Caden let out a cry when the beast’s canines met his hand. Before Joey knew what he was doing he’d dropped the Box and dived at the chupacabra, gripping the top and bottom of its mouth with both hands and wrenching his hands apart. Pungent saliva dripped from his fingers and he felt sharp teeth dig into his flesh, but he managed to pry apart the creature’s jaws enough to release Caden’s hand.
“Run!” Joey cried, as soon as Caden was freed, and Caden obeyed, fleeing behind one of the fire trucks. From Joey’s peripheral vision he saw Frankie running towards him. She jabbed at the chupacabra’s side and more purple blood flew. The beast made an unearthly screeching noise and Joey was able to pull his hands away as it bent its neck to snap at Frankie. Frankie dodged and started backing away, swinging her machete in front of her.
Joey dove for the Box once more where it had clattered and rolled beneath one of the fire truck’s tires, but his fingers fumbled again on the little lever, slick as they were with saliva and blood. “Any time now!” came Frankie’s shout from across the garage. Joey started running toward Frankie and the chupacabra—it had her backed up against a wall and it was snarling and snapping at her with its teeth while she held it off with slashes of her knife.
Suddenly Caden was beside Joey, clutching his injured hand to his chest and with the other making a dragging motion that looked like it took all his strength. Caden forced himself to step backwards, pulling the chupacabra with him and leaving Frankie free.
“To me!” cried Frankie at Joey, who was still struggling with the Box, so he hurled the Box across the room over the chupacabra’s head. Deftly, Frankie caught it, dropped her machete to the floor, and flicked the Box open. The Box did its job and drew the chupacabra inside it, clicking shut in the suddenly silent garage.
Joey turned to Caden just in time to catch him as he collapsed. Caden was heavier than he expected so Joey let out a sound somewhere between a huff and a grunt as he adjusted to the weight. “You okay?” he asked Caden, voice echoing through the garage.
Caden began to nod, then changed his mind and shook his head. “No.” Joey helped Caden straighten out and stepped back, hands still held out to catch him, and Caden took a few dragging steps on his own—then sat down abruptly on the concrete floor, leaning back against a huge tire on one of the fire trucks.
Frankie had approached while Joey was watching Caden, and when Joey looked up he saw her wiping her machete on her pants (gross) and sheathing the knife. “Let me see,” she said, dropping to one knee beside Caden. Obediently, Caden held out his bloodied hand. “Not as bad as I thought.” Standing again, Frankie strode toward the exit. “I’ll get the first aid kit from the van.”
Uncertain what to do, Joey hovered over Caden, looking from the wounds on Caden’s hand—difficult to see through all the blood—to his wan face. “What can I—?” he began, but Caden cut him off by cursing.
As Joey knelt next to Caden, Caden used the clean thumb of his uninjured hand to wipe off the stone on his emerald ring. The stone had a large crack across it. Caden cursed again, quietly. So that’s what the crunch had been. At least it hadn’t been Caden’s fingers.
“We can get it fixed?” offered Joey.
Caden shook his head. “I’ll have to fix it myself, once I have some extra magic.” Joey refrained from pointing out that that wouldn’t be anytime soon, considering how busy the team had been. “My dad made me this,” Caden finished, voice soft.
Joey was saved from coming up with something to say by Frankie’s reappearance with the first aid kit. Once Caden’s wounds were clean it turned out they weren’t as bad as they looked, though Frankie bandaged him up so thoroughly that his fingers disappeared into a thick wad of gauze.
“You, too,” said Frankie to Joey, who looked down and realized that, yes, his hands were stinging as well. The cuts weren’t as extensive as Caden’s. Frankie made brisk work of cleaning and bandaging them, saying as she did, “That was really stupid.”
It had been stupid, Joey admitted, glancing from his punctured fingers to Caden’s well-wrapped hand. But he hadn’t been thinking at the moment he had grasped the chupacabra’s jaws—it had just been instinct.
“Got the job done, didn’t it?” defended Caden, unexpectedly, and Joey looked up from his hands. Caden was glaring at Frankie, then he turned to Joey. “I didn’t say thank you yet.”
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“Oh, it’s—” Joey began to dismiss.
“Thank you.”
“You two are disgusting,” announced Frankie, finishing with the first aid kit. “You need to work this out, whatever it is. Ridiculous.” Standing, she began to head toward the exit, and Joey and Caden hurried to follow her.
----------------------------------------
The standard procedure when someone had been injured was to either 1) if it was bad enough, go to the ER, or 2) if it wasn’t life-threatening, regroup at HQ and debrief. On their way back in the van Frankie had reasoned, “If you get an infection, like, a magic infection or something, it’s not like the hospital can help with that anyway. Joey, you’re a null so you should be fine, but maybe look something up for our Channeler when we get back.” Joey had just nodded silently from the passenger seat, watching Caden in the rearview mirror where the other man had fallen asleep in the backseat.
Now they were arriving in the back room at HQ, Frankie calling out a greeting to Mac, who answered her with a shout from the office. Joey beelined for one of the walls of books, pulling out everything he had on chupacabras, while behind him he heard Frankie take a load off in a chair and draw her precious machete.
Then suddenly there was a sensation of motion behind him and a slam of something against the wall by the door as Frankie yelled, “What the hell?” Joey spun to see Frankie pinning a stranger against the wall with her machete at his throat. All Joey could take in at first was that it was some kind of non-human with gray skin, an angular face, black hair, pointed ears—
And piercing green eyes.
Joey dropped the book he was holding.
“A freakin’ goblin?! Are you kidding me?!” Frankie was growling, shoving her machete harder against what had to be Caden’s neck. “’A little of this, a little of that,’” she quoted, referring to Caden’s lack of a magical specialty. “I should’ve known you were a damned non-human.”
Internally, Joey was reeling, still staring at Caden’s eyes in an unfamiliar face. A face that was looking back at him, brow drawn in mute apology.
Mac appeared in the doorway of his office and Joey watched him take in the scene. Frankie was still muttering angrily, and Mac said, “Okay. Does this have anything to do with the fact that I just got a fax from Home Office saying there’s no such person as ‘Caden Ash’ on their books?”
Frankie had a grip on Caden’s hoodie with the hand not holding her knife, and she used it to slam him against the wall again. Caden cried out in pain as his head struck the wall, and despite himself Joey made an involuntary motion as if to stop Frankie.
“You faked your paperwork. What else haven’t you been telling us?” demanded Frankie.
The door to the antiques store opened behind Joey, and Indira complained, “You’re disturbing our non-existent customers—whoa, what?” Joey looked at her and saw her take a step back in confusion. “Who is that?”
Frankie shook Caden again. “A lying little goblin who’s probably been waiting to stab us all in the back.”
“No,” protested Caden, and Indira gasped in surprise, clearly realizing the truth of the situation.
“Frankie, maybe drop the machete,” said Mac, sounding exhausted. “He hasn’t hurt us all this time, it’s unlikely he’ll start now.”
With one last shove, Frankie released her grip on Caden’s shirt and stepped back, but she didn’t sheath her machete again.
“Okay.” Mac stepped toward Caden, who pressed himself backwards into the wall at Mac’s approach. Stepping back again, Mac held up his hands, obviously trying to show he wasn’t a threat. “Okay. So you don’t work for the Company.”
Cautiously, Caden shook his head in acknowledgement.
“Why are you here?”
“I can’t tell you,” said Caden, and oh it was strange to hear his familiar voice coming out of a different face.
“Why did you lie?” husked Joey before he knew what he was saying and Caden turned to him, eyes swimming with emotion that Joey couldn’t name.
A grey-skinned hand lifted and gestured toward Frankie, still standing tensely to the side. “Because this is the reaction I get when I don’t.”
“Why reveal yourself now, then?” asked Mac.
Frankie jumped in, “He wasn’t gonna. I saw his illusion flicker before it disappeared. What happened, too tired to lie to us?”
Caden held up his bandaged hand. “My ring…”
“It broke,” said Joey, realizing. “Your dad made it for you.”
“Yeah,” said Caden, voice soft as if speaking just to Joey. “To hide. It’s not safe for us.” His green eyes were wide as if begging Joey to understand.
In this moment, though, Joey didn’t want to understand. He balled his hands into fists and took a deep breath, but Mac spoke before he could say something he regretted.
“Look.” Mac sounded more wiped out than angry. “You’ve done good work. Clearly you didn’t mean to hurt us. I don’t know what your motives are for being here, but you aren’t a part of the Company, which means I can’t keep you on the payroll. You should go.”
Caden was still looking at Joey when he replied, “I’ll go.”
Before Frankie could threaten him again, Caden slipped out the back door, which clanged shut behind him. Everyone stood and watched him leave.
“A damned goblin right under our noses,” raged Frankie after a minute. “What the hell did it think it was doing?”
“I don’t think he’ll come back,” said Mac with a sigh. He looked at Joey, who was feeling so much that he didn’t know what he was feeling. “Take the day, kid.”
Joey didn’t wait to be told twice; he grabbed his bag from the desk chair and left through the back door where Caden had just exited. He almost expected to see Caden waiting for him, but the alley was empty. Numbly, Joey walked to the train station.
Later, he’d be proud of himself for making it all the way home before the tears fell.