Devils & Thieves Series, Book 1 Page 3

  Alex gave me a look. “You okay?”

  “I need a drink stat.”

  She frowned, but before she could dig further, one of her cousins called her name and sidled over to our table, coaxing Alex into a conversation about the upcoming festival. I headed to the bar and furtively ordered a shot of rye from Dara, the bartender. She arched an eyebrow. “Sure you wanna go down that road again, darlin’?”

  I winced, thinking about my last drunken night here. “Nope. Not at all. But this is just to take the edge off, okay?” I offered her my best puppy-dog eyes. “It’s been a rough day.”

  Dara was a sucker for the puppy-dog eyes. “You know I’m not supposed to serve you.…”

  “It’ll be our secret,” I whispered. “And make it two. Alex wanted one as well.”

  That sealed the deal, because no one refused Alex Medici. “Sip on it, all right? Take it slow.”

  “Will do,” I said as she slid two shots of the amber liquid toward me. Relief was already singing in my veins—alcohol dulled my sense of smell and dampened the killer rainbow aura of kindled power in the room. It was the best way for me to survive the night. I whirled around, smoothly downing the first shot as I did. Quickly walking back to Alex, glad as ever that she was monopolizing the gazes and focus of half the people in the room, I tossed the second shot back and set the two glasses on a table that needed to be bussed.

  Alex hated rye anyway.

  Smiling as the liquor burned my throat, heated my belly, and sent a wave of heavy relaxation along my limbs, I sank onto the seat next to her. She didn’t seem to notice I’d been gone and was engaged in animated conversation, so I pulled my phone from my pocket. Turns out I’d missed a text earlier—one I’d been waiting all day to receive.

  I’ll meet you at your house later, it said.

  Fingers trembling, I texted back: Can’t wait.

  Putting my phone on vibrate, I dropped it back in my pocket and turned my attention to the library again. Just because I could sense Crowe’s magic didn’t mean he was here—the Schoolhouse always smelled like him. When I didn’t see him, I relaxed a little.

  With our table now full, and Alex talking about her mother’s plans for the Medici tent at the festival, I turned to the room to people-watch. At a table in the far corner, Jackson Niklos, a Devil member in his early twenties, was showing off his animalia magic using a butterfly. The monarch flitted in between three women, the wings brushing against their cheeks like a chaste kiss, making the women blush and giggle, sending up purple puffs of magic only I could see. Behind the bar, Brooke, one of the Devils’ League prospects, a Warwick with the invictus power her family was renowned for, carted in two kegs, one balanced on each shoulder. The weight was nothing for someone with that kind of magic, which hung around her in a faint orange haze. I knew from experience it smelled of cloves, pungent and biting. Fortunately, all I could smell right now was the lingering hint of rye. It let me enjoy this place for what it was—an oasis of wonder in a not-so-wonderful world.

  Within the walls of the bar, our magic wasn’t a secret, guarded and tamped down like it was in the outside world, among drecks. Even before my dad split, all my holidays and birthdays were spent here with the Devils’ League. They were my family. And even as I got older and my sensitivity to the magic grew, I never wanted to stay away too long—and so I’d figured out how to cope.

  “Little banshee!” Thom Flynn called as he shuffled over and leaned in to kiss Alex’s forehead. Although he wasn’t related to Alex by blood, she considered him her uncle, and he treated her like she was his favorite niece.

  “Hey, Uncle Flynn,” Alex replied quickly before snapping her fingers as Dara walked by. “Jack and Coke for me, please. Jemmie, what are you having?”

  Dara gave me a hard look, and I grinned in what I hoped was a charming way. “Uh… a Tom Collins, maybe?”

  “Good idea,” said Alex. “Keep it light.”

  “Absolutely,” I said, turning away so she couldn’t smell the liquor on my breath. “Wouldn’t want to get crazy.”

  Dara paused for a moment, and I tensed, wondering if she was going to call me on my antics. But then Alex cleared her throat and the waitress scurried off.

  Flynn scooted in next to me and put his arm over the back of the booth. “So what’s new, Carmichael?”

  I shrugged. “The usual.”

  He grabbed a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the table and started cracking them open. “The usual good or the usual bad?”

  “Just the usual-usual.”

  Flynn laughed. His overgrown salt-and-pepper hair was tied back in a bun, revealing what might have once been an extremely handsome face. Freckles dusted his nose. His eyes were big and blue. Gray stubble covered his jaw and the skin wrinkled around his eyes, but a lot of the older women who orbited the club went after Flynn. I guess to them he still had something worth pursuing.

  I’d known Flynn as long as Alex had, which was to say, since we were babies. My dad, Michael Medici, and Flynn used to be best friends and had founded the club together back when it was more about the riding and the freedom. I got the sense that their feud with the Deathstalkers had ruined all of that. The club Crowe inherited last year was a completely different animal, more about doing business and fending off threats. More about basic survival.

  Someone called out to Flynn from across the room, poking fun at his recent loss at the poker table. Flynn cursed at the guy, whispered an inlusio incantation, and tossed a peanut his way. I held my breath to protect myself from the cigar smoke scent, but saw the telltale trail of cast magic as the peanut arced through the air and burst into a thick green haze when it hit the table—revealing a coiled viper as it cleared. The guy lurched to his feet, eyes round with terror as his body reacted instinctively to the illusion. If the snake struck, the bite would hurt him almost as much as the real thing.

  Flynn laughed again. “That one deserved it,” he said to me, and grinned.

  I returned his smile and swiped my drink from Dara’s tray when she returned to our table. Alex shoved aside her straw and took a healthy gulp. She chuckled as I sucked down half of mine in the same amount of time. “Looks like we’ll need another round soon,” Alex called, even though Dara had already turned away. “And add two shots of tequila!”

  “Slow down, little banshee,” Flynn said to Alex.

  Alex rolled her eyes and exchanged a conspiratorial glance with me behind his back. My cheeks burned with guilt—if she’d known I was two ahead of her, she wouldn’t think it was so funny.

  I sipped my drink, determined to do exactly as Flynn advised, especially because my head was already starting to swim. I needed to slow down if I wanted to stay in this zone of pleasant, numbing buzz without toppling over the edge into crazy, drunken Jemmieland. “So,” I said to Flynn, leaning close so he could hear me over the pulse and pound of the music, “I heard you finally got that old 1938 Crocker road-worthy. Are you going to show it off at the festival?”

  Hearing my interest in his dearest love, Flynn’s eyes lit up, but before he could answer, the library doors began to open and the entire Schoolhouse turned their attention in that direction.

  The doors creaked and scraped as they swung wide, heavy and loud. The library had always held my fascination—and fear. Ever since I was a child, it had seemed like a forbidden world separate from my own, where magic was a beast tamed by grown-ups, easily unleashed if someone misbehaved. For me, even setting foot in that room was likely to end badly, so I’d never tried. Though I was older now, far from being a kid anymore, my dread of the library had only increased—because now Crowe commanded it.

  “Tell you about it later,” Flynn said over his shoulder as he hurried from the table.

  Crowe was the first out the double doors. From where I sat, he stood in profile when he paused in the hallway to scan the bar. A lock of his black hair hung rogue over his forehead. He was clad entirely in black, save for the trio of cuts hanging from a leather cord around
his neck.

  All eyes were on him. At six foot three, he towered over most, but it was more than his height that made him stand out, even to kindled who couldn’t sense Crowe’s magic the way I could.

  Crowe was the kind of person who didn’t need to demand respect—it was automatically given to him.

  “Oh, great,” Alex muttered next to me. “He does look pissed.”

  And he did. He looked really, really pissed. I didn’t even have to see the whole of his face to know it. The tendons in his arms stood out sharply, clenched just like his fists. His jaw flexed, teeth grinding. I wanted to shrink the way he swelled, and disappear into a puff of dust beneath the table. If I had that ability, I’d probably try to use it.

  Flynn settled in behind Crowe, on his right, and curiously enough, on his left was Old Lady Jane Vetrov, clad in a patchwork dress and motorcycle boots, and wearing a black bandanna over her long white hair. Jane was stuffed to the gills with omnias magic that ran in the Vetrov family and made her Hawthorne’s resident psychic, the best of the best. And weirdest of the weird, if you asked me. But that was probably just a side effect of having access to the Undercurrent, what drecks called the spirit world. Old Lady Jane wasn’t a Devil. She kept herself on neutral ground, believing that her gift belonged to everyone, and therefore owed allegiance to no one club or family.

  Seeing her in the Schoolhouse, with Crowe of all people, was rather uncharacteristic.

  She rose to the tips of her pointy boots and whispered something into his ear, and he acknowledged her with a shift of his chin. She nodded, squeezed his arm—protected from her powerful clairvoyant touch by the thick sleeve of his motorcycle jacket—and headed for the bar.

  Crowe’s best friend, Hardy Warwick, took up the spot vacated by Jane and, like a pack of wolves, the three men faced the room together. “Gunnar still hasn’t turned up,” Crowe announced. “I don’t know where he’s tucked himself this time, but if any of you come across him, tell him to sober up and get his ass to the festival tomorrow. I need him.”

  Ah, Gunnar. He and I had shared a few wild nights at the Schoolhouse in the past, seeing as he could drink me under the table as easily as breathing. His arma magic enabled him to forge weapons out of anything—mud, a pile of rocks, a handful of drinking straws—and I guess Crowe thought that was pretty important for the festival, which made me wonder what exactly he thought was going to go down.

  I didn’t have much time to ponder that, though, because that was the moment the president of the Devils’ League noticed me. If Alex was a pearl, then her brother was obsidian. Black volcanic glass. Pretty and shiny, quick to cut. As our eyes met, it all came back, his hands and his mouth, and then the moment I realized he had used me as a momentary distraction. I hunched in my seat, once again wishing I could disappear.

  The jukebox switched albums, and something loud and bass-heavy started up, allowing me to pretend that the thumping in my chest was the music and not my traitorous heart.

  Crowe started toward us, and I took a long draw from my drink, hoping the burn of the alcohol would override the other burn sinking lower and lower in my gut.

  “Alex,” Crowe said when he reached the table. He shed his jacket and hung it on a hook nailed to the side of the booth. He leaned over and kissed Alex’s cheek, then slid into the booth beside me. Hardy slid in on the other side of Alex, effectively trapping us between them. Flynn grabbed his drink and leaned against a nearby post.

  “Hey, Jemmie,” Crowe said. “What are you drinking?”

  I concentrated on enunciating my consonants as I said, “None of your damn business.”

  He reached over, grabbed my glass, and drained what was left of my drink in one gulp. “Tom Collins.”

  “Hey!” I said.

  Hardy chuckled. I scowled at him, but it only made him laugh harder, sharpening the lines of his cheekbones.

  I waved at Dara as she passed. “Can I get another Tom Collins, please?”

  “No, Dara,” Crowe said. “She can’t.” He didn’t take his eyes off me. “You reek of whiskey, Jem.”

  I turned to him, glad that the heady burn in my gut had formed into something useful: anger. “Bullshit.” But my cheeks were also burning—and probably bright pink.

  “Dara, how many drinks have you served Jemmie already tonight?”

  The waitress shifted her weight from one foot to the other, biting her bottom lip.

  “It’s okay,” said Crowe. “You won’t get in trouble. Just tell me.”

  “Three,” she said quietly.

  “That’s totally not true,” I snapped, but Crowe ignored me.

  “And how long has she been here?” he asked.

  “’Bout twenty minutes,” Dara replied, throwing me an apologetic look.

  “She’s done for tonight,” he said over me.

  “No, I’m not, Dara,” I said, my throat tight. With Crowe next to me, all the magic inside him was pressing on my senses, making my entire body ping with alarm and dizziness. It was going to take another drink at least to tamp that down. “You were supposhed to bring ush shots of tequila anyway.”

  Dammit. I’d slurred my words. Crowe’s brow pinched with disapproval.

  “Dara,” Crowe said. “Jemmie is done if I say she’s done.”

  Dara gave him a quick nod before scurrying away. Next to me, Alex heaved a disappointed sigh. I clenched my jaw, so the next words that came out of my mouth were ground between my teeth like grain beneath a pestle. “Why are you such an asshole, Crowe?”

  At least I hadn’t slurred it.

  Everyone within earshot fell silent. It was the kind of quiet that comes before a storm hits, an eerie stillness charged with anticipation. The table was almost buzzing with it, everyone wondering how Crowe would react.

  Crowe smiled and pretended I didn’t just call him an asshole in front of everyone. “Last time you drank here,” he said, “you ended up puking all over our bathroom. Or did you forget already?”

  Worse than Crowe yelling was Crowe chastising.

  Now I looked like the asshole.

  I sagged against the back of the booth, defeated, and as I did, I felt the heat of his arm through the thin material of my vintage T-shirt. It brought on a flashback of that night I’d gotten so sick, of Crowe, his voice soft and reassuring as he held my hair back while I vomited. His hands on me, on my stomach, and the instant relief that spread through me as he worked a spell to settle my queasiness. The cold that lingered when his hands finally pulled away.

  Why did he do these things to me? Being around him made me feel like a rabid animal. I wanted to tear him apart and devour him all at the same time. His magic overwhelmed me more than most, even when he wasn’t using it on me, but it also felt like heaven to have his hands on my skin. His gentle attention was like the sun on my face… but the way he’d looked at me afterward, the worry and puzzlement over why I’d had too much to drink yet again, the frustration and irritation when I wouldn’t tell him why… that felt like being lost in the darkness of space.

  I understood why girls fawned all over him. And it wasn’t just the pull of him, or the power. He was also ridiculously gorgeous, and the scars that marred his face only managed to make him more attractive. A small one cut his left eyebrow in half. There was another slash just beneath his right eye, and a third and fourth ran along his jawline. Both were the result of brawls with interlopers from other gangs who tried to encroach on Hawthorne in the past year, thinking that because Michael Medici was dead and my dad had gone, the Devils’ League would be ripe for a patch over. They hadn’t bargained on Crowe’s power in their takeover attempts, though, nor were they wise to his determination to keep the Devils independent, his willingness to get down in the mud and fight, and his utter brutality when he did. He could have healed himself after literally crushing the guys who tried to take him out, or he could have had Alex do it. But he’d chosen to let his wounds heal naturally. Alex had joked that it was because Crowe hadn’t been able to stand
looking so perfect all the time, but I had a feeling there was a different reason—the scars were a visual reminder of who he was now, of his responsibility, of what he’d lost.

  Looking at him was reminding me of what I’d lost, too. Or, really, of what I’d never had.

  “Crowe,” Alex said, finally cutting through the obvious tension despite Crowe’s seemingly relaxed smile, “give Jemmie a break.”

  As he turned to his sister, that smile disappeared and he just looked at her in that way of his that could destroy cells at the nuclear level. Alex rolled her eyes.

  Crowe took in a breath. It wasn’t a normal breath. It was the kind of breath that said he was preparing to light us on fire. Despite the alcohol rolling through my veins, I could already smell it. Smoky. Sweet. Deadly.

  “I heard a rumor about you today.” He turned in the booth to face us both, stretching his other arm, the one covered in a sleeve of tattoos, out on the table. His fingers rapped against the wood.

  “A rumor?” Alex parroted, feigning disinterest.

  Crowe scooted in closer, until his chest was practically pressed against my shoulder. Our legs bumped together beneath the table. I rubbed my eyes in an attempt to clear the shimmering threads of amber magic drifting off his skin.

  “Did either of you cast at the mall?” he asked.

  Alex pinched her straw between two fingers and twirled it around and around in her drink. “Like I would be so stupid?”

  Crowe gritted his teeth and turned his gaze on me. “Jemmie?”

  “Uhhh…”

  More than just the table was silent now. The whole barroom was quiet.

  The hair on the nape of my neck stood on end.

  “Twice!” Crowe barked, and I jumped. He clearly already knew the answers to his inquiries.

  “This is bullshit,” Alex started, but Crowe cut her off.