His Father's eyes

CHAPTER 24

“How many people are you going to kill, Patty?”

“As many as I have to! You think you’ve found some secret formula, don’t you? But your spell won’t last long. You think you’re the first weremyste to use blood against the phasing? You’re not. The spell Saorla put on us is more powerful by far than what you’ve done. You’ve bought yourself a few minutes, that’s all.”

I wanted to argue with her, but already I could feel the weight of the moon pressing down on me once more. She was right. I’d won a moment’s reprieve. The moon wasn’t even up yet and my spell was failing. I suppose a runecrafter could keep the moon at bay all night long, if he was willing to bleed himself to death.

“I can cast again,” I said. “I can keep myself sane long enough to destroy you.”

She shook her head. “You can’t. I’ll bleed this one, and then bleed your friends. I’ll bleed my friends if I have to. Saorla and I have plans. Nothing else matters.” Her gaze flicked in Jacinto’s direction.

Saorla and I have plans. Once more I thought of Patty’s comment about not needing Witcombe’s money for much longer. She was the competition Amaya had been talking about at his house. I doubt that he knew this, but I was sure of it. And though I wanted to laugh away the possibility-Patty Hesslan, a crime boss? A rival to Jacinto Amaya?-seeing her holding a knife to the throat of a man who was ostensibly her ally in this fight made the possibility seem all too real.

She gave a shrill whistle. The coyote-Hacker-lifted his ears at the sound and trotted back to her.

Patty grinned. “More blood.” She eyed my dad and me, and then looked over at Jacinto and the others. “Are you willing to kill him to save yourselves?”

“So you’ll kill anyone you have to. Just like you killed Heather Royce.”

Witcombe was on her feet again, seeming unsteady and uncertain, her gaze flicking back and forth between Patty and me.

“How do you feel about that, Missus Witcombe? Are you ready to help Patty kill again, like she killed Heather?”

“She did what she had to,” Witcombe said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“So you approve of what she did to Heather? It didn’t seem like it that night.”

“I was upset. What happened was regrettable. But . . . but I understand now.”

I nodded. “You heard?” I called.

“We heard.”

Witcombe whirled. Patty turned her head sharply, searching for the source of that voice.

Three elements: the camouflage spell, an end to the conjuring, and Kona and Kevin, who had been hidden by it.

They were warded already, and had been since our conversation in the parking garage. A spell from Witcombe forced them back a step, but did no damage. Kona raised her pistol and fired.

“No, Kona!”

The shot rebounded back at her but missed. She ducked belatedly.

But while Patty and Witcombe were still distracted, I cut myself and cast again.

Patty cried out, dropped the knife, which I had heated, and watched as it melted into the desert dirt.

The moon peeked over a ridge of distant mountains, blood red and huge. I felt my thoughts slipping away, slick, like they were coated in oil. I cast the shielding spell again and knew another moment of clarity. But I was more clouded than I had been, and I knew that even this moment of relative sanity wouldn’t last long.

But I saw as well that Patty and Witcombe weren’t doing much more than staring at that rising moon.

“What have you done?” Saorla demanded.

I thought she was talking to me, but she wasn’t. She was facing Namid and the other runemystes.

“We have removed your spell,” Namid said. “Blood of the innocent should not be used to help others escape the laws of magic. Your weremancers will experience the phasing as they are meant to. At least for this night. Take them and go.”

“No!” I said, the word ripped from my chest.

This time they all looked at me.

“Patty and Hain and Witcombe-they’re all guilty of murder. They need to . . . to . . .” I was having trouble keeping my thoughts on track. I could barely remember what I had just said. And I had cast a spell. It was supposed to help in some way. “They’re murderers.” I stared past the woman in the green dress, to two people who were walking toward us. Kona. One of them was Kona.

“He’s right,” she said. “The two women are wanted for the murder of Heather Royce, and the man is wanted in connection with a murder that took place a few nights ago in Sweetwater Park.”

“I will not give them up,” Saorla said. “Let me leave this place, Namid’skemu, with these three who serve me.” She indicated Hain, Witcombe, and Patty. “And I will allow the Fearsson men to live.”

“They’re not yours to bargain away,” Kona said to the runemyste, her voice so cold I wondered if Namid would ice over.

“Perhaps not,” Namid said. “But with Saorla’s help they are too powerful for your jails to hold.”

Kona aimed her weapon at Patty. “There are ways around that.”

“She’s still warded,” I said. “They all are.”

Kona kept her weapon trained on Patty, but she pursed her lips, clearly unsure of where that left her. I hated to admit that Saorla and her weremancers had us beaten. But it was true: They were warded-against bullets, against magic, and, no doubt, against a host of other assaults as well.

But, as it happened, not against everything.

I had forgotten about Hacker. It seemed as though everyone had after Patty called for him. He remained in coyote form, his yellow eyes gleaming with moonlight, his fur tinged with red in the rich light of the setting sun. Now, with a snarl that came from deep in his chest, he leaped at Hain, who was still on his knees, and who, long ago, had spelled Hacker, robbing him of his freedom, making him little more than a slave to the moon and to magic.

Hain was in a moon-induced haze and couldn’t react fast enough. The coyote went for his throat, teeth snapping, paws planted on the weremancer’s chest. Hain fell back with the animal on top of him and let out a gurgling cry as the beast tore at him. Blood soaked his shirt and the ground beneath him. His eyes rolled back in his head.

Saorla made another sharp motion with her hand, and the coyote flew from him, yelping as it hit the ground a few feet away and rolled.

But I wasn’t watching Hacker or Hain.

I saw Patty’s lips moving. She was about to cast using Hain’s blood. God knew what she would do or at whom she would aim her magic. My father, Kona and Kevin, Jacinto and the others, me-any one of us could have been her target.

And so I did the one thing I could think of. Three elements: Patty, a cylinder of magic around her, and all that blood. I cast without hesitation, without thought, without consciously putting the elements into words. I pictured what I had in mind and let the spell fly.

Magic surged through the ground and practically made the air shimmer. I couldn’t have said which of us cast first. It felt as though the spells released simultaneously. The blood vanished and flames shot from her hands. Only to be blocked by the barrier I’d conjured. The fire rebounded, an assault spell fueled by blood; whatever wardings she had placed upon herself before coming here could never withstand such powerful magic. She screamed, flailing and writhing, trapped by my spell and under siege from her own.

Flames swallowed her like some ravenous beast. Her clothes and skin and hair blackened until at last she fell over, still twisting, her movements growing weaker by the moment.

Kona, Kevin, and my dad stared at her, wincing but unable to avert their eyes. Regina Witcombe had covered her mouth with trembling hands. Tears coursed down her face. Even Jacinto and his men flinched at what they saw. Alone among us, Saorla and the runemystes seemed unaffected. Namid and his companions watched Saorla, but the necromancer had her hard glare fixed on me.

“You have cost me a servant I value,” she said. She cast a quick glance at Hain’s body before meeting my gaze again. “Two servants. You will pay a price for that.”

I ignored her. Pointing at Witcombe, I said to Namid, “What about her? She and Patty killed a runemyste, and she was an accessory to Heather Royce’s murder.”

“She is mine!” Saorla said. “I will not lose another.”

I shook my head. “That’s not for you to say.”

“She cannot be held by a jail, Ohanko. You know this.”

“She killed one of your kind! You’d let her go?”

“I am helpless to do otherwise.”

Saorla’s mouth curved into a great big shit-eating grin. I would have loved to say or do something to wipe it from her winsome face, but my thoughts were fragmenting again. It was all I could do to follow the rest of the conversation.

“What about my damn murder investigations?” Kona asked.

“I believe they are solved,” Namid said. “The man who committed the murder in the park is dead, as is the woman who killed Heather Royce. Do I have all of that right?”

Kona frowned, but after a moment she nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.”

Namid turned to Saorla. “We have a bargain then, you and I. You will take the Witcombe woman and go. And you will leave the Fearsson men alone.”

“And the people we love,” I said, thinking of Billie and of Kona.

Namid weighed this and then nodded. “And those they love.”

Saorla shook her head. “Unacceptable.”

“It is, for the most part, the bargain you proposed.”

“I demanded all three of my servants!”

Namid’s shrug was so casual that even in something of a daze, I had to keep from laughing. “Two of them are now dead, through no fault of mine.” He pointed my way. “Nor of his.”

“His spell killed her!”

“Ohanko’s spell kept her from harming others. She was killed by her own crafting.”

“I still do not-”

“You will agree to this,” Namid said, his voice like ice grinding against stone, “or I will step outside of the law and wipe you from this earth right now.”

I hoped that Saorla would refuse and force the runemyste to act. But I think she sensed that she’d pushed him as far she could. “Very well,” she said. Her eyes found mine. “Beware, Justis Fearsson. I am not finished with you.”

“Did I not make the conditions of this bargain clear?” Namid demanded.

“Of course you did, Namid’skemu. I am merely telling young Fearsson what he knows already to be true.” She looked at me sidelong once more. You still owe me a boon, she whispered in my mind. Out loud she said, “We shall meet again.”

Her disappearance was sudden enough to startle me. It took me a moment to realize that Witcombe was gone, too. The bodies of Hain and Patty Hesslan-Fine remained, as did Hacker, the werecat, and the others-dead and alive-Saorla had brought with her. I was vaguely aware of movement off to the side. Men were leading others to a pair of SUVs. That should have meant something to me, but my attention was drawn back to the watery figure before me. He was speaking to the woman-to Kona.

“They need a place to sleep,” he said.

“I know. Justis can go back home now. I’ll take him there myself. I’ll take both of them.”

“It is well. You have my thanks.”

After that I lost track of the conversation and just about everything else. I remember gazing at the moon from the desert, and later through a car window. I think Kona said stuff to me, and I suppose I tried to answer, but I remember nothing of what we talked about. I do remember, though, that my father rode with us, and that he slept.

I awoke the next morning feeling hungover, my thoughts clearer than they had been, but far from crystal. The door to my second bedroom was closed, which it never is. I was about to open it when I remembered that my dad was here with me, that his trailer had been knocked over, and that Patty Hesslan-Fine was dead. I left the door shut and dragged myself into the kitchen to fix some coffee.

I wanted to go see Billie-now that I had remembered my dad, I was recalling lots of other stuff as well-but I didn’t want my father waking up alone in a strange house. He’d been in my place before, but it had been a while, and his memory wasn’t always so good, particularly in the middle of the phasing.

While I was waiting for him to wake up, Kona called and asked to come by. She and Kevin showed up at my door a short time later, badges in hand.

“I take it this isn’t a social visit,” I said, eyeing them both.

“’Fraid not,” Kona said. “We need a statement from you about Heather’s murder, about your friend Martell, and about what happened last night to Hesslan-Fine and Palmer Hain.”

“All right.” I stood aside and waved them into the house.

Kona went right in, but Kevin faltered, his eyes lowered. “I think I owe you an apology.”

“No, you really don’t. You’re new to this magic thing, and this week you got thrown into the deep end without water wings or anything.” I grinned, and so did he. “You’ve handled it well,” I said, “and I appreciate it.”

The three of us talked for the better part of an hour. Kona and Kevin had a lot of questions, and I answered them as best I could, trying to reduce magical occurrences to explanations that wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows among those who read their report. Eventually I heard my father stir in the back room and call out, “Justis?”

I excused myself and went back to see how he was doing. When I opened the door, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hair tousled, his T-shirt wrinkled.

“My place was destroyed, wasn’t it?” he said as I walked to the bed and sat beside him.

“I think we can repair it, but yeah, it’s in pretty bad shape.”

“And I suppose everything else I think happened last night really did happen.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I remember a coyote killing someone and Elliott Hesslan’s daughter lighting herself on fire.”

“That all happened.”

“Damn.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “You know, I do fine with the phasings on my own. If that’s your idea of a good time, you can count me out next month.”

I laughed, though only for a few seconds. “How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad, considering. Hungry. You got any food?”

“Yeah. Kona and her partner are in the living room. They needed a statement on what happened last night.”

He nodded and looked around the bedroom. “I don’t suppose anyone thought to crawl inside my place and get me a change of clothes.”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Oh, well.” He stood and followed me out into the living room where he greeted Kona with a hug and introduced himself to Kevin. I fixed the two of us some scrambled eggs and toast, and, as I cooked, finished my conversation with Kona and Kevin. When they left, my father and I went outside and sat on the front steps to eat our breakfast.

I expect that he felt as muddled as I did, and for a time we ate in silence.

Then Saorla popped into view in front of us, and we both dropped our forks, just about in unison.

I cast a quick warding to protect both of us. The necromancer laughed at the touch of my magic.

“You still believe that your wardings can stop me?”

“I have no idea. But as long as I can cast, I’ll keep protecting myself.”

She shrugged, as if she didn’t care one way or another. “I did not come to kill you, though kill you I will.” She smiled. “Yes, Namid’skemu protects you still as part of the bargain we struck. But with time his vigilance will slacken, and then I will have my revenge.”

“Well, until then,” my dad said, “why don’t you leave us the hell alone?”

“I miss you, Leander Fearsson. I miss being in your mind. I miss hurting you.”

“Forgive me if I don’t say the feeling’s mutual.”

“Perhaps you would miss me more if I looked like this.” Her body flickered like a dying light bulb, much as it had the night before, and she stood before us in my mother’s form, her hair down, the same cornflower dress bringing out the blue in her eyes.

“Get out of here,” I said. “Before I summon Namid.”

“You sound like a child. You will call for Daddy if I don’t leave you alone?”

She was right, that was exactly how I sounded. But I didn’t have the power to drive her off on my own. My father’s face had gone ashen, but he continued to stare at her. I don’t think he was capable of doing anything else.

“Go,” I said, putting as much menace into the word as I could.

She laughed and faded slowly, still in my mother’s body. “Until next time,” she said, the voice and accent all Saorla.

Once she was gone, my father took a long shuddering breath.

“Sorry,” he said. “I should have . . . I don’t know. I should have done something.” He set his plate aside.

I did as well. Neither of us had finished our meals, but my appetite was gone, as was my dad’s, I’m sure. I stood, walked a few steps down the path toward the street, to the place where Saorla had stood. Then I turned.

“What happened, Dad?”

I blurted the question, not even bothering to explain what I meant. He knew: my mom’s death, and that of Elliott Hesslan. The question had been burning inside me for years, through all the accusations and whispered rumors, through all the dead, silent moments we had spent together. God knew I’d wanted to ask a thousand times, and always I swallowed the words. It was none of my business, I had told myself, though of course it was. He’d tell me when he was ready. But I had known that he wouldn’t. Only now, after all that had happened in the past few days, had I finally given voice to that desperate need to know. And again, I had sounded like a little kid, unable to contain myself any longer.

He regarded me from the stairs, his eyes sunken, his shoulders slumped. Already, I regretted asking. No matter how much I wanted to know, he didn’t deserve to be put through having to tell me.

I opened my mouth to say as much, but he held up a hand, stopping me. A tear spilled down his cheek and then another.

“I should have told you a long time ago,” he said, emotion roughening the words. “But I didn’t know how, and I’m not always able to . . . well, you know.”

“I do know. You don’t have to tell me. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Of course you should have. You should have asked me when you were a kid, but I understood that you couldn’t. That was my fault. I shouldn’t have waited for you. But I was chicken.”

He buried his face in his hands, and I thought he was crying. But when he lifted his head again a few seconds later, his eyes were dry.

“She should have left me. The phasings were wearing me down, and I was drinking too much, afraid of what the moon was doing to my brain. She should have left. But she loved me, I guess. And she was nuts about you, and she knew I was as well. ‘A boy needs his father.’ She said that to me the one time I asked her why she continued to stick around. She wouldn’t leave because that would have meant taking you, and she didn’t want to do that.

“But she was angry, and hurt, and she needed someone. We’d met the Hesslans a couple of times-mutual friends, I think. It’s funny, I don’t remember the name of the couple who introduced us. But Elliott and Mary seemed nice enough. I didn’t give them much thought. Dara did, though. She was friends with Mary first, but she and Elliott both liked to garden. That was what did it in the end. Tomato patches and marigolds.” His laugh tipped over into a sob. But after a moment he went on in a low quaver. “I don’t think she was out there searching for someone to replace me. Not really. But like I say, she needed more than I could give her, and he was the one she found.

“Thing was, he was looking for her in particular.”

That I hadn’t expected. “What?”

Dad nodded. “He was after her. After me, really. But through her. Hesslan was into dark magic, and even then there were beings like that one.” He pointed to where the necromancer had been standing.

“Like Saorla?” I said.

“Yeah, like her. For all I know, it was her. He started the affair with your mom and made her believe that he loved her. But then he started asking questions, trying to make her tell him stuff about me and my magic. At least that’s what I think happened. I pieced most of it together after the fact. But I’m right. I know I am.”

“So he was asking questions,” I prompted.

“That’s right. And she got suspicious. Smart lady, your mom. She figured out that he was a weremyste, too, and she was pissed. When she worked out that he was using her to get to me, I think she tried to break it off. He must have threatened to expose the affair to everyone, including you, because . . .” He took a long breath. “Because she killed him. And then she killed herself.”

“She killed him,” I repeated in a whisper.

Dad nodded. “That much I know for certain. I know how to read a crime scene, and I was the one who found them.” His voice had gone flat, and his gaze was unfocused. “They were in a hotel. I’d followed them there a week or so before, and that night I was going to confront them. Never got the chance. She stabbed him in the heart, and then used the same knife to cut her carotid artery. She was dead in minutes.

“I altered the crime scene. Not a lot, but enough to make it less clear who killed who. I couldn’t leave her there like she was, knowing that she’d be thought of as a murderer. That’s why so many in the department thought I’d done it, because I was the one who found the bodies, and because the evidence was too hard to read. I didn’t care, really. I’d have taken the rap for her if it came to that. Hell, there was a part of me that would have been happy to kill the bastard myself.”

He swallowed and faced me. “I’m sorry I didn’t-”

“Stop. No apologies. I know now. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m sorry you know.”

“I’m not. I appreciate you telling me.”

“Did you ever think that I’d killed her?”

“Not once, not even for a second. I think you know there was a time when I hated you, when I blamed you for every bad thing in my life, stupid as that was. But even then I knew you hadn’t killed her.”

He nodded, even chanced a smile. Tears streaked his face again.