Catch Like Hell's Light, Part 1
Fandom: Justified
Warnings: Discussion of domestic abuse. (If you've seen the pilot...)
Summary: Fusion with The Dresden Files (and that universe's rules and uses of magic). Raylan Givens is stuck back in Kentucky, and as a wizard, he gets all the magical cases. Starting with Boyd Crowder, who's using his power to blow shit up like always.
Note: I'm planning a loose retelling of the first season with magic flying everywhere. It's going to be heavy on Raylan and Boyd's strange friendship, and I'm not sure if that'll go further to a relationship. Be forewarned.
The thing about the Marshals is: they know about magic. They don’t condone it, quite, but they know it’s out there. There’s rumors enough in the law enforcement communities; there’s only so many times you can investigate a demon summoning gone wrong before it sticks. (The numbers of times is one. What a demon doesn’t eat, it throws around the place like garlands, and that’s just not what a rookie wants to walk into.) So Raylan is a wizard and the Marshals know it. They like to pretend they don’t, but they still push the strange cases over for him to handle.
That’s one of the reasons Raylan’s about to collect himself a shitload of trouble.
Buckley is an uncontrolled dark-magicking warlock. And he’s gotten under the White Council’s radar so far, despite all the shit he has pulled in front of Raylan’s own eyes. Raylan doesn’t have the evidence to call the Wardens and let the wizard’s justice system work this one. And he can’t arrest the bastard by mundane means, either; that won’t hold a warlock long, and there’ll likely be a body count. So Raylan gives him twenty-four hours to get out of his sight.
See, Raylan and Buckley, they have an ugly history, and let’s leave it at that.
The point is, the time runs out and they have a perfectly mundane stand-off. Raylan waits for Buckley to move for his gun. Raylan shoots him - because he is an upstanding wizard, who does not kill with magic. The Laws have nothing to say about killing with guns.
So Raylan’s still fine with the White Council, still got them on speed-dial for when a supernatural case crosses a Law. But he’s got some explaining to do with the normal law, the Marshals who like to pretend that magic doesn’t exist.
With a few battles fought and lost on the way, it all lands Raylan back in Kentucky.
--
Boyd isn’t, at heart, an evil man. That’s the important thing to remember.
The new recruit looks around the car. It’s just the two of them out for a wild night. Or on a mission, depending on how seriously you view these circumstances. He asks, “We’re blowin’ up a place, right?”
“We surely are,” Boyd confirms, the Good Book open in his hands. It’s night and the streetlights flash by too irregular for reading, but Boyd doesn’t need to see the words. He likes the weight of it in his hands. The solidity.
“Well, don’t we need some explosives and shit to blow it up with?” the recruit asks.
Boyd turns his head, slow and steady, like a hunter moving his rifle. Slow enough not to spook the prey till they’re in the sights. The kid casts glances over till they’re at a red light, then tries to hold Boyd’s eyes. Youthful bravado, proving he’s man enough to stand up to attention like that.
Usually, Boyd makes a point of finding the eyes of the folk around him. He has no shame about showing who he is. If they know he’s a wizard, they’re forced to give ground before they soulgaze and show him what’s in their hearts. Boyd’s found that the ones who know and go through with the soulgaze anyway are generally better than the dregs of society.
Boyd breaks the contact just when he feels the stirrings, because there’s no fun in it if the other person can’t make an informed choice. He squints up at the red corona of the light on the windshield and wonders, “Exactly how new are you?”
But put that aside for a moment.
One thing leads to another and Boyd hollers, “Fire in the hole!” just before he cups his magic in the palm of his hand and chucks fire right into the church. He quite considerately gives the blacks around there a chance to get out of the way, even. Sure, it’s to save his own skin - Boyd has no intention of taking a life, not with his magic - but it’s a consideration all the same.
Boyd and the recruit are a ways away before the kid slams on the brakes on a bridge and chokes out, “What - what - what the fuck was that?” His knuckles might split his skin, his hands are so tight on the steering wheel.
“Here’s an interesting thing,” Boyd says meditatively. “Where’d you say you was from?”
“Oklahoma,” the recruit quavers.
“They don’t have magic in Oklahoma?” Boyd asks gently. Well, not exactly gently. Evenly. With patience in every syllable. “You been with them any length of time and you don’t know the first thing about not inviting anyone inside? About avoiding the eyes of a wizard?”
The kid wrenches around in the driver’s seat, trying to see Boyd directly behind him. “What you talkin’ ‘bout, magic? You - you’re some kinda bugfuck crazy!”
“I’m thinking that the government suits haven’t figured out the full nature of our humble group.” Boyd takes up his gun, starts screwing on the suppressor. Keeps talking. “I’m thinking they sent in a snitch who don’t know about magic.”
“I ain’t no snitch!” the kid protests, and - well, one thing leads to another again. Boyd hikes along the road to a pay phone and dials the home base.
“Oh, hey, boss - got word from Oklahoma. New kid’s not in on everything, we gotta make sure we explain about - uh, rules an’ stuff. You know, magic rules,” Devil says, missing subtlety by a few miles.
Boyd considers the car he left a half mile back. “I’m afraid I had to let him go. I’m goin’ to need a ride.” He waits on the side of the road, the onyx in his ring giving off enough glow to read by.
He’s no more evil than a man who puts down a horse with a broken leg. It takes a certain perspective to understand it that way.
--
Raylan walks into the Marshals’ offices in Lexington with a healthy amount of caution. No one’s said anything to his face, but he knows the entire grapevine lit up like fireworks with the news of Raylan’s mundane shortcut to controlling that warlock. Rumors must be thick as horseflies about his having magic. He’ll have to keep an eye out for the ones that take them to heart.
He walks down the rows of tiny government-pay cubicles, curious about the computers and printers he sees there. He can’t get near the things, they don’t mix well with magic. The only reason every one of these machines isn’t melting down is all the warding layered over Raylan’s hat. Otherwise he’d be leaking power all over the place. Still can’t touch things like cell phones, for better or worse. Plus how he has to write all his reports out by hand.
Art Miller’s the only one who says something out loud, and that’s because he’s the one to hand over the supernatural cases. He and Raylan have quite the civil discussion about how Raylan can’t pull that kind of stunt again, and there better not be fireworks about his being a wizard.
It’s strange being back. It’s not home, not the least bit, but it’s familiar like an adult walking the halls of an elementary school. Everything used to fit, and now he’s the wrong size. Not to mention that he doesn’t have the slightest hint of a threshold - he feels half-naked everywhere he goes. It’s a bastard to establish permanent defenses in a place as impermanent as a motel. But he can’t bear to live with what’s left of his family, and he can’t think of getting an actual place. He keeps hoping he’ll leave before his past snatches at his heels.
This vulnerable, nostalgic feeling hits Raylan hard in the sternum the first time he sees Boyd Crowder’s face in a mug shot. It’s a little distorted - an irregularity in the focus, twisting the straight lines for measuring the prisoner’s height into a dip like a heart monitor’s line. Raylan can see Boyd’s hands holding up the slate with his numbers, and he’s not wearing any ring. Raylan’s surprised Boyd’s got his magic under control enough not to confound every camera for a block’s radius around.
“Shit, Art,” Raylan huffs, tilting his hat up to rub his forehead.
Art looks at the picture with no special recognition, like Raylan’s not busy imagining the last twenty years of Boyd being stuck in Harlan. “So you do know him?”
Raylan suppresses a laugh. “Yeah, I know him. Boyd and I dug coal together when we were nineteen.”
Art shakes his head and keeps on about the details: “A black church went up in a fireball. None of the witnesses have a clue what weapon the guy used; say his hands were empty, then fire was flying across the street. And considerin’ the things Crowder used to do for the military in Kuwait, we’re thinking the term ‘fireball’ is a bit too literal. This one of yours?”
“It’s one of mine,” Raylan agrees without a doubt. Boyd wouldn’t use anything as mundane as actual explosives. He never could stand the thought. Boyd’s blood runs hot, a big fan of the fire element, where Raylan prefers to work with earth if he has the grace of time.
Raylan flips through the file and refuses to let his stomach turn. He knew how Boyd was, when they were kids. He’d seen the man’s soul. He’d pretended that the reckless spellcasting was just about two boys raising hell for Boyd - that he would grow out of the thrill it gave him. Flaming out a church, though. Racists with magic behind them.
He asks, “Anyone die in the church?” and holds his breath.
“No. Just a fuckton of property damage,” Art grunts.
Raylan breathes out through his nose, slow and careful. Boyd hasn’t broken the First Law, then. At least there’s that.
He regrets the thought an hour later, when he’s looking at some kid with a pen-ink-and-sewing-needle swastika tattooed on his neck and his brains all over a car. Because they’d both learned their way around the First Law, hadn’t they? If you need someone dead, they’ll die. The rule only says you can’t use magic to kill them.
--
Tim Gutterman’s fiddling with something tiny and electronic when Raylan walks through the office looking for coffee. He calls, “Hey - Raylan, right?”
Raylan stops and turns a mistrustful eye on the box in his fellow agent’s hands. “That’s right.”
“You’re from Harlan?” the man asks, a little desperate. “Only I have to drive out there and my GPS doesn’t know how I should go.”
Raylan does his best not to glower. Not everyone has to share his bone-deep grudge against his hometown. He asks, “Why’re you going?”
“Talking to a newly self-made widow,” Tim answers distractedly. He fiddles with the GPS some time longer and holds it out. “Just take a look, see if it’s in the right neighborhood?”
Raylan holds both his hands up like the thing’s a grenade. The warding spells on his hat keep attacks out and Raylan’s magic in, but anything on batteries within a foot is forfeit. “Don’t hand me that.”
Tim grins suddenly. “Jesus, you sound like my sister when someone tries to get her to hold a baby.” He makes another move toward Raylan, threatening to toss the GPS at him.
“Don’t let him near that if you ever want it to work again,” Art says, as he passes by with papers to read. He stops. He looks up properly and frowns at them both. “Hey, Tim, what’s the name of that woman you’re goin’ to look in on?”
Tim turns to his desk, leaning right over the low cubicle wall. He straightens up with the file and reads, “Ava Crowder.”
“Ava Crowder?” Raylan repeats, stunned. “Ava Carter married into the Crowders?”
“Maiden name: Carter,” Tim confirms. He hands the file over. “And she’s officially uninvited to the family reunions. Shot her husband over dinner two nights ago. It’ll probably be ruled self-defense, but she’s probably in danger from her former in-laws. She feels it’s not our business.”
Raylan skims the file through, skipping over the pictures of finger-mark bruises. Little Ava Carter and Bowman Crowder. And no shit she’ll be in danger; she’s just killed Boyd Crowder’s brother. Boyd’s already proved that magical violence doesn’t discomfort him. Raylan meets Art’s eyes for a second and skims them away. He doesn’t like where this is going. Namely, his going straight to Harlan.
“One of yours?” Art guesses, smirking at him. Knowing what Raylan would give to never show his face in that town again. He walks on briskly, ordering, “Tim, you’re off it. Raylan will be happy to cover this himself.”
Tim shrugs at Raylan. “Sorry about that.”
Raylan keeps reading the file, clouds settling over his mood.
--
He knocks on the door and waits. It’s a nice day, but just being on Harlan soil raises the small hairs on his neck. He doesn’t know how far out his Aunt Helen’s wards go, but if they don’t tell her he’s been in the area, someone else will. Small towns and gossip.
The door opens and Ava’s in the doorway. She’s a bit of a mess, unkempt how a woman gets when she’s not expecting to step outside her door. No cosmetics, hair unwashed and tangled. It reminds Raylan of his own days of being married and seeing his woman without her face on. Although Winona never took a shotgun to him, not even during the divorce.
He catches himself looking at her eyes and fixes on her right ear, instead. It’s bad business for a wizard to lock eyes with a human; leads to a soulgaze. Each person’s inner being laid out and bare, no secrets or polite facades about it. Can be both harrowing and involuntary.
Ava looks like she’s seen a ghost. “Raylan Givens, as I live and breathe! What are you doing back in Harlan?”
“Checkin’ on you,” he says, and shows her his badge. “It’s about Bowman.”
“You’re a Marshal, that’s right. I heard from your Aunt Helen.” She’s looking him over carefully, smile sly and inviting. “You’re all grown up.”
Against his better judgment, Raylan smiles back. “So are you.”
She bites her lip and admits, suddenly, “I used to have such a crush on you, you know that?”
“You were much too young,” he says, remembering those in-between years with a constriction in his chest. The kicking around time between high school and getting the hell out of Harlan, working the mine to save up and running around with Boyd Crowder. Before Raylan’s momma died and this place lost every hold on him. His past has its teeth sunk in him all over again, it seems.
“Not too young now,” Ava murmurs, one hand touching her neck, her hair. Her face goes comical when she finds the disarray. “But I’m not put together! Oh, give me a moment to get on something better.” Then she rushes off up the stairs, calling over the railing, “I’ll be just a minute!”
Raylan shifts his weight on his legs, knocks his hat up his forehead. Clears his head enough to reach out with his magic to investigate the threshold in the unhappy Crowder home.
It’s rotten out and flimsy, barely resisting his examination. He could step in uninvited and keep near all his power - and probably so could anything with magic, human or not. Boyd might have his invitation from his brother, but anyone off the street could cave the house down on Ava’s head. Mundane, without even the protection of a threshold. She might as well be trussed up for slaughter.
Ava reappears, wearing a nice summer dress and her hair up. She walks down the stairs sedately, then frowns at Raylan. “You’re still out on my porch,” she states, voice hard.
“Well, I do seem to be,” Raylan agrees with a bland smile.
Her forehead is creasing, distrust sudden in her tense fists. She warns him, “I won’t be inviting you in.”
At least she knows that much, Raylan considers. He points out, “Going in a person’s house without permission is mighty ungentlemanly.”
She sets her jaw, crosses her arms. “That may be.”
He exaggeratedly looks down at the toes of his boots, six inches from the door. He slowly takes a step inside, crowding her a little against the door where she avoids touching him. He takes off his hat; it’ll leave his magic a little wild, but there’s nothing electrical that’ll take offense. He doesn’t even see a television.
They stand there, door open to the porch, Ava’s confusion becoming clear. “So you’re not-” she starts anxiously. “But you know about-?” she tries again. Then her spine goes iron-pipe rigid and she glares hard at him. “You’re not lookin’ me in the eye, Raylan Givens. Only one never looks me in the eye is my brother-in-law.”
Raylan’s still fixing on her ear. He tells her kindly, “I’m out here on your case because magic runs in families, and the Crowders particularly. Can’t rightly keep your in-laws away without being a wizard.”
Ava gasps like he’d struck her. “But the threshold. I didn’t invite you,” she insists.
“It’s weak,” he tells her. “Barely felt it. You and Bowman, you weren’t a proper family, were you?” He asks it like he hasn’t seen the file or the documentation of her hospital visits.
“Bowman…” She goes a little distant. “He weren’t a wizard, not properly. But he could do a few castings. Nasty ones.”
Raylan nearly touches her shoulder, but thinks better. He suggests diplomatically, “Let’s sit down and talk about it.”
In a few heartbeats, Ava gives a full-body shiver and comes back to herself. They shut the door, for all the good it’ll do, and she turns to the doorway to their left. “The dining room. That’s where I shot him.” Her voice is low and sure. Satisfied with what she’s done. Must have come to terms with her husband’s death the second she made up her mind to cause it.
Raylan leans into the room a ways. There’s a patch of blood in the carpet by the head of the table, seeming for all the world like someone spilled a jar of jam. A few crumbled pieces of plaster, impact points of the spread of the buckshot around the body. She stood right here when she pulled the trigger.
They make it to the kitchen. Raylan has whiskey and ice, Ava some Southern Comfort and cola. Then they go to the sitting room and sit.
Raylan says, “Best start with how you learned about the Crowders’ magic.”
“No, I’ll start earlier.” She shakes her head, lifts one hand to her mouth, swallows away the taste of alcohol. “I’ll start with how I said my own name out loud for our vows. First, middle, last. Bowman skipped his middle, but I didn’t understand, then.” She waits while Raylan has some of his whiskey, checking to be sure they’re on the same page.
Hearing a person’s name from their own lips gives you power over them. Gives you a handle onto their soul. It’s the first step in putting a lot of different spells over a person.
Raylan doesn’t like where this is going. He can see that grimness reflected in Ava.
“I was a good girl before my wedding. Went in with a white dress, you know. We went to Tampa for our honeymoon to see the Superbowl. In the hotel that first night, Bowman set up candles and things. Laid down copper wire in a star and circle under the bed. Wanted it to be a special atmosphere, he said.”
Raylan’s fingers tighten on his glass and he makes himself take another sip, forces the burn down through his throat. A pentacle, a virgin. The spell would power itself. He must have spoken the words while he was in her, nonsense syllables to her ears. Maybe kept the bloody sheets - there’s a lot of dirty tricks you can pull with maiden’s blood. Jesus fucking Christ.
“When we came back, I was… happy.” She twists her lips, sharing a sour joke. He doesn’t know what his face is showing her. “I wanted to stay in the house all the time, stay where I could take care of Bowman. I left for shifts at work, but he hated that I had a job and I quit. I could barely go out for groceries without my heart fluttering, wondering if Bowman would get home and find me gone. When that happened, I got hurt. He’d speak words and for a week I’d get a migraine if I passed the front door. There were rules, like never inviting anyone inside, never leaving my hair or blood outside. He burned my used tampons in the backyard, rather than put them in the garbage. And I never thought about any of that. None of it ever seemed strange to me. Never thought nothin’ about it.”
She falls silent, thinking on it now. She knocks back more of her drink. She tries to look him in the eye and turns her face away when she remembers she can’t. “I avoided speaking to men whenever I could, even my own daddy ‘fore he passed. One time I dropped some money and old Mr. Waldon put his hand on my arm to tell me so. It raised up gooseflesh like razors under my skin.”
That would be a harsh deterrent to ever stepping out on Bowman, then. A disinclination to consider flirting, pain if she was really determined to have a man’s hands on her that weren’t her husband’s. Raylan’s spoken to people who have been enthralled - he’s broken some out of it himself. The ones who cast it always end up dead. It’s against the Third Law, and humans who figure out what they’ve been doing against their will can take things into their own hands.
Case in point.
“Your Aunt Helen heard me screamin’ and took me to her home,” Ava says then, with a new tone. She glances at him from the corner of her eye, measuring his reaction. “She could see what was hanging over me. She gave me a drink to break the thrall and explained about magic. Helped me figure out how it had happened on the honeymoon and gave me a necklace that would keep away Bowman’s spells. He wasn’t strong with them; it took too much to keep up what he started that first night. Keep me under till I drowned. He couldn’t make a new try at it, because I weren’t no virgin, the ways he used me. I went home to him and said he couldn’t hold me no more, but I’d made a sacred vow, so why couldn’t we try being man and wife without no spells to force it.”
She sets her empty glass down hard, a loud noise when she isn’t talking. She demands furiously, “Why in hell did I do that? Fourteen years of my life slipped away without me thinkin’ nothing was wrong. And I went back. I figured it was the magic that was cruel, not the man. But without it, he fell back on the old tradition of beating my head in when I did something wrong. And he was going to kill me that way. All he ever did in his life was get drunker and meaner. So I shot him.”
Raylan watches her settle, the anger seeping out of her shoulders. Like the words are keeping her peace of mind. There are things to ask, words to say, but Raylan gives her some time to herself.
That’s when someone starts beating on the front door, hollering, “Ava! Hey, Ava! We’re going someplace, come get in this here car!”
Ava shrinks into the couch at the first word, then jumps up. “I’m getting my shotgun,” she tells Raylan calmly, and strides to the stairs. Keeps it in the bedroom, then.
Raylan puts on his hat and goes to the front of the house, leaves his gun holstered. He opens the door, pulling the visitor up short with one fist up to keep banging on thin air.
He’s a rangy little man, a little beady-eyed and slow to change tracks. He’s got ‘HEI LHI TLER’ spaced unevenly across his neck. He gapes at Raylan. “Who’re you?”
“Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens,” Raylan answers, not moving to show his badge. He keeps one hand on the doorknob and the other relaxed at his side, to go for a gun or a spell. “Who’re you?”
“Dewey Crowe,” he answers, still surprised. He’s not gaining momentum well. “I… came for Ava. Ava!” he calls into the house.
She appears at the top of the stairs, shotgun over her arm. She says, “Dewey Crowe, you and yours had better leave me alone.”
“Crowe. Ran into a Dale Crowe Jr. in Florida, breaking some rules,” Raylan says, testing a little. If this kid knows magic, if he knows the Laws. If he knows that other Crowe was beheaded for meddling with necromancy.
Dewey Crowe’s face is a picture. “He was my kin.”
Oh, he knows. His family’s got wizards, he might be one himself. Raylan gives him a tight, intimidating smile. He says, “Get on out of here, son. And don’t you think of coming back.”
Dewey’s got his pride, though. He sputters, “I’ll be back. I’ll be right back!” He turns on his heel and scurries down the lawn to his car, a sedan that’s seen better days. It has a staff lodged in it, much too large to be practical. It’s about a foot and a half taller than Dewey, that’s certain. If the kid needs that whole thing as a focal point for his first attack, he doesn’t have any business trying to work magic in a fight. He should have had it in his hand before announcing his intentions.
Raylan saunters out after him, calling up a spell and getting ready. Dealing with the earth is heavy, slow-moving like a glacier, till it’s unleashed. Not much use in a quick draw, but handy when you’re pinned down and have half a minute to concentrate and develop something sneaky.
Dewey drags his staff out and starts saying, “Stop right there! Or else - Vena, uh, no, that’s not right. Venus? Ventim?” He mutters, “Damn it, what’s the one for wind?”
Raylan walks within a yard of this kid. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he sighs. “Terra gravitas obtineo.”
“Whoa!” Dewey cries when his feet leave the ground. “Hey, stop it!” He hovers, tilts off-axis so he’s almost horizontal, arms waving all around, staff dropped. Doesn’t seem to like it when he can’t rely on gravity going down.
Raylan gathers up the displaced energy, holding it back. Then he dumps it on Dewey, so the man thuds to the ground on his ass. It lays him out and pins him down, an extra hundred-thirty pounds of weight on his chest for the same amount of time he was floating, paying back the force of gravity owed. Not enough to knock the idiot out of him.
Raylan lets up on the spell. Nudges Dewey’s thigh with the point of his boot, presses hard to rouse him. It’ll leave a bruise. He says gravely, “You ever try to turn magic on me again, you’d better have your death curse ready.” He doubts Dewey would have the brute strength for a dangerous curse, even with his last breath. He couldn’t even revenge himself, like a proper wizard.
Dewey scrambles up, takes his staff in a loose fist. Not threatening, just bringing it to his car. He’s all out of sorts. “I’m, I’m tellin’ Boyd,” he stammers, wedging his staff inside and climbing into the driver’s seat.
“You gonna see Boyd?” Raylan asks, solicitously holding the door for him. “You know, Boyd and I knew each other back in the day. Dug coal and drank beer together. You see him, you tell him his old friend Raylan Givens is in Harlan.” He shuts the door and hopes this dumbass kid doesn’t make Raylan shoot him someday.
Dewey screws his courage up and hisses, “I’ll be back for Ava later.”
Raylan steps up to the car, reaches through the window, and smashes Dewey’s mouth into the steering wheel. His teeth cut up his lip something serious. Raylan says, “You see Boyd Crowder, you tell him Raylan Givens is looking for him. You hear that? Raylan. Givens.”
Dewey drives off in a state. He’ll likely pull off the road for a good cry before he has to tell Boyd about what happened.
Raylan turns to see Ava standing on her porch, shotgun out, squinting in the sunlight. As he walks back to her, she says, “I knew magic was in families, and your Aunt Helen has it. But I never thought you mighta got it.”
“My momma, too,” he tells her, wearing that bland smile again.
“Not your daddy?” she asks, quick and sharp.
Arlo’s still kicking and around and making a nuisance of himself, then. That sonnuvabitch wouldn’t have the sense to live clean if he was a wizard; the temptation to break the Laws would’ve killed him just as soon as he could work the spells to do it. Raylan says darkly, “My daddy’s a different kind of strange.”
“You seemed too nice for it,” she says sadly. “From what I remembered about you, when I was sixteen and you left.”
Raylan shakes his head. He doesn’t know if he’s gotten meaner, or if he just hid it so well before. “Magic isn’t cruel, just some folks that use it.”
She keeps looking like she’s going to cry at him. If he’s too much like her dead husband for comfort, at least that sorts out the flirting from earlier.
“Let’s see if I can’t set you up some wards,” he says, trying not to show how much he’d rather be anywhere but Harlan just now.
“You’re gonna talk to Boyd,” she says instead. “You’re gonna stop him comin’ near me, tryin’ to talk his way into his brother’s place in my bed.”
Raylan stares at her. “You don’t think he’s gonna make time with his brother’s murdering widow.”
“I know he ain’t after me to put me in the ground. My last name’s Crowder, now, and he’s set on keepin’ me in the clan.” She puts the safety on the shotgun and leans it next to the door, pretty face all drawn and worried. “I won’t be able to fight him if he puts a thrall over me, Raylan. He’s stronger than Bowman was. A proper wizard.”
“I know he is,” Raylan mutters to himself. That’s been stuck on his mind. Having a human enthralled is against the Third Law. The Council wouldn’t care about a minor practitioner like Bowman, but Boyd is a wizard. It’d mean his head. But it’d mean Raylan’s if he explained any of that to Ava.
She takes a deep breath, smiles with a hint of that flirt in her. “I know where you can find him.”
Part 2