Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(3)

“Hey, you okay?” Alex asked.

I forced my eyes open. “What? Oh. Yeah. Headache.”

“Again?” She lifted the charm from her hand, and the light burned out. Once again, it looked like nothing more than a normal sliver of wood. “Want me to—”

“No,” I said quickly as she started to reach for me, ready to use her own venemon magic to heal. “I’m fine.” There was enough magic in the air already.

“Oh, here we go,” she whispered, peering at Kat.

I followed the line of her gaze with a mixture of dread and giddiness. This was the way of our relationship. Alex always did the dirty work, and I always let her. She had enough power and caused enough trouble that there was almost never pressure on me to use my own magic, for which I was very thankful.

The first to catch a whiff of the curse was the shorter girl at Katrina’s left. Her nose wrinkled and she brought a hand up to cover it. “Ewww,” she said. “What is that smell?”

Kat caught on next, and her mouth turned down at the corners as she tried to wave the smell away. “I don’t know. God, that’s awful.”

The dark-haired girl trailing behind Kat said, “I don’t mean to be a bitch, but I think it’s you.”

“Of course it’s not me, you idiot.” Katrina scowled. “I showered this morning.”

“Oh God, it smells like rotten tuna,” another girl said.

Alex barked out a laugh.

Katrina’s head turned, and her eyes immediately found us hunched in the entrance of the clothing store.

“Shit,” Alex said.

“I told you!” I said.

“Go!” Alex pushed me out the door.

“You haven’t paid for the dress!”

She threw it over the shoulder of the nearest mannequin and gave me another shove. “I’ll come back for it later.”

“Alexandra!” Katrina yelled. “Jemmie! I will kill you!” She stormed toward us, her sleek ponytail whipping behind her.

Shoppers slowed to watch our drama. A cluster of dreck girls from Hawthorne High held up their phones, ready to film if a fight broke out.

“Faster!” Alex gave me another shove.

“Don’t push me!” I said over a shoulder.

Kat was gaining ground on us. “Goddamn it, you two! Undo it!”

“Not a chance!” Alex said.

“Hey! Ladies! Stop right there!” A mall cop stepped into our path, his hands held up like he was trying to soothe a bucking horse. Or, more likely, stop a suspected shoplifter.

People pressed up against the storefronts, throwing protective arms around their children like we were first-rate criminals. Laughter bubbled up my throat.

Alex snapped her fingers, and her magic, sweet and smoky and shimmering with golden flecks, hit my senses in an instant even though, once again, I wasn’t its target. She dodged to the left, yanking me with her as I stumbled. The cop—who was the target—doubled over, his face waxen.

Just as Katrina was running past the cop, he straightened and puked all over her. The gathered onlookers took a collective breath. Katrina froze, vomit dripping down her leg and sloughing from her billowy tank top.

“Time to go,” Alex whispered just as Katrina snapped back to life and let out a demon-like snarl.





Alex and I laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed until we were far away from the mall and Katrina Niklos.

“I definitely need to trade for another of Flynn’s cuts,” Alex said.

She turned her car off Reddman Road and onto a graveled one-lane. The woods hugged the drive that wound back to Sable River, and the little cottage that sat on its shore. We were officially on Medici property now, which made us safer than almost anywhere else.

“Because that has got to be the second-best revenge strike we’ve ever put in motion.”

“I think you mean you,” I corrected. “I get dizzy if I even try to cast like that.”

Alex blew out a breath. “It takes practice, Jemmie,” she said quietly. “Don’t tell me you can’t do it. Remember that time Crowe was chasing after us in the woods and you put up that barrier—?”

“We were eleven. I was scared. It was a reflex.” And I’d gotten so dizzy from the rush of my own magic, plus the intensity of the sight and smell of it so close by, that I tripped and fell on my face a second later. Crowe was after us because he’d discovered us in his room and threatened to pull our lungs out through our nostrils—a threat I actually took seriously. But he bounced off my barrier right after I fell. He landed on his butt, already laughing about the instant karma while I wiped mud from my face on the other side.

“That was one seriously badass reflex, my friend,” Alex replied.

I turned toward the window, thinking of what had happened the very next day, how it had changed my life forever, how it had cemented my decision to avoid using magic whenever and however I could. “It was a fluke.”

“You have greatness under all those layers of denial, Jemmie. Someday we’re going to dig it out.”

Alex’s constant faith in me felt good, like a warm fire on a cold winter’s day. If only it were actually warranted. The magic that ran in my family, the Carmichaels, was protective locant magic. My dad had it in spades. The barrier I’d thrown up that day was so wide and so stubborn that Lori, Crowe and Alex’s mom, had to call Dad in to remove it, and it had convinced him that I would be as powerful as he was… but he was wrong. And so was Alex.