As if in answer, the cloud went vertical, much like the spinning discs that Scout had used to create the portal that had gotten rid of the two Philadelphia gangsters. Slowly enough to show some gravitas, the disc set itself down on the prow, giving the few passengers on the sparsely populated ferry a good eyeful of something they couldn’t explain and showing Lucky and Scout a portal surrounded by an aura of fire. Standing on the rim, as though there were a dais there made for him, was a man a few inches shorter than Scout, but with cold indigo eyes and a salt-and-pepper-streaked gray beard.
“Scout,” Lucky murmured, his heart in his throat. “No. Don’t go. Don’t…. We can….”
“Run?” Scout asked tenderly, skimming fingertips over Lucky’s cheek. “You deserve better than that, Lucky. Don’t worry.” His goofy, dreamy grin popped out, and Lucky wanted to cry. “Have a little faith, right? I mean, I’m stronger than I look!”
And with that, he turned toward the man who must have been his father and said, “You’ll never get her, you sonuvabitch.”
And with that, he broke away from Lucky, and to Alistair Quintero’s obvious surprise, he charged into the portal and leaped, tackling his father into the whirling magic gateway and disappearing.
The portal closed like the top of a drawstring purse, and one lone soul started screaming, leaving Lucky on the prow of the ferry, cold and alone and terrified for the goofy magician with the dandelion hair whom he loved with all his heart.
Alistair
SCOUT KNEWhow to steer a portal. He’d done it once when he’d gone to get Kayleigh, and again when he’d flipped their friends from Philly back to the East Coast. He’d learned to control—albeit barely—the whooshing of his own blood in his ears and the sudden dip of magic when it was disbanded, zinging into the atmosphere like an electric charge.
He’d tackled Alistair to give himself a chance to take over the destination of the portal, and praise the saints, it worked.
Part of it was that the only place he wanted to be was home.
His real home. On the island with Lucky and Kayleigh and the kindly Marcus, who didn’t seem to expect anything from him but that he tried his best. With Helen, who was so fiercely protective of Lucky that she lost her temper when he knew she didn’t mean to. Where the waves and the sun and the sand all met and frolicked and quarreled and danced like old friends.
He’d felt strong on the island, comfortable. His whole life, Alistair had simply pulled magic out of the air and expected Scout and the other boys to follow. Alistair had always dictated what came next and always had the advantage.
Scout wanted Alistair on his own turf. He had that now, a place he understood, small and sure, where he was familiar with the market on the corner and the times the ferries ran. He felt when the sun would hit his apartment bed and when the air got sticky and cold with the evening wind in the autumn.
This was his place. He knew the ghosts here by their first names, and where the library was, and he could plant his feet where the sea met the sand and show Alistair the way home.
The portal dispersed, and Alistair and Scout were flung along the beach, rolling down the sand, and Scout pulled himself to his feet and took a quick look around.
Yes! There was the clearing, and there was Tom’s bench, and there were the spirits Scout had visited, the ones trapped in the saddest, most destructive pattern of their days and not allowed to flow from the good to the bad to the peaceful until their hearts were full and ready to rest.
He felt the presence of the Wisp, breathless and quivering on the edge of the clearing, and the dark and terrible presence of the thing that had tried to drown him twice, once in the ocean and once in the layers of memories that wrapped around the trap itself.
They were both there, the good and the bad of this place, coiled to face an intruder. Well, Scout wasn’t an intruder. He lived here. Scout and Lucky had spent the day planning to be here. Travel? Yes. But their hearts were already tangled up in the island’s history, in its tides, and Scout wouldn’t leave. Those were his mysteries, his and Lucky’s to solve, and he wouldn’t let Alistair push him or Lucky or Kayleigh off their own island.
And he’d never leave them.
He’d had his fill with lovers and sisters and brothers pining to be with one another across sea and sand. He was all for putting an end to that crap right now.
“What are you doing?” Alistair screamed, pulling himself up on the edge of the surf. He was wearing his big important wizard’s robes, velvet and trimmed in gold fur and mystical symbols, and he’d landed in about three feet of water. The weight of the robes dragging him down must have been exhausting and ridiculous,
“I’m having this out,” Scout said, thinking it was obvious. “My God, Alistair—it’s been nearly two months. You’re still trying to chase us down? You know the people keeping you busy have lives and jobs and such. They’ve been trying to keep Kayleigh and me safe, but I’ve got to tell you, they can’t do it forever.”
“Safe? What do youmeansafe?” Alistair, the man who had plucked Scout from thin air and tried to coerce him to give over his sister, sounded surprised. “Kayleigh’s duty is to come home—”
“Kayleigh’s a fuckingadult!” Scout snarled. “She’s got no duty to you. You’ve been chasing us because she’s been given away in marriage to someone she’s never met. Not because you love us. Not because you want to apologize for being an insufferable fascist autocrat—no. Because your possession told you to fuck off, and you want it back.”
“Youstoleyour sister from the family’s demesne,” Alistair retorted, sounding legitimately hurt. “Kidnapping—”
“She came willingly!” Scout wondered if there was some sort of magical wake-up potion he could give his father but then decided that a woke Alistair might be a deadly Alistair, because that asshole did nothing in moderation. “She leaped into my arms, and I portaled us out of the damned compound. And she grabbed my hand, and we’ve traveled together since. Not because she owes me or because I feel duty toward her, but because weloveeach other, and that’s what you do.”
“That’s sentimental crap, Scotland!” Alistair snapped. “That girl is a commodity that was meant to keep our family safe and provided for over the span of a generation. Do you not understand? I made adealwith Callan Morgenstern’s father, to provide his son with a wife of good stock and wizarding grandchildren. I signed that deal inblood.”
“Well, pay for it with your own blood,” Scout snapped back. “Your daughter isnot property!” He felt his body fill with anger then, swirling and crackling like an electric wind.
Alistair licked his lips, and Scout regarded him quizzically. Scout’s father had always been larger than life, stern, commanding, contemptuous of any weakness, but here, on this beach….
He was overdressed, bedraggled, and well, desperate. His wizard’s robes, which looked great when he was conducting a ceremony in his oak-paneled study, or even outside on the grounds during a Samhain bonfire, were swampy and ridiculous now. Scout had gone rolling in the sand, and he was used to being dusty and unkempt, and his hair had never listened, but Alistair’s dignity, his presence, had taken an amazing hit in the same landing that had left Scout feeling empowered and substantial.
