Read A Lonely Magic for Free Online Page B

less. When you called me, I would not have failed to answer.”
    “Called you?” What was he talking about? She hadn’t screamed. She’d wanted to. If she’d thought anyone would hear her, she would have. But she hadn’t.
    “You should sleep now, Luken.” Kaio’s voice interrupted them, and Fen started. She hadn’t heard him come up behind them, but there he was, hovering over her shoulder, a faint frown of disapproval woven across his forehead. “You need your rest. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to talk later.”
    She glanced back at his brother. The younger man was frowning, too, but he looked more confused than disapproving. “All right.” But as Fen moved to rise, he put out a hand to stop her. “Wait. What’s your name?”
    “Fen.”
    He repeated the name, as if testing it and liking the sound of it. “Fen.” He let his hand drop. A smile played around his lips. “Nice name.”
    “Thank you,” Fen said. Was he flirting with her from his hospital bed? Shouldn’t he be a little young for that? “And you? Are you Luke or Luken?”
    “Luken to family, Luke to friends,” he replied.
    “Gotcha.” Fen shot him an okay sign, index finger touching thumb, and stood. “We’ll talk later.”
    Kaio stepped aside to let her pass and she started back to her seat. But she’d only gone a couple of steps when Luke said something else, a mutter she didn’t quite hear. She looked over her shoulder but Kaio waved her forward, as if the words weren’t meant for her.
    As Fen sat down again, though, she was frowning. It sounded like he’d said, “Which are you?”
    But that made no sense.
    Maybe it was the leftover effects of the drugs forced on her or maybe she hoped to escape Kaio’s gaze, but Fen put her head against the chill of the window and closed her eyes.
    She wanted to fall asleep. Not that she’d be able to, not with the way her mind kept throwing crap at her.
    Zach. She’d stopped by Sunday night to see if he wanted to split a pizza, an impulse after a long day. It would have been a splurge for her, but shared she could swing it.
    She recognized what she’d walked in on right away. She hadn’t spotted anything obvious—no drugs, no guns, no money—but the tension in the room, the cold looks, and the vague menace of his visitors reminded her of uglier parts of her past, places she didn’t want to go again.
    Places she didn’t know Zach was visiting.
    Sure, he had an edge, but his eyes held no darkness, nothing saying he was in over his head. Nothing that made him as a dealer, at least not to her, and she should have known.
    But damn it, why hadn’t she kept her cool? What he did was none of her business. If she hadn’t gotten so flustered, his connections might not have thought they needed to kill her.
    And those connections…
    The guy from last night’s words kept playing and replaying in her head. “Your choice.” “This is just a job, miss.”
    Someone else called her miss recently. Who was it?
    Had she made the right decision? Luke wouldn’t have gotten shot if she wasn’t such a coward. Was that her fault? But they were both alive, at least for the moment, so hey, that was better than dead, right?
    It was so weird, though. His blood—it had looked green. Not bright green, not fluorescent or anything. It wasn’t the green of fake apple candy, but a deep, dark green, almost a muddy color. It must have been the light. Lack of light. The darkness.
    How had Kaio found them? How had Luke found her?
    Oh, God, she needed to stop thinking. Just stop. Let the thoughts go. Leave it alone. Done was done and what had happened couldn’t be changed.
    And she had nothing to be scared of.
    She was on an adventure. She should treat it like one. Hey, she was flying in a plane and that was cool.
    And she was on her way to an unknown destination with total strangers and she had no idea who they were or why they were helping her or what their motives were… oh, lord, she needed to make her