Chapter Three
Leander wasn’t sure where Salem was being held, but he could make a few guesses.
Standing under the scraggly apple tree that struggled with concrete anchoring its roots, he watched the dark windows of Tecca’s house.
Once it had been Tecca and Finn’s house.
They had thrown a housewarming party Leander had missed because he had been in Chongqing learning flora magic.
The skill was so poorly respected in the US that Leander had thought it next to useless.
At best, he thought he might move to some rural area, pretend to be a preacher and make a living blessing crops.
Druwolf’s offer of mentorship in China had felt like a dream.
Sometimes Leander wished he had the magical power to go back in time and slap himself.
Hard. Perhaps fatally. At the very least, brain damage could not have made his decision-making process worse.
He touched the apple tree, soaking in the healing magic and letting it center him.
This is what his sifu had given him. The man had never given Leander his name, but he had taught Leander to feel the magic in each leaf, each flower, each blade and bit of bark.
This apple tree was loud despite its ill health.
It might not have even survived, but it had fed from the magic of a little boy who had played under its limbs.
And now Leander hoped to steal the tree’s source of strength. He sent his own magic out, twining it with the tree and feeding it before pulling his own magic back.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
Leander whirled around at Creek’s statement. “What are you...” He sighed. “Why are you here?”
“My handler assigned me to watch for Druwolf’s assassin.” Creek stepped into the weak light of a flickering streetlamp. “I wanted to talk to you without risking being seen.”
Leander sneered. “Are your masters keeping you on a short leash?”
Creek didn’t rise to the taunt. “I tend not to socialize with drug dealers, so they’ve never given the order.”
“I don’t deal drugs.” Leander had many sins on his soul. More than he could count. However, he didn’t sell the shit that came out of Druwolf’s hidden workshops.
“No, you make them. Worse, you make magically powerful drugs.” Creek’s tone had no mercy, but Leander wanted none. He’d made his choices, just as Creek had.
“There always has been and always will be someone selling if people want to buy,” Leander said.
He wanted to spit the words out and add a few choice barbs about Creek’s profession.
After all, his primary job was finding people with magic, kidnapping them, and delivering them to be enslaved by the government.
That seemed far worse than strengthening the effects of a few drugs.
A month ago, he would have said all that, but seeing one more childhood friend die because of Druwolf had brought the ugly truth close to home, more than he liked.
He’d not only built a house of glass, but he’d used thin and cheap panes.
Creek studied him for a long time without speaking. “Why are you here?”
“Can you protect him?” Leander countered without answering.
“If he shows magic, I can.”
He could take Salem into custody, he meant.
But Tecca would have trained her son to hide his magic at all times, assuming he even had any.
Some children didn’t inherit, even if they had powerful parents, and many didn’t show signs until puberty.
That had been Tecca. Finn and Creek had shown their magic early, and Leander had thought himself without magic until he started high school.
Biology class had nearly outed him, but the teacher couldn’t identify the student who had made all the tomato seeds sprout overnight.
Sometimes he wondered if the authorities had caught Creek because the teachers were watching their class more closely after the tomato incident. The guilt was old and well-worn.
“I can protect him without taking away his freedom,” Leander said quietly.
“Druwolf will kill you both.”
Leander snorted. “He plans to anyway.”
Creek moved closer, a frown creasing two vertical lines into his forehead. “You learned something.”
“I just stopped denying something,” Leander said wearily.
“I can protect you. A plant mage... you could have a beautiful garden so far away from here that Druwolf would never find you.”
“I’d be locked in a garden prison,” Leander corrected him.
They’d always had honesty between them, just like they’d held each other’s secrets, even after Creek had started working for the police.
The government suspected Leander had magic, but they didn’t have evidence because Creek had never revealed the truth.
Perhaps it was some nostalgia for a time when those secrets had been easier to keep that made him say, “Escape with us.”
Creek sucked in a breath and stepped back. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” Leander studied Creek. “You always wanted to be free, to travel, to see the world.”
“To be a tourist in the world, not a fugitive always one step ahead of arrest.”
“They won’t find us. Between the two of us, we could protect Salem and ourselves.” A clawing, desperate hope rose from the pit of Leander’s soul.
Creek stepped back. “That’s fine for you. If you’re caught, it’s your first strike. You’ll get to choose a government job and get government training. If I’m caught...” Creek swallowed.
Leander’s laugh was dark and lacked any humor.
“You’re an idiot if you think they would show me mercy.
I’m not a sixteen-year-old kid turned in by a teacher before even learning to use his powers.
They know what I am. They have spent ten years trying to catch me.
Even if I voluntarily surrender, I won’t have a life worth living. ”
“But you’ll live. If you run...” Creek’s expression darkened.
“We won’t get caught,” Leander promised. “We could chase some of those dreams we had when we were young.”
“Go,” Creek said, his voice strained. “If you’re going to take Salem, do it and leave.
I’ll tell them I saw nothing, but you can’t ask me to take that risk.
” He steppe d back again, and the tiny hope blossoming in Leander’s chest died.
He clung to the threads of healing magic from the tree as something in his soul broke.
But magic couldn’t fix souls or change the past.
With a nod toward Creek, Leander moved to the side of the house.
He’d been at Tecca’s place once, and so he could guess where Salem’s room was.
He took a seed from his pocket and pressed it into the space between the window and the sill, and then he pushed.
The seed sprouted and grew. Leaves stretched into the air seeking sun and finding Leander’s magic.
It pushed harder, straining the window lock.
The tiny oak developed a trunk and fought for space until the sash groaned and then opened with a sharp snap.
Leander slipped into the dim room. He had guessed wrong.
The room was bare—white walls and gray bedspread—nothing childlike.
This was Tecca’s room, the one she and Finn had once shared.
He felt dirty being in here. He’d loved Finn, yet he’d cursed him, both to his face and behind his back.
Being in this room reminded him of the years he’d lost because he’d rejected Finn’s offer of friendship.
If he couldn’t have all of Finn, he refused any part.
He’d been the greatest fool ever to walk the earth.
He tiptoed out of the master suite and into the hall, where he heard a reality television show playing.
He moved in the opposite direction. There were certificates pinned to the wallpaper: first year karate, perfect attendance, fourth place science fair.
Leander moved to the next door, a bathroom, and then the third.
He stopped. There was a lump in the middle of a twin bed, blue sheets wrapped around his sleeping form.
Leander stepped into the dim room, the streetlight filtering in through the curtains. “Salem,” he whispered. He moved toward the bed. “Salem.” He touched his shoulder, and the boy sprang up, dull school scissors in hand as if he could defend himself against a grown man with them.
“Peace,” Leander murmured, grateful the boy hadn’t made a noise. He admired Salem’s survival instincts, even if this was inconvenient for him.
“Mr. Moore?” Salem asked, confusion coloring his tone.
“Yes. I was a friend of your parents.” Of course, Salem knew that. He wouldn’t have known Leander’s name if he hadn’t known that. Seeing Creek had thrown him.
“Mother told me,” Salem whispered, and the arm with the scissors lowered slowly. “Why are you here?”
“We need to leave.” Leander considered how to explain the danger in terms appropriate for a child.
He’d never been around children, and now that he faced one, he didn’t know where to start.
They weren’t like plants, which sent threads of magic out into the world to show what they excelled at or what they needed.
“Is the monster here?” His voice trembled, and he clutched his scissors more tightly.
“It’s coming soon,” Leander said, and in some definition of monster, he was telling the truth.
“We need to leave. Do you have anything you can’t leave behind?
Anything you would want to carry away even if a monster was chasing you?
” Hopefully, the last would prevent the child from trying to pack his entire wardrobe.
Salem slid out of bed and went to his desk.
He pulled out a book and a small box before turning back to Leander, ready to leave.
The warning had worked too well if the child would leave everything else behind.
There was a stuffed bat with worn wings tangled in his sheets, and Leander picked it up.
“Get dressed quietly—something warm. I’ll put a few clothes into your backpack. ”
Salem took the bat cautiously, as though expecting Leander to rip it away.
As much as Leander wanted to take offense, the child didn’t know him, and he had recently lost his mother.
He should suspect unfamiliar adults; Leander could only hope he remained quiet as he clutched his bat to his chest. Leander slid drawers open as softly as possible, grabbing underwear and pants while Salem slipped into clothes from the floor.
“We won’t come back, ever,” Leander said. “Is there anything else you need?”
“They took Momma’s jewelry,” he mumbled.
Leander hadn’t thought a ten-year-old child would care about jewelry. “I have no way to recover it, and we need to leave before we’re caught.”
Salem nodded and pushed dark curls out of his eyes.
While Leander wasn’t the best at reading people’s expressions, it seemed like he had hope in his eyes.
Few people had ever looked at Leander like that, and suddenly the danger of what he was doing felt like a weight on his shoulders.
Salem was counting on him. Leander held out his hand to the boy while keeping the backpack in his other.
Salem took it, and Leander led him back down the hall.
The caretaker was still watching the television, so he moved as quickly as he could, pulling Salem into the master bedroom and then out of the window.
The boy watched, eyes huge as Leander put his hand on the sapling growing on the sill.
Leander pulled the magic back out of the plant, feeling as it died cell by cell until only the brittle skeleton of a tree remained.
Leander pulled it free as easily as a dead vine and threw it away from the window.
That would make it more difficult to determine who had broken in.
After all, Leander had many tricks he had shown no one.
Not even Druwolf would know what the marks on the sill meant.
He turned, took Salem’s hand again, heading for the street.
The surrounding shadows darkened and fear squeezed Leander’s heart.
Creek’s promise to hide their escape felt like a vow written on tissue paper.
He pulled Salem closer, and the boy pressed against his side.
But the shadows didn’t close in. Police cars didn’t pull up to the curb.
The night was quiet, or as quiet as the city ever got.
Leander headed for his car, pulling Salem along with him.
He threw the backpack onto the rear seat with his bag and urged the boy to get in on the passenger side before he started the car and put it into gear.
The shadows grew deeper as Leander pulled away, but within a block, they had faded.