Mory laughed — apparently unaware that I was not freaking joking. Then she spun away, dashing back out of the room.
I let her go without protest, allowing myself to nibble on a single row of the bar — which smelled insanely good — while opening Rochelle’s sketchbook.
A dreadful future etched in charcoal on paper flashed before my eyes. It unfolded picture by picture as I flipped the pages and savored the treat Mory had thoughtfully bought for me.
A young girl with a whip.
A demon.
A city destroyed.
“This is what we’ll be unmaking?” I asked, glancing over at Rochelle because I couldn’t bear to continue to look at the future contained in the sketchbook. All the sketches showed the girl — a younger, female version of Beau — abandoned in a derelict cityscape with only a demon at her side.
The oracle toyed with her wedding ring, looking resolutely away from me. And the sketchbook. But she nodded. “Yes.”
“All right.” I closed the sketchbook, hiding that future from my sight — but not from the forefront of my mind. I had no doubt that the images would haunt me ever after. Assuming I survived the following nine years. “Show me your plan.”
Rochelle shifted to the love seat, perching beside me to flip through the second sketchbook — and revealing pages upon pages of elves and swords and bloody mayhem. I saw scenes with my father and me, swords flashing. I saw the gateway practically vomiting forth dozens of elves at a time.
Then more sketches of me, looking … well, half-dead, and tearing through the magic I’d helped erect. Destroying the gateway. And apparently, as it was all laid out for me in black and white and accompanied by a helpful narration from the oracle, that gateway was going to collapse and swallow us all.
Yeah, not just me or my father.
The entire city.
Destroyed.
Consumed by a magical backlash. Because of me. My choice. My decision.
My future.
My destiny?
Despite my resolve, I practically inhaled the rest of the bar, smothering my terror in smooth chocolate, candied nuts, and sweet-and-sour fruit.
“Okay, Jade?” Rochelle asked, laying her hand gently on my forearm.
I carefully folded the now-empty plastic wrapper, ignoring my almost desperate desire to rip it open and lick off any tiny slivers of chocolate still stuck to it. “I assume you’ve figured out a way to …” I waved my hand over the sketchbook.
“I’ve figured out a beginning. We’re still taking steps, so … I can’t tell you if it works. I can’t tell you if we’ve thwarted what’s going to happen until we have thwarted it. Until I see a different future.”
“Or until I kill you. Along with the rest of the city.”
Rochelle sighed softly. “Not me.” She lifted her hand from my arm, pressing her palm lightly against her rounded belly.
Right. The girl and the demon. Rochelle would survive the destruction. For long enough to give birth, at least.
The oracle shook her head. “So … the only thing I can tell you for certain is that you can’t be the one to close the gate. But it must be closed. It has to be closed. And … logically, that has to happen after the elves have retreated back through it. So they can’t just go into hiding until they get an opportunity to reopen the gate.”
I stared at her in horror. “You want me to talk the elves into retreating?”
“They don’t seem like big talkers.”
“They aren’t.” Unbidden, a fissure of pain for the lovely elf who’d washed away in the rain opened up in my chest. Mira. Mira didn’t mind trying to communicate. “Mira wanted to go home,” I murmured. “After I killed her brother.”
“The illusionist?”
“Yes.”
“So … what about the others? What if they had the option?”
A ping of hope bloomed within the pain that I seemed to be constantly recalling, constantly holding, constantly fighting through.
Rochelle was watching me closely. This was part of it, part of her magic, part of constructing the plan. She needed me to move in some specific way, but neither of us knew what direction that was yet.
Then I remembered the gemstone that had been embedded in my forehead.
“Even if they did want to go home, Reggie controls them,” I said.
“All of them, all the time?”
“Yeah. She’s annoyingly powerful.”
“She’d have to be. To take you down, dowser.” Rochelle touched my arm again, lightly. “But she never really had you, not completely. Did she?”
“I don’t know. She had a damn good hold.”
“I couldn’t see you. It terrified me. But then Mory and Liam got Ed through the elves’ wards, and that started giving me glimpses.” She tapped the sketchbook I’d just been paging through. The one in which I destroyed everything and everyone. “And I knew … I saw your knife and Blossom. I knew there was going to be a moment where …” Rochelle’s steady resolve cracked infinitesimally, but she shored it back up. “I knew there was going to be a moment when you would need me. Need us.”
“When I tore through the wards.”
“Yes. You did that, Jade. And then the floodgates opened, and I saw.” She laid her hand over the third notebook. “Possibilities.”
“But this …” I touched the second notebook. “It’s not destiny?”
“It might be,” Rochelle murmured. “But … I’ve been seeing other things, other people, not contained in that set of visions. Things and people around the edges of that future.” She looked over at me. “And you’re good with an edge, aren’t you, Jade?”
“I can do a lot with an edge,” I said. And for the first time in a while, I heard my own resolve. “Point me in the right direction, oracle. If I’m going to die either way, if it’s a fight I can’t win, I might as well go up against destiny.”
“Yeah. I thought you’d say that. But I need you to do a few things first.”
“Are you going to set me trials? Am I to prove my worthiness?”
Rochelle offered me a tiny hint of a smile. “I need you to wield your alchemy. To arm your misfits, as you call them.”
“Kandy calls them that,” I murmured. “And I can’t just wave my hand over any object —”
“I’ve sorted that part out.”
Liam Talbot stepped into the open doorway, unbuttoning his dark-navy wool coat. I’d been so focused on the conversation that I hadn’t heard the dark-haired sorcerer arrive, or even tasted his magic.
“Jade,” he said, slinging his coat over the back of the antique chair Rochelle had abandoned. His gun was holstered at his hip, teeming with his creamy peanut-butter magic. “Good to see you so …” He grinned, sweeping me head to toe with a warm, brown-eyed gaze. “So primed.”
I’d never seen him look so relaxed. Apparently, the end of the world appealed to him. “Liam.”
Nodding toward Rochelle, the dark-haired sorcerer’s gaze fell to the sketchbooks on the coffee table as he pushed up the sleeves of his sweater, revealing muscled, naturally tanned skin. “Oracle.”
“Sorcerer. Did you bring your badge?”
“Yes. Mory said you’d asked.” He pulled his Vancouver Police Department badge out of the back pocket of his dark-wash jeans. “Do you need me officially on duty? I, uh, took a leave of absence, but I can reverse it fairly easily.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Liam’s hesitation and the casual suggestion that he could reverse his so-called leave easily sounded a lot like he’d tossed some spells around at the police department.
“I’m not sure it needs to be official.” Rochelle reached for and opened the third sketchbook, flipping through the charcoal sketches so quickly that they were a blur of dark gray. “I haven’t had the time to refine many of these, but I picked what I thought were the most important.” She paused near the back third of the book, angling it toward me.
The sketch she’d selected showed Liam’s badge, but held in a de
cidedly female-looking hand.
“Is this the first of my tasks, oracle?” I asked, just a little caustically. I wasn’t certain how I felt about creating magical objects on demand.
Instead of answering, Rochelle flipped back to a set of earlier pages in the sketchbook. Those sketches depicted less-refined details of the badge, then showed Liam standing by a concrete wall, or maybe the corner of a building — and wearing that badge.
I glanced over at the sorcerer. He had sat and was now leaning forward in the chair, his eyes glued to the sketches. As far as I could tell in black and white, he was wearing the same clothing now as he was in Rochelle’s vision.
“What do you want me to add to the badge?”
“Is there enough magic in it? For you to work with?”
There was. I could taste the residual — a hint of Liam’s peanut-butter power. “Enough.”
“Persuasion.”
“Excuse me?”
“Persuasion,” Rochelle repeated calmly.
Liam looked up at me, his dark eyes rounded with wonder.
“You want me to add a layer of persuasion to a sorcerer’s badge?”
“Yes.”
“A sorcerer who already wields a dangerous weapon?”
“Hey,” Liam interjected.
“Yes.”
“You want me to make it possible for him to … persuade people to do whatever he wants?” I jutted my finger at the image of Liam on the table before me. “This is somewhere in the city, right?”
“Yes. By the stadium.”
“So who will the sorcerer be persuading? Nonmagicals, right?”
“Possibly. Or possibly elves. I’m not asking that you give Liam the ability to brainwash people. Simply to … imbue them with a feeling of well-being. Of easygoing, good-natured compliance.”
Liam leaned back in the chair. His steady, rapt gaze darted between me and Rochelle.
“And when he uses it to compel someone to do something … illegal?”
“It’s all going to be illegal,” Liam said. “Today, tonight, tomorrow. With the elves, according to human laws at least. Isn’t it?”
I looked at him, utterly aghast.
He shrugged. “Breaking and entering. Destruction of property. Assault, murder. Hell, the elves started it with a mass kidnapping.”
I glanced back at Rochelle in disbelief.
She sighed softly. “You know you can just destroy it. If he uses it in a way you don’t like.”
“They don’t just hand out badges like candy,” Liam said crossly.
We ignored him. I flipped back through the pages of the sketchbook, finding the first one of me holding the badge.
“Just a little compulsion, maybe,” I murmured. “A little extra to back the sorcerer’s natural ability to charm. However deeply he usually hides it.”
“Yes.” Rochelle fiddled with the cushions, settling back on the couch with her hands splayed across her belly.
I eyed Liam. He let me look at him, assess him, without comment. “Is this the worst thing you’re going to ask of me?” I directed the question to Rochelle.
“Not even close.”
I sighed. But then, I had already known that was going to be her answer. I gestured toward Liam.
He leaned across the coffee table, offering the badge to me.
“No. You need to hold it.”
“In the sketch —”
“Sure. I’m certain I’ll hold it at some point, but magic doesn’t come from nowhere. I use the power within you, anchoring it to the artifact with my own.”
“The power within me,” Liam said, sounding horrified.
I laughed. “Yeah, sorcerer. You’ve got to have it to wield it. Just like witches. Or necromancers. Or oracles.”
“But I use spells, objects, runes to cast.”
“And the spark that ignites those objects is within you. The trigger.”
Liam muttered disconcertedly under his breath. Then he stood up, crossing around the coffee table. He hesitated before attempting to cram himself onto the love seat beside me — there wasn’t much space. Pushing the coffee table aside to make room, he kneeled next to me instead, holding his badge in the palm of his hand.
I almost teased him about the kneeling, but decided he didn’t know me well enough for me to pull it off. This was a difficult enough situation already without any miscommunications. Well, any further miscommunications.
I cupped Liam’s hand in mine. He flinched. Adepts weren’t big on being touched by other Adepts. Yeah, that must have totally been the issue. It had nothing to do with him having seen me in full-on ‘Evil Jade’ mode.
Ignoring his reaction, I concentrated on the glimmer of magic already coating the badge. Residual from being worn, being touched by him constantly. I’d worked with less. I cupped my other hand over top, sandwiching Liam’s hand and badge in between my own hands.
Then I closed my eyes, reaching for Liam’s peanut-butter magic — his spark, as I’d called it. I stirred that energy toward his hand, coaxing it to pool within his palm. Then I siphoned it into the residual contained in the badge, anchoring it there with my own magic.
The taste and scent of creamy peanut butter filled my senses. I thought about Liam’s easy smile when he’d stood in the doorway, and the good nature that simmered beneath that expression. I thought about how that good nature was often dampened by his fierce need to protect those he cared about. I recalled his systematic thoroughness when investigating the elves. And his willingness to adapt when his methods hadn’t worked.
I thought about him standing sentry at the stadium when I’d asked him to wait there for Kandy. Of how he’d retreated only when necessary.
He could have run that night. He should have run, but he’d stayed. And ultimately, it was his bravery that had led to the others knowing I’d been captured, and to me being rescued.
“The badge is you, Liam Talbot,” I murmured. “An extrapolation of everything you already are. Kind, caring, forceful when needed. Tempered by your rational nature. Persuasive.”
Magic settled between our hands, embedding into the badge.
I opened my eyes, pinning the sorcerer with my gaze. “No one can take this from you, Liam. No one can use it but you.”
He nodded, epically serious.
“Except me. So don’t make me take it from you.”
“I won’t.” He swallowed, then firmed his tone. “It is a great privilege to wield an artifact of your creation, Jade. I will use it carefully.”
I nodded, plucking the badge out of his hand before he’d even seen me move.
He flinched. Again.
But it was never a bad thing to instill just a little fear into someone I wasn’t quite certain I could completely trust yet. Even though I knew my reservations about the sorcerer, and about the other Talbot sorcerers in general, had more to do with my own prejudices than it did with them.
I held the badge in my palm, glancing down at the open sketchbook to make certain I mirrored the vision that Rochelle had captured on the page. Then I smiled at Liam. “Just to fulfill the oracle’s prediction.”
He nodded solemnly. I offered him the badge and he took it, gazing at it with wonder.
I turned to Rochelle. She had her eyes closed and her head resting on the back of the couch. “What next, oracle of mine?”
She smiled tightly, leaning forward to flip the page of her sketchbook, revealing a drawing of a pen. Benjamin Garrick’s fountain pen, at a guess.
“Great,” I groused, trying to infuse the proceedings with some humor but failing miserably. I touched the scar on my forehead and reminded myself that I could be a good soldier.
Both Liam and Rochelle were watching me. Too closely. As if waiting for Evil Jade to make an appearance. Or maybe I was just reading too much into everything, like usual.
I dropped my hand. The tense moment passed.
Liam clipped the badge to his belt and picked up his wool coat. “We’ll be ready for you. But give us
some notice before you head our way?”
Rochelle nodded, but her attention was already back on her sketchbooks.
Mory returned with Benjamin Garrick and Jasmine in tow. A junior necromancer hanging out with two vampires would have been great fodder for an Adept comedian, though it wasn’t presently giving me the giggles. Even though I trusted both the vampires in question.
Well, I trusted that the bone bracelet seething with necromancy on Benjamin’s left wrist would keep his bloodlust under control. And I trusted the blood of the executioner that ran in Jasmine’s veins and made her far stronger and less easily distracted than a newly made vampire usually was. But in general, vampires and necromancers didn’t mix. Like, on a fundamental level. Predators didn’t like being controlled by their prey.
Benjamin, wearing a thin brown sweater, faded black jeans, and heavy work boots, paused in the open doorway to the living room, spotting me by the front windows where I’d been pacing. Yes, again.
A slow smile spread across the dark-haired vampire’s face as he swept his dark gaze over me, head to toe and back again.
I’d forgotten about my warrior get-up. Again.
In what I thought might have been an unconscious gesture, Benjamin pushed the sleeves of his sweater up his forearms, exposing the aforementioned bone bracelet on his left wrist. He’d been reluctant to reveal the necromancy working previously. But as his innate magic — his ability to beguile — brushed against me, it was obvious he was distracted. By me, it seemed.
I allowed myself an answering smile.
“Benjamin,” Rochelle said from her vantage point on the couch. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course, oracle.” Though the young vampire’s response was pleasantly polite, his gaze didn’t leave me. “It is my pleasure as always.”
“Hey, Benjamin,” I said.
“I like the new look, Jade. Very formidable. Very …” Benjamin rubbed his fingers together. And as if finishing his unspoken thought, the dark-haired vampire’s magic attempted to tease me toward him, inciting me.
I laughed quietly.
“Please,” Jasmine snorted. “What are you going to do with her if you catch her, Ben?”
Gemstones, Elves, and Other Insidious Magic (Dowser 9) Page 16