A look of something sad and hungry passed over Max’s face, and was gone.
“Killed him,” he said without inflection, dismissing man’s best friend that easily.
Wren almost laughed. Of course Max had. Poor Dog. She hoped it had been quick.
Those bright eyes squinted, and Max scowled at her. “You can’t be here,” he said with obvious irritation.
All right, that was not what she was expecting to come out of his mouth. Although what she had expected, Wren didn’t know. She didn’t know why he was here, miles and miles away from the last place she had seen him, right in the middle of her damn job, or why he was so pissed off, not that wizzarts needed a reason for anything.
“You should have gone away when I told you to,” he said, his hair sparking with agitation. His hands weren’t moving yet, though. It was when his hands started to move that the storm was about to hit. Assuming that telltale sign still worked, anyway.
“When you told…” she started to say, then stopped. Oh. The void covering the area where the house should have been. Right. Suddenly the twigs and bugs and dirt-sore knees seemed the least of her problems. Was he tied up somehow in this job? But how? No, that didn’t…feel right. There was something else underlying it all, something she could almost taste, almost recognize, but it slipped away when she tried to chase it. Why was he here? Why now? Why had he bothered to show himself?
“Shoved you away,” he muttered. “Don’t go poking where you’ve been told off, like you got no manners. Be smart, stupid brat. For your own good.”
He was making a faint bit of sense, which worried her even without understanding it. If she were smart she’d nod her head, pack up, forget about the job, and listen to the not-so-nice, very crazy man.
She was smart. She was also stubborn. And, according to one of P.B.’s favorite new rants, she had developed a recent and rather disturbing case of can’t-kill-me-nyah-nyah. And nobody told her to do something for her own good, not without telling her why.
Wren stood up, her five-foot-and-no-inches barely noticeable against Max’s sinewy height, and pulled down enough current to make her own flesh sparkle. A statement: Don’t push me, old man. Maybe P.B. was right to worry.
“I’m on a job, Max. A job that’s got nothing to do with you.” That she knew of, anyway. Shit, let it have nothing to do with him, please. No such thing as coincidence, but let it not be connected. “Let me get it done and we’re out of your hair. But you will let me get it done.”
Her voice stayed even and low, even as everything inside her was turning into wobbling Jell-O. She was stronger than she had ever been, stronger than she really wanted to be. Maybe one of the strongest, Purest Talent of her generation, no lie. But the thought of going against a full wizzart scared the shit out of her.
That fear was reassuring, actually. It meant that she was still sane.
“You can’t be here” he said again, as though her defiance hadn’t even happened. To him, it probably hadn’t. He could be a single-minded bastard.
The wind rose around them, filled with static and dry leaves. Him or her, she wasn’t sure who was doing it. Reaching down into the core, where her own reservoir of current seethed like a pool of dry-scaled, neon-colored snakes, she soothed it, coaxed it back under her control. Controlled herself, which meant controlling her core. Control had been what saved her. It made her weaker than Max, able to channel less current through her body, but she could direct it better, focus her strikes.
She let that knowledge show on her face. “I can and I will. Max. Max!” She shouted his name, seeing his eyes glaze over, and was relieved when they focused back on her. Having a wizzart’s attention was unnerving, but letting him go spastic was when it got deadly. Suddenly the words tumbled out of her, desperate to be heard while she still had his mostly sane attention. “Max, there’s a way out. To unwiz. To come back. I did it. You can, too.”
She actually didn’t know if there was, if it had been too long, was too late for him. Once you wizzed, you never went back, that was what everyone knew. Except she had. Sort of. Because of P.B. There was only one P.B. Would she share? Could she? Would he?
Wren shoved that doubt back into a box in her mind and latched it shut. Never mind that boxing difficult things up had probably led to her wizzing in the first place; it was still a useful tool. No time, no place for doubts. She was fine, she was functional, and she owed it to Max—to Neezer, her long-gone mentor, who had introduced them—to try. To at least pass the knowledge on. And if the possibility distracted him from his you-can’t-be-here shtick, so much the better.
“Way out? I’m already way out, brat.” He grinned at her, a death’s-head grin, and the hair rose on the back of her neck even under the slicks that covered her head to toe. The light-absorbing, water-repelling, tear-resisting material was great for avoiding cameras, motion detectors, nosy guards and aggressive tree branches, but it didn’t do a damn thing against the heebie-jeebies.
This wasn’t the Max she remembered. That Max was unnerving, dangerous, his hair trigger halfway pulled. This Max was…
Scared.
Jesus wept. The concept made her sweat. Anything that scared a wizzart…
Wren swallowed, and went for broke. “Max, what aren’t you telling me?”
His voice dropped into a growl. “I’m telling you to go. Don’t be here. You don’t want to be here, not…not here. Not here.”
She was definite about her first impression, now. He was scared, and he was hiding something. From her. Scared, and trying to get rid of her, rather than tell her. Something he didn’t want her near, didn’t want her to know about. Why? What was hiding down there, deep in the bedrock?
Did it really matter? It did not.
“I’ll go as soon as I get what I came for, Max.”
The static was crackling in her hair now, making her eyes itch. The song of it was alluring, enticing. She could tell him endless years that there was a way back from the edge, and he wouldn’t hear because he wouldn’t want to hear. That was the thing about wizzing that the others—the ones who hadn’t been there—didn’t realize: it’s so damn dangerous because it feels so damn fabulous. You really don’t care that the cost is your sanity.
And she couldn’t honestly tell him it was better on the sane side of the street.
“Go away now!”
His hands flickered, a tiny sprinkling-of-water motion. She didn’t have time to brace herself before the blast threw her backward, landing her hard on her ass, knocking her head against a tree and stealing the air from her lungs. She rolled even as she hit, expecting a bolt of current to follow, to finish her off.
Another gust slammed into her, bruising her from hip to rib, but no bolt.
Run run run the voice inside her head was chanting, the natural, smart, sane response when dealing with a pissed-off wizzart. Max might be scared, but he wasn’t scared of her. Wren kept rolling, coming up on elbows and knees, her head still ringing from the blow but her senses clear enough to know exactly where the old bastard was. A thick rope of current, dark purple and scarlet, uncoiled from her core and lashed out. She felt the hit more than saw it, felt Max’s shock and anger recoil back through the connection. How dare she strike at him?
“You’re the one who attacked me, you stupid wizzed son of a bitch!” she yelled, not caring if the target, the state troopers, and half of Saratoga County heard her.
Another blast was his only response, still not a bolt but a cold, salt-filled wind, shoving her hard enough to send her back on her ass and scoot her a half-dozen feet farther into the woods. Leaves and branches scratched at her slicks, and the hard roots bruised her ass and elbows.
“Go!” echoed in her head, a roar like a waterfall,