six, I think.”

“That’s a large crossing. It would have taken a lot of power behind the spell to crack the gate that wide.”

Maybe that was why Tomi looked so exhausted.

“Is Davy being hurt a part of it?” I asked.

“Yes. Death magic takes a sacrifice. It doesn’t have to be a life, just an exchange of energy. But the old ways, dark ways, always use a sacrifice.”

“You said those ways were forbidden.”

Shamus, who was done with his phone call, laughed. “They are. But first someone has to catch you doing it. Death magic is hard stuff to Hound.”

I didn’t know that. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse, knowing there was a kind of magic less detectable to Hounding.

“There’s something else,” I said. “Davy said Tomi mentioned a man named Jingo. Is she part of the Authority?”

They both got quiet. Finally, Zay spoke. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Told you he’s a freak,” Shamus muttered. “Gonna be a fuckin’ war.”

The muscle of Zay’s jaw tightened. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe we’ll find a way to fix this first.”

Shamus snorted. “Optimism does not suit you, my friend.”

“So is Jingo Jingo using Tomi some other way?” I asked. “For Hounding? A little light on the subject would be nice.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Zayvion said. “I don’t know if Jingo Jingo is involved with Tomi at all. There are. . people who would plant his name. Make false trails to cover their own tracks.”

“Backstabbing and double-crossing? Fantastic show you’re running,” I said.

“There’s a lot of unrest among magic users right now,” Zayvion said. “Especially since your father’s death. A lot of finger pointing, blame of magic and knowledge being improperly supervised, leaked, used.

“But right now, we need to deal with the Hungers,” Zayvion said, changing subjects.

I still wanted to know what Jingo Jingo had to do with all this, but for all I knew, Shamus was more than his student. He could be his spy.

Where was that secrets spreadsheet when I needed it?

“Do you still think they’re in St. Johns?” I asked.

“Probably. There’s a reason the gate was opened there. There isn’t magic in St. Johns. Nothing is piped in, nothing natural beneath the ground. I think Tomi didn’t want us knowing the gate had been breached. It’s possible the Hungers are waiting for nightfall to slip into the rest of the city.”

“And once they’re in the city, what do they do?”

“They kill,” Shamus said.

“So why haven’t I heard about this on the news? Dead bodies? Rampaging nightmare creatures? That’s got to be good enough to at least hit the morning shows.”

“You don’t hear it because we are very, very good.” Shamus grinned.

“No, if someone dies, it’s noticed,” I said. “By a neighbor, a friend, a coworker.”

“We don’t hide the bodies,” Zayvion said, “when there are bodies. We just make sure the cause of death never points toward the magical.”

“That doesn’t sound easy,” I said.

“After years and years of training?” he said. “It’s not.”

“Crap,” I said. “Training. Shame, would you call your mom and tell her I’m going to be late-later? Please?”

He just shook his head. “You’re gonna owe me for all this sugar I’m pouring on her.” He dialed, and spent several minutes explaining exactly what we were going to be doing.

Finally, he hung up. “Says she’ll consider it extra credit, but no getting into the middle of anything really dangerous. Thinks I’m gonna look after you.”

“I can look after myself,” I said.

Shamus nodded. “Of course you can.”

I was demure enough not to flip him off with both fingers.

We drove past the park. Police tape closed off the parking lot, but North Bradford Street was clear. Zayvion parked the car several blocks away, tucked down a one-way gravel and bramble dead-end road, then popped the trunk.

Shamus jumped out and started rummaging through the gear in the trunk.

“I don’t suppose I could talk you into staying in the car?” Zayvion asked.

“No.”

He didn’t look surprised by my answer. “Did your father teach you any of the Closing spells?”

“No.”

“Attacks?”

“What? No.”

“Allie. .” He rubbed the back of his neck and tipped his head down.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t have to be the one who kills these things, but I do want to see how they are killed. I’m here to watch and learn so the next time one of my Hounds gets attacked, I’ll know what to do. I’ll stay out of your way. Think of me as a job shadow.”

He stopped rubbing his neck. “I’d like to think of you as a lot more than that. Alive and safe, for one thing.”

“How about stubborn and smart enough to look after myself?”

“Mmm, that too. But I’m still going to go with alive and safe.”

He leaned toward me. I met him halfway. We kissed, and delicious warmth spread through me, filling me. The taste of him-a little smoky and sweet, along with the scent of pine that would forever remind me of him, of his touch-poured through me and made me want him more.

He pulled back and rested his forehead against mine. “Please. Please take the keys and drive home,” he said softly.

I leaned away, just enough that I could see his eyes. Just enough that I wouldn’t fall into needing to do what he said. Not because of Influence or anything magical between us. But because I hated to hear the worry in his voice.

“Just tell me what to do if one gets too close to me. I promise I am not going to get close to one of them.”

He licked his bottom lip, and I wondered if he could still taste me, taste our kiss.

“Shield will work against them,” he said. He was all teacher now, all Zen. Calm. Reassuring. Matter-of-fact. Like he hunted nightmares every day.

Which, come to think of it, he probably did.

“Camouflage works too. If things get hot, back off and back out. Most of the defensive spells-Hold, Sleep-won’t do a thing. The Hungers absorb anything thrown at them. So your best defense is to not attack. Try to blend in, try not to smell like magic or give off the sign that you use magic.”

I rolled my eyes, and he nodded. “I know. But try. Blocks will work on you, not on the Hungers.”

He searched my face, his gaze dropping to my lips, then back up to my eyes. “Allie-”

“-tell me later,” I said with a little too much cheerfulness. “When all this is over and you and I are sitting on the couch, drinking a glass of wine.”

“Stubborn,” he said.

“Middle name,” I agreed. And before we could say anything else, before I lost my nerve, I got out of the car.

Shamus bent over the open trunk, humming a tuneless song and smoking a cigarette.

“Need any help?” I strolled over, my boots crunching in the wet gravel. I stuck both my hands in my pockets and was grateful I’d put on a hat. It wasn’t raining or very windy right now, but the air was bone-bitingly cold and damp.

“Sure,” he said without looking at me, “hold this.” He handed me a leather rope that looked a lot like a short-handled bullwhip, but with silver glyphs worked down the length of the leather and a blade of glass at the tip.

I held it, leaving the length curled in the trunk among the other weapons-a couple sheathed machetes with glass and glyphs worked into the hilts, more leather whips, some plain rope, a few stained glass boxes that looked like they should hold jewelry, sheathed knives, and several glyphed and Warded cases that looked like the right shape and size to carry guns.

And with all that to choose from, Shamus, who was still wearing his black fingerless gloves, was instead carefully unwrapping silk handkerchiefs off of four small round medallions. The medallions were lead and glass like everything else in the armament ensemble, but each was loose. He opened one of the stained glass boxes and pulled out four leather cuffs. He pressed the medallions into the leather cuffs, and I could feel, rather than hear, a low thunk as they snapped into place.

Zayvion got out of the car, paused to assess what I was holding, then got busy on the other side of Shamus, sorting small bits of glass, leather, lead, and steel.

They each took one of the leather cuffs and snapped them into place on their bare wrists, medallions pressed against their skin.

“You think?” Shamus asked, holding up a leather band with one of the medallions in it.

Zayvion nodded and took it from him. “This,” he said to me, “is for you to wear. We’ll each have one on. They allow us to sense where the other person is. If we’re injured. If we’re unconscious. If we’re alive.”

“Do they let us read each other’s minds too?”

Shamus chuckled. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what’s going on in Jones’ mind.”

“No,” Zayvion answered.

“Which arm?” I asked.

“The right, I think.”

I pulled back my sleeve and he wrapped the leather around my right wrist. The medallion fit like a warm, silky disk against the inside of my wrist and pulsed with two distinct beats. I raised my eyebrows.

Zayvion lifted my hand to his chest and pressed my palm there. I could feel the beat of his heart under my hand and echoed in the medallion at my wrist. And when I took a second to think about it, I could somehow tell that he was well, confident, and a little excited.

“Shame?” he said.

“Right.” Shamus sucked the last of the smoke out of his cigarette, threw it to the wet gravel, and dragged his shoe over it. He stepped up, and I put my hand on his chest. His heartbeat matched the second rhythm on my wrist, and touching him gave me the sense of his state of mind. He was exhausted, worried. Two things I never would have guessed, looking at him, and I was good at reading body language. He was also determined, like someone who had been working a hard, long shift and was willing to roll up his sleeves and work for however long it would take to get the job done.

He grinned, and the worry shifted to amusement.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you need to touch me?” I asked.

Shamus wiggled his eyebrows. “If you insist.” He lifted both hands-curled, not flat-and reached for my chest.

I took a step back.

“Shame,” Zayvion growled. “Knock it off.”

Zay took my arm and stood half between us, turning his back on Shamus. “We use these all the time. We’re attuned. As long as you’re wearing that, we can sense you without touching.”

“Maybe you can,” Shamus said, “what with the whole Soul Complement thing you two have going on, but I might need a little feel.”

“No.” Zayvion did not look at him. “You don’t.”

The conversation stopped as a car drove down the gravel road and parked behind us. For a second I worried that we were all standing there in front of a weapon-filled trunk. Then Chase got out of the car.

She wore black combat boots, black jeans, and a blue-and-black plaid flannel coat zipped up so that just the turtleneck of her gray sweater showed. Her hair was back in a single long braid, and her eyes, beneath the straight, thick bangs, were wide and sapphire blue.

She made flannel and combat boots look as though they belonged on a Parisian runway.

“Hello, boys.” She nodded toward me. “Why are you here?”

“On-the-job training,” Shamus said. “Plus, we think the things like her. She’s our in.”

Her pretty face settled somewhere between curiosity and disgust as she gave me the full-body once-over. “You saw the Hungers?”

I stuck my wrist with the band on it in my pocket. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want her opinion of me wearing the band that connected me to Zayvion and Shamus. “I saw them. I use Sight a lot when I Hound.”

“You were Hounding the Hungers?”

“No, just looking for a friend.”

She bit the corner of her lip, like she was trying to decide something. I honestly didn’t care what it was.

“Heads up.” Shamus tossed a leather band to Chase, and she snatched it out of the air and clipped it on her wrist. As soon as it closed, I felt a third rhythm tapping at my wrist.

Apparently, she felt it too.

“You’re joking, right?” She looked between Shamus and Zay. “She’s not coming with us, is she?”

Zayvion zipped his coat and made quick work of pulling things out of the trunk and attaching them to his body.

“Yes,” he said, “she is. She needs to touch you, Chase. This is her first time.”

Chase camped back on one hip. “You Read?”

“Sure.” I walked over to her. “Doesn’t everybody?” I placed my right hand below her neck, palm resting flat against her sternum. She was annoyed, a little jealous. That, I could have told just by looking at her. But the last emotion I picked up from her was fear.

Okay, maybe I should turn in my degree in body language. She didn’t look afraid at all on the outside.

“Done?” she asked.

“Uh, yes.” I pulled my hand away, stuck it back in my pocket where I could rub my thumb over my fingertips to try to wipe away the emotions I had sensed. But rubbing at my fingers wasn’t doing me any good. With each of their heartbeats tapping gently at my wrist, I found that if I thought about one of them, I could not only tell that they were breathing and conscious, I could also sense a hint of their mood.

Move over, lie detector tests. These suckers were good.

Shamus had taken his turn stuffing things in his coat pockets. I glanced over to see if the machetes were still in the trunk. They were not. Which meant Shamus and Zayvion had three-foot blades strapped onto their bodies somewhere.

In broad daylight. In the middle of the city.

“Should I take anything?” I asked, as Shamus slammed the trunk shut.

“A healthy sense of self-preservation would be good,” he said.

Zayvion reached over and wrapped his hand around my wrist, his fingertips pressing the medallion closer to my pulse. And I could tell that at this moment, he was intent and focused on nothing except me.

“Stay out of the way, out of reach. Use your defense spells if you must. Run, if you must. Just stay safe.” He pressed the hilt of a sheathed knife into my hand.

I knew that knife. It was the one he had given me when Pike was still alive. It was the only weapon I had ever killed someone with. It knew my blood, Zayvion’s blood. And it knew the blood of my enemy.

“Chase and I will take point,” he said, drawing his fingers away but leaving his heat behind. “You and Shamus will handle cleanup.”

Shamus was in the middle of lighting another cigarette. He gave me a quick wink and exhaled smoke. “Nothing but glamour, this job.”

“This is done.” Zayvion made it sound like a ritual, an ending, a prayer.

He motioned for us to walk away from the cars. There was enough room on the road that we could all walk shoulder to shoulder. Next to me was Zayvion, then Chase, then Shamus. As soon as we were a yard away from both cars, all three of them flicked their fingers, like flicking away a bug or, in Shamus’s case, tapping ashes off a cigarette.

With that one small motion, they each set a spell-I couldn’t tell which one-but I could tell exactly what it did. Instead of looking like three people armed for war, marching around in broad daylight, they looked. . normal. Average. Zay was his ratty-jacket-wearing, street-drifter self. Shamus passed for goth poser, and Chase looked like the kind of woman who chopped her own firewood, grew her own food, and didn’t take any flack.

None of them looked like they were carrying weapons, and I couldn’t even smell magic on them. I took a deep breath and all I smelled was Zay’s pine, Shamus’s cigarette smoke and cloves, Chase’s vanilla perfume, and the wet, green, rain-drenched soil and trees around us.

“Might want to put that away,” Shamus noted.

“What? Oh.” I belatedly tucked the knife I’d been holding like my life depended on it-ha, not funny-inside my coat, where it fit pretty well behind my belt and lay against my hip.

Zay turned to face the cars for a second. He wove a spell and knelt. His middle finger and thumb were pressed together. He opened his fingertips, and pressed his fingers into the wet gravel. I smelled the wash of a spell, slightly buttery and sweet. Then the cars were covered with leaves, and looked like they’d been there awhile, like maybe they were one of the neighbor’s cars or belonged to someone staying overnight.

The amazing thing about that simple spell was that it not only gave a visual camouflage, but it also gave off an emotional ping-that the cars belonged there and weren’t anything for anyone to take much note of. Subtle and natural, no one-not even the best Hounds-would think there was magic going on here.

“Wow,” I said.

Zayvion stood and gave me a short nod. “Thank you.” We walked to the end of the road and turned toward the park. It wasn’t far, but before we got there, Shamus touched my arm.

“Let’s get some coffee while they start,” he said.

“Don’t you need me to show you where I saw the gate and the Hungers?”

“No,” Chase said.

I looked at Zayvion. “We can tell. It’s about midpark, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “But I saw them while I was driving out of the parking lot.”

“We’ll go to the origin point,” he said. “Close the gate. Track out from there.”

“You mean the gate might still be open?” It had been hours since I’d been there. If the gate had been left open this entire time, there could be dozens, hells, hundreds of the Hungers on the street.

“Gates don’t Close on their own,” he said. “Someone always has to Close them.”

He and Chase continued walking, and Shamus tugged on my elbow again. He started walking uphill into the neighborhood and toward the main street. “Let them do this part. You and I can scout to find the Hungers’ nest.”

“They nest?”

Shamus shook his head. “Your da, he didn’t tell you a damn thing about magic, did he?”

And it was strange, now that we were a good distance away from Chase and Zay, I could feel the weight of my father in my mind again. Could feel the scratch behind my eyes that was going to drive me bat-shit crazy pretty soon.

“No.” I pressed at the bridge of my nose to keep from rubbing my eyes out. “Want to give me a quick rundown on procedures?”

“Easy. Z and Chase will stroll into the park clothed in Camouflage spells. Zay will close the gate-he’s the guardian; closing gates is his shtick. There are specific cancellation spells that you use for gates. They are hard as hell to cast and take a shitload of training and magic to work. Good Closers can use some of the magic that is suspended in the gate itself to fuel the spell, but still, it takes balls to shut those things out here in the dead zone. Probably another reason Tomi cast it out here. Harder to close.

“But as you intimately know,” he added, “Jones has balls. When it comes to magic.”

“Do you even listen to yourself?” I asked.

“And ruin the surprise? Once he closes the gate,” he said without breaking verbal stride, “the Hungers will know it. That’s where you and I come in. The Hungers should be nested, waiting for dark. We kind of hit the shiny side of luck with that one. If these things cross in the night, there’s no nesting. They’re everywhere. Get your workout trying to run one of these bastards down. Coffee?”

We’d made it up a couple blocks and a coffee shop was just across the street.

“We have time?”

“How fast can you drink?”

“Let’s do it,” I said.

Lucky for us, there wasn’t anyone in line. I ordered a cup of house brew, black. Shamus ordered half a cup of house brew. Then he proceeded to fill the cup up the rest of the way with milk and sugar. Lots of sugar.

“Sure you got enough milk in your sugar?” I asked as we strolled out of the shop and headed south.

He flipped me off. “You drink your coffee your way, and I’ll drink my coffee the right way.”

And we did. Quickly. My cup was almost empty and my throat almost burnt by the time we reached the end of the next block. We threw our cups in the garbage, and kept walking downhill toward the river and Cathedral Park, the St. Johns Bridge to our right.

“What do we do when we find the nest?” I asked.

“Kill them. As many as we can. You know how to set a Drain, right?”

“Let’s pretend I do.”

“Okay, in that case, you stand back like Zayvion said. I’ll set the Drains. Too bad you and I haven’t cast together before. If we were Complements or Contrasts, you could pour magic into the spells I throw.”

“We could try now,” I said. My dad, behind my eyes, fluttered and scratched. I don’t know what he was all worked up about.

“Why not?” Shamus ducked into the mouth of an alley and leaned against the wall. “I’m going to weave a simple Light spell, right?” He did so, quickly. Watching him made me feel like I was all thumbs. “A little magic.” He exhaled, and the Light spell glowed soft white in an orb the size of a golf ball.

Even though I was watching, I was pretty impressed with his reach. Magic did not pool naturally beneath St. Johns. He had to access it about five miles out, over on the other side of the train tracks where the city had stopped laying the networks and lines.

“Now you,” he said, “make it bright.”

The spell was tiny. Even if my way of casting and his completely clashed, the worst we’d probably get would be a flash and then nothing. Like fragile wire, the glyph he cast wouldn’t hold very much magic before it self-destructed.

I cleared my mind, set a Disbursement, and thought about how I could best feed magic into his spell.

Like this

, my father said. And I knew the way to cast the magic, almost with a flick of my wrist, so that the magic would catch and wrap naturally, matching the pulse of Shamus’s spell.

And sure, I could have ignored my dad. Could have decided he was just trying to screw me up. And sure, I thought about it.

Stubborn

, my father sighed.

I have not always tried to make your life miserable, Allison. Far from it.

I ignored his comment. If I were ever going to listen to him, this seemed like a fairly harmless time to do so. The light would either get brighter, or it would go out. No lives on the line with this spell.

So I cast magic the way he had shown me, pulling just the barest amount of it out of my flesh and bone and into Shamus’ spell.

The orb glowed brighter, doubling in intensity, but did not burn out.

“Sweet,” Shamus said. “Might be Complements, you and I.”

“I thought I was Complements with Zayvion.”

“Soul Complements, maybe, that whole rarest-of-the-rare, only-one-for-the-other thing. There are other degrees of magic use that complement one another. That aren’t as powerful and are still fairly rare. Mostly, there’s Contrasts or nothing. Course, you and I might be that too.”

“Contrasts?”

“Means our magic blends, sometimes perfectly, sometimes not so much. Do the same thing twice and get different results. Never know when it will work and when it won’t.”

He unwove the spell, then traced a new orb of Light into the air in front of him.

“Here’s the same thing I just cast. You do your part again. Exactly the same. Let’s see what happens.”

I cleared my mind, set a Disbursement, then drew magic through me just as my father had showed me, just as I had done the last time, and added it to Shamus’ spell.

Instead of growing brighter, the orb sizzled, filled with black specks, then went completely black. It snapped like a firecracker and was gone.

It happened so quickly, neither Shamus nor I had time to flinch away from it. I felt the failure of the spell like a quick headache behind my eyes that was gone almost as soon as it registered.

I dug my left thumb into my temple.

Shamus nodded. “Give you a pain?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his hands over the thighs of his jeans, as if trying to wipe away sweat or pain. “Thought as much. We’re Contrasts. That means you keep your magic to yourself, missy.”

I gave him a sour look. “Like I’d want my magic mixing with yours anyway.”

He chuckled. “Ooh. Spunky. I like. No time, unfortunately. Z and Chase should be done digging at the gate. Ought to have it closed anytime. Which should flush the Hungers from their nest.”

“And how, again, do we find them?”

“We don’t. They find us. Me,” he amended. “They find me. You stay quiet and don’t call attention to yourself.”

He headed down the sidewalk. “We need a side street, alleyway, abandoned building. Best would be a spot out of sight-especially since it’s still light out-but open enough we have room to maneuver.” He tipped his chin toward the left, where a broken-down metal shed that might have once been a workshop or warehouse huddled behind half of a rusted chain-link fence. Next to the shed was a patch of dirt and weeds.

Here, huddled between the rise of the bridge to our left and the untended bushes and scrub of the empty lot, we had everything Shamus had said he was looking for. Enough area to move in, and privacy from prying eyes.

He strolled through the gap in the fence and then over to stand beneath a sickly hemlock. I followed him.

“You’ll want to be over there.” He pointed at the rusted shed.

“Couldn’t you have said that before I walked all the way over here with you?” I kicked my way through the wet weeds that slapped at my shins. I put my back against the shed.

“And?” I asked.

“And don’t use magic. At all. Period. Not even Sight. Nothing. Got it?”

“The first time.”

He flashed me a grin, then shook out his hands and held them up, chest high, palms facing outward. He pulled on magic. Not just a small amount to fill a spell; Shamus accessed enough magic that I could taste it, feel it on the back of my throat like hot peppers when I swallowed.

He chanted, or at least I think he chanted. His lips moved and he was half whispering, half humming words I could not understand. A glow, something that didn’t look like anything more than weak sunlight through the storm clouds, surrounded him. That was not sunlight. It was magic.

The heartbeats against my wrist changed. The one I knew belonged to Shamus slowed and pumped harder, like he was falling into his stride in a marathon. But the other two rhythms, Zayvion and Chase’s hearts, suddenly quickened. I turned my thoughts toward Zayvion’s heartbeat and could feel his strain as he drew magic toward him, from the stores out past the rail line, from the stores on the other side of the river, and then could feel him focus all of that magic into one place.

A rush of heat flooded my body-it felt like I was blushing from head to toe. I swayed and took a step to right myself. Hells, he was pulling on so much magic, I could feel the drain in my bones. I bit the inside of my cheek and recited my Miss Mary Mack jingle to keep my head clear.

The heat rushed out of me. Zayvion’s heartbeat skipped, paused, long enough that I wondered whether his heart would beat again.

Chase’s heartbeat continued on, strong, heavy, almost as if she were trying to make up for the lack of his. I felt Shamus’ heart and I felt Chase’s heart. But not Zayvion’s.

The only emotion I could feel from Shamus was a sort of grim patience. When I focused on Chase’s heartbeat, I could feel her anger, her worry.

I opened my mouth to say something, and then I couldn’t move.

They had arrived. Nightmares, monsters. The Hungers I had seen running through the edge of the park loped up to the broken chain-link fence. And paused.

They looked more solid than when I had seen them in the park. They had killed, fed, devoured.

But if I had not been staring at them-if I had not been

expecting

them to be there-I would not have noticed them. They were silent. I couldn’t hear their breath, couldn’t hear their paws on the concrete. I breathed in, caught no scent other than the rain and green of the nearby river and the slight meaty tang from the sewer processing plant.

My senses said that they should not be there, that nothing but shadows hovered beyond the rusted gate. But a chill down my back raised every hair on my arms.

I looked into their eyes and knew I was gazing into death. It took everything I had to look away from them. Away from their eyes. It took everything I had to look instead at Shamus, softly glowing, chanting, with his feet spread wide, his face tipped up to the sky, eyes closed, as if caught in some sort of exaltation.

And it took everything I had not to run as the nightmares, the creatures, pushed through the gate-all of them just solid enough that they could not pass through the chain links, but instead had to squeeze through the hole between two fence posts. Silent, even in the wet, tall, noisy grass. Silent as only predators could be. Silent as winter’s killing cold. As death.

They ignored me, drawn to the magic Shamus was using.

Shamus did not move. There were a dozen of them, all bigger than a Saint Bernard, all muscled and thick. Tanks. Killing machines. They spread out, half stalking around behind Shamus, the rest in front and beside him, keeping equidistant and in a circle, maybe three yards between themselves and him.

They paused, tasting the air. Scenting their prey.

Every nerve in my body told me to run. And if not that, then to cast magic, to fight. To save Shamus before these things jumped him and tore him to shreds. But he had told me to hold still and not use magic, not smell like magic, not even look like I’d ever been around magic.

The Hungers stepped closer to Shamus.

Shamus pulled on more magic. The yellow-white glow didn’t grow bigger, but it brightened enough that I thought it might catch the eye of a casual passerby.

I glanced at the road, didn’t see any cars or people walking by.

Still, I thought Zayvion said they knew how to do this in daylight. I thought they knew how to do it without being seen. And I certainly thought they knew how to do it without leaving Shamus all alone to face down every nightmare that had crawled out of death’s hole.

Except, of course, that calling the nightmares was exactly what Shamus wanted to do.

The beasts crouched, stepped closer, closing the circle. Two yards out. Four feet.

Shamus tipped his chin down. He was no longer chanting. He was grinning, his arms spread wide as if welcoming the beasts in for an embrace.

His eyes burned with black fire. Literally. He lowered his head just enough that his hair fell forward, hiding his eyes. Then he pulled his hands together, as if in prayer, against his chest.

Zayvion’s heartbeat abruptly struck with bruising pain against my wrist. I sucked in a raking breath. My heart stung, beat on beat, in time with Zayvion’s pounding pulse.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

I pulled my wrist up to my chest, pressing it close, trying to ease the ache behind my ribs.

Zayvion was alive.

Shamus chanted, a soft singsong whisper that reminded me of a lullaby.

Even though he was singing a lullaby, things were going to hell over there. The beasts’ mouths gaped, muscled shoulders bunched, ready to jump, rip, devour. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t attack. And then I knew. Even without Sight I could tell they were draining the magic out of the spell he was chanting. Draining him.

The nightmares grew more and more solid, and Shamus stood there, head bowed, hands at his chest, humming a childhood song, while his heart pounded a slow, almost meditative beat. He was enduring the drain of magic. Enduring the pain, just as he had endured the Proxy I’d set on him.

The Hungers were no longer translucent at all. They were solid, slathering beasts, heads too large for their compact bodies, skin mottled with scales. Thick veins snaked beneath the mottled skin.

Magic, no longer just shadowed, but now black and thick as tar, pulsed through those veins. Magic that Shamus had just fed into them. Magic that pounded Shamus’ body and mind. Magic that punished him, drained him. And made the beasts stronger.

The beasts moved forward. Shamus swayed.Another step. Shamus’ song faltered. He licked his lips and sang on. Another step. Sweat or maybe tears dripped from the edge of his jaw. Even from across the field, I could see him tremble.

I couldn’t just stand there and watch him get eaten. I took a step away from the shed.

Just then, Shamus looked up. But not at me. He stared at the beasts in front of him. Then smiled and opened his hands, palms upward like he was pushing something up to shoulder height.

He stopped pulling on magic.

The beasts lunged.

“No!” I yelled.

I traced a glyph for Sight, filled it with magic, and drew the glyph for Hold so I could throw it at the beasts and stop them, even though Zayvion had told me not to use magic at all. I threw that spell at three of the beasts tearing at Shamus. As soon as I cast Hold, I remembered Zayvion had said it wouldn’t work.

Hells.

Shamus was still standing, still grinning, though I could not fathom how.

Hold hit two of the beasts. It locked down on one of the Hungers, clamped like a black-legged spider that latched on and pulsed, injecting the paralyzing venom of Hold into the beast’s flesh. For a second, I thought it might work. But instead of freezing, the Hunger stretched and absorbed the Hold spell like a gutter sucking down rain.

The beasts turned. Three of them. Toward me.

Bigger, faster, more solid. Their eyes widened, burning with unholy, bloody fire.

Right. Screwed up. Big time. Wondered if I’d live long enough to apologize to Shamus about it.

The Hungers charged.

Camouflage

, my father said.

In that second, with that one word, I saw the lines it would take to cast the Camouflage glyph. Where the beginning and ending twisted back to parallel one another, so the spell fooled the eye, ears, senses.

Screw the Disbursement. Screw trying to clear my mind. I drew the glyph for Camouflage as fast as my fingers could move and poured it full of magic, as much magic as I could get my hands on, as much magic as I had in me.

Hot, sweet, slippery, the taste of butterscotch stung my eyes to tears, snapped at the back of my throat and burned.

Still the beasts ran. Three yards away, two, one. I pulled the knife out of my belt and shifted my stance to brace for impact. I was really wishing I owned a gun right about now. Or, yes, that I’d started those damn self-defense classes Violet insisted I take.

No time to worry about that. Not while the bulldozers of gonna-fuck-you-up bore down on me, butterscotch coating and all.

Screwed, screwed, screwed.

A solid wall appeared in front of me and blackness slammed down. I yelled at the sudden absence of light and jerked back. I couldn’t see anything but blackness. I also couldn’t smell the creatures, couldn’t hear the creatures.

I was about to die, and I’d gone blind.

This sucked.

The wall reverberated with three heavy impacts that shook the ground like small earthquakes. The creatures, I think, slamming into the wall again and again. I stepped backward and traced a Blocking spell blind, from memory alone. I didn’t know how long before the Hungers pounded their way through that wall of darkness.

But before I put the last twist on the Blocking spell, the pounding stopped. For a second I stood there, wet, panting in the dark, too silent, too cold, too hot. Too damn blind. The heartbeats on my wrist thumped, three different drums in three different beats.

Then the wall exploded into smoke. Standing in front of me was Shamus.

He was pale. I didn’t know white could get that white. Through the heavy hang of his hair against his face, I noticed he had freckles I’d never seen before. His eyes burned green, carved beneath and above by black smudges. But he was not bloody or bruised. He just looked really, really angry.

“Didn’t I tell you not to use magic?” he growled. “ ‘Get back,’ I said. And did you? No.” He shoved my shoulder-my injured left one-so hard I yelped and stumbled. He palmed me ruthlessly toward the rusted metal building. “Stupid. Stubborn. You’re fucking trouble. Fine, if you want to die on your own. There’s fucking four of us out here.” Another shove, and my back hit the metal wall.

“I-”

“Shut it. Watch.”

He faced me, so close I could smell his sweat, feel the heat rise off his body. He kept his back to the open field. The way he stood, it was like he was a wall between me and the beasts. And since I had not let go of Sight (which was amazing, considering. Go, me) I could see the low glow of light caught in the folds on his clothes where only shadows should be. The air around him seemed thicker, as if glass stretched out to either side of him.

The grasses and weeds at his feet were already yellowed by winter, but the longer he stood in one place, the browner they became. A slow-creeping circle of dead grass and weeds extended out from his boots as he sucked life in to feed the exchange of magic.

Death magic

, my father whispered. And I caught a hint of him being impressed by Shamus’ skill, a hint that he hadn’t thought the boy he once knew would ever sacrifice enough to become a master in the art.

Shamus very calmly pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lit it, letting the match fall to die in the wet, brittle grass. When he slanted me a look, his eyes burned a green so dark, it was almost black.

That boy was pulling in some heavy magic.

Master indeed.

I didn’t know how he did it, but he really had become a wall, and was accessing a hell of a lot of magic in this magicless part of town to hold it in place. I briefly considered pouring some of my magic into his spell to support it, but we were Contrasts, unpredictable and explosive when mixed.

I looked past his shoulder. Zayvion, in his ratty blue ski coat and black beanie, strolled through the middle of the field, heading uphill and toward the base of the bridge. His head was bent, his hands loose at his sides. He looked like a transient, watching his feet and hoping to find a discarded miracle lying in the dirt and weeds.

But with Sight I saw not only Zayvion the street drifter, I also saw Zayvion the warrior.

Seven feet tall, his body was alight in a symphony of black fire and silver glyphs that whorled like tribal tattoos down his arms, torso, back, and legs. The black fire flickered with silver blades of light.

The beasts followed the light and darkness that was Zayvion, as if they could taste the magic he held, caught by his fire, his shadow, hungry, but just wary enough to stay several feet away from him.

I took a step forward. I wanted to be a part of that fire too, wanted to feel his hands on me, his magic in me. Wanted to be a part of whatever he really was. Wanted to know what he could be, maybe even what we could be together.

Shamus clamped his hand on my shoulder and pressed down until it hurt. The pain-normal physical pain-did wonders for clearing my mind and stopped me from walking after Zayvion.

“Beauty, isn’t he?” he said with just a hint of longing in his voice. “Guardian of the gates.” He nodded. “No one but Jones can handle that and come out of it breathing. And sane. Magic from Life, magic from Death, light and dark, Blood, Faith, and Flux; he’s got it all, uses it all. Some of them doubted him. Not me. Not once. Just have to look at him to see it. He’s more than any of us. Scary. But disciplined. Controlled. No matter what kind of shit he’s in. No one doubts him now. Not even Sedra.” He sucked on the cigarette, his eyes narrowing for a second while he considered me. “Well, until you came along.”

“Me? What does this have to do with me?”

“If you’re his Soul Complement, you’re just like him. One finger in each kind of magic. Light and dark. Able to break open or close the gates between our world and death. Maybe a lot more than that. You worry people, Beckstrom. I think you even worried your all-powerful da. I think that’s why he didn’t want you using magic. I think that’s why he kept you out of the Authority.”

“Trust me,” I said, “You don’t have to worry. If I could do half of what Zay’s doing, I wouldn’t be standing here with you. I’d be over there taking care of those things.”

Shamus just stared at me and sucked on his cigarette. Not exactly a vote of confidence. But not a dismissal either.

“Should we help him?” I asked.

“We should do nothing but stand here. Chase has him covered. I’ll do cleanup. You’ll do nothing. Nothing.” He exhaled smoke into the wet air. “If you so much as twitch, I’ll knock you out and hold you down until this is done.”

“You could try,” I said.

That got a tight smile out of him. “I bet you even worry Jones.”

The way he said it, I didn’t think he was joking.

The Hungers that I knew were solid, monstrous nightmare creatures now looked like dogs, sniffing around in the dirt, trotting at Zayvion’s heels. It was an Illusion, and a very clever one at that. I squinted at the shadow of the glyph that maintained the Illusion. The lines of the spell floated in the air toward the sickly hemlock tree.

Chase leaned against the trunk of the tree, one knee bent, the heel of her boot propped behind her. She didn’t look any different from the last time I’d seen her, flannel and black jeans. Tough, pretty, strong. No amazing transformation like Zayvion-on-fire. Her hands were shoved in her flannel overcoat, one of her shoulders hitched toward her ear. To the casual observer, she was watching Zayvion, waiting for him to join her under the tree and out of the lightly falling rain.

To the not-so-casual observer, like maybe someone with her back against a wall using Sight, it was clear she was maintaining the Illusion and had made the pack of monsters look like a pack of dogs.

To the not-so-casual observer, she was throwing around magic like it was as easy as breathing, like it cost nothing. I wondered whether people in the Authority Proxied their spells. If I had to guess, I’d say Chase did. I wasn’t sure about Zayvion. And I’d guess Shamus took the pain for casting his spells. Maybe even liked it.

Chase lifted her chin and met my gaze. I was pretty sure Shamus’ wall blocked us from the creatures’ senses, but that didn’t make us invisible. Chase’s mouth quirked, and there was challenge in her eyes. I was not about to take that challenge. Sure, I was good at magic, but as people seemed to be pointing out to me, I was largely untrained. Watching Chase manipulate the Illusion filled me with a burning desire to learn more and fast. Then the next time she gave me that condescending, dismissive look, I could smack a spell up the backside of her head.

Zayvion started whistling. Soft, swaying, the song was an old folk or country tune, something that brought to mind half-remembered words of a man wanting to waltz with a woman but ending up dead, his lonely ghost calling her name and wandering the land.

At the end of the chorus, Zayvion stopped, turned. He pulled the machete out from beneath his coat. Chase had an Illusion for that one too. To the nonmagical eye, he was doing nothing more than stretching.

But the beasts saw him for what he really was. A seven-foot-tall, burning black and silver god of a man wielding a wicked steel and glass machete glyphed to a killing edge.

The beasts leaped. Zayvion caught the first one through the chest with the tip of his blade. He pulled the blade free and pivoted, swinging the machete more like a billy club than a sword, putting the strength of his body into it. He sliced the next beast in half. Both sides of the creature fell to the grass and quivered.

I blinked, lost my focus on Sight for a half second, and the scene changed to Zayvion standing there, lighting a cigarette while the dogs wandered aimlessly around him and eventually made their way into the shadows under the bridge and out of sight.

Note to self: Chase can kick some serious Illusion ass.

I concentrated on Sight again. The glyph was still there, still working.

And Zayvion was still fighting. Silent, even in the noisy grass, he took the next beast through the thick head, the blade wedging and not coming free. He abandoned the machete, and a string with glyphed blades at the end appeared in his hands.

It didn’t look like a formidable weapon, and frankly, I was trying to figure out why he didn’t just pull a gun. Zayvion said a word I didn’t hear-maybe Chase was working a Mute spell too-and the string burned with wicked fire. Magic dripped like flame down the edges of the blade. He swung the string in a tight circle and folded it against his chest to shorten and change the string’s direction. The blade whipped out and cut off the front legs of the creature nearest him. A second strike through the ribs, and the thing moved no more.

This time I saw the Hunger’s muzzle open in a howl.

But I heard nothing. Definitely a Mute spell. Zayvion probably didn’t use a gun because Mute, even a really strong Mute, still allowed some noise to escape. And it was harder to hold an Illusion and Mute spell at the same time, doubly so in the dead zone of St. Johns. But a machete and rope-pretty easy to mask the sound of their strikes.

And apparently, the howl of undead, unliving beasts.

The rest of the creatures seemed to finally figure out that Zayvion was going to finish them off in short order. As if a cue had been sent, they took off running, fast, fluid, disappearing beneath the bridge.

Zayvion swore-that I heard-and Chase and he set off after the Hungers, their heartbeats tapping fast at my wrist.

Shamus flicked his cigarette to the ground and rolled his boot over it. He also dropped whatever spell he had been using to hold up that wall.

He coughed a couple times and spat.

“Shouldn’t we follow them?”

“No.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, but not before I noticed the blood at the corner of his lips. “I’m going to clean up. You can watch if you want.”

It really bugged me to just stand around while other people were working, but I’d said I only wanted to come so I could learn. So I could keep my people safe from those creatures. So I would know what to do next time. So I never had to haul Davy’s broken and bleeding body into the hospital again.

All I’d learned so far was that it took at least three people to handle the Hungers. And a certain knowledge with weapons.

Which meant, if I really wanted to know how to fight these things, I had a lot of learning ahead of me.

Shamus must have taken my silence for agreement. He walked off toward the dead-at least I hoped they were dead-bodies of the Hungers.

I put the knife back in my belt and followed, noting the circle of dead grass where Shamus had stood had grown to six feet in diameter.

“Bet you suck at gardening,” I observed.

Shamus shrugged. “It’s all about energy exchange. It could always go the other way, me feeding a plant instead of drawing the life out of it.”

“Do that often?”

Shamus looked at me over his shoulder. “No.”

“Why not? Have something against plants?”

“No, but I haven’t met a vegetable good enough to sacrifice a year of my life for.”

“What?”

“Energy exchange. Death magic is all about transition, transfer, mutation, change from one state into another.” At my look, he rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. This is the ABC’s. I can draw the life energy out of a living thing, like a plant, or I can give my life energy to a living thing, like a plant. Once that connection is set, it is a carrier for magic. And that carrier-say it with me: Death magic-shifts how magic responds when it is cast into glyphs.”

We stopped above the inert creatures. They were reduced to a strange collection of torsos, limbs, and body parts. Zayvion’s machete stuck out of the skull of one of the things, hilt toward the sky, with just enough blade showing that it caught silver in the light. Fluid, thicker than blood, oozed black from every wound. I still didn’t smell any kind of scent from them.

What had Shamus said? Death magic was hard to Hound?

“So, yeah, I like my vegetables. Don’t love ’em enough to die for them.” He knelt and poked a finger at one of the Hungers. His finger disappeared to the last knuckle inside the flesh, like he’d jabbed a stick into sand. He pulled his finger back. It came out clean.

Not so much creepy as sort of barf-inspiring.

It didn’t seem to bother Shamus. “I’m going to stay here and retrieve the rest of the energy they fed on-since a lot of it was mine. Give me your word you’ll stay out of trouble.”

“Scout’s honor,” I drawled.

“Close enough.” He traced a spell, one I did not know, into the air above the creature nearest him. The Sight spell I had cast was gone now, and I’d promised not to use any more magic, so I had to settle for the very normal sight of Shamus kneeling over four butchered nightmares.

He tipped his head back a little and closed his eyes. He whispered something, a single liquid word. Then a look of rapture crossed his face. His heartbeat slowed, and when I turned my thoughts to how he was feeling, I was surprised at the slick, lazy euphoria that filled him. Apparently, this was the upside of using Death magic.

The Hunger nearest him began to fade. Within two minutes, it was gone, all the remaining energy that made it solid absorbed by Shamus, leaving nothing, not even black blood behind.

Shamus sighed. Maybe it was my imagination, but he didn’t look quite so pale. Without opening his eyes, he whispered that liquid word again. The next beast began to fade, and a second, stronger rush of euphoria took him.

If I stayed in touch any longer with his emotions, I was going to get a friggin’ contact high.

The wind picked up, pushing the misty air around and reminding me that it had been a long day. I was cold. Tired. Wet. I tucked my chin into my collar and exhaled, my breath doing little to warm me up. I wondered if Zayvion and Chase were done running the Hungers down. I glanced over the way they had gone, didn’t see any movements there. Of course, Chase was pretty good at Illusion.

“Daniel Beckstrom.”

I spun at the voice behind me.

The Necromorph crouched on all fours in the shadows behind the metal building. I had no idea how long he’d been standing there, but he was thicker, stronger than when he’d jumped me. I think he’d been feeding well too.

Shit.

The wind shifted. I smelled death and blood and burnt blackberry-him-and then strawberries and bubble gum. Tomi’s scents. The murderer shifted up and back, jerking his hand as if he were pulling a rope tight. I heard a very human whimper behind him.

Tomi stumbled forward into the tepid light.

I sucked in a breath. Every inch of exposed skin was black and blue or covered in blood.

“Shame,” I said.

Shamus didn’t move. Not an inch.

I took a cautious step back and shook Shame’s shoulder. He was too caught in the rapture. I didn’t know how to break whatever spell he was using.

Inside my head, my dad had gone very, very quiet. He didn’t seem afraid of the murderer. No, he seemed terrified. And angry. Bad combination for a powerful dead guy who could run my body on remote control.

“You betrayed me,” the Necromorph growled quietly, but not too quietly for me, not for my Hound ears. I could hear him across any distance. “And now your death will free me.”

The murderer turned, lost again to the shadows.

I heard a high, muffled scream.

Shit, shit.

Quick mental calculation: Shamus zoned out. Zay and Chase running down the Hungers. I could feel their heartbeats, still fast, still alive. They might even be done killing them by now. They might be back any minute.

Shit, shit, shit.

Tomi didn’t have time for any minute. I strode around Shamus. Careful not to touch the Hungers, I pulled Zayvion’s machete out of one of the remaining creature’s skull.

Black ichor clung to the blade and then was absorbed, the faint ribbons of glyphs worked into the steel sucking away the blood.

Time to find out what this thing could do to a Necromorph.

I held the machete low against my side and jogged to the back of the building. I sang my Mary Mack song. I needed to keep a clear head. A cool head. And a Disbursement. Needed one of those too. I decided on body ache, afraid to add any more to the headache and push it up into deadly levels.

Dying was not in my plans for the day.

If you have a suggestion

, I thought to my father, who had been too silent for too long,

I’d love to hear it.

He surprised me by answering.

Let him kill the girl. While he feeds on her, he will be vulnerable and you can kill him.

No.

The price of one life is nothing to destroying that monstrosity.

I will not stand by and let one of my Hounds-hells, let anyone-die just so I can get a clear shot at that thing

, I said.

Allison

, he warned.

No. Done. Final.

I slowed and walked down the narrow path behind the shed, brambles as high as my head forming a wall uphill to the left of me, the shed to my right. A pile of discarded wood-two-by-fours and broken pallets-made the footing tricky. There was no room here to swing the machete. I traced an Impact glyph-something strong enough to blow that thing off his feet-with my left hand and held it there, pinched between my fingers, ready for me to fill it with magic.

All it needed to do was buy me some time so I could get in better machete-swinging range.

One metal panel on the back of the shed was rusted and bent open. I glanced in. There was just enough light fingering through cracks at the roofline and seams of the wall panels that I could make out the figures in the otherwise empty building. The Necromorph stood on all fours, rocking side to side, his head low. Tomi sat beside him, her arms extended to chest height, fingers spread wide, shaking, but poised to cast magic. Even in the low light I could see her eyes were wide and blank.

My heartbeat kicked into fight-or-flight, but my mind went totally clear. I could do this. Take that bastard down and save Tomi. As a matter of fact, I was looking forward to this.

We could end this. End him. He could be the proof that dark magic is too dangerous, even in good hands. The end of those who seek to open the gates and bring Mikhail back. You and I have the power to change which magic is used and how. We could rule the Authority, if we so wished.

My father was a cold fire in the center of my head, raging, babbling.

Tell me later

, I said.

When I’m not busy staying alive.

I stepped quietly into the shed, holding to the shadows alongside the wall, the machete’s blade raised so I could swing quickly.

The murderer growled, and Tomi whimpered again.

First, throw the Impact to knock him out. Next, go in swinging.

It wasn’t a big plan, but it was simple. I liked simple.

Allison,

my dad said.

Wait for him to feed on the girl. He will be vulnerable.

Like hell

, I said.

The thing sunk fangs into Tomi’s shoulder and she yelled, her blood pouring down her arms to her hands. Hands that wove a spell for him.

I poured magic into the Impact glyph and threw it at him with everything I had.

No!

But I wasn’t listening to my dad. I ran, covered the distance between me and the murderer with half a dozen pounding strides.

The Impact hit its mark and the beast toppled. Tomi crumpled, unconscious. The Necromorph only stayed down for a second before he turned, faced me.

And smiled.

Block. Block!

Dad yelled in my head.

I tried. But it is impossible to trace a glyph at a full run, with a clear enough mind to do it correctly, and fill it with magic when your frickin’ dad is yelling at you.

The Necromorph lunged at me.

Oh, shit.

My dad, all cold fire and hate in my head, pushed past me. Shoved me out of the way. A wave of vertigo spun the room. I was chanting, only it wasn’t me chanting. It was my father. Using me. Using my body, my mouth. Again.

For the love of all that’s holy, he had to stop doing that shit.

He raised my hands, tracing something with my left that made black fire-fire a lot like what I saw Zayvion wield-drip down the blade of the machete.

The Necromorph jumped, slammed into me. I went down and knocked the back of my head against the ground. I knew it hurt, but it was a distant sort of pain.

My dad angled the blade, thrust it at the Necromorph.

The Necromorph dodged out of the way, standing back on two legs.

I, or rather my dad, scrambled up onto my feet. I wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Tell me who owns you,” my father said with my mouth. “Tell me who hired you to kill me. Tell me, or this will be your end, Greyson.”

Greyson? Chase’s ex-boyfriend? The man she thought might be her Soul Complement? The man Zayvion said was dead?

Holy crap.

“There is no end for me.” Greyson stretched his neck so the disk implanted in his flesh shone a sickly green. “Not anymore. You have seen to that. You and your technology. But there is still revenge for me. And I will have it through you, Daniel Beckstrom.”

Greyson opened his mouth, his jaw unhinging so that I could see all of his serrated teeth. He inhaled, and I could feel him drawing like a hard wind in my brain.

My dad yelled. I had never heard him yell like that before, had never heard myself yell like that before.

I knew he, we, were in excruciating pain. But I didn’t feel it.

I pushed to regain control of my body, willing him to move out of the way, to step aside so I could be in the front of my own mind.

With that thought, I was fully in control of my body, and could feel every aching inch of it. I think I broke a rib.

It was too damn easy to take control of myself. And I knew why. Greyson somehow had a hold on my dad’s soul and was sucking him out of my head.

My dad still screamed, but not from inside my head.

In the dim light of the warehouse, I could just make out the watercolor image of my father wavering in the air between Greyson and me. Dark business suit, gray hair, and eyes too much like mine, his face contorted by agony. He yelled, but even as I watched, he was fading, becoming less and less solid, his screams quieter and quieter as Greyson breathed him in.

Greyson drank his soul like the Hungers had drunk down magic. The disk at his neck pulsed with magic.

I was beginning to dislike those damn things.

With each heartbeat, my father faded, and Greyson slowly changed from the beast he was back into the man he had once been.

Long black hair fell around his rugged, long-featured face-one a model would kill for. He was taller than me, wide in the shoulders, his beastly form shifting into the scarred and muscled body of an athlete, a runner.

Yes, he was naked. Yes, even with my dad screaming and Tomi unconscious and possibly dead, I looked.

Very nice in that department too.

Allison

, my father whispered.

He will hunt. Violet. Please.

Here is the problem with being left in the dark about magic and the people who use it. I wasn’t sure if Greyson draining my father’s soul was a good thing or a bad thing. But I did know this: my father had asked me

please

only once.

And I also knew that even if Greyson had been Chase’s lover, he had also killed my dad.

That did not make us friends, no matter what I thought about my father.

Fuck.

I didn’t know how to break Greyson’s hold on my dad, but I might be able to stop him.

I traced a Hold spell and poured magic into the glyph. I threw it at him. Nothing.

Well, since magic didn’t work, it was time to get back to basics. I ran past my father’s ghost and swung the machete at Greyson’s head.

A sharp pain shot across my ribs and I groaned. Yep. Broken.

My swing fell a little short, pain hitching my reach. Greyson had good reflexes. He twisted away from most of the strike. Just the tip of the blade bit flesh, drawing a deep line of blood across his biceps.

My father wasn’t screaming anymore. There wasn’t much of him left to scream. Only the very faintest outline of him and two dark holes where his eyes should be were all that remained of his soul. I didn’t know how to get him back in my head, didn’t really want him back. But swinging at Greyson had broken his concentration.

I knew if Greyson got one more sip of him, he would have absorbed my father’s soul.

And if Greyson could carry around my father’s soul like I could, then Dad would be awake, aware, just like he was in me.

I did not like the idea of my father, and all the spells and training he had, being at the beck and call of Murder Boy over there.

Greyson opened his mouth, unhinged his human-looking jaw.

No time to think.

I ran to my dad’s ghost, ran

into

his ghost and inhaled, occupying the same space.

I didn’t know how to ask a spirit to possess me. So I did my best to clear my mind and concentrate on allowing my father’s soul, his mind, back into me.

I am a river and magic flows through me. Your soul is a part of that magic, a part of the magic I carry in me.

“Come back to me, Dad,” I said with enough Influence, I think even my willful father would respond.

A cool breeze, soft as a sigh, washed over me. I smelled wintergreen. Tasted leather. My father’s scents. But it was faint. So faint.

“Dad?”

No response.

And still no time.

Greyson yelled. That wasn’t good.

I turned. Threw both my arms up to protect my face.

A massive figure charged out of the shadows and hit Greyson like a one-ton truck.

Greyson rolled, but the beast kept after him. Greyson finally crumpled beneath the beast. And it was a beast. A very familiar beast.

Stone growled. His strange pipe-organ vacuum-cleaner croon now had a primal guttural rattle. He did not like Greyson. Not one bit.

I didn’t know where the big lug had come from, but I was really happy to see him.

He had Greyson pinned with one stone hand on his throat, and the other shoved in the center of his chest. Stone rocked forward, leaning a little more weight on each hand.

Greyson yelled.

So, here’s the deal. I had no problem with Stone making mush out of this guy. Maybe in man form Greyson could not only feel pain, he could also die. He sure hadn’t died in beast form when Stone messed him up before.

But I didn’t know if my dad was in me. I didn’t know if my dad was in Greyson. And the last thing Dad had asked him was who hired Greyson to murder my father. Greyson had answers to questions I wanted solved. Whether or not my dad’s soul was in me, in Greyson, or finally at rest.

“Stone, don’t,” I said. “Don’t kill him. Yet.”

The breathing boulder actually listened to me and eased up a little. Not that it did Greyson much good. He was bleeding, and from the angle of his arm and leg, broken. But bleeding and broken weren’t enough to make Stone let go of him.

And yes, Greyson’s wounds were already healing, just like they had in the alley, though I didn’t see dark magic filling him. No, just the disk that pulsed green at his neck.

A shiver ran down my sweaty back. Every instinct in my body told me the man on the floor was inhuman. Something that broke the rules of life and death.

Yeah, I know. So says the woman who keeps a dead man as a brain buddy.

Already Greyson looked less human. His face shifted into feral angles, his limbs bent and twisted into the form of the beast.

Maybe losing his humanity meant he no longer had my father’s soul. Maybe it meant I still had my father’s soul, what was left of it, inside me.

I’d cheer, but, really, who was I kidding? I had a couple problems on my hands here.

I shifted my grip on the machete. Cutting Greyson may not stop him, but large injuries seemed to slow him down some. And I was hankering to stab somebody until they told me what the hell I wanted to know.

“What did you do to Tomi?” I asked. “What did you do to my dad? Is he still in you? Did you kill him? Again? Did you fuck up Davy? Who hired you? Who put that damn disk in your neck? Why did taking my dad’s soul change you?”

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t move.

Yeah, I heard it too. Footsteps coming close to the shed.

The room suddenly flooded with light. Greyson looked over my shoulder.

I did too. That was stupid. Luckily, Stone was not at all interested in the light. He stared straight at Greyson and growled again.

Chase strode into the warehouse through the same hole in the wall I’d gone through. She held an orb, the source of the light, in her left hand. The fingers of her right hand curled around a snakelike glyph that I could see even without Sight.

“Allie?” she called.

“I’m fine,” I said even though I wasn’t. Because, really, right now I was a little worried that the kick-ass woman behind me was going to meet her undead, half-beast murderer boyfriend and oh, I don’t know, maybe the conversation would get awkward. If I understood her job description, it was a Closer’s duty, Chase’s duty, to Close people who used magic wrong, who used magic to hurt others. And that meant it was her job to kill Greyson.

The man she once loved.

The beast he now was.

Who might house my father’s soul.

Who might know who was behind my dad’s death.

Who might be impossible to kill.

Holy shit.

She strode over to me like she didn’t believe a word I’d said. Good instincts.

Greyson was still sliding into his mutated beast form, the disk at his neck pulsing toxic silver-green with every beat of his heart. He didn’t run, not that he could get out from under Stone’s grip. He didn’t raise his hands to cast a spell. He simply lay there. Watching Chase draw nearer. The rhythm of his heartbeat quickened, and the disk at his neck pulsed faster.

Pain twisted his face while contortions changed his body.

Chase caught sight of Stone and Greyson and paused midstride. She seemed to catch herself and finished the march to my side. She dimmed the light to nonnuclear levels and stopped next to me.

“Greyson?” she breathed.

“Please,” he said, his voice still more man than beast, “let me go.”

The spell in her right hand flickered and died, but the orb still burned, deep yellow now, like dying candlelight that caressed Greyson’s face, blurring the edges until it seemed only the man rested within its glow.

She was losing concentration. Probably going into shock.

I didn’t blame her, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her shock get me killed.

“Oh, Grey.” Her words caught. She swallowed, tried again. “I–I can’t.”

Greyson lifted one hand toward her but did not touch her, even though he could have. “Then look away. Please look away.”

Chase was shaking. “No. We can help you. We can undo this.”

Greyson shook his head. “No one can. Not even Zayvion.”

Chase’s breath caught in her throat. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth as if she could somehow keep the sorrow behind her lips. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, but I knew she was doing mad work to clear her mind. Her heart at my wrist fluttered like a hummingbird in flight.

When she spoke, she was no hummingbird. She was steel and ice. “Tell me who did this to you.”

“Daniel Beckstrom,” he growled.

Chase swung on me so fast I didn’t even have time to exhale. And that bitch knew how to throw a punch. I took it just below the eye, and fell. Blood poured down the back of my throat, and the dust from the floor filled my mouth. She’d put something else behind that hit. I couldn’t move. Not even to pull the knife out of my belt.

I’d spun before I landed so now the only thing in my line of vision was the bent metal opening at the back of the building.

I could still hear, which was something, I suppose. I heard Stone growl and jump. I heard Chase chant and throw magic. The ground shook as Stone hit the floor and was silent. After that, I heard Greyson getting onto his feet.

“Chase?” Greyson said.

“Go.”

I heard the sound of four feet running, watched as Greyson headed toward the opening in the wall.

She had let him go. She had let my dad’s murderer free.

But just as Greyson reached the opening, a figure stepped through it. Zayvion, with a two-by-four over his shoulder. He swung at Greyson like a batter aiming for the far wall, and connected with his head.

Greyson flew out of my line of vision. Zayvion adjusted his hold on the board and drew a glyph in the air with his left hand. He threw the spell at Greyson. I didn’t hear any other movement from that part of the room.

“Looks like this worked out to our advantage after all,” Zayvion said. “Do you want to explain this to me, Chase?” He left my vision, weaving another spell, walking toward where Greyson fell.

For a second I thought Chase had left to be beside Greyson too. But she squatted down next to me, her boot inches from my face.

She tugged my chin to one side so I could see her cold, cold face. “You have screwed with the wrong woman, Beckstrom,” she whispered. She pressed her fingertip into the center of my forehead.

And then everything went black.