‘‘Can you stand?’’ Zayvion asked.
Oh, hells no. With prompting, and some support, I might be able to puke.
I blinked until I could make out his face above me and gave him the dirtiest glare I could muster.
Zayvion scowled. Then he looked up, away from me, and the muscle where his jaw and ear met tensed and his nostrils flared, like he was scenting the wind.
Yes, I was hurting. Yes, I felt sicker than the worst hangover I’d ever had. That didn’t keep me from appreciating the fact that Zay was stepping in to help me, and the kid with me, probably at great risk to himself. Plus I couldn’t help but notice that Zayvion was a good-looking man. If I’d been up to it, I might even have licked the edge of that jaw to see if he tasted like mint, or what he would do if I bit his ear.
‘‘We have to go, Allie.’’ He looked back down at me. His eyes were brown and warm and understanding. They were also flecked with gold, like back at the diner when he’d Grounded me. I had never seen anyone’s eyes look like that, and wondered if it was magic or me that caused it.
I wanted to tell him not to worry. We’d make this work out somehow. I had a good feeling about us.
Had I just said that out loud?
Zayvion’s eyebrows notched upward and he lost the serious Zen look. ‘‘I do too,’’ he said quietly. ‘‘But tell me about that later. We have company.’’
He pressed his fingers into the back of my neck and the minty feel of his touch rolled down my body in ever-warming waves until I could really and honest-to-goodness feel myself again.
‘‘Mmm,’’ I said. I felt a hundred times better. What was it with those hands of his? ‘‘Better,’’ I said. I stretched and yawned.
Zayvion was back in scowling mode, unimpressed by my appreciation. ‘‘Now, Allie. Hounds.’’
Okay, that got through my amazing stupidness. Hounds. Bonnie-with-a-gun. With Zayvion’s help, I sat away from him.
‘‘We can’t leave him,’’ I said. It came out kind of slurred, but Zayvion nodded.
‘‘Fine. My car’s over here. Come on.’’ He stood, helped me stand, something I needed and wasn’t proud of, then more or less supported me to his car. I noticed he was limping a bit and was sure I could feel bruises forming beneath his skin on his arms, stomach, and back. If I could draw magic and paint it through the kid’s bones, think of what I could do for a few bruises on a guy I really liked. One little lick of magic should take the sting out of what ailed him. I whispered a poem and told magic to run down Zay’s chest, like warm water, like oil, soothing, heating, mending, and leaving health behind.
‘‘Not now, Allie.’’ Zay dumped me in the front seat and slammed the door, breaking my concentration. By the time I had formed a snappy response, he had shut the back passenger’s door and was sliding in behind the wheel.
‘‘Wait,’’ I said. ‘‘The kid.’’ So much for snappy.
‘‘Got him,’’ Zayvion said. ‘‘The cat too.’’ Then he put the car into gear and got us going forward fast.
I rubbed at my eyes with stiff, swollen fingers. I hurt, but in a distant way, as if the hurt wasn’t moving fast enough to catch me yet. I looked at my hands. My right hand was an angry scarlet color, like I’d gotten a bad sunburn that went all the way up to my elbow before splitting out into forks of red lightning up to my shoulder. I wondered if I was red all the way up to my temple, where my skin felt burned. I wondered if I had any hair on that side of my head.
My other hand was normalish color except for the knuckles, wrist, and elbow where bands of black seemed to be forming.
‘‘Are you okay?’’ Zayvion asked.
I pulled myself together and tried to think through the last few events. The afterimages of the magic I had directed, the colors and textures of it painting against bone and flesh—and more, the feel of it coursing through me, filling me and the kid—distracted me for a bit, but I managed to pull my thoughts back. Back to the car, to the rumble of the engine, to the stink of too much garbage in too small a space.
‘‘I’m fine. I think.’’
‘‘Your hand is burned.’’
I wiggled my fingers. ‘‘I don’t think so. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just red.’’
‘‘Are you sure?’’
‘‘Not really. How is the kid?’’
‘‘Breathing. Unconscious. What did you do to him?’’ He glanced over at me, but I didn’t know exactly what I should tell him. Our very strange relationship wasn’t making a lot of sense to me right now. Why was he helping me?
Come on, Allie. Think it through. Your dad was killed and you need to go to the cops. Just stick with the simple stuff.
Besides, what I had done to the kid—if I remembered correctly—was heal him. I know I’d tried to needle a permanent image of health and healing on his bones with magic. A lot of magic.
No one used magic to heal someone like that. The amount of magical energy it took to actually heal flesh came at such a high price that it usually killed the user before the patient recovered. Add to that the horrifically failed attempts through the years that had left people maimed, dead, and insane, and magical healing was as much a pipe dream as floating cities.
All of which meant what I’d done wasn’t exactly impossible, it was just very, very unlikely.
Zayvion was still waiting for an answer, so I gave him one. ‘‘I found him, by the river.’’ I cleared my throat and put a little effort into voice projection so I could be heard over the engine. ‘‘Someone stabbed him in the chest. He needs a doctor.’’
‘‘I didn’t see any wounds—blood, but no wounds. I looked.’’ Zayvion geared down, slowing the car. ‘‘Are you sure you’re okay?’’
The stink in the car seemed to be getting worse. My eyes watered and I wondered if I had enough fine motor skills to roll down the window.
‘‘I’m fine,’’ I said. ‘‘Tired. Cold. But that kid needs a doctor, that cat needs food and probably a rabies shot, and I need to get to the police.’’
‘‘Now’s not a good time for you to be anywhere in the public eye.’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Because your friend Bonnie spent some time talking to the police. She said she was hired to Hound the hit on your dad.’’
‘‘So he was killed by magic?’’ Even though he had told me that might be the case, I did not know how it could actually happen. The idea of my very careful father being touched, much less harmed, by the magic he had been so influential in regulating made zero sense to me. ‘‘How? No one can get through his defenses.’’
‘‘Someone did.’’
‘‘Who?’’
Zayvion glanced at me, those warm eyes still burning with gold. He had tiger eyes, I decided, burning bright.
‘‘Who?’’ I asked again. ‘‘Who could get through to my dad?’’ Who could match his magical prowess? Who would he even let his guard down for?
‘‘You,’’ he said softly. ‘‘Bonnie said it was your signature on the hit.’’
That was a slap in the face. I was very awake now. ‘‘What? Oh hells, she didn’t. Who hired her? The cops?’’
He shook his head. ‘‘His ex-wife.’’
That narrowed it down to five women. ‘‘Which one?’’
‘‘I don’t know.’’
I scowled. ‘‘Bonnie’s full of crap. She’d do anything to make my life miserable.’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Because she and I are in a very competitive business and the last time we went head to head, I won. Also she’s a crazy, petty bitch.’’
He glanced at me, then back at the road. He was taking us through the downtown neighborhoods, heading south toward the highway. I was glad it was still raining. It kept most people occupied with umbrellas and hats and trying to stay dry, instead of looking for a woman on the run.
‘‘The police wouldn’t be looking for you if there weren’t reasonable suspicion, Allie.’’
‘‘Do you believe that?’’
‘‘Can you convince me to believe your story instead?’’
I punched him in the shoulder. ‘‘Ow!’’ I yelled. Stupid, stupid. That hurt. My hand was killing me.
Zayvion acted like he hadn’t even noticed I’d touched him.
‘‘Hitting me is not the best way to convince me you are not capable of violence,’’ he said, and I was sure I heard laughter beneath his disapproving tone. ‘‘I don’t think it would go over well with the police either.’’
‘‘I did not kill my father. You were there when I last saw him. I accused him of being a jerk, of putting the hit on Boy. I told him I’d go to court to testify against him, and I worked blood magic to make him tell the truth. That was all.’’
Zay was busy navigating the road. ‘‘Even so, the police are looking for you. And they’ve put out the Hounds to hunt you down and bring you in.’’
‘‘Why is that a bad thing? I need to go to the cops. I need to tell them what happened. I’m innocent, Zay. I don’t want to hide.’’
The car stopped, and I looked up. We were at a stoplight, and a crowd of people streamed across the intersection through the rain and gray.
‘‘The police have orders to shoot, if necessary, Allie. You’re considered armed and dangerous. You were right about one thing—it took a hell of a lot of magic to knock your dad down. More to kill him. Unprecedented,’’ he added quietly.
The light changed and Zayvion moved the car through the intersection, only to slow for traffic ahead. ‘‘The Hounds have been approved to Proxy as much magic use as they need to drag you in.’’
‘‘All the more reason for me to surrender peacefully. I have information that will clear me.’’ I was getting into that uncertain how-much-could-I-trust-him territory. I didn’t want to tell him what the kid had told me. That he might know who killed my dad. That he might have been there when it was done. Or at least that’s what I thought the kid had said. But until he was conscious and could answer questions, telling him Cody might be a part of it was only hearsay.
‘‘What kind of information do you have about your father’s death?’’ And even though he was quiet, there was that air of authority again. Like he expected people to tell him things because he said so. Like he expected me to do what he thought was best.
And I guess because that reminded me too much of the sort of things my father used to do to me, or maybe because I’d just had the crappiest day on earth, I suddenly didn’t want to do what he wanted me to do.
‘‘Information I’d be happy to tell the police.’’ And not you, not yet, I silently added. ‘‘And unless you can give me a better reason than ‘you’re being hunted by Hounds,’ then this is kidnapping, Jones.’’
Zayvion snorted. We had stopped at another light, another intersection. He turned and looked at me.
‘‘I’m trying to help you.’’ The baffled smile was real and nothing like my dad.
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Because I have . . . friends in the police department. This isn’t an average arrest order. Someone wants you gone from public view, locked away, shut up, dead, if need be. Someone wants to kill you, and whoever it is, they have the money, the manpower, the Influence and drive to make sure you are removed from the picture. They think you know who killed your father.’’