Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
R iley yanked me down the bus steps, and Cassander and Junior followed behind. Cassander was speaking quietly, offering his suggestions on how to make a better deal next time. Junior seemed to have recovered from his disappointment and nodded rapidly, his eyes going wide at whatever Cassander was saying.
The arcade was something that had survived in town since the eighties, a lot of the machines still from then, but Desert Flower had few entertainments for kids and even fewer that parents were comfortable with teenagers hanging out at by themselves. By the time I was a teen, the arcade had food, enough machines to entertain my entire graduating class, and a few non-arcade businesses built up around it.
As soon as I stepped inside, the scent hit me at once. The popcorn, sweat, and sugary cotton candy smell was like walking straight back into my childhood, when the arcade was for when Dad had a really good week at work, and Mom was sure the coffee can emergency fund was full.
Then we’d each get five dollars in quarters to run around with and waste to our hearts’ content. I had become an expert at the niche eighties video games that still worked, spending too long staring at the grainy pixels.
The space itself had expanded, taking over what had once been a hair salon next door and using it for air hockey tables and a few booths where bored parents could wait for kids.
After turning Mom’s fifty into ten dollars of quarters and two twenties, I gave Junior and Riley five dollars each and settled into one of the booths. Riley immediately disappeared into a car racing game, her full attention on steering. Junior went for a classic game of Street Fighter that I was pretty sure hadn’t moved since the last time I’d been in the arcade.
I watched them long enough to make sure they were staying put, ignoring the way Cassander stared at me, his gaze lingering in a way that was impossible to ignore.
The music blared, a mix of modern pop songs remixed and sung by children and classic rock, like two people were warring over the sound system. Led Zeppelin faded into a Britney Spears cover, and Cassander had to raise his voice to be heard.
“Why won’t you work with your mother? What is it she does exactly?”
“My mom is a con artist. I left town so I wouldn’t have to work for her. I’m not going to start now that I’m back and desperate.” I shifted, the vinyl creaking under me.
“A con artist,” Cassander tasted the word. “She said she can tell the future. She’s not a fortune teller? A soothsayer?”
I blinked at him, my mouth falling open in a laugh. “You don’t actually believe in that, do you?”
Both of Cassander’s eyebrows went up, and he opened and closed his hand, catching a single sparkle of light in his palm. I jerked my head around, checking to see if anyone else noticed, if anyone else saw what Cassander had just done. No one was paying us any attention. The only other parents in the entire place were arguing in the corner, one gesturing wildly at the bored teenager behind the counter.
“Don’t do that,” I said quietly.
“Do what? Show my magic?” Cassander frowned. “Why? You know about it.”
“But they don’t.” That was the primary rule, the one that had been drilled into me since my first day at the SPA, the one that I could recite like it was my social security number.
Don’t ever let anyone who doesn’t already know find out about magic .
In order to protect everyone, we had to keep magical artifacts a secret. The people who knew about them had to be monitored, had to be kept from revealing the reality to the rest of the world. Not that those who knew ever wanted to tell the world. Secrets were power, and magical artifacts were the biggest secrets of all.
Maybe that was why the SPA had never told me about magical creatures or about how magical artifacts were created. Maybe even at the SPA, there were layers of knowledge, circles in circles of who knew what.
“Why are you so flippant about this? You’ve been keeping your existence a secret too.”
I watched Cassander’s face, several things that had been turning in my mind clicking into place at his flinch.
“Yes, but it was not always like that. There was a time when my kind walked freely in your world, known as they are. There was a time when you wouldn’t dare breathe in my presence.” Around us, the air seemed to darken, all of the lights pulled into Cassander’s skin, the sound of the machines fading until all I could hear was his voice. “Maybe that is the problem. Maybe your kind should be afraid of mine again.”
I watched him, focused on his lips, the way that his skin seemed to glimmer, illuminated from within. We were alone, the two of us.
“And what kind is that exactly?” I waited and, when he didn’t respond, poked at him. “Living night-lights?”
His mouth dropped open, and he was going to tell me every secret he had, his pride pricked. Earlier, my mother had shown me the key to pushing him into truth, and I was going to keep turning it until he told me who he was.
Then he frowned, his eyes narrowing over my shoulder. “Who is that?”
“What?”
I turned and saw someone wearing a T-shirt with the arcade logo on it. He was staring at me, eyes wide, a box in his hands filled with wires and pieces of electronics.
He looked familiar, the way that you recognize someone you haven’t seen in years by the shape of their face, the tilt of their eyes, even if the wrinkles have increased, the hair changed color.
I flipped through my mental Rolodex, using context clues to tell me who he was. We were in Desert Flower, so statistically, it was someone I had grown up with or gone to school with. He looked slightly older than me, but not by much. If we had gone to school together, he was probably no more than a year ahead of me.
Before I could decide that he was more than a classmate, someone I had known vaguely in high school, he bolted, dropping the box on the ground and plunging through the emergency exit.
When I saw him running, I knew exactly who he was because his habit of bolting fast meant he had never gotten caught by the cops when they had come to break up a party or the principal when we were all smoking under the bleachers.
Leonard.
Leonard, who’d seen me and recognized me and was now running. Why? What did he know that I didn’t? What did he know that made him bolt as soon as he’d seen me?
I was up and out of the booth before the door had finished closing, slamming my hand to open it again, then wincing away from the bright light. We were in an alley behind the arcade, and I looked both ways before catching sight of Leonard going around the corner. I followed after him, fast but not too fast. I needed to make sure I didn’t lose him accidentally. As I rounded the corner, I caught sight of him ducking into the park two blocks away.
It looked like age hadn’t affected his speed at all. If age and pot usage hadn’t burned away his muscle mass, maybe he still had the brain space to explain why he was running. Unless it was an automatic response, like a chicken with no head still running in circles.
I put on a burst of speed to get me to the park because there were too many places for him to escape inside. As my foot touched the grass, Cassander caught up to me, looking as though this was a normal walk.
“The kids!” I said sharply.
“Do you think this will take that long?” Cassander asked sharply. “Us against him?”
When I turned my head to look at him, I tripped, spinning my arms wildly to try and stay stable. Cassander caught me, and I could feel his hand hot through two layers of clothes. I stood straight, searching the park for Leonard.
“There.” I pointed, catching sight of Leonard as he sprinted across the street on the other side, the crosswalk beeping a friendly tone to let him know it was safe to cross.
I pushed myself, ignoring the aches and pains from the past few days as we flew through the park, but as soon as I put one foot in the street, the light turned, a red hand displayed on the crosswalk sign. Pulling up short, I nearly fell in front of a truck speeding through the intersection.
Cassander pulled me back with a hand on my shoulder, and I shook my head.
“The coin?” I asked.
He shot me an amused look. “Not all of your bad luck is due to magic.”
“I’ve never been this unlucky.”
My mother said luck didn’t exist, just poor planning and poor preparation. She would have made an excellent Boy Scout leader.
By the time the light turned and we ran across the street, I was sure we had lost Leonard. He’d gone into a small shopping plaza, and as we entered it, I hissed in annoyance. All the stores were open, and he was nowhere to be seen. Most of them sold things for tourists who came to the large fairs in the park. There was a small historical museum that captured the history of the town. Where would he go? Where would he try and hide?
I shook my head, slowing and looking in each of the open doorways as we passed. Nothing seemed out of place, no one was shouting, and I didn’t see any sign of him.
When we got to the museum, I noticed the volunteer working the front desk frowning toward one of the displays.
“Here,” I murmured, and Cassander came up beside me, guarding my weak side as though we had worked together a hundred times and he already knew how to support me.
We walked in, and the volunteer turned to us, her friendly smile widening when she caught sight of Cassander.
“Entry is free, but if you want to make a donation—” She gestured to a large, clear box next to the reception desk.
I hesitated. There was no better way to make sure she remembered us than to ignore the implied entry fee. Cassander stepped forward, his smile brilliant. “We’ll pay on our way out.”
Her eyes went wide, and she nodded happily.
“We were looking for a friend. He came in here a few minutes ago. He said he really wanted to show us one of the displays.” I smiled at her, lopsided, trying to match Cassander’s charm, even though I knew it was a losing venture.
No one could charm like he could.
For a second, she looked conflicted, aware enough that something was off, even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Then Cassander smiled.
She melted. “He went into the theater.”
I was off before she even raised her hand to gesture the direction. I remembered the layout from enough school trips to fill a lifetime. The museum barely had one hour of entertainment, yet every year, they dragged us here.
The only thing that ever changed was the theater, which showed various movies that had been filmed in the area. By the poster outside the open doors, it was a John Wayne western this time.
The movie was already going, someone drawling in a cowboy accent about not making any sudden moves. Only one person sat in the theater. I glanced at Cassander significantly and jerked my chin toward the third row.
Cassander circled around the back of the theater, and I waited to approach until he was close enough that Leonard would have nowhere to run.
“Leonard.” I sat next to him, and he stiffened, about to bolt, but I grabbed hold of his wrist, squeezing tightly. “It’s almost like you don’t want to talk to me.”
“Hey, Damian,” Leonard said weakly. “Long time. How are you? They said you joined the military.”
“I did.” I smiled, squeezing harder until Leonard yelped. “Last time I saw you was after graduation. Cindy Marie’s party, wasn’t it? I thought we were good, Leonard.”
“We are! We are so good. We are very good.” Leonard gave me a weak smile. “So good. That’s what we are.”
I turned my head to Leonard, craning my neck so I could see his face. “Why run, then?”
He was sweating, beads of it rolling down his face as he looked around, desperate for an escape. He tried to stand, jerking up, and I yanked him back down, but he pulled harder.
Cassander slid into the seat on his other side, wrapping his arm around Leonard’s shoulder and leaning in.
“Leonard, is it?” How Cassander made the very fact that he knew Leonard’s name sound like a threat was a mystery to me. But Leonard’s eyes went so wide I could see the white around them in the reflected light from the movie screen.
A gunshot went off on-screen, followed by a dozen more, Leonard jumping at each one.
“That’s my name.” Leonard raised his free hand to his upper lip and wiped at sweat.
“There’s something you don’t want to tell us. A secret?” Cassander waited, seeing how that landed, and I could tell from the body language, not to mention the hand wrapped around his wrist, that Leonard’s heart rate had just spiked. Everything in Leonard’s body language said that he had something to hide, although I couldn’t fathom what it might be.
The last time I had seen Leonard had been over twelve years ago. He was part of the past I had left behind. There was nothing to tie us together. Unless it was something I didn’t know about. Some secret that had to do with the Reyes family that had stayed in town—my sister, my mother, my brother-in-law.
“Now, what might that secret be? Something to do with Damian. You know something that he doesn’t, something that you’re so afraid he’ll find out about that you ran.” Cassander leaned close, nearly pressing his nose against the side of Leonard’s face. “Tell me.”
“I can’t,” Leonard whimpered, and underneath my fingers, I felt his heart going as fast as a sprint runner’s one meter from the finish line.
“I can smell the loyalty on you.” Cassander sniffed, and Leonard flinched.
No, whatever it was wasn’t loyalty. It was fear, and Cassander picked up on it immediately too.
“Tell us who you are afraid of, or we all walk out of here, arm in arm, closer than we ever were in high school.” I tightened even further on his wrist, feeling the twist of bone and tendon. “You get me?”
“I can’t. You can’t do that to me. Please, man, she’ll kill me.” Leonard wiped at his sweat again, rubbing his hand against his jeans.
“She can kill you, but there’s any number of ways a person can die.” Cassander lowered his voice, leaning until his lips were nearly pressed against Leonard’s ear. “I can think of at least a hundred right here in this room.”
“Iris Milner,” Leonard said quickly. “Iris Milner wants you dead, Damian. If she can’t have you, she’s going to take everyone around you.”