Krista tilted her head. “Bet hubs does that for you, doesn’t he?” she said.
Eric grunted affirmative and folded down his collar. “Yeah, but I don’t want a kiss at the end this time.”
“You sure?” Krista said. “Jaesung’s a good kisser.”
Eric’s gaze snapped to me with a hint of menace. I wiped my face with my hands. “It was a dare.”
“Before or after Hel?”
“It was her dare.”
Krista cackled and tapped her fingertips together in a mockery of evil glee. “He turned eight colors. It was great.” She pushed herself out of the chair by the window and came to inspect Eric’s ensemble. “Why are you getting snazzy, anyway?”
Eric scrubbed a hand self-consciously across the back of his head. “I’m about to ask to speak on Hel’s behalf at her trial. I don’t want to do that looking like…well…”
“A lumberjack?” Krista suggested.
“Offensive lineman,” I added. “After the game.”
For a second, I thought he wasn’t going to smile. But after passing his gaze between us for a couple of heartbeats, the corner of his lip twitched up wryly.
“Fine, yeah,” he said. “I need to present myself a little more professionally. Make a good impression. As her mentor, they’re required to let me talk at the trial, but they don’t have to listen.”
Krista bit her lip, picking a string off Eric’s sleeve. “Do you think it’ll make a difference?”
Eric fussed with his cuffs. “I don’t know,” he said. Then he slapped his pockets. “Wallet. Key. Okay.”
“I guess there’s no chance of us going with you,” I said.
Eric shook his head.
“Why not?” Krista asked. “It’s not like we’re a threat.”
Eric winced. “You’re mundanes. Or they think you are. It would be a massive stack of paperwork and interviews and promises before they’d even release you back into civilization, let alone allow you to meet with the National Guild’s Twelve. We don’t have that kind of time.”
I raised my hand. “I’ve done the paperwork and interviews and promises thing already.”
“Yeah. But it damages our case. Think about it—Magic is supposed to be a big secret. If I show up with two—or even one—mundanes who know Helena, it weakens her image even more.”
I sighed and flopped back down on the bed. “So what are we, then?”
“Our secret advantage, hopefully,” Eric said.
Krista kicked her boot against the nightstand, fidgeting. “That Enforcer at the diner saw us.”
“She’s got bigger things to worry about,” Eric said. “Probably assumed the two of you were Guild.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got to head on. You two stay put. Order some room service. Get some sleep. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Once the door shut behind him, I patted the bedspread for my glasses and pushed them onto my face. I was headachy with hunger, but I wasn’t sure I could bear to eat anything. I flipped through the roomservice menu, stomach rebelling at the offerings.
Krista stood at the window, peering through the sheer layer of drapes.
“You want anything?” I asked, waving the menu.
She was silent for a moment, seeming to focus on something on the street level. For the second time, I rolled off the bed with a grunt and moved to the window.
The second I arrived, she jerked the curtains shut. “Awesome. He’s gone. Let’s go.”
She nearly bulldozed me on her way past.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, grabbing at her arm. “Go where? We’re supposed to stay-”
“Dude, I just found out magic is real!” she said. “I need to get out there in this brave new world.”
I stared at her for a minute. “Yeah. Magic. And blood sorcerers. And a big, magic governmental body that’s about ready to kill someone we love. It should kind of terrify you.”
She pulled her arm free. “Guns. Murderers. Rapists. Nuclear bombs. White privilege. I don’t see how the mundane world is less scary.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but found I couldn’t.
“Besides,” she said. “You can see auras and shit now, so maybe we can spot something that could help.”
“That’s your plan?” I said. “Walk around and hope a solution falls into our laps?”
She grabbed the last room key from the bureau. “Whatever. You stay here and raid the mini bar. I’ll go by myself.”
She wrenched open the door and ducked out.
I groaned. There was no stopping Krista when she was determined to do something, even if that something invited trouble from untold magical dangers. Or just, like, Baltimore at night. She’d probably walk up to every person with tattoos and ask if they were a sorcerer.
No rest for the weary. I jammed on my shoes and bolted down the hallway after her.
“I knew you’d see reason,” she said when I caught up.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I saw you asking a drug dealer to teach you magic.”
“Shut up and look for auras.”
We rode the elevator down, and I tugged my shoes the rest of the way onto my heel. There was an enclosed pedestrian bridge from the hotel to the shops opposite, and the glass barrier gave us a decent view.
This part of Baltimore seemed relatively tame. Lots of hotels and low-slung shops, paddle boats for rent on the harbor, green spaces along the sidewalks. Growing up in Chicago, I’d expected something a little taller and grungier of Baltimore. Then again, we were probably getting the sanitized, tourist-friendly part of the city.
“Want to rent a paddle boat?” Krista asked as we exited the shops onto the brick quay. “Look! They’re dragons!”
“Knee says fuck no,” I said. My gaze was drawn past the dragon-shaped paddle boats to the rigging of an old boat. “Is that a pirate ship?”
“USS Constellation,” Krista said. I glanced over to find her reading off her phone. “Civil War era battleship. Ooh, do you want to do the tour?”
“Krista. Focus,” I said. “We’re not here to be tourists.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, pointing back over her shoulder. “Because the National Aquarium is over there.”
I rubbed my forehead, desperately unhappy with my choice to come with her. Krista tended to bulldoze through the worst situations with exuberant optimism, convinced that if she could just distract herself with enough fun, the problems would sort themselves out. I was more of the ‘figure out a plan and relentlessly pursue’ type. Or, failing that, I was the ‘hide massive amounts of stress with jokes until the point of emotional breakdown’.
Since we had no plan, I sort of wanted to be a ball of anxiety in the hotel room. But Krista’s eyebrows were waggling, and there was no way she was going to give me the room key to let me pursue my desire to panic myself into an aneurysm. Maybe looking at fish would calm my nerves.
“Fine.” I said. “Aquarium.”
I tried not to think about how tired I was as we walked along the bricked quay. The water clung to the retreating colors of sunset, and across the harbor lights blinked to life, giving me the sense that the jagged and unfamiliar skyline was waking up. Baltimore felt like a nocturnal beast, stretching its muscles beneath us as we walked into the thickening foot traffic near the Aquarium.
We passed under a weird, pentagonal office building that straddled the bricked quay. It looked like a mini skyscraper to me, but the lines of tourists streaming in and out gave me the sense it was something else.
I was still scanning for a sign when someone slammed into my shoulder.
I pivoted with the force of it, muscle memory taking over to correct my balance. The dude who’d run into me wasn’t quite as lucky. I had the briefest impression of dark skin, neon tee shirt, and tightly-locked hair before he bounced backward, arms swinging. I managed to grab his elbow just before he staggered back into a pair of running kids.
“Sorry,” I said, righting him. “Wasn’t looking.”
“S�
��cool, man,” the guy said, shaking off the shock. Then he slid past me, and vanished into the throng of people.
“Sorcerer?” Krista asked as we walked on.
I shot her a glare. “Not everyone is going to be a sorcerer.”
“He was skinny, though,” she said.
I sighed, eyes tracking to the left, where a green space sprawled out toward the street. There was a massive metal…thing that looked like giant chopsticks resting together. It was probably a sculptural piece of art, but I had no idea what it was meant to represent.
“Oh no!” Krista wailed. “The aquarium closed at four!”
I heard it, but I didn’t care. There was something wrong with that structure, something…
I saw it: the soft halo of power that seemed to drag at my attention like a magnet. I walked toward it, ignoring Krista’s questions about what I was doing.
The mandala had been etched beneath it, and though the original drawing appeared to be gone, the magical one remained. It gleamed a pale jade color. I had no clue what it meant, but something told me it was Guild. I doubted anyone else would be so ostentatious as to tag a giant fucking iron sculpture in the middle of the most touristy spot in Baltimore.
“What?” Krista said. “Is is magic?”
“Actually, yes,” I said. “It’s one of the magic circles. I have no idea what it means, though. Or what it does.”
“Too bad you can’t take a picture of it,” she said. “Or can you? Does magic show up in pictures for people who can see it in real life?”
I blinked. “Uhh…”
She lifted her cell phone, snapped a picture of the sculpture, and handed it to me. “Survey says?”
“Nope,” I said. “Which kind of makes sense. Otherwise sorcerers could just take pictures of mandalas and use those instead of bothering with the drawing all the time. Or maybe the whole ‘drawing order’ thing makes that impossible. I don’t know.”
Krista tilted her head. “Can you draw it?”
I laughed. “No.”
“You have good handwriting. I figured you could draw.”
“I can’t draw.”
She bit her lip. “We’ll have to tell Eric when he gets back.”
I sighed and shoved my hands in my pockets. “That’s not a conversation I’m look-” I cut myself off as a sharp corner jabbed into my palm.
“What?” Krista said, her eyes widening. “Jae, what?”
I pulled a business card from my jacket pocket. The front of it had a stylized image of a woman in an apron holding a tray of cupcakes. She was leaning against a set of pink, curling letters that read: Batch, Please!
And below that was a Baltimore address.
“Uhh, did you get anti-pickpocketed?” Krista said. “Because that is not a marketing technique I want to catch on.”
I flipped over the card. On the back, in bold blue ink, was a message that turned my arteries into ice
Meet me here if you want to know what the vigilantes plan to do with D’Argent
Chapter 23
helena
I remembered only oblivion.
The nothingness twisted, which...I guess meant it couldn’t actually be nothing. Something had to exist, if it was swirling like that. Darkness broke apart, and pale pink light pulled me in, converging in a single point. That point of light hovered, so close I felt like I could touch it. Then it started expanding. The light grew and grew and grew, until I was blinking it back, wishing I could swat it away.
The light faded, and a dark smudge hovered before me.
I felt untethered and weightless, like my body didn’t exist in the way it was supposed to.
Even as the dark smudge resolved into a face and the pink flashes sharpened into the clear, elegant glyphs of a magic circle, I still felt disconnected. Sound wasn’t functioning right—I could see the man’s mouth moving, and I could hear...something. But it sounded like he was talking underwater. Nothing made sense.
I was sitting on a cot in a small, windowless room. The man in front of me was doing something to my shoulder. God, there was blood everywhere, all over my arm. And I was wearing a navy blue bathrobe, my injured arm shrugged out.
I wanted to pull away. I knew I shouldn’t trust him, but I couldn’t remember why. And he seemed to be healing me. Yes, that was a healing mandala, and the burning in my shoulder was starting to fade.
A door in the wall opened, and a tall figure stepped in. My brain shuddered in recognition.
De Vries. Tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed De Vries.
Things started clicking into place. Faster and faster, memories snapped into blanks and the puzzle pieces assembled into a coherent picture. The man crouching before me was Enforcer Randolph. He’d been about to kill me, because I was shifting into hound form, and De Vries...
De Vries shot me. He shot my tattoo, right as Enforcer Randolph and I were battling over it. I must have passed out after that, because I didn’t remember falling. I didn’t remember coming to this room. I had no idea what was going on.
Snatches of words came to me. Randolph, talking to De Vries, who set down gauze and medical tape on a small table next to the bed. Their voices mingled in my head.
“...hound-soul...tethered to her...”
“...she transform anymore?”
“...you sure...an issue...”
“...is gone.”
My tattoo. He’d shot my tattoo. What did that mean?
I shook my head, trying to clear the gooey feeling from my brain. Messing up my enslavement tattoo meant no one could use it anymore. But I’d had to break the magic on it first. I’d had to take over the tattoo myself and let all the magic out of it. Then...I’d been bitten. My shoulder had been mauled by my Godfather, after he’d been twisted into a crazed monster.
Surely, my spellhound tattoo wasn’t important. The spell had already been cast. The hound’s soul was already tethered. The magic circle didn’t really need to be there in ink form for the physical spell to keep working. It was fine. I was fine. The spell would last until someone broke it.
I reached into myself, seeking out that core of turquoise power that rested just behind my heart. It was there, dim and tired from overuse, but leaping readily to my will. I reached further, into the familiar nook where the soul of an Irish Wolfhound curled up, waiting for me to call on it, to help pull my body into form...
...and found nothing.
The nook was empty. No friendly nudge, no tingle of heightened hearing and sight, no glimmer of lanky legs and shaggy fur stalking out in spirit form.
Sound slammed back into me all at once. A shuddering air conditioner, the creep of weight shifting the floorboards above. Randolph and De Vries, still discussing me.
“What happened?”
My voice was cracked, like I’d been screaming. Maybe I had.
De Vries jerked back, startled by my sudden return to speech. Or maybe he was startled because I was staring at him, every atom in my body attuned to the pulsing arteries in his throat, and how badly I wanted to tear them out. He’d shot me. He’d shot my tattoo.
I wasn’t a spellhound anymore.
He’d unmade me.
“What did you do?” I shouted it. I felt the words tear my throat, but it didn’t hurt. I was on my feet, buoyed by an anger so transcendent I couldn’t even feel my body.
Enforcer Randolph’s hands closed hard on my arms, holding me back as I prepared to smite Officer Blue Eyes with the energy of a thousand bolts of lightning.
“He saved your life, D’Argent,” Randolph said. “My defenses would have killed you if he hadn’t shot you back into human shape. Would you rather be dead?”
“What if I would?”
The door opened again, and the face that greeted me this time was familiar enough to render me completely still.
“Stand down, Hel,” Eric said. He was looking at me, but with one hand, he seized De Vries’s collar and shoved him into the wall. “As for you, asshole-”
“Stone,” Ra
ndolph warned. “Stop, or so help me I will throw your grizzly ass in the cell across the hall.”
Eric kept his narrowed eyes locked on De Vries for several long seconds. Then, very slowly, he unclenched his fists from around the Enforcer’s collar.
De Vries had grabbed Eric’s wrist, prepared to wrestle him off, but he lowered his hand as Eric stepped back.
“Get out of my sight,” Eric growled. “And stay out of my way.”
Enforcer Randolph released my arms. “How many times do I need to remind you gentlemen that we’re on the same side?” he asked, turning on the two men still puffed up and posturing just inside the door.
De Vries’s jaw flexed. He cut his eyes to me, and I wasn’t sure how to read what was in them. Wariness? Disgust? Regret? I honestly didn’t care. He’d taken everything from me, and I wasn’t about to give him an inch of leeway. A moment later, he nodded to Enforcer Randolph and stepped from the room.
The small man planted one hand on his hip, the other massaging his forehead. “You get ten minutes, Stone,” he said. “Wards on.”
Then Enforcer Randolph stepped past Eric, looking almost comically petite, and slammed the door behind him.
Every inch of the cubical room lit up with mandalas in pink and white, sealing us both in.
I staggered back, horrified at the sheer number of magic circles, and the brutal effects I could read in the glyphs around their outer rings. They wallpapered the place, as tight together as they could fit. I could see, now, how such a place could hold a sorcerer like Gwydian.
There would be no getting out alive. Not from the inside.
Eric was looking at me. He was dressed in a sharp navy blazer and a light blue shirt. He was clean-shaven, and had somehow managed to pull a tie from the depths of his wardrobe. He looked hesitant, like he wasn’t sure if taking a step toward me might set off a bomb.
I was shaking. All that rage was swirling inside me with nowhere to go. There was no safe target to lash out at, so it turned its barbs inward, prickling across my skin in unspent frustration.
UNMAKE (Spellhounds Book 2) Page 17