Page 50 of Junk Magic

It simply hadn’t occurred to him that he couldn’t merely waltz into the Circle’s HQ with a dozen Were guards on duty, dragging another vargulf along. Or that he couldn’t do anything else, either, that even partially intersected the Were community. That he was a leper, an outcast, a pariah, who damned sure couldn’t make his own clan!

That needed the consent of the entire Were council, a body he would literally be torn to pieces before he ever reached. Not that it mattered; they wouldn’t speak to him anyway. No one in power would except for his brother, who couldn’t admit it. He knew that; he’d been raised knowing that. And yet, even after all this time, he still didn’t understand.

I was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

“Next time you need something from the Circle, call me,” I finally said, because he already knew what I’d been thinking. It was all over his face, but his voice was light when he answered.

“I tried. For some reason, you weren’t answering your phone.”

I suddenly remembered the shattered thing that Caleb had tossed at me. I hoped he’d taken out the sim card first. “The growers did the same thing to it as to my bike.”

He winced. “Ouch. Okay, help me load all this up, and we’ll swing by and get you another one before we eat.”

Chapter Fourteen

We did not swing by and get another phone. I had an old one at the house that would do in a pinch, and no intention of lugging a crap ton of frozen pork through the Apple store. It was crazy enough to be speeding through Vegas with it sticking out of saddlebags and threatening to fall from the grocery sacks I was clutching in my lap.

I didn’t care. I was too busy doing my impression of a dog hanging its head out of a car window—something I totally understood suddenly. Because there was a whole new world I’d never imagined, just waiting to be discovered.

It started out with the usual city smells, just ramped up to the point that it felt like they were slapping me in the face: baking asphalt and exhaust; hot grease billowing out of the open door of a fast-food restaurant; a spilled soda in a gutter, its sickly-sweet aroma sizzling in the heat; and garbage, sweat, and cigarettes—the latter all from the same car, which seriously needed cleaning out. But it got weird fast, because the car . . . wasn’t there. It had passed by minutes ago, with a ghostly outline flickering in front of my eyes that we rode straight through.

The same was true of half of the people I saw. Some were in the present, reeking of suntan lotion and pool chemicals, their skin glistening under the still punishing heat of the afternoon sun. But others were like the smelly car: hazy, ghostly figures from the past that formed a crowd so thick that it looked like a festival had descended onto the city.

Most of the scent-people were dim, with the traces that formed them being hours or even days old. But others were almost as rich and vibrant as the flesh and blood counterparts they walked alongside or darted through the middle of. I blinked furiously as we zipped past, unsure at times who was real and who was a scent memory.

And wondered how the hell Weres kept them all straight!

“You okay?” Cyrus asked, probably because I was sniffing up a storm right by his ear.

“Uh huh.” It was as much as I could manage with the entire last week or two of Vegas street traffic all fighting for my attention. Something that went from amazing to overwhelming real freaking fast.

“Hold on, we’re almost there.”

I nodded, too overwhelmed to speak, and he put on a burst of speed, cut through the lower level of a parking garage, and headed into calmer side streets.

My arms were half frozen by the time we finally arrived back home, my thighs were burning from clenching the seat, and my shirt was drenched with sweat. I was never so glad to see my driveway in my life—right up until I noticed the smoke billowing out of my back yard. A lot of it.

“Shit,” I said, trying to disentangle myself from the packages of pig.

That was easier said than done, and before I managed it, Caleb showed up. “You read my mind,” he said, eyeing the haul. “But I have a grocery order coming with hamburgers, sausages, chicken . . .”

“It won’t go to waste,” Cyrus assured him, swinging off the bike and grabbing one of the sacks.

I’d have given him the rest, too, but didn’t get a chance. I was mugged by a starving mob of teens a moment later, who denuded the bike and then streamed around the house, their spoils held high above their heads like a triumphant army. Leaving me looking pointedly at Caleb.

“What’s going on in the backyard?”

“Relax, we’re having a barbeque—”

“I don’t have a barbeque.”

“—and what back yard? It’s a patch of desert.”

“It’s a xeriscape,” I told him, climbing off the bike.

“You good?” Cyrus asked, regarding me narrowly.

“Yep.”

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