A Bone to Pick, page 4
They looked right past him. The old man hadn’t turned around to notice—hating myself, I pushed his anger harder, heard him spluttering curses as he fixated on the “recruiters.” Did his bitterness have to make it this easy to distract him, all of them?
Ian moved across the room. I edged closer to the thugs.
“That’s him! And him too!”
The lean, angry man I’d faced down before. Standing near the door. Pointing at me, rushing at Ian, as though he’d been scouting for the others all along...
That spy was closing on Ian, and I charged across the room at him. My fist swung out, sent him stumbling back and gave me an instant to shove Ian for the door before I turned to think about the two gunmen I’d left at my back—
They both lay sprawled together, toppled in a heap with Jason in the middle of them. The taller one tried to stand, Jason offered him a hand up, and then Jason “slipped” and they both fell again.
I twisted back. The thug I’d hit was hanging back, Ian had reached the door. I looked back at Jason, thought of turning to help him.
The tall one slammed a punch straight into him. Jason dropped to the floor.
No more time. I lunged at the thug I’d hit, and he ducked back and cringed—and I twisted for the door after Ian.
Then the two of us were running, pounding down the corridor and scrambling for every scrap of speed we could. One thought beat in my head: tripping people, Maya’s magic can do that to stall them, I’ve seen it before...
“This way, this way,” Ian was panting.
He led me around a corner, then as I tried to run on he caught my arm, and yanked a small door open.
A bathroom, a tiny one. We crowded in and clicked the lock—not much of a hiding place, but if they kicked the door in I could grab whoever did.
Footsteps sounded outside. Racing toward us, and the Pulse tracked the three enemies closing on the corner, and all heading past us. They’d really missed us.
Ian panted “What... what is...”
“Shh!”
The other three could have been snarling dogs as they passed, but Willard Duval thundered by like a mad bull, savage with anger that I’d beaten him again.
We waited, waited, as I felt around for other traces of their presence. There were two other Duvals that could be anywhere, and how did the other thugs fit in this... and Maya?
“What was that?” Ian finally said. His tanned face looked almost pale.
That? I shook my head. How could I start, to tell him about the other magics out there and what he must have stirred up?
I said “I think your healing got you noticed.”
Footsteps sounded outside. Slower, lighter ones this time, and lighter emotions too.
“Ian?” came Lucy’s voice.
Ian clicked the door open. Lucy stood outside, Jason leaning against her.
“What happened to you?” Ian said. “What did they do?”
“Your secret cost us our jobs, that’s what.”
CHAPTER THREE: LISTENING
Going back to the clinic was never mentioned—all three of them seemed to grasp how easily those enemies could reappear. Instead Ian, Lucy, and Jason let me lead them out of the building.
I made a show of watching at doorways and walking out first, but mainly I did what searching I could with the Pulse. I sensed no trace of the Duvals’ anger, but the other three would be harder to pick out of the whirl of emotions outside, whatever kind of thugs or crooks they were.
The bright daylit breadth of the shopping center parking lot should have felt safe. Instead I only felt how many people could be watching us. I left the three back at the door while I checked a few quick steps one way and then the other, waiting for a flash of emotion out of the mall noise that could mean someone spotting me. Nothing did.
When I turned back, I saw Lucy waving me to hurry. Behind her, Ian and Jason were already racing across the lot and piling into a small Ford that shone a deep gold color. We scrambled after them, and Ian shot Lucy a glare as we climbed in.
Ian pulled us out with an actual squeal of tires, and we surged down the street with what speed we could in the noon rush. I knew I’d never spot if we were tailed this way, certainly not as easily as any of them could pick this distinctive color out of the street.
Nobody spoke, until Ian angled the car for a right turn at an intersection and Jason said “No, you can’t—” and a glance back at me, and we drove past it. None of them broached the silence about what had happened, or even the fact that all three of them joined in on the run together. Ian only drove us automatically down the broad street, face blank and knuckles white.
When I saw us nearing the city limits I finally said “Why don’t we stop for lunch. On me.”
Maybe it was the last words that did it. The three traded another set of private glances, and we pulled up at one drive-through that had only a couple of cars lined up ahead. When the bags were handed through our window, the cheap smell of French fries was sudden, crinkly heaven after the morning we’d had.
We settled in at the outdoor table right beside the car—or three of us did, while Ian only slid his driver’s seat back to dig in. Lucy and Jason had pulled on coats over their uniforms. I kept an eye on the cars and pedestrians that might notice us, and watched the small glances and worried looks the others exchanged. A spring breeze rustled the wrappings on the table.
The food let us keep quiet a while longer. It was only when I was feeling the steadying weight of what I’d wolfed down inside me that Lucy spoke.
“Mr. Corbin... Adrian?”
I nodded.
“So who were they back there?”
“You know what they were: trouble.” I pushed the bag aside along the table. “I know the big guy, but the other three—”
“No. I mean, he started a fire.”
At the corner of my sight, Ian’s hand waved her to hush.
But she glanced around the lot, and intensity filled her voice: “Papers started burning, and it was one second after he said he’d ‘speed this up.’ Are you going to call that a coincidence?”
So she’d kept track of all that. I looked at her, at Ian watching silently through his open window, at Jason hunched at his end of the table.
Memory hit me; just like with Maya, here I was again convincing someone to admit to having magic. And what happened with Maya back there? The burger twisted in my stomach a moment.
I drew in a breath and glanced between them again. “When you start using your secret, you risk someone else will know what it is. Fire is the one the Duvals have, and they came after you.”
“Secret?” Ian wiped his fingers on a paper napkin, one finger at a time. “It’s a clinic. Of course they were there to steal drugs.”
Jason’s voice was quieter. “Lucy? You called your friend in because you guessed something like this would happen?”
“Not a friend—I hired him, because I wanted a detective’s opinion on how unsafe things might get. I never expected this.”
“So you’re hiring security,” Ian said. “But you bringing that up, Jason—you don’t want to talk about how you made it out of there? Surrounded, playing the big hero to slow them down?”
His finger stabbed out the window at him. Jason only sat motionless, shock fighting to spread over his face.
Ian went on “Sure, I know you’d never have called those bruisers in. But I want to know how you did all that with one arm if it was any kind of real fight.”
“How?” I burst out. “Why would you ask that? Or did you not see the hit he took?” This was no time to explain how Maya’s magic could have been adding invisible shoves to the confusion Jason made.
But Ian didn’t answer, only glowered at me. Of course he saw Jason save us—and he resented him for his moment of courage, and me too.
The table was silent, with just the sounds of the street and the far end of the lot pressing at the edges of our hearing. I looked around at these three people, all still younger than me. Ian hunched inside his car, the stubborn healer who tried to keep control of everything. Lucy at her corner, watching it all and trying to get them to face the problem. Jason, I still didn’t know, but with his sling he had to be with them for his own healing too.
They didn’t trust me. They didn’t trust each other, and they’d get themselves killed. And keeping them alive, with their magic and in the face of hostile magic, these three could have been the Plan itself. Everything I’d meant to do to help people since I’d found the Pulse.
“I told you, there are real threats after you. Killers.” I leveled my gaze at Ian—I’d do this without using the Pulse to read them, suddenly it meant too much that I make them listen on my own. “So, can you at least admit that they’re looking for you? Because you have the secret of healing.”
Ian’s eyes twitched, like he was fighting not to look away. “Sure. I’m a med student working at Summerside Clinic. Or was.”
“I mean your own healing. Cuts closing, pain fading.” I smiled, and let some of my own curiosity warm my voice. “I have to ask... did you start studying medicine because the patients were a smart way to test what you can do? Or did you start out so eager to be a doctor that it led you to this?”
The beginning of a smile moved on Ian’s face until he forced it off, telling me the compliment had scored a point. He said “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Hiding it was a good idea. But you’ve already attracted attention from the Duvals, and probably others—”
“These ‘Duvals,’ you call them,” Ian cut in. “That lummox said you abandoned him. And then you said something that shut him up, fast.”
How long had he been waiting to drop that bomb? Ian had been harsh enough on Jason for defending him. I looked at him, still sitting in his car, tapping the wheel as if he was halfway to driving off alone.
“The Duvals and I... tried to protect someone together,” I said. “You can see how well that worked out. Now you’re the ones in danger, and that’s because of things like this.”
I pulled out my phone. I had the woman’s post about her “Miracle” bookmarked, so I held the screen up for him to see.
“What is it?” Lucy leaned over.
“A patient trying to share.” Ian reached out his window and scrolled down. “And it’s already got a dozen comments on it arguing whether her recovery was positive thinking or aliens... oh.” He looked up at me, and the proud set of his face loosened a fraction now. “You put up this first comment, didn’t you? No, wait, I bet you were the link after that.”
I let myself have a small grin. “Both.”
I left it there, not saying I’d had to do it because Ian had put them all in danger. Better he see that side of the problem on his own, so he could accept it.
“And you’re here for security.” He frowned.
“Look, you don’t know me.” I set the phone on the table in front of me. “The question is, what are you going to be?”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m saying... I don’t know what it’s like, to look around and see aches and cuts and all the rest, and wonder if you can make it go away, but...” But you’ve got magic. And so do I, the Pulse means I can feel any kind of pain and more—
No. I froze those words on my lips, looking around at how fragile any trust on their faces was now. This was no time to tell them I could have been weighing every doubt and fear behind their eyes this whole time.
Instead I said “I’ve seen that you’re trying to balance that. You’re trying to find a way that runs between leaving people to suffer and drawing the kind of notice you aren’t ready for.”
“Notice? You got all of that from this?” Ian put a sardonic twist on his words, trying to laugh me off now.
“Well, I did have all morning,” I smiled back. “But seriously, you must have had a lot longer. You knew there’d be people out there who’d screw up all your plans...”
I locked my gaze on his face, and reached for all the quiet certainty I could layer under my words.
“You can write me off as a threat, sure. You can hide in a hole and let them win. Or go on the way you have, and know that every minute you’re risking that future because they could find you again. Or you can take another kind of gamble, and let someone who’s faced the Duvals before try and help you now.”
When I stopped there, stillness hung over the space between us, and it muted their faces as thoughts moved behind them. Far away, motors hummed down the street, a child laughed on the sidewalk. The wind whispered against us.
Now I should probe them with the Pulse... but I needed to win them over on my own. And I couldn’t even look over at Lucy, at Jason, because Ian wanted it to be all about him.
Then he glanced at Lucy. “And you trust him?”
“I think... the way he breaks it all down, I think I want to.”
Neither of them looked at Jason, but he’d shown he had no trouble speaking up if he disagreed.
“Alright then.”
Ian stepped out of the car. The slam of the door behind him was like some muted thunderclap.
“Alright, yes, I can heal. One day the talent just started appearing in me, and now... here. Jason?”
He reached out, and the younger man stepped over to meet him.
“You took those injuries defending us—I should never have let you carry them this long. And, I’m sorry I doubted you.”
His fingers settled on Jason’s free arm. A red mark on the back of his hand, a scrape, began to pale and fade away before my eyes. Like some time-lapse video or CGI made real... Jason’s face twitched, small sensations chasing across it as the magic worked through his flesh. Ian’s eyes closed, and I could picture him searching out other wounds and working on whatever kept Jason in that sling.
A steel ring glinted on his finger.
A sudden talent, he called it—but none of the five magics I’ve seen before worked like that. Every one of them, starting with the Pulse, had been a secret knowledge that could let anyone store power in something, like the Bones in my pocket. If this magic simply appeared within Ian on its own... it would be a whole new kind of wonder. Or he was lying.
That ring seemed to pull at my gaze. He had another on his other hand, but I knew his magic might be tied to anything. I glanced at Jason, over at Lucy. Did they know, was he hiding the fact that his magic could work for any of them?
Ian pulled back from Jason, and flashed a proud man’s grin. “It was a small thing once. But I found it kept growing, then I met Lucy in class and she’s been helping study it ever since.” The tall girl gave a simple nod. “And Jason joined us because he needs my help to restore his arm.”
“And yes, we’ve been trying with that.” Lucy leaned forward in her chair, talking faster now some block had come loose. “What the ‘great healer’ here left out is that it takes him real skill to make it work. The worse the injury or the less familiar it is to him, the more often it will reassert itself after he’s done. We took the whole term off from our classes to keep testing it—there are other clinics we volunteer at—”
She slumped in the chair.
“If they let us in the door now. With those people after us... no, we shouldn’t even try.”
Ian stared at her. “You want to give up, now?”
“Someone tried to kidnap us. No, it looked like two groups of someones, and one tried to burn the clinic with a roomful of patients in it. This is why we have police—”
“No!”
Ian flung the word out against the world. Then he broke off, and reached beseeching hands toward her.
“Not yet. We’ve been over this, I can’t bring the healing in until it’s certain. You think I’ve mastered it yet? Look at your notes and try telling me that.”
Lucy glanced down, her hand went to her pocket like a reflex. She shook her head.
“We have to make this stable. If we can’t show that it’s reliable and real? They’ll make me start over with rats, and learning how rodent tissues fit together would tie me up longer than the goddamn forms. I know how to test it without risking patients, ever.” He took a step toward her. “We’re trying to change the world.”
“You’re changing the world,” she sighed. “Right now I’d settle for keeping the chance of that alive. And I think Adrian agrees with me, don’t you?”
For a moment I thought of Detective Poe—he was still waiting for my report about dangers at the clinic. Sure, the police would take them in... but the fact that the Duvals were out of jail meant Maya could skip in anywhere, if she was after the healing’s secret. Still, Lucy had said it: it was about keeping the chance of that alive.
“You both better think,” Jason’s voice cut in, “before you ask Adrian Corbin for his opinion.”
He’d drawn back from the rest of us after the healing, so quiet and so easy to miss. Now he glared at me, and flicked through his phone with his good hand.
He added “I knew I’d heard the name. You ever see his blog?”
“I chose him for his website,” Lucy said. “He looked capable, affordable, open-minded—”
“Open? As in, ‘Ten Signs There’s a Werewolf On Your Block’?”
He held up his screen for her, for all of us. On it was the same stupid stock movie photo I’d put up once, with its crouching monster and blood and all.
“Aliens, conspiracies...” Jason gritted his teeth, and pointed at my own cell, still on the table in front of me. “You had to show off right in front of us, how you had links to all the crazy sites. But this time you think you’ve got a real story, don’t you?”
Ian stared at me, horror and hate filling his eyes. “You... all this time, you’re just a hack blogger... you lying—”
“Those were years ago!” I snapped. “Someone reblogged them when I took them down—do those things even have dates on them?”
“So which of us is the werewolf?” Jason laughed.
“They were jokes!”
I fought to hold myself up straight in the chair, when too much of me wanted to shrivel up. My gaze kept going to my own blank-screened phone, lying in front of me as a reminder to us all.
