I didn’t know how he had hung on so long.
I resisted the urge to lick at the magic, resisted the urge to place my lips briefly against the ropes that covered his mouth. Taste and smell were a Hound’s strengths, and I could learn a lot about a hit by using them. But no one wanted to see a grown woman lick someone’s wounds—magical or not. I took another deep breath, mouth open, to get the taste of the magic on my palate and sinuses at the same time. The lines were so old, all I could smell was death. Boy’s death.
I muttered another mantra, pulled a little more magic, and traced the cords across his chest with my fingers, memorizing the twists and knots and turns. Some of the smaller ropes lifted like tendrils of smoke—ashes from the Offload glyph’s fire.
Every user of magic had their own signature—a style that was as permanent and unique as a fingerprint or DNA sequencing. A good Hand could forge the signature of a caster, but the forgery was never perfect, and rarely good enough to fool a Hound worth their salt.
And I was worth a sea of salt. I retraced the spell, lingered over knots, and memorized where ropes crossed and parted and dissolved into one another.
I knew this mark. Knew this signature. Intimately.
I jerked my hand away from Boy, breaking the magical contact with him. No wonder the signature was familiar. It was my father’s.
It had been deconstructed to try to hide his distinctive flare, but I knew his hand, knew his mark. The room was suddenly too hot, too small, too close.
Boy was sick, dying, and my dad was killing him.
“Get him a doctor.” My voice sounded thin and far away. I swallowed and clenched my hands, digging nails into palms until I could feel the pain of it.
“Mama,” I said, “this is bad. A big hit. And it’s old. He needs to get to a doctor right now.”
“Who did this?” Mama asked. “You tell me who. We make them pay.”
But I couldn’t say it, couldn’t wrap my brain around what my father had done, couldn’t understand why he would do such a thing. Boy was only five years old.
Not too far off, a siren wailed.
“Is that an ambulance?” I looked to Boy—the one with the beard—who stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “You did call an ambulance, right?”
He gave me a level look and a sinking feeling hit my stomach. He hadn’t called an ambulance. Probably hadn’t called anyone. I guess they trusted doctors as much as they trusted magic. Or they didn’t have the money to pay a hospital bill. Maybe they thought Hounding would take care of it, would magically make Boy better.
Sweet hells.
“Give me the phone,” I said.
Mama waved her hand. “We call, we call.”
That was a lie. I took two steps toward the Boy by the phone, wondering how fast I could dial 911 before he dragged me away. Both Boys—the one from the kitchen and the nonspeaker—crossed their arms over their chests and stood shoulder to shoulder in front of me, blocking the phone.
“Get out of my way,” I said. “I am using that phone.”
“Allie girl,” Mama warned.
“He could die, Mama.”
“You tell me who did this and I call.”
“I already called,” a deep voice behind me said.
I stopped and looked over at Zayvion, who was still leaning against the wall, coffee in his hand.
“Before you got here,” he said. “They’re on the way.” As if to illustrate his point, the distant siren grew louder.
Convenient, that. But should I take his word for it? I opened my mouth to say something. Mama beat me to it.
“You have no right here, Zayvion Jones.” Mama’s voice was sharp, and heavy with that muddy accent I could not place. She was more than angry. She was furious. In all the years I’d known her, I’d never seen her so mad, not even when she’d been robbed for the third time in a month. “My family. My home. My street. Not yours, Zayvion Jones. Not one of your kind.”
Zayvion stiffened for the briefest moment. He suddenly seemed much less the harmless drifter and much more a figure of authority. He shot a look at me, those brown eyes calculating something. Maybe trying to decide if I was friend or foe. I don’t know what he came up with, but he leaned back and that edge of authority—of power—was gone, leaving him just a harmless drifter again.
He shrugged. “Then you can tell them to leave when they get here. Tell them there’s nothing’s wrong with your son.”
“No,” I said, not wanting Mama’s anger to override her reason. “The ambulance is a good idea. He needs a doctor—someone who can break an Offload pattern or set a Siphon to bleed away the strength of this spell.” I walked back over to Boy, the youngest, and rested my hand on his too-quickly beating heart.
I wanted to help the kid, wanted to tear the ropes of magic from him. But the magic fed off him as if he were the caster. That is the power of an Offload: it makes someone else pay for magic they have not used. I did not have the training to break such a strong spell without risking Boy’s life.
“Who, Allie?” Mama asked again.
I shook my head, angry at my father and his company for thinking they could get away with something like this, and worried that Mama might do something stupid—like send out a half dozen of her Boys with guns to even the score. I didn’t want her to do that. Not until I had a chance to do it first.
“It was a corporate hit—an Offload for magic used in the city. A lot of magic. For something big. I’m going to trace it back to the caster. I’ll let you know when I find out for sure. Call the cops and tell them.”
I strode to the door, angry and a little dizzy. I hoped the Boys would take care of things and see that Boy the youngest got to a doctor, even if Mama was too angry or too stubborn to do so.
“I want them to hurt, Allie,” Mama demanded. “I want them to pay for my poor boy. Tell them we’ll go to court, go to news channels, tear them down. Tell them they will pay.”
“They’ll pay,” I said as I brushed past Zayvion and straight-armed the door open.
I was half a block away when the ambulance turned the corner and headed straight to Mama’s. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Mama standing on her front step, waving them down.
Maybe Boy still had a chance.
Anger took me a long way, down the street and five more blocks before I hailed a cab. Anger made me not care it was raining, made me not care Zayvion followed me and held the cab door open and slid across the vinyl seat next to me. Anger even made me tell the cabbie to take me to Beckstrom Enterprises as quickly as he could.
“You okay?” Zayvion asked. When I didn’t answer, he put his hand on my arm—the one with the scars. And his hand felt good there, soothing and warm like winter mint.
I pulled away. I didn’t much trust him, though I had to give him points for calling the ambulance back there. Boy could very well have died if he hadn’t. “I’m fine.”
He frowned. “Allie, your neck. It’s bruising.”
Great. I’d forgotten to set a Disbursement spell when I cast magic to Hound Boy. That meant I didn’t get to choose how magic would make me pay for using it.
Lovely.
“It’s fine.” I pulled my coat collar closer to my jaw. I hated being around people when I hurt. But I’d done this to myself. I always paid my own price for using magic, mostly because I didn’t want to be indebted to a Proxy. If I had remembered to cast a Disbursement spell, I could have chosen how the pain would manifest: a two-day migraine, a week of insomnia, even flulike sickness—something fairly dramatic that I could get over quickly. I hated the slower Disbursement route some Hounds took. Sure it made for a less immediately painful price, but one that lasted much longer and took a harder toll. I’d seen too many Hounds end up blind, deaf, and insane. That is, if the pain pills, booze, and drugs didn’t kill them first.
I glanced at the back of my hands as new bruises darkened, and tried to take a deep breath but couldn’t because of the sharp pinch of pain beneath my ribs. Great. I was probably bruising inside and out, and wouldn’t be able to move in about an hour.