“John!”
“I’m fine,” he said hoarsely, answering his friend’s previous question, and promptly staggered into a wall.
“Of course, you are.” The tone was unamused.
John stared around blearily. “Did I set anything else on fire?”
“Were you trying to?” Caleb asked, and grabbed him.
That led to John looking down, and blinking in confusion.
“The hell am I wearing?”
“That was my next question,” Caleb said, pulling him off the wall and over behind some sandbags. They were shoulder high, delineating an exercise area that was currently empty. Another set behind them created a pathway which led to a bank of lockers along another wall.
John located and then fumbled with the dented metal cabinet assigned to him, finally managing to get it open and to pull out the only clothes it contained: a set of ancient gray sweats that he kept around for workouts. They were worn and threadbare, but clean. And better than the t-shirt, boxer briefs and pale gray bathrobe he’d been wearing for some reason.
Probably because I’m supposed to be in bed, he remembered.
“Damn it, John! You’re supposed to be in bed!” Caleb echoed his thoughts in what he fondly believed to be a whisper.
“I’m aware of that—”
A meaty hand grabbed his shoulder. “Then what the devil are you doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
All this repetition was starting to get on John’s nerves, which weren’t in great shape to begin with. Much like the rest of him. The small, square mirror on the inside of his locker showed him back a thin, pale face that he barely recognized, one with dark circles under bloodshot green eyes, a three or maybe four-day growth of beard, and a shock of blond hair sticking out haphazardly, as if trying to form a halo around his pounding head.
He grimaced at the irony and pulled on the sweats. That worked out all right, but his hands shook slightly. And, of course, Caleb noticed. His bull-in-a-china-shop routine masked a more than competent investigator, and a damned fine mage.
One who was going to drag him off to the medics if he didn’t start making some sense.
“I swear to God,” Caleb snapped. “If you don’t start making sense—”
“Cut it out!” John said, and then paused, wondering. He looked at Caleb, his eyes narrowing, which caused the other man to make an abortive movement toward his side holster. One he stopped halfway, although he didn’t lower his hand, as John slowly and deliberately reached out—
And poked him in the chest.
“Something wrong?” Caleb asked dryly.
John grabbed his friend’s shoulder and squeezed. He felt real. Solid. Not like another damned dream. The repetition was probably down to the fact that there were only so many things someone would say when a friend showed up at work looking dazed and disheveled, in his underwear, and proceeded to slowly poke you.
John ran a hand over his eyes. “I’m . . . not feeling well.”
“I gathered that.”
John sat on one of the benches in front of the lockers in order to put on his trainers. Caleb settled beside him. For a moment, nobody spoke.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Caleb finally asked.
John assumed he meant in the real world, although for a second it was hard to tell the difference. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Concentrate, damn it!
“Dante’s,” John said hoarsely. “I’d just woken from a dream and thrown a fireball spell. There was a woman there . . . she caught it—”
“Tami. A null witch.”
John nodded.
“She’s been helping me babysit,” Caleb informed him. “Cause sometimes you throw weird fey spells I don’t know how to counter. But her abilities absorb them just the same.”
“Fey spells?” John looked up at his friend. “Then I’ve . . . done this before?”
“’This’ meaning walk across town in your bare feet while apparently zonked out of your mind? Or ‘this’ as in try to burn down the hotel? Which this are we focusing on here?”
John contemplated that for a moment. At least it explained why his feet were cut and bruised and filthy. He tried cleaning them off with his socks but it didn’t help much, just smeared the dirt around. He finally put the shoes on anyway and leaned his head back against his locker.
“I guess you’ve had an interesting day, haven’t you?” he asked Caleb.
“Not really.” Caleb said, eyeing him darkly. “The fireball incident was a week ago.”
Chapter Three
C offee?”
John rounded on Caleb as soon as they hit the man’s dingy office, because discussing his current state out in the open wasn’t a great idea. But instead of answers, he had a coffeepot thrust in his face.
He pushed it aside with a curse.
“Well, I’m having some,” Caleb said, unperturbed, and plugged the frayed, fabric wrapped cord into the wall. Or, more accurately, into an adapter, because the pot looked like it had been bought in Britain circa World War II.
“A week?” John demanded, his hands on the desk. One of which Caleb calmly moved aside so that he could put down a disposable placemat.
The thick white paper was printed with decorative beads and swags of lace and looked like something a small, grandmotherly figure should be fussing about with, instead of a huge war mage, but Caleb didn’t care about such things. He was well known for unashamedly drinking the girliest cocktails imaginable, the multicolored kind with three parasols, and for stubbornly believing that he could sing karaoke. To say that he was secure in his manhood was an understatement.
“Girl’s drinks taste better, and I’m amazing at karaoke,” Caleb said, when John made a comment.
“You are not amazing.”
A flash of brilliant white teeth lit the dark face. “Women think I’m amazing.”
“I was talking about your singing.”
Caleb laughed. John didn’t. He just watched his friend commandeer an old leather desk chair that he refused to get rid of, despite the fact that it squeaked terribly and had stuffing falling out of the cushion, and put his feet up.
The coffeepot gulped and gurgled. The chair squeaked and squawked. The two men glared at each other.
Or, rather, John glared; Caleb gave back his patented Zen face, the one he used with perps he’d decided to simply wait out.
“My go to is “Power of Love”,” he finally said. “Luther always pulls.”
“Caleb!”
“Stop hitting my desk.” Caleb adjusted his little doily. Because God forbid that the scratched and stained wood get another ding in it. “And relax. I got you in here before you tore a hole in the roof or fried any recruits. I’m duty officer tonight, so nobody’s coming by to ask questions. And the coffee is almost done. Sit back and I’ll bring you up to speed.”
He did. A few minutes later, John was on his second mug of coffee-flavored water, trying vainly to get some caffeine into his system, and Caleb was finishing up a short, but alarming recitation.
“You mean to say that I’ve been wondering about, setting things on fire, for a week?” John demanded.