Magic to the Bone

Chapter Sixteen

“Allie?” It is strange to hear your name when you think you should be dead.

I tried to answer.

“Allie?” Same voice. A soft voice. A woman’s voice.

“Allie?” Nola. That was her name. Nola was looking for me.

I moved my mouth (I had a mouth!) and opened my eyes (eyes!). Light, low and yellow, shone on Nola, on Nola’s pretty face above me.

She smiled and her eyes watered. “Welcome home, honey. Drink some water.” She put a straw to my lips, without asking—typical Nola—and I drank. That was an exhausting thing to do, and I fell gratefully back to sleep again.

It is a weird thing to wake up in a bed you don’t remember falling asleep in. Daylight was filtering in through the shades on the window, so I at least knew what bed I was in—Nola’s cozy guest room. I could not remember getting here.

As a matter of fact, the last thing I remember was getting up and wanting a cup of coffee. Because it was my birthday, and I was twenty-five today. And since I was miles from where I last remember being, I was going to assume I’d had a hell of a night, drank my ass off, and ended up out here at Nola’s partying.

My head hurt like I had the granddaddy of all hangovers, and my mouth tasted horrible. I couldn’t remember anything about my birthday though. I rubbed my hands over my eyes, caught a flash of colors.

My right hand was ribboned in peacock-feather colors of metal, and my left hand was tattooed around every knuckle. A faint memory flickered at the back of my mind, but I could not draw it forward.

Hells. Lost memories meant I’d been using magic—maybe Hounded too hard and had my short-term memory pay the price for it.

What kind of idiot was I? Add to that the IV tube in my left arm, and it was pretty safe to assume I’d really done something stupid.

Nola walked into my room with an armful of sheets.

“Morning,” I said.

She jumped and had to catch the sheets before they hit the floor. I grinned.

“Allie,” she said. “You’re awake!”

“Yes. What’s got you spooked?”

Nola put the sheets down in the spare chair and hurried over to sit on the bed next to me. Her tanned skin was flushed red and her eyes looked bloodshot, like maybe she hadn’t gotten much sleep lately.

“How are you feeling? Don’t try to sit. Let me get you water. Do you know where you are?”

Okay, now she really had me worried. I’d never seen her rattled.

“Slow down,” I said. “One thing at a time. I hurt some. Did I use a lot of magic recently?”

She nodded.

I exhaled in relief. “Okay, that explains the memory loss. Is today still my birthday?”

“Oh, honey.” She brushed my hair back from my forehead and her cool fingers felt good. Why did I wish they felt like mint?

“Your birthday was three weeks ago.”

“Wow,” I said. “Did I have a good time?”

Nola laughed, but she was crying too. “No. It was a miserable birthday.”

“Except for my cool tattoos?” Making jokes when I’m scared and the world is falling apart, and I can’t remember anything and just want to cry, is one of my strong suits.

“Tattoos?”

I held up my hands.

She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped at her face, then blew her nose. “Those aren’t tattoos, honey.”

I knew that. I just wanted her to tell me what they were, because I had absolutely no idea.

“I’m going to get you water, and you are going to drink. You are also going to try some broth. While you do that, I’ll try to help you remember . . . remember everything.”

“I don’t want any broth,” I said.

“Too bad. And Jupe is going to stay here and keep an eye on you until I come back.”

I looked over and, sure enough, the big ox came trotting into the room and rested his head on the edge of the bed.

“Stay,” Nola said, to me as much as the dog.

I was so glad she was bossing me around, because it meant she thought I really was going to be okay. But I wasn’t as convinced. I felt sore, inside and out.

Emotions flooded through me—fear, anger, sorrow, loss—in a confusing wave. Even though I hate crying, and had no idea why I wanted to cry right now, I could not stop the tears that ran down my face.

It made me angry that I was crying for no reason, or maybe for a reason I couldn’t recall. And being angry only made me cry harder.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. If I’d had the strength, I’d pound the walls. But I couldn’t even muster the energy to sit up.

When I heard Nola walk toward the room, I averted my face and stared at the curtains. I wiped at my cheeks with my strange, multicolored hand, a hand that did not look like my own. Sorrow tightened my chest, but I took three deep, calming breaths. I could do this. I could survive finding out what I didn’t know anymore. I could survive losing bits of my life, and bits of myself. I’d done it before and been okay. Mostly.

“Let’s get you sitting,” Nola said. She leaned over me and I looked up at her. Even though I figured my eyes were puffy and red, and my cheeks and nose were all blotchy, she did not say a word about it. She didn’t make comforting noises, or tell me she was sorry. She was just her normal, strong, matter-of-fact self. “You’re not broken,” she said, “just a little bruised.”

She was the best friend ever.

It hurt to sit, hurt more to stay sitting, but with Nola’s help, I managed.

“You okay?” she asked.

I was shaking, sweating. “I’m good.”

She put a tray over my legs and set a cup of broth, a spoon, a straw, and a carefully folded white napkin on it. There was something about the neatness of the napkin, pressed cloth, spotless white, that tickled the back of my mind. Then the sensation was gone.

“So.” Nola kicked off her boots and sat on the bottom of the bed, leaning against the footboard. Something down on the floor mewed. She got off the bed, and sat back down with a little gray kitten in front of her. The kitten picked its way across the quilt, exploring the folds and batting at the ridges.

Cute. I didn’t know she had a cat.

“Where shall we start?” Nola asked. “Your birthday. Do you remember me calling and telling you to come out and visit me?”

I frowned. “I don’t think—no, I don’t think so.” I picked up the spoon and was surprised at how heavy it was.

“I left you a message because you weren’t at your apartment. You later told me you were Hounding a hit up in St. John’s.”

The room got hot all of a sudden and twirled like a merry-go-round. I wanted to puke. I think I dropped my spoon. Somewhere in that gut-wrenching chaos were my memories of St. John’s, but no matter how far into it I leaned, I could not snag the bronze ring and retrieve them.

“Here now,” Nola said.

She was above me. I was lying again, covered in sweat. But at least the room had stopped spinning. She put a cool cloth on my forehead and I reveled in the simple, soothing pleasure of it. Okay, maybe I wasn’t feeling as good as I thought I was.

“You’re fine,” she said. “I’ll go slower. We have plenty of time to straighten this out. Plenty. Sleep now. Sleep.”

And I did.

The next day, or at least I hoped it was the next day, I woke early. Tendrils of anxious dreams slid away, leaving me with nothing but a hollow feeling of loneliness. My arm no longer had the IV hooked to it, so I decided to go take a bath.

I pushed the covers back, levered up, and rested a while before making my way slowly, hand on the walls for balance, into the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the tub and rested until I stopped trembling, then finally stood and stripped naked.

The image in the mirror was a shock. Whorls of metallic ribbons marked me from temple to fingertip on my right, rings of black banded my fingers, wrist, and elbow on my left. The blood magic scars on my left deltoid were slashes of red.

A ragged, pink scar as wide as my hand puckered just below my ribs on my left, and a thumb-sized circle sat just below my collarbone.

Wow. So much for wearing a bikini.

I leaned against the sink and stared at my eyes, trying to fit this reality of the new me with the knowledge of the old me. My eyes were still pale green like my father’s, I still had short hair, though it looked like I needed a cut soon, and I was a little on the thin side. Still, I was me.

“This is it,” I whispered. “This is me now. I can deal with it.”

There was a knock on the door. “Allie?”

“I’m going to take a bath,” I said.

“Need any help?”

I did. And I knew Nola would be happy to be of assistance. But what I needed even more than her help was my life back, or at least a sense of normalcy. And that meant sucking it up and taking care of things myself as much as I could.

“I got it so far.”

She waited outside the door. I took a deep breath and made it back to the tub. I crawled into it and eased down onto the cold ceramic. I turned on the spigots until the water poured out hot.

“I’ll get breakfast started and bring you some towels,” Nola said through the door.

“I can do it,” I lied. Luckily, she was already gone.

Turns out I did need help getting out of the tub, getting dried, and getting dressed. I also needed some help back to bed. Even so, I felt pretty good about my accomplishment for the day.

I leaned back against the pillows Nola propped between me and the headboard of the bed, and breathed hard until my heart stopped beating so fast.

“A couple more days like this, and I’ll be ready to run a marathon.”

“How about you get through a meal without passing out first?” Nola said.

“Spoilsport.”

She smiled. “I have oatmeal for breakfast. What kind of tea do you want?”

“No coffee?”

“Let’s start with tea.”

“Fine. Do you have mint?”

Nola frowned. “Mint? Are you sure?”

“I think so. Why? Don’t I like mint?”

She shrugged. “You’ve never asked me for it before, but maybe you developed a taste for it recently.”

I thought about that, tried to remember if I drank mint tea, but no clear image came back to me. What came to me was an emotional memory of the comfort, ease, and pleasure mint could offer. For whatever reason, I liked mint and I missed it. A lot.

“I guess,” I said.

Nola patted my leg and strolled out of the room.

She spent the rest of the day giving me back what memories she could. Not much of it made sense, but I carried an unconscious knowledge, an afterimage of it all deep in my subconscious. My emotional memory was intact. I remembered the grief, the anger, the fear, the pain, if not the actual events themselves.

My father had died.

I’d been shot. Twice.

Accused of murder.

Cleared of that accusation by Mama’s and Cody’s testimony.

I had drawn upon magic so hard that it had been permanently burned into my skin, my bones.

I healed someone.

I’d totally missed out on my birthday. No presents, no party, no song.

I had missed my father’s funeral.

And I might even have fallen in love with a man named Zayvion Jones.

I had done so much, and lost it all.

Nola didn’t seem to think it was something out of the ordinary for me to deal with, but I didn’t think I had ever lost this much memory at one time before. That magic I’d done—the last thing in Mama’s kitchen that Zayvion had apparently told Nola about—had nearly killed me.

If you used magic, it used you too, and I had used the hell out of it, probably without setting a Disbursement. It was just my luck that my price had been twofold, physical pain—a coma—and massive memory loss.

I hoped I had made the right choice. I hoped that if I still knew what I had known then, I would make the same choice.

Wishing I’d done something different—maybe not used magic so much, maybe not gone up to St. John’s, maybe not gone to see my dad, maybe not tried to help Cody—would only drive me insane. And most of the time I felt too close to crazy already.

About a week through my recovery, when I had graduated to the couch and could get around the house slowly on my own, I sat in the living room and picked up my little blank book.

Nola was in town, talking to some people about becoming a caregiver for Cody. She felt strongly that getting him away from any place that had magic would be best for all concerned. And from what she’d told me about him, I agreed.

I opened the book. The first few pages had my name, birthday, and medical allergies listed. Some other things too, like the number for the police, for the hospital, my address, and Nola’s. Filling most of the pages after that were the notes I had taken before my birthday.

From the date of my birthday forward were only a few sparse notes outlining Mama’s call to me, the Hounding job I’d done on Boy, the trip I’d made to see my dad. My hands shook at that, and my throat felt tight, but I kept reading. I had notes that covered the blood magic Truth spell my dad had lied about, my suspicions about Zayvion, my desire to go to the police and testify against my father.

And that was it.

Nothing more.

All the rest of the pages were blank.

I thumbed through them, all of them, looking for any other note, any other word.

Blank. Blank. Blank. Dozens and dozens of stupid, white, empty pages. Why hadn’t I written more? What was wrong with me? I always kept good notes. Always. Why wasn’t there something in there about the magic marks? About healing? Why wasn’t there something in there about how I really felt about Zayvion?

I threw the book across the room, and immediately felt stupid for doing so. I rubbed at the headache behind my temples.

So I’d screwed up and hadn’t taken notes. Deal with it, I told myself. Freaking out wouldn’t put words on the page. Making a vow to do better from now on might do some good.

And I could start now. Write that I am angry I didn’t keep better notes. Sounded like a dumb idea, but then I decided that I should do it. Every detail I wrote down was one more bit of my life I got to keep.

I got up, retrieved the book, and found a pen on the coffee table. I sat back on the couch and opened the book to a clean page. Maybe I should start with waking up here.

So I did.

After about a half hour, I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. Nola was home.

She unlocked the door, letting in the clean, cold smell of rain and dirt. She strolled in carrying a bright blue bag with a bow on it.

“Happy belated birthday.” She dropped the bag on my lap.

Before I could say anything, before I could worry about how to thank her for doing such a wonderful, thoughtful, kind thing when I was feeling so sour and petty, she said, “You’re welcome. Open it.”

I sat up straighter and grinned. “Thank you.” I pulled tissue paper out of the bag and peeked in it. Whorls of colors, of thread—no, yarn—filled the bag.

“Yarn?” I lifted out a skein each of pastel orange, rose, blue, purple, and green, colors that mimicked the marks of magic on my hand. Two long wooden needles, and several other short wooden needles with a point on each end, including a couple tied together by a plastic cord, remained in the bag.

“Yarn and knitting needles,” Nola said happily.

I pulled out the long needles, and tried to intuit if I had ever held anything like them before. They didn’t feel familiar. “Do I? Have I ever?”

“No. Not at all. I’ve chosen a new hobby for you to learn. We can knit together. You’ll like it.”

I raised one eyebrow. “I think I should be the judge of that.”

She chuckled. “I knew you’d say that. I’ll teach you the basics, then I thought maybe we could try to make you some nice gloves.”

“Why do I need gloves? Are you putting me to work around here?”

“No.” She gave me a serious, almost sad look. “You can’t stay out here forever, Allie. You need to go back to the city. Back to your life there. And if you find out you don’t like it, you know you can come back until you decide what you want to do next.”

“You’re kicking me out?” I meant it to sound funny, but it came out sort of small and sad.

“You’d get bored soon anyway, and curious about what you left behind. I know you. You don’t like to leave things unsettled, and a lot of things are unsettled. Your dad’s business, your relationship with your stepmom, your Hounding business.” She paused. “And you need to settle things with Zayvion. He stayed here by your bed for two weeks. I think there are things unsaid between you.”

“Really? Is that why he calls? Why he stops in to see me now that I’m conscious?” He had done neither of those things, and apparently it annoyed me even though Nola didn’t have a phone so, technically, he couldn’t call.

Nola pressed her lips together, then stood. She pulled something out from behind a vase of flowers on the mantel. It was an envelope. She handed it to me.

My name, in writing I did not recognize, was on the front.

“He left you this.”

“Have you read it?”

She shook her head.

I stared at it for what felt like a long time. “I think I want to know what he has to say to me face-to-face.”

“Are you sure?”

I was sure. Very sure. “If he has something to say to me, I want to watch him say it. I need that. I deserve that.”

Nola patted my knee. “I agree. But you don’t have to go anywhere today. Maybe when the gloves are done you’ll be ready to wear them to your favorite coffee shop. Then, after you settle back into life in the big city, you can get in touch with him.”

Talking about Zayvion stirred feelings in me I was not comfortable addressing. I was so ready for a change of subject. “Did you take a class to become wise and all-knowing, or were you just born bossy?”

“Both. Now are you going to stop complaining and try something new”—she pointed to the skeins of yarn—“or are you coming out to help me clean the chicken coops?”

“When you put it that way, how can I turn down knitting?”

“I’ll get my needles,” she said. “We can do a little before lunch.”

She jogged up the stairs to her bedroom and the kitten padded into the room. It eyed the skeins of yarn and mewed. I pulled out the end of a string and dangled it over the edge of the couch. The kitten belonged to Cody. Nola said she’d found her out in the field the day after Zay and I had left.

“How did it go with the attorneys?” I said, loud enough for my voice to carry.

“Good,” she yelled down. “We’re closer to convincing the authorities that Cody would be well served out here.” She headed back down the stairs, a tapestry tote in one hand. “The sheriff has decided to get involved. He says it’s because he’s concerned for all of the citizens under his jurisdiction. I think he sees a golden opportunity for some media exposure.”

The kitten bounded all of six inches and attacked the thread dangling in my hand.

Nola made a sour face and plunked down on the couch next to me. “I don’t like the sheriff’s interest, but his involvement was like pouring grease on gears. It looks like I might even have Cody out here as soon as this summer, if all goes well.”

“And if it doesn’t?” I asked, tugging back on the string and fishing the kitten up onto her hind feet.

“You know me. I am not the kind of woman who gives up on the people she cares for.”

Oh. She meant me, too. “Thanks,” I said.

She pulled out two long, wooden needles and a ball of light blue yarn. “Ready?”

I tossed the skein of yarn under the coffee table for the kitten to chase, then picked one of my yarns, the mint green-colored one, and nodded. “Let’s do this.”

“Good. First, make a slip knot.”

Nola had an annoying habit of being right.

About two weeks later, when she and I had both finished a set of gloves and knitted matching scarves, I knew it was time for me to go. The rains of September were now November sleet, and the ground stayed frozen all day.

It was time for this bird to fly south. Well, north and west, really, to Portland, before the snows made it hard to get over the pass.

I made some phone calls. First to my bank, and found out I’d had a sizable deposit transferred into my account at the beginning of the month. When I asked them to trace it back, they said it was from Daniel Beckstrom’s estate.

And yeah, that creeped me out. Even dead, my dad was trying to influence my life. And at the same time, it was probably one of the nicest things he’d ever done for me. I was so damn broke right now, not to mention the new debt for the hospital stay before Nola and, as she told me, my stepmother Violet bullied people to get me transferred out here, away from magic, and into Nola’s capable hands.

Of course, I had not forgotten I was late on rent. Months late now.

I called my landlord, and he had my apartment locked up. Hadn’t sold my stuff because my stepmother had made out a check to cover rent through next month.

I’d have to pay her back, maybe even thank her for that. If I ever talked to her again.

But what really sent me back toward the city, more than the threat of snow, more than the restlessness, was magic. Even though there was no magic here at Nola’s, I still carried a small magic within me. Except it wasn’t small anymore. At night it shifted within me, slow and gentle, stretching, stroking, growing. I felt pregnant with it, heavy with it, but unlike what I imagined carrying a child was like, magic filled my whole body: my bones, my muscles, my organs, my skin. I could smell it. Taste it. See it. Hear it.

It made me ache in a strange and pleasant way, like a hunger I could not sate.

And somehow I knew the answer to that hunger was in the city.

Nola drove me to the train, stood in the icy rain, and held me tightly. “Be careful. I’ll call you when I get the new phone installed. Then I expect you to call me every day.”

“I’ll try,” I said. We’d come up with a new plan of me calling and telling her about my day. Sort of a backup to my little book and the computer at home. “If you ever want to get out of the dark ages and maybe actually buy a computer, I’ll send you e-mail too.”

Nola rubbed my back one last time, then let me go. “I’ll think about it. Good luck, honey. I’ll see you soon.” She climbed back into the truck with Jupe.

I picked up the new backpack she had given me and the duffel that had some extra clothes I’d bought, my knitting stuff, and Zayvion’s letter in it. I wore a warm, knee-length coat I’d bought in town, and the gloves and scarf Nola knitted. I wasn’t so much trying to hide my marks as just trying to stay warm against the bitter cold.

I got on the train and waved to Nola and Jupe. It was time to try to make my real life my real life again. To do that, there were a couple of people I needed to see. And one of those people lived in St. John’s.

In my old life—the life I remembered—things had a way of going wrong a lot.

It looked like my new life was going to be a lot like my old life.

I stood just inside the doorway of my apartment, and could not force myself to take one more step.

What my landlord had been reticent in telling me over the phone was that my apartment had been ransacked. My living room looked like it had been hit by a hammer-happy demolition crew. Everything was ruined.

He hadn’t reported it to the police, which was no big surprise. The surprise was that there was another smell in my room more powerful than the stink of old magic. I had smelled it before—iron and minerals, like old vitamins—but I couldn’t remember who or what smelled like that. I broke out in a cold, terrified sweat. Who or whatever belonged to that smell had scared the crap out of me. Were they, or it, here? Had they or it recently been here? I didn’t hear anyone in the apartment. I didn’t sense anyone in the apartment.

Magic stirred within me, pushing to be free of my tenuous control over it. I breathed through my mouth, trying not to smell, trying not to freak out, and trying to think calm thoughts so the magic would not slip my grip. Coming back to the city—back to where magic flowed beneath my feet, filling me up and pouring through me to the ground again like a circular river—had been hard.

So far, I could control the magic, or at least let it flow through me and not use it. So far.

I exhaled, and told the magic to rest, to be calm, slow, like a summer stream. That helped some. Enough that I could look around the room and see how much of my physical life I’d lost—most of it.

But I still could not force myself to step in—into the stink of old magic, into the panic-inducing odor of iron and old vitamins.

I needed out of here. Fast.

I left the room and locked the door behind me. I took the stairs down and strode out into the chill of late afternoon. It wasn’t raining for a change, but it was going to be dark soon. I wanted to yell. To rage at the entire, stinking, unfair world. To hit someone. Anyone.

Magic lifted. Sensuous heat licked up my arm, promising power.

No. The last thing I needed to do was something magical.

I tipped my head back and stared at the gray sky, trying to get a grip. I counted to ten. Twice. I thought calm thoughts.

Then I tried to be reasonable. I had nowhere to go, but I was not sleeping in that dump tonight.

I hailed a cab and let my nose—literally—lead me to several apartment buildings to the west. It meant a couple of extra hundred a month in rent. I’d find a way to swing it. I couldn’t live in that crappy apartment anymore. It was time for a new start. A blank slate.

The third apartment complex I tried was called the Forecastle. The building didn’t stink of magic, had no elevators, and was renting out a third-floor one-bedroom. What more could a girl want?

It was only five o’clock, still close enough to normal business hours that I didn’t feel bad pounding on the manager’s door.

It took a minute, but I finally heard footsteps, then the lock being turned.

“Yes?”

The manager was a heavy man, bald, wearing jeans and a button-down shirt. He smelled like chicken broth, and he was short. Short enough that his wide, round face was level with my boobs.

Great.

He stared at my chest, but I had to give him some credit because he managed to pull his gaze up and actually look me in the eyes.

“I’d like to rent the one-bedroom, and I’d like to stay in it tonight.”

“It doesn’t work like that, lady. I’ll need to do a credit check, get some references. Why don’t you come back tomorrow.” He took a step backward.

He was going to slam that door in my face. I was going to be stuck with nowhere to go tonight unless I wanted to sleep in my wrecked apartment, or a women’s shelter.

Oh, screw that.

The one thing we Beckstroms did well was Influence people. And even though I’d sworn off using it, I felt justified in breaking my vow. This was an emergency.

“Please?” I put a little Influence behind my words, just the slightest amount, because I wasn’t sure what all the magic coursing through me would do.

What it did was sting. My right arm felt like I’d just wrapped it in Band-Aids and ripped them off all in one go. My left arm felt heavy and cold.

I drew a sharp breath.

Well, that hurt.

I tried again, more carefully. “My apartment was broken into and I can’t stay there. My credit isn’t all that great, but I have money in the bank that will do first and last, and a month in advance if you need it.” That was better. Just the barest breath of Influence behind the words. My arms didn’t hurt as much. I concentrated on only Influencing him to give me the benefit of the doubt, not to fall senseless beneath the power of my words.

“My name’s Allie Beckstrom,” I added.

That got him moving.

“Oh,” he said. He studied my face more closely, then nodded and nodded. “Oh. I didn’t recognize you. Come in. We’ll get the papers filled out and I’ll show you the apartment.”

He opened the door and I stepped in.

“Bad couple of months you’ve had,” he noted casually as he dug through a messy stack of papers on a desk. “With your father and all.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it has been.”

I looked around the room and noted a couple photos of men and women in police uniforms on the wall, including one of what seemed to be a younger version of the man in front of me.

“Are you a police officer?” I asked.

He pulled out a clipboard and clamped some forms onto it. He handed me the clipboard and dug around on the desk for a pen.

“Was. Retired. You thinking about renting for a year? I can give you a break on the price if you agree to stay that long.”

I kind of liked the idea of renting from someone who would know how to look out for trouble if it came.

“A year sounds good. I can use all the breaks I can get.” I took the pen he offered and began filling out the form. I was happy to discover that I could complete it without having to refer to my little book.

He showed me to the apartment, a moderate-sized but well-kept place with windows that looked out through the branches of the trees lining the street, and over the busy street itself. Not much noise came through the windows, even though I noted a bus stop just a few blocks up the hill.

I liked it.

I spent the first night of my new life sleeping on the floor, curled up beneath my coat, duffel bag under my head for a pillow, happier than I had been for days.

The next day I took the bus to St. John’s.

I didn’t know why, but crossing the railroad track always put me in a better mood. There was something good about this rotten side of town. Something invisible to the eye, but obvious to the soul.

I stepped off the bus, and waited as it drove past before crossing the street. It was raining lightly, a misty sort of rain, and I kept close to the buildings, using their awnings to try to stay dry. The air stank of diesel, dead fish, and the salt-and-hickory smell of bacon and onions being fried.

A shadow moved in the doorway to my left, and I glanced over expecting . . . someone. There was no one there. Except for an abandoned shopping cart, the doorway was empty.

Great. This was not the place to be if I was suddenly going to get all jumpy and start second-guessing myself.

Suck it up, I told myself. You can do this.

I tucked my hands in my coat pocket and walked up the two wooden steps to Mama’s door.

The clatter of dishes being washed rang out from the kitchen and the moist heat of the restaurant wrapped around me. At the tables to my right and left were an even split of men and women, maybe ten in total. No one I knew, or at least no one I remembered.

Ahead of me, with his hand still beneath the counter on his gun, was Boy.

Nola told me I’d been shot. Once by a man Zayvion said broke into his apartment. Once by an old Hound enemy of mine, Bonnie. She did not mention me ever being wounded by Boy, but Zayvion had given her only sketchy details about that night we’d all met in the kitchen.

It wasn’t like I could go through my life jumping at shadows. Or guns.

I could do this. I had to do this if I wanted my life to be mine again.

That bravado got me across the room and standing in front of Boy.

“So,” I said, pleased that it came out low and casual. “Is Mama here?”

“Allie girl?”

I looked to the right.

Mama stopped washing a table, wiped her hands on a towel, and strode over to me.

“Why you come here?”

“I need to ask you a few things.”

She glared at me, but I stood my ground.

“Fine.” She caught my elbow and walked me toward the door, as far away from Boy and her patrons as she could get.

“You don’t belong here, Allie girl. Not now. Not anymore.”

I wasn’t convinced I’d ever really belonged here. But I’d always felt welcome. And even though Nola told me Mama had finally gone to the police and told them about James’ killing my father and putting the hit on Boy, it was apparent my welcome was worn through.

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I never thought you would just stand by and let James hurt Boy like that. How could you look away while he suffered? He was just a little kid. He could have died.”

Mama pulled herself up, gaining maybe half an inch on her five foot two frame.

“You think I know what James does?” She was angry. It was the first time I had ever heard her call any of her sons by their name. “You think he tells me the things he does? Tells me the people he does it with? You don’t know. Don’t know what it is like for family to hurt family.”

“Try me,” I said. I was an old pro at family hurting family.

“When you say your father was the one, I believe you. But you were wrong.”

I so wasn’t going to let her blame me for this. I gave her a cool stare.

“James was wrong for what he did,” she said. “Too much pride, that Boy. Too much greed. My heart bleeds that he hurt my Boy. And kill your father.”

There it was. Admission. No apology, but at least she had the decency to acknowledge that she thought James had killed my dad. I just hoped she would speak her mind like this on the witness stand.

“But he is family, you know?” she said. “Family. Still, I do what is right. Tell police. Watch them arrest my Boy, take him away in chains. And my heart bleeds for him. For my poor, prideful Boy.”

“Is that the only reason you turned him in? Because it was the right thing to do?”

Then she did a strange thing. She looked away, looked at the floor, looked uncomfortable. “Yes.”

She was lying. I could smell the sourness of it on her. And when she looked back at me, her expression clearly stated that she would say no more.

I let it go. Maybe Nola could tell me more. Maybe Zayvion too, if I ever found him. Or maybe someday, when we both had time to recover our lives, I could convince her I was someone she could talk to.

“Is Boy home from the hospital yet?” I asked.

She laughed, a short, sharp bark. “Where have you been, Allie girl? Boy come home month ago. He is strong. Back in school.”

“Good,” I said, and I meant it.

The hard edge in Mama’s eyes eased. “Yes. Good. You go. This no place for you now. No place for your kind.”

She stepped up to me, touched my right hand. The magic beneath my skin settled at her touch, the constant, roaring pressure of it eased.

“You find your place,” she said. “Who you are. Who you should be. You find your people. Family.”

She turned. “Go,” she said over her shoulder. She strode off into the kitchen and started yelling at one of her Boys to clean the floors.

Boy with the gun still had his hand under the counter. I decided not to push my luck with him or his gun, and left. Mama was right about one thing. I had some searching to do. To figure out who I was. And who I intended to be.

I stepped outside and walked as quickly as I could through the rain to the curb. I wasn’t feeling very well, the mix of smells suddenly too strong for me to stomach. I was tired too, which wasn’t much of a surprise. My stamina still wasn’t all that great.

Rain poured harder.

I could walk a few more blocks to the bus stop. But a cab was pulling through traffic, and I waved and whistled and caught the driver’s attention. He did a passable, if illegal, U-turn, and pulled up beside me. By this point, rain was pounding down so hard, I couldn’t see the buildings on the other side of the street. I reached for the door handle.

A man’s hand reached down at the same time, and I was overwhelmed by the heavy stench of iron and old vitamins.

“Allow me, Ms. Beckstrom.”

I jerked away and stepped back. The man wore a hat and long coat, but was plain-looking, totally forgettable in a crowd. I knew his type. I’d grown up around them.

And I knew his smell.

This bastard had tried to hurt me. Somehow, in some way I could not remember.

“The war is coming,” he said. “Time to choose your side.”

Before I could do so much as think about drawing on the magic within me, before I could even whisper a mantra, or scream for the cops, he opened the door, left it open, turned, and walked away.

What in the hell was that all about? War? What war?

The cabbie powered down the passenger window. “You getting in, lady?”

I could say no. There was a chance that man had somehow booby-trapped the cab. Or I could say yes, get in the cab, and get the hell away from here.

I voted for speed over certainty.

I climbed in the backseat, and shut and locked the door. Going to my new apartment might be a bad idea. Maybe he’d bugged the car. Maybe he knew the license plate and was following me.

Yeah, well let him follow me. He’d get the surprise of his life if he showed up at my apartment, because I would kick his ass with every ounce of magic I had in me. The war didn’t have to come to me; I was more than happy to go to it if I had to.

“The Forecastle.”

The cab moved out into traffic, and even though I watched, I saw no other sign of the man. I paid the driver and got out in front of my new apartment, walked inside, and waited awhile, dripping on the floor, looking out the window at the street. Wet trees, wet buildings, wet shops. Wet people walking up the hill with wet grocery bags. Nobody stopped. Nobody looked my way.

Maybe that had just been some sort of warning.

For something I could not remember.

Great.

I headed up the stairs to my apartment. I was so very done with not knowing what the hell was going on. After hiring some movers to bring my few unbroken possessions to my new place, I’d go out and start looking for answers. And I had a good idea of who to ask first—Mr. Zayvion Jones.