My grunt of agreement went unheard as I continued to scan the horde.

  “Don’t fret,” Grimm continued to my turned back. “They aren’t replacements. Donovan told me you were quite distraught thinking Ripley might take your spot.” He chuckled. “You’re not that disposable, Fitch.”

  Avery finished necking with the chicken fight guy and stopped in front of me on his way to his seat at the gang’s table.

  “Hey, bitch,” he greeted, conjuring a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and pressing them into my hand. “Welcome back, etcetera.”

  Sighing relief, I tore through the plastic wrap into the smokes and fired one up in record time.

  “Grab a drink, then come on back,” Avery said. “Gonna be an interesting night. Grimm’s really dredging the bottom of the barrel with these ex-cons if you ask me.” He looked me over with a sort of dawning realization, then shrugged. “No offense.”

  He moved away to sit beside Vinton, and I faced the throng of Hex hopefuls once more. Dancing, drinking, and grinding on each other, it wasn’t a bad party. I just wasn’t in the mood. Alcohol would fix that. I could change my entire personality with the right combination of hard liquors.

  Ducking into the mob, I wove a path to the bar where Nash was multitasking with a shaker in each hand. When I managed to attract his attention, I gave my order, then leaned with my back against the cool, copper counter.

  I wasn’t the last to arrive. Stragglers came through the entry in waves, packing the room to bursting. Whatever Grimm said to get them here must have been lucrative, or maybe they felt they owed the gang some debt for busting them out of jail.

  I thought I might find Clyde in the mix, an easy mark since he would have been half again as tall as anyone here and twice as broad. While searching for him, I spotted someone else. Make that three someones.

  Across the throng of strangers, Jaxon Rhodes, Jette Black, and York Tompkins passed through the entry.

  My drink order forgotten and cigarette snuffed out, I shoved away from the bar to make a beeline for the new arrivals.

  It was hard to believe Jax could be even skeevier in street clothes, though the eyepatch taped across his face made me smirk. York must have taken fashion classes from my lawyer, buttoned up in a blue velvet suit with his hair perfectly coiffed. Jette looked damn near edible in a black patent leather minidress I would have peeled off her, given the chance. Too bad she had shitty taste in friends.

  I reached them in moments, making myself into a wall between them and the rest of the room.

  “No fucking way.” I stabbed a finger back the way they’d come. “Get out.”

  Jax pushed close, his dark hair stringy and halitosis worse than ever. “Long time no see, jailbird,” he hissed.

  God, he stunk. Like pavement-baked roadkill.

  I muscled through revulsion and stayed within inches of him, my hands twitching with magic begging to be unleashed.

  “Turn the fuck around,” I growled. “You’re not welcome here.”

  He didn’t back down, didn’t even blink. “That so?” he asked. “Well, Grimm said we are welcome. And, since you’re just one of his peons, we don’t have to listen to you.”

  Jette snickered. Gluttons for punishment, all of them and, without antimagic like a boulder on my shoulders, I had plenty to give.

  “You wanna cut the shit and take this outside?” My eyes angled toward York and Jette. “I’ll even let you bring your fan club.”

  Jax huffed a breathy laugh. “Careful, Marionette. You don’t want to dirty that very clean slate of yours.”

  A shrill whistle from the opposite end of the room pricked my ears. I knew without looking that it was Grimm calling the meeting to order. Reluctant as I was to answer his summons, ignoring it would only delay the inevitable.

  “Save the last dance, won’t you?” I told Jax. “I’ll be here all night.”

  27

  Application Denied

  Passing by the bar, I found my drink waiting on the counter—old reliable whiskey sour.

  I returned to the table where the rest of the gang had congregated. Sipping greedily on my drink, I slid into the open seat next to Ripley and his sucker fish of a girlfriend. Luckily, they were too absorbed in each other to pay me any mind.

  Grimm’s whistle had drawn more than just me. A line began to form in front of us, cutting through the middle of the room while the party raged on either side of it. Clearly, others had a better understanding of tonight’s agenda than I did because the line leader launched into his sales pitch without so much as a word of welcome.

  “Name’s Adler Oakley—”

  “Pass,” Avery cut in.

  Grimm shot him a look. “Your reasoning, Mister Hale?”

  “His name sounds too much like mine. It’s confusing.”

  “Adler doesn’t sound like Avery,” Donovan said, his brow furrowed.

  Avery puffed on his pipe. “No A names.”

  Grimm cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, I will consider your opinions, but perhaps we should base our decisions on what the candidates bring to the table magically?” He turned to the potential recruit. “What powers do you possess, Mister Oakley?”

  The man reached into his pocket to produce a stack of folded paper animals. When he tossed them onto the table, the creatures sprung to life, darting across the surface or taking to the air. The display was simultaneously charming and incredibly lame.

  “Papermancy!” Adler declared, swinging his arms wide in a grand gesture.

  “You made that up,” I muttered, causing Ripley to snort beside me.

  An origami turtle waddled its way over to the zombie, and she peeled herself off of Ripley to catch it in her hands.

  “Yeah, I’m sticking with pass,” Avery said.

  Donovan nodded in agreement. “Pass.”

  With a defeated huff, Adler stomped off. The paper turtle fell over, limp, in the zombie girl’s hands. She let out a coo of disappointment and jostled it.

  “I can do that, too, you know,” I whispered to her.

  She and Ripley both looked at me, a startling combination with his bicolored eyes and her red ones smudged with streaky black makeup.

  It took only a niggle of mental effort to walk the turtle past the girl’s wrist and up her forearm while she giggled with delight. I sipped my drink, smiling around the straw. For a flesh-eating undead, she didn’t seem so bad.

  As the origami animal marched back down the girl’s arm, I caught Ripley staring at me, unnervingly focused.

  “What?” I asked him, breaking concentration to let the turtle topple over.

  “Nothing, mate.” He shook his head and faced forward once more, waiting for the next person in line.

  A haggard woman hobbled up, looking like a storybook swamp witch, hunchback and all.

  “I am the crone,” she rasped, fluttering her tattered robe.

  Donovan leaned around Ripley to whisper to me, “Isn’t that the homeless lady who lives in the alley off Main?”

  A mouthful of whiskey sour got caught in my laugh. I sputtered into my glass, swallowing then wiping my arm across my face.

  At the other end of the table, Vinton scowled. I flipped him the bird and stood. “How about a round? We can take a drink every time we think this whole thing was a terrible idea.”

  “Sit down, Fitch,” Grimm said in a way only a man desperately clinging to control could.

  I sat, but not before signaling Pippa and ordering a replacement cocktail.

  After the crone came a pair of towheaded twins I recognized before their introduction. Ethan and Ezrah Everett, Southern transplants who’d made a run for gang membership and been denied more than once. Terramancer and aeromancer, respectively.

  They proved worth hearing out, at least, because Ethan Everett’s opening line was both the best and worst thing I’d heard yet.

  “You weren’t impressed with paper?” he asked. “How do you feel about rock?”

  He punched the ground, rather toward the ground, sending out a shockwave that ripped a crevice in the floor. It split, then widened between his feet, causing the room to tremble around us.

  “Enough!” Grimm shouted.

  Ethan stopped with his chest heaving and beamed a big, dumb grin while those in line behind him dodged the spreading crack.

  “Imbecile.” Avery scowled. “Are you trying to bring the building down on top of us?” Both twins went wide-eyed and abashed as Avery concluded, “Try again next season, Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

  “Avery,” Grimm rumbled, his tone a warning. His stormy expression cleared as he looked at the twins. “I’ve long admired your talents. You are both welcome to join us.”

  I was kept quiet by the arrival of a fresh whiskey sour as the Everett twins high-fived, then cleared the path for the next initiate.

  Another couple, this time a woman and man, stood before the table. The woman pulled a penny whistle out of the sleeve of her shirt and began playing. She was only a few notes in before the man joined in a warbling song. It was enough to make me forgo the straw and tip back my drink for a guzzle instead.

  “Bloody hell,” Ripley groaned.

  “This is bullshit.” Donovan shoved back from the table to stand.

  The musical couple fell silent, staring along with the rest of us as Donovan seethed.

  “I’ve been waiting, and working, and doing everything, and now I have to sit here while these people get invited into the gang for nothing?” He aimed his ire directly at Grimm, who looked stunned.

  “Relax, Donnie. It’s no big deal,” I said in a low voice.

  My brother rounded on me with his fists balled. “I know it’s no big deal to you, Fitch. You made that totally clear. But I deserve better than this. It’s not my fault about Thatcher—”

  A snap of my fingers pinned his lips shut before he could say another word. His nostrils flared, and his face burned red as he poised to either storm out or throw himself at me. After a tense moment, he turned away, walking quickly through the crowd and out of sight.

  I thought to follow him, but nothing I could say would help the situation. He knew where I stood on the matter, and I wasn’t willing to coddle him by lying about it.

  “You know what? He’s right,” I said, standing.

  In my peripheral, Grimm cupped his face in his hands. Bet he was wishing he had a drink about now. It was his turn to toast this disaster.

  “This is bullshit,” I continued. “We throw lame parties. The birthday party sucked and this sucks. It’s like a fucking job fair.” I swung an arm toward the dozens waiting to impress us.

  “People kill for this shit.” Flashing the Bloody Hex tattoo emphasized my point. “Let’s at least fight for it.”

  “Fitch,” Grimm called over. “I understand you’ve had a trying week, but now is not the time…”

  Climbing first onto my chair, I then stepped onto the tabletop to address the crowd. Besides the low bass from the thrumming music, it was the closest to quiet the place had been all night.

  The musical couple lingered, their eyes ping-ponging between Grimm and me.

  “If any one of you manages to lay a hand on me, you’re in the gang,” I announced to the sea of wide-eyed stares. “How’s that sound?”

  Grimm rose with a shout. “My apologies, ladies and gentlemen. I’m afraid Mister Farrow has had a bit too much to drink.” His voice dropped to a gritty whisper as he told me, “Get down from there. You’re making an ass of yourself.” He leaned forward to grab my ankle, but I kicked him away.

  “Don’t be shy,” I continued while shouldering out of my suit coat. “I’ll take you one, two, or three at a time.”

  Avery cheered from his seat. “Fuck yeah! Tell ‘em how you like it.”

  From this vantage point, I could see Jax and his hangers-on lined against the far wall. I aimed a finger at them. “Why don’t you get us kicked off, tough guy? Or did you only want to fight me when I couldn’t fight back?”

  Jax’s single yellow eye met mine, narrowed into a slit. His body gave a shiver before it melted into a long, low form that disappeared in the tangle of bodies and legs. From his place, a massive black cat sprung forth, bounding across tabletops in a charge toward me.

  Delighted as I was by the challenge, his path was too easy to track. There was only one way forward and one table left between him and me. Sending out mental anchors, I hooked under the tabletop and waited. When Jax’s front paws landed, I lifted the table and flipped it backward, forming a wall he slammed into at full speed.

  The knock of the panther’s body colliding made me grin. He hit the floor with a heavy thump. Down for the count.

  “Who’s next?” I asked the crowd. “The pussycat gave it a shot. Surely one of you can do better.”

  The horde began a slow divide, either moving toward the exit or pushing closer.

  A few onlookers took advantage of the icebreaker and decided to make a go for it. One woman grabbed a chair and swung it toward my legs. A clap crushed it in midair, causing it to burst into a spray of harmless wooden shards.

  Two men clambered onto the table. The first dove belly-down and looked up in time to take my shoe to his face. The second made faster progress until I caught him by the waistband of his pants and airlifted him backward. I dropped him in the middle of a cluster of people, toppling them like bowling pins.

  Shouts of collaboration rose from the group, proof that nothing brought people together quite like a common enemy.

  Amidst the ruckus, my ears pricked to a bellowed protest from Nash. “I’m charging you for damages, Fitch!”

  “Put it on my tab!” I hollered back.

  People climbed or leaped onto the table with war cries, swinging beer bottles and fists. One by one, they were rebuffed. Clocked with their own makeshift weapons, donkey-kicked out of range or telekinetically dragged away like rejected acts on an old vaudeville show.

  After the last would-be initiate scurried away, I sprawled out flat on the tabletop. My chest heaved with panted breaths and sweat slicked my face.

  “Your boy’s bloody nuclear, Grimm,” someone said. Ripley, judging by the accent. “Is he always like this?”

  “Not nearly often enough,” Avery replied, chuckling. He tossed my suit coat to drape over my prone form. “You got a little… On your nose there.”

  I daubed at my nostril to find a bead of fresh blood. “Guess I overdid it,” I mumbled, but the knowledge did nothing to put a damper on my good mood.

  Residual power zipped through me like bees swarming from my brain into every finger and toe. I wondered if others could feel it, shocking like static, or making my skin as hot to the touch as I felt inside.

  Grimm towered over me with his features drawn tight and skin pale. He had passed anger into something else entirely. Coldly simmering, calculating.

  “I hope you’re satisfied,” he said. Even his voice vibrated with tension.

  I huffed a laugh, stretching toward the whiskey sour gone room temp and sweaty. With my drink in hand, I pushed myself to sitting as Donovan skulked back into sight.

  “Donnie!” Grimm shouted across the empty room. “Take your brother and go home.”

  Donovan’s stony expression was joined by a visible wince. “What’d he do this time?”

  “I livened up the party,” I said, taking a sip of my cocktail.

  “And you felt that was necessary?” Grimm smoothed his hair behind his ears but looked more like he wanted to pull it out.

  “I felt like having fun,” I replied.

  It didn’t bear lamenting that I didn’t want to be here in the first place, or that I was still processing Jacoby Thatcher’s oh-so-compelling testimony. In a matter of minutes, he had publicly dismantled my identity and made me out to be nothing more than a pawn in the Bloody Hex’s game.

  Grimm remained on his feet, shaking his head.

  I turned to face him and caught the other men in my peripheral. Avery had kicked back to watch, a popcorn bucket shy of full cinematic rapture. Vinton mimicked Grimm’s mounting rage, gone purplish red from his cheeks to the top of his bald head. Ripley watched, perpetually suspicious, while his zombie lap ornament stroked the origami turtle.

  Donovan lingered behind me, out of the way, which was where I wanted him.

  “Why are you even mad?” I asked Grimm. “A bunch of lowlife, cut-rate witches showed up here doing parlor tricks… Fucking papermancy, for Christ’s sake.”

  Avery snickered.

  “It was an embarrassment,” I said.

  Grimm pitched forward, stabbing a finger into my chest. “You, Mister Farrow, are the embarrassment,” he snapped. “To yourself and to this organization.”

  I rolled my eyes. “‘Organization.’ Sure.”

  His hand pulled back, and I could tell he wanted to hit me. He wouldn’t, though. Not with everyone watching.

  “I risked everything to free you from a prison of your own making,” he said. “You earned your way in there and would not have made it out without me moving the very hand of God to spare you.”

  “You weren’t doing me any favors,” I said, rising to stand on the table. “You need me. I heard the news. I’m the most prolific killer in modern history. I’m your golden goose. I know it. He knows it.” My point at Ripley earned me a narrow look.

  “Leave me out of this, mate,” he said.

  Bristling, I continued. “I saved your asses from extinction. I turned the tide against the Capitol. I killed thirty-some-odd people. Me.”

  Liquor sloshed from my drink to splatter onto the tabletop. Swearing, I threw the whole glass to shatter on the wood floor.

  “Get out.” Grimm stabbed a finger toward the exit. He was madder than ever and not about the spilled booze.

  I sneered back at him. “I’m not done.”

  “Whatever you have left to say can wait,” he replied in a scarcely controlled growl. “I’ll be holding my peace until later. I suggest you do the same.”

  The breath I drew to respond was stopped by his shout.

  “Donovan!”

  My brother stood beside the table, directly behind me. Near enough he could grab my forearm.