Page 67 of Junk Magic

She sat quietly for a moment, her eyes somber, then got back to her feet. “There never are. But for once at least there’s no bullshit about it.”

She walked off.

Chapter Eighteen

I watched Sophie walk away, and felt shitty. She was in a bad situation, but it was a brutal world. I wouldn’t have helped anything by lying to her; I knew that.

So why did I feel like crap?

Maybe I should tell Hargroves that this wasn’t going to work. And get my new students shipped back home, or what passed for it, whether they liked it or not. They might hate me, but I was used to people hating me; I was a cop, after all.

And it would be better than burying another kid.

But I doubted that the Corps would see it that way.

They needed help and were determined to get it. But the older “graduates” they’d let out of the school system tended to have a chip on their shoulder for some reason and wanted nothing more to do with them. And they weren’t trusted anyway, since they often made their way into the arms of the dark, who at least didn’t lock them up or keep them on a leash for the rest of their lives.

We might be the good guys, but honestly, it was sometimes hard to tell.

So, no, the kids wouldn’t go home. They’d be assigned to another trainer instead, one who didn’t screw up as often as me. And who wouldn’t understand them, because he hadn’t been on the outside looking in his whole life, and didn’t know what it felt like.

Or maybe I was being an arrogant asshole, and just assuming I could handle them better than anyone else. I sighed and leaned back against the tree, holding the still cold bottle against my overheated cheek, hoping for some relief. It wasn’t much use, having already reached the tepid stage. Cold out here had a definite shelf life.

And arrogant asshole sounded about right.

Only Hargroves must have thought that I could do something, or he wouldn’t have entrusted them to me. Or maybe he’d just thought it fitting: sending his problem children to the most problematic member of his staff. I wondered what he thought now?

I sighed again and watched Cyrus and Caleb muscle out of the back door. I guessed Caleb had gotten tired of threatening Danny, who hadn’t seemed too bothered by it, and had decided to do something useful. He had a thick roll of white fabric over his shoulder, while his companion was carrying a washtub full of ice studded with bottles.

Cyrus was, of course, mugged before he’d gotten six yards, leaving him with an empty tub and an exasperated look on his face.

Looked like dinner was still going to be a while.

I leaned my head back against the tree trunk, and closed my eyes, hoping for a moment of peace to get my thoughts in order. But that wasn’t what I received. Without visual stimulation to distract me, other senses came online.

A lot of them.

It suddenly felt like I was the tree, sending little roots shooting out everywhere. Only these roots were turbo charged and set on fast forward. Little ghostly roots . . .

I should rein them in; I knew that. After the craziness at Cyrus’s apartment, the plan had been to ignore all the strangeness until it faded out, and blended back into my normal experience. That was the smart move and I had committed to it.

But the thought caused a pang under my breastbone, a persistent, aching sense of loss. My new world was slipping away before I’d ever even explored it, and I wasn’t likely to get another chance. War mages do not experiment with weird, magical drugs if they want to remain war mages. This was my only opportunity to discover my mother’s world, to see it as she had, to understand.

And after today, I kind of thought I’d earned it.

Just for a moment, then, I let myself drift.

There was no immediate difference, except that the chaos in my thoughts slowed down, and a languid heat took over. Not the sticky, burning, oh-God-it’s-so-hot of summer in Vegas, but a floating, comfortable feeling, more soothing warmth than fire. My wolf liked it here, liked the sun on her body and the wind in her hair. Liked all the people scurrying around, some of whom were now bringing out plates, cups and platters to decorate the tarps.

I couldn’t see them, but I could trace their actions by the smell of the food they carried: potato salad, its sweet pickle bright and tangy on the breeze; the pasta dish I’d helped to cook, its spicy, vinegar smell unmistakable; Cyrus’s fatty, bacon-y beans; buttery garlic bread, with the charr from the grill marks coming distinctly to my nose; a fresh salad, its cool, green notes singing through all the rest; and corn on the cob, grilled over an open fire and smeared with cotija cheese and Mexican spices.

And even without the smells, I would have followed the action from the sounds: the clink, clink of dinnerware; the scuff of shoes over sand, with Aki’s oddly worn sneakers distinct among the rest; the “oh, shit, sorry” of a near collision between Jen, her slightly breathy voice rising in surprise, and the lower tones of Danny, bringing over a platter of ribs; while the whack, whack, whack of the back door constantly hitting the side of the house pounded out a steady beat.

That last should have upset me—I’d just had the damned thing painted—but it faded into the languor drenching my limbs in honeyed warmth. Fittingly, a bee was droning around the branches overhead, looking for a late bloom. I could hear its soft buzz, even trace the movement of its miniscule wings, like I could discern the shush, shush, shush of the tree’s small leaves, moving in a breeze so faint that I shouldn’t have been able to feel it.

But I could, and it carried word of everything going on in the neighborhood. And suddenly, my senses expanded again. I heard a chainsaw gnawing through the tops of some bushes in the distance; Mr. Patel muttering at the end of the block as he struggled with a car that wouldn’t start; and a couple of kids down the road defying the heat to bounce a basketball against a driveway.

The driveway was cracked. I could tell whenever the ball encountered the edge and bounced off to the side. Probably the Wallers; they’d needed to get theirs sealed for a while.

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