“Meh?” Emery ripped off another, the intent to distract her. As soon as her sword hit the magic, it spiraled out into three whorls of color and light before zinging back at her, crackling the air.
“What the…” She batted the air with her hand and hacked with her sword, like swatting flies. A wisp from the spell strafed across her upper arm, searing it. She didn’t flinch. “Even that one. You’re on the right track, but it’s missing something. Countering those spells is easy. Any gobshite with a lick of sense will have no problem tearing you down.”
“It seems I haven’t met a gobshite with a lick of sense yet, then.”
“I mean…hello? Who am I?” Reagan jogged a few more steps before the next spell zipped through the air, similar to the distracting one, though this one was meant to scald. It broke apart as the other had done, but she was ready for it. She sliced it down quickly, turning her back on Emery at one point to do so.
“Tackle her,” I shouted, unable to help it. “Tackle her from behind. She’s—” I cut off as she turned around. “Missed it, Emery.” I shook my head.
His chest shook, and I knew he was chuckling at me.
“I wasn’t kidding,” I muttered.
“That’s what makes it so funny, Turdswallop,” he said, creating a nastier spell between his two palms. More complex, with a weave twice as large, this one should take her back a pace.
“Should’ve listened to her. Here’s Johnny!” She sprinted at him in the lull between spells.
He took two quick steps back, not worried about losing ground in order to buy time. Five feet away from him, Reagan bent her knees, preparing to launch.
He thrust his hands forward and the spell rushed at her, a cloud of magic rolling and tumbling through the air.
Unexpectedly, she went down into a slide, like trying to steal second base. The spell drifted over her and she popped up, jumping into the air a moment later. She kicked out. Her foot smacked against Emery’s forearm, which hadn’t come up to block her in time. He punched his own face.
Reagan punched him in the stomach and the upper leg, then bent and swept her leg behind his, knocking his legs out from under him. He landed hard on his butt and rolled away. In that time, a blast of fire took out the drifting spell, lazily headed back in her direction. It was a homing spell like the one I’d used, but he’d missed a few components in his haste.
By the time he was up, the fire was gone, and she was squaring off again.
He blinked half a dozen times, like he’d been completely blindsided, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Ms. Gobshite, to you,” Reagan said, fisting and straightening her hand. “You’ve got muscle tone, though. I’ll give you that. Giving you a charley horse isn’t as fun as it should be.”
This time, Emery did brace himself. “Fuck it. Again.”
A smile took up Reagan’s face. “Don’t mind if I do.”
She ran forward as he was readying a nastier spell, but the sound of plastic clattering against the floor dragged away my focus. My phone was jumping against the back wall where I’d left it earlier.
Skirting along the side of the warehouse so as not to get hit with a rogue foot or spell—you just never knew with Reagan—I grabbed the phone and checked the screen. A number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?” I asked as Reagan punched Emery’s face, faster than should have been humanly possible. He jerked out of the way at the last moment and then landed a solid punch into her stomach. His other hand came around for a left hook, but she ducked in time and powered a fist into his ribs.
He tackled her, smashing his large shoulder into her middle and taking her down. His bigger, heavier body fell on top of her, but she didn’t lose her breath like any normal person would’ve. She rolled with impossible strength, curled up to get her feet lined up with his middle, and kicked out. He went tumbling across the floor.
They both scrambled to their feet. Emery already had a spell at the ready. With one hand, he started weaving and rapidly firing lesser spells at her, cringeworthy confections intent on keeping her busy. With the other hand, he constructed something he’d obviously gotten from me, but with embellishments stemming from his frustration and desire to win.
“Are you creating multiple spells at one time right now?” Reagan asked as she muscled her sword through one lowball spell after another. “How the hell are you creating multiple spells? That can’t be done.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t feel magic. I think you were lying.” His tone said he was teasing, but his face was screwed up in intense concentration.
It occurred to me that Emery had been trained similarly to Callie and Dizzy. Though he was more flexible, Reagan was likely one of the first people who’d made him rethink his usual fighting strategies.
Welcome to Reagan Land, where every day was a new nightmare.
“Hello?” a man said on the other end of the phone.
I’d completely forgotten I’d pushed talk. “Oh sorry, hello?”
“Penny?”
“Yes, who is speaking?”
“This is Red. The shifter from down—”
“Reagan’s friend, yeah. Hi.”
“I don’t know about Reagan’s friend…” he muttered. “Hey, you got a minute?”
“Uh…yeah. Wait, how did you get my number?”
“I deal in intel.”
I waited for more. Silence stretched between us, getting awkward, until he finally said, “Reagan gave it to me in case I needed to talk to you and couldn’t get a hold of her. In case there was danger, or something.”
“Ah, right. She’s right here, if you—”
“No, no. No, that’s fine. She’s probably busy.” I didn’t miss the wariness in his voice. “Listen, I thought you should know. There’s been a lot of activity in the bars lately. In this whole area, actually. Mostly in the daytime and early evening. People drift away when the sun starts going down, and then it’s just the regulars. Now, I don’t know what all of them do, you understand. I do my job discreetly. I listen, I don’t ask questions.”
“Okay…”
Emery loosed the secondary spell he’d been working on, then quickly brought up his hands to weave a more complex spell between his two palms. Reagan chopped and hacked her way through his newest spell, struggling more with this one.
Without warning, weaving all the while, Emery ran forward and kicked her between the legs.
“Oh!” Reagan’s knees buckled and she sank to the ground. “You kick much harder than Penny.” The spell dove at her. She waved her palm through the air in what I knew was her last-ditch effort. Fire crackled above her, a thin line over her body, catching the spell. Flame dug into his spell and fractured it, like stress cracks. The next moment she was up, walking a little bowlegged, using her sword again and cutting away the rest of the spell.
Erasing one of her most perplexing pieces of magic from the air.
“What the… You have a big secret, Ms. Gobshite,” Emery said with wide eyes.
“I should never have agreed to fight you,” she said, launching at him.
“Penny?” Red said.
“Oh, sorry—Reagan is practice-fighting someone right now. I’m a little distracted.”
“Good. She’ll have less energy to torment me.” Red cleared his throat. “About these people—I mean, you know our neck of the woods is heavily populated with tourists. So I see a lot of faces every day—”
“Who is it?” Reagan said, making me jump. Sweat ran down her face and slicked back her hair. Her breath came in deep pants. Emery had finished off what I had started.
“Red.”
“What does he want?” she asked, reaching for the phone.
I handed it over without thinking. My magic might’ve been getting worlds better and stronger, but my ability to resist orders, even silent ones, from headstrong, competent people hadn’t gained any ground.
“What’s up?” she said into the phone.
“Who’s Red?” Emery asked, pulling up the base of his shirt to wipe his sweaty face.
On impulse, I grazed my fingers across his defined stomach before laying my hand flat against his skin. It felt good to touch him again. To feel his heat and solidity.
I still couldn’t believe that he’d actually come back. A large part of me had feared he wouldn’t. That he’d forget me a little more with each passing month, that he’d decide the connection between us had only stemmed from the heat of the moment. But he was here, now, and it felt like we were picking up exactly where we’d left off, except I was less naïve, less new to this world.
A hum buzzed deep in my core, and I looked up and caught his Milky Way eyes. The sound of Reagan telling Red to get to the point drifted into my consciousness. “Huh?”
A smile flickered across Emery’s lips and he knelt, now eye level with me. “I was too far away to see the weaves you did. I couldn’t duplicate them.”
“Your magic didn’t seem totally balanced.”
“It wasn’t. You weren’t close enough.” His thumb drifted over my chin, trailing heat in its wake.