The Secret Coin (Accessory to Magic Book 3) Page 5

  “Look, guys. I can’t even tell you how much I appreciate you sticking your necks out for me like this. And I won’t ask again. I promise. This is it.”

  Rebecca scoffed and marched across the tiny living room toward the couch, where she flung the bloodstained towels aside before dropping down onto the cushion with a grimace of distaste. The elf never could stand the fact that most of Corpus had chosen to live like regular middle-class humans in their mid-twenties.

  Admittedly, Cedrick still had a college vibe going on with this apartment.

  “If you’re in trouble…” Anthony started.

  “I got it covered. Seriously.” Jessica nodded at him and took a deep breath. Her expanding lungs brought a surprisingly new twinge of pain to her hip wound, and she winced. “I just have to get home.”

  Tucking the gúlmai under one arm, she pulled out her phone again and got ready to order another Uber ride into Golden. She hated Ubers. Just not enough to justify getting her own car.

  “Don’t.” Cedrick waved her phone away. “I’ll take you.”

  “You’ve already done enough, man. I’ll just—”

  “Yeah, you’ll just bleed all over the back of someone else’s car and open up a whole new can of question-worms. Not to mention a big-ass fee for bleeding on the seat. Come on.” He glanced at Rebecca, who got the silent hint and tossed him a wad of the already bloody towels beside her. After another shared glance with Anthony, Cedrick nodded toward the front door of his apartment. “Let’s go.”

  “Thanks.” Jessica tried to smile at Damian, but the unshed tears still wavering in the usually stoic Umbál’s eyes made that nearly impossible. Apparently, even after a year and a half, the guy was still all mush on the inside. When they weren’t on a job.

  Rebecca refused to look at her, and Anthony only met her gaze for a split second before nodding and looking away. “Well, you have our numbers, I guess.”

  “Yeah. Thanks again.” She lifted the bundle of her jacket, but the gesture was as weak as she was as she shuffled toward the front door where Cedrick waited for her.

  What an idiot she was for thinking this could’ve possibly gone any better. No, she hadn’t prepared to be literally stabbed in the back, but that wasn’t the worst part. Honestly, what had she expected to happen after they finished this job for Leandras? That everyone would throw her a party and congratulate her on being only half the witch she’d been when Corpus was alive and kicking?

  Swallowing her guilt, she stepped out into the hall and waited for Cedrick to close the door behind him.

  “So,” he started slowly as they moved down the hall toward the elevators, watching her warily from the corner of his eye. “I know it’s too much sometimes to spill the beans with everyone staring at you like that, but if you need an ear, Jess… I got two right here that still work pretty well.”

  They stopped at the elevators as he punched the call button, and Jessica looked up at one of her very few existing friends. The sincerity in his green eyes made part of her want to tell him to fuck off and that she’d take her chances with an Uber. The other part of her wanted to fall apart and tell him exactly why she hadn’t been herself in Leandras’ apartment—that she’d stripped out half her magic eighteen months ago before her drastically shortened prison sentence to protect herself and everyone else around her from then on out; that she didn’t even know if she could heal the way she used to when she’d been fully herself; that she was in seriously deep shit now, with a dying fae sprawled out in the lobby of the bank she’d been tricked into owning, while what felt like half the magical world was vying to either take the bank from her or pay her enough to let them get their hands on the Gateway into another world it was now her job to protect.

  But if she unloaded all of that on him now, Cedrick’s brain might explode. If she said a word about any of it, she knew without a doubt that he’d force her injured ass right back to his apartment. And her friends would never let her leave.

  Chapter Five

  The elevator doors opened, and Jessica swallowed the relief she’d only briefly felt at the idea of telling Cedrick everything. “Not much to talk about, honestly. But thanks for the offer.”

  They stepped inside the elevator, and it took everything she had not to sag back against the wall in exhaustion. Not much to talk about, sure, but if she didn’t finally pay serious attention to the wide selection of injuries she’d sustained over the last twenty-four hours, she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to make it through the next twenty-four hours. Maybe even the next twelve.

  Cedrick punched the button for the first floor and sighed as the doors closed in front of them. “Does Mel know?”

  She froze. Yes, just the mention of Mel had her on edge again. But what was he talking about? Did Mel know about the extra little heist they’d just pulled as a personal favor to Jessica’s personal favor? Did Mel know that the man who’d commissioned her first real art pieces and kickstarted her career was the same magical whose goons Jessica had now fought twice in what certain circles might have called bloody battles? Did Mel know about the bank? Did Mel know that Jessica had removed the most powerful and destructive parts of her own magic and kept it locked up in a tin box in her underwear drawer, refusing to use it again even though what remained of her magic was sputtering out, unpredictable and undependable, and making it impossible for Jessica to heal like she normally did? Or…something else?

  “Jess.”

  “No, Mel doesn’t know.” She looked up at him and slowly shook her head. “And it stays that way. Mel’s out. For real. She’s changed her life, and I know I dragged the rest of you back into this, but I’m not dragging her in too. So drop it.”

  His frown made her gut churn, especially when he added, “Did she tell you she was out?”

  “Did she tell you she wasn’t?”

  Running a hand through his hair, the changeling who kept his human illusion up more than any other changeling she’d known let out a heavy sigh. “Whatever happened between you two—”

  “Is over, Cedrick.” Jessica’s hands clenched painfully around the hard, sharp edges of Leandras’ gúlmai bundled in her jacket. It was the most grounding thing she could think to do, even when the elevator doors opened and they stepped into the apartment building’s front hallway on the first floor. “And I’m not trying to bring anything back up again, okay?”

  His gaze fell to the glass pendant resting against her chest, which of course was clear and without its usual blue glow when she was inside the bank. For a brief second, his eyebrows rose, then he looked away again, and Jessica perfected her longstanding ability to act like she hadn’t noticed and didn’t care.

  “She could do a hell of a better job on that knife wound than Rebecca, though,” he added. “That’s for damn sure.”

  “That’s not…” She couldn’t help a smirk and a wry, weak chuckle as he held the door open for her. “You’re not wrong. But Mel stays out of it.”

  When she stepped past him and into the frigid night air, she quickly tucked the pendant under the collar of her long-sleeved shirt.

  “I almost called her, you know. You were in pretty bad shape. Like even worse than the Orion job.”

  “Good thing you didn’t. I would’ve ripped your head off.” She tried to grin when he shot her a sidelong glance with its own healthy dose of amusement, but the pain in her hip turned it into more of a pained sneer. “And look. I’m still alive. Crisis averted. This your car?”

  “Yeah.” Cedrick headed around the hood as Jessica reached for the handle of the passenger-side door.

  A wave of dizziness consumed her, and the jacket-wrapped gúlmai thumped against the car door before the rest of her body collapsed against it.

  “Whoa.” Cedrick was at her side again in an instant, the towels under his arm as he gripped her by both shoulders to steady her. “For fuck’s sake, Jess. We’re all just trying to help you.”

  “I know…” She blinked rapidly, pain returning everywhere now. As
if even her own body didn’t want her to return to the bank and finish this stupid promise she’d made to Leandras so he wouldn’t die either. “You guys have done more than enough already.”

  “We can do more—”

  “Nope. You can’t.” Jessica reached for the door handle again, but he beat her to it, his other hand still resting on her shoulder as he opened the door. “I know that makes me sound like an ungrateful asshole, but I just have…a lot going on right now.”

  She shot him a quick glance before lowering herself painstakingly into the passenger seat. Cedrick closed the door and headed around the front of his car, and when he got behind the wheel, he stared at the bundle of bloodstained towels in his lap as if he had no idea how they’d gotten there.

  Why wasn’t he starting the engine?

  “You already took the fall for us once.” Cedrick cleared his throat. “It changed things, yeah. It changed things a lot. But that doesn’t mean any of us don’t still owe you.”

  When he slowly turned his head to meet her gaze, Jessica couldn’t tell if the knot in her stomach was from the pain coursing through her body or the guilt. Which was probably just as strong. And only a pure masochist could feel guilty for taking a five-year prison sentence that saved the rest of them from having to step through the front doors of MJ Penitentiary for any of the long list of things they’d done—either with her or on their own.

  But the fact remained that Jessica hadn’t been able to save all of them by playing the damn martyr after Mickey turned on her. Mickey was still walking around as a free Matahg, wreaking his own havoc wherever he wanted, however he wanted. Corpus was still disbanded, for the most part. And Rufus was still dead.

  The silence in the car mixed with the intensity of Cedrick’s gaze on her made her want to scream. Instead, she looked straight ahead through the windshield and shrugged. “Well, if you did owe me anything, you don’t anymore. Not after tonight. And I’m pretty sure this gray upholstery’s gonna be a rusty brown in a second, so we better use those towels.”

  With another heavy, frustrated sigh, Cedrick stared at her for another ten seconds before shaking out the towels in his lap. She leaned forward as much as she could so he could slip them behind her back, and the guy took surprising care in making sure he didn’t touch her bandaged hip and lower back. Then she sat back again and nodded, reaching up for the seatbelt. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, well, we wouldn’t wanna start the whole process of owing each other all over again, right?”

  He was pissed. She knew it. Cedrick didn’t use that level of sarcasm as anything but a placeholder for yelling his head off in anger. And no, Jessica didn’t want to owe anyone else anything else right now. She already had the terms of one binding to complete, and without these towels behind her, Cedrick’s car would be carrying around enough of her blood for a dozen other bindings.

  She still felt his eyes on her as he waited for her to say something else, but she just couldn’t. If she responded to the sting of his last statement, she didn’t trust herself not to unload everything on the guy. Cedrick didn’t deserve that. None of them did.

  His seatbelt zipped noisily when he jerked it down and jammed the buckle into place. “Where am I taking you?”

  “Golden. Arapahoe and 9th is fine.”

  “Just couldn’t leave the Foothills, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  The engine started, then Cedrick pulled them out of the parking lot and into the otherwise dead and empty streets at the edge of Lakewood.

  “Okay. Where’s your building?” The car rolled slowly down Arapahoe Street, and Cedrick peered up through the windshield at the apartment buildings around them that were much shorter than those farther east toward Denver and downtown. Low, small, single-family houses with only two bedrooms—maybe three, if someone got lucky—dotted the street beside the Mexican takeout place and another gas station.

  “This is fine. Just pull over.”

  “Jess…”

  “I can walk—”

  “No you can’t! You had a knife in your back an hour ago, and you couldn’t even open the goddamn door.”

  Taking a deep breath, she turned to look at him head-on. “I’m getting out here one way or the other, man. Easier for both of us if you just stop the car and let me out.”

  His startled blink formed another knot in her gut. Yeah, they both knew her magic was tapped, and it didn’t matter why. But neither one of them could pretend she couldn’t hurt him if she really wanted to. That surprise and confusion in his eyes looked a lot like he thought she actually would hurt him, and whether or not he believed the threat didn’t matter.

  She was serious. Because she couldn’t risk anyone knowing exactly where she lived and exactly what she’d taken on as her new job in the last three weeks.

  Not to mention the fact that getting any of her friends involved in this crazy-ass business with Winthrop & Dirledge and the Gateway and the factions of insane assholes who wanted to take both from her would only make things that much more complicated. Complicated generally meant worse. A lot worse.

  Gritting his teeth, Cedrick turned the wheel and pulled over at the curb on 9th Street. He jammed the shift gear into park and turned toward her, obviously trying to calm his heavy breathing but not quite succeeding. “You can’t keep this up forever.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Jess, just—”

  “What?” There was way more venom in her voice than she really wanted. Chalk that up to the throbbing, slicing pain in her back and lower hip—and everywhere else for that matter. And to the fact that she knew she’d just changed whatever kind of friendship they’d still had by trying to protect him and everyone else.

  “Just be careful, okay?”

  She didn’t mean to laugh at that, but it came out anyway as a humorless snort.

  “I’m serious. Shit’s been getting…weird around here, if you haven’t noticed.”

  The lump in her throat was impossibly hard to swallow. Forget whether or not Mel knew anything. Did Cedrick? “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

  “I just don’t wanna see you get hurt. I mean, more than a stab wound, you know?”

  “Thanks. I’ll be fine.” Jessica opened the door and fought back a groan when her entire body flared up with pain again against the pressure of opening nothing more than a stupid car door.

  “There’s a lot of talk about what’s been going on the last few weeks,” Cedrick continued, his voice low now and barely more than a whisper. “Right around here, actually. In Golden. You know anything about it?”

  She froze but didn’t turn around to look at him. Yeah, this could’ve been a trap—if it had been anyone else asking her. But this was Cedrick. Just another concerned magical from her past who just so happened to have heard something about the bank and maybe even the Gateway. Just like Mel. Just like everyone else in the whole damn state of Colorado and probably beyond.

  “Nope.” She shoved the car door open all the way and struggled to her feet with Leandras’ glowing magic-box tucked under her arm. “But if I see anything weird, I’ll give you a call.”

  Cedrick snorted. “No you won’t. Not about that. But if you ever need a drinking buddy…”

  Straightening her back as she stood was a hell of an exercise in self-control. She steadied herself against the passenger-side door and dipped her head to meet his gaze, wrinkling her nose. “Yeah, I quit drinking in prison. Screws with my chakras and shit.”

  He chuckled, but it was dampened by concern as he looked her up and down. “Or whatever. Don’t wait another year and a half to check in, huh?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the ride.” Jessica’s back and chest screamed at her when she shut the door. Then she stepped up onto the sidewalk and headed southwest along 9th.

  No way would Cedrick just drive away and leave her out here without knowing she made it home. Except she wouldn’t let him see where home really was these days. So she shuffled down the sidewalk toward the three apartm
ent buildings arranged in a square-shaped U at the end of the block, away from Winthrop & Dirledge.

  Hopefully, Leandras could wait a little longer for his magic. If he’d even managed to wait this long and wasn’t dead already, sprawled lifelessly across the ratty old armchair in the lobby.

  When she stepped into the parking lot of the apartment complex, refusing to turn back and look at Cedrick—because it would only make the pain worse and because she really couldn’t stand to lie to his face one more time—the sound of his tires crunching across bits of sand and gravel followed her.

  Good. Now he thought he knew where she lived. Small bit of luck that he hadn’t insisted on walking her to her front door in a building she’d never entered before in her life.

  When his beat-up car turned the corner again on Arapahoe and disappeared, Jessica staggered back out of the parking lot and headed north again toward the corner of 8th Street and Cheyenne. She had a dying fae and a severely on-edge sentient bank to get home to.

  By the time she turned onto 8th, she was shivering in the biting cold. Her jacket wouldn’t have done much to ward off the sting of late-November air in the middle of the night anyway. Despite the tremors wracking her body, though, her chest still felt warm. Blazing-hot, even.

  If it was the magical burn from that idiot of an orc who’d tried to take her in a drunken alley fight, then yeah. She’d also be walking right into a chorus of I-told-you-so’s from Winthrop & Dirledge itself. The bank had better have some insight into how the hell she was supposed to recover from that one.

  She really didn’t think she’d be able to handle the rest of it on her own.

  The blue glow of the pendant tucked beneath her shirt flared to life when she crossed the street onto the block where Winthrop & Dirledge Security Banking had existed for who knew how long. Great. She was back in range, at least. And the bank was still alive, or functioning, or whatever it wanted to call itself.

  Unresponsive to her own commands to pull itself together, Jessica’s body sagged against the front door of the bank and the frosted-glass windows with a thump. Her legs were about to give out at any second—or maybe they were, and this was just the beginning of the achingly slow slither down to the floor. Pushing herself to move through the pain and exhaustion, she fumbled to tuck the wrapped gúlmai’s suddenly unbearable weight under one arm so she could fish around in her back pocket for the keys.