Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(8)
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.