15. Chips Hit the Floor
Chips Hit the Floor
You can learn a lot about folks from where they hold their enemies, Elias thought. His waiting room in the Void, for example. Inescapable, timeless, yet bland enough to drive a man mad. The magicians had put a lot of thought into how to truly make him miserable.
Likewise, the Melroses hadn’t thrown together this containment cell with a couple of swiftly drawn sigils.
The space had been constructed the way Rockefellers built libraries: on purpose and for all time.
Granite blocks were planed smooth, and iron bands the width of a palm bolted through like a spine.
Some clever Melrose ancestor had paid stonecutters, blacksmiths, and a very patient sigilist to make sure prisoners stayed exactly where they were put.
Elias took in the gathering. Inside the bars: three magicians in toppers and waistcoats. He’d spent enough time on the wrong side of the law to recognize low-ranking goons when he saw them. That’s who they send to pinch me, he thought. This trio of junior-grade palookas? Highly, highly insulting.
They’d refused to offer their names, so Elias invented some in his head. The square-shouldered one who stood forward and did the talking? Elias mentally tagged him Stock. The careful, nervous one with fast eyes became Ledger. The smirker—a born heckler, clearly—he dubbed Quip.
Stock, Ledger, and Quip, like a shifty law firm.
Outside the bars was the opposing team. Kelly Melrose, posture straight enough to frame a wall; Delilah, neat as an archive and just as thorough; Scarlett, loose-limbed and ready to cause trouble; and Luna.
Luna . . . all bright focus and stubborn hope.
Elias had to struggle to keep his eyes from tracing her form.
Her presence made the air feel different, more alive somehow.
What power she wields over me, without even trying. That can’t be good.
“Gentlemen . . .” Kelly started in a voice warm enough to thaw, firm enough to hold. “An app called CastR poses a threat to all of us: witches, magicians, anyone with a stake in magic. We’d like to stop its creator, Ashton Vex, without destroying everything else.”
Stock tapped one of the bars, taking its measure. “You built this for us. For our kind.”
“We built it for anyone who makes Oak Haven a target,” Kelly said.
“What is it about us, anyway?” Luna genuinely wanted to know. “Witches and magicians don’t much like one another, fine. Why does our town in particular end up as the target of every evil plan?”
“You hoard,” Ledger replied. “You’re snobs, with your ridiculous forgetting spell, spitting out amnesia.”
Stock stepped close to the bars. “And then there’s Salem.”
Kelly sighed. “We know. Our ancestors failed the people of Salem. It’s been our shame for many—”
“Failed the people?” Stock repeated. “You left fellow magical beings to hang, is what you did.”
Silence fell in a way that made the little hairs on Elias’s arms stand up. He looked at each of them: faces tense, no one quite meeting anyone else’s eyes.
But Kelly didn’t flinch. “Explain.”
“The victims of Salem were amateur magicians. They were young and untrained, learning from pamphlets and whispers. But your people let them die because they weren’t witches by blood.”
“That can’t be,” said Delilah. “No . . . I mean, we would have been taught this story . . . wouldn’t we?”
Quip shook his head. “Why? Easier to sand the story smooth, right? Easier to say ‘poor innocent humans’ than ‘magicians we left to die.’”
Elias watched Luna as the revelation settled on her. Her hurt, her anger, then that special grief when you learn someone—or someones—wasn’t who you thought. He knew that feeling. Hell, he’d caused that feeling more times than he cared to remember.
“Listen, fellas,” he offered, “whatever happened way back then, these ladies didn’t know.”
“So they say,” Quip said.
“Nah, nah. We can all smell a lie. There isn’t one on their side of the iron.”
Stock’s expression could have gouged the stone floor. “We should take the word of the criminal, Elias Shaw?”
“Take the word of a man who’s spun enough fake tales to recognize a true one.”
“Agnes Bartlett knew,” Kelly said suddenly.
“One of our founders. Agnes was . . . guilty. About something she wouldn’t name.
Girls, do you remember a letter of hers that I once read to you?
She spoke of ‘turning blind eyes to the darker shadows of our history.’ She knew.
And she kept it from her own descendants.
” She turned back to the captives. “I believe you.” Her words came out clean and unadorned, no hedging or excuses.
“Our people drew a line between ‘born’ and ‘learned’ magic, and innocent people died on the wrong side of it. And I know this doesn’t mean much . . . but I’m sorry, truly.”
The simplicity of the apology took the magicians by surprise. Just the truth standing naked in the room.
“So let’s stop drawing that line,” Luna said. “Ashton Vex wants to turn all magic—yours, ours, everybody’s—into a product. That’s his vision, a world where our power becomes nothing more than a commodity. Look, we can’t undo Salem. But we can promise not to abandon each other again.”
Ledger scoffed. “You know where you can put your promises. We’re here to bring Elias back to the Void, nothing else.”
Kelly folded her arms across her chest. “Shaw remains here for now. Clearly we need someone who can run interference between your kind and ours.”
The three men looked at one another through a series of small, tired expressions. Stock reached out as far as the warding would allow. “Truce,” he said. “For now.”
Kelly took his hand in the narrow space. “For now,” she said. With a snap of her fingers, the door to the cell swung open. “Come. Upstairs we’ll give you a nice meal, and you’ll give us a way to contact your superiors.”
Quip shrugged. “They’re gonna insist on getting Shaw back. I’m just saying.”
“They’ll have to go through us first,” Kelly said pleasantly. “And I wouldn’t recommend it.” She herded the group upstairs. Delilah was already extracting information from Ledger, while Scarlett was cheerfully menacing Quip.
Elias lingered, leaning against the cool basement wall with his hands in his pockets. Luna came over to stand beside him, close but not touching.
They stood together without speaking for a long time. Above them, floorboards creaked. Someone laughed upstairs, almost certainly Scarlett.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said finally.
“Do what?”
“Vouch for us. For all you know, we did know about Salem.”
“Just a bad habit, I guess. I see a table start to tilt, I try to keep the chips from hitting the floor.”
“You’re good at reading people. But you’re also good at telling people what they want to hear. Maybe you just wanted me to think you believed us.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t doing it for you.”
Something flickered across her face. “Oh.”
“I was doing it for me.” He pulled one hand from his pocket, studied his fingernails. “Turns out I don’t particularly want to go back to the Void. And I figured that standing up for the witches who are keeping me out of it might improve my odds of staying out.”
“That’s very practical of you.”
“I’m a practical man, Melrose.”
“Are you?” She took a step closer . . . just enough that he could smell whatever she used in her hair. Something citrusy. “Because I think a genuinely practical man would’ve kept his mouth shut. Maybe you’re not as selfish as you pretend.”
“Careful, sweetheart. That rumor could ruin me.”
“I’m not your sweetheart.”
“So you keep reminding me. You know, sweetheart isn’t such an insult where I come from.” He was also aware that she hadn’t stepped back. That her eyes had gone dark in a way that had nothing to do with the lighting. That if he just leaned down a few inches—
“Where you come from. Which is also where you’re planning to go back to.” Not a question. More like she was testing the shape of the words.
“That was the plan.”
“What do you mean, was?”
Goddamn it. He’d been careful, keeping his cards close, never showing his hand. And now I’ve blown it. “We’ll have to see. Plans change.”
“Do they?”
“Complications arise.”
“What kind of complications?”
He looked at her then—really looked—and found her looking right back with an expression that suggested she knew exactly what kind of complications he meant. “The blond kind,” he said quietly. “Stubborn. Prone to rescues.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“Yeah.” His hand lifted almost of its own accord, fingers brushing a strand of hair away from her face. “It really is.”
Her breath caught. Just a little hitch, barely noticeable, but he heard it. Felt it in the millimeters between them.
“Elias—”
“LUNA!” Kelly’s voice boomed down the stairwell. “Where are you?” Somewhere upstairs, chairs scraped across floorboards, teacups clinked in saucers. The ordinary world, clearing its throat.
Luna jumped back like she’d been shocked. The spell, if that’s what it was, broke clean in half.
Elias exhaled slowly, trying to get his pulse back under some semblance of control. “We’re not done with this conversation.”
“What conversation? I don’t know what you mean.” But her cheeks were pink and her voice had gone breathy. “You coming?”
He stared at her for a beat too long. “Luna Melrose, we’re going to stop Ashton Vex.”
“Okay. But how?”
“Let’s break something he loves.”
She looked up at him, smiling mischievously. “And what would that be, Mr. Shaw?”
“His ego, of course.”