Chapter 1 #2
“It was absolutely bussin’. Everyone was having a blast. Then just before the club closed, Leo crashed out.”
“He freaked?” Isa asked, and Kelly nodded. “How so?”
“He was getting paranoid—thought someone was watching him.”
“Did you pick up on that vibe too?” Isa asked. Kelly wasn’t the flighty type—she couldn’t be if she wanted to work at Wonderland—and wouldn’t detect a vibe unless it was really there.
Kelly bit her torn lip, flinched, then stopped. “No, but he was off, way off, being cringe to Em and Olie. Saying how they treat him like shit because he’s a muni.”
Isa tried not to wince. The derogatory term referred to those who held little to no magical ability in a world that was all about Arcane power. “So he’s a Traditionalist?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. His magic is, like, small, you know? He can try to turn lights on and off, juice up a minor charm, but it’s always a crapshoot.
I didn’t think it bothered him much. I mean, we laugh about it all the time, but tonight, he…
he… just…” She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together as a single tear rolled down her face.
Isa got up to grab a box of tissues. On her way, she picked up the old portable handset from where Kelly had dropped it and set it on its base on the desk.
She sat back down next to Kelly and handed her the box.
The younger woman murmured a quiet thanks then pulled out a handful of tissues and blew her nose.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“Nothing to apologize for.” Isa heard Des moving back their way. “So, you were at the club, and this Leo guy was getting upset?”
“Who’s Leo?” Des asked, stalking back in with a highball glass full of water and handing it to Isa.
“A friend.” Whatever she saw on his face had her quickly adding, “Just a friend, I swear.”
Considering the state Kelly was in, Isa wondered if the girl was in denial. She offered the glass of water to Kelly, who managed a couple of sips before handing it back. Isa set it on the floor to the side of the sofa.
Des headed to the desk and the toppled chair. He made quick work of righting it before taking a seat, giving Kelly space. “And where is Leo now?” He opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out a healing kit.
The tissues Kelly was twisting between her fingers tore, and what little color her face had held disappeared. A curious blankness hit her gaze as her breathing became erratic. “I… I don’t… He’s…”
Alarmed, Isa caught Kelly’s hands in hers and squeezed. “Kelly, look at me. Come on. Look at me and breathe. Yeah, just like that, again. Good. You’re good.”
As Kelly breathed in and out, the strange blank look slowly faded from her eyes. When Isa was sure the younger woman wouldn’t pass out, she got to her feet, took a seat next to her, and tried again. “Okay, so you’re at Obsidian, Leo’s getting weird, and then…?”
She dipped her chin in a slow nod. “We were at the club, and it was closing, so there was a discussion about where to go next. The others were getting pissed at him being so weird and wanted to ditch him for the Alchemist in Tempe, but I figured he was just hammered. I started walking him home, since we were close, hoping he’d sober up, but instead, he got worse, which made me wonder if he had taken something at the club. ”
Isa caught movement from behind the desk and risked a glance. Des raised a small ice pack in silent question. She nodded and lifted her hand as she kept on topic with Kelly.
“Is he the kind that would do that?”
“I didn’t think so,” Kelly said as Des tossed over the ice pack and Isa caught it.
“You know I don’t like that scene, but when he went to pay for his drinks earlier, something fell out of his pocket, and I went to pick it up, but he got there first. Snatched it up quick and stuffed it away while he was acting kind of squirrelly.
So maybe?” She said the last as a question.
“Do you know what it was that he dropped?” Des asked.
Kelly’s brow furrowed. “It was one of those tiny baggies”—she lifted her hand, with her forefinger and thumb about an inch apart—“with a couple of red pills.” She dropped her hand and looked worriedly between Isa and Des.
“I got upset and asked him about it. He said he was holding it for someone, that it wasn’t his, and we kind of argued about it, you know? ”
Isa did know because Kelly had lost an older sibling to an addiction. “Okay, so you’re taking him home—”
“Which is where?” Des interrupted.
Kelly’s attention went to Des. “Evermore.”
Isa recognized the name. The popular high-rise condo, about five blocks north of Wonderland, catered to the downtown university crowd.
“So you walked from the bar to his place, right?” Isa asked.
The younger woman nodded, her attention on Isa’s hands as they unwrapped the charmed ice pack. “Then what?”
“I got him up the stairs and inside his condo. He told me earlier that his roommate was out of town until next week, so I knew no one was home, but I didn’t want to just leave him alone and whacked-out, you know?”
“You were worried.” Isa activated the ice pack’s rune and handed it to Kelly.
“Yeah.” Kelly pressed the pack to the knot on her forehead. “He kept muttering and pacing in the living room, so I went to the kitchen to get him some water and aspirin. I was at the fridge when…”
Her gaze went dark as she tightened her hold on the throw, huddling. Misery radiated off of her. Isa rubbed a comforting hand along her stiff spine but stayed quiet, letting Kelly tell the story at her own pace and fight her way clear of the memories.
In a few moments, Kelly spoke again. This time, there was a distance in her tone.
“He slammed me into the fridge so hard I dropped the glass. Heard it shatter, but I couldn’t move.
He had me pinned…” Her voice cracked, and a violent shudder tore through her.
The hand clutching the throw rose as if to touch one of the bruises by her eye but stopped.
“He said how he’d make me pay attention.
How he wasn’t a useless muni, how things were going to be different now, then…
” Her shock-glazed eyes met Isa’s. “I tried to talk him down, but it wasn’t working, and it should have, Isa. ”
She wasn’t wrong. Her skill as a Charmer was part of the reason they’d taken her on as a server. A mage who could calm a rowdy crowd with a few magically backed words was invaluable.
“It was like every time I spoke, it just made him angrier, so I fought back, doing that thing you taught us, where you just drop. That’s where I got these.
” She shifted her weight and loosened her grip on the throw, exposing the cuts and scratches on her thighs.
“There was glass on the floor.” She touched one of the shallow cuts with a shaky hand.
“But then he grabbed my hair and started to drag me across the floor. I needed something, anything, to stop him, and there were knives on the counter, you know, in one of those block thingies. I tried to grab one but knocked it over just before he hit me again. I couldn’t really see, just picked up one of the knives, and…
and…” She turned her hand over, revealing deep, ragged tears along her palm and small cuts on her fingers.
Isa hissed at the blood-smeared mess, wondering if stitches were going to be needed. She took Kelly’s wrist carefully to keep her from using it. “Des, can you get me some wet paper towels?”
While Des headed out, Kelly kept talking.
“I used it to make him let me go.” Her fingers curled up as if holding something, and Isa’s heart ached as she realized the cuts had been made when Kelly’s grip had slipped on the knife.
Kelly kept staring at her blood-streaked hand. “Everything kind of blurs after that.”
Des came back in, handed over the damp paper towels, then stepped to the desk as Isa gently wiped away the blood.
He came back and handed Isa a healing charm.
As soon as Kelly’s palm was somewhat clean, Isa activated the charm and was relieved to see the worst of the cuts start to close under its soft glow.
“I was trying to get out of the kitchen,” Kelly said, her attention on what Isa was doing, “when this flash hit me.” She touched the singe mark in her shirt.
“It hurt so bad. I think I screamed.” She turned to Isa with a dazed look.
“I don’t get it. He’s not an electro mage or a pyro, but he was standing there, wielding magic he shouldn’t have, eyes wild.
And that magic— like some weird cross between electricity and fire—” She shook her head.
“All I could think was he was going to kill me. He tried for another strike but missed. The magic he was using, it was scary wild, and I just wanted to get out of there. He came after me again, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it out.
He got an arm around my throat, and I stabbed him over and over again until he let me go.
Then I ran.” She lifted her head, her gaze going from Isa to Des as she swallowed hard.
“I think, maybe, I might have killed him.”