Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(4)

Sure, I might have magic. I just can’t use it.

And in the kindled world, that made me about as useful as a dreck.

The road curved inward and the Medici cottage came into view. It was a slouching, one-story house surrounded by flowers that looked as if they’d been planted deliberately in a neat rainbow of color. They hadn’t. Lori Medici was originally a Stoneking and had the terra magic many in her family were known for. She could walk into a forest and speak to the trees like they were old friends. She’d used her magic to coax the heart of the woods to beat stronger around the cottage.

On either side of the front door, giant hydrangea bushes bloomed all summer long, even in the heart of the hottest months. Wildflowers had sprung up between the hydrangea blooms in purple and yellow and cornflower blue. A twisting rose bush had been creeping for years up a peeling white lattice on the corner of the house, and although it was an antique rose, meant to only bloom once a year, it kept producing buds from spring to fall. On the far side of the house, facing the river, a magnolia tree hung heavy with flowers. Only a dusting of loosed petals lay in the grass.

Alex parked at the head of the driveway. We got out and walked around the house to the river’s edge. The Sable River here was narrower and shallower than it was in town, but it was no less beautiful to look at. Here the sandy bottom glittered in the sunlight. Water trickled over a cluster of rocks, producing that spa-like tranquil sound of gurgling water.

I lay on the ground beneath the magnolia tree, sunlight peeking through in crosshatches. I kicked my shoes off and dug my toes into the grass. Alex lay down beside me, closed her eyes, and breathed out. This was our happy place, the cottage and the woods. In this place, with my best friend at my side, I felt like I belonged.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do this fall?” Alex asked after a moment.

“No.” I closed my eyes, too, and let the sun warm me, my hands splayed across my stomach.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what I want to do.” I didn’t have to see her to know she was now looking at me, frowning.

“Are you considering moving to the city, maybe following in your dad’s footsteps?”

“Are you kidding me?” I fought to keep a sneer of disdain on my face, but I couldn’t hide the tremble of my lower lip that said this conversation was getting to me.

“Aw, Jemmie,” Alex said. Her fingers brushed my arm. “I shouldn’t have mentioned him.”

Dad had left Mom and me the day after Crowe chased us through the woods, and he’d barely been involved in our lives ever since. A founding member of the Devils’ League along with Crowe’s father, Owen Carmichael now worked for the Syndicate, of all things. That agency served as a check on kindled powers, and they’d been down on the Devils ever since a brutal gang war with the Deathstalkers that had ended seven years ago with the violent death of the Stalkers’ president, Henry Delacroix. Just after it happened, my dad left the Devils—and our family—to work for the other side.

And I was pretty sure it was at least partly my fault.

I pulled my arm out of Alex’s reach. “It’s all right,” I said, laughing to hide the catch in my voice. “I just don’t think a job with the Syndicate is in my future.”

People with locant magic often worked for the Syndicate, using their power to protect others and even bind criminals’ magic so it couldn’t be used against innocents. If the Devils’ League wasn’t my chosen family, a job with the Syndicate might have been a natural choice for me… assuming I could actually cast.

So what was I supposed to do now that I’d graduated from high school? Go to a dreck college and pretend I was like them? Marry a dreck who had no clue about the world I’d been raised in? No thanks. But I wasn’t so sure I could stay in Hawthorne, either. It wasn’t exactly easy for me to be here, and living in a less magical place would be a relief in some ways. Except—I would have to leave my mom and Alex, the only two people in this world who really cared about me, with or without magic.

“You know,” Alex said, and the way her voice crept up an octave immediately caught my attention. She sounded uncertain, and Alex was rarely uncertain.

“What?”

“Now that you’re eighteen, you could apply to be a prospect.”

I laughed. “You know I don’t have a bike.”

“And you know there’s one in that shed behind your house.”

The one that had been my dad’s. “If you think going for a patch is so awesome, why don’t you do it?”

“Ha! As if I’d join a club where my brother was the president. No freaking way. Bad enough being part of his family.”

I knew she was mostly joking, but also that she’d never be able to take orders, especially from Crowe. She just wasn’t built for it. I wasn’t sure I was, either. “So you think I should join even though you never would? Hypocrite much? Gunnar told me all about the hazing, by the way. I can’t believe you’d wish that on me.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be a prospect long. Crowe would make sure you moved up to full patch fast—it’s not like anyone would vote against having you. Your locant power is something the Devils haven’t had access to since your dad left.”

In dreck motorcycle clubs, women weren’t always allowed to be members. But with the kindled, parts didn’t matter—power did. “I’m sure they can find someone else if they really want to. Someone useful.”