Something Magic This Way Comes (31 page)

“Miss Watkins, I represent a powerful cartel of mages who are interested in recruiting your talents. If I am not mistaken, your life lately has not been particularly pleasant. Because of your rather unique potential, my employers are willing to provide you with excellent housing, education, and liberal benefits while you learn to become an integral part of our organization.”

A snort came from Missy’s right side. She and Prentice both glanced over to see Gerard stifling a reply behind her hand. The sorceress raised her eyebrows in mock embarrassment.

“Oh, sorry. Don’t mind me.” Prentice let out an irritated sigh.

“In any case,” Prentice continued, clearly annoyed, “you will be treated very well and given every comfort. You have the potential to become a valuable asset to our cartel, and we would like to give you every opportunity to attain your full potential.”

“Is that the same deal you gave my sister and her children as you drained them like human batteries during your last battles of succession?”

The voice came from behind the small group and was accompanied by purposeful, splashing footsteps as a substantial matron wearing rubber farm boots walked into the range of Gerard’s fairy light. Her white hair had been hastily pinned into a crude bun, and a ratty gray raincoat had been thrown over her green paisley pajamas. Despite this harried appearance, however, her expression matched the looming threat of the black clouds still lingering overhead.

“What the hell is this, Gerard?” Prentice demanded in an outraged voice. “Bring-your-own-geezer night?”

The sorceress barked out a surprised laugh before favoring the mage with a canary-fed smile. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said as she waved a hand at the matron. “This, Porkloin, is really and truly balance.”

“Gram!” squealed Missy as she turned and ran for the woman. She could hear Gerard’s chuckle and Prentice’ hiss of indrawn breath behind as she charged into her grandmother’s embrace.

“Hello, puddin’,” Gram whispered to her. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

Missy wanted to pour out her heart to Gram, tell her about all the pain and horror that she had seen and experienced since their last parting, but all that came out were sobs and tears. So she settled for burying her face in the wet comfort of her grandmother’s raincoat and felt safe for the first time in a month.

Gram straightened but kept on hand protectively on Missy’s head.

“Allie,” she said conversationally.

“Hello, Becca. Long time. Things are making more sense now.”

Gram patted Missy and then pried her free from the raincoat. “Punkin? I need you to go stay by Miss Gerard for a bit, okay?” Missy shook her head.

“She’s scary!” Her emphatic pronouncement drew a chuckle from her grandmother.

“Oh, she’s all right, once you get to know her. I asked a friend of mine for help, and he sent Allie. I need you to go stand with her for just a bit until I deal with this young fella.”

Gram gave her a gentle push toward the side of the passage where Gerard had taken up a perch on a closed dumpster. O.G. was grooming himself with a smooth silver tongue as he sat on a cement stoop in the doorway next to his mistress. Missy stepped hesitantly toward a spot on the wall between the dumpster and the cat before turning to look back at her Gram and Prentice.

“You’re in for a treat,” Gerard told her in a perfectly audible stage whisper. “Not many folks get to see the White Witch of Denton in action.”

Prentice went even more pale in the blue light; his mouth opened in shock, then worked silently as he tried to find his voice. “You!” he managed to gasp out at last as he raised a shaky finger to point at Gram.

“Me, you sorry excuse for a soul leech.” Missy had never seen a smile as cold as the one Gram gave the now shaking mage. Even she wanted to run away from that horrible expression. Glancing to her right, she saw Gerard grinning in unabashed enjoyment.

Whether driven by fear or desperation, the mage wasted no more words. He snapped his hands forward, wrist to wrist with fingers outspread. A rush of cold filled the alley as an oily black cloud shot out from his palms toward Gram. Missy screamed and made to move forward, but some sort of invisible tether materialized about her waist, binding her to the door.

“Just watch,” came Gerard’s gleeful voice.

The horizontal oil slick rushed toward her Gram leaving frost on every surface as it passed except where Gerard, Missy, and the silver cat watched.

Missy’s stomach seemed to fill her throat as the grayhaired matron raised a single hand and flicked her wrist disdainfully.

Light that seemed to be drawn from a high summer noon in Denton flared to life in front of the cloud, the vertical pillar of brilliance slicing the chill away and dissolving the mage’s attack into coalescing puddles of ink. For a moment, Missy thought she could see the weave of the black spell coming unraveled in the flying remnants as they evaporated in the rain.

Just as the last of the casting closest to the mage’s hands was about to come undone, though, a hidden glyph erupted from the black . . . the brilliant crimson of the firebird!

“No!” she screamed as she stretched out her own hand. Heat scorched her face as a firebird erupted from her own threads, screaming out to intercept Prentice’s surprise scant inches from her grandmother’s face.

“Stupid little bitch!” Prentice snapped. Another firebird streaked from his fingertips, this time directed at Missy. Her eyes widened as the glyph roared through the darkness aimed seemingly at her nose.

She struggled to find another firebird like the one she had conjured for Gram, but nothing answered her call.

I’m going to die,
came the realization.
I’m not even
twelve and I’m going to die.

A wall of pale blue ice appeared between Missy and Prentice’s attack. His glyph struck the barrier with an ear splitting crack, but the frigid shield held.

To Missy’s left, Gram straightened, bringing her hands up to her chest and then down in a clearing gesture. Ice, fading firebird, and sunlight pillar all disappeared with an ephemeral “pop.” Her right hand strayed back up to her hair to tuck a loose strand of gray behind her ear.

“My turn,” she said so softly that Missy just barely heard. Prentice, apparently, had heard all too well. He cringed back before turning to run hell bent for the alley entrance.

Her attention drawn by Prentice’s attempt to run, Missy did not see what Gram did. A rush of air and the sense of something enormous passing by were unmistakable, though. The fleeing mage bent backward with a crack as some powerful force slammed into him from behind. His feet left the ground as he lofted out of the alley and into the street following a rising arc.

A flash of blue and white appeared on the street from the left, and Prentice disappeared from sight as the impact of a bus radically altered the mage’s ballistic trajectory with a wet crunch. Missy stared at the now empty alley opening in shock. Against the background noise of a squealing air brakes and tortured tires, a polite cough came from Gerard’s perch.

“That was . . . elegant,” said the younger woman as she hopped down with a splash. Panicked voices started shouting out in the street. Missy looked up to see the young witch’s wry grin, then looked back toward her Gram. The older woman chuckled and brushed her hands in a gesture of finality.

“All a matter of timing and situational awareness, Allie,” the old woman said as she joined them near the dumpster. “And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge down in Escobedo I’d like to talk to you about.”

Gerard chuckled. “And I think Missy there is a chip off your block. She didn’t even have to weave that glyph before she cast it.”

The sound of her name released Missy from her shocked trance. She threw herself back against Gram’s sopping raincoat. “I want to go home!” she pleaded.

Gentle hands appeared on her head, slipped to her shoulders and held her tight.

“Oh, puddin’,” Gram said softly, “I know you do, and I wish I could take you back and make it all better.”

Missy pushed back and looked up in disbelief at her grandmother. “You . . . you’re not taking me home?”

An expression of pain and despair washed across Gram’s wrinkled face.

“Hon, I want to, but I can’t,” she said as her eyes began to glitter in the fairie light. “The folks that varmint worked for have been after me for a long time. I thought that if I stayed low and out of sight, they’d leave me and mine alone, but that doesn’t seem to be the way of it. I think they killed my boy and then used that grief to twist your mom up and ruin her life. Reckon they thought that if they caused enough pain, I wouldn’t fight ’em.” She sighed and pulled Missy into a tighter embrace.

“I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there to stop your momma from running off, hon. I never thought she’d do what she did, but now I’ve got to deal with these skunks, and I can’t protect you at the same time. I’m just miserable that I couldn’t save her.”

“But . . .” Missy began. Gram shook her head firmly.

“Nope. You need to go with Allie back down to Houston. That friend of mine . . . his name’s Don . . . he’s got a school there. They’ll teach you more about your threads and a lot of other stuff to boot.” Missy snuffled and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “Oh, don’t let it be like that, puddin’. It won’t be long, and you’ll get to meet a lot of other kids, and Allie here won’t let anything bad happen to you, will you Allie?”

Gerard jerked back in surprise, glancing between Gram and Missy in panic. “Becca,” she started out reasonably, “you know I’m in acquisitions. I’m not exactly a babysitter.”

“I’m no baby!” snapped Missy. “And I don’t want to go to Houston!”

Allie held up her hands to fend off a further protest.

“Look, Missy, Becca has a point. She can’t have you trailing around behind her or hiding in her house while she’s out picking a fight. You’re better off at the Haven school for a bit while she fixes things.”

Missy looked back and forth between the two, trying to find a chink in either woman’s armor. A siren sounded in the distance.

“Time’s running out, Allie.” Gram’s voice seemed more tired than Missy had ever heard it. “I’m asking you to watch out for her as a friend, not offering you a contract. She needs you more than you could know, and I have a sneaking suspicion it’d do you some good, too.”

“Becca . . .” Allie started to say, but the old woman held up a hand, cutting her off.

“For your Grandpa’s sake, Allie. Please.”

In that moment, Missy thought that Gerard was going to explode. Allie’s face had gone all still and flushed with her mouth working up and down silently as her brain apparently tried to come up with a suitable remark to release the pressure. Then the young woman’s eyes fell to the right of Gram and the flush faded.

“All right,” she said softly. “I’ll do it, but you’d damn well better not dawdle.”

A pair of matronly arms reached out to drag a startled Gerard into a none-too-feminine bear hug that squeezed Missy between them.

“Good girl!” Gram told her as she pounded on Allie’s back. “He’d be proud of you.”

Gerard pushed out of the embrace like a cat. “All right! All right! No need to get soppy about it. Jeez!”

The sound of the siren drew nearer and was joined by another. Allie glanced toward the street meaningfully before looking back at Gram and Missy. “I think we need to git.”

Gram nodded, then bent down to kiss Missy on the cheek. “You be good for Don and Allie. I’ll be along as soon as I can get things straightened out.”

Missy wrapped her arms around the old woman and squeezed as tight and hard as she could. Her eyes burned, but the tears seemed to have run out. “I will,” she said into the raincoat. “Just hurry.”

Strong hands pulled her away to where her Gram’s own twinkling eyes could look down at her. “It won’t be long. I promise.” Then she put Missy’s right hand into Allie’s left, touched the side of her nose, and disappeared.

A pregnant pause ensued as Missy tried to accept that her grandmother had just vanished. A jerking motion shook her hand as Gerard broke free.

“She just . . .” Missy started to say.

“Yeah, I know, the show off,” Gerard muttered.

“Doesn’t even need to form a portal. Those boys won’t know what hit ’em.” She shook her head and started back into the alley away from the street, Missy following in her wake. Their quiet steps filled the silence, the clinking of O.G’s paws on the pavement providing a soft counter-cadence.

“Well,” Allie said as they neared the Tommy’s body, “let’s get out of here before the cops come looking.”

Gerard raised a hand, and Missy felt a surge through her whole body as Tommy’s body disappeared with a pop.

“Where’d you send him?” she asked.

“Back to the Haven,” muttered Gerard. “There’s a place in the building where they can take care of him.”

“It sounds big.”

“Nah, it’s just an old hotel. Lots of rooms, though.”

“Do you live there?”

“Hmph! As if. I’ve got my own place.”

“Will you come visit?”

Gerard sighed.

“I think I’ll be staying there for a while. Seems as though I’ve just been forced to adopt a little sister.”

She gestured toward the far end of the alley, and an oval of black rimmed with multicolored threads appeared before them. Missy’s left hand crept up nervously to slip back into Allie’s right palm. Right before they stepped through the portal, Gerard squeezed, gentle but firm.

“Change is always scary,” Allie said before they slipped into the black, “but having friends helps.”

T
HE bus stank of diesel, and the seat dug uncomfortably into her slight frame. She got her compact out of her bag and examined her face in the mirror.

The same Rhian as always looked back at her, but she did what she could to improve upon nature. Every few minutes, she checked her watch. She was ready by the door when the bus stopped, diving out before it was fully open.

Rhian ran the length of the road and up the High Street. A tall boy in denim waited by the café door.