“THAT’S A Land Rover.” Toby stood in the nearly empty garage, blinking. “My, aren’t we posh.”
“LR3,” Darius grunted as he shoved bags in the back.
“QF7.”
Darius slammed the hatch, probably harder than he needed to. The black eye patch with a blond eyebrow raised over it somehow managed both piratical and distinguished. “What?”
“Oh. I thought we were spouting out random letter/number combos.”
The gusty sigh could’ve been the end of Darius’s patience or exasperated amusement. Toby hoped for the second.
“Not… a Range Rover.” Darius shooed him toward the passenger side. “Less pricey.”
Toby peered into the cabin. “Still looks pretty cushy. Older model, yeah, doesn’t have the kind of display every car has now, but still looks like a spaceship cockpit. Or at least airplane. Why do they call it a cockpit, anyway? I mean, you can’t steer with your dick. Though I guess if you—”
A sharp throat-clearing cut him off. Darius had moved over to the driver’s side door and regarded him over the roof of the vehicle. “Scared?”
“Maybe a little.” Toby fidgeted with his backpack strap. “Yeah.”
“Of me?”
Was there a hint of sorrow in the question? “Hell no.” Toby let a smile creep in. “You’re just a great big teddy bear.” Griffin. Teddy griffin.
The snort at least was free of emotional subtext.
“Look, I trust you.”
“Not much….” Darius grimaced, apparently fighting for a word. “Choice.”
“You don’t say much, but you don’t bullshit me either. You took me in when you didn’t have to. You’re trying to help, even though I can see parts of you want to run screaming. If I haven’t said thank you yet, thanks. Even if none of this works and I go up in a big magic mushroom cloud. I’m grateful you want to try.” The conversation was moving into territory that sometimes made Darius stomp off, so Toby flashed a grin. “Did we bring junk food?”
That bright blue eye gave a slow blink. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? Aw, man. You’re killing me here.”
One corner of Darius’s mouth twitched. Score! Almost smile! “If you behave.”
Toby let out a dramatic gasp before he laughed and climbed into the car… truck… off-road thingy. He had the feeling Darius had bought it years ago for fieldwork when he was still geology professoring. A few wriggles in his seat confirmed his initial assessment, though. Might’ve been a work vehicle, but it was still cushy and comfy.
He hadn’t been bullshitting Darius either, nor did he intend to. Maybe his new teacher’s methods were dangerous like the guild said, and maybe Darius was crazy like the guild implied, but he was trying to do something to save Toby. Sure, Toby might still die before he got his magic under control, but it was better than having the rest of his life taken from him. Yes, he trusted Darius, to protect him and to know what to do next.
As far as the scared part went? Yeah, he was scared. Even though he felt better than he had in weeks, he was a ticking wild magic explosive. Any moment might be the final number on a countdown clock he couldn’t see.
That could’ve been paralyzing if he thought about it too much, and if he’d been alone. He wasn’t. The mage beside him was badly damaged, but in watching him struggle out of his own personal murk, battling demons Toby couldn’t begin to visualize, he’d seen something of the fierce heart burning under the scars. Yes, he trusted Darius, and not just for his expertise. He trusted Darius to be a decent person, to do the right thing.
It wasn’t exactly friendship, but it was a start. Or something. Where was his brain going with that thought? A sudden weary wave compressed his spine as the garage door went up and uneven light filtered in from a cloud-swept sky. So tired….
Toby jerked when something landed on his lap. “Oreos! Cool, thanks!”
A normal grunt response, then Darius got out of the car, which made no sense since the garage door opener was in the car. Curious, but not so curious that he didn’t open the package of cookies and snag a couple, he kept an eye on Darius as the big man used the outside keypad to close the garage and lifted a bucket of something reddish.
Darius held a palm over the bucket. When he raised his hand, the red substance followed and filled in the seam between door and garage. It mimicked his movements up, across, and down to complete the fill until the garage door had an unbroken seam of whatever it was.
With the bucket left near the front stoop, Darius climbed back into the driver’s seat and eased the Land Rover down the driveway.
“So, uh, what was that?”
“Clay.”
Toby twisted in his seat and spotted an identical red seam around the front door. “To seal the house? But you didn’t do the windows? Is it to keep someone from breaking in?”
“No. Yes. No.”
“Okay, my fault for the multiple questions, but you can do better than that.”
Darius scrunched his nose as they reached the end of the drive and turned onto the windy back road that led down the hill. “Warning me. If someone tries.” He tossed the hair out of his eyes and cleared his throat, fighting for words. “Magic. Not magic.”
“So the clay tells you if someone tried to get in. Or did get in. And the windows?”
“Bottom edges. First floor.”
“Got it, got it. Missed you doing all that.”
The surviving eye, on Toby’s side, crinkled at the corners. “Busy packing.”
A heap of clothing had been left on Toby’s bed that morning with instructions to “sort and pack.” Since he only had the clothes he’d arrived in, now laundered, and a couple of borrowed sets, the instructions had obviously been to pick extra clothes that would stay on his bony body. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
All the way up Route 52 to Route 1, Toby managed to leave Darius in peace until a stray thought slammed into him. “Wait. How long are we gonna be gone? What about your fish? Your birds? Your garden?”
Darius reached over and patted his arm. “Under control.”
“Really?” Toby pulled out his hardest side-eye. “I don’t think the koi can feed themselves by magic.”
“Emailed someone.” Wait, was that a snicker? “They’ve done it… before.”
“Oh, duh. Of course you’ve had someone come out to take care of stuff when you’ve had to go away before.”
The crinkling vanished abruptly from around Darius’s eye socket, his voice flat and raspy as he said, “Then too.”
Stupid, stupid. We were doing so well. Impossible to miss the subtext there. Darius had needed to arrange for someone to take care of things in the garden when he’d been unable to, and who knew what those times had been? How long had it taken to recover physically from the accident that took his eye? How often had he gone through depressive episodes since then that kept him from doing things?
Wordlessly, Toby offered up the Oreo package, pleasantly surprised when Darius accepted one.
DUNCANNON’S MAIN drag appeared to be Market Street, only a couple blocks over from the river. Of course it was, since the major thoroughfare in every small town on the East Coast was either Market or Main Street. Maybe that was true throughout the country—Toby had no idea.
They drove past the usual mix of little stores, pizza shops, and hair salons, past duplexes and semidetached homes in a variety of colors and levels of upkeep. There might have been a train station, or a building that had been a train station, off to the right near the river. There definitely was an old, probably historic hotel, the Doyle Hotel, with a sign: Welcome Hikers!
“What’s that about?”
Darius, who had been silent for the last hour and a half of the two-hour drive, managed an interrogatory grunt.
“The hikers. The sign about welcoming hikers.”
“Appalachian Trail.”
Toby frowned. He thought he understood what the Appalachian Trail was. Sort of. “It goes through town?”
“Nearby.”
“Is that where we’re going? Somewhere on the trail? Out in the woods with the bugs and snakes?” Toby thumped his head against the window. “I hate mosquitoes.”
The sound from Darius might have been a snort or an aborted laugh. “Too early.”
“Too early for what?”
“Mosquitoes.”
The mixed commercial and residential district gave way to more widely spaced houses on the other side of town, and Darius took a sharp right onto a road that looked more like an alley to Toby, though it still had a name on the map. Here they pulled up in front of a neat two-story house with bushes that were just beginning to flower pink and white on either side of the door. The lace curtains in the front windows and the pastel bunny wreath threw it over the wall from “tidy” to “cute.”
“You have a great-aunt here or something?” Toby waited until Darius made definite moves to leave the car before he followed suit.
“Friend.” A muttered I hope might have followed, but Toby couldn’t be sure.
The door opened before they’d reached the second step up onto the porch, and a figure filled the doorway, though filled was kind of an overstatement. Tall and willowy, he might not have been able to fill a poster tube.
“Darius?” The man reached out a hand, then let it drop. “Is it you?”
Beside Toby, Darius nodded. “Arden.”
“They wouldn’t tell me….” Arden’s voice cracked. “Anything. I called. And called. I thought…. Dammit, Darius, you let me think you’d died.”
Toby stayed where he was while Darius took another step forward. Was this guy an old boyfriend? Lover? Colleague? Cousin? Gah, this is awkward. Toby hitched his backpack up and retreated another step as they stared at each other.
“Sort of… did,” Darius whispered, and at that Arden stalked forward, head leading, graceful and strange in his movements, like a wading heron.
He took Darius’s head between his hands, eyes roaming over the eye patch and the more visible damage. Then he wrapped his arms around Darius with a ragged sob. “You’re a pretty solid ghost.”
It took two whole breaths before Darius unstiffened and returned the hug. “I’m…. Good to see you.”
“Gods.” Arden stepped back, swiping at his eyes. “I’m shaking. Come in. Please. Both of you. No need to let the neighbors watch me go to pieces.”
Toby hesitated since it still felt like he was intruding here. Waiting out on the front steps after an invitation inside would’ve been rude, though. Arden had an arm around Darius as they turned to go in. Grumbling about noncommunicative teachers, Toby trudged after them.
The little vestibule where Toby toed off his shoes in imitation of their host let out into…. Well, into one of the strangest hallways he’d ever seen. The old cliché was organized chaos, but this went far beyond. It was strictly regimented chaos, and Toby knew that made no sense even as he thought it.
A wall-mounted shelf on his immediate left held a collection of thimbles, but not the twee little ceramic collectibles with painted scenes other people collected. No, these were practical thimbles in every possible color, arranged by material and size. Cabinets with dozens of little plastic pullout drawers—the kind usually found in a garages or woodshops—lined both sides of the hallway. They probably had a name. Toby couldn’t recall what. A small regiment of knickknacks sat atop each cabinet, one category to each, such as cats on one or windmills on another. Some of the cabinets had wheels, some didn’t, but each one had a neat printed label, and each little drawer also had a perfectly affixed, straight, and centered label.
Holy mother of perfectionists.
He couldn’t stop to read all the labels as he hurried to catch up to Darius, but he definitely caught one on a cabinet that read beads and another designated washers. They passed two closed doors and one that led into an overstuffed parlor before the hallway dumped them out in the riotous kitchen. Again, riotous was both an overstatement and an understatement for the gleefully excessive collection of stuff lassoed and hogtied into structured order. In any other house, Toby would’ve concluded that Arden lived with his grandmother or a fussy great-aunt, but something about the way Arden moved through it made Toby certain this was his domain and his ruling of it.
Arden had settled Darius in a chair at the surprisingly clear kitchen table and was bustling around the stove and sink, apparently putting tea on. Because of course he was.
A hand suddenly blocked Toby’s move to the table. “Arden MacEvoy, Life/Chalcogen Mage, exiled.” The uncertain smile slipped a hair when Toby shook his hand. “You’re unplaceable.”
“Toby Jones. How did you—?”
Arden’s free hand fluttered. “Life mages feel stuff like that. Darius, are you teaching still? After everything?”
“No.” Darius had hunched in on himself, hair hanging in his face in a return to the Darius that Toby had first spotted on his front step. “Yes.”
A frown furrowing a deep V in Arden’s forehead, his gaze snapped between them. “What is this? Darius, what’s happened?”
The cords in Darius’s neck strained, and Toby could feel the words stuck in his throat. Not my place to speak for him. It’s not. But watching him struggle set one sharp needle after another into Toby’s heart. “He’s not supposed to be teaching, okay? They kicked him out after what happened, and I don’t really even know what happened, except it was wild magic and it was bad and Darius almost died, that’s what they said. But it’s not like they helped him, he needed help and they kicked him to the curb and told him not to teach anyone, and I guess he promised he wouldn’t, but then I showed up at his house and I was dying and he said he would even though they told him not to.”
Pale eyebrows vanishing under a ginger hairline, Arden cocked his head. “You’re speaking for Darius now?”
“He….” Toby felt the flush all the way down his chest as he glanced at Darius for some hint of… something. Anger. Approval. But his teacher was staring at the duckies on the vinyl tablecloth. “It’s hard for him now. Speaking. He’s been getting… better.”
The last word trailed off as Arden stalked to Darius and dropped to his knees beside the chair. “Why, Dar? Why didn’t you let me know? You could’ve emailed. Texted. If you needed help. You did need help. I would’ve come.”
“I know,” Darius whispered.
Arden shook him by the arm, not as gently as Toby would’ve liked. “Then why?”
“Kara… died.” Darius had wrapped his arms around his ribs and started rocking. “Too much. And she couldn’t….”
“I know she died. The guild didn’t keep that secret. But that doesn’t exp—”
“I killed her!”
In such a small space, those words shouldn’t have echoed, but in the silence that followed, they reverberated endlessly. Toby wanted to ask what he meant, because it was Darius and there had to be more to it, but the anguished roar had frozen him in place. He could only watch in helpless ineptitude as Arden gathered Darius into his arms, helped him stand, and led him away.
He hadn’t moved, pack still on his shoulder, rooted to the kitchen tiles, when Arden returned.
“I hope you don’t take that at face value.” Arden flicked the stove off as the kettle began to whistle and poured the steaming water. “There’s no need to be frightened. Of him.”
“I’m not.” Toby cringed at the note of childish defiance. “Where is he?”
“Back in the guestroom, resting. He’s not well.”
“No shit.” Dammit, where did all this rude come from?
Arden handed him a mug of tea and pointed to the table, the gesture too much like a Darius direction to ease the lump in Toby’s throat. It got his feet moving, though. He settled uneasily with his backpack in his lap and the mug clutched in a death grip.
“Park the attitude, magpie. I’m not the enemy.” Arden took the opposite chair, long legs stretched out under the table. “When did you last do a web?”
“What?” Toby jerked when a foot tapped his leg.
“Web. I know at least that much about how Dar teaches. The web exercises were an early innovation.”
“Oh.” Resenting someone for knowing Darius longer was stupid, and where the hell was that coming from? “Last night before dinner.”
Arden gave one definite nod and rose, all limbs and sharp movements. Scrap paper from a heaping pile in one drawer and pens in various colors from another joined the mugs on the table. “Draw three webs—any symbols or illustrations you like—while I make lunch. Looks like you need food as much as you do channeling.”
The tone was irritable and weary, further setting Toby on edge. But he didn’t feel like he had any room to argue as a guest in a stranger’s house. He wanted to go check on Darius, wondering if maybe he shouldn’t have been alone. Instead, he pulled a piece of paper toward him and started drawing.