Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (29 page)

“I’m not following. I mean, I get that you
liked coming here and maybe Britta isn’t as awful as Erika, but
what does the big dirt lizard and the rest of it have to do with
anything?”

“Because, ye great fool, ye did things that
made me like ye and I wasn’t supposed to like ye, just seduce ye.
And for showing off, ye’ve gone and made a mad race of it.”

“A race of what,” I said,
trying not to dwell on the part where the really, really pretty
Irish girl said she liked me.
I have a
girlfriend, I have a girlfriend.

“Do ye think I’m the only one whose people
are interested in ye? Do ye think that maybe the other witches
would have called home and told them about the powerful warlock
with the brains of a turnip?” she asked, giving me a sidelong
glance as we walked.

I thought of the kids I’d seen after class
last night… on their cell phones. Trying to gather my thoughts at
all these revelations, I was glancing to the other side of us when
I spotted him.

Adult male, middle-age, five-nine to five
eleven, brown hair, dark eyes, beard, thigh-length dark leather
coat, tan pants, brown shoes… staring at me.

On a college campus of over twelve thousand
undergraduates, anyone older than twenty-five stands out. This guy
didn’t have the professor or administrator vibe. Too polished, too
metro looking.

“Who the hell is that?” I asked as a pack of
kids crossed in front of my vision, blocking him off.

“Who?” Ryanne asked, looking where I was
staring.

The kids moved past and the man was gone.

“Wow, that was odd. A dude was standing there
staring at me. Now he’s gone.”

“At you? Oh does the whole world revolve
around you, does it? Don’t ye think a man might be staring at me?”
she asked, executing a quick walking pirouette.

“Absolutely, which is why it was weird he
made eye contact with me. He should be staring at the hot girl, not
the scruffy boy,” I said, still looking around for him. His
disappearance was odd, too. Much too complete to be normal in my
opinion.

“Oh so ye think I’m hot, do ye?” she
asked.

“Of course. I’m a straight male, aren’t
I?”

“Oh, that was almost a complement, I do
believe.”

“Let’s rewind a bit, back before I got
distracted by some dude and where we got sidetracked by your
hotness. You said that other kids would be calling home and talking
about the dirt lizard and stuff. What’s the big deal?”

“Okay, me hotness aside, let’s look at it
like this. Suppose ye were in a school or college or place where a
kid appeared who could throw home run passes or kick field bases
from one end of the field to another,” she said.

“What? I think you mean throw touchdown
passes and kick field goals?” I clarified.

“Whatever. Not my fault ye’ve no normal
sports at’all. Anyway, some prodigy of a player appears in whatever
sport ye want to name and is so completely beyond what anyone has
ever seen in that sport as to make things almost unfair,” she
said.

“Like football? Our football?” I asked.

“Whatever, ye chancer,” she said, clearly
done with the sports metaphor.

“Well, there would be a lot of media coverage
and probably a mad dash by all the head coaches to recruit the
kid,” I said.

“Bingo. Give the man-boy a biscuit,” she
said. We entered the English building and started toward the
stairs.

“So you think recruiters are coming?” I
asked.

“I think, boyo, that parents
weekend is coming for our little Arcane in March and it’ll be crazy
attended, with lots of
aunts
and
uncles
that have no blood at all in common with the
students,” she said.

“Oh, circle leaders coming along with actual
parents?” I asked.

“Yep. And they’ll be offering ye the moon,
their daughters, and free tickets to the Superbowl,” she said.

“Wait… Superbowl tickets? Good seats?” I
asked.

She smacked my arm. “Ye focker. Sell yer soul
for end line tickets would ye?” she said in mock disgust. “Not to
mention all the nubile girls ye’d be offered along with
riches.”

“End zone,” I corrected quickly. “And I
already have a girlfriend.”

“Yes, I know. Tell me, Declan, jest what’s
the attraction to the soldier girl? She’s kind o’ cute, I’ll admit,
but I don’t see any wicked sense of humor or interest in stuff
other than things that’ll bleed you, blow you up or shoot you dead.
Maybe you like getting beat up a bit?”

I didn’t answer right away, thinking about
Caeco.

“We have a lot in common,” I said
finally.

“Like, jest exactly what?” she wondered,
completely serious.

“We’re both outsiders. Neither of us ever
belonged. We are both gifted in our own areas. We each understand
being hunted and living under the radar. We’re both freaks of
nature,” I finished.

It was her turn to be silent. She glanced my
way a couple of times as we climbed the stairs and moved down the
hall to our class. The next hour and a half went by slowly. I
partially listened to the lecture, took half-assed notes, and
doodled designs of ideas for reactive shields. Ryanne appeared to
be deep into the class, but I noticed she wasn’t writing down much.
She usually took detailed notes; at least she had before.

When it was finally over and we were headed
out into the cold and snow, she turned to me. “So have ye thought
about what I said?”

“About what? Recruiters?”

“Yes.”

“Some. I don’t see how it would work. What am
I going to do? Move to some town in Ireland or wherever the twins
are from? And do what?”

“It’s more about having you on their side and
about adding your genes to their lines. Some witch moms are pretty
militant about marrying their daughters to the fellas with the best
magic genes they can find. Yours are tops,” she said.

“Maybe from Mom’s side, but not my father’s.
He was a frigging rapist.”

“Like I said, some circle leaders are pretty
ruthless about getting the genes. You best not be drinking anything
you haven’t poured yerself. Now, jest where was the man who
fathered ye from?” she asked.

“Croatia, that’s all I know,” I said.

“Odd that,” she said. I looked at her
expectantly. “Oh, it jest that Zuzanna is from Croatia is all,” she
said.

Oh great. And she was one of the ones making
calls. “You think my father will hear? If he’s still alive?”

“I think the whole witch world will hear, if
they haven’t already,” she said with a seriousness that was unusual
for her.

Chapter 27

“Hold steady, Declan,” Mack said for like the
tenth time. “I don’t want to shoot any of your fingers off.”

“You try holding still when some maniac of a
werewolf hunter is pointing a .22 pistol at your hand, or at least
close to your hand,” I replied.

We were just outside of Burlington at a sand
and gravel quarry that was closed for the night. The pole-mounted
security camera had succumbed to my magical persuasions, as had the
locked gate, and there weren’t any private homes in the immediate
area. A light snow was falling and Caeco’s concern for the line of
tracks that the Beast left forced me to use another card in my
deck. Jetta had noticed immediately. “You’re using wind to blow
away the tracks… How are you using wind?” she’d asked. I had just
shrugged and winked at her. Caeco was the one who blabbed my
secret.

“He has an affinity for Air,” she’d said.

“No way. He’s Earth and Fire,” Mack had
chimed in.

“Earth, Fire, and Air,” Caeco said back.

“A little Air,” I’d corrected, pulling to a
stop behind a big pile of snow-covered sand.

“I thought that was impossible?” Jetta asked.
I shrugged again.

“So is a dual affinity warlock with more
power than an entire circle. Why not be even more impossible, ah
Declan?” Mack asked.

“That’s me… Mr. Impossible.”

“Impossible ego, impossible to live with,
impossible son of a bi—” Jetta ground out before Caeco interrupted
her with a loud “Ahem.” Jetta immediately looked embarrassed .
“Sorry about that last part, D. I didn’t mean it like that,” she
said.

“It’s okay. I think my mom would be okay with
the bitch part as long as it was a capital B Bitch and said with
respect. She could certainly go there when it was called for,” I
said, thinking of my mom yelling at a food delivery guy who had
dropped and then stepped on some expensive meat.

Minutes later found me lying back on the
mound of dirt, left hand extended out straight out from my side,
watching as Mack lined up to shoot near my hand.

“Remember, try to extend your shield past
your fingertips because I won’t hit you, but it’ll be close,” he
said, then muttered something that sounded suspiciously like
“Maybe.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“Nothing. Now stop being a big warlock baby
and concentrate,” he said, lining up the shot from a foot away.

I closed my eyes and
thought
really
hard about stopping bullets. There was a snap, a chuffing
sound as the soda bottle suppressor Mack had whipped up contained
much of the sound and… nothing else. I looked over at my hand. A
little .22 bullet hung, suspended, an inch off the sand.

“Still concentrating?” he asked. I nodded and
he instantly snapped off two shots right at my left hand. I yanked
my hand away and jumped up.

“Are you fucking crazy?” I asked.

“He kinda is, but so is that,” Jetta said,
pointing at my hand, where two bullets were moving everywhere my
hand did, but not touching it. I held up one hand to Mack.

“No more shooting. I’m dropping the shield,”
I said, waiting until he nodded and cleared the gun’s chamber.
Caeco snatched the ejected round out of the air and handed it back
to Mack.

“Neat, now maybe you can help me find the
empty cases,” Mack said. Caeco opened her other hand, revealing
three tiny brass .22 cases.

“My girl has mad skills,” Jetta said.

I dropped all three expended bullets into
Caeco’s hand . “So does my guy,” she said, smiling at me before
looking at her roommate.

“Okay, the results are good. Let’s get out of
here before someone comes along,” Mack suggested.

We piled back into Beast and pulled back out
to the closed gate. After everyone looked out their perspective
windows and pronounced the area clear, I used Craft to open the
gate and reclose it after Beast rolled through. A swirling
snow-devil wiped out our tracks behind us and we pulled up to the
edge of the road. Just in time, as a pair of headlights appeared
around the far bend. I waited to let the car go past but it slowed,
the silhouette becoming that of a police cruiser. Chittendon County
Sheriff’s Department.

“Awesome,” Mack groaned.

“Shut up and let Declan talk. His aunt’s
girlfriend is a deputy,” Caeco said before turning to me.

The cruiser pulled in with its headlights
focused on Beast, but after a moment, the car pulled forward and
the driver’s window powered down.

“Roll down your window. I think I know him,”
I said.

Leaning over Caeco’s lap, I waved to the
deputy I had met at least once at a department picnic. His stare
was very direct and measuring, but I figured he’d already
recognized my distinctive vehicle or he would have held back and
run the plates.

“You Ashling’s boy?” the beefy, bald headed
deputy asked, his eyes scanning everything.

“Yes sir. Declan, and this is my girlfriend,
her roommate, and my roommate,” I said.

“Roommates? I thought you were still in high
school?” he asked. His name came to me a second later. Carl. Carl
and a couple of other deputies were Jeep aficionados, but they
could admire Land Cruisers too, and we had talked about Beast at
the outing.

“Early college program at UVM. We’re all in
it,” I said.

“So what are you doing way out here?” he
asked. “Drinking?”

“Do that right in the dorms if we wanted to.
We needed to get away from the other kids for a bit. Plus, I need
to be outdoors fairly often, like my aunt,” I said.

Most of the department knew my aunt had some
different skills, things that a few of the more open-minded might
call psychic. She had done a lot of lost people work for the
department and after a while, they stopped caring how she did it
and were mostly glad she could do it. I was hoping Carl was one of
the ones that weren’t too freaked out by her.

“Like aunt, like nephew?” he asked, a deeper
question hiding in plain sight.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Okay, well, carry on. Drive careful, though;
the roads are a little greasy and I wouldn’t want to have to call a
Jeep to pull your Cruiser out of the snowbanks,” he said with a
smirk.