Justice Calling(15)

Harper called the land line in the shop around four to tell me she was heading to the B B to talk to Max.  I felt weirdly isolated without my cell phone. I ordered a replacement online, but I wouldn’t have it until the following Monday.
I had no word from Alek. Ciaran dropped by to say he’d solved everything with the cops, at least for the moment, and that the second kid was in a coma at the hospital. The sheriff was going to write it up as a robbery gone wrong.  Nobody had any explanation for how Jimmy had died. It appeared his heart had stopped, just like that.  I didn’t envy Sheriff Lee her job explaining it to his parents or the admins at the college.
Ezee called the store as well, sometime after noon when I’d given up on doing inventory and was distracting myself by painting orc miniatures.  He said he recognized one of the kids from school and was going to ask around, see who they might have associated with. I told him to be careful and asked if he’d seen or heard from the Justice. He hadn’t.
The medallion off the kid in the coma was upstairs. As the day faded, I thought about it more and more, trying to anticipate the questions Alek might have and how to answer them in a way that would make sense but not give away more about myself than I already had.
No good. I dropped a mini back onto the newspaper and gritted my teeth.
Thoughts of Samir flooded in. Had even the relatively small amounts of magic I’d used yesterday been too much? Was he even now on his way here to finally kill me?  The tracking spell wouldn’t register, I didn’t think. Way too much ambient magic in this area for that to stand out. But the circle of protection I’d thrown up to fend off whatever killing ritual the shadowy man behind Rose’s paralyzing was performing, that wasn’t exactly minor magic. I mean, in the scale of things for me, it was. Or it would have been, once upon a time when I was in practice and in shape magically speaking.
I looked around my shop.  Pwned Comics and Games. It was home, the kind of place my teenage self had dreamed about all those years ago after my second family opened my eyes to the world of all that is nerd. I liked my life here. I didn’t want things to change. I didn’t want to have to run again.
Maybe I was still safe. No more magic though. Not even my stone floating exercises, at least not for a while. Whatever happened with Rose and the ritual mage who was behind all this was Alek’s problem to handle. He was the one trained for this shit.  I could provide emotional support to my friends, but I had to stop being involved.
I could stay for now. Keep my life here. Decision made, I relaxed a little.
Which is when, of course, the universe kicked me in the ass again.
Levi and Harper came through the front door in a rush.  I knew it was trouble just from the energy they projected, before I even made out their upset faces and heard a peep from them.
“Ezee is missing,” Levi said.
“What do you mean, missing?” I asked.  My heart took up residence in my throat.
“He was supposed to meet me at work after his last class got out.  He didn’t show and he isn’t answering either his cell or his office phone.”
“Maybe he’s at the library? Emergency student conference?” I tried to ignore my painful sense of foreboding.
“Did you talk to him today?” Harper asked.
Shit. “Shit,” I said. “I did. He said he knew one of the perps from last night and was going to ask around, see who else might be connected to the guy.”
“Shit is right,” Levi muttered. “We’re going over to Juniper to look for him. Come on.”
How could I refuse that? He was my friend. This felt an awful lot like involvement though.
“Where’s the Justice?” I asked.
“I think he went to the hospital to see if that guy had woken up yet,” Harper said. “He said something about it when he came to check on mom earlier.”
Which meant Alek was at least forty-five minutes away in another town. Wylde wasn’t large enough to have a full hospital, we just had the emergency clinic and a couple doctor’s offices.
“Okay, let me lock up,” I said. What else could I do?






 
    Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure,   Magic
    
 


 

Chapter 7


Juniper College is a private liberal arts university known for turning out a lot of serious students who go on to get PhDs and then work in low level service jobs for the rest of their lives trying to pay off massive student loans.  Okay, so maybe not always that last part, but it was one of those elite small schools full of people who seemed more in love with learning than with practical life skills.  I’d teased Ezee about it a lot, but in good fun.