Dead Man’s Deal

“This your place?” Robert asked as he shut the door behind him.

I shook my head. “Just somewhere I crash on occasion.” Setting the bottle on the scarred coffee table, I walked into the tiny kitchen and grabbed a couple plastic cups that I kept there. I paused, staring at the disposable plastic cups. It had been a while since I had gotten plowed in this apartment with a friend or two. Was I mellowing out too much? Getting old? I rolled my eyes and wandered back into the living room with its cracked beige walls and stained carpet to find Robert sitting on one of the sunken cushions of the couch.

Sitting on the other end of the couch, I poured us each a healthy shot of whiskey and sat back. “All right, talk.”

Robert took a big swallow and winced as it went down. Definitely not as smooth as Mordred, but it would get the job done. “I don’t have to tell you shit.”

“You’re going to talk and tell me every fucking thing I ask for. I deserve that if I’m going to protect you from whatever Reave has got you involved in.” I set my own glass down without drinking. It was like talking had triggered all the emotions that I had managed to get a handle on. “Why are you fucking working for Reave? You’re not an idiot. Fuck. How could you do this to Mom and Dad?”

“Do this to Mom and Dad?” he repeated, looking at me like I had lost my mind. “I’m not doing this to them. I’m helping myself, and what the fuck do you care about Mom and Dad? What the fuck do you care about any of us? You left!”

“Of course I left!” I shouted, jumping to my feet. Robert pushed to his feet as well so I wouldn’t tower over him. Whatever fear he was feeling toward me wasn’t there now—we were both too pissed. “I had to leave if I wanted to protect you and Meg and Mom and Dad. The Towers might have let me go, but they weren’t going to let me live happily ever after. I’ve had warlocks and witches hunting me for years. You think they wouldn’t have tried to use you or Meg as leverage to get me to do what they wanted? Fuck! I left because I had to.”

“You should have never come back in the first place!” Robert roared. I took a step back, my anger instantly melting away, but Robert didn’t notice. Apparently there was something on his mind that he had been itching to vent. “When you disappeared as a kid, we told the world that you had been killed in an accident. You think we could tell anyone that you became one of them? We would have been lynched in a heartbeat. But no! You came back, destroying everything. Dad tried to make up stories, like you were a distant cousin, but no one believed him. They knew you had been taken to the Ivory Towers. They knew you were a warlock, and everything changed.”

Robert paced a couple angry steps away from me and then turned back, his face twisted with pent-up rage and pain. “You want to know why Mom and Dad moved to Low Town? Because of you. They left Vermont and New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and West Virginia because they were trying to outrun the rumors that they had given birth to a warlock. They came to Low Town to hide!”

I collapsed on the couch behind me, staring blindly at the wall. Whatever anger I had felt only seconds ago about my brother being a part of the Low Town Mafia evaporated. My chest ached and there was a lump growing in my throat threatening to cut off my breathing. In my lifetime, I had been burned, stabbed, poisoned, shot, and had a chunk of my soul ripped off. This felt worse. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. It hurt to think, but I couldn’t stop my mind from churning over the same thought. If I had never returned home after leaving the Towers, my family would have been happy, healthy, and safe.

I had been sixteen when I left the Towers and I couldn’t think of any place I wanted to go more than home to my family. I hadn’t seen them in nine years, but they still represented the only happy memories I had in my life. They were laughter, warmth, and love wrapped in a modest middle-class home on an old tree-lined street in Vermont. I had nowhere else to go and nowhere else I wanted to go. I knew that it was only temporary; I didn’t trust the council’s promises and reassurances. But I needed help and my feet set. I was only sixteen.

When I walked in the front door, Mom cried. She held me so tight and cried tears of joy. She cried for four days every time she looked at me. Dad cried too, his arms wrapped around Mom and me. No one asked questions. We hugged, cried, and were happy to be together. I could only guess that was before anyone started to think about how the rest of the world would react to my miraculous return from the dead.

I should never have gone home.

“Gage, man,” Robert whispered beside me. The couch shifted as he sat down again, but I was still staring straight ahead, my body so stiff that muscles ached. I was afraid that if I moved, I’d shatter. I had destroyed my family. I destroyed them by being a warlock and by returning home to give away their secret shame.

“I didn’t know.” My voice was rough and low like I had been gargling razor blades, and it was starting to feel that way as well.

“I know. They didn’t want you to know and, man, I’m a fucking idiot. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not your fault.”

A short, bitter laugh escaped me as I looked over at him through narrowed eyes. “Yeah, not my fault that I was born a warlock, but it was my fault that I came home.”

“We never felt that way.” I frowned at him, not needing the lies. Robert squeezed my shoulder and smiled. “Well, okay, so maybe I was pissed at you for a year or two right before I dropped out of college, but then I got my shit together. Mom and Dad never regretted you coming home. Not once.”

“I ruined their lives. I’m guessing I screwed up yours pretty badly as well as Meg’s.”

Robert gave my shoulder a shove but didn’t let go when I started to look away from him. “It’s not your fault. Blame it on the assholes in the Towers. Hell, better yet, blame it on the assholes that ran us out of New England. They only focused on the fact that you’d been born a warlock—which could have happened to any one of them just as easily. They should have been focusing on the fact that Mom and Dad raised a kid who was smart and brave enough to fucking leave the Towers.”

I nodded, trying to breathe. “Thanks.”

Robert dropped his hand back to his lap while reaching for his drink with the other hand. I did the same and we both finished our first glass before either could speak again. The alcohol would numb the worst of the pain. There was truth to what Robert had said, all of what he said. It wasn’t all my fault, but by the same token, I should never have gone home when I was a teenager.

“You should go see them,” Robert suggested. He reached across the table and snagged the bottle, pouring us both a new glass.

“Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah. I know they’d love it. They miss you.”

I sat back against the couch and stretched out my legs, trying to ease the tension crawling through my frame. “I don’t know if it would be safe.”

“I think they would argue that it’s worth the risk.” Robert took a drink and smiled at me. When he spoke again, his voice was rough from the whiskey burn. “Do you honestly think it’s ever going to be safe? You’re wasting time.”

“You could always go talk to them first for me. Warn them that I’m in town, what I look like now so it wouldn’t be such a shock if I showed up on their doorstep.” Robert frowned at me and remained silent. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly subtle. I wanted to hear why he was no longer talking to our parents. “Did you fight?”

“No, not really.”

“So … what? You just stopped seeing them? Stopped answering the phone when Mom called?”

“Pretty much.”

I set my cup on the table and waited. Robert sighed before downing the last of his drink and placing his empty cup next to mine. “Things didn’t work out at college,” he started.

“Because of me.”

He shrugged. “Part of it, but I think I was looking for an excuse. I was tired of school, wanted to be doing something. I made some friends here that I probably shouldn’t have, started helping them out on the occasional job. I knew the business they were in, but I told myself that I wouldn’t get drawn in.” He stopped and stared down at his hands.

“But you did.”

Robert looked at me with a little self-mocking smile. “Reave came to me and offered me a job personally. Said I was good. He offered me a lot of money and I took it. I told myself that I wasn’t hurting anyone, so it was no big deal.”

I clamped my mouth shut. People were getting hurt by the things that Reave was into. Robert might not have been the one to pull the trigger or wield the blade, but anyone who supported Reave was only adding to the body count.

“Did Mom and Dad find out what you were doing?”

“No. Well, I don’t think so.” He stopped and threaded a loose strand of hair behind his ear. “They had such hopes for me at college and getting some big job in an office building wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase. Every time I went to see them, I had to see those hopes. Got tired of it, so I stopped going.”

I stared at the bottle of Jack on the table, a part of me wishing that I had brought up the Mordred. Numb and stupid would have felt a lot better than what I was feeling right then. After leaving for Low Town, I didn’t let myself think about my family much because I knew that I couldn’t go back, but I told myself that they were all happy and safe. Unfortunately, happy and safe were extremely relative terms, I was learning. All I knew was that they weren’t the kind of happy and safe that I had imagined.

“I’ll get you out,” I said in a low voice.

“What?”

I looked over at Robert, meeting his confused expression. “I’ll get you out. Get you free of Reave. I’m stuck with him holding threats over my head, but I’ll get you out when I get out.”

“I don’t want out,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me? The pay is good and I’m good at what I do. It might not be legal but I’m not hurting anyone. I don’t need you to rescue me.”

I sat speechless for a minute, staring at him. Between Bronx and me wanting out so badly, I had naturally assumed that Robert would consider himself trapped as well. But he wasn’t trapped. He was exactly where he wanted to be and … I was being an asshole. I might find Robert’s line of work distasteful, but I couldn’t judge him because he had chosen to color outside the lines. There was a good percentage of my own work that was off the books because it wasn’t exactly legal. Well, that and the whole warlock thing, which wasn’t illegal but it wasn’t a crowd pleaser either.

“Sorry,” I muttered, feeling like an ass while, at the same time, finding a whole new reason to hate Reave.

“No problem. Are you still going to help me? Reave said you would.”

I nodded as I moved to the edge of the couch. Snagging the bottle, I filled up my cup and Robert’s. I had a feeling that I was going to need this. “Keep you safe? Sure. What’s Reave got planned for you?”

“Nothing too major. I’m just a package boy.” Robert shrugged, but there was something in his expression that wasn’t quite modest. He might have been a package boy, but there was such a thing as a valuable package boy based on intelligence, courage, and resourcefulness. “He wants me to deliver some information to a buyer.”

“What kind of information?” Robert was silent so long that I finally looked over at him to find him frowning down at his whiskey. “You have to at least give me some kind of hint if I’m going to be able to protect you effectively. It will give me an idea of whom I’m protecting you from.”

“You don’t think we’ll be overheard here?” Robert asked, lowering his voice to a whisper.

It was a struggle not to whisper as well. “By who?”

“Them.”

Fuck. What the hell was Reave dealing in that my brother was worried about drawing the attention of the witches and warlocks? We all worried about the Ivory Towers, but for the most part, we didn’t worry about them listening in to our conversations. They pretty much ignored the fact that we existed until we stepped on something that did interest them. Apparently, Robert had stepped into something big.

Putting my cup on the table, I stood and quickly tapped the energy floating around in the air. It only took a couple of seconds and a brief wave of my hand to summon the silencing spell that was becoming a regular part of my repertoire recently. For someone who had chosen to break away from the Towers, I was frequently in the midst of things that would most interest them.

“Don’t move,” I said, flopping back down on the couch. “I created only a small bubble—attracts less attention. No one can hear you.”

Robert looked at me a bit skeptically. “I didn’t see you do anything but wave your hand in the air.”

“The best spells are the subtle ones. Now talk.”

A smile peeked out for a second. “I still can’t believe you’re a warlock. My brother …”

“My brother, the warlock. Scourge of all that is good and just in the world. Yeah, yeah,” I said a bit irritably. When I lived in the Towers, I was told that I was being reborn into godhood. When I moved back among the “mortals,” I became the bane of their existence. Such a fall back to earth tends to bruise the ego. “Now, what does Reave have you transporting?”

Robert’s smile faded. “I don’t know how he acquired this information, but Reave knows the exact location of all the Towers.”

My heart stopped and then started again, pounding away like a madman on crack. I lurched to my feet, wanting to put some distance between my brother and his words as if I was expecting a bolt of lightning to strike him, but I remained rooted to the spot. I couldn’t move outside of the spell without disrupting it and I definitely needed to do a little venting that wouldn’t be overheard.

The first of the Ivory Towers was built before the Great War, but the warlocks and witches forced everyone after the war to work on building others—one on every continent plus a secret eighth so that they could tighten their hold on all the peoples of the world. As each Tower was finished, the memory of everyone was altered and powerful spells were placed over the Towers to hide them. No one but the warlocks and witches knew where they were, and I believed it to be for the best. If you couldn’t find them, then you couldn’t start shit that was going to get everyone killed.

Reave was going to get us all killed.

“What the hell is he thinking?” I yelled.

“Maybe that he’s tired of being under their thumb,” Robert snapped.

“We all are!” I shouted simply because I couldn’t stop shouting. I dropped back down onto the couch and put my head into my hands, trying to learn to breathe again. When I spoke, my voice was low but not particularly calm. “I don’t want to know what he’s planning. That’s the least of our problems. If they find out he’s got that information, they will come down off the Towers and kill us all.” I glared at my brother. “You don’t know them like I do. If they suspect anyone has that information, they won’t bother to hunt down you or Reave. They will destroy the entire city, every living creature, to make sure the information has been silenced.”

Robert tried to smile. His mouth moved in the right direction, but it was strained, while his eyes flickered with fear. “Then I guess you better come up with something good.”

“Has he told you yet? Do you know the locations?”

“Just one. He said it was insurance so that you wouldn’t try to ‘rescue me.’ He also said that if you tried to erase the location from my memory, he’d kill me.” Robert didn’t look particularly disturbed by the threat, probably because he knew that I would do everything within my power to protect him.

My teeth were clenched so tightly that my jaw had begun to throb. I was going to kill Reave. I wasn’t a killer, but this dark elf was driving me to it. My brother might not have wanted out, but he needed out because Reave was shortening his life substantially by putting him in the path of the Towers.

“I need time to think and prepare.” The words were stiff and hard when I spoke. “When are you scheduled to make your delivery?”

“I get the information in three days. You’ll have one day to tattoo them on me—”

“What?”

“Reave is giving me the locations as coordinates. I can’t memorize seven sets of exact coordinates and he doesn’t want paper or digital copies traveling. He wants them tattooed on me, and you have to include a spell to protect the information.”

Sitting back against the couch, I rubbed my eyes with my right hand against the pain that had started there. There was some small relief that he said seven—even Reave didn’t know about the secret eighth Tower. Hell, even I wasn’t completely sure where it was. All the same, I could feel the strands of the web Reave was weaving around Robert and me tightening, entrapping us so perfectly. It seemed as if he had thought of everything, tying my hands so I couldn’t free my brother.

I needed to think. This was more than protecting Robert and all of Low Town from this information. The Towers had become a powder keg of unrest, and Reave was creating a human torch out of Robert. If the Towers and Robert collided, the war that ensued would make the Great War look like a playground scuffle between third-grade girls.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t turn to Sofie or Gideon for advice. They would have only one answer. Kill Robert. Kill Reave. There had to be another way. I had to figure out what the hell it was.

7

IT WAS DARK. The world had been reduced to shapes lacking definition so that everything took on a menacing demeanor. My eyes strained, desperately trying to give meaning to my world, but it was useless. Any light that crept into the room was quickly swallowed up in the great maw of blackness that enveloped me.

I stretched out both hands, determined to use my remaining senses to figure out where I was, how I had gotten there. My fingers hit cold, damp stone. Dirty grit crusted under my fingernails and embedded itself in the fine grooves of my fingers as I slid them along the rough surface. The wall beside me was composed of giant stones, while the floor beneath my feet seemed to be made of the same uneven rock. The room curved slightly, as if it were circular rather than square.

There was no sound beside the soft scrape of my fingers along the stone wall and the scuff of my feet on the floor. My heart pounded in my ears, frustrating me. Was I alone in this room? Was someone else here, tracking me by my thudding heart and shuffling feet? Would it kill me? Help me?

Footsteps broke through the silence. I froze, waiting in the stillness as they grew steadily closer. The tread sounded even and familiar. A friend? The footsteps stopped close, followed by the clang of metal on metal and then scraping, like a key turning a rusted lock.

Light surged into the room, blinding me. I fell back against the wall, throwing my arms up in front of my face to protect myself from the sudden invasion. Shrinking back, I squinted and blinked, willing my eyes to adjust to the brightness rather than stay frozen and helpless.

“Come along!” snarled an angry voice that chilled the blood in my veins.

I moved shaking hands from my face, praying that I was wrong, but I wasn’t. Simon Thorn stood in the open doorway, a magical ball of white light hovering above his shoulder. This wasn’t right. Simon was dead. I’d killed him months ago. Simon had to be dead.

But if Simon was dead and trapped in the underworld, did this mean I had died as well? Had I passed during the night, called by Lilith to pay the year I owed magic for killing Simon? I couldn’t be dead. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and the cold seeping from the stones through my thin shirt. I wouldn’t feel these things if I was dead, right? Was I dreaming? Remembering? Both?

In the bright light, I stared down at my hands to find them smaller than I remembered. My arms and body were smaller and thinner, while Simon was taller. It all seemed wrong, but my mind kept stumbling as if the wheels in my brain were slipping as they tried to puzzle out this problem.

“Now, boy, or I’ll drag you by your hair,” Simon said, pulling me from my internal struggles.

As if willed by some unknown force, my body obeyed his command and I pushed away from the wall. On shaky legs, I crossed the small stone cell and followed my mentor down the long, narrow hall marked by other heavy doors in front of silent rooms. There were others behind those thick doors, huddled in the darkness, cold and wounded.

At the end of the hall, we turned left and walked down a wider hall until we came to a large circular room. There was more light here, created by torches and little balls of magical light. A pair of witches and a warlock stood near the back of the room, silent and grim. I stopped just past the threshold and looked around, taking in the bleak gray walls. This room was familiar, creating a cold chill in my mind. I’d been here before and it hadn’t been a pleasant place.

Simon roughly grabbed my shoulder, his thin fingers biting through the ragged cloth of my shirt to pinch muscles and nerves. “Get in there,” the warlock said. He gave me a hard shove and I fell into the shallow circular pit in the center of the room. My knees hit the hard compact dirt, sending a sharp pain down to the bone.

Placing my hands against the dirt floor, I pushed back to my feet and my eyes fell on Bryce. Oh God. Now I remembered why this place seemed so familiar. The young boy lay on his side, his breathing ragged as the air slipped between split lips in short, quick gasps. Dirt and blood crusted his face. His clothes had been taken away, revealing an all-too-thin frame covered in ugly bruises and long, festering cuts. Pain glazed his eyes, making me wonder if he was aware of where he was and that I was near him.

I backpedaled until my back slammed into the wall of the dueling pit. Turning, I looked up at Simon. My hands were on the chest-high rim, ready to climb out of the arena. I couldn’t do it. I knew why I was here and I couldn’t do it.

Simon stepped directly in front of me, blocking my escape. “This is your third and final chance to finish this. You kill him and we will move on with your training, or we will keep him alive indefinitely, locked in constant pain. Kill him or I kill you.” Placing his foot on my shoulder, the warlock shoved me backward, away from the wall and into the center of the pit.

I stumbled, but managed to stay on my feet. Swallowing back the bile in my throat, I looked down at the wounded apprentice again. Three days ago, Bryce and I had been placed in the dueling pit. We had both been learning curses used in fighting, and our mentors had decided that the best way to prove we were proficient was a duel to the death. I won the duel, but refused to kill Bryce. I had been locked in a cell, while Bryce had been beaten and tortured as they waited for me to submit to their wishes.

Shaking my head, I tried to backpedal again when I heard Bryce give a little whimper. His head moved so that he was now looking up at me. Pain cut heavy lines through his young face, sweat glistened on his brow. His lips moved, forming the words Help me but he lacked the strength to put sound to it. There was only one way to help him, to remove the pain and the fear.

My hands were trembling when I raised them, gathering together the energy I needed. I kept repeating in my head that if I did it quickly, Bryce wouldn’t feel more pain, he wouldn’t have a chance to be afraid.

“No!” Simon’s harsh voice sliced through the silence. A wave of energy swept through the room, pushing the magic I had pulled from my fingertips. I twisted around to look at my mentor in confusion. “You had your chance to kill him with magic and you threw it away. You’ll kill him with this.”

Simon reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out something that he tossed into the pit. I looked down and my stomach lurched. At my feet was a small wooden dagger. The tip was sharp, but the blade was dull. There would be no saving Bryce from pain.