Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(58)

He shook his head, covered his eyes with his hand, then he resumed speaking in a distracted voice, as if to himself, “I can’t raise my son around that. What was I thinking? This is happening all over again. I’m a horrible father.”

“Lon!” I said, tears threatening to spill from anger and confusion. “I said I was sorry about the servitor. I wouldn’t put Jupe in danger on purpose, and as far as violence goes, you probably would’ve shot and killed Riley if you’d had a gun.”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter.” He sounded weak and defeated.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I protested, my confidence shattering as I said the words. “She would have killed me or taken me in. She hurt Jupe.”

“You might not have had a choice, but I do. Right now I’m taking my kid to the hospital, and you’re going to stay away from him.” He put his hand on Jupe’s back and tried to push him forward.

“Dad!” Jupe cried. “Cady, I’m not mad, don’t listen to him.” He was still crying a little. I wasn’t sure if it was from pain or shock, but he was trying so hard to be grown up. “I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. It’s not your fault.”

“I said stay out of this, Jupiter!” Lon yelled.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

Lon gave me a blank look then herded Jupe toward the classroom door. When he got there, he paused. “What are you going to do with her now?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. My hands started shaking.

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you gave her a f*cking concussion.”

“Maybe.” My voice barely carried.

“Find your own way home,” he said, laying a protective palm around his son’s neck.

Jupe sobbed, screaming at his father, “I hate you,” as they walked out the door.

23

My basement looked like a mobile field hospital. I didn’t want Riley Cooper to be able to use spells to escape, so I painted four old sheets with sigils that blocked magick and hung them around a small area of my basement that the previous owners had intended to convert into a bathroom. An old toilet and a drain for a shower were as far as they’d gotten.

Adding grand theft auto to my list of crimes that night, I’d managed to get Riley back to my house blindfolded in a hot-wired Ford from the school’s back parking lot; I had to plaster the backseat in old newspapers so she wouldn’t bleed all over it. Once we got home, it took me fifteen minutes and several tries to remember the counterspell that would allow her to breach Lon’s house ward. Then I had to contend with all my other minor wards; every time I tried to get her through the door, a series of irritating warnings ballooned in my head and she started moaning and shaking, but I finally managed a successful cloaking spell.

I found the key to the handcuffs on a small key chain in her pocket. After digging out a length of rusted chain from the shed in my backyard, I shifted her hands to the front of her body and cuffed her wrists to one of four metal support posts that were bolted into the cement floor. Nothing within her reach but the toilet and a musty couch I’d dragged to the metal post. I brought down a satellite radio and switched it on, then left her there and locked the basement door.

It was nearly six in the morning by the time I crawled into bed.

I slept a few hours, woke around noon, then fired up the courage to call Lon. He didn’t answer. I sent him a text and told him that I hoped Jupe was okay, and waited for a response, but it never came. If he was serious about my not seeing Jupe again, then he was serious about my not seeing him either. All the work we’d done was for nothing, and I was back at square one.

Not only was the possibility of helping my parents look like the biggest long shot in the world at this point, but I couldn’t even focus on the futility of it, because Lon’s words were competing for attention: This is your fault. The accusation repeated in my head ad nauseam, along with the blank look he’d given me. My heart felt like it’d been buried under a pile of rocks.

Dazed and drained, I plated some fruit and crackers and carried it down to my kidnapping victim. She was asleep on the couch behind the makeshift antimagick curtains. I woke her.

“Do you want to eat?” I asked.

She stuck out her handcuffed hands and raised both middle fingers.

“Look, I don’t have any problem leaving this food on the floor, but you’re going to drink the water before I leave.”

She initially resisted but gave in without too much prodding. It took her two tries to empty it.

“How old are you?” I asked after she’d finished.

Water ran down her chin. “None of your business.” She threw the empty plastic bottle in my direction.

“Eighteen?” I guessed. “Seventeen?”

“Twenty-one. Where are we? Are we still in La Sirena?”

She didn’t know where I lived. That was good.

“We’re in Fresno,” I lied.

“Fresno? What are we doing here?”

I ignored her. “What were your instructions from Luxe?” She shifted her legs to curl up on the couch, facing away from me. She looked uncomfortable. “Bring you back to San Diego … alive, unfortunately.”

“Why me and not my parents?”

She laughed. “My brother’s hunting your parents in Mexico, don’t worry.”