Free Magic in the Blood by Devon Monk Page A

like blood gushing free into their hands. I swayed, dizzy from the loss of magic, and pushed at their hands while I stumbled backward.
    I yelled. The watercolor people followed me back until I was flat against the chain-link fence. Ghostly hands dug deeper for magic, burning down to my bones.
    Then I did what I usually do in tight situations. I got angry.
    No more Mr. Nice Girl. I had magic—magic they were pulling out of me, magic they were feeding on—and I was not about to be anyone’s all-you-can-eat buffet.
    I let go of the magic bolstering my sight and smell, ending that flow of magic so I could recast something to protect myself. I needed to pull magic into a new spell, something that could kick watercolor ass—what the hells could kick watercolor ass? A mop? A hose? But as soon as I let go of magic, before I even started to trace a new glyph, the world snapped back into place.
    The real world was the real world again. The watercolor people were gone.
    “Allie?”
    I traced a Hold glyph so fast, it was cocked and ready to fire before my heart had a chance to slam one more beat against my chest.
    I didn’t pour magic into it.
    Good thing too. Grant, the owner of Get Mugged, stood outside the door of the coffee shop in a T-shirt and flannel shirt, cowboy boots, and dark jeans tight enough to show he had bragging rights.
    The only thing he was doing was getting rained on and looking worried.
    I didn’t blame him. I’d be worried if a wild-eyed woman were pointing a Hold spell big enough to stop a rhino in midcharge at me too.
    He slowly raised his hands to about chest high, while I stood there breathing hard, and blinking harder, and trying to think straighter.
    “Easy, now. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
    What I had seen—the glyphs and the watercolor people—was not here. Or at least they were not here anymore. I sniffed and couldn’t smell death. Couldn’t smell the leather and wintergreen of my dad, couldn’t smell anything except the city, coffee, and Grant’s cologne that hinted at vanilla and something deeper, like bourbon and sex.
    Grant didn’t do anything else, didn’t move any closer.
    I pushed off the chain-link fence and was happy that my legs held me. I ached in my joints, ached where Trager had stuck a needle in my thigh, and my skin felt tight and sunburned.
    “You’re shaking,” he said. “How about a cup of coffee to warm you up? Come on inside. It will be okay.”
    I lowered my hand, breaking the Hold glyph as I did so. Magic seemed a little dimmer in me, a little smaller. And my heart was still pumping too hard, like I’d been running or had just come out of a fight.
    No surprise there.
    But other than that, everything was fine. Normal. Fine. I was fine. Normal. Fine.
    Oh, who was I kidding?
    “I’ve had a really bad morning,” I said, my voice catching at the end.
    Grant nodded, like maybe he already had that figured out. He strolled over to me, all sweet and brotherly—if I had a brother who was a hot-looking cowboy coffee roaster—and put one large, warm, coffee-scented hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get you inside. You can tell me all about it.”
    When all I did was stand there and shake, he slid over next to me and rested his arm across my shoulders. Then he gently propelled me forward toward the doors of Get Mugged.

Chapter Six
    T he smell of hot coffee and baked scones wrapped around me like a hug as we walked into Get Mugged. Grant’s employee, Jula, was behind the counter, moving scones out of the oven and into the glass case below the counter.
    There were about a dozen people seated at the mismatched wood tables and chairs, reading papers, their laptops, phones, handhelds. Get Mugged was bigger than it looked from the outside, and open up to the second-floor ceiling, with an overlooking loft at the back half of the shop. Ceiling-to-floor windows and strings of track lighting on the pipes across the rafters lit up the place, while the brick and wood walls made