Death magic.
The Snake man yelled the last word of the mantra and released the spell with such force and hatred, it left the bitter smells of chemicals and burned skin in the room.
Cody moaned. He couldn’t think. The memories of what he had been, of who he had been, were gone, and the older, smarter part of him was silent. His head hurt. His whole body hurt. He wanted Kitten. He wanted the pain and the coins and the bone and everything to go away.
He felt the box close around the coins and the bone, felt it because his blood was in there too. He didn’t like the little box now. Didn’t like it at all. Still the pain did not go away.
He wanted the sun. He felt all alone and lost. Cody began to cry.
Everything was quiet in the room. The Snake man took a deep breath and let it out. ‘‘You did good, Cody. You did very good.’’ The Snake man helped Cody stand, and then helped him take a few steps and lie down on the bed.
‘‘Did you get hurt?’’ the Snake man asked.
Cody nodded. ‘‘You hurt me.’’
‘‘No. You got in the way of the magic, Cody. You shouldn’t have gotten in the way.’’ The Snake man smiled on the outside and hated on the inside. ‘‘It’s not too bad though. You’re lucky you didn’t die. Let me make it better.’’ He reached down for Cody’s T-shirt and Cody pushed his hands away.
‘‘No.’’
‘‘I can’t make it better if you don’t let me look at it,’’ Snake man said. ‘‘Here, you can hold the kitten.’’ He put the kitten on Cody’s chest.
Cody scooped her up close to his neck so she wouldn’t get messy with his blood; so she would be safe and far away from the Snake man.
Snake man went over to the door, and when he came back, he pulled up Cody’s shirt and cleaned off the blood with a soft cloth. Then he sprayed his stomach with something that stung a little and made the cut go numb. The Snake man put a bandage over the cut.
‘‘There. Not too deep at all. You did good, Cody.’’ Snake man brushed his fingers over Cody’s hair. He held the box with the coins, the bone, and the knife in his other hand. ‘‘Just rest now. I’ll be back soon and take you for a ride, okay? Just me, you, and Kitten.’’
Cody tried to smile. A ride sounded good. Maybe to the park. Maybe to someplace that had sunshine.
The Snake man pressed fingers that were mostly clean on Cody’s forehead. Cody felt heavy and tired. He wanted to get the kitten some water, or maybe some food, but he could not move, and even though the kitten mewed, he fell quickly down into darkness.
Chapter Three
Z
ayvion held the deli door open for me. Old-school chivalry. Nice. I walked into the heat of the deli, into the smell of soup and spices and Parmesan crisping in butter. My stomach knotted with hunger. No surprise there; I hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
A small wood table by the window was empty, so I threaded between the early lunch crowd to get to it. Once there, I paused and took a deep breath, preparing for the unique aches in store for me as I tried to take my coat off.
‘‘Want any help with that?’’ Zayvion asked.
‘‘I got it.’’ Actually, I had already worked up a sweat just unzipping my coat. Getting my left arm out of the sleeve without dislocating something or having all the muscles down my back cramp into one solid knot was looking pretty grim.
Zayvion moved behind me, silent even on the hardwood floor, and gently tugged on my cuff.
‘‘It’s okay,’’ I said. But I liked the sensation of him behind me, so close I could feel the heat of him.
‘‘Mmm.’’ Zayvion held the left cuff until I extracted my arm and then he sort of slipped to the side, leaned close, and pulled my coat the rest of the way off. He draped the coat over the back of a chair before I could come up with a comment about him keeping his hands off my outerwear.
I didn’t know whether to be attracted or worried. I didn’t like it when people invaded my personal space, and liked it even less when I was hurting. But Zayvion had been helpful, and hadn’t touched more than my coat.
It was a really nice thing for him to do.
We stood there for an awkward moment while I breathed far too heavily for just a coat unzipping—I mean, I’d walked several blocks in the rain to this place and done okay.
My stomach did more than flip; it rolled and cramped, and a wave of nausea washed over me. The heavy smells of garlic, salt, grease, beans, wet coats, cologne, and hair spray, not to mention the gritty stink of diesel and oil from traffic outside, made it pretty clear that instead of being attracted, or confused, I was going to be sick.
The sweat on my skin went greasy cold and Zayvion got a worried look on his face. He put his hand on my arm. ‘‘Okay. Why don’t you sit down, Allie. I’ll get you some water.’’
I’m not the kind of girl who does what someone tells me to do, but my vision was going dark around the edges and little sparks of light were doing the chacha in front of my eyes. I carefully sat in the chair and propped my forehead against the cool window, not caring what the people beyond the glass or around me thought. I stared at a spot on the wooden window-sill, two carved zeros that were not quite connected enough to symbolize eternity, and breathed very evenly through my mouth, telling myself I was not going to throw up in the middle of this deli like some drunk in a soup kitchen.
A cool, light cloth draped the back of my bare neck.
‘‘Do you need a bucket?’’ Zayvion asked from behind me.
‘‘No,’’ I gritted.
He lifted what I assumed was a wet towel. I felt the sticky heat of the diner on the back of my neck again, then the coolness of the other side of the rag. As he turned the towel, his fingers rested against the back of my neck, at the base of my skull.
His fingers were cool, like mint. I opened my mouth to tell him to leave me alone for a minute, but instead of words all that came out was a soft moan. That cool mint feeling from his fingers spread up my neck to cradle the back of my head and quench some of the fire there, then worked down the back of my neck and spine and wrapped minty-cool around the hurt in my ribs and stomach. The pain eased off enough that I could think. And what I thought was, I was in pretty bad shape.
How stupid could I be to not set the Disbursement spell when I Hounded Boy? And how stupider could I be to go out for a cup of coffee with a man my father paid to stalk me while magic used me for a punching bag?
‘‘Breathe,’’ Zayvion said, so softly I knew he must have leaned forward to speak near my ear. I would have done almost anything so long as he didn’t move his fingers away from my skin. He should be bottled and sold for migraine sufferers.
I took a slow, deep breath and the sick in my stomach let up a little more.
‘‘Good,’’ he said. ‘‘Now exhale.’’
I did that too, and moaned again as the nausea drained away, leaving me tired, achy, but functional. Then his fingers were gone, the cool wash of mint gone. I felt stiff and bruised, inside and out, but not as bad as before he touched me.
Zayvion sat on the other side of the table and picked up a cup of coffee I hadn’t seen him bring over.
He glanced out the window, his eyes narrowing against the gray-white light, and took a drink.
‘‘Thanks,’’ I said.
He tipped the cup away from his lips. His eyes were brown, flecked with a gold I don’t remember seeing before. ‘‘Sure,’’ he said. ‘‘Any time.’’
I put my hands on the table and discovered there was a second cup of coffee and, next to that, a little saucer of individual cream pots and packets of sugar. I picked up the coffee and took a sip of it. Black and bitter, it washed the sour taste of spent magic out of my mouth and filled my sinuses with a sharp but pleasant burned smell.
‘‘Nice trick,’’ I said.
Zayvion blinked once, slowly. ‘‘Trick?’’
‘‘You set a Siphon to mitigate some of the pain from the price I’m paying for not setting a Disbursement spell, right?’’
‘‘Ah,’’ he said. ‘‘That trick.’’ He followed up that nonanswer with a Zen-like look.
But his eyes. Gold flecks burned where there had only been brown before, and an intensity flickered through his calm gaze. He had done something, something more than setting a Siphon—not that setting Siphons was easy. It took two full years of specialized education to be able to cast and set channels that slowly bled used magic back into the raw magic that pooled beneath the city. And not everyone who studied hard and practiced harder mastered that trick. The few who did were usually into the more advanced fields of body-magic integrations, people like doctors and the regulators who set tolerance levels for legal Proxies.
I’d seen Siphons set. I put a year of study into it myself before my professor told me I might as well waste my time failing at something I enjoyed. But I remember the basics. Enough to know that Zayvion had not set a Siphon. He’d done something else. Something that took even more skill.
‘‘I’ll be damned,’’ I said. ‘‘You Grounded me.’’
Grounding was another matter altogether. It was equivalent to acting as a lightning rod for someone else and was usually done while the original caster was drawing on magic. It allowed a larger amount of magic to be accessed, and a smaller price to be paid by the original caster. The Grounder often bore a heavier burden of the pain—trying to match another person’s magical style and ability was very difficult and dangerous. As so was using Grounding to mitigate the pain of using magic.
Zayvion’s eyebrows went down and he tipped his chin to one side. ‘‘I’m not sure I follow.’’
‘‘What are you?’’ I asked. ‘‘Master’s level?’’
He shook his head and took another drink of coffee. ‘‘I didn’t go to college for magic.’’
‘‘What did you go to college for?’’
‘‘The women.’’ He smiled. ‘‘Oh, we aren’t being that honest? Economics.’’
‘‘So you’re an economist who stalks people for money and just happens to have mastered the rare art of Grounding?’’
‘‘What can I say? I’m a complicated man. And I didn’t Ground you.’’
I took another drink of coffee. He was so lying. ‘‘All right. Let’s go with that. If you didn’t set a Siphon, and didn’t Ground me, how come I feel better?’’
‘‘Acupressure,’’ he deadpanned.
‘‘Acupressure?’’
‘‘Pressure points. It’s a kind of massage that helps with muscle tension.’’
‘‘I suppose you went to college for that too?’’
‘‘No, but maybe I should have. I’ve been told, on more than one occasion, that I have good hands.’’
I gave him back what I hoped was one of his blank stares. ‘‘Do you really expect me to buy that?’’
That got a smile out of him, and damned if it didn’t make me smile back. ‘‘Well, you don’t have to buy it, or lunch,’’ he said. ‘‘Both are on me. I’ve already ordered and paid, so no argument.’’
As if on cue, a girl came over with a platter that held two bowls of soup—beef vegetable, with what looked to be real chunks of fresh vegetables floating in the thick broth—and a side of sourdough bread.