O’Lachlan looked me directly in my eyes. His own had lost the fevered glow from the potion he’d taken earlier, but, even sober, his irises retained the icy-blue hue of a dirty magic addict. “Once the Blue Moon gets here, you’ll all be praying for the devil, bitch.”
Chapter Two
Later that evening, I pushed my way through the kitchen door with a grocery bag in my right hand and my gun rig in my left. The mail was clamped between my teeth.
Arriving home to play house after a day of chasing down scumbags makes for an uneasy transition. Back when my brother, Danny, was little, I usually had to hide in the bathroom for five minutes and do deep-breathing exercises to release the pent-up adrenaline before I could face putting on my nurturing, maternal mask for the kid. But now that he was older, I found the same cop’s instincts that allowed me to handle criminals were also pretty handy in dealing with a sixteen-year-old.
“What’d you get?” Danny was at the table pretending to do homework in the hopes I wouldn’t notice the game device on his lap.
I swung the grocery bag up onto the tiled counter. “Come unload the bag and you’ll see for yourself.”
He sighed from deep in his gut, as if helping me was a burden only a saint could bear.
I began flipping through the mail while he unloaded the bag.
“Oh eww!” He turned and shot me an accusing look.
Setting down the private school tuition bill I couldn’t pay until after my next MEA overtime check cleared, I went to investigate the problem.
Grabbing the rotisserie chicken and sides from the grocery had seemed like a good idea at the time. Better than fast food, but not as time consuming as an actual home-cooked meal. But the container Danny held aloft like a gun at a murder trial held a pale-looking carcass swimming in a pool of congealed lemon-pepper-flavored grease.
I shrugged and took it from him. “It’s not that bad.”
“Like hell—”
He cut off the words when I pointed to the curse jar by the sink. I’d told him it was my way of maintaining a level of respect in our home, but the truth was, I added more money to it than the kid. I considered it a sort of savings account. Some people pulled pennies from couch cushions or sold plasma for extra scratch, but I paid for splurges with shits, damns, and the occasional fuck.
Danny shoved a buck into the jar before continuing. “I’m going vegetarian.” He turned and pulled a bottle of soda from the fridge.
“If you don’t want the chicken, you can have rolls and potatoes and—”
I realized with a start I hadn’t grabbed one green thing to serve with the meal. A salad or whatever. The little burst of heat in my stomach was the familiar sensation that accompanied the reminder that I was a failure of a role model. Didn’t matter that I hadn’t asked for the job. I took care of my responsibilities. It’s just that lately it felt more and more like parenting was a riptide I couldn’t outswim.
“And what?” he said, a challenge in his tone.
I put down the knife and turned to face him. “What do you want from me, Danny? I spent three hours at the precinct this afternoon trying to get one guy through booking. And that was after Morales and I had to chase the guy down. You don’t want chicken that’s your choice, but I’m not going to apologize for not catering to your refined palate with money I worked my ass off to earn.”
“Fine,” he said softly, “I’ll have the freakin’ chicken.”
The corner of my mouth quirked. I may not be a real mom, but I’d somehow managed to master the martyred tone my own mother had employed to guilt me into good behavior. I hated having to use it on him, but it got results. Pasting a June Cleaver smile on my face, I turned to set two full plates of food on the table.
We both sat and dug in. The kid had been right, the chicken was too greasy, but it helped counterbalance the overly dry mashed potatoes, so that was something.
A few minutes later I realized Danny was unusually quiet. He seemed to have recovered from the chicken discussion, so it couldn’t be that. Also, the electronic squawks and beeps that created our typical dinner soundtrack were conspicuously absent. Plus, he was staring into his mashed potatoes like maybe they held the secrets to the universe.
“What’s up?”
He jumped a little, like he’d forgotten I was there. “Nothing.”
I frowned and turned fully toward him while I wiped chicken grease off my hands with a paper towel. “Something happen at school?”
“What?” His brows lowered and he shook himself a little. “Yeah.”
I tamped down the flare of worry in my gut and tried to look not-too-judgmental. “Should I expect a call from the principal again?”
“Nah. Nothing like that.” He took in a deep breath and leaned back. “I—uh, well—there’s this thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“There’s this new club at school I want to join.”
I blinked at him a couple of times. “A club? You?”
His face crumpled into an offended frown. “What? I do stuff.”
“Just surprised is all. You’ve never really been a joiner.” Off his deepening frown, I realized I was probably offending him. I swallowed and tried again. “What kind of club is it?”
His eyes widened, like he was surprised he’d gotten this far with the discussion. Guilt hit me upside the head. I’d always been protective of Danny—overprotective if you asked Baba—especially after almost losing him six weeks earlier. So it was no wonder he expected me to refuse outright without hearing details.
“Well, remember how that girl Pen was helping died a while back from the diet potion?”
Pen was my best friend, Penelope Griffin. She was also the guidance counselor at Meadowlake, the private school Danny attended. The girl he mentioned had gotten in trouble for taking the potion at school. Turned out her mother had been making her take it to lose weight, but before Pen could get the authorities involved, the girl overdosed. The mom was now in jail, but the incident left its scars on the Meadowlake community.
“One of the teachers started a group to promote kids staying off dirty magic.”
I didn’t point out that the girl in question had died from a completely legal potion sanctioned by the Federal Drug and Potion Agency, not some dirty brew cooked by a junkie wizard in the Cauldron. Instead I focused on my surprise over him wanting to join this type of organization. “You want to join an antimagic group?”