Tempted by Magic
Mischief and Magic: Book One
Jasmine Walt
Contents
Important Note for the Reader
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
Glossary
About the Author
Also by Jasmine Walt
Important Note for the Reader
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the Baine Chronicles universe! Tempted by Magic, the book you are about to start, is the first book in the Mischief and Magic series, which is a standalone spinoff from the original Baine Chronicles.
For readers who are new to the Baine Chronicles world, I’ve included a glossary in the back of the book to help illuminate the backstory and characters. If you’ve already read the first book, this glossary will help reacquaint you to the people, places and things introduced to you in the original series.
You can either read the glossary first to familiarize or re-familiarize yourself with Annia’s world, or you can plunge into the story and refer to it as needed. The guide is in alphabetical order, and characters are listed last name first.
To the new reader, welcome to the Baine Chronicles world! And to those of you who have stuck with me since the first book, Burned by Magic, welcome back and thank you! Your support allows me to continue doing what I love most – writing.
Best, Jasmine
1
“Rise and shine, mija!”
Groaning, I cracked open an eyelid to see large golden eyes staring at me out of a ghostly face.
And no, I don’t mean ghostly as in “pale.”
I mean an actual ghost. Transparent. Non-corporeal. Dead.
Oh, and not just any ghost either, I thought as I looked her up and down through my bleary eye. No, the ghost who floated before my bed in all her caramel-skinned glory, sporting a glamorous headdress and beaded leather clothes as if she were on her way to a midnight ritual, was Garalina of Ymal. AKA, Priestess and Avatar of the goddess Syris. AKA, my new roommate. AKA Person-Who-Doesn’t-Need-Sleep-And-Is-Way-Too-Damned-Cheerful-In-The-Morning.
“Just ten more minutes,” I grumbled, and pulled the covers back over my head. A girl needs her beauty sleep, doesn’t she? But before I could even close my eyes again, the sheets magically yanked themselves from my grip.
“You’ve had more than enough beauty sleep,” Garalina said tartly, reading my mind.
Scowling at her, I touched the golden torque around my neck—the magical piece of jewelry bound us together, giving her access to my thoughts and feelings.
“Besides, I don’t know why you are angry with me. You told me to wake you up at seven in the morning.” She gestured to the brass clock on the wall with a slender hand.
Sure enough, it was seven o’clock. Time to get up. “I know, I know.” Sighing, I dragged myself out of bed before Garalina could do it for me. Technically speaking, she wasn’t allowed to use her magic without my permission—one of the rules I’d set up when I’d agreed to bind her to me so she could escape her prison—but Garalina’s idea of “permission” was loose, to say the least. I’d given her permission to wake me up this morning, which in her eyes meant she could use any means at her disposal to get me up.
And with the amount of magic at her fingertips, that thought was more than a little unnerving.
Scrubbing the sleep from my eyes, I trudged to the bathroom and stripped off my pajamas. The torque couldn’t be removed until I’d fulfilled my bargain with Garalina, so it stayed around my neck as I stepped into the shower and turned it on full blast. In exchange for Garalina saving my life back in Randilion, a country on the northern border of the Southian continent, I’d promised to help her find and kill Ortanos, Garalina’s former lover…and her murderer. There was a chance he was already dead, of course, since it had been over three hundred years since he’d slit her throat and tried to steal her magic, but she’d told me that shamans who stole magic could live for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Until we found him, or proof of his death, we were stuck together.
I finished my shower, then towel dried my auburn hair and wrapped myself in a bathrobe. Opening the bathroom door, I was hit by the wonderful scents of fresh coffee and fried bacon, and my feet automatically steered me toward the kitchen.
“You know this is against the rules, right?” I said as I walked in, trying to sound stern. But the mug of coffee on the counter and the plate of toast and bacon next to it made my traitorous stomach growl. “I’m perfectly capable of making bacon and toast the usual way.”
Garalina rolled her eyes. “Yes, but think of the time you could save!”
I started to argue, and she flicked her hand, using her magic to shove a piece of bacon into my open mouth before I could say anything.
“Magic isn’t evil, Annia,” she said as I furiously chewed my bacon. “It is a gift from the gods, meant to make human lives easier.”
“Of course I don’t think magic is evil,” I snapped, snatching up the coffee. I took a long drink, and sighed as the hot, bitter liquid banished the lingering cobwebs in my mind, giving me the boost I so desperately needed. I’d only gotten back to Canalo a few weeks ago, after smuggling Noria out of the country, and the time change was kicking my ass. “But there are laws against humans using magic like this, Garalina. I could be thrown in jail or even executed! And then how would we find Ortanos?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “Your best friend is the Chief Mage’s wife. You wouldn’t be executed.”
Instead of answering—and saying something I’d ultimately regret—I sat down at the table to finish my breakfast. I chewed on a piece of toast, staring out the large window in my living room, which offered a picturesque view of the Firegate Bridge stretching over Solantha Bay. My entire life, I’d been pressured by other people to take the easy way out. My mother had offered to use her society connections to get me onto the Main Crew when I’d first joined up with the Enforcer’s Guild. The girls I’d gone to school with had looked down on me for choosing a dangerous career, when I could have married any number of handsome, wealthy bachelors and coasted through life without a care in the world. And some of my fellow enforcers looked at my nice clothes, fancy steambike, and excellent track record and assumed I was sleeping with the brass to get the better paying gigs.
Nobody seemed to accept the fact that I wanted to earn my way through blood, sweat, and tears. But I had. I’d built up a stellar reputation and close rate in the Enforcer’s Guild, relying on nothing but my own skills. I damned well wasn’t going to change that now. As for Sunaya, no, she wouldn’t allow me to be executed if the public found out about Garalina’s magic. But I didn’t want to put that burden on her, not when she was dealing with so many new responsibilities now.
Garalina must have sensed that this wasn’t the time to push me, for she’d disappeared shortly after I sat down. Probably visiting her goddess on the astral plane, I thought as I retreated to my bedroom to get dressed. I still found it hard to wrap my mind around the fact that there were other deities out there; in the Northia Federation, most of us believed there was only one god. The mages called him the Creator, the shifters called him Magorah, and we humans called him the Ur-God, but despite the slightly differing myths, he was still the same deity.
Booting that train of thought
from my head before I found myself in an existential crisis, I tugged on a pair of leather pants and a red tank top, and slung my utility belt around my waist. I checked that the pouches were filled with my various supplies—smoke bombs, lock picks, rope, handcuffs, and other tools of the trade—then strapped my sword and knives on and headed out the door.
The familiar sounds of the city greeted me as I left my apartment building: steamcars chugging along the road, pedestrians chattering to each other as they walked to work, the occasional irate screech as neighbors squabbled with each other. Before I’d taken that trip to Southia, I’d lived in Maintown, the human section of Solantha, but I’d moved to the Rowanville apartment not just because it was only a twenty-minute walk to the Enforcer’s Guild but also because I enjoyed the racial variety. This was the only part of town where humans, shifters, and magic users openly fraternized, and ever since Sunaya had started her civil outreach projects, the gap had grown even smaller. Across the street, a massive male with the orange eyes of a tiger shifter held hands with a petite human woman. And ahead of me, a woman in mage robes was having an animated discussion with a human about the pros and cons of magitech.
It was the perfect place to live for a woman like me, one who straddled the line between human and mage. I hoped that, with all the unusual types living here, Garalina’s magic would go unnoticed if we had the occasional slip-up.
As I walked into the Guild’s main lobby, the desk sergeant called out, “Hey, Melcott.” Stanley, a grizzled old man with wide shoulders and a pot belly, was a retired enforcer who ran the front desk along with a revolving door of enforcer trainees. He squinted at me out of faded blue eyes, looking me up and down. “Long time no see. That a souvenir?”
“You could say that.” My fingers unconsciously flew to the torque around my neck, and I wished it weren’t quite so flashy. If it were winter time, I’d cover it up with a scarf, but it was over 90 degrees today and the cooling system in the Guild sucked.
Garalina popped back into my head. “I could use my magic to make the torque invisible,” she said slyly. I could always tell when she was with me—her presence was like a shaft of warm sunlight on a lazy afternoon, and the subtle scent of freshly turned earth laced the air around me. “That way you wouldn’t have to worry about others questioning it. Though it does seem rather blasphemous to cover up such a sacred piece of jewelry.”
“Well, if you’re not on a crew, you ought to go check out the bulletin board over there,” Stanley said before I could come up with a proper retort. He jerked a meaty thumb toward the large freestanding board off to the right. “All the freelance bounties are up there.”
My eyebrows flew up. “That’s new.”
Stanley nodded. "There's been a lot of changes around here, what with the Chief Mage ordering all these reforms. Most of the cases are assigned to crews now instead of first-come, first-served, but the ones where victims have offered extra bounties go on the board. If you see one that interests you, write down the case number and bring it to the clerk's office. They'll pull the file for you so you can get started.”
"Thanks." Frowning, I wandered over to the board. Sunaya had told me she was doing an overhaul on the Enforcer's Guild to handle the rampant corruption—the old system, where enforcers were paid strictly per bounty, meant that only the high-paying cases got solved, with many getting swept under the rug or forgotten about altogether. Sunaya's new system put all crewed enforcers on salary and assigned them to different sections of the city, which solved that issue. But as a result, it limited the amount of bounties lone wolf enforcers like me could take.
Still, I mused as I scanned the board, there were some decent bounties up here, several of which could pay my rent—and since I’d spent all my savings on smuggling Noria into the Central Continent and furnishing my new apartment, I really needed the coin right now.
“This one looks interesting,” I murmured, plucking a piece of paper from the middle. On it was a bounty for a serial robber who’d been fleecing customers in the wealthy 4th Street shopping district in Maintown. Several shop owners had come together to offer a bounty for the robber’s capture, claiming that he was driving away business and ruining the district’s pristine reputation. It sounded like a fairly straightforward job, and the bounty was enough to cover at least one month’s rent.
“How boring,” Garalina complained as I wrote down the case number. “A mere thief? I thought you said this job was exciting.”
I rolled my eyes and pinned the paper back onto the board. “Not all criminals are serial killers, you know.”
I expected a long line at the clerk’s office, especially at this hour, and was a bit surprised to find there were only ten people in front of me. “Hey, Annia,” Lina, an old acquaintance, greeted me as I stood behind her. “How’s it hanging?”
“Just getting back into the swing of things.” I frowned as the line moved forward. “Where is everyone these days?”
Lina laughed, reading the look on my face. “Most of the other lone wolves have joined up with a crew,” she said. “The only ones left, like me and these guys”—she gestured to the other enforcers, several of whom I didn’t recognize—“are toughing it out, either because they can’t find a crew to take them or because they don’t play with others. But it’s only a matter of time before we all give in.” She sighed. “Things are changing around here.”
When it was my turn, I gave the clerk the case number, and he handed me the file. “You bring that back by the end of the day,” he said in a quavering voice.
“Yessir.” Since bounties were fair game for all enforcers, all case files had to be returned within 24 hours so other enforcers could review them too. Tucking the file under my arm, I went back to the lobby in search of a place to sit down. The place was pretty crowded, but I found a ratty chair to park my butt in, then pulled out my notebook and prepared to take notes. There wasn’t much in the file that hadn’t already been covered in the bounty description, but there was a sketch of the robber: a man in his early thirties with shaggy hair, a hook nose, and three days of beard growth that did nothing to hide his weak chin. I memorized the sketch, then returned the file and left the building.
Since money was tight, I hadn’t picked up my steambike from storage yet, so I hopped on a public steambus and headed across town. Staring out the scuffed-up window, I noticed that many of the buildings were covered in scaffolding as construction workers toiled around the clock to repair them from the quake damage. I hadn’t been here for the natural disaster, but the aftermath had been devastating. Buildings had either collapsed or burned to the ground, and many of the roads and streets had been torn up. Thankfully the roads had been mostly repaired at this point, but the rest of the rebuild was still in progress.
The bus dropped me two blocks away from 4th Street, and I hoofed it the rest of the way there. This was the trendiest section of Maintown, its streets lined with high-end and boutique storefronts and luxury street vendors selling all sorts of clothing, jewelry, sweets, and food. The scents of spun sugar and savory spices made my mouth water, and I purchased a bag of candied nuts from a cart so I could blend in a little. I’d left my sword in a secure locker at the Guild, and my knives were tucked into my boots, so I should look like a normal Joe.
I stopped to talk to the shop owners who’d listed the bounty, and they told me the robberies tended to take place around lunchtime, when the crowds were thicker. I thanked them for the info, then discreetly patrolled the streets, looking for any suspicious activity. But as noon came and went, I saw no sign of the man in the sketch.
I could feel Garalina’s frustration simmering in the bond, growing stronger and stronger by the minute. “Would you stop this nonsense already?” she finally cried. “I already know who it is, and you would too if you would just use my magic already. This is a waste of time!”
“What?” I scowled. “You know who it is and haven’t said anything?”
“Yes,” she said snippily. “And I’m
not going to tell you, either. You’ll have to use my magic if you want to find out.”
“Fine.” I let out a long-suffering sigh. “Hit me with it.”
A sense of triumph lit the bond between us, and a second later, magic surged through my blood. My vision blurred for a few seconds as Garalina used a spell to adjust my sight, then it returned to normal.
“Look at the old woman pushing the candy cart,” Garalina ordered.
I did, and stifled a gasp. The old woman was an illusion, and with my adjusted sight, she now glowed transparent blue. It was all too easy to see the man standing behind her. As I watched, he slyly reached into a woman’s purse and pulled out her wallet.
“Oh no you don’t!” I yelled, springing into action.
The crowd screamed as I tackled the perp from behind. He sure as hell didn’t feel like an old woman as we crashed to the ground, his lean, bony body doing absolutely nothing to cushion the fall. Snarling, he fought back, trying to buck me off his back, but I grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his face into the ground. He yelped in pain as his nose crunched into the asphalt, and I did it again, noting that he was still struggling.
“Quit fighting, asshole,” I snapped, yanking his arms behind his back. “I’m an enforcer, and you’re under arrest for pickpocketing.”
“Pickpocketing?” he cried in a quavering voice as I slapped a pair of manacles on him. “What do you mean? I’m just trying to sell candy!”
“What are you doing?” a woman cried as I hauled the perp to his feet. “How can you attack a poor old lady like that? Have you no shame!”
Tempted by Magic: Mischief and Magic: Book One Page 1