The day had taken a lot of strange turns since then, and as lucky as he and Kayleigh knew themselves to be, he was ready to drop where he stood.
“Sorry, Macklin,” Scout said through a yawn. “One childhood was hard enough.”
“Well, I’ll be happy to be your brother as an adult,” Macklin said. “Now we’re going next door to let you two sleep. Don’t forget to charge your new phones. Dropped calls are the bane of modern existence.” He said it with a wistful smile, and Scout and Kayleigh were suddenly in his arms for a big three-way hug.
“Thanks, Macklin,” Scout whispered, eyes burning. “You didn’t have to do any of this, but you and Josue and Jordan—you saved our lives.”
“Gotta watch out for family,” Macklin said, kissing them both on the temple. “Now to sleep. We’ll see you in the morning.”
But in the morning when they awoke, they both found texts on their phones, sent at around 2:00 a.m.
Alistair showed up to get Kayleigh back. We portaled to Australia to get him off your tail. Take the car—it’s paid for—and make your way to Spinner’s Drift. Text us when you need us. If we can’t make it, we have friends who can. Love you both—Mack and Jordan
Scout just stared at the text in shock for a moment, and then Kayleigh spoke into the bright silence of the hotel room.
“You can drive, right?”
Scout gave half a laugh. “Remember when Barnaby was supposed to train me to monitor the perimeter of the compound?” Barnaby was a little Alistair, right down to his nasty attitude. Scout had lasted about a month on that detail before they’d had enough of each other. However, thanks to him, Scout could drive automatic.
“Excellent. I say we eat pizza for breakfast, shower, and hit the road,” she said. “If they went to all that trouble to get Alistair off our backs, I’d hate to wreck it by getting caught ten miles from the compound.”
Scout opened his mouth to protest, to shout, to get mouthy in typical Scout fashion, but he glanced at her and saw her eyes were red-rimmed too.
They had brothers who loved them and who would put themselves out for them. The least they could do was get the hell out of Dodge and do what the magic said.
Spinner’s Drift, here we come.
Lucky Find
LUCKY STAREDout the window of The Magic of Books,trying to keep the inward flutterings of his stomach to himself.
“New guy’s trying to do another magic show,” he muttered to Helen, the proprietress. In her late fifties, maybe, and as spry as a teenager, Helen was hard to get a bead on. She wasn’t old and bitter, but she wasn’t under any delusions that fifty was the new twenty either. She was, if anything,circumspect, and given that she’d offered Lucky a job in the little coffee-and-book shop when he had little more than a fake ID and good intentions to recommend him, he’d come to treasure that quality in her. She didn’t poke, didn’t pry, just let him sleep in the little room in the basement—or on the roof in the summer, when even the cool of the underground stucco hadn’t been enough to combat the stifling humidity.
Helen chuckled, bringing her cup of apricot and ginger tea with her as she leaned against the frame of the open french doors and peered into the quad of the little tourist square that made up the business center of Spinner’s Drift.
The drift itself was a series of tidal islands, an archipelago, grouped together off the coast of the Carolinas. The main island—the one the business center sat on—was about twenty miles from end to end and not quite round. More of an egg shape. This island—hisisland, as Lucky had begun to think of it—was the biggest. The islands were connected, depending on the size of each one, by a series of tidal roads, bridges, and ferries. The residents kept in touch with everything from power boats to skiffs to off-road vehicles, and while the majority of the population of about three thousand was on the main island itself, another thousand people lived in the houses and cabins scattered across the little archipelago.
Most of those people made their living here, in the three-block section of businesses that overlooked the harbor or in the two resorts that took up much of the rest of the island.
Lucky had been living here in Helen’s spare room for the past six months, taking a breath, regrouping, trying to get his shit together, and nothing—nothing—had caught his attention in that time like the new magician who did shows from the magic shop across the street.
The shop itself sat right next to a fish-and-chips place, and the owner, Marcus Canby, was smart. The ferry from Spinner’s Drift to the mainland—Charleston to be specific—arrived and left during high tide in the morning and the evening. The food service businesses in the square prepared for their rushes around the ferry arrivals. People got there and wanted to eat, or they went fishing or played in the resorts and then got ready to leave and wanted to eat before they left.
And the magic shop put on shows during the peak food hours in the hopes that those who’d had their interest piqued by the show would wander in and buy the equipment that would help them be as interesting and as handsome and as mysterious as the guy currently bumbling, grinning, and faking his way through Marcus’s usual stage performance.
Or at least that was Lucky’s guess.
“He’s getting better,” Helen said mildly.
Lucky gave a skeptical snort and rolled his eyes. “It wouldn’t be hard to improve,” he muttered.
“Oh come now,” Helen chided. “Look at him. He’s enjoying the hell out of this.”
Lucky scowled at her, but his eyes, as always, wandered across the street to Marcus’s new apprentice.
He was unfairly watchable.
Six feet tall if he was an inch, he had a slender, rangy body that looked damned good in the sleek black jeans and fitted satin waistcoat that Marcus had given him to wear for the performances, as well as a black leather cloak that was used as a prop sometimes. His shaggy black hair had been trimmed since his arrival back in early September, but even fashionably cut, there was still the hint that it would grow overnight, leaving his narrow, appealing face half-hidden in riotous curls and obscure hisstunningcobalt eyes under bold black brows. He had a commanding nose, a square jaw, and a little cleft in his chin, which he would finger sometimes when he was thinking.
