Magic on the Hunt by Devon Monk

Not quite a fever, but a sure sign he wasn’t at his best right now.
    “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. We both wanted to say it. We both were feeling that gratitude for life, right on the heels of a very real brush with death.
    “It won’t happen again,” he said. “I was stupid to trust him.”
    I nodded, my cheek brushing over the nylon of his ratty ski coat. “Me too.”
    I stepped back because all I really wanted to do was take him upstairs to my apartment and curl up in bed with him.
    “We’d better get to lunch,” I said. “Nola’s probably there already.”
    We held hands walking to the car. I got in first. It hurt, but along with the pain meds that were numbing things, I was also getting the hang of how to bend and sit without making my hip feel like someone was stabbing a dull knife into it.
    Zay slid behind the steering wheel with a grunt. Those ribs weren’t doing him any favors.
    “Want me to drive?”
    “I got it.” He started the car and maneuvered it out of the parking lot.
    “Nola said she has Cody with her,” I said.
    “Mmm.”
    “Will that bother you?”
    He glanced at me. “Why?”
    “You’ve Closed him. Twice. Does it bother you to see what’s left of his brain?”
    Okay, that came out a lot harsher than I’d intended. But it was the truth. Cody was a living casualty of the Authority’s rule of taking away people’s memories and abilities to use magic if they didn’t do what the Authority wanted them to do.
    “His was a special case,” Zay said. “The first time I Closed him, he was fine. I saw him afterward, checked in on him. There was no sign of any loss of mental acuity. Then . . . I don’t know. I’ve Closed a lot of people. I’ve never had anyone come out of it so damaged. He’s a savant with magic. Rare. We thought that his unusual abilities with magic, more than what I did, caused his mind to fail.
    “I Closed him very carefully. Nothing I did should have damaged him.” He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing at the pain of the twist, and changed lanes. “Makes me wonder.”
    “What?”
    He started to shrug, thought better of it. “If someone else got to him after me.”
    A few months ago I would have told him that was ridiculous. But now, with Jingo’s betrayal and Dane’s visit at gunpoint, I wasn’t so sure Zay was wrong.
    “Will it bother you to have me there?” he asked.
    “Not you,” I said. “It bothers me that Cody was broken.”
    But Cody’s spirit, his ghost, who seemed somehow older and wiser than the childlike Cody Nola was looking after, had told me he didn’t mind being broken. He told me the living Cody was happy the way he was. It still seemed like he’d gotten a raw deal to me.
    “I know there’s no changing it,” I said. “Is there?”
    “Who knows?” Zay sighed. “The way things have been going lately, I don’t know if anything follows the rules anymore.” He glanced at me. “Yes. I should be able to un-Close Cody. I don’t know how much good that will do him since he’s had a mental break.”
    “He’s not a bad kid,” I said.
    “No. But you didn’t know him before. You think Shamus can get out of hand. Cody was hell on a bender. No sense of caution. Got in with the mob, owed money, then art, then magic, then other favors. Found a patron who pumped enough money into his sinking ship, he didn’t get gunned down in the streets.” Zay shook his head. “Anything his mother was against, he was all for. It was a mess.”
    “Sedra, right? His mom?”
    “Yes. She’s the one who finally decided he was too reckless with magic, too untrustworthy with the Authority’s secrets, and needed to be Closed. After Mikhail’s death . . . nothing was ever right with her.” He turned into a parking garage and took the ticket.
    No wonder she was such an ice queen. Her lover dead, her son Closed, the Authority her responsibility—she hadn’t had it easy.
    “She became a much harder person. Driven to rule. No