Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2) (12 page)

“And I will take word of your insolence to my Lord. That you are a mageling will not matter to my Lord one bit. Your mother and sister are still going to suffer for a long time before I give them the death they're going to be begging for when I'm done with them. And you will wa-AHGH!” he yelled as I stuck the point of my balisong into his armpit and settled the score between us.

He dropped me, and the knife slid free as I fell. I reversed the blade in my grip and slammed it into the top of his foot, then staggered to my feet. I left the knife sticking out of his shoe, but it didn't pin his foot to the floor and he came after me. His hands fell just short of my throat as I lunged back. I ended up against the wall next to the fridge when he came at me again. My left hand slammed the freezer door in his face and knocked him back. Blood ran freely from his nose as I closed the freezer and kicked him square in the privates. I had yet to meet a living being that didn't double over when I hit them there. While he retched and moaned, I grabbed the collar of his trenchcoat and dragged him to the back door, then opened it and thrust him a little ways ahead of me.

“You
never
threaten my family!” I yelled. Then I slammed the door on his head.

He brought an arm up, and I slammed it in the door a few times instead. When it was bendy in places an arm shouldn't be bendy, I stuck his head back against the door jamb and brought the door against it a couple of times, then shoved him out into the back yard. His hat was on the floor next to the door, and I flung it out to land next to him. He rolled onto his back and snatched my knife out of his foot and threw it at me. It went wide, but it stuck deep in the door.

I came off the back porch with a growl that started deep in my throat. He was already scrambling away when I hit the grass, and he was in a staggering run before I could get to him. That should have told me some scary things about him, but I was too pissed off to care just then.

“Tell him that, asshole!” I yelled after him. “Never!”

He disappeared down the alleyway, and I stood there for a few seconds, wondering what to do next. Mom and Dee were safe, and the bad guys were taken care of. I vaguely recalled something important was going on inside, and that I needed to be there instead of on my knees in wet grass. And when did the part about not standing happen, anyway? For that matter, my fuzzy brain was wondering why my hands were shaking and why I was cold all over. It was warm inside, the part of my mind that handles things like that reminded me. My monkey brain had its own set of priorities, and at the moment, monkey brain made sense. I got to my feet and staggered toward the house. Somewhere along the way, everything got really bright and my head felt like it was going to float off my shoulders.

If I had just passed out, the next hour or so would have been a lot more pleasant. Instead, I was pretty much aware of being nauseated, cold, sweaty, and generally in shock. All my brain could handle was impressions. Dr. C laying me down on the couch, cops and paramedics going back and forth, a light shining in my eyes, and something liquid, cool and sweet, being poured down my throat.

“It's the body's natural reaction to a disruption of its normal processes,” I heard Dr. C saying a queasy eternity later. He was sitting on the coffee table with a cup of something red in his hand. “Expending so much of his personal energy like he did caused a reaction that's like a combination of heat exhaustion and shock. Plus, once his personal stores were depleted, the spell drew most of the kinetic energy out of his body before it drew from the room around him.” That explained the frost on the walls.

“He'll be all right soon, won't he?” Mom asked, though I thought it sounded more like a demand.

“Yes,” Dr. C said. “It's nothing permanent. In fact, if he'd remembered to use his touchstone, he probably wouldn't have exhausted himself so badly.”

“Oops,” I said softly.

“Chance, honey,” Mom said softly as she came to my side, “How are you feeling?”

“Like a train wreck,” I managed as I struggled to sit up. For a minute, the room spun and my head pounded, but I figured laying back again would just give my head an excuse to explode or my stomach enough reason to heave my ankles up through my teeth, so I sat there and waited the worst of it out. “Isn't this where someone was supposed to tell me not to sit up?”

“Experience is the best teacher, my young apprentice,” Dr. C said, sounding sage and a little Sithy.

“Ah, Darth Smartass. You are strong in the Dork Side of the Farce, my Master,” I shot back at him.

“He'll be fine,” Mom said levelly. “If he learns to watch his language.”

“What did you tell the cops, Mom?”

“The truth. That I didn't see what happened upstairs. By the time I got there, he was already outside. And if they ask you about it, I expect you to tell them the truth as well.”

“That I cast a spell and knocked him thirty feet?” I whispered.

“That you ran into the room, yelled at him, and he left through the window,” Mom said with a crafty smile. “Let them come to their own conclusions about how he managed the rest.”

I looked at my mom with a whole new level of respect. It was the absolute truth, but it didn't reveal anything. The police would explain away what didn't fit, and no one would even think about magick. Of course, that begged the question of the example we were setting for Dee. Which brought my thoughts to wondering where my little sister was.

“Telling the police about the bad man in her room,” Mom told me, when I asked.

About then, one of the paramedics came over and checked me out, and gave me a clean bill of health when I didn't seem to be on the verge of collapse. Once he was satisfied that I had just been coming down off of an adrenaline rush, he closed up his bag and made for the door.

That just left Collins and his partner in the house. Simms came out of the kitchen with a frown on his face and gave me a glare.

“He's your informant, you talk to him,” he said sourly over his shoulder.

Collins appeared in the doorway behind him and gave him a curt nod. Simms didn't waste any time getting out of the house.

“So, what really happened here?” Collins asked, his notepad disappearing into his coat pocket.

Dee’s head appeared around the corner, then she darted to Mom’s side and clung to her like Velcro.

“Off the record?” Dr. Corwyn asked.

“Yeah, off the record.”

“Pretty much what we told you,” I said. “Except there was magick.”

“So the guy in your sister’s room didn’t jump out the window,” Collins said dryly.

“No, I threw him out of it with a TK blast. And I got the other guy with a kind of choke hold.”

“What kind of blast?”

“Telekinesis. TK for short. Same thing I used at Camp Werewolf last October. They told me to stay out of their master’s business, but I don’t know who they work for. I think they were talking about Crystal’s disappearance, because they asked me why I shook Julian down Friday night. They already knew he was dead, and they thought I was still a suspect.”

“We haven’t given the press any names,” Collins mused. “Wonder how they knew that?”

“Maybe he saw you bust me. One thing’s for sure. He wasn’t a normal guy. I got a blade into him twice and he still didn’t slow down.”

“So they were trying to get you to back off,” Collins said with a smile. “Means we hit a nerve. Okay, here’s the deal, we’re gonna get you, your mom, and your little sister in protective custody, get you set up in a safe house or somethin’. Then we’re gonna keep pushing this.”

“No way,” I interjected. “I have stuff I have to do. And I can’t help you find this guy from a safe house.”

“You can’t help us find him if you’re dead, either, and no way I’m lettin’ that happen.”

“He can stay with me,” Dr. Corwyn said quietly. He turned to my mom. “If that’s acceptable to you, Mara. My home is warded, and I can take more precautions while Chance stays with me.” Mom gave him a hard look before she answered.

“I’m still not happy with you, Trevor, but Chance is right. He can’t hide and still do what he needs to. If I had any other option, I’d take it.”

Dr. C lowered his eyes and turned away. “I know.” Dr. C wasn’t the kind of guy to use two words when he had another fifty that sounded better. Something about this whole thing was eating at him.

Mom took Dee up to get some stuff together, and Dr. C sent me upstairs to do the same. I stopped at the doorway to my room, and my mind just kind of locked up. Since October, this had been my safe place, the first place that I could call ‘safe’ for years. Up until then, everything I had in the world fit into a gym bag with room to spare. Mom barely made ends meet, and I didn’t have a lot of stuff, but I didn’t want to leave any of it behind. It was
mine
. Hairy monkey brain pounded its chest in defiance for a moment, until I tranq’d it from a distance and started thinking over its prone form.

Since things had to be taken care of one way or another by midnight Wednesday, I only grabbed enough clothes for that long and my stuff from the bathroom, including my favorite towel. Finally, I dug my stash of magickal gear out of the hiding spot just inside the door of my closet. Almost six months of scrounging had netted me enough foci for half a dozen spells, and I had all of them primed and ready to be charged.

As I pulled the meager supply of magickal gear out of the hole I had made in my closet, a tarot card and a slip of parchment fell to the bottom of the hidey-hole with a soft tap. I flipped the tarot card over to see the Page of Swords facing up at me, and Mr. Chomsky’s last message. I tucked them into my back pocket as bits and pieces came together in my head while I stowed the rest in the hidden section I’d made months ago in the bottom of my Truman high school gym bag. Finally, I dumped my clothes and stuff on top of it all.

“Grab a couple of books,” Dr. C said from my doorway. “And don’t forget your laptop.”

“I’m not very good at this,” I told him as I tucked the computer into its case. “You’d think I would be, you know. I’m half Romany; most of our history is one long journey.”

“You shouldn’t have to be, Chance. You’ve been adrift too much as it is. We’ll get you back home as soon as possible.” He took my bag and computer and headed downstairs.

I spent a few seconds looking around at my room. If things went bad, I was never going to set foot in here again. It was a thought that really,
really
sucked. It stayed in my head as I went downstairs and into the kitchen.

There was blood all over the place. Bloody footprints smeared the linoleum and a trail of round drops ran beside them to the door. Another smear of dark brown covered the freezer door where I’d slammed it into Fedora’s face. There were bits and pieces of him all over the room, more than I needed to track him. I’d told him that threatening my family was a bad idea. Now it was time to show him why.

I met Dr. C out front with my duffel bag over my shoulder and a handkerchief with Fedora’s blood on it in a plastic bag in my jacket pocket. Mom and Dee were loading their bags into the trunk of an Essex County Sheriff Department patrol car as the door closed behind me, and we met in the middle of the lawn.

“Be careful, Chance,” Mom said sternly. “Listen to Trevor, and find that sword. I want you back home before your birthday.”

“I will, Mom,” I said. I wanted to promise her I would, but promises had extra weight behind them when a mage made them; even an apprentice like me had to be careful about giving my word. The consequences for failure weren’t pleasant.

Dee put her arms around my middle and squeezed tight for a full minute. “’m scared,” she muttered into my stomach. “What if someone else comes?”

“No one will be able to find you. And someone will be with you all the time.”

“Don’t want anyone else. Want you there.”

My eyes stung and my chest went tight with that strange rush of feelings I’d been starting to get used to again over the past few months. I knelt down so our eyes were almost level with each other.

“Dee, I want to be there so much,” I told her. “But I can’t be. The people who came today . . . that was my fault. They came because of me. So you and Mom have to go somewhere . . . away from me for a while, okay?” My voice broke, and Dee’s eyes welled up with unshed tears. She held up her hand with her pinky crooked, and I hooked mine through it.

“If the bad people come . . .” she said softly, and let the sentence hang.

“I’ll be there,” I finished as I put my arms around her and hugged the stuffing out of her. It was a promise I didn’t mind making, not for Dee.

Mom gave me a hug of her own. Over her shoulder, I could see Simms watching us from the other side of the patrol car with his arms folded across his chest. His mouth twisted like he’d just swallowed a lemon before he started toward us.

Dr. C put his hand on my shoulder as Simms led Mom and Dee to the patrol car, and gently steered me toward his green Range Rover. He waited until they turned the corner at the end of the block before he pulled away from the curb. I looked to my right, trying to etch the vision of home into my brain as we pulled away, and hoped I’d get to see it again. Collins’ blue Neon slid in behind us. The sun was still bright, the sky still blue, and the morning was still too damn perfect. How was I supposed to be all moody and angst-ridden in this kind of weather? I felt a good brood coming on, and I needed gray clouds and rain to set the scene.