by Oxford, Rain
“Go knock on the door,” I told Hunt.
He was hesitant, but finally started across the street. Remy and I stood in front of the diner, chatting casually to disguise the fact that we were waiting for the trouble. When nobody answered the door, Hunt opened it, presumably using magic, and disappeared inside. He stepped back outside a moment later and shook his head. She was gone.
“Let’s get a room and we can try again,” Remy said.
I ignored her as a presence approached me. I didn’t move, even though my instincts screamed of danger. Whether I knew how to use my powers well or not, I never forgot a mind. Despite the fact that it was my usual defensive reaction, I wasn’t about to reach out for this mind; I knew what I would find.
Only it wasn’t the red-headed woman. The manager of the hotel passed us casually on the sidewalk as he returned to the hotel. Remy didn’t look twice, but I knew what was under that skin. The manager passed Hunt on the street and they glanced at each other suspiciously before moving on.
“New target,” I said when Hunt reached us.
“I know. We’ll follow him.”
“Huh?” Remy asked.
“The manager,” I explained. “I don’t know how, but he’s got the same aura as the woman we were tracking. I still suggest we capture and interrogate.”
“I disagree,” Remy said. “We need to follow him back to his leader.”
Out-voted, I shook my head even as I followed them to the truck. The manager was just pulling out of the motel in a beat up old Station Wagon when I started the SUV. There was a heavy stream of traffic as people headed to work, but the man kept taking the deserted streets, which made it much more difficult to stay undetected.
After about ten minutes, the Station Wagon slowed and I had to pass him or risk suspicion.
“What are you doing?” Remy asked.
The Station Wagon turned into an alleyway, so I pulled into the next one and circled back. I stopped the SUV right by the backdoor of an old restaurant and got out, motioning for Remy and Hunt to wait. Of course, they both ignored me. There was a dumpster on wheels just around the corner, so I got down, careful to avoid the dubious stains on the pavement, and peered under the dumpster.
There were several cars lining the alley. I heard a door open and saw two feet step out of one of them. The man was close enough that I couldn’t see above his knees, but my instincts told me he was the one I was after. He opened a door just a few feet from the dumpster and went into the building. Fortunately, I had thought to look at the front of the building when I passed and knew it was a pawnshop.
I stood. “Remy, go around to the front and act like a browsing customer. Hunt, take a wide scope around the place. I’m going to follow him in.”
“Here,” Remy said, handing me her gun.
“You might need it,” I argued, only to stop when she pulled a second gun out from a strap on her thigh. “What the hell? How did I not see that?”
She grinned. “That would be my womanly powers.”
“She uses concealing spells,” her father explained.
I covered Remy until she got around to the front of the building before I went to the back door. It was propped open slightly from a brass door stopper that was broken and wedged between the door and the wall. My instincts warned me this was a bad idea. Hunt kept telling me to trust him, but I had never been led astray by my instincts.
I opened the door, the gun ready, and looked around. It was a storage room full of boxes and cleaning supplies. Once I entered the room, I stopped the door from slamming shut behind me and let it close quietly. I went to the door on the far side of the room and tried it.
Locked.
Why the hell would they lock a storage room? Something’s not right about this. The sensation of danger increased and the overhead light switched off. I pulled my penlight from my pocket, clicked it on, and shouted.
“Jesus-fuck! Don’t do that!” I whispered loudly. Hunt was lucky I was experienced enough with guns not to keep my finger on the trigger. I almost wished I wasn’t so safety-conscious when he didn’t have the decency to look even a little apologetic.
“I saw the man in the back window of the restaurant next to us, so there must be a joining door,” he said. “He was in a kitchen that looked like it was never finished.”
“I think this is a trap. Can you get the door open?”
He grabbed the knob and a bright spark made me blink. When he opened the door and light flooded the room, I put my penlight away and aimed my gun. It looked like any old junky pawnshop, except we were alone.
Between the jewelry case and laptops was another door, which Hunt went for first. I trekked across the crowded shop, barely able to squeeze through the narrow aisles to lock the door. Once again, my instincts flared up and my magic reacted automatically. I felt the mind of the man who had been outside the club.
“Get down!” I yelled. The door opened to the big man, who had a gun in his hand. Hunt put his hand out as if to ward the enemy away. When the gun went off, the bullet struck something invisible instead of Hunt.
“Oh, good,” the mountain of a man grinned cruelly as he lowered his gun. “Gale wants another wizard.”
“Where is my daughter?”
“The little trollop who came in here thinking she was being clever? We were onto her hours ago. We’ve been waiting for you to find Felicity ever since that familiar took her earring.”
Hunt made an odd sound a split second before I felt weird. It was similar to the sensation of being underwater in a dream; the mind believes it, sees it, and feels it, but it’s not quite real. I tried to unleash my power again and find out what was going on from the man’s mind… but nothing happened.
I couldn’t connect to my power, as if a bridge had been broken.
The red-headed woman came through the door, grinning brightly. “Well, now that you have both been de-fanged, come on in. Gale thought you should all be together when you die. Too bad we couldn’t get that vampire.”
I felt relief, which was probably an entirely inappropriate thing to feel at that moment. The woman stepped forward and gestured to the room. Hunt, anxious to be with his daughter, didn’t hesitate. When I started to pass her, she stopped me with a gentle hand on my arm. “How did you know it was me?” she asked. She meant how I knew she was disguised as the manager.
“Your aura.”
She smirked. “You must know one of us. It won’t be so easy next time.”
“Next time?” It struck me as an odd thing to say when she expected me to die in the next few minutes.
Her smirk widened. “No, you’re not going to be that easy for Gale to kill.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Tell that to Professor Langril.” I didn’t know why I said it and I hadn’t even meant to say it in the first place, but when her face drained of color and her mouth dropped open, I knew it was the right thing to do.
My instincts were still working.
Using the distraction to my advantage, I raised the gun still in my hand and shot her. She grunted and looked down at her abdomen as blood gushed through her peach-colored sweater. “You ruined my shirt!” She lifted the shirt to display the hole in her stomach, which was sealing itself and healing over in seconds.
“Shit.” She let her sweater fall and took my gun. I went into the joined restaurant, which was hollowed out for construction. Remy was tied to a chair in the middle of the room with a gag in her mouth. “This is becoming a habit,” I told her. She narrowed her eyes at me.
Behind her was the “boss” of the operation, who I assumed was Gale. Of course, this was the kind of scene that came straight from a mobster movie, only I was a P.I. instead of a cop.
Gale laughed. “Which is good in your case, because the cop always gets shot,” he said. I froze. “Oh, yes, I can read your mind.”
I tried again to use my magic and got nothing. “So the amulet lets you neutralize the magic of those around you, but not your own.” That actuall
y made perfect sense. “Are you a wizard or fae?”
He laughed again. “I am neither wizard nor fae, and the amulet does much more than neutralize your power. Now, let’s begin the killing.” The woman went to his side and looked way too excited about killing.
“Wait, wait! We haven’t made introductions, you haven’t vented your evil plan, and Hunt hasn’t done something stupid and risky to save his daughter! You can’t just jump straight to the killing!”
“Devon, what are you doing?” Hunt asked.
“Annoying him to buy us time. Isn’t that obvious?”
“And what would you need time for?” Gale asked.
“You’ve never read the villain’s handbook? You reveal your plan, continue talking so I have time to come up with a way to stop you, and then you attack one at a time. I guess you haven’t watched that many P.I. movies.”
“No, actually, I prefer to watch cop movies. Private investigators are failed cops.”
“Oh, ouch,” I patted the pocket on my chest. No damn lighter. Where the hell did my lighter go? “Your opinion has stabbed me in the heart. I will now slay myself, if only I had a knife.” I patted my jeans pocket and felt nothing that could help. “Can I borrow yours?” The mountain man pressed his gun against my back. “Never mind then.”
Gale pulled a dagger from a harness on his belt and held it across Remy’s neck. Only then did I see the cloud of darkness forming behind Gale and the woman. The mountain behind me opened his mouth to warn them, so I slammed my elbow up into his nose. Before he could recover, I grabbed the gun, aimed it at Gale’s head, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet glanced off an invisible shield in front of him, just like it had on Hunt’s shield. To my surprise, it was Flagstone who appeared in the dark. Like a dog, he jumped on Gale and bit the man as they went down, but he couldn’t shift without magic. Gale managed to roll onto his back, shift his hands into wolf paws, and slice his claws through Flagstone’s chest.
Hunt was expecting this; he rushed forth and tore the gag out of Remy’s mouth. With one hand on her shoulder, he grabbed Flagstone’s arm with his free hand. A dark mist surrounded the three of them and cleared in a few seconds, taking them with it. I was alone with Gale and his two assistants.
“He’s got one of the keys!” the woman screamed.
“What keys?” Gale asked. “How did he use magic?!”
At least I wasn’t the only one completely confused. The woman ignored him and turned to me. “Tell me where the fourth key is!”
“Lady, I have no clue what the keys even look like, what they open, or who the hell has them.”
Her eyes narrowed and her grin was predatory. “Then maybe you can help me find it.” As fast as her grin had appeared, it vanished into utter shock and horror. I felt the darkness form around me before I saw it. She dived forward, only to be stopped by familiar red lighting that shot out of the black wind tunnel closing in on me.
Professor Langril gripped my shoulder too hard. “Next time, Felicity. Next time, you’re dead.” The darkness closed off all light then and I felt Langril’s hand pushing me to walk. “You’re okay,” he whispered. “Just don’t speak. You don’t want anyone to know you’re here.”
I felt like I was trying to walk with too much gravity. The ground was soft and uneven, the air was frigid and stale, and there was no sound. Before I could ask where we were, I felt a hand grab my calf. Professor Langril’s hand closed over my mouth.
“They’re just testing. They can find you in the shadow pass, but they can’t see you.”
More hands gripped my arms and legs, but their holds weren’t strong enough to restrain me. Time was impossible to determine; we could have walked for a minute or an hour before I felt that we were alone again. The darkness cleared in a swirling mess just like it had come on, leaving me alone in Hunt’s library.
The bowl of silvery liquid was on the desk, a temptation too great for my curiosity. Normally, my job required a balance of caution and inquisitiveness, but it seemed life at Quintessence was a different matter. I already knew my nosiness was going to be the death of me.
I approached the table hesitantly and peered into the bowl. The swirling liquid slowed and stilled to become as smooth and reflective as a mirror. The light from the gas lamps glittered off of it easily until it fogged over, just like the gallium did in the tracking spell. Only this time I saw a face take form.
It was the face that Amelia saw in the shadows.
The face grinned, lips parting over sharp teeth. It saw me.
Chapter 10
It was pitch black and I could sense a malevolent presence all around me. This wasn’t a living enemy that could be killed. I felt the firm handle of a torch in my grasp, so I drew on the power inside me, focused on the heat of a flame, and directed it into the tip of the torch. As fire engulfed the top of the torch, shadows were chased back. There was something unnatural about it, like the shadows were moving away instead of being penetrated by light.
My instincts were never wrong. I was being watched— hunted even.
I was in a dry cave and the floor sloped upward pretty steeply. Behind me was a wall, so there was only one way to go. I carefully trekked through passageways that were wide as trains and gaps that I could barely squeeze through. The further I traveled, the colder and dryer the air became.
Finally, after what felt like hours, I came upon an enormous cavern with a stone tower in the center. The tower was about fifteen feet in diameter and forty feet in height. Spaced evenly around it were massive wooden doors, each carved with peculiar symbols and designs. While none of the doors had any obvious locking mechanisms, they also had no doorknobs. I pushed against one, but it wouldn’t budge even a hair’s breadth to my best attempts.
I studied the symbols on the doors more carefully. When I approached the last door, my palm started to sting, so I held my hand out a little towards the light to see it. There was nothing on my skin, but I felt like something was burned into it. It only took me a moment to realize that the lines I could feel burning in my hand were the same as on the fourth door.
I was a cautious man by nature, so it was a surprise to myself that I turned my palm out to face the door.
A hand pulled my arm down and another closed over my mouth to stop my startled shout. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The second you give them what they want, they will no longer need you.”
Although the voice was familiar, the English accent wasn’t and prevented me from identifying the man. As if it were overcome by darkness, the flame of my torch died with a sudden, violent flicker.
* * *
I woke feeling smothered, so I struck outward and connected with someone’s nose.
“Devon! Cut that out!”
I recognized April Nightshade’s voice and sat up, blinking clarity into my eyes. The professor was dressed in an emerald green corset, black pleated skirt, and spike-heeled boots. She took a towel and started wiping the oil off my chest. The woman apparently had a fetish for rubbing burning oil on people. Since she still looked sixteen, it was more disturbing than kinky.
However, this time, she was a little rough around the edges. Aside from the exhaustion in her ice-blue eyes and the fact that her red and orange hair had obviously not been brushed, there were several cuts and scrapes on her face and arms. “Are you okay?”
I realized then that we were in Hunt’s office and I was on his couch. We were alone, which just made the oil more awkward.
“I’m fine. It’s just been a rough few weeks. I’m risking a lot by helping you.”
“Where’s Dr. Martin?”
“He’s… a little bit missing.”
“How can someone be a little bit missing?”
“Well, we can’t find him, but we’re sure he’s not hurt and that he’ll turn up eventually. Andrew tends to go missing every once in a while. That’s why we didn’t think anything of it when he disappeared for thirty years.”
“Wait, we? You knew him be
fore he disappeared? How old are you?”
“I am far older than you. It will probably take another hundred years or so before I look legal.”
“What are you?”
“It is good to see you made it alright,” Hunt said, entering the office. Flagstone and Remy were right behind him.
“How did I get on the couch?”
“Remy found you on the floor in my library and we moved you in here. We thought Gale had killed you at first; your entire upper body was burned.”
I looked down at myself and saw not a single mark. Understanding my confusion, Remy picked up a blackened cloth off of Hunt’s desk and held it up for me to see. It was the charred remains of my once-blue button-up shirt. “Oh.”
“So now what?” Remy asked. “Our powers are back, but we went through all that work for nothing.”
“No, we learned three things. First, we learned exactly who we’re up against. Second, we learned that the amulet gives Gale our powers, not just suppresses them. Third, you cannot go near him again,” I said to Hunt. “We don’t want him getting your power.”
“But we got our magic back,” Remy argued.
“I believe we were very fortunate to,” Hunt said. “The gunman had said that Gale wanted another wizard.”
“Obviously, he doesn’t have an entourage of captured paranormals,” I said. “That must be why he’s killing people; the amulet gives him our powers when we’re near, but he can’t keep them unless he kills us.”
Hunt nodded thoughtfully. “I never learned much about the amulet because the council kept it so secret.”
I wondered if Henry knew. No, I decided. He would have told me. Henry, I trusted.
“How did you get out of the pawnshop?” Remy asked. Embarrassment colored her cheeks. “I wanted to go back for you.”
“Professor Langril got me.” I knew a good father would always save his child first and I couldn’t possibly blame the headmaster for doing so. I stood up. “I’m heading to my room for a nap. We can try again tomorrow, but we’re going to follow my instincts this time.”