But it was hard to reach to the older, smarter part of him. He had tried to do it a lot before, and never did it right.
The knife flashed up, the Snake man intoned a mantra that was so bad, so very bad. The coin filled the Snake man’s words with power and the bone changed it into something worse. Into death. Cody knew he was going to die. In the dark, without sunshine.
No! The older, smarter part of him said. Reach for the coin, for the magic in the coin.
Cody was crying now. He didn’t want to die. Didn’t want Kitten to die. So he reached for the coin, for the warm, pretty magic there. And he took some of it. He took it and the older, smarter part of him reached out for it too, and reached out for him.
Hang on, the older, smarter part of him said. Don’t let go, no matter what.
Cody held on. Held on while the Snake man finished the angry, bad magic. Held on while the knife came down. Held on while the pain shot through him and made him scream. Held on to the older, smarter part of him, while the older, smarter part of him held on to him and to something else—the magic in the coin. Cody wished he could have said good-bye to Kitten.
The knife pushed under his skin again.
He wanted to scream, but couldn’t hear anything except the older, smarter part of him chanting soft words that moved the magic in a different way, painting a picture of sunshine and sky. Then the pain was so big that it covered up the sunshine, it blacked out the sky, and Cody was squished into a dark box where he couldn’t see or hear anything anymore, not even the older, smarter part of himself.
Chapter Six
T
here are reasons why I like to sleep in my own bed. One, I have good pillows. Even though the mattress is too hard, as long as I have enough pillows, I don’t care. The other reason I like sleeping in my own bed is because gorillas with baseball bats don’t come in the room and bash in my head while I’m asleep.
So when that sudden, explosive pain hit, I knew right off that I wasn’t at home. I groaned, opened my eyes, and tried to match where I was to places where I might fall asleep. It was a narrow room lit by a small yellow-shaded lamp in the corner. The walls were painted in we-didn’t-even-care-the-first-time-we-painted-it beige. A white and blue quilt spilled over onto a wood floor that had been so worn down it looked more like bark than wood.
But the quilt was clean, thick enough that I suspected feathers inside, and looked homemade. I leaned over, almost lost my lunch to the pounding pain inside my skull, and with much careful breathing pulled the quilt off the floor and back onto the bed with me.
Sweet hells, I hurt. But it was not the same pain I’d been in from using magic. This was different. Deeper. It made me feel really sad and really alone.
Then, as fast as it had hit, the pain was gone. I wiped at the wet on the corners of my eyes. That had been the worst headache I had ever experienced. I took a couple of breaths, and was relieved that really, all the rest of me was feeling pretty good. But the headache, or maybe the haunting absence of that sudden pain, left me feeling horrible in a different way. I was crying, actually crying, like I hadn’t since I was ten. But why?
The wispy fragments of a dream brushed across my thoughts; someone was gone, missing. Hopelessness washed over me like when I’d been told my mom had left the country. I wanted to curl up under the quilt and never come out.
I’d just lost someone or something important to me. But I didn’t know why I thought that. I must be tired. Just tired.
I wiped my face on my sleeve and took a look at my hands. Still a little yellow from the bruising, but not the angry black and purple-red they’d been last time I’d looked at them.
The digital clock next to the bed read five a.m. I’d slept over twelve hours. I had better write down the details of the hit on Boy and the meeting with my father in my little book while I had the chance. When I got home, I’d take some time and transfer the notes to my computer.
It was strange to have my entire life, or at least the important bits I didn’t want to forget, recorded by hand and backed up electronically. It made sense to do it for the jobs I Hounded, but sometimes when going through the book I ran across a detail, like ‘‘always take the right trail in the park’’ or ‘‘parrots don’t work’’ that were obviously personal experiences I no longer retained.
Sometimes I felt like a ghost in my own life.
I sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. Mama had left me in my jeans and tank top and put my extra sweater on me, and had draped my coat over the foot of the bed. I tugged the coat up to me, and dug the leather-bound journal and pen out of the pocket.
The first page of the book had my vital information. My name, birthday, blood type, medical allergies, things of that manner. So far I hadn’t forgotten those things, but it was a grim and very real possibility that one day I might. I didn’t like to think about it, but it would be stupid to not take what precautions I could.
I thumbed back to a blank page and started with the date and time of Mama’s call.
It didn’t take me long. I’d had lots of practice, in college and otherwise, to make my notes as short, clear, and concise as possible.
I tucked the book back in my coat and turned out the lamp. But instead of drifting back to sleep for maybe another hour, I tossed and turned, the lingering sadness and loss from the dream filling my thoughts.
For no reason at all, I kept thinking about my father. Not about his anger and manipulation, but about the feel of his blood and mine joined, his regret when he said, ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ and how genuine that felt.
I should have stayed away. Stayed away for another seven years.
I finally got up and walked across the dark room to the window. I tugged back a corner of the curtain, not sure I was ready for actual sunlight yet. I needn’t have bothered being so cautious. It was not daylight out, not even close. The sky was black as a hangover, and the alley below the window didn’t have a light anywhere along it. I was on the second floor, so I could see around one building with windows that were broken out, and there was plenty of light from the other streets, lights that burned brighter the farther away from St. John’s they were.
St. John’s wasn’t like what I expected from this vantage. This early in the morning, it carved a strong ebony edge against the burning yellows and blues of the city, like the mountains against sunrise. And there was a kind of haphazard sense of power in the short, strong buildings that were still standing, a squared-off victory over time, over manipulation, over magic. It survived despite the changing world.
St. John’s had power to withstand poverty, neglect, pain. Maybe that was what I liked about it. Because there were people in these buildings who hadn’t given up, hadn’t tried to be anything other than what they were, hadn’t tried to conform to what the world expected them to be. There were other people too, the kind who migrated here like rats to garbage. Even so, good people remained—people like Mama and her Boys. Those deep roots made this dump feel more like home than the penthouse condo of my childhood.
A motion at street level caught my eye. A big, heavy man in a dark trench coat moved down the street, stepping around piles of what I hoped were just garbage and cardboard. He was coming from somewhere farther north, moving out of deeper shadow into faint streetlight.
A chill ran over my skin. There was something about the big man that gave me the creeps. I watched as he strolled along, trying to figure out what bugged me about him.
He was almost out of my line of vision, moving in front of the building that blocked my view farther down the street. I shifted on my feet, curling up so I put some weight on the side of my foot. I drew the curtain back a little more.
The man stopped. It was like watching an old movie where a mime runs into a glass wall. He threw a hand in front of him and looked over his shoulder. But instead of looking back into the darkness, he looked up. At me.
Like I said before, it was dark out, dark in the room, and I hadn’t brought a night-light with me. There wasn’t a single way he could see me, standing behind a dark curtain, in a dark room, wearing a dark sweater and jeans.
But his face was tilted up toward me. I saw his mouth open, as if he had just said the word no. I could see the shadow-smudged thumbprints where his eyes should be, and I knew he saw me. I stared right back at him, because if there’s one thing I won’t do it’s back down once I’m spotted.
My heart beat hard, and I wished I had on my boots, my running shoes, anything. Instinct told me to run. Instinct told me he was dangerous.
I could handle dangerous. Dangerous and me went back a long way. We did lunch when dangerous was in town.
The man lifted a hand toward me and I felt, very clearly, his fingers, like heated oil, slide down my spine, thump over each vertebra, and then squeeze.
I caught my breath because it felt really real. And it creeped me the hell out.
I let the curtain drop and stepped away from the window. Groping someone without their permission was against the law, magic or no magic. Breaking the line of vision was usually enough to dispel that kind of spell. But just in case, I backed away to the door and made a warding gesture. The sensation of his hand down my back had already faded, so I didn’t invoke a spell or draw any magic into that ward, but I rubbed my hands up and down my arms trying to rid myself of the sense of violation.
His touch might be gone, but my heart was still pounding. That had been familiar. That man down there, whoever he was, had touched me before.
I tried to draw up a memory that he fit. A client? An acquaintance? Someone from college? An associate of my father’s? But where there should be a name, or a defined face in my memory, all I found was black static.
A chill rattled under my skin and I clenched my hands into fists, then shook them out. That man touched me, bone deep, without my consent. He knew me. And he knew I was here, up here, in this room.
‘‘Oh, hell,’’ I whispered.
There was no way I was going to just sit here. For all I knew, he was on his way up now. I didn’t know why, but getting away from him, shaking the scent of him—rot, and something like licorice or honey mixed with the faint whiff of formaldehyde—had become the top item on my agenda for the day.
Okay, I wanted out, out of here, out fast.
I looked for my backpack and found it on the wooden chair by the bed. I picked it up, took the time to shove my feet into my shoes and tie the laces so I wouldn’t trip. I pulled on my coat, patting my pocket to make sure the book was there.
The other pocket had money, so I pulled out a twenty and threw it on the mattress. Mama’s generosity was a bridge I didn’t want to burn.
I wanted to run. I needed to run. I knew he was coming for me. I could feel him moving through the darkness below into the light of Mama’s restaurant. I could smell him. Could smell the rotted stink of magic he’d used on me. I had to leave. Now.
I looked at the window, but some practical part of my mind calmly listed the injuries I’d get if I tried to hero it down the outer walls of this dump. Right. Probably best to escape through the door. Any time now. Now would be good. Before he made it up the stairs.
I swung my backpack over my shoulder and hurried to the door again. I listened for footsteps. My heart was beating so loudly that I had to hold my breath to hear. Nothing. No sound at all from the other side of the door.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and checked the hall in the dim light of a couple low-watt bulbs in the ceiling. Just a hall with a few closed doors, and the wooden-railed staircase going down. And that’s exactly where I was going too. I closed the door behind me and walked over to the stairs, insanely grateful that I’d packed my running shoes. I looked down the stairwell. Pockets of shadow swallowed whole sections of the stair. Anyone could be in those shadows. He could be in those shadows. I hesitated.