CHAPTER 29

That was one of those easier-said-than-done plans. I didn’t know where to look for Barb, or what to do when I found her. Finishing kicking her ass was definitely on the roster, but that was sort of nebulous, in a specific way.

I shuddered. My brain was starting to show the lack of sleep. I stopped at a drive-by coffee shop and got a quad shot of espresso and had them pour a generous splash of amaretto flavoring in to make it drinkable. I was tired enough to find myself balancing the coffee and my cell phone, making a phone call while I was driving.

That had to be one of the stupider things I’d done lately. Except the scene at the restaurant, which I hoped took the cake for at least the next couple years. But if I was ever going to mar Petite’s bumper with a sticker, it would probably be one of those hang up and drive ones. Watching people drive juggling coffee and cell phones made me the bad kind of crazy. Doing it myself and compounding it with no sleep was the sort of behavior that made me want to take my keys away for a week as punishment. I promised myself I’d do that later.

By the time I’d muttered and scowled and scolded myself I’d also dialed my home phone, which got snatched up so fast I thought Gary must’ve been sleeping on it. “Jo?”

“I’m okay. Are you?”

“Worried sick,” he said grumpily. “Where you been, Jo? What’s goin’ on?”

“Thank you,” I said instead of answering. “For staying there. For looking out for me. Thank you, Gary. I’m really sorry. I kind of lost it last night.” I flicked my turn signal and almost poured coffee in my lap. “Did Mark call?”

“He finally stopped callin’ around one,” Gary growled. “I been chewin’ my fingers to the bone tryin’ ta decide if I should call you or not, Jo. What the hell happened?”

I laughed, hoarse sound. “I don’t even know where to begin, Gary. The really short version is I completely embarrassed myself and my boss, saw the end of the world has my face on it and learned Mark and Barbara are involved in it somehow. Did he leave a number?”

“Same one as before.” Gary rattled it off like he had it memorized, and I wondered why he did and I didn’t.

“Thanks. Gary, I…look, I don’t know when or how this is going to go down. I’ll try to call you, okay? Are you going to be—where are you going to be?”

“I’ll be here,” the old man promised. “If I need ta go out I’ll give you a call. You okay with that?” Worry colored his voice again and I wished I could give him a hug. Stupid phones.

“It’s fine. Thank you,” I said again. “I’ve…I…” I didn’t know what to say. I hung up, drank as much coffee as I could at a stoplight and called Mark’s number despite the fact it was barely six in the morning.

He sounded less awake than Gary did, though like the cabbie, his opening volley was “Joanne?” instead of a more typical hello.

I said, “Yeah” and “Is Barb there?” in almost the same breath. There was silence before Mark exhaled.

“She came over at two in the morning, Joanne, saying you’d showed up at Captain Morrison’s place acting like a jealous girlfriend. Is there something I should know about there?”

“How about I come over and explain myself?” I found myself holding my coffee cup very carefully. I wanted to squeeze a fist around it, but it was a paper to-go cup, and I already couldn’t remember the last time I’d changed clothes. Pouring hot coffee over myself didn’t sound like a good idea.

Mark sighed. “All right. I’m staying at one of those shortterm rental places right next to Microsoft, on Northeast Fortieth. Oakwood, I think. You know where that is?”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” I hung up and concentrated on driving. Without traffic, it took less time to get there than I’d expected. I drove through the complex to the unit number he’d given me and threw my coffee cup away on my way up. He opened the door before I even knocked.

Concern colored his expression and his aura, blotches of worry that flashed through the opposite colors of the rainbow. Where Barb had red and yellow, Mark was orange and green, fading into indigo, all of it sunshine-bright. It was easier to see, without the two of them together, and I could now see the same razors of blackness between those brilliant shades. I didn’t know if I just hadn’t been looking closely enough before, or if believing they were the bad guys helped me see it. Either way, without thinking, I reached out and put my fingers into the murky splices, pulling them apart.

Butterflies swarmed out of the opening I’d made, midnight-blue and violet, darkness upon dark. They took the air around me away, settling onto my skin with grazing light brushes from their wings, and they fed on the silvery sheen of my own power. Spots swam through my vision like butterfly eyes, feathered with tiny piercing needles. I struck back, forming a fine-woven net with ease that surprised me, and swept it through the crevasse that butterflies pounded from.

They caught in the net and drained it dry, gobbling up the power there and becoming ever more solid, more real, themselves. They swooped together, making a fluttering, always moving body in the darkness, like a photograph mosaic made up of hundreds of other tiny photos. My head hurt, looking at it, and it only got worse as the form shifted and changed, never quite satisfied with its shape.

The butterflies on my skin kept nibbling away, tickling sensation bordering on pain. Power fluttered beneath my breastbone like a warning, and I strengthened the shields I’d built, both physical and mental.

Light shot off my skin, braiding into a thin cord that flashed away into the distance. Hundreds of butterflies followed the brightness, and for an instant I left my body, racing ahead to see where in hell they were going. It was my cord, my power; I could travel it instantaneously, just as quickly as I’d snapped out of myself and into Morrison’s house.

Morrison. I was there by his hospital bed a breath ahead of the butterflies, staring down at him in horror. The shields I’d left for him were vulnerable to my own power use, making a clear line for my enemy to follow.

I shut down every aspect of magic I could think of, slamming back into my body so hard I swooned. It was oldfashioned and fakey of me, but I didn’t think collapsing against the wall yet managing to keep my feet quite qualified as a faint. It was unquestionably a swoon. No self-respecting woman from an era beyond 1910 should find herself in a swoon. I was offended on my own behalf. I leaned there in my swoon, completely bereft of any of the power I’d gotten used to. No mental shields protecting my core self, no physical ones to keep butterfly feet off my skin. No auras blazing, not even a hint of impatient power bubbling behind my sternum. For the first time since the beginning of the year, I felt completely, wholly, absolutely and totally normal.

It was awful.

I’d gotten used to the nudging insistence of power within me, to a sparkle at the edges of things that told me how much more to see there was than what I saw through ordinary eyes. I’d gotten used to a vague sense of people, even when I was deliberately ignoring my power. I’d gotten used to a very slightly heightened awareness that I didn’t even know I’d gotten used to until I cut it off and made myself invisible to the butterfly demon residing in the dark places of Mark’s aura.

Mark—to whom it must have looked as if he’d opened the door, I’d reached for him and then tumbled sideways in a faint—caught me and pulled me into his arms with the strength and confidence of a fairy-tale hero. He drew me into his room, closed the door and looked down at me in confusion that had no place on a fairy tale hero. “Joanne?”

“I thought you were an English major.” Even my voice sounded wrong, all thin and raspy. I couldn’t tell if it was, or if magic had done something to my hearing, too, and now it was gone.