Other People's Magic (The Bridge Keeper Series Book 1), page 1
OTHER PEOPLE’S MAGIC
The Bridge Keeper Series
Book 1
GENEVIEVE MCKAY
Copyright © 2023 by Genevieve Mckay
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Genevieve Mckay
Chapter 1
Kenzie - One Year Ago
“You should check this out, Kenz. I think this is the one.”
The bus rounds a sharp corner, jostling my shoulder roughly against Theo’s, and the oversized textbook slips from his grasp and falls to the rain-soaked floor with a thud.
A few riders in the seats nearby barely glance up from their phones before ignoring us again.
“Oops.” Theo scoops the book up and wipes the muddy cover apologetically with his sleeve. “Sorry about that.”
“Animism: Fact or Fiction?” I squint at the title. “For our philosophy project?”
“Yeah, it’s perfect. Animists believe that everything in the world has a consciousness, including objects. Maybe that would help explain your, you know, gifts…”
“Hey now.” I punch his shoulder lightly in warning. Theo is the kindest, most trusting person I know. He’s my best friend, but he’s way too casual about keeping secrets for my liking. Especially my secrets. “We’ve talked about this.”
“Oh, right.” He looks around the bus and shrugs. “Nobody is listening.”
He’s probably right. I’m most likely being paranoid again. Only a couple dozen people are on board tonight, all sniffling and dripping rain water onto the seats and wishing they were somewhere else.
Heavy droplets thud on the bus roof and the windshield wipers up front are making a steady squeak-thump, squeak-thump sound. The windows are so steamed up that it’s like riding in a dimly-lit submarine through the darkened streets, completely cut off from the outside world.
The boy across from me has a black pen clutched in one hand and is staring at his knees. No phone, no book, just staring at his worn-out pants like they hold the answers to a problem he’s working on.
On second glance, maybe they do. I can see faint lines and squiggles running from knee to thigh as if they’re covered with hieroglyphics or runes. No, not runes, equations, or notes of some sort.
I squint at him in the dim overhead lights. He’d boarded with us at the University bus stop but I can’t recall seeing him around campus before—not that that’s unusual for a school with over twenty thousand students. I hardly know anyone but Theo and my uncle Jack even though I’m nearly finished with my first year.
He’s not wearing a raincoat. What I took for a jacket is actually a thin cotton lab coat that has been fully saturated with rain and is sticking to the blue shirt beneath it. His pant cuffs are frayed, and his glasses have a piece of tape wrapped around one hinge. He has a gaunt look about him too, thin cheekbones and hunched shoulders. His messy blond hair stands up in all directions.
Another starving student. I remember the slightly squashed, uneaten sandwich in my backpack and wonder if he’d be offended if I offered it to him.
The bus lurches again and I reach out automatically to grip the upright pole next to my seat. And that’s when it happens.
The thing about my so-called visions is that there is never any warning. I can touch the same object, or person, a dozen times without anything weird happening. And then that thirteenth time all hell will break loose.
My fingers lock on the pole and my whole body goes rigid like I’ve been electrocuted. My teeth clamp shut with a click, catching the edge of my tongue painfully, and I am plunged into darkness.
My visions always start the same way. Like old silent movies being played out on a scratchy projector with bad lighting and a jumpy picture. Usually, they’re brief, filled with people or places that I already know. Short, useless premonitions that tell me things like the grocery store will be out of milk, or the teacher will be three minutes late for class. Hardly worth the pain my body goes through every time I have one.
But this is different. There is a grainy close-up of a man wearing a thin, tilted crown, his arrogant face carved into cruel lines. His mouth opens in a silent roar of defiance and he throws one fist into the air.
A faceless gray army stands behind him, unmoving, each soldier clutching strange cylindrical guns. The image flickers and everything goes dark again. Then a ring of strange blue light hovers in front of me, like a blazing, upright circle big enough to step through if I wanted. Which I most definitely do not.
The scene switches abruptly and suddenly I’m looking at the top of a mountain at sunrise. There is a girl there in ragged clothes, her face streaked with mud and blood. An oversized raven sits on her shoulder and to one side is a mottled horse marked with black and white patches. Then that scene is gone and I’m left in the dark with just the eerie blue circle of light again.
A warm glow on my right makes me turn my head, and there beside me is that same spotted horse. It’s not a picture on a screen like usual. It’s right there beside me, less than a foot away.
I should be afraid but I’m not. Not yet.
“Um, hello?” I say, feeling a little stupid talking to a horse, even in a vision. I don’t know much about animals. I grew up in the city with two germaphobe dentists for parents so I was never allowed to have a goldfish, let alone visit a farm.
It doesn’t say anything—because obviously horses can’t talk—but off in the distance I hear water, like waves lapping against the shore, getting steadily louder.
The animal blinks at me calmly, and as I stare, its shape seems to shift a little, to change. It doesn’t move but it is somehow bigger than before. Instead of hooves, its feet are splayed like a lizard’s and tipped with sharp claws. Horse hair becomes scales and water drips off its broad back, pooling around its feet and spreading across the inky ground toward me.
It’s like a kelpie, I think in wonderment. I did a paper on them in one of my mythology courses. Strange, savage water horses known for drowning the unwary and eating their bones. There were even some conspiracy theorists who believed they were actual animals that existed today; I’d toyed with the idea of doing a research project tracking the reported sightings.
In front of us, the circle of blue light sputters and then gets about ten times brighter. The dark, hollow center undulates and then bulges outward like something is trying to push through.
Run. The voice in my head is not my own.
I turn to see the horse-thing staring at me intently. And then there is an explosive flash of blue and I’m back on the bus, color and sound rushing back in an overwhelming burst.
“Kenzie? You all right?”
I nod furiously, waiting for my ragged breathing to settle, disoriented to be back on the normal old bus again and not in my vision. But the urge to run is still there.
“We have to get off the bus.” My voice is too loud, and too full of fear. All the people nearby eye me warily, their gazes flicking from my shoulder-length purple hair down to my black ripped jeans and combat boots. And then to the large, yellowish bruise on my cheek that my very recent ex-boyfriend, Darryl, had given me. They’re probably wondering if I’m on drugs. “Something bad is going to happen. We need to leave now.”
“Kenzie, come on, it’s raining and we’re too far from home to walk. Just tell me…”
“We’ll die if we stay. I know it.” I spring to my feet, fear and adrenaline coursing through me. Everyone is looking at us now, some nervously, as if I might know something they don’t, and some clearly just enjoying the show.
The boy in the sodden lab coat makes a snorting sound under his breath but keeps his gaze locked firmly on his knees, the pen hovering halfway up his thigh as he scribbles a correction.
“Hey, keep it down back there.” The bus driver is watching us in the rearview mirror, a scowl on his face. He fixes his gaze on me and narrows his eyes. “Or you’ll have to get off.”
“It’s okay, we’re leaving, sorry,” Theo says, stuffing the textbook into his backpack and clambering to his feet.
“What in the hell?” the bus driver swears and then suddenly swerves hard to the right, sending us lurching and sliding sideways. “Jaysus Murphy, what is that thing?”
Blue light flashes, the windshield shatters and all I hear is screaming as the bus hits something hard, spinning sideways with a screech of brakes before shuddering to a stop. Theo has thrown his arms around me and pinned us against the upright pole, my face mashed sideways against his chest, locking us in place. The weird boy with the pants is on the floor at our feet, clutching the lower part of the pole, a trickle of blood running from a small gash in his forehead.
The bus is tilted at an odd angle and is still rocking from the impact. Suddenly there is a loud boom as if something has slammed into the side and the bus lurches again, sending us all tumbling sideways. More screaming and then the entire bus groans and shudders like it’s being battered from the outside.
Equation-boy blinks up at me through his cracked glasses like I might have the answers to all this.
But I don’t. I don’t know what the hell is happening.
There is an awful wailing sound and suddenly the wall of the bus sheers away with a screech of outraged metal. There, filling up the newly gaping hole, is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.
A mutated rhinoceros? A dinosaur? Certainly not an animal I’ve ever seen at the zoo. All I know is that it is impossibly huge with thick, scaly skin, blazing eyes, and a yawning mouth full of serrated teeth.
Bear, I think just before it leaps. There is a moment where it looks right at me and I know I’m about to die. Then it swerves to the front of the bus, sending passengers flying with swipes of its giant claws.
The air is filled with horrified screams and then Theo is yanking me sideways and we’re all crawling and stumbling toward the back emergency exit, panicked people pressing on all sides.
I don’t look to the front of the bus. I don’t want to know what’s happening to those poor people trapped up there. I’m driven solely by terror, acting on instinct. I do not want to die tonight.
“It won’t open.” Two men are bashing against the emergency door handle but the back of the bus has been damaged in the crash and there is a crumpled line through the metal, jamming the door tightly to its frame.
“Take her,” Theo says, thrusting me at the boy with the glasses like I’m some sort of breakable package, before joining the men at the door.
The boy blinks at me and I shake my head, pulling myself together. I’m not about to sit back and wait for someone else to save us.
The windows at our end of the bus hadn’t shattered in the crash. I jump up onto the nearest tilted seat and scramble upward, jamming my feet against the metal rail that would normally be overhead if the bus was upright. The big windows aren’t meant to open, but above them are smaller windows that slide sideways to let in air. It takes me a frustrating few seconds to yank at the small opening until it’s wide enough for me to wriggle my body through.
“This way,” I call frantically over my shoulder. “Here’s the way out. Theo, everyone, come on.” I crawl across the tilted side of the bus, skidding down metal that is slick with rain and then drop heavily onto the road. I try to fall properly, bending my knees and then rolling on impact, but it still hurts like hell. Rain pelts down around me as I scramble clear, my body pumping hard with adrenaline.
All around me is pure chaos. Cars have slammed to a stop in all directions, alarms blare and people are screaming. Sirens wail through the darkness, although they haven’t reached us yet. Behind me the bus is rocking and the most god-awful sounds are rolling out of it. Screams, animalistic grunts and groaning metal.
I gag at the splash of bright red blood fanned across the first three windows. This can’t be real. It must be a nightmare.
Where is Theo? Why hasn’t he followed me yet?
Through the cracked windows I can see the mass of people still pressed at the back of the bus. They’re alive, at least. But for how long? Why didn’t they come out the window when I called them?
A group of excited bystanders is crowded in the rain, behind the shelter of an overturned car, gaping at the devastation. At least half of them have their phones out, filming through the sideways rain.
“Please help them!” I scream, pointing at the bus. “People are still in there.” Guilt surges through me. Theo is still in there. He’ll think I left him behind, that I ran to save my own skin. Which is pretty much what I’d done.
Nobody moves. A few feet away, a fancy black SUV is parked on a sharp angle, a deep dent in the hood and the front glass a spiderweb of cracks. Two men stand there, staring at the bus in shock. The closest one to me is all muscle with electric green eyes that constantly scan the crowd. They lock on me briefly, zeroing in on the bruise on my cheek, and then flick away.
The second man stares down at his phone, lanky red hair obscuring his face.
“Help me.” I don’t know why I keep saying these words. Nobody will help and I’m on my own. The last thing I want to do is go anywhere near that bus again but I can’t leave Theo there. I just can’t. He’d never abandon me.
Saying a quick prayer, I sprint to the back of the bus and start hammering at the emergency door, not looking at the faces desperately pressed up against it. I don’t want to see the moment when that creature turns on them too.
“Move.” A hand jerks me roughly backward. It’s the muscle-bound man from the SUV and he inexplicably has a massive crowbar in one hand and a small black gun in the other. “Ryan, get back in the car. Take the girl with you.”
I scuttle backwards away from him, eyeing the gun in shock. I’ve never even seen a pistol in real life; they’re illegal to carry here, and nobody I know in this hippie coastal town would dream of owning a weapon.
A warm hand closes around mine and I twitch sideways. The red-haired stranger, the second man from the SUV, smiles at me calmly before looking down at the phone in his other hand. I can see some sort of charts or graphs filling the screen.
“Don’t worry. It will be okay,” he says evenly not even looking up at the chaos unfolding around us. “The probability of us being hurt is near zero right now.”
I am seriously meeting the weirdest people tonight. I don’t let go of his hand, though. It feels like a lifeline in this storm.
Then three things happen all at once. There are two loud popping sounds; the back door finally opens and people tumble out onto the street, most of them already running for their lives the second they hit the ground. And then there is a gigantic explosive boom that nearly sends me stumbling to the ground.
“Kenzie!” Theo is there, throwing his arms around me and crushing me to his chest so my ear is pressed against his wildly beating heart.
“You’re alive,” I whisper, swamped with a mixture of relief that he survived and guilt that I’d practically abandoned him.
Sirens wail all around us, lights bouncing off the ruined bus, the scattered cars and the debris lying in the street.
“We have to get out of here,” I say, clutching at his shirt. “That thing is still in there.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “It’s gone.”
“Gone?” The bus is eerily still. Just twisted metal, shattered glass and silence. A back tire rotates slowly. “Where?”
I glance around nervously, half expecting the creature to be lurking behind a car or grinning at me from a shop window.
“I don’t know. There was an explosion right after the gun went off and then it was gone. Kenzie, those poor people. That could have been us.” He breaks off, tightening his arms around my waist and pressing his face into my hair.
I cling to him tightly. Theo has been my best friend since high school. He’s seen me at my worst: when I was struggling to adjust to my so-called visions; through a string of regrettable relationships a mile long, including my last one that left me with bruises and an empty bank account. I wouldn’t know what to do without him in my life.
