Magic Shifts

by Ilona Andrews

  “It occurred to me that one day I will be a father,” he said. “And I have no idea how the hell I’m going to do that.”

  “You’re already a father. Sort of.”

  “Julie was already a good kid when you found her. Most of the hard work was done. I am talking about raising a little human from the first breath. I don’t even know what the hell I would do with a baby.”

  “I think you will make an excellent father. I’d worry more about what kind of mother I would make.”

  We would screw up our children. It was inevitable. Julie had taught me that you never get the child you want or expect. You get the child you get and you try your best to make sure they turn out to be a decent human being. That was all that mattered.

  An image of pregnant Andrea sitting on our lawn and eating the remnants of a bull flashed across my mind. “If I get pregnant and we kill something magic, don’t let me eat it.”

  He grinned.

  “If Aunt B were alive, there’s no way Andrea could get away with it.”

  But Aunt B was dead. She would never see Raphael and Andrea’s baby. Hugh d’Ambray’s Iron Dogs had killed her, but Hugh was a tool and my father used him like a battering ram when he wanted to break down a door. Roland bore the ultimate responsibility for it.

  “I found out what it means to claim the land,” I said.

  “Tell me.”

  I did. “It wasn’t a hallucination, Curran. I improved when I shouldn’t have.”

  He made a noise, half a growl, half a frustrated grunt. “That means he wields magic even during tech. He won’t hesitate to shield himself.”

  “Yes. Attacking him during technology while he is in his territory means risking the lives of everyone in it. He will drain them dry to keep himself alive. He will deeply regret it and be conflicted about it later, but he will do it. His will to live trumps everything else.”

  “We’ll get him,” Curran said.

  “I know.” I just had no idea how. How do you kill someone with that much power?

  “We’re going to be smart about this. We’re going to watch him, test him, and when we know we can win, we’ll crush him.”

  And that was why he was a scary bastard. “Curran . . .”

  He kissed my hair. “Yes?”

  “I can’t get Sienna’s vision out of my head. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but it keeps popping up.”

  “It’s a possible future,” he said. “Not the definite future.”

  “I know. I just wish I knew what it meant. I usually see him on a grassy hill in my dreams, too. Only when I see it, there is always a tower being built.” My father was an active participant in those dreams. I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw what he wanted me to see.

  “Before Jim and Robert left, I asked them when the construction on the tower had started,” Curran said.

  “And?”

  “The day we killed the wind scorpion.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “There was nothing there until the scorpion died. That evening he put the first block down and he wasn’t at all subtle about it. Why build a tower now, in plain view? He has no power base here. He isn’t ready to defend the tower, unless he camps out in it.”

  Curran had a valid point. Roland spent most of his time in his little budding empire in the Midwest. His version of the new world order was rather fragile; he had to be there to keep an eye on it. Why would he drop everything and come over to build a tower here? He had to know I would lose it when I found out.

  Ah. That explained it.

  “It’s a diversion.”

  Curran nodded. “For some reason, he’s worried about the djinn. Every time we made progress, he escalated the construction until you could no longer ignore it. He is fucking with your head.”

  “But why? I thought the djinn might have been some sort of screwed-up test he shoved our way, but if it’s a test, why not just let us deal with it?”

  “Your magic doesn’t work on the djinn directly. Does his?”

  “I don’t know. The natural resistance would still be there, because my magic is Roland’s magic and I bounced hard off the ifrit’s host. But Roland has a lot more juice than I do and he’s been at it for thousands of years longer. He might be able to overpower the ifrit, but it’s possible it would cost him a lot of magic. We’re not talking about just any djinn. He’s an ifrit, which is supposedly second only to the marids in the raw magical power department. According to the myths, the ifrits have a society much like we do. They exist in clans, and they have their own aristocracy based on power. I think our guy was high up in the food chain, because he was wearing gold and emeralds. I also got a glimpse into his mind. It’s a mess. He’s completely bonkers, but the amount of power he has is staggering. You should’ve felt it—it was like a damn volcano.”

  Curran leaned back. “So if it’s not a test and the ifrit can present a challenge to Roland’s power, why not help us deal with it? He wins if we take the ifrit down.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “The intel from Robert shows that the timeline matches up perfectly—every time we took a step closer to the djinn, Roland made his construction even more obvious. It’s like he doesn’t want us to interact with the djinn at all. He doesn’t want us to kill it.”

  “I’m not even sure we can, Curran. The ifrit’s power is growing. The first two times he summoned something, he seemed to be only fulfilling wishes, so he could then take over the host. This time he summoned a giant bull and then dropped a meteor and a snake on us. We don’t even know if he’s taken control of a new host yet. This is just him venting his hurt feelings because of the giant. I can’t let him keep doing this. He is a threat to more than Eduardo or us. He is a threat to anything in his vicinity.”

  Curran grimaced. “Did you hear what he said?”

  “About betrayer spawn? Yeah, what the hell was that all about?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Curran said. “But Dali did some checking. Eduardo’s Pack admission paperwork is on file. In the Place of Birth section, he listed Atlanta, Georgia. She had people make some calls to Oklahoma. The werebison herd isn’t talking to the Pack officially. They’re circling their wagons around Eduardo’s parents.”

  “Why?”

  “Nobody knows. But unofficially Dali’s people were able to find out that Eduardo’s mother became a member of the herd six years after Eduardo was born. His father is a werebison and is high up in the herd’s chain of command, and he doesn’t want any of this.”

  “If Eduardo’s parents somehow betrayed the ifrit, it’s possible he’s punishing Eduardo. Wouldn’t they want to help?”

  “Dali got a feeling that Eduardo’s mother hadn’t even been told. Whoever her people spoke to said they saw her at a birthday party yesterday and she was laughing and having fun. By all accounts she really loves her son. If she knew he was missing, she would likely be here.”

  “Did they pull the marriage license?”

  “Eduardo was seven when they married.”

  That could mean absolutely nothing. Plenty of people waited to get married. Or it could mean that the man married to Eduardo’s mother was his stepfather.

  “You think her husband is protecting her?”

  Curran nodded. “We’re not going to get any help from them.”

  “Then we’ll have to work with what we’ve got.”

  Maybe I could ask Roland about it. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Hey, I know we’re mortal enemies, but can you help me with this thing? I sank deeper into the water. I didn’t want to go.

  “Did you ever want to kill Mahon?” And why did I just ask him that? Argh.

  “No. There was a time I would’ve done anything for his approval.”

  It didn’t surprise me. After he watched his family being slaughtered, Curran lived on his own in the
woods, hunted by the same loups who had eaten the bodies of his parents and his sister. Then Mahon led a party of shapeshifters into the woods. Mahon was older now, and I was strong, but I would hesitate to fight him. To a starved twelve-year-old, he would’ve seemed larger than life.

  “As I got older, I realized he was manipulating me to get what he wanted.” Curran said. “I remember the first time it clicked. I was eighteen. He wanted me to pass a law and I wanted to go play with my new girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “You don’t know her. She was blond and had huge boobs.” He frowned. “Something with a K. Kayla . . . Kelly . . . Something.” He grinned. “Jealous, baby?”

  I stretched against him, my voice slow and lazy. “Is Kelly in this tub? No? Then I have nothing to be jealous about.”

  “Mahon nagged me, so I told her to wait and sat there for two hours reviewing this long-ass law about the percentages the Pack received from the profits of their businesses.”

  “Sounds riveting.”

  “Oh, it was. When I was done, Mahon told me my dad would be proud of me. It occurred to me that my dad was an isolationist. He wouldn’t have given a shit about the Pack or if the masons should pay twelve percent while the teachers paid seven. It was this empty encouragement Mahon offered to me when I did something he liked, because he knew I missed my father and I wanted to make him proud. I sat there after he left and tried to think of all the occasions he’d used it. He’d used it quite a bit.”

  His face hardened. Hello, Beast Lord.

  “I knew I had to cut the leash then, because I wouldn’t be anyone’s pet ruler.”

  No, being someone’s pet didn’t suit him. No more than being Sharrim suited me.

  My life had always been a vector pointed to the same goal: kill Roland or die trying. That vector didn’t survive collision with reality. Roland’s power was too great and I didn’t have the spine to die trying to murder him while watching everyone I loved burn in the same funeral pyre. The exact thing Voron had warned me about had come to pass. I had fallen in love. I had accepted responsibility for a child. I had friends, and I wasn’t capable of condemning them to death for a cause that wasn’t truly my own. I survived.

  Looking back at it, it was the right choice. The only choice, really. But Voron’s conditioning didn’t just wear off. He raised me so I could kill Roland or die. Either way Roland would be hurt, and it was good enough for Voron. The nagging sense of failure was still there, and I felt enough guilt and shame to fill a small lake. The guilt fed my anger, and every time I thought of Roland, my sword hand itched. I knew I wasn’t ready for the confrontation, but somehow I deluded myself into thinking I could win the same way I usually won—by brute force and my skill with the sword.

  It was time to grow up. I had a responsibility to the land I claimed and everyone alive within its borders. I had a responsibility to Curran and Julie, to my friends, and to myself. I deserved to have a life at some point. Running at my enemies with sword drawn and pounding them with power words with all of the delicate subtlety of a hammer no longer worked. We were playing in the big leagues now. The stroke was a painful lesson, but it helped bring home the point: I had to fight smarter.

  “We can’t let on that we figured out the tower is a diversion,” I said. “I’m going to focus on that and maybe we can learn something about the ifrit. He thinks both of us just pummel things with our fists anyway. He won’t suspect any sophisticated subterfuge.”

  Curran smiled. “Would you like me to snarl at the appropriate moments and promise to bash heads to pieces?”

  “Would you mind?”

  “Well, it might be a stretch for me, since I never do anything like that.”

  I chuckled.

  “But if I am properly motivated, I can give it my best shot.”

  Oh boy. “Do you have any specific motivation in mind?”

  He leaned toward me, tiny gold sparks playing in his eyes. “Yes, I do.”

  A muffled knock sounded through the door of the bedroom. Curran rose, wrapped a towel around his hips (which shouldn’t have been hot but was), and opened the bathroom door. “Yes?”

  “We need to leave in twenty minutes,” Julie called through the bedroom door.

  “You’re not coming,” I told her.

  “I’m all dressed and I’ve put my makeup on.”

  “No,” I growled.

  “What if this is a clever ploy and while you’re at dinner Hugh d’Ambray comes and kidnaps me?”

  Oh, for the love of . . .

  “You won’t be able to get it out of your head now,” Julie called. “You’ll worry about it all night.”

  Curran laughed.

  I sank deeper into the water.

  Why me? Why?

  “Also, Ascanio is downstairs,” Julie said. “He says that he was charming and the cranky neighbor’s name is Justin Thomas Rogers. Ascanio has the address. Mr. Rogers’s daughter reported him missing yesterday. He got this picture. I’m sliding it under the door now.”

  Curran walked into the bathroom and held a photograph to me. A middle-aged man looked back at me, balding, thin but somewhat flabby. The giant that had rampaged through the Guild had worn his face. There it was, the confirmation we’d been looking for.

  “Can I tell him that you remember him now?” Julie asked. “He invited me to his pity party, and I really want to leave.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  I WALKED INTO Applebee’s wearing my work clothes: loose dark pants, boots, a gray sweater, and a simple black jacket. Sarrat’s weight rested comfortably between my shoulders. Curran walked next to me. He wanted to wear sweatpants, because “they tear easier.” I asked him if he wanted me to get him some male stripper jeans so he could avoid looking like a Russian gangster from pre-Shift movies, after which he got all offended and put on a pair of regular jeans instead.

  Julie brought her Kestrel axes. She also wore her big black steel-toed boots, the burgundy-colored sweater I’d knitted for her, and a short pleated skirt with no stockings despite the cold. Some things had no logical explanation. You just had to roll with it.

  The hostess looked at the three of us and pointed to the sign above her head. “We have a strict no-weapons policy.”

  “What if my fists are lethal weapons?” Julie asked.

  A manager emerged from the back room, saw us, and nearly sprinted down the hallway.

  “You may keep your fists,” the hostess said. “But—”

  The manager nearly slid to a halt in front of us. “This way. Your table is waiting.”

  The hostess opened her mouth and snapped it shut.

  He led us to the back of the restaurant to a table by a window. The table was designed to seat six. My father sat by himself, wrapped in a plain brown cloak. The cloak had seen better days and the deep hood that hid his face was frayed. He was trying his best to be inconspicuous, his magic folded and wrapped around him. His “god in beggar clothing” act was impressive, but I saw through it anyway.

  As we approached, he pushed the hood back and my father’s face greeted me. Hugh once described it as “if the sun had risen.” Saying Roland was handsome would be a gross understatement, like calling a hurricane a gentle breeze. My father was beautiful, his face perfectly proportioned, with bronze skin, a square jaw traced by a short graying beard, a full mouth, a powerful nose, high cheekbones, and large dark eyes under dense eyebrows. The moment you saw those eyes, you forgot everything else.

  There was a passage in the Bible in the book of Job that said it wasn’t age that guaranteed wisdom, but it was the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gave sage men understanding. When you looked into my father’s eyes, his spirit looked back at you. They shone with power, as if the magic itself filled him, ageless but very much alive. He was a man who walked the Earth before the Bible had ever been written
, and his wisdom was as towering and timeless as the Sarawat Mountains. It didn’t keep him from making very human blunders or being immune to small petty things like revenge, punishment, or murdering my mother because he thought I was too dangerous to be born.

  Yep, that last one did it.

  Behind me Julie stumbled but caught herself. Curran appeared completely unconcerned. Former Beast Lord—not impressed.

  Curran approached the table and pulled out two chairs. I sat in one, and Julie sat in the other, on the side. If things went sour, I could shove her into the booth next to us with my left hand in half a second.

  Curran sat next to me. His face was relaxed, his expression unreadable.

  The manager hovered next to us, a look of complete devotion on his face.

  “Iced tea,” I said.

  “Coke,” Julie said.

  “Iced tea,” Curran said.

  “Iced tea for me as well. That will be all,” my father said.

  The manager took off.

  “Is there any way you could refrain from magicking our waiter?” I asked.

  “I abhor poor service,” he said and smiled. “I took the liberty of ordering potato skins and onion rings. I’m so glad we could do this.”

  It was time to play my part. “The tower, Father. I want it gone.”

  “It’s not a tower. Merely a tall building.”

  I pulled the Polaroid from the inside of my jacket and put it on the table. “This is a model of a tower.”

  “We consider it a threat,” Curran said. “If you want a war, you will get one.”

  “I’m building a residence,” Roland said.

  “Why?”

  “So I can be closer to you, of course. I’ve come to dislike hotels over the years and I want to have a comfortable place to stay while I visit you.”

  “I don’t want you to visit me.”

  “Parents don’t always do what their children want them to do,” Roland said. “Sometimes they show up unannounced and nag you about your eating habits. And I am about to do just that. Have the two of you set a date for your wedding?”