by Robyn Bachar
Dedication
To Diana, Karrin and Brian, who are amazing friends and even better beta readers; to my family, who were brave enough to read Blood, Smoke and Mirrors and insane enough to love it; and to Suz, the Wandering Gnomes, and the Prairie Hearts, who put up with my writing drama and encourage my madness. You’re all made of so much awesome, and there aren’t enough words to thank you properly.
And to Mary “the Gator” Jaros. Mary was a good friend, a no-nonsense teacher, a tireless advocate, a breast-cancer survivor, a tough broad and one good witch. She helped me get my life back on track, and I’m eternally grateful. Mary, I may have inherited your wardrobe, but I’ll never fill your shoes.
Glossary
alchemist: a magician who specializes in brewing potions. The source of the magic is not the ingredients themselves—though they can help add an extra kick—but the alchemist who infuses her own magic into a potion. Alchemists are the most mercenary magicians because their magic is the most marketable.
chronicler: a librarian who has joined the Order of St. Jerome and become a vampire. Chroniclers undergo a ritual that was originally stolen from the necromancers and altered. It stops their aging and places the body in a sort of stasis. Like the original ritual, there is a chance of failure, and the odds of survival are only 30 to 40 percent. To survive, chroniclers ingest magic by consuming the blood of living magicians and often take blood as payment for their services. Chroniclers are responsible for recording magician history and archiving spells and magical research. See also Order of St. Jerome.
Council of Three: the magician governing body. Every type of magician is monitored/ruled over by a Council of Three, as are faeries. There are levels to councils—regional, national, global, etc. Because the seers (See also seers) are so small, they only have one global council.
demon: an entity native to one of the hell realms. Unlike other magical creatures, demons cannot be killed, only banished back to their realm. However, if a magician travels to that realm, he or she can kill the demon there. Physical attacks on people in “haunted” houses are caused by demonic entities (ghosts can’t physically interact with their surroundings). Demons come in a variety of shapes and sizes due to the difference in hells—some embody sins or vices, others natural elements like faeries, and some are just outright nightmarish bogeymen.
faerie: one of the magical races formerly native to Earth. Faeries are extremely long-lived, but are not immortal. In many ways they are embodiments of magic, the different clans representing different aspects and elements of it. Faeries left Earth and created their own world after the extinction of the elves, but that act left them damaged as a species, unable to reproduce with each other. A full-blooded faerie has not been born since the formation of their world. Many magicians owe their magic to their faerie heritage.
guardian: an enforcer of magical law and order. They work for the higher powers to ensure criminals are apprehended, but councils are responsible for judging guilt or innocence. Guardians can be called on to execute the guilty, if necessary.
hunter: an individual or group who hunts and kills magicians. There are several different types of hunters. Religious groups, such as those sanctioned by the Catholic Church, believe they are ridding the world of Satan’s followers. Some hunters have personal reasons, such as having a family member killed by shapeshifters. Others do it for sport, believing magicians to be challenging prey.
kinslayer: a magician or magical being who has murdered a member of his/her family. Magicians have always been outnumbered by straights, and after the elves became extinct great importance was placed upon preserving the remaining races. Killing other magicians is frowned upon, but it is considered a great crime to kill a member of one’s own family. Kinslayers are often socially ostracized by other magicians.
librarian: a magician specializing in history and research. Because they study a variety of magics, librarians can cast any type of spell. However, when a librarian casts them, these spells are less powerful. Example, a sorcerer’s fireball is less like a softball and more like a golf ball if a librarian casts it. Most librarians aspire to serve the Order of St. Jerome. Though few are chosen to become chroniclers, many work as servants or assistants. See also chronicler; Order of St. Jerome.
magician: a person with magic in their blood. Most magicians have inherited their magic from faerie relatives, but in the past many humans have been born with their own innate magic, although this has dwindled over time as magic has faded from this world. Only people with magic in their blood can cast magic. No amount of equipment or materials will allow a straight to cast magic.
necromancer: a practitioner of death magic. Necromancers specialize in dealing with ghosts, zombies, and other icky dead things. When a magician becomes a necromancer he is apprenticed to a master necro, and once his training is complete he undergoes a ritual to become a master (see vampire). This ritual is risky, with a roughly 50 percent chance of the subject’s dying. Master necros build up bad karma for jamming a spoke in the wheel of life, and when a master dies horribly, bad things happen to his soul.
oathbreaker: a magician known to have broken an official oath. Sworn oaths are taken very seriously in magician society. If a person swears to do something, such as fulfill a quest or take on a sacred responsibility, failure to uphold the oath can result in social ostracism. Oathbreakers are considered untrustworthy, and few people agree to deal with them.
Order of St. Jerome: the organization of chroniclers. The order was founded by a group who decided that having immortal librarians to protect magician records and be able to remember stories and events was necessary to maintain a record of magician history. The necromancers were furious that their ritual had been stolen, but a war between the two factions was prevented when the order agreed not to become involved in magician politics. The group has gone through many names over the years, but St. Jerome is the most recent and longest lasting.
seer: a magician who can read auras and receive prophetic visions. Seers are the rarest kind of magician, with only a handful in the entire world. Their visions center around the person they’re reading or a traumatic event in an area. Seers are not mediums, and though they can get a feeling for the energy in a house, they don’t communicate with the dead (because that’s necro territory). Seers are particularly adept at locating a person’s soul mate.
shadowspawn: a faerie who has been expelled from Faerie for evil acts. Though faeries have a high tolerance for mischievous acts, they do have limits as to the sort of crimes allowed in and outside of Faerie. Faeries convicted of acts of great evil are expelled from Faerie, banished to live on Earth.
shadowstep: a method of transportation used by master necromancers, chroniclers, and shadowspawn faeries. To keep vampires from causing mayhem in other worlds, the higher powers closed the doors to them—except for the hell dimensions. Shadowspawn faeries and vampires brave or foolish enough to make the trip can travel through the shadow realm.
shapeshifter: a magician infected with wild magic and possessing an animal spirit. In ancient times, many animals had their own magic and were seen as sacred. These animals could imbue a magician with their magic—known as wild magic—and this created the first shapeshifters. These shifters were then able to spread their magic to others, imbuing them with the spirit of the original animal. The most common shifters are canine, with the rest made up of feline, ursine, equine and avian. Shifters coexist with their animal, almost like having a split personality, and can shift into a hybrid animal/human form and the full animal form. Many shifters, particularly predators, revel in their beast, which has led to shifters being considered subhuman by other magicians and even hunted by sorcerers
. See also wild magic.
sorcerer: a magician specializing in elemental magic typically destructive in nature. Like witches, sorcerers use elemental magic, and tend to focus on one element in particular. In general their magic does not require spoken spells or physical ingredients; large, formal rituals are rare occurrences. Sorcerers are divided into houses or families, though some prefer to remain solitary and avoid the internal politics. There is much competition between sorcerer groups, which leads to occasional outbreaks of violence resembling gang warfare. Sorcerers are the magicians most likely to become necromancers, as well as being most likely to be kept as a necromancer’s pet.
soul mate: a soul’s perfect match. Soul mates are not always romantic partners and can be represented in other close relationships, such as best friends. Because souls are reincarnated, a person can meet his or her soul mate in several lives, or none at all. Also, due to free will soul mates are not guaranteed true love or a happily ever after. Seers can be helpful in finding a person’s soul mate.
straights: a slang term for nonmagicians. There are many other terms, such as voids.
summoner: a magician dealing in summoning, binding, and/or banishing magical entities. Summoners capture and bind their prey, trading magical favors or power in exchange for release. They mainly deal in demons, but with the right information, such as a True Name, they can deal with any living entity—elementals, imps or faeries. Dealing with demons is risky business and wears on a summoner over time. They begin to take on demonic physical traits and may even become demons themselves, at which point they are often pulled into a hell dimension that becomes their new home.
Task Force Prometheus: a secret government project researching magicians and magic; also known as hunters or Methees (slang). While looking for terrorists, the government uncovered the hidden society of magicians. A top-secret task force was formed to study magic-users, to find the source of their magic in order to weaponize it.
True Name: the name of a magician or magical being that has power over that person. In modern society, names aren’t given as much weight and a magician’s True Name holds little to no power. It is considered rude to use a magician’s True Name, especially without permission. The names of older beings, such as vampires and faeries, can still hold power and be used against them. Faeries in particular guard their True Names jealously and go by a number of pseudonyms.
vampire: a slang term for a master necromancer or chronicler. Vampire is considered rude by many older master necros and chroniclers. They do, however, share some traits with the popular vampire myth. They must feed on the blood of living magicians—specifically on the magic within the blood. Most keep spouses, partners, or “pets” as blood sources. It is extremely rare for a vampire to kill during feeding (when you’re done milking the cow, you don’t slaughter it). Though some powerful vamps venture out in the daylight, most avoid it. Sunlight causes damage to their skin. A vamp’s magic will continuously try to heal that damage, and once their magic battery is drained, the vamp slips into a coma that can be difficult to cure.
wild magic: a form of magic originating from an animal, known to be unpredictable. Most magicians consider shapeshifters to be infected with wild magic. This magic imbues its host with the spirit of the animal it originated from, and it also interferes with the host’s original magic. Most magicians fear being infected with wild magic.
witch: a magician specializing in elemental magic, focused on healing and self-defense. Witches use their powers to help others and the environment. They have a strict policy of doing no harm with their magic, which makes them unique among other magicians. Witches like ritual with their magic, using elaborate spells that require special tools, spoken words and physical ingredients. Spell books and tools are traditionally passed down from one generation to the next.
Chapter One
It was a dead man’s party, and I was a guest of honor. Lucky me.
I never intended to join Team Evil. I’d spent most of my life trying to prove to the rest of magician society that there was no evil in my blood. Yet there I was, waltzing into a necromancer gathering to fight on the side of my vampire master, Councilman Zachary Harrison. Our spirits were stuck together with magical duct tape, and if Harrison lost his head, so would I, making it in my best interest to ensure he didn’t get his ass handed to him by the angry vamps who wanted his job. Plus there was the annoying fact that Harrison was one of the few magicians with the power, money and chutzpah needed to fight our growing hunter problem. Without him we all might end up being dissected on some government slab, so again it was important to keep him alive. Or as alive as a vampire can get.
But that didn’t make me feel any better about being on the side of Team Evil. All I needed were some leather pants and a bad Eastern European accent and I’d be ready for true villainess status. I drew the line at leather pants, though. No one needed to see my fat ass in leather pants, not even my husband Lex. He probably would’ve approved of leather pants in the privacy of our own home, but at the moment he radiated a thundercloud of pissed-offedness as he walked beside me into the heart of darkness.
It was a pleasant, well-appointed heart of darkness. The gathering was held at the home of the eldest necromancer councilman, Alejandro Vargas—one of his homes, specifically a mansion in Oak Brook. Though the décor was elegant, the place stank to high heaven of decomposing flesh and biting smoke. Necromancer magic. Gross. Of course, I was the only one who could smell it, with my extra-special gift for recognizing magic by scent, like a paranormal bloodhound. I tried to keep from wrinkling my nose, but it was hard not to be disgusted by the undead crowd. If I wanted to be fair, I’d point out that they weren’t all undead. Some were minions like me or apprentices still in vampire training. Well, none of them were minions like me. I was special. Unique. Even more important than Harrison’s apprentice, Anthony, who wasn’t a bad kid, despite his whole volunteering–to-be-a-necromancer thing.
The official necromancer term for my predicament was blooded, but Harrison and I weren’t bound by blood per se. Instead, we were connected on some weird, spiritual level that gave our magic an extra oomph, but came with the very unwanted side effect of being able to hear his thoughts and sense his emotions. Thus I had the Zachary Harrison endless playlist going on in my brain 24/7. It was quieter at home and almost completely silent in Faerie, but here in necro central the reception was loud and clear. Even though he was on the other side of the building, I knew Harrison was irritated and cranky, rather like a toddler who needed a nap.
He didn’t appreciate that observation. I mentally told him to die in a fire.
“Ah, there she is.” I turned and spotted Faust, the one gray suit in a sea of black, approaching us. Aside from the outfit, he blended pretty well—Faust was skinny, pretty, and he’d be young forever. He peered at me from behind the smoked lenses of his spectacles and smiled politely. Faust is a shadowspawn faerie, and as Titania I shouldn’t ever speak to him because his entire family was kicked out of Faerie for epic bad behavior. But as Harrison’s minion, I talked to Faust all the time. And he was weirdly growing on me, like a foot fungus.
“If you and your Oberon would be so kind as to follow me?” Faust bowed, and I heard a faint grunt from Lex’s direction. It was the first sign of life I’d heard out of him since that afternoon…unless it were possible to hear someone’s teeth grinding. I didn’t need a psychic hot line into Lex’s thoughts to know he hated every moment of this. Understandably so. I know I’d be ready to spit fire if Lex had some woojy connection to another woman. Sure, we were soul mates, but our relationship had enough trouble to begin with without throwing my big, stupid necromancer problem into the mix.
Harrison appreciated that observation. I mentally told him to die in a fire. Again. It was going to be a long night.
Faust led us through room after room where the bland, beautiful dead were discussing politics. Finally we entered a library, and it gave me a moment of pause, because books were not in th
e top ten things I associated with Zachary Harrison. Probably not even in the top twenty-five.
“I do read, you know,” Zach commented dryly.
“E-mail doesn’t count,” I replied.
“I really wish you two wouldn’t do that,” Lex said. Normally his voice was a smooth drawl, but tonight it was clipped and brusque.
“Sorry,” I muttered, wincing sheepishly. “Hey, Anthony. Aren’t you supposed to be at school?” I asked Zach’s apprentice. Anthony was a college student, and he attended my alma mater, Three Oaks University.
“I came up for the weekend. Mr. Harrison sent his helicopter for me.” Anthony smiled his dazzling, white smile, reminding me he was every bit as handsome as his mentor. Apparently Harrison was continuing Lovely Laura’s legacy of creating pretty vampires. Anthony looked like a Mediterranean billionaire-in-training, while Zach was an all-American blond heartthrob.
“Of course he did. How long do we have to stay?” I asked.
“Until the challenge is complete,” Zach said.
This was our third necro gathering since my forcible recruitment to the dark side, but it was the first time someone had gotten up the cojones to challenge Harrison for his new seat on the necro council. The seat he’d gained when Lex and I had whacked the previous councilwoman, Lovely Laura Barrenheart. It was one of my fondest memories. I hoped that bitch was burning in an extra-special hell.
“So you slay the bad guy and we’re outta here?”
“It’s not quite that simple. The situation has changed.” A line of worry creased his spray-tanned brow, and my stomach dropped. Zach didn’t scare easily. “It appears that my challenger, Mr. Rousseau, also has a blooded servant—a fire sorcerer. As such, you will be expected to fight in the challenge as well.”