“You used it on two people. At the mall, of all fucking places.”
“I did not!” was all the challenge Alex could muster.
“There were witnesses!”
Alex snorted. “Who? Your new girlfriend? Are you going to believe her over your own sister?”
As Crowe leaned in more, I pressed my back into the booth, wishing I could melt into it. No one wanted to be caught between two warring Medicis, but right now it was to my advantage. Once again, maybe I could hide in Alex’s shadow.
“I shouldn’t have to remind you of the rules,” Crowe said. “And I also shouldn’t have to remind you not to cast against an ally. Katrina is a Six and you know it.”
“Well, I’m not officially a Devil and neither is Jemmie,” Alex snarled, “so she’s not our ally, is she?”
I grimaced. Why had she brought me back into it?
Crowe slid out of the booth and stood. “Get up. Both of you.”
Alex folded her arms over her chest. “What? Why?”
“Get up. Now.”
I obeyed. After a mutinous pause, Alex did, too. I wasn’t sure where Crowe was going with this, but it didn’t feel like it would be anywhere good.
The people in the middle of the barroom shrunk away from Crowe as Alex and I stood in front of him.
“Do I have to remind anyone else here of the rules?” he said as he turned a circle. “What is the consequence for casting recklessly in front of the drecks?”
“Binding,” someone called out.
Oh no.
Crowe began to pace. Alex set her hands on her hips, like she was bored. I put my hand on my stomach, suddenly feeling sick.
“Exactly,” Crowe said. “Binding. And there’s only one person in this town who can do a binding spell.” Crowe stopped. His heavy gaze settled on me.
“No.”
He kept staring.
“No. Absolutely not. You probably have cuts my dad left behind that you can use. You don’t need me.”
“Nah. Fresh out,” he said, giving me a tight smile. “You’re up, Jemmie.”
My whole face felt like it had been set on fire. Every gaze was on me, like needles digging under my skin. “I can’t,” I whispered.
“Now that’s bullshit,” he said. “You seem to forget that I’ve experienced your magic. I know what you can do.”
“Crowe,” Alex said, her tone softening. “That was a long time ago. I don’t think—”
“Shut it,” Crowe ground out. “She’s going to do this, or you’re both going to be banned from the festival.”
“What?” Alex wailed. “You can’t do that!”
I coughed as Crowe and Alex’s smoky-sweet magic billowed around me, as the golden skeins of it roiled around their bodies, loosed by their rage. “Stop,” I pleaded.
“If she doesn’t bind your power with her locant magic, I’ll happily leave you both so sick that it’ll take you a month to start eating solid food again,” Crowe said. “And if you even try to heal yourself, Alex, wait and see what starts to grow on your face.”
“You wouldn’t!”
Crowe laughed. “Try me.”
“Remember that grayish fungus thing Gunnar was sporting after New Year’s?” Hardy asked. “That was Crowe being gentle.”
Alex huffed and took me by the arms. “Just do it, Jemmie.” I started to shake my head, then gasped as she squeezed painfully. “Do. It.”
I gave her a pleading look, but she was now too full of fury to realize what she and Crowe were demanding. My heart was beating so fast I could barely get the words out. “Please. I can’t.”
“If you won’t do it,” Crowe said as he turned away, “then I suppose I’ll have to report her, and the Syndicate will send its locant specialist to do it.”
Goddamn it.
Goddamn him.
The Syndicate’s locant specialist was my father.
“Fine,” I muttered.
Maybe with three drinks on board, I could make this work. Maybe it would be okay.
I glanced at Alex. She was avoiding my eyes now, but the rosiness in her cheeks told me enough. Her own brother was embarrassing her in front of all her friends and family, and she wanted this over with.
My cloudy head tried to look for an alternative solution, but I came up with nothing. If the Syndicate was brought into this, my dad would bind her for a month. I could probably only muster a binding spell that would dissipate after a few days—if I could cast it at all.
Would she hate me for being the one to do this, or was it a favor to her? What if I was about to make even bigger fools of both of us?
“Time’s up, Jemmie,” Crowe said, and pulled out his cell phone.
“I said I’ll do it!” I shouted.
Alex whipped her head my way, a scowl deepening the dark line of her brow. I turned to her, giving the room my back. “I’m sorry,” I mouthed, but Alex’s frown didn’t lessen. If anything, it became more pronounced. I had no idea what she was thinking.
I wrapped my hands around her wrists. Although alcohol dulled my senses, my magic still came rushing forward, answering the call, wreathing my body with sapphire ribbons that slithered like cobras and were just as dangerous, to me, at least.
I’d been born with this magic. Using it should come as naturally as eating or sleeping. But without practice, it was a blunt instrument instead of a scalpel. And now the scent of it was on me, sharp and overpowering. I held my breath. My palms were slippery with sweat as I tightened my grip. Strands of blue magic waved and coiled in the air, growing from my skin like weeds. My stomach rolled. Sweat started to bead at my temples and the small of my back. The attention of the room made my skin crawl and burn—and so did my own magic.
I wanted to curse Crowe to an eternity of hell for doing this to us.
My head had begun to buzz with lack of oxygen. If I didn’t cast quickly, I was going to pass out. With the blue twists of my locant power wrapping around my best friend, I mentally clamped the lock closed on Alex’s magic and felt the flicker of it die out. It wasn’t gone for good—there was only one way to take another’s magic forever, and it was completely forbidden—but it was blocked from her use until the spell ran its course.
It wasn’t until Alex yanked her arms from my grasp that I realized my hands had gone numb. She turned and walked away while I leaned on the table with my elbows, the only way to keep myself from hitting the floor. People were still staring. I wanted to cry and scream and kick and rage, but instead I said, “Alex, wait.”
She didn’t.
“It’s not like she didn’t deserve it,” someone said behind me.
I whirled around, recognizing the voice. “You bitch,” I said as I caught sight of Katrina. She smirked at me while she sipped a beer. My breath sawed from my throat. As soon as I got the feeling back in my hands, I was going to strangle her. “You should leave.”
Katrina snorted. “And if I don’t?”
“Jemmie,” Crowe said when I started for her, my footsteps heavy and clumsy.
Amber ropes, invisible to everyone but me, wound around me. Every part of my body froze, my hand raised in midair. I growled at Crowe as he stepped between me and my target.
“Let me go,” I said, fighting against his magic, silently berating myself for letting my guard down, for leaving a door open so he could step right through it. The sweet-smoky smell was making my stomach turn. Or maybe that was the rye.
He got in closer so when he spoke, it was loud enough that only I could hear. “Not until you stop acting like a brat.”
“This is all her fault,” I said. I gave Katrina a death glare as she inched closer to Crowe.
He frowned. “Is it?”
It suddenly felt like we were talking about something else entirely, and we both knew what that was.
“Yes,” I said. “And yours, too.”
His magic pulled back, freeing me. I sucked in a deep breath and shoved him away. He barely staggered an inch. It was like trying to displa
ce a mountain.
With a curl of my lip, I swiped a shot of something clear off a nearby table and downed it in one burning gulp. Then I stormed out of the barroom.
THREE
AS I HURRIED DOWN THE SCHOOLHOUSE’S FRONT STEPS, the double doors burst open behind me. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.
“Jemmie, wait.”
“Screw you.”
Crowe quickly caught up to me. “There are rules. Without rules, we’d descend into chaos.”
I stopped abruptly and Crowe had to backpedal. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
He cocked his head to the side. “The difference between Alex and me is that I know how and when to break the rules. She disregards them entirely.”
He had no idea what he’d just done to me. No idea why I was so upset.
I started walking again. The Schoolhouse music faded behind us. There wasn’t a lot of civilization in this part of town save for a few workshops that had long since closed. It was one of the reasons the bar got away with its rowdy crowd and thumping music long into the night.
“You shouldn’t have made me do that,” I said, my voice wavering.
“If anyone else could have, I wouldn’t have asked you to.”
We reached the street. I’d headed this way simply to escape, but now that I was out here, I realized I didn’t have a ride home. If I wanted to go anywhere, I’d have to walk.
“Did Alex drive?” Crowe asked, reading my frustration easily.
“Yeah.” I crossed my arms over myself and rubbed my hands over my bare skin. The night had cooled off since I’d been inside the bar, and goose bumps rippled down my forearms. Still, the fresh air was nice. And necessary. Finally, my head was starting to clear from the muddle of magic and alcohol.
“Let me take you home.”
“I’m not riding on the back of your bike.” Too soon for that, in so many ways.
“I have my car.”
Spend time in an enclosed space with him? Ha. “Not riding in your car, either.”
He ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip. Crowe didn’t have a lot of tells, except for this one. It was what he did right before he put someone in their place.
I braced for it. It’d been a long day, and I wasn’t sure I had enough left in me to fight him.
Hoping to cut the tension, I added, “I like walking.”
“It’s three miles.”
“I’m in great shape.” I peered down at my sandals. I was going to have blisters for days.
He sighed. “Just wait here. Please?”
“Fine.”
He jogged back toward the Schoolhouse, disappearing in the shadows on the north side, swallowed whole like a specter.
Less than a minute later, he pulled his black 1967 Nova into the street. He crossed the centerline, driving up alongside me at the curb, then leaned over and opened the passenger-side door.
Inside, the chill in my bones seeped away immediately, despite the fact that the car’s heater hadn’t had enough time to warm up. A heavy scent of cinnamon hung in the air, along with tiny pink shimmers. He’d used a cut to kindle a warming charm. Probably from his mom.
I glanced at Crowe as he shifted the car into gear and pulled back onto the road. “What?” he said, without looking at me.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
We rode in silence for a while, and I tried to calm down. Crowe had no idea why I didn’t use magic, or what it did to me—and that was because I kept my problem to myself. He’d wanted to make an example of Alex and me tonight, and he had succeeded. He couldn’t have known how scared I had been, how awful it felt to cast. Those thoughts cooled my rage and humiliation, making room for other realizations. I had managed to do a binding charm, and I hadn’t ended up on the floor or in the hospital. That… was actually a good thing. And if Alex would let me know that she wasn’t pissed or hurt, then I’d feel even better. Needing to turn my anxious thoughts away from my temporarily powerless best friend, I asked, “What was Old Lady Jane doing at the Schoolhouse?”
Crowe’s thumb tapped against the leather steering wheel while we waited out a red light. “Club business.”
“About the festival?” With a half-dozen other clubs in town, there was a lot of business to do.
The intersection was empty of traffic. Crowe tapped out a quicker rhythm, as if sitting still in the car, the brake engaged, was making him restless. “Jane’s been consulting for me on a few things.”
“Such as?”
“The future.”
I sighed. “Obviously. That’s what Old Lady Jane does. So what’s happening in the future?”
The light finally flicked to green and Crowe stepped on the gas. The car’s engine roared to life as we lurched through the intersection.
“Bad things,” he said quietly.
“You planning to break more bones?”
He leaned back on the headrest. “If I have to. But this is bigger than a few fistfights.”
“A lot of fistfights, then?”
“We haven’t run up against the Deathstalkers since last year.”
I sat up in my seat. “But hasn’t it been seven years since the Devils took their president down? I thought you guys had made peace.”
“Hardly. The Devils didn’t just take down the Stalkers’ pres—they took out all five of the officers, too.”
“Whoa,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know—”
“You were young. I’m sure your dad didn’t want you to know.”
“You were young, too.”
“I was old enough.” Weariness had seeped into his voice. “Anyway. I don’t think the fight is over.”
“But the Deathstalkers hosted us last year in New Orleans.” My hands got clammy as the memories poured in. “They didn’t seem to hold any of that against us,” I said lamely.
“Yeah, they were perfect gentlemen,” Crowe said.
“Your sarcasm is loud and clear,” I said.
“They murdered my dad, Jem.” His voice had gone low and husky.
“What? I—” I swallowed hard. Talking to Crowe about his dad’s death felt like playing catch with a loaded gun. “I thought it was an accident.”
“Wouldn’t it be easy if we all believed that?”
“Flynn told me that’s what it was.”
“Flynn wishes that were true. But I saw my father’s body. I know different.”
I stared out the window into the night. “How could you tell it wasn’t, um… natural?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it to you.”
“Why did you?”
A one-shoulder shrug was all I got for an answer. I let my vision go unfocused as I considered that Michael Medici might have been murdered—by Deathstalkers, no less. And if Old Lady Jane was right and something big and bad was going to happen, I could see why he was tense. With the Kindled Festival coming up, it was the perfect time for someone, anyone, to try to get revenge on Crowe for the pain he’d inflicted in the past year. The perfect time for someone to strike out at any of the Devils. Any of the Medicis.
“You just had me bind Alex’s magic—what if she needs to protect herself?”
“I’ll have people watching her back. Don’t worry about this, okay?” Crowe turned onto my street. “Whatever is going on, I’ll handle it.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I scooped it out, hoping it was Alex.
Crowe glanced at the phone before pulling up in front of my house. “Who’s ‘D’?”
“None of your business.”
“Girl or guy?”
“Guy.” It was true, but also, I wanted to see his reaction.
He shut the car off and leaned back in the bucket seat, his body angled toward mine. A streetlight cast half his face in shadow and half in bright, silver light. Crowe had that perfect Italian skin and bone structure. The way he lived—drinking regularly, sleeping little, high stress and anxiety—you’d think
he’d look haggard and older than he was. He didn’t. He looked like he drank kale smoothies for breakfast and ran ten miles a day. I didn’t know how he did it. Maybe his appearance was doctored by Flynn. Maybe Crowe Medici’s handsomeness was just an illusion.
“This D guy a dreck?”
“Not all of us get off on dating for power.” I pushed the car door open. “Why?”
He looked away from me, out the windshield to the empty street beyond. “I just want to be sure you’re safe is all. Seeing a dreck is an unnecessary risk.”
“So you think I should date only kindled?”
A half smile turned him devilish in the light. “I think you should embrace girl power and all that and stay single for a while.”
“You’re a shitbag.” I stepped out and slammed the door shut.
“Jemmie. Wait.”
I stalked around the front of my house to the back door. On the porch, I dug in my bag for my house key but didn’t find it fast enough. Crowe caught up by the time I turned the deadbolt.
“Why are you still here?” I said as I dropped my bag on the kitchen table, giving the house a quick scan. It was dark save for the light above the stove. It cast a soft golden glow around the room. A package of thawing ribs and another of sausage were sitting out on the counter—clearly Mom was planning on making her special slow-cooked feijoada—but from what I could tell, she wasn’t home. Thank God.
“I think we’ve had enough of each other for one night,” I said.
I rummaged around inside the fridge and pulled out a takeout sandwich left over from last night. When I turned around, Crowe was standing in the middle of the kitchen, his car keys hanging from his index finger. He just stared at me.
The house seemed to shrink in size around him, and I took a step back, pressing myself into the counter so I didn’t have to crane my neck to look at him.
“You always going to treat me like this?” he asked evenly.
I set the sandwich down and propped my hands on the edge of the counter. “Treat you like what?”
“Like you hate me.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Jemmie,” he started.
I cut him off. “I should have walked home.”
I moved past him for the living room. His hand snapped out and grabbed me by the wrist. Heat spread out from his touch, engulfing me, and I wondered if he felt it, too, this volcano that erupted between us whenever we touched. Only some of it had to do with magic, but I was already breathing it in as it snaked out in amber streaks around us, dark and dangerous and pulsing.