The rest of the week passed peacefully. According to the agreement, Austin was supposed to be out of the house before Saturday. Once Molly received the go-ahead from Nina, she confirmed the meeting with the real estate agent for six o’clock Saturday evening.
The timing was somewhat unusual, but Tanya was amenable, and going back to the house at suppertime gave them the best chance of avoiding curious, nosy neighbors dropping by.
When midafternoon on Saturday came, she reluctantly decided she should go over an hour early. Tanya knew a company that would sell the contents of the house at a flea market for a commission, but Molly wanted to collect photographs of her father and make sure there wasn’t anything else she wanted to keep.
When she pulled into the long, familiar driveway, a sour feeling like heartburn settled at the back of her throat. She parked and studied the scene.
It really was a beautiful house, spacious and well-positioned on a large corner lot. The backyard faced a large park with lots of trees that offered a nice sense of privacy. She hated the sight of it.
When she let herself in the front door, a rotting smell assaulted her.
What the hell? Quickly, she walked through the silent downstairs.
The kitchen was exactly as it had been when she had left the house a few weeks ago. Everything single thing.
The un-iced cake still lay on its plate. Browned wedges of lemons and limes filled serving bowls and dirty drink glasses. Uneaten hors d’oeuvres lay scattered on serving trays. Curling veggies and congealed dip sat on a party tray, and in one side of the sink, a large ceramic pot was filled with the rotting, marinated chicken that had never been cooked.
He hadn’t touched any of it. If anything, he had added to the mess by throwing dirty, food-crusted plates into the other side of the sink.
He could have done nothing, and the cleaning service would have come on Wednesday and taken care of everything. Instead, he must have canceled the service and left the mess for her to face.
“You petty son of a bitch,” she muttered.
Anger clenched her muscles. Moving quickly, she walked through the rest of the house. His office was bare, all the furniture gone.
There were other spots of nastiness. The master suite was a mess. He had left drawers pulled out and hangers strewn on the floor. A sour smell rose from the dirty, unmade bed. In the bathroom, bottles of her shampoo and conditioner were opened and dumped upside down in the sink where the liquids had hardened and congealed.
She jogged downstairs again to check the area where they had hung a collage of family photos.
The wall was empty. Every good photo she’d had of her father. They were all gone.
Furious and hurting, she rushed outside. The garbage was picked up on Thursdays. He might have just thrown the photos away. They might still be in the trash bins in the nook by the side of the garage.
When she reached the big, black bins, she threw back the hinged lids on both the recycling and the garbage bins. They were empty.
A sob tried to bubble up. Wiping at her face with the back of one hand, she bit it back.
She had hung the best photos, but there was still one last chance to find something from her father. Otherwise, she would have to go back to her mother and endure more recriminations and emotional blackmail.
She kept mementos in large plastic tubs in the basement. If Austin’s spite hadn’t driven him to destroy things down there, there were a few photos, things that were too damaged or deemed too goofy to hang on the wall. Slamming the lids down, she jogged back through the house and down the basement stairs.
She had tucked the storage containers high on a shelf underneath the stairs to protect them from potential flooding. As she looked into the shadowed niche, the bins were still in place. Hardly daring to hope, she pulled them out and opened them.
Everything was still neatly packed as she had originally left them. Her high school and college diplomas. Childhood drawings and holiday cards and family snapshots, many of them faded. Some were torn and bent. One was of her father standing by another man at a barbeque. He wore a plaid, short-sleeved shirt and held a martini glass.
Molly couldn’t remember who the other man was. In the photo, both men were laughing. She touched it gently. This would be enough.
After she put the bins in the back of her Jeep, she got to work. When the doorbell sounded a few minutes after six, she had cleared out the rotting food, thrown away everything in the fridge, and the dishwasher was running with a full load while the worst of the crusted dishes soaked in the sink. She had left the back door wide open to air out the smell, and a cool breeze swept through the house.
Wiping off her hands, she went to answer the door.
Tanya Martin was a young, attractive woman, perhaps thirty years old, with improbably red hair, immaculate makeup, and a wide smile. They talked for forty-five minutes and went over the comps Tanya had pulled for house prices in the neighborhood.
Then Molly signed the contract and Tanya took her leave. As Molly closed the front door, she smiled with relief. The house was well maintained, stylishly decorated, and located in a “blue chip” neighborhood that never went out of demand. After the first weekend of showings, they would probably see several offers. Maybe even a bidding war.
If Molly stuck to her intention of only accepting a cash offer, she could be rid of the property within a few weeks. This was going to go quickly.
Alone once more, she turned her attention back to cleaning. By the time she was nearly finished, darkness had fallen.
The last thing to do was change the bed. Quickly, she tore off the bedding and made the bed with a coverlet in a classic faded paisley pattern.
After patting the pillows into place, she turned to confront the pile of dirty bedding she had dumped in the hall. The last thing she wanted was to stick around and do laundry.
Too bad she didn’t know any housework spells. (Yet?)
“Screw it,” she muttered. “I’m done cleaning up after that bastard.”
Gathering the pile into her arms, she carried it downstairs and out the back door to the garbage bins. Letting it fall to the ground, she threw open the trash bin and went down on one knee to gather it up again.
As she did, a pair of familiar shoes and long, jeans-clad legs came into view.
Austin.
She leaped to her feet.
She wasn’t fast enough.
Something hard came down on the back of her head. Pain exploded, and the world disappeared in a gray haze.
She didn’t pass out, not quite. As if from a long distance away, she felt her body collapse where the gravel met grass. Something hard hit her again and again. Maybe a golf club or a baseball bat. She hadn’t known she could feel so much pain.
Coughing, she tried to curl into a fetal position and cover her head with one arm. Austin kicked her in the abdomen. The blow knocked her over. She rolled with it and landed flat on her stomach, working desperately to suck air into her cramped lungs.
Agony stabbed her through the chest. She had no breath. She couldn’t shout or scream for help.
As she fought to get upright, he landed with his full weight on both knees at the small of her back, knocking the air out of her again as he drove her flat.
Gravel ground into her cheek, and red pulsed in her gaze. Something wet ran down the side of her face. Vaguely she felt her fingers scrabble at the rocks and grass.
Somewhere inside she had a new, burgeoning Power just waiting to be deployed, if only she could figure out how to use it.
Funny, she thought. It never occurred to me to practice throwing Power behind my back. I always had to look at whatever I was hitting. Joke’s on me. Ha ha.
Hard fingers tangled in her hair. New pain flared as Austin yanked her head back and whispered in her ear, “You had to take everything, didn’t you? It wasn’t enough to serve me with divorce papers. You had to take the whole goddamn thing. Everything I worked for all these years. All the investments. Did you think I was just going to let it go and walk away, you stupid cunt?”
He knew how much she hated that word. It must have given him a lot of satisfaction to finally call her that.
She coughed, “You know, I kinda did.”
Her scalp was on fire. Everything was on fire. She tried to twist around so she could see him. If she could lay eyes on him, she could hit him, but his knees drilled into her back and kept her pinned in place.
“Maybe I will let it go and walk away,” he whispered. “But first I want that file back. You know the one.”
Oh yeah. No doubt about it. He was so dirty.
She tried to laugh, but her bruised rib cage wouldn’t let her. As she closed her fingers around a handful of gravel, she gasped out a laugh. “You really think I didn’t make a copy? Several copies?”
“We’re going to clear out your email,” he growled, yanking cruelly at her hair. “You’re going to give me back the original and any copies you made, and then I’m going to let you go. It’s as simple as that. All you have to do is cooperate, and this will all be over with.”
All except for Josiah and his investigation.
Ha ha.
“And if I don’t?” Just as she couldn’t hit him with her magic, she couldn’t throw the damn gravel in his face while he had her pinned on her stomach. The angle was wrong.
“If you don’t, I’m going to hurt you a lot more than I have already. Believe it or not, I don’t want to do this.” He grabbed her wrist and shook it. “Drop what’s in your fucking hand or I’ll tear out your fucking hair.”
She opened her hand and let the rocks drop to the ground.
When she was done, he twisted her arm behind her back, and his weight lifted from the base of her spine.
She had no time to feel relief. The world tilted and agony screamed when he used her twisted arm to haul her upright. Staggering, she fought to get her balance and turn so she could face him, but he kept her arm twisted behind her back and hooked an arm around her neck, bending her backward and keeping her off-balance. Keeping her under control.
“We’re going to walk to my car.” His breath touched her cheek, and she caught a whiff of alcohol and garlic. Apparently he had enjoyed a nice meal before he came out to the house to kick the shit out of her. “Then we’ll drive to wherever you’re staying. You’re going to give me everything, and we’ll wipe your email account and your computer, and I’ll leave. We’ll be done, and we’ll never have to see each other again. You understand?”
“Got it,” she croaked.
He frog-marched her through the backyard to the side street that bordered the property. A grinding red agony flared with every step. He had cracked a few of her ribs. As they went, she tried to look around, squinting through a stinging wetness in one eye.
Half the neighboring houses were dark. It was Saturday night, and many people would have gone out. He was abducting her, and there wasn’t anybody around to witness it.
Austin had tucked his BMW unobtrusively in the shadow of a large maple, around the corner from the house. When she saw the shadowed car, something happened to her blurred vision.
The outline of the car faded. She distinctly saw red plastic gasoline containers and coils of rope in the trunk.
Gasoline and rope.
What a shock. He had no intention of letting her go after destroying all the copies of the bank statement and wiping her email.
Well, fair enough. She had no intention of meekly climbing into his car.
It wasn’t hard to pretend to stumble. She went down, biting back a groan as her throat and her twisted arm took the full weight of her body where Austin restrained her.
For a moment she choked at the tight band of his arm around her windpipe while the socket in her shoulder popped. Then with a muffled curse, he released her. She dropped to the ground and rolled onto her back.
He was already moving to restrain her again, kneeling on one of her arms while he leaned hard on one elbow at the base of her throat.
She barely paid attention. The moon cast his features and the bulk of his shoulders in shadow, but she could see him well enough.
This time the lightning did not just flicker at the edges of her gaze. Instead, it filled her vision entirely. Power illuminated her body from within. Tucking in her chin, she focused on his chest and released.
Power blew out of every pore in her skin. When it punched into him point-blank, it lifted him into the air and threw him several feet away. He landed heavily, with an audible thump.
For a moment neither one of them moved.
Get up, she told her body fiercely. Move.
Easier said than done. She rocked onto her side, letting the spike of renewed pain out in a hiss as she dragged first one knee underneath her torso, then the other, balancing her weight on one hand while the arm that Austin had twisted hung uselessly at her side.
Austin groaned from where he had landed. He was stirring too.
She beat him upright, just barely. Fighting to stay on her feet, she waited until he straightened. He stared, his expression full of uncomprehending shock.
“What the fuck was that—”
There was so much lightning she could barely see through it. Her body couldn’t contain it all. It blew out of her, and she hit him again.
This time the blow spun him around. He twisted and fell as hard and gracelessly as he had before.
That gave her the chance to secure her balance. Sucking air, she took her first real breath since he had hit her. Something ground in her chest as her lungs expanded, but the oxygen helped to clear her head.
She swiped at the wetness obscuring her left eye, watching warily as Austin coughed and moaned. Her phone was in the house, resting on the kitchen counter. She couldn’t call for help until she got inside. She couldn’t run to get to it, nor could she run away.
She might be able to hobble. And it seemed like too much damn effort to suck in a deep enough breath to scream for help—if any of her neighbors were around to hear it. Her ribs were giving her hell.
Meanwhile Austin struggled to get up again.
Sometimes you have to go with what you’ve got.
“Earlier I was feeling like there was something lacking from this divorce,” she croaked as she limped toward him. “Some kind of final conversation, a mutual acknowledgment that this is the end.”
As he lifted his head, he gave her a look filled with wide-eyed dread. She hit him again with magic, hard.
She told him, “I’m not some piece of property to get under control. I’m not obligated to spread my legs just because you happen to want sex. So you had to earn every fuck you got out of me. Cry me a river, asshole.”
The Power was so lovely and light. Wielding it was like wrapping her fingers around the sun. She poured it down her arm and held it in one hand, relishing its warm, radiant glow. When she flung it at his face, it struck him with an audible slap that knocked his head back.
“I’m not someone you can cheat on whenever it suits you while you ignore every promise and vow you ever made to me.”
She struck him again. This time she knocked him onto the street, and as he stumbled and went down, he cried out, a high, thin sound that barely caused a ripple in the air. Collapsing, he lay sprawled on the pavement and didn’t move.
Had she killed him? She hadn’t meant to, but she wasn’t sure.
You don’t want to hurt someone by accident. Everything you do, you want to do with intention.
She should probably stop pounding on him, but she still had so much rage left. The Power told her Austin had tucked a cigarette lighter in his front pocket. Carefully, she bent over to fish it out. Then she turned to regard his beloved BMW. He had always taken take care of that car like it was his own baby.
This time the blast that blew out of her was like a ground-to-air missile, taking with it the last of her strength. The car flipped into the air. With a booming crash that splintered the peaceful night, the BMW landed on its roof and rolled three times before it came to a halt. The smell of spilled gasoline wafted over to her.
She told Austin’s immobile form, “I’m not some possession you can destroy just because I’m no longer convenient.”
In the distance, she heard a shout. Then another. People would be arriving on the scene very soon, but she had one final thing left to do.
Limping over to a wet, spreading stain on the pavement, she squatted, flicked the cigarette lighter, and held the small flame to the liquid. It caught, and a blue flame streaked along the path the liquid had taken, back to the car. Within moments, the BMW was engulfed in flames.
Straightening, she walked away. She made it halfway back across the lawn before the car exploded. The concussion slapped her in the back, followed by a warmth like a spread of fiery wings, and boiling heat and light turned the night into day.
She glanced over her shoulder. Austin hadn’t been caught in the explosion, not that she had stopped to calculate one way or another. He lay prone and unmoving while, several yards away, his car burned in the fireball from the ignited gasoline.
She nodded. There was the closure she’d been looking for.
* * *
She made it back to the house, locked the back door, and turned off the lights. Then she scooped up her phone. Leaning against the counter for support, she punched Josiah’s name with a shaking finger. She listened to it ring. And ring.
Well, shit. Her knees wobbled, and she sank to a sitting position on the floor.
Just when she was about to tap Off, he picked up. “Molly.” His voice was cool and guarded. “I’m surprised to hear from you. What do you want?”
“I might have killed Austin,” she croaked. “Oopsie?”
His coolness vaporized. “What happened,” he demanded. “Did he hurt you? Where are you?”
“At the house. His car’s on fire. The neighbors are disturbed.” Leaning her head back against the cabinet, she said tiredly, “I might know only one magic trick, but it turns out I can do a lot with it. I can’t stay here.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Did he hurt you?”
“Yeah.”
“How bad is it?”
“Do doctors still tape broken ribs?”
He swore, and her thoughts scattered like buckshot. If she went to the hospital, they would ask her questions she didn’t want to answer. Meanwhile, when Austin’s car stopped burning, some bright expert would inspect it.
There were no skid marks on the road, no other signs of impact. What about the extra gasoline? Cars carried a lot of gasoline anyway, so maybe that wouldn’t matter, but the BMW was in park, and that was decidedly incongruent with an accident.
It was going to look exactly like what it was—arson.
“I can hear the approaching sirens.” Josiah’s voice brought her from her mental wandering.
How could he hear the sirens from where he was? Belatedly, she realized she could hear approaching sirens too. He must have caught the sound over the phone. Shock was turning her stupid.
“I could come pick you up, but it would take time for me to get there. It would be better if you could leave before they get organized at the scene. Can you drive?”
She sighed. “Only way to know is if I try.”
His voice gentled. “All you need to do is get a quarter mile away and you’ll be out of the activity. Do that, and I’ll meet you wherever you are.”
“Got it.”
“Stay on the line.”
“Can’t,” she grunted. “Need both hands to get up.”
He swore again, a quiet whiplash of profanity. “Call me back as soon you can.”
“I’m not going to call you back right away. I’m going to try to make it back to my apartment.”
“Fine, dammit. Give me the address and I’ll meet you there.”
She told him, hung up, and concentrated on getting upright, finding her purse and keys, and slipping out the back door.
To her left, the edge of the scene was barely visible. She couldn’t see the car itself, which was around the corner, but she could see the glow from the fire along with a few people who had gathered. Their attention was on the unfolding drama.
She didn’t think anybody noticed as she slipped around the garage to where her car was parked in the driveway.
Climbing in made every injury flare with such intense pain she almost passed out. Hunched over and panting shallowly, she started the ignition, reversed, and eased down the street in the opposite direction from the fire.
Once she was stationary and had the Jeep in motion, driving became easier. Her body decided it was a good time to start shaking, so she took her time. When she finally turned into the driveway by her apartment, a dark, powerful, low-slung car waited down the street, lit by a nearby streetlight.
She put the Jeep in park. Her door was yanked open, and Josiah’s big body filled the open space. When he saw her, he hesitated, and his face tightened.
“Okay,” he said carefully while a muscle bunched in his lean jaw. “You’re going to be okay.”
She gave him a thumbs-up. “Piece of cake.”
Something happened to his tight features. She was too preoccupied with her own problems to figure out what it was.
Gently, he cupped long fingers around her hand, upraised thumb and all. “Can you swing your legs out?”
She thought that over. It was a surprisingly complicated maneuver that would mean shifting her ribs and using abdominal muscles. “Sure. Give me a few minutes.”
“You don’t have to,” he told her. “I can move you, but that’s going to hurt too. Are you ready?”
She nodded. He slipped a hard, muscled arm underneath her knees. When he eased her legs out, the broken ribs ground together. A cry tore out of her, and stars flashed against her eyelids.
Then a black hole swallowed her whole, pain and all.