Page 5 of All Out of Flux (Stolen Hearts #3)

5

LEON

I flexed my fingers, curled them into a fist, over and over, struggling to work away the pain. Why this hurt had lingered so much more than the other two dragons, I didn’t know. Why it only stayed in my right arm, I wished I knew, too. At least that meant I could keep that hand closer to the window on the passenger side, away from Max’s eyes.

Why was I still trying to keep these things so secret from him? He knew about both Tiamat and Bakunawa. Maybe it was the awareness that Bahamut was something yet greater, that I’d done something especially naughty. And foolish. Maybe I didn’t want him to know I was in any pain at all. The idea of him feeling sorry for me hurting somehow hurt me, too.

But most of all, I didn’t want him raising those same questions back at me. Had I finally gone too far?

“Oh,” Max muttered. “I definitely think we’ve gone too far.”

A pang twisted in my chest. I clenched my hand into a fist, blinked hard at the blur of city and street whizzing by the windows.

“Sorry?” I asked, feigning innocence as I turned to check his face. “What was that?”

He gripped the steering wheel as he cut a hard left. I gripped the bottom of my seat as the car lunged and obeyed.

Max’s eyes flashed toward me for the briefest second, then went back to focus on the road. “Sorry about that. We were supposed to turn at that intersection and I missed it completely. Did you get everything you needed back at the apartment?”

I nodded, my gaze falling on my hurting hand. This would be a great opportunity to tell him about Bahamut, and yet. “I’ll last more than a few overnights with my fresh overnight bag. What about those, um, errands that you said you were running?”

His hand came off the wheel just quick enough to scratch at the back of his neck, the base of his hairline where the little locks were softest, where they grew out cute and funny if he went too long between haircuts. Cute. And funny. Not ha-ha funny, just his behavior. Something was off.

“Actually, I didn’t get to pick up that ice cream you like.”

I shrugged. “It’s sweet that you thought about that at all, but that’s okay. I can go without for a few hours.”

Max laughed. “Stop it. We’ll pick some up later. Listen, I have to be honest with you. I didn’t actually do a grocery run. I — um, I went and got a head start on our finding job.”

All thoughts of Bahamut went whizzing out the window, which happened to be closed, but never mind that. I smacked him on the shoulder with the back of my hand, a reflex, so light it barely registered to Max and his ridiculous muscles.

“You lied to me? Come on, man. We’re supposed to be a team. The Booty Patrol. Thievin’ Beavers. Swindle Unlimited.”

“None of those names are acceptable in the least. But sorry, Leon. I knew you’d be annoyed, but it was to protect you. This statuette we’re looking for? Best place to start is the city’s magical pawnshops and antiquity stores. Guess who controls, oh, ninety percent of them?”

I gasped. “Gustavo Brillante.” And then I relaxed, latching on to that one thing he’d said before everything else. “You were trying to protect me? Aww, Maximo. That’s so cute. Are you falling head over heels? Are you smitten with me? That’s it. We can be the Smitten Kittens. You know, like cat burglars, but young and cute.”

“Under no circumstances are we — and no! I am not smitten. Just worried. The last Brillante you met tried to drown you. In all fairness, Tío Gustavo is a much more reasonable person than Divina could ever hope to be, but he’s still a Brillante. He’s still an insane criminal.”

“I’ll charm the pants right off of him. Don’t you worry about me.”

Max groaned. “Put the image of a pantsless Tío Gustavo in my head again and I swear I will crash this car.”

His phone, mounted on the dashboard, said something about our destination approaching in a mile or so. Max patted it gratefully, one of those weird and weirdly sweet things he did out of nowhere. Loved those little quirks about him.

“Oh, good. We’re almost there. Vera said we could do the communion whenever, but I’d rather get it over with sooner than later.”

I glanced out the window again, studying our surroundings. “A communion can happen anywhere, right? I mean, cast the circle, say the words? Kind of weird that we need to head to a specific location.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes it helps when you approach an entity at their tether, you know? Someone powerful like Arachne, it’s like she has gateways to her home all over the place. Sometimes it helps to knock on their doors instead of just yelling out into the ether.”

And yet, sometimes, the most powerful of entities just walk right into your apartment to offer you terrifying and annoyingly painful pacts. I still hadn’t figured out why the dragons loved slapping their wet feet all over my apartment in particular.

I took a deep breath, clenched my fist hard enough that a couple of my knuckles popped. How could I hide this Bahamut business from Max after he’d been so earnest with the Gustavo stuff? We needed to be honest with each other about the men in our lives, whether they were evil uncles or dragons from creation myths.

“So since we’re being totally honest with each other,” I started, clearing my throat.

“Uh-oh. What’s this, now? What’s happening?”

Another deep breath, and when I exhaled this time, it came in a sigh. “Another dragon appeared to me today.”

Max whistled. “Well, well. Look at Mr. Popular over here.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you at first, because — well, I don’t know why myself, to be honest. Maybe I’m worried that I’m overdoing it. Is there such a thing as too many dragons?”

“Pretty sure you’d know if you were overdoing it.”

I glanced down at my hand, but said nothing.

“And I told you,” Max continued. “It’s okay. I won’t judge you for taking a different path in magic. For taking what might even be your ideal path. I mean, you’re a witch. A bruho . Communing with spirits is just another part of your toolkit. But communing with dragons? Come on. How badass is that?”

I smiled, adoring the side of his face in the midday sun. Sometimes I wondered if I deserved him. “It was Bahamut this time.”

“Bahamut. Bahamut.” His forehead furrowed. “Nope, not ringing a bell. I’m sure they’re super powerful and badass, though.”

“He,” I corrected. “He appeared as a man along with Tiamat in my apartment. One of the sea serpents from the creation myths. Carries the world on his back, you know the drill.”

“Damn. So, earth magic, maybe?”

“Dunno. Haven’t given Emanation a shot yet. But I figured whatever it was Bahamut could bless me with, it might help us fight the Quartz Spider.”

Max’s face hardened. “Damn straight. Speaking of which — fuck. I missed another turn.”

I laughed. “It’s no big deal. We get to spend another five minutes in here shooting the shit, and I get to grill you about why you didn’t get me three more pints of that peanut butter and chocolate ice cream.”

He repressed a huge, goofy smirk, scratching the end of his nose. “I said I was sorry.”

“Don’t be. Totally joking. So what did you find out about the statuette, anyway?”

“Not much, honestly. We know it’s worn down and mostly featureless, kind of like those old fertility goddess statues you see in museums. But that only makes it harder to pick the one we’re looking for out of a lineup. So I scoped out one of Gustavo’s most popular shops, and guess what? Not a statue in sight.”

I narrowed my eyes, my gaze flitting between the road and his face. “And that’s — a bad thing, is it? I can’t tell with you sometimes.”

“Hard to say, but I would have expected Tío Gustavo to flood the market with replicas by now. If he found out that I was after it specifically? God, I couldn’t even imagine. We’d never find the genuine article. I suppose if Roscoe focused hard enough, he might be able to detect something.”

I shook my head. “I’ve talked to him a couple times about how he does that. It’s a nifty trick, but the way Vera described the statuette to us, its enchantment is too faint to really stand out. Ross is awesome, but he’s not like a magical metal detector.”

“We’ll just have to keep our eyes peeled, track the thing down the old-fashioned way. Two heads are better than one and all that. Oh, look. We’re finally here.”

“And you didn’t even miss the turn. Third time’s the charm.”

Max carefully pulled into a parking spot, pulled on the handbrake, then smushed his entire hand right in my face. I sputtered between his fingers, fighting to slap his hand off, laughing.

We’d arrived at our destination, all right, one of the last places I’d expected. A craft supply store, the kind of place where sweet old grandmas sold bundles of yarn and rolls of washi tape to other sweet old grandmas. The only sign that anything was amiss was actually the sign above the store itself.

“Snitches Get Stitches,” I read out loud. “Geez. You think it’s like a front for a criminal operation? Maybe one of the other great families has its fingers in the old crafting supply pie.”

Max shook his head. “Highly unlikely. If Vera sent us here, that means this place is affiliated with their Mother Spider. This is very likely a modern temple to Arachne.”

Pretty chimes tinkled as we pushed the door open, a blast of balmy air rushing out of the shop. It smelled like sugar, candy, and mints, and other things that grandmas liked. I clenched my fingers tightly over the plastic bag of fortune cookies we’d acquired for the communion, a couple dozen of the things that Arachne liked.

You wouldn’t know immediately from looking, but this place was definitely dedicated to the Mother Spider. Her symbol lined the shelves, hung from the ceiling, on the walls, only disguised as cute things for decorating the home. Elaborate lace doilies, beaded and feathered dreamcatchers, a woven basket. Each contained the shape of a spiderweb.

Snitches Get Stitches was a world apart from the Jade Spider and her cohorts, the job-givers who held court in swanky bars and seedy pubs. But it all made sense. Even in the arcane underground, a place of open magic, it still didn’t hurt to keep a low profile. That was why the spiders could see and hear so much, lurking, watching, and listening.

We stepped up to the solitary person at the counter. I felt a thrill of delight when I saw that it was, in fact, a lovely old lady in charge. In a fluffy pink cardigan, the ruffles of her yellow shirt peeking out through the sleeves, she was the very picture of delight.

“And how can I help you today, dearies?”

I opened my mouth to say something charming and polite, but Max muscled his way to the front.

“We’re here to commune with the Mother Spider.”

The old woman narrowed her eyes, the sweetness fading from her face, replaced by hard suspicion. “You a cop? You gotta tell me if you’re a cop.”

Max blinked. “You mean one of the Masques? Absolutely not.”

She dragged a hand under her nose and sniffed. “Good. We don’t like Masques around here. Too nosy, trying to sniff around for our priceless information.” She beckoned as she led the way to the shop’s back room. I glanced over my shoulder, very much aware that she hadn’t done anything to lock up.

“Umm, is all this stuff going to be okay? Just that someone might walk in and swipe something.”

The old woman gave a short bark of laughter. “Hah. I’d like to see them try. In here. Yes. Right in the middle.”

I held my breath. Max and I stepped into what looked like an eclectic art installation, the kind of thing where you might be invited to actually touch the artwork. Multicolored strands of yarn hung from the ceiling and from the corners, pinned in places, dangling loose in others. A spinner’s web made of every color known to the human eye.

“Now, normally,” the shopkeeper said, “you’d have to perform every step of the communion yourselves. But the circle is cast and the doorway is half open. I only need the offerings. Did you bring them?”

I lifted the bag of fortune cookies. She nodded.

“Good. She likes that place. They make great dim sum, not that the Mother cares much for dumplings.”

Max rotated his hand at the wrist. “Not to be rude, but could we maybe speed this up a little?”

Mr. Efficiency over here getting all impatient. Max could deal with small talk, but he was even more excited to speak to Arachne than I was. This was the closest we’d gotten to finding any real dirt on the Quartz Spider.

Our gracious hostess clearly didn’t feel the same way. Her face had wrinkled into something resembling an unhappy prune.

“Very well. The Mother will see you now.”

She raised her hand at the two of us, but for whatever reason kept her eyes locked on Max and Max alone. Not unusual in and of itself — who could keep their eyes off him, anyway? But then she opened her mouth. I waited for the words to come, but the woman remained silent.

Threads of spider-silk burst from her fingers, wrapping both of us in their embrace, but again, especially Max. The woman’s mouth opened wider and wider. A spider emerged from within her throat, leaping straight toward Max’s face. Then another. And then another.

I screamed. Max screamed. The woman laughed and laughed as the room itself filled with cobwebs and spiders.