Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(6)

“It’s the little banshee!” he called over his shoulder.

Everyone at the Schoolhouse called Alex “the little banshee,” because when she was a baby all she did was wail.

“Your brother was in a mood today. Fair warning, sugar,” Boone said as he made his way toward his motorcycle.

Alex and I shared a look.

I pulled the heavy wooden door open and Alex slipped in ahead of me. Better she go first. Crowe wouldn’t kill his flesh and blood. Besides, I welcomed the chance to adjust to the onslaught that greeted me. Like many of the kindled motorcycle clubs, the Devils’ League was a small, single-chapter club with only twenty full-patch members and a handful of prospects and hangarounds who might prospect in the future, but there were a few hundred friends of the club, members of the kindled community who gathered to support them, which was what seemingly all of them had done tonight. The Schoolhouse was packed, swirls and splashes of amber, green, pink, purple, and orange haloing the kindled, hanging in the air. Just the sight made me clutch at the wall. I willed my feet to be steady.

The music was even louder inside, thrumming through the floorboards. In the first classroom we passed, everyone had abandoned the billiards tables and danced to the guitar solo that was somehow still carrying on, punctuated by quick, frenetic drum riffs. They were a motley crew of men and women, gyrating and jumping, hair whipping, arms raised and flailing. When the lyrics picked back up, the entire room broke out in song.

This was the double-edged sword of the place. There was something intoxicating about seeing this crowd here, something so us. And yet it also made me ache because I couldn’t be fully part of it. Unlike everyone else, I couldn’t just let go and revel. A ringing had picked up in my ears, and the colorful aura signaled a major headache coming on. Perhaps sensing me falter even though she couldn’t possibly know why, Alex threaded her arm through mine and tugged me toward the bar—and that was right where I needed to be if I wanted to survive the evening.

To get there, we had to walk past the library, which was situated in the far left corner of the building. The room was fronted by thick double doors that were always closed and locked. That was the casting chamber and meeting place, accessible only by members of Alex’s family and trusted members of the Devils’ League, as well as a few select kindled who were allies of the club.

I could smell the magic inside even now, so potent that it collected like a film on the back of my throat. There were notes of something metallic and steely, but it was overwhelmed by something sticky and sweet. Venemon magic—specifically Crowe’s, which had a musky, masculine undertone that distinguished it from Alex’s. It made me want to breathe deep. It made me want to run.

No magic in the kindled world was inherently good or bad. But Crowe could turn a hex as easily as a child could cast a handful of rocks. Of course, the venemon magic that ran in the Medici family lent itself well to being twisted. They could heal, but could just as easily inflict pain, or crush bone, or make someone ill.

Crowe was devastatingly good at both healing and hurting—and didn’t hesitate to do either.

A lot of conservative kindled said that made him a criminal. Crowe once joked that it made him talented. After all, his ancestors had been renowned for their poisons and antidotes, which were really just well-cast spells. The better-known Italian Medicis were assassins and court enforcers and aristocratic warriors, but many were also skilled physicians and healers. Crowe parlayed his inherited abilities into a gold mine like so many of his ancestors before him.

The Devils’ League sold his magical healing cuts through trade lines all across the continental United States. They also sold mild hexes that might cause someone to vomit for a week or lie in bed in anguish for a day. But the top sellers, by far, were Crowe’s amplifying cuts. The charm gave the user a temporary boost, much like a shot of adrenaline, and that included making whatever magic the individual cast about ten times stronger.

I didn’t have to be a conservative to know that what Crowe created and sold toed a dangerous line. It gave more people the opportunity to use their own magic for crooked purposes. And one time, I admit, I sort of did exactly that—I had tried to use one of Crowe’s amplifying cuts myself. I had stolen it from his room the day he found and chased us, actually. My dad had just announced he would be moving away, and I thought, maybe, if I could convince him I had magic as powerful as his, he would stay. He would stop looking at me with that furrowed brow that signaled a mixture of concern and disappointment.

Thanks to that reflexive barrier spell, I had gotten away with the amplifying cut. The next day, as my dad packed his things, I tried it out, thinking I could throw a containment spell around the entire house and keep Dad with us, where he belonged.

This is the way eleven-year-olds think, unfortunately. It was also the way I ruined everything. I activated the cut the same way I’d seen some of the grown-ups do at summer gatherings—cradling the wood close to my face, whispering the incantation just so—but what I thought would boost my magic only boosted my sensitivity to it. Suddenly, I was retching, writhing, the containment spell I’d tried to cast wrapping around me like sky-blue ropes, the minty, stinging scent of it closing my throat. Choking me.

I remember the horror and confusion in Dad’s eyes when he found me. I remember my mother calling 911. I remember my father having to destroy the spell I’d cast in order to allow the dreck paramedics to make it through the door.