The Final Formula (9 page)

Chapter
9

“W
hat does that mean?” Rowan’s
tone held a calm that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I expected to see fire in his eyes, but for the moment, they remained gray.

“She doesn’t mean you’re going to die,” James said. “She means you’ll meet the personification of death.”

“He’s a grim.” Marian gave James a big smile.

Lydia gasped and stepped forward to take Marian from Rowan’s arms.

“Where are we going?” Marian asked as Lydia whisked her from the room.

I started to comment when Rowan’s eyes, which had never left James, went completely orange.

“James!” I stepped between them, not sure what I could do.

“No!” Gerald sprang forward and grabbed me by the front of my shirt. Did he think I’d given James some sort of command?

A wave of vertigo hit me, distorting my vision. An instant later, something slammed into my back, or perhaps I slammed into something. My head spun and the sunlight hurt my eyes. Sunlight?

I squinted at the blue sky and finally made sense of my surroundings. I was outside, on my back in the grass. Somehow Gerald had teleported me outside. And he had his hands around my throat.

“I won’t let you kill him,” he whispered. He straddled my body, both hands squeezing my throat. “Send your pet back to hell!” He pulled me off the ground and slammed me back down again. My head collided with the earth and sparkling stars swam across my vision.

I gripped his wrists, trying in vain to pull away his hands. Darkness haloed my vision and I dug my nails into Gerald’s wrists. Panicking, I twisted and thrashed, trying to find some leverage, anything to get him off me.

Suddenly, his hands left my throat and his weight no longer pinned me to the ground. I sat up, coughing. An animal snarled and gooseflesh pebbled every inch of my body. Gerald screamed. I twisted around and found him lying several yards away, pinned beneath a massive black dog. Or more accurately, a hellhound.

I’d seen James furry before, but never in the bright light of day. His shaggy coat was a slash of darkness that, like his growl, didn’t belong in a world of sunlight and bright fall foliage. But more disturbing than the wrongness of his presence was his size. This form had to outweigh his human body. Gerald wasn’t a big man, but James came close to making two of him. He flexed his paws, unsheathing ebony claws like a cat. They sank into Gerald’s shoulders, and he screamed again.

“James! Don’t!” Rowan ran around the side of Lydia’s house. Gerald had put me down in her backyard.

Rowan picked up a wooden Adirondack chair and without slowing, slung it into James. It hit him broadside, and I cringed. The impact knocked him off Gerald, rolling him several feet. Concerned, I cleared my throat in an effort to call out to him, but I needn’t have worried. James rolled to his feet, his claws digging into the turf to stop himself.

Gerald got to his knees before James turned back to him with another hair-raising snarl. Gerald’s scream cut out in mid-crescendo. He was no longer there.

James whirled to face the house and darkness swallowed him. I didn’t know how else to describe it. For an instant, less than an instant, he wasn’t the hellhound and he wasn’t the boy I knew. He was something in between. He stood on two legs, but that’s where the semblance to humanity ended. Covered in black fur, he still had the muzzle and pointed ears of the hellhound. His clawed hands held open a rip in the darkness, and beyond him, I caught a glimpse of other eyes. And then he and the darkness were gone. If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. Like Gerald, it seemed that he’d simply vanished.

“Shit, he slipped planes,” Rowan muttered. “Where—”

A scream came from the front of the house.

Rowan ran toward the sound, and I scrambled to my feet. Dizzy from the choking and the adrenaline, I staggered for the first few strides, but managed to keep my feet under me. I followed Rowan around the side of the house to the front, the snarls growing louder as I ran.

James had Gerald backed up against the side of a Honda Civic in the driveway.

“James,” I called, my voice a hoarse croak. I didn’t feel too generous toward Gerald right now, but I didn’t want James to kill him.

Gerald circled the car putting it between him and James. I tried calling to James again, but he didn’t even glance in my direction.

Gerald staggered away from the car, keeping James in sight. He backed up the walk and caught his heel on the bottom step. Off balance, he fell across the steps, grunting in pain. “Oh God,” he whispered, his wide eyes still on the driveway.

I turned my head in time to watch James step out of the side of the Civic. He’d simply walked right through it, as if it wasn’t there. Or he wasn’t. Grim. Ghost dog. I now understood how he’d gotten into the Elemental Offices the night we’d broken in. He could walk through walls.

“James!” I tried again and produced a little more volume.

He didn’t glance over, his eyes intent on his target. His large paws fell on the walk, claws gouging the cement without sound.

Suddenly, a white-hot fireball engulfed James, and I screamed.

I couldn’t believe it. “You bastard!” I whirled and slammed both hands against Rowan’s chest. He took a step back, but his hands shot out, catching my wrists.

James leapt from the flames, and the next instant they vanished. Only bare earth remained where the slab of the sidewalk had been. Rowan had incinerated it, not James.

“Let me go,” I twisted in his hold, but couldn’t break his grip.

James stopped advancing on Gerald and turned his head to look at us. His glowing green eyes focused on Rowan.

“Stay back.” Rowan pulled me behind him. I pushed at his back and tried to step around him, but he held out an arm, blocking my path.

“You’re protecting her?” James asked.

Startled, I glanced around Rowan and found the boy I knew, sans clothes, kneeling in the grass before us.

“From me?” James added. His eyes still glowed and his dark hair looked a little wild, but otherwise he appeared himself.

“Until you regain control, yes.”

I realized that Rowan had grabbed me to draw James’s attention away from Gerald. That was no small risk.

James leaned forward, hands braced on the ground, and bowed his head. “He shouldn’t have run.”

Movement drew my attention to the porch. Lydia helped Gerald up and herded him into the house, stepping past Marian who stood in the doorway, her wide eyes on us.

I began unbuttoning my shirt and pushed past Rowan, but he was already handing James his coat. I stopped, uncertain.

“Gerald didn’t exactly run.” My voice still sounded a bit rough, and it hurt to swallow, but it didn’t seem Gerald had broken anything.

“He can bend space-time and travel between the two points,” Rowan said.

I turned to stare at him. “He can create wormholes? No freaking way. Let me guess. He’s a physicist.”

“Actually, he owns a video rental store in Batavia, but I understand he’s a big science fiction fan.”

I snorted and glanced over at James. He was on his feet, one hand holding Rowan’s jacket around his hips. The glow had left his eyes.

The two men studied each other for one long moment.

“You should have told me you were a grim,” Rowan said.

“Should have told you?” I said. “You freaked out and tried to incinerate him the moment you found out.”

James’s hand settled on my shoulder and pulled me back. “It’s okay, Ad.”

“Okay? How is that okay?”

Footfalls thumped on the wooden porch steps, and I looked over to find Marian approaching us. She walked up to James and tugged on his arm.

James’s brows rose in question.

“Come here.” She crooked a finger at him.

James glanced at Rowan and then me before he squatted down beside her.

She leaned over and whispered in his ear, cupping her hand around her mouth like any child sharing a secret.

James suddenly pulled back, his eyes widening. “What do you mean?”

“I thought you’d know. You don’t?”

James shook his head.

She studied him. “You really can turn into a dog.”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” She gave him a grin. She might know what he was, but she didn’t understand.

“Come, child,” Lydia called from the porch.

Marian glanced in her direction before she turned back to James. “I have to go. Will you let me know if you figure it out?”

“Sure.”

She flashed him another grin then leaned over and kissed his cheek.

James blinked in surprise. “Thanks,” he whispered.

Marian turned and ran back to Lydia, leaping across the missing chunk of sidewalk on the way. Her laughter carried back to us before the older woman took her hand and led her inside.

James rose to his feet beside me. I arched a brow and a bit of color bloomed in his cheeks. What had Marian told him?

Rowan sighed and ran a hand over his face, stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose. Did he have a headache?

“I was born in this country,” James said. “I’ve never even been to Europe.”

Rowan dropped his hand. “I didn’t think it was you.”

His easy admission threw me. “Then why did you try to incinerate him?”

“I didn’t.” He looked annoyed that I’d even suggest it. “Grims are said to be the only thing impervious to the power of an Element. I was curious. It turned out to be true. I couldn’t see in him.”

“See
in
him?”

He studied me a moment. “You don’t understand how my power works?”

“Elements manipulate their element as it exists around them. Though, it’s not technically an element, but a state of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. I think of it as a matter-specific form of telekinesis.”

“Not a bad analogy.”

I thought about that. “And to manipulate your state of matter, you must see
in
it?” Whoa. “You see the atoms?”

“I don’t know about that, and it’s more feel than sight.” Rowan shrugged. For a man who was always so decisive, the shrug made me smile.

“What?” he asked.

This time I shrugged. “So what do
you
do? Where does the fire come from?”

“Fire is different.” Rowan dug his keys out of his pocket and tossed them to James. “You know where the clothes are.”

“Yes. Thanks.” He gripped the keys in his fist. “Sorry.” He frowned at the grass at his feet.

“I can teach you control,” Rowan said.

James looked up, surprise evident on his features—and something else. Hope.

“But I’m not…like you.”

“Anyone can lose control. You don’t even have to be magical.”

James frowned faintly then nodded. “Thanks.” He turned and walked off toward the car.

“Yes, thank you,” I said once James was out of earshot.

Rowan’s attention shifted to me. “I wish you’d told me.”

“Not my secret to tell.”

Rowan studied me a moment then nodded. “I need to go speak to Gerald.”

“Are you going to kick his ass?”

“He thought he was defending me.”

“By attacking me? I’m not the grim.”

Rowan’s brow wrinkled and his eyes dropped to my neck. “I’m sorry.”

Wow. He
could
apologize for something. Before I could comment, he touched the tender skin of my throat. His warm fingers slid upward to my jaw, lifting my chin slightly while he leaned down for a closer look.

I took a hasty step back.

Rowan frowned, though it wasn’t in anger. “Gerald must have thought you were controlling James. The grim is supposed to be a product of alchemy.”

“What?”

“You didn’t know that? I thought…” He glanced back at the car.

“You thought what? That I was using him? Experimenting on him?” I remembered my Perfect Assistant Dust and hurried on. “He’s my friend. He rescued me from those SWAT guys—twice now. He was there for me when no one else was. Hell, you were at the Alchemica. Did you even bother to look for survivors?”

“I—”

“No, you didn’t. I saw you. I was lying not fifteen feet from you. You were busy instructing your servant to bring the car around.”

“Where my phone was—which I used to call the squad.”

I crossed my arms. “How magnanimous.”

“You’re very quick to judge—and apparently require no facts to make such an assessment.”

I wanted to tell him to bite me or something equally crude, but James returned. He’d donned a pair of gray sweatpants, but still held the T-shirt. He hadn’t bothered with shoes.

“Addie—” James began.

“I’d appreciate it if the two of you would stay out here.” Without waiting for a response, Rowan turned and walked into the house.

“He’d appreciate it.” I rolled my eyes.

“Addie.” James’s brow furrowed in concern.

I flopped down on the bottom step to the porch. He pulled on the plain white T-shirt, and sat down beside me, though not very close. He gripped his hands in his lap.

“You okay?” I asked. He didn’t look as pale as he had after the attack on the shop, but then, he hadn’t ripped any souls here.

“I scared you,” he whispered.

“I think you scared everyone. You’re one terrifying pooch, Fido.”

“I’m sorry. When Gerald did his wormhole thing, I couldn’t feel you, and I sort of lost it.”

“Feel me?”

“On the mortal plane.”

“And you left it, too. When you became…something else.”

He looked up, eyes wide. “You saw that? You shouldn’t have seen that.”

“I admit, it was disturbing, but I—”

“No, I mean you shouldn’t have been able to see it. Those bound to the mortal plane can’t see any other.”

I cocked my head, studying him. “How do you know all this?”

He lifted one shoulder and let it fall. As always, he went silent when I asked too much about his magic. I thought about what Rowan had said.

“Rowan said there’s a connection between grims and alchemy.”

He looked up, surprise absent in his expression.

“That’s why you study alchemy. You’re looking for a cure.”

He gave me a bitter smile. “There is no cure.”

“Tell me what you know. I may be able to—”

He pushed up to his feet. “I don’t think even you can fix this.” He turned toward the drive.