Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell #3)(15)

I gave him a soft smile. “You’re my favorite person, you know.”

“You’re my favorite person, too.”

Our private code. A normal couple would’ve already exchanged the L-word, but Lon was uncomfortable expressing emotions. Being constantly bombarded with everyone else’s feelings made him apprehensive about wearing his heart on his sleeve. I also wondered if his failed marriage made him guarded. Understandable, if it did. But no way was I saying it first, regardless of how I felt. Besides, this worked just fine for us.

“Light’s changing,” he said, letting his fingers trail over my back as he released his grip on me. “Come on.”

Holding his hand, I matched his stride, ponytail swinging across my shoulders, and stuffed my free hand inside the pocket of my black hoodie. It had an embroidered dragon on the back and the word KOREA curved over it in big block letters—something Jupe and I found in a Morella thrift store a couple weeks back.

The handwritten sign on the market’s door looked similar to the one I’d stuck on my bar’s: CLOSED TEMPORARILY FOR REPAIRS. WILL REOPEN NEXT WEEK. Yet, the lights were on inside, unlike at Tambuku. I rapped on the door until a stooped-over elderly Latino man with a dark green halo peeped from behind a rack of freeze-dried fruit snacks. I waved and smiled.

“We’re closed,” he shouted through the glass. He was dressed in a loose pink panama shirt and khakis. No shoes.

“I’m the owner of Tambuku Tiki Lounge down the street,” I yelled back.

He looked at me as if to say “So?”

“We got robbed last night, too.”

That got his attention. He clicked open a lock and cracked the door, tossing a wary glance over my shoulder at Lon. “You got robbed, you say?”

“Yeah. Around midnight. I was wondering if I could talk to you and compare notes. Maybe it was the same people.”

He glanced up and down the block, then waved us inside and locked the door behind. I winced at the smell. Rotten milk? A large plastic bin on casters was filled with leaking melted gourmet ice cream and boxes of no-cheese gluten-free frozen pizza. A couple of young boys were emptying their freezer display.

“Our electricity was out for too long,” the man explained, waving a grizzled hand toward the boys. “We lost everything perishable.”

“Us, too. My lights aren’t back on yet. I’ve got a guy replacing the fuse box. My name’s Cady, by the way, and this is my boyfriend, Lon.”

“Andrew,” he answered, glancing up at Lon’s strangely gilded halo, then at my silver one—clearly he was curious, but not enough to straight-up ask. That was my general experience, anyway. Many Earthbounds even assumed I was one of them, just . . . different. “They did a number on us, as you can see.” He pointed toward the checkout counter. The entire area looked as if a tornado had ripped through it. The glossy wood countertop was splintered and tilted into an upside-down V. The register was missing, and a big black safe jutted up out of the middle of the destruction.

“Christ,” Lon muttered.

Andrew settled both hands on his hips and sighed dramatically. “My wife and I have owned this store for twenty years. We’ve been robbed at gunpoint twice. Thought we were done with that after the remodel.” He turned to me. “How did yours happen—your robbery? Guns?”

“No guns,” I said.

He gestured to my halo, finally acknowledging it. “You’re the magician who binds Earthbounds.”

I gave him a soft smile. “I am.”

“People talk,” he said by way of explanation, turning his attention to re-stacking a fallen display of all-natural beeswax lip balms. “Tell me about your robbery.”

“Two Earthbound kids. Late teens, maybe. One blond, one dark-headed. Both faces were painted in theater makeup. A reindeer and an elf.”

“A horse and some sort of frog,” he said in agreement, referring to his robbers.

Could’ve been the same get-ups. It was, after all, really bad makeup.

Andrew’s mouth twisted briefly. “Did the blond boy poof! your electricity?”

“Yep. I’ve never seen a knack that powerful. The other boy used telekinesis to lift my till drawer across the room.”

The shop owner nodded slowly. “He tried to lift the damn safe straight up through the counter.”

Thank God we kept Tambuku’s safe in the back office. Those punks might’ve made it out of the bar with a thousand dollars or so, but they missed five grand in the safe. Idiots.

Andrew continued, saying, “He nearly killed one of my girls who was stuck behind the register when he was trying to lift that thing. Thank God she had the sense to crawl away.”

“He slopped paint all over our floor and my partner slipped and broke her collarbones.”

Two thick gray eyebrows shot up. “The pretty Chinese gal?”

I nodded.

He made a sympathetic noise.

“She’ll be okay,” I assured him. “A healer is helping knit her bones back together. She’s at home resting right now.”

“Poor thing. What’s wrong with kids these days? No respect. No caution.” He waved an angry hand, gesticulating wildly. “In my day, we were taught to hide our knacks at all cost. You start flaunting it, you draw attention. No one cares anymore.”