I thought about pouring magic into the Shield glyph but decided the hammer would probably solve my problem quicker. I let go of the glyph, switched the hammer to my right hand, and approached the door.
I looked out the peephole.
Zayvion Jones stood on the other side of the door, warped by the bend of glass. He was whistling loudly and holding something that looked like a pizza box in his hand.
He stared straight at the peephole like he knew I was looking at him and, without breaking eye contact, knocked on my door again.
I unlocked the door, opened it.
In front of me, smelling like pine and pepperoni, stood six feet plus of Zayvion Jones.
“Mr. Jones,” I said, trying to think of what had really just happened. “What brings you by?”
His eyebrows hitched up while he looked me over, from my fuzzy socks and buggy pajamas to my wet, uncombed hair. His gaze lingered on the hammer.
“I brought you pizza.”
“I thought our date was tomorrow.”
“It is. This is just a late night snack. I thought you might be hungry.”
Now that he mentioned it, I was starved. The delicious scents of basil, rich cheese, and spices wafted up from the box.
My stomach growled. Loudly. Traitor. Should I trust him? Let him into my house after the day I’d had? I thought it over. Realized I didn’t care. I wanted food, and here it was, hot and delicious, on my doorstep. And Zayvion Jones wasn’t hard on the eyes either.
“Come on in.” I walked away from the door and into the kitchen, putting down the hammer, pulling out napkins, and getting a couple glasses.
Zayvion closed the door behind him.
“Just put it in the living room,” I said. “We can eat there.”
I didn’t hear him walk across the floor, but I did hear him put the pizza down and lift the box lid. I strolled out of the kitchen, napkins and two glasses of apple juice-the only beverage in the house besides water and coffee-in my hand. “All I have is apple juice. Hope that’s okay.”
He moved away from the window. He had taken off his ratty coat and black beanie, hanging the coat on the back of one of the chairs at the round table. He wore jeans and a dark gray sweater that looked like cashmere. The flex and movement of his chest and torso beneath that thin fabric made my heartbeat quicken.
I remembered him, remembered his body. An image flashed behind my eyes. He stood in a doorway, naked except for his boxers, his dark skin tiger-striped with yellow light, his eyes burning gold with passion. He had waited. Waited for me to say yes.
I blinked. And the memory was gone. A sad hunger lingered at the back of my mind and echoed through my body. I wondered if I’d said yes.
I realized Zayvion was silent, his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, watching me, waiting.
I blushed. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” he said softly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” I sat in the coatless chair. “It was just-maybe-a memory or something. It’s gone.” I tried to keep the frustration and embarrassment out of my voice.
He sat in the chair across from me silently, even though that chair usually creaked, and turned in his seat so he could see both the front door and the window. “Was it about me?”
I fished a piece of pizza out of the box, pulled it up until the strings of cheese broke. “Yes.”
“Was I naked?”
I couldn’t help it-I laughed. “I can’t believe you asked me that. No comment.”
He smiled, laugh lines curving at the corners of his eyes. “So I was naked.”
“Shut up and eat your pizza,” I said around a mouthful. And that was the end of my side of the conversation. I wiped out two pieces of pizza before coming up for air. Zayvion paced me, piece for piece. He got up, found the apple juice, and refilled our cups.
After the fourth slice I felt like I could think again. Hounding always made me hungry; drawing on magic always made me hungry. I’d been doing a lot of both of those things on nothing but a scone, coffee, and french fries, most of which I’d lost in the parking garage.
“How did the job with Stotts go?” he asked.
I tore the crust off another piece of pizza, leaving the topping portion still in the box. “I didn’t tell you I was working for Stotts.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Were you spying on me?”
“Define spying.”
“Were you on the street watching me Hound for him?”
“No. I was… working.”
“And that involved keeping an eye on me?”
“In a roundabout way. I noticed you were with him. How did it go?”
“My Hounding jobs are between me and my clients,” I said. “And this is police business. Confidential.” I did not want to tell him about Pike. Didn’t want to tell him I had ratted Pike out and that he would be charged with kidnapping-or more, if the girls were found injured, or dead.
Time for a subject change.
“So what was up with that chanting and light show you put on earlier today?” I asked.
“That?” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and nodded. “That was magic.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out under the table like he was used to being comfortable around me and in my apartment.
“Genius. What kind of magic? What did you use against those things? The watercolor people things?”
He considered me for a second then. “What is the first rule of magic?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Zayvion did not look like he was kidding. As a matter of fact, if I had to describe how Zayvion looked, I would use the word intense. Something important was riding on this conversation. Or maybe riding on my response.
“The first rule of magic is if you use magic, it uses you.”
“Yes,” he said. “There is always a price to pay for using magic. Always. And when you spend a lifetime using it, it spends a lifetime using you. It leaves its mark on you”-he motioned toward my hands-“and you leave your mark on it.”
“What do you mean, you leave a mark on magic? It’s hard enough just to touch magic. Magic isn’t solid.”
“Neither are the Veiled.”
“The who?”
“This doesn’t apply to the casual magic user. This doesn’t even apply to someone who uses magic once a day. But for those of… us… who use magic constantly, it is believed that our minds, our souls, our life essence, can impress upon the flow of magic. Like an image on film. Or maybe more. Some people believe that if you use magic too much, you will impress certain parts of your life into the flow of magic permanently. You can lose bits of yourself to it.”
I suddenly wasn’t hungry.
“But they’re wrong, right? Because I have magic in me. Inside me. Tell me there aren’t… parts of people’s spirits and lives in the magic. Tell me I’m not full of dead people.” It came out just as horrified as I felt.
I suddenly wanted to crawl back into the shower and scrub myself again.
Zayvion straightened and leaned forward without making a sound in my creaky chair. He reached across the table and put both of his hands over mine.
His hands were warm, wide, heavy like a blanket. “You are not full of dead people. But there are theories that magic is. And that sometimes when the gates between life and death are opened, those bits of dead magic users-the watercolor people, the Veiled-can rise.”
“Like ghosts?” I could handle ghosts. There were people who got rid of ghosts. Exorcists and such.
“No, not like ghosts.”
Well, that was just fantastic.
“Then what are the… what are the Veiled?”
“They are parts of dead magic users who don’t know they’re dead because they are still tied to-fed, if you will-by the flow of magic.”
“That’s the theory?” I asked.
“That’s the theory.”