Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(2)

“Good grief. Speak of the devil,” I muttered as the mirror’s reflection revealed a tall, willowy figure walking by just outside the store. “Katrina freaking Niklos.”

Katrina and a few other Rolling Six girls meandered toward the candy shop across the corridor. One of the girls said something and Katrina hung her head back and laughed. Her animalia magic spiraled around her in faint purple wisps that I knew from experience only I could see. That had been the scent I’d detected, too. Sometimes—scratch that, always—the sensitivity I had to magic was a real pain in the ass.

“Whoa. It’s like you have the power of conjuring,” Alex said in my ear.

I jumped. “Christ. What, did you fly out on your broom?”

“I’ve been standing here for a whole minute. You were just too busy staring razor blades at the girl to notice.”

My shoulders sagged. “I don’t care who Crowe sneaks into alleys with.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” She gave me a mischievous look that made my stomach drop. “Should we mess with her?”

“No.”

She slung one of her shopping bags over her shoulder and started digging in her purse. “I only have a handful of cuts on me, but I’m sure we can find something. Or I could just make her puke all over herself.”

Alex’s power was the same as Crowe’s—venemon. Magic of the body. Both brother and sister had it running thick through their veins.

“As much as I would enjoy that,” I said, “I say we don’t. Please.”

Alex dug deeper in her purse. “Why not?”

Because I could already feel the heavy scent of at least three different kinds of magic wafting up out of her bag as she pawed through it, mixing with the lingering hint of Katrina’s magic and the honey and smoke scent of Alex’s. Because my vision was already going hazy with swirling colors.

“Katrina isn’t dumb,” I said, taking a few steps away from Alex in an effort to reach fresh air and sanity. “She’ll figure it out, and then she’ll tattle or something.”

“Who cares what she says?”

“What if she tells Crowe?”

Alex looked up and bit her lower lip, considering. Technically the two gangs were allies, but after Crowe’s last encounter with the Rolling Sixes, the peace was fragile at best. We shouldn’t be stirring up crap with them. But Alex automatically hated all of Crowe’s girlfriends, and I did, too, because… well, there were reasons.

Again with the hypocrisy. I tried another tack. “What if she tells the Syndicate?” I asked. “We can’t use magic in front of drecks!” That was our word for non-kindled people—who were all around us right now.

Alex rolled her eyes. “Really? If Syndicate agents are coming, their focus is going to be on the real action at the festival, not a prank at a mall.”

Now I was starting to feel ill, and not just because of the sight and sound of mixing magic. “Maybe you’re right, but if anyone finds out—”

Alex shrugged as she peered between two mannequins standing in the storefront partially concealing our position. “We’ll use something innocuous. Come on. Look at how smug she is. I bet she’s telling everyone she got into his pants.”

I followed Kat’s progress down the corridor, her dark hair shining like oil in the light. I couldn’t help but picture Crowe’s fingers sliding through it and the thrill it would have given her like it had once given me. “Fine,” I said.

Alex smiled, baring her teeth in a way that was more maniacal than pleased. She dropped to the floor so she could get a better look into the bottom of her purse. “Aha. This will work.” She held up a small plank of red wood, about the size of a stick of gum. Scrawled across the length of it in silver sharpie was SMELL: BAD.

The wood plank was called a cut, or charm, and I could immediately tell that it’d been created by Thom Flynn because of the handwriting, and because it was so unadorned. Most kindled created cuts like they were art, etching them with rune symbols or hand-drawing their labels in heady oil paints. Flynn’s cuts were like Flynn: simple and straightforward.

“Why do you have a bad-smelling charm?” I asked, and got a weird look from a passing guy. I pressed my lips together. We weren’t supposed to talk about magic in front of drecks, either.

“You never know when a stench will be called for,” Alex answered. “I like to be prepared for anything.”

Once activated, cuts were easy to use directly, like for protection or as tools—or weapons. It was a little trickier to use them remotely, on a target that wasn’t close by, but Alex was a pro at by-proxy magic.

“Do you know what the smell is?” I asked, nerves creeping in once again.

“No.” Alex was crouching just inside the entrance to the store. “But knowing Flynn, I’m sure it’s uproariously foul.” She set the charm in the palm of her hand and whispered the short incantation, giving it a target. As she stood up, I shifted behind her and grabbed the bar of a nearby clothing rack, just in case. Even though I wasn’t the magic’s target, I never knew how the scent and sight of it would affect me, and I didn’t want anyone to know it could affect me at all.

The wooden cut glowed green with Flynn’s inlusio magic, and despite the fact that it had been created to give off a bad smell, my nose filled with the scent of autumn leaves and cigar smoke—the smell of the inlusio magic itself. Emerald filaments laced my vision, and I clamped my eyes shut in the hope of clearing them away.