Page 42 of Junk Magic

I turned in his arms, careless of any watchers from inside the building. “I’m feeling a little off right now,” I said shakily. “So . . . what?”

I didn’t get an answer, unless you counted a tackle from a half-naked boy. Cyrus had loaned Jace his leather jacket, which he’d wrapped around his waist, making him look vaguely like a Scotsman in a leather kilt. He felt like one, too, when he grabbed me, the thin boy arms having the grip of a man twice his size.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his body trembling, too. “Thank you. I thought—I don’t know what I thought.”

You thought you were about to be torn to shreds, I didn’t say, because there was no need. And because he was currently squeezing all the breath out of me. He finally let go and turned to Cyrus.

“But Jayden—”

“I took care of it.” Cyrus’s voice had a wolf growl in the back of his throat. “He’ll be returned to us tonight—unmolested.”

Jace buried his face in Cyrus’s shirt, then suddenly collapsed, sobbing, onto the hot pavement. Because it was all too much and he was just a boy. I stood awkwardly by as Cyrus did everything right—crouched down, hugged him, rubbed his back, and told him that it would be okay, when we all knew it never would.

For Jace, there would always be a hole in his heart, no matter how long he lived. I’d dealt with that since my mother died, the realization that there are some wounds that don’t heal. You learn to live with them, to not think about them every single day, to function again because life goes on. But healing?

Yeah, that was a lie.

But it was a lie that Jace needed right then, and gradually, the tears slowed down. I realized that Cyrus must have come here to demand the body back, and had probably brought Jace in case a family member’s signature was required. I didn’t know how things had gone so terribly wrong, but with a lobby full of Weres, it wasn’t hard to guess.

“This was my fault,” Jace said, almost as if he’d heard my thoughts. “We signed the papers, then Cyrus went outside—”

“Through the back, to the impound yard,” Cyrus added. “They wanted to know if I could get a scent off a bike that had been left at the grow farm—”

“A bike?” I asked.

“—and I did. It was yours. I think the clan who attacked you tried to destroy it. They . . . did a good job.”

I decided not to ask.

“I was supposed to sit in the office and wait for him,” Jace added. “But I thought I smelled you and you were . . . upset. I was worried and went to look and . . . they grabbed me.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” I told him firmly. “None of this was.”

“They saw him come in with me, but waited until he was alone to pounce,” Cyrus said, his voice roughening again. “Cowards. If you’d ripped that bastard’s throat out, it would have been—”

He stopped himself, but not because there was a child present. Jace had probably seen more violence in his short life than most war mages, and was already nodding along. Instead, the pause was because of the loud contraption that had just rattled up behind us, announcing its presence with a pop and a belch.

“What—” I coughed, waving a hand in front of my face in search of clean air I didn’t find, because the beast’s exhaust was polluting it all.

“Needs an oil change,” Caleb yelled, to be heard over the engine. He was in the driver’s seat, although of what, I wasn’t sure. It was old and rusted and looked like something that would embarrass a junk yard. “Old surveillance van,” he shouted cheerfully. “I commandeered it for a school bus. What d’you think?”

I was fortunately too busy coughing up my lungs to answer.

“Wanna ride?” he asked Jace, who looked from me to Cyrus.

“Go on, canagan,” Cyrus told him. “Lia and I will be along in a while.”

Jace nodded and climbed on board, as quickly as if a clan leader had just given him an order. It made me frown, but I didn’t comment since the three of us weren’t fitting onto Cyrus’s bike. I watched Caleb rattle away in what was definitely a road hazard and probably illegal, rolling coal all the way to the main street. And then I turned my thoughts to the food Cyrus had promised.

“Tamales?” I said doubtfully, wondering if Hernando would even sell them to us, a vargulf and whatever the hell I was these days. But Cyrus shook his head.

“Better. Come on.”

* * *

Cyrus’s cramped apartment was even more cramped than I remembered, since it now had two large chest freezers shoved against a wall of the living room.

“Redecorating?” I asked, as he dumped the bike’s saddlebags onto a beat up, two-seater sofa.

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