Page 21 of The Mage on the Hill
He let Toby have his privacy all the way out of town. “You okay?”
“Yeah. No.” Toby’s voice was a dull, faded-poster version of its usual bright clarity. “How could they do that? The whole hospice thing was so personal. I mean, I kept them just in case. So I’d be able to pick if you’d said no or… I feel….”
Darius reached across the center console and groped for Toby’s hand, grateful when those slender fingers closed around his without hesitation. “Violated?”
“Sort of?” Toby’s grip tightened. “Growing up, everyone always told me the guilds were the good guys. The ones who made sure magic wasn’t misused. The people who helped when you needed it. The places where good little magelets learned how to be the best thems they can be.”
“They try,” Darius said softly, though it rankled to say it. “They do.”
“But they’re not always right.”
“No.”
Toby patted the hand he held in an absent way as he stared out the window until he looked down and flushed. “Oh. Sorry. You need that to drive.” With gentle deliberation he placed Darius’s hand back on the wheel. “I guess you scare them, huh?”
With a nod, Darius pulled back into traffic, such as it was on 849. “Change scares them.” He turned words over as he drove. “Radical change… probably harmful.”
“They kept saying that to me, over and over.” Toby sighed and reached in the glove box for his package of Oreos. “Well, not that exactly, but that they were trying to protect me, to keep everybody safe.”
“Yes.”
“I guess dead is pretty safe.” The bitter note in Toby’s voice stabbed at Darius.
“Rules, because they worked.” Darius gripped the wheel tight, determined to get out enough words for once. “Procedures, because they worked. But also walls… against new ideas.” He stopped and swallowed hard as his words started to rasp. “Kovar? Twenty years… to approve.”
Toby leaned forward far enough to look him in his eye. “That was alotof wording. Go you. But are you serious? It took twenty years for them to start using the whole Kovar thing they’re so sure’s the only way now? Twenty freaking years?”
An asshole in a Jeep was riding his bumper, so Darius eased into the shoulder to let him pass before he answered, “Yes. Adrian Kovar had passed.”
“Huh. Poor guy. Didn’t even get to see his ideas used. Not that it was fun. At all. It was kinda awful, actually. But not for everyone, they said. When it worked, it worked. Maybe it wasn’t so bad then.” Toby twisted in his seat to look behind them. “Are they still coming?”
Good question.Darius opened his door and put his foot out on the ground. This wasn’t his familiar home patch of earth, but it still spoke to him. Quiet. The rumblings of something powerful approaching had quieted. “No.”
“Cool. Okay. I guess they’d check Arden’s house first, and dammit, I hope they don’t give him a hard time. Then I guess they’ll be checking out a trash can on whatever street that was back there.” Toby stuffed an Oreo in his mouth, obviously feeling better, and spoke around it. “Can they still follow us, you think?”
“Possibly. Slower, though. Don’t spray crumbs.”
“Sorry.”
West, Darius decided. They would head toward higher ground and less populated country. Maybe meeting Elias would help. It was possible that Toby was like him. As he drove, he tried not to think about how empty his hand felt without Toby’s.
Chapter Seven
THE WINDYtwo-lane back roads had put Toby to sleep, and when he woke, groggy and stupid from a dream about sorting rose petals, it took a moment to register that they were traveling a lot faster and a lot straighter, and it was getting dark.
“How are we on an interstate?”
Darius’s snort was definitely an amused one. “PA has them.”
“I know, but… never mind.” Toby sat up, rubbing at his stiff neck. “Are you okay still? How long have you driven today?”
“Had a nap.”
If Darius still had both eyes, Toby had the feeling he would’ve been side-eyed hard enough to knock him into the next county. “I could help out, you know. It’s not like I don’t know how to drive.”
Without taking his eye off the road Darius reached over and patted his knee, which might have been condescending from anyone else, but his voice only held soft concern when he followed the touch with, “Too dangerous.”
“Right. Right.” Toby slumped in his seat again. “Like driving with an uncontrolled seizure disorder.”
