The Saint of Liars Read online

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgment

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Book Club Questions

  Author Bio

  The Saint of Liars

  The Lucky Devil Series Book 2

  Copyright © 2023 Megan Mackie. All rights reserved.

  4 Horsemen Publications, Inc.

  1497 Main St. Suite 169

  Dunedin, FL 34698

  4horsemenpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Cover by J. Caleb Clark

  Typesetting by S. Wilder

  Edited by Jenna Stanton, Jamie Garner, and Jen Paquette

  All rights to the work within are reserved to the author and publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please contact either the Publisher or Author to gain permission.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2022947640

  Paperback ISBN-13: 979-8-8232-0103-2

  Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-724-7

  Audiobook ISBN-13: 979-8-8232-0101-8

  Ebook ISBN-13: 979-8-8232-0102-5

  For my teacher, Phyllis

  Acknowledgment

  Thank you first and foremost to my mother, Connie, for my entire life in general and for proofreading my book three times specifically.

  Thank you to Jenna, my editor, for guiding me through this process.

  Thank you, Andrew, for always dropping everything to come over and help me figure out what was wrong with my book.

  Thank you to Frank for being my life-affirming snowman.

  Thank you to Caleb for working with me tirelessly on getting my cover art exactly right.

  Thank you to my husband and friend, Paul, for supporting me unwaveringly. I love you with all my heart. Thank you to Byron and Alaina for leaving mommy alone for five minutes so she could finish her book.

  “True love will triumph in the end—

  which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie,

  then it’s the most beautiful lie we have.”

  - John Green

  Prologue

  Justin Masterson rushed up his drive, fumbling with the keys. The stupid light over the door didn’t kick on as he approached, making it twice as hard to find the front door key. His trembling, sweating hands didn’t help any. He about screamed in frustration when the pile of keys dropped in a jangled mess onto the front stoop.

  Checking his voice at the last second, he instead vented his frustration at the doorbell.

  “Come on, come on. Fucking hell, Anna, answer the goddam door,” he growled, before bending to retrieve the keys, drawing a little blood as he scraped his knuckles on the rough concrete. The sting seemed to refocus him, and he managed to find the right key just as the light sputtered on. Dressed in an unattractive pair of pajama pants and one of his black undershirts, his stupid wife opened the front door.

  “Justin? What’s wrong…?” she started to ask, but he shoved past her.

  “Get dressed,” he ordered. He made his way to the back office behind the stairway of their two-story house. Passing the mirror that hung in the semi-dark hallway, he wouldn’t have recognized himself if he had bothered to look long enough. Tall and slender, Justin had always been considered a handsome catch. He had the angular face and lithe, long body of a rock star while his brain was deemed genius-level protégé. Coupled with the charm of Don Juan, the fact that he was married was rarely a deterrent for other women.

  Instead of doing as she was told, his stupid wife, who would rather stuff her face with chocolate than abide by the strictures laid out in their pre-nup that she remain a certain weight, followed him into the office.

  “Justin, what is going on? Where have you been?”

  “We need to leave. Tonight. Get whatever you can’t live without,” he said, taking a direct line for his computers. He needed to erase everything, everything he had ever created, but he wasn’t sure there was time. And that might be stupid, anyway. If the company caught up with him, he would need a bargaining chip.

  “What do you mean, we are leaving?” his stupid wife persisted. She crossed her arms over her ample chest, one of the few parts about her he actually liked. The gesture was more to comfort herself than to display anger or defy him and he checked himself. Screaming at her would slow things down. He needed her to comply.

  “Something bad has happened. You need to trust me and do as I say.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, typing furiously at the computer. For the moment, they still seemed secure, but tick-tock, tick-tock. He simultaneously started uploading and downloading, splitting the program into fragments. That would work. He would be able to find all these pieces again, both in real life and in the digital realm. He had to hurry. Hurry. Think faster. Be cleverer. He could still win this.

  “Where is my spare cell phone?” he asked himself, as he plugged the one from his pocket into his system.

  He was shocked to turn and find Anna still standing there. She had moved in closer, doing that eerie trick she had of finding things without looking for them. She swore she wasn’t a Talent, but no one had been able to explain to him how she did such a thing without magic. It made his skin crawl every time. She slid her hand through the mess on his desk, pulling the small, black phone out from underneath a stack of papers. There was no way she could have simply seen that.

  “I said go!” This time he shouted. Goddammit! Why couldn’t the stupid woman do what she was told?

  “No,” she said, jutting her chin out in timid defiance. “Not this time. You will tell me what’s going on.” A single tear rolled down her cheek and a small part inside Justin ached. He hated it when she cried.

  It only provoked his anger further.

  “If you don’t get upstairs this minute, I will leave your fat worthless ass behind!” He started toward her then. Anna flinched, dropping the phone. The screen shattered as it hit the floor. She backpedaled away from his larger form. He had never hit her before, so he had no idea why she had that reaction. He pushed the guilt away, deciding he didn’t care enough about her to even bother. He didn’t have time for this.

  “Get upstairs,” he growled and began to turn away.

  Her hazel eyes darkened as something flashed behind him. Then those same eyes widened. Justin turned toward the light, white and cold, bursting through the windows.

  It was too late.

  “Justin?! What is happenin
g?”

  “I… I did something…” he started, but it was impossible to finish. How could he explain it?

  “What did you do?!” she demanded, her voice becoming shrill with fear. The leaves and grass outside swirled malevolently as an oncoming storm kicked up. Shadows cut across the cold light.

  Justin rushed to his computers. He had to destroy them, destroy everything. Forget the bargaining chip.

  “Most of it is sent,” he muttered to himself as he checked the screen. The audio pulse coder had completed its jobs, transforming his work into transferable sound. The auto dialer had sent those pieces to fill every voicemail box of every contact number he had ever known in that phone. It would have to be enough, but what about the computer itself? With a mighty shove, the computers crashed to the floor.

  “Justin!”

  “Fire! We need to burn it down!” Some part of him knew he wasn’t thinking rationally anymore, but that part wasn’t in charge at the moment.

  “Justin, what is happening? Answer me!” Anna grabbed his arm, yanking him back even as he tried to grab the small crafting blowtorch from the desk where he built and soldered his own hardware. It was a tiny blowtorch, but needs must….

  He didn’t realize he had backhanded Anna until he heard her hit the back wall. It was too surreal. The light, the shouting coming from outside, the sight of his young, curvy wife sliding down the wall, her face stunned and hurt. He stood there shocked, holding the lit blowtorch in hands that no longer seemed attached to his body.

  What had he done?

  He needed to answer her. Needed to answer that face that looked so betrayed and hurt. “I embezzled money from the company,” he heard himself say. “They’re coming for us.”

  He hurled the lit blowtorch. The fire erupted. His notebooks and circuit boards, his entire short life’s work. The only thing besides himself that he cared about. He felt nothing as he watched the flames lick it all up. He felt like he was standing in a vacuum of time as he watched it all burn.

  “Justin!” Anna screamed. Sight, sound, and heat flooded into sharp relief. Justin turned in time to see three men dressed in black military swat gear double march through the door, weapons drawn. Two of the men went for his wife, hauling her up by her outstretched arms that were meant to repel them. Where had the third man gone? It was all happening too fast.

  Disoriented, Justin tried to bolt forward, imagining in his mind that he was going to haul the huge men off of her. Instead, his momentum was arrested. More men had entered through the office windows and seized him from behind. Why was this happening?

  Someone punched him, and all Justin saw were stars. When the stars cleared, he was being pressed face down on the ground as cold metal snapped onto his wrists. The weight of the hired muscle holding him down crushed the air out of him. Through the chaos of fire, smoke, and boots, he saw Anna.

  She was in the same position he was, her head pinned to the side as a man straddled her from behind to handcuff her. Her face was a mess of tears and snot. She was so ugly when she was afraid.

  “Okay, let’s get these assholes up,” a commanding voice said.

  “Justin?” Anna’s voice pleaded as they locked eyes.

  “You stupid bitch,” he snarled. “Why didn’t you just do as you were told?”

  Chapter 1

  Seven Years Later…

  Rune Anna Leveau sat in the Lucky Devil’s booth staring at the open magic tome before her. Her bar, also called the Lucky Devil after the iconic statue that sat in that booth with her, was empty, closed for a week of renovations. Cleaning supplies were staged on top of the old, well-loved, well-maintained bar. All the bottles of liquor that usually lined the back wall were gone, tucked away in the storage room while the dust and magic were flying. At least, what little magic they could afford.

  Liam was kicking up plenty of dust behind the bar. Her four-armed bartender had been going hard at the wood shelving with polishing oil, bringing back the shine that the metal tin promised was in there somewhere.

  In the next room, she could hear Alf, both bar manager and one of her retainers, shouting. She ducked her head closer to her book. She was not going to get up to see what was going on. Even if she did intervene, there was a good chance he wouldn’t listen to her, anyway. For one thing, he simply knew more about the business of running a bar than she did. For another thing, he had barely accepted her as the true Heir of the Magdalene, the Wizard House Rune had inherited from Aunt Maddie, which was more or less attached to the bar itself. After her death, Aunt Maddie had left everything to Rune, despite Alf’s strenuous objections. And even though Alf had sworn his fealty to her, the new official Head of the House of the Magdalene, it was still hard to say for certain some days who was the boss of whom. She was having a hard enough time trying to figure out the magic required to reanimate the bar trashcan.

  Normally, the squat awkward trashcan hopped back and forth behind the bar, catching any refuse that the bartenders swept down to it. Lately, it had been doing a poor job, moving sluggishly and failing to catch the peanut shells and napkins that was its regular diet. Last week, it failed all together. Now it stood there, like any other trashcan, completely devoid of magic.

  “So, how does this work?” Ally, Rune’s teenage retainer, asked. The beautiful girl sat across from her in Lucky Devil’s booth trying to help by grinding up incense in a metal mortar and pestle, while Rune sifted through the freshly bought spelling supplies, adding bits and pieces to the bowl as prescribed.

  Ally was the newest addition to the House of Magdalene, though she was the first to swear fealty to Rune. Ally’s long blonde hair was in her “serious” braid and she wore a t-shirt and jean shorts, instead of her usual catholic-school uniform. The city of Chicago was in the full swing of summer, and school had gotten out a few weeks before. Unlike other teenagers, instead of going to the beach or working a part-time job, Ally was attending to her duties as a wizard’s, or whatever’s, retainer. So far, it had mostly involved being Rune’s personal assistant.

  Even with the windows fully open and the breeze from the outside, the bar was sweltering with Chicago heat, a special kind of heat only those who lived there completely understood and could complain about with authority. The air regulation spell inside the bar, which kept temperatures adjusted appropriately not only during the seasons but based on internal crowd size, went kaput hard last week. They used hominal window units, but they were not up to the job.

  Wiping sweat from her forehead, Rune took a sip of lukewarm water. Ally tugged at the old spell book, but only succeeded in reading the words upside down. Not that it would have done her any good, as the book was handwritten and not by someone who had practiced their penmanship.

  “I mean, can you really cast this?” Ally asked, squinching her perfect eyebrows at the page. “I mean, you’re only a Talent. And your Talent has nothing to do with animating things, right?”

  “Nope. Finding things, and occasionally people, has nothing to do with Reanimation magic,” Rune said distractedly.

  “Then how you gonna cast a Reanimation spell?”

  “Very carefully.” Rune finally looked up from her tome. “Look, do you have three thousand dollars for a Reanimation crystal?” Ally shook her head glumly. “If I can’t make it work, then we’re only out a hundred in supplies.” Rune flipped the book back to the first chapter, wondering if her teacher voice sounded anything like Maddie’s. “At its core, all magic, no matter the Talent, is a transfer of energy. This is why if one magic practitioner creates a spell and stores it into a crystal, another magic practitioner with a completely different Talent can activate that spell by feeding it magical energy. That same principle applies to imbuing any object with a continually running spell. It’s just really, really, really hard.”

  “Then why not make up a bunch of Finding crystals, sell those, and buy a Reanimation crystal?” Ally asked.


  A look of guilt crossed Rune’s face. “I don’t actually know how to transfer a Finding spell into a crystal. It’s not a very common Talent and every time I’ve tried, even with Maddie’s help, I couldn’t pull it off.”

  “But I thought….” Ally sat back in the booth, chewing on her words as she tried to work it out. “Then what do we do?”

  “Come up with three thousand dollars, try it ourselves, or live life without an animated trashcan since there is no tech equivalent to this. I’m trying out option number two.”

  “But I mean, couldn’t you go back to the original person who cast it and get it recast for cheaper or something?” Ally pressed.

  “No, she’s dead,” Rune said, staring hard at the book’s writing.

  “Oh, that sucks.” Then Ally went still as what Rune said connected up for her. “Oh, sorry. You mean, your aunt….”

  Alf harrumphed as he appeared beside the table. “All the magic in here was cast by Maddie. She was a real wizard, not some Talent hack.” Alf was a little person, which put his chin at about level with Lucky Devil’s elevated tabletop. His size didn’t stop him from leaning his knuckles against the edge of the table, becoming an imposing presence all the same. “Maybe you could use your ‘Finding’ Talent to find the real Heir of the Magdalene.”

  Rune didn’t reply to the jibe. This had been their pattern over the last couple of months. She had hoped his animosity toward her had cooled with her proving that she at least had the magical Talent to be Maddie’s heir. Yet, the majority of the time, it was as if nothing had changed. And despite everything, she still didn’t feel confident getting rid of him, which left them in this fluctuating state.

  She gazed at Alf with an impassive face, waiting. At first, he only stared back, challenging her, but then slowly he pursed his lips harder and harder together until a very terse “My Lady” came out. Then Rune smiled a Cheshire-cat smile at him.

  She knew it was a bit perverse to force him to address her by the honorific when she forbade Ally, her only other retainer, to use it. But he had tried to force the bar out from under her with their mortgage company. She should have at least fired him for that, except he then swore fealty to her as the Head of the House. As punishments for betrayal go, addressing her as “My Lady” every time he spoke to her was very mild, except that he hated it so much.