Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Parker blinked at him, and the two coffee shop employees seemed confused.
“What?” Parker said, finally, his eyes shifting, as though he was looking at some other plane Nick couldn’t see.
“The spellwork is more intense than I thought,” Nick said. “It’s more than I can do on my own.”
For a second, Parker blinked, but then he glanced at the two employees and tugged Nick to the side. The storage room was small, too small for much more than a few shelves on the walls and a small set of lockers for employees.
Parker’s lips tightened as he examined Nick’s face. Then he said, “Let’s go.”
Nick didn’t complain as Parker dragged him out of the coffee shop. He knew he needed to go back, provide any first aid the cashier needed. He should call the captain, let him know what had happened. He should…
Nick’s vision swam, and the next thing he knew, he was in the back seat of his car, slumped over. Parker was crouching on the asphalt in front of him and saying his name over and over.
“I’m fine,” Nick said.
Parker shot him a harsh look. “This is Freaky Friday, and I am not okay that I’ve now turned into the mom who has to be cranky about everything. You do not get to be the one who overextends yourself magically and ends up almost dying.”
Then Parker was leaning over him, buckling the seat belt and muttering to himself as he fished Nick’s keys out of his pocket.
Parker closed the door gently and got in the driver’s seat.
He was on his phone, bringing it up to his ear, even as he adjusted the rearview mirror so he could look at Nick, his eyes going soft.
“Zahide. Listen, Nick and I have discovered a way to disable the parasite without blowing anyone up. We helped an employee at Busy Bee Coffee on Gonzaga Road. Can you head over and check her out?” Parker listened for a second.
“Yeah, we’re persona non grata right now, and with our luck, that means we’ll be called back in soon, but I’m taking Nick to Laurel. He depleted his magic.”
Parker winced and made a face in the mirror. Nick didn’t need to be on the phone to hear that Parker was bearing the brunt of Zahide’s unhappiness.
“He didn’t mean to. Yeah. Thanks.” Parker took the phone away from his ear, and he looked down at it, typing something out before starting the car.
“Zahide’s mad?” Nick said.
“Don’t worry about Zahide. Worry about me, your equally mad husband,” Parker snapped. “You said you could do this, no problem.”
“I thought I could,” Nick said. “I overestimated my abilities.”
“You think?” Parker turned at the next light, looking at him directly. “Two special ops–trained magic users take days to set up these circles, and Nicholas King, of those Kings, thinks that he’s better than black ops alchemists?”
“Well, yeah,” Nick admitted.
“I mean, I assumed you were, too, so I guess both of us get to be wrong here.” Parker looked in the mirror again before pressing the accelerator. “We aren’t doing that again if it’s going to hurt you.”
“Yeah,” Nick agreed.
“Okay,” Parker said.
Nick closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat, and when they got to Laurel’s cafe, Parker had to shake him awake. Laurel opened the door for them, rushing them inside to a table filled with food.
She shoved a smoothie into Nick’s hands. “That first.”
Nick didn’t bother arguing, just took long drinks of the smoothie until his head stopped spinning, the ringing in his ears going away.
Then he sat and ate while both Laurel and Parker loomed over him threateningly. When he slowed down after the first plate, Parker leaned forward.
“I will call your mom.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “I’ll call my mom.”
Nick ate the second plate of roasted vegetables mixed with chunks of savory meat quickly. Like everything Laurel made, it was delicious, and by the time he finished, he could actually think in something more than fragments of sentences.
Parker was filling Laurel in on what was going on.
Her frown was getting deeper, and she said, “That’s why. I sent everyone home when we got the shelter at home order, but I know a lot of other businesses who thought it was just a suggestion. But you guys figured out how to stop the parasite?”
“Yeah, but we aren’t doing it again,” Parker said sharply. “Look what it did to Nick. I don’t want him to do it again six times.”
Laurel nodded. “Your magic levels were really low.”
“I was overusing it yesterday. I think if I was at my usual levels, I would have been fine. It’s not complicated. It’s just detailed.” Nick picked at the potato wedges on the plate. His stomach said he wanted them, but he hadn’t done his run this morning.
“Eat them,” Laurel said, sitting down across from him. She narrowed her eyes at Parker. “You, too.”
“What did I do?” Parker asked, but he sat down and took a plate of the same vegetable and meat dish Nick had just eaten.
“My problem is that the anchor points on all three spells demand full capacity before I can even begin loading the other parts of the spell.” Nick bit into a potato wedge. It was savory and salty, with a hint of spice that lit up his mouth.
“So that forces you to put all your magic on the table first,” Laurel said. “Can you reuse the spell for the next person? Wait until you have enough now and then just do it once?”
“I thought of that,” Nick admitted. “But I just don’t have the capacity, and now the parasite knows we can hurt it. I don’t know why it hasn’t killed the other ten.”
“I don’t think it wants to,” Parker said around a mouthful.
His expression was bliss, as though it didn’t matter that they were on a deadline with an unknown enemy.
“Other than Gile, none of them have threatened us. In fact, even the one in Gile actually listened to me. It went where we told it, blew up when we asked… I don’t think any of them want to kill.
Except maybe parasite prime. Whichever one they all came from. ”
“You think that the further we get from the original parasite, the less they want to be doing this?” Nick said. “That makes sense. The others were upset; they didn’t want to hurt people.”
“‘I was made to hurt.’ Isn’t that what the one at the escape room said?” Parker looked down, his mouth pinching as his brows drew tighter. “Maybe if we kill the original parasite, we could just let the others go?”
“Go where?” Nick pointed out. “Right now, they’re occupying people’s bodies.”
Parker frowned. “I know, but this just feels cruel. They have some sentience.”
“So your main problem is that you need to lay out the power initially.” Laurel looked up at the ceiling. “What if we did something else?”
Nick immediately turned his eyes to her. “Like what?”
“Like when we designed the escape spell together.” Laurel grinned. “You’d still be able to do the alchemy interior, but I’ve been figuring out ways to get around anchor points. Then we’d be using my magic for the heavy lifting. And I haven’t been overusing my magic recently.”
Nick’s stomach clenched, and with the good food inside, he could feel it gurgle, could feel the anxiety shiver down his spine. Even now, after letting Parker power his spells, after working together with Laurel several times, mixing alchemy and witchcraft felt like the worst sort of perversion.
He’d always told himself he only did what was necessary, only did the worst sort of depravity when he had absolutely no other choice, but even he knew that wasn’t true. What he’d been taught his whole life wasn’t true.
It was possible to work with a witch, to work together and for it not to be evil or end in someone losing their magic. Moreover, when he saw the way Laurel worked with magic, it was often just as graceful and beautiful as the best alchemists.
Laurel took out a sheet of paper and drew out her spell, showing him how she could replace the anchor points and still have the spell function.
“And you’d be able to sustain it six times?” Parker asked suspiciously. “I’m not trading a magic-depleted husband for a magic-depleted sister.”
“Trust me, this is nothing compared to working the cafe at lunch hour.” Laurel gave them an amused look. “Have you tried to explain to twelve office workers who all want different things why it takes more than two minutes to get them their food?”
“We have to try it,” Nick said.
Laurel nodded. She cleared a space for them to work. It would take more than a good meal to get him back to full capacity and he hated that, but he wanted to make sure they could at least get the spell working. Nick wasn’t sure he could handle a failure again.
As she put together the framework for him, Laurel hummed a soft song, her voice rising and falling as she worked through the magic. When she asked him questions, he answered and they fell into the sort of collaboration that he missed from practicing alchemy with his family.
“If I add a bit here containing the spell and binding it, do you think that will make it too inflexible?” Laurel asked.
And then they were off on another tangent and by the time his stomach started rumbling again, Parker had dozed off in one of the comfortable chairs. Laurel made them all dinner and then sent them home.
“I’m not doing this at night,” she said firmly.
“I’m not sure if we’re still under a time crunch since we got rid of the parasite in Gile, but I don’t want to take the chance.” Nick frowned down at his hands, clenching them together. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Laurel agreed. She hugged both of them tightly and waved as Parker drove off.
At home, Nick went upstairs right away, his body feeling empty and hollow. He waved off Parker’s concern and barely was able to change before he fell into bed. Once there, he slept, expecting to be too tired to dream.
He was wrong.