Page 3 of The Rising Tide
But Josue had bought him a phone and had written the passcode on another Post-it swacked to the back.
Scout tapped the passcode in and smiled through the burning behind his eyes.
His brother had sent him a text.
Sorry, brother. He found your stash of forbidden books. It didn’t matter if you made a portal or not, he was going to send you away.
Scout grimaced. “Forbidden” in this case meant “romance.” The kind with two male romantic leads. He’d been refusing to choose a wife for years now, making vague excuses, but obviously Alistair had not been fooled.
Our brother Macklin has been waiting for your call. Here’s his number. Call immediately, and he’ll be there.
Scout stared at this. Macklin? Macklin had left when Scout was a kid—off to sow his wild oats, Alistair had sneered often enough. Not quite a year ago, though, something had changed. Alistair had shown up for breakfast one morning looking as though he’d been pecked to death by ducks, and after that the first person to ask about Macklin’s long-anticipated return had been blown through a wall.
Scout’s younger sister, Kayleigh, had woken up after a week, unable to remember what had happened, and nobody had dared to mention Macklin Quintero again.
Apparently, whatever had happened, Macklin had come out on top, and Alistair was not happy about it.
That decided Scout. Anything that pissed Alistair off was enough to make him a fan.
He looked around the woods again, thinking he may have heard cars to the southeast, and cursed the fact that wearing his ceremonial robes when he’d been banished meant he was barefoot.
Seriously. Alistair Quintero. Fuck that guy.
With a bit of fiddling—these little devices were really very self-explanatory—he thought he had it.
Macklin? This is Scout. Josue told me you could help me?
He stared at the screen, thinking,Wait? Don’t these things need internet or something?But whatever Josue had done to charge and power this thing—and Scout felt a small soft-sided box in his pocket that he assumed held power cords—it apparently was ready to work.
Scout? Where are you?
I, uhm, don’t know. Out in the woods by the compound, maybe? I was just banished.
There was a pause, and Scout noticed little bubbles by where Macklin’s reply would appear. Very comforting, those bubbles, he thought.
And he just left you there? What. A. Dick!
And that, right there, was when Scout realized Macklin might be the family member he loved the most.
Right?
He sent it almost without thinking. He was going to ask questions then, but Macklin beat him to it.
Do you need anything? Money? Transportation? A map?
Shoes?Scout typed in, angry all over again.
We’ll be there in ten minutes.
Scout frowned. Be there? They’d be there? Who would be there? But… but Macklin was presumably banished too. Granted, he was supposedly the pride of the Quintero wizard family before he’d been banished, but didn’t that mean he wasn’t allowed to do magic anymore?
CouldScoutstill do magic?
Ooh… interesting question.
Thestatedreason for Scout being banished had been that he didn’t have enough magical power to be more than a (disdainful sniff)hedge witch.That was how Alistair said it too, like being a hedge witch was too small to even worry about. Certainly not talented enough to ever berealfamily.
But Scouthadpossessed power. Sometimes it was wonky, and sometimes it listened to his heart instead of his head, but it was there. Once, he’d been asked to conjure a crossbow. Why, he had no idea. They didn’t hunt their own food. They had it shipped in, in giant quantities. Were they hunters now? Because that didn’t really work for Scout, who was much happier with some toast and jam than raw bleeding deer meat on the hoof. But a crossbow he’d been asked to conjure.
