by Lisa Edmonds
I ate my lunch and started thumbing through the books, looking for any references to anything called a Kasten. I checked the indexes in the back, then skimmed them, finding nothing. When my vision got blurry, I took a break to do more Internet searches, but nothing came up, no matter what I searched for. Even alternate spellings gave me nothing.
I went back to the books, this time looking through some of my books on fire magic. Over an hour later, I still had nothing except a headache. No call from Natalie yet either.
Malcolm, meanwhile, was jumping in and out of crystals in the work area. “I hope you don’t get stuck in one of those while you’re testing your spells,” I told him as I headed for my storage cabinets. “Before we start using them to jump you from place to place, I need some way to get you in and out of them too.”
“I’m working on that,” Malcolm said, disappearing and reappearing. “Right now I can jump in and out, but there’s no masking spell on the crystals, so any mage who wanders by them would be able to tell I was in there.”
“Good point. We should work on that too.” I went to the leftmost cabinet, traced four runes on the door, and opened it. Four of the shelves held books and notebooks, the contents of my carefully curated but limited blood magic library. These books were black market and extremely hard to find. They’d been procured through third parties and delivered to post office boxes.
I pulled out any books that dealt with harnads or objects of power used in ritual blood magic. I took the books to the library table and spread them out while Malcolm went back to his bolt-hole spells. I bent my head over my books.
Twenty minutes later, I dropped a book on the table with a yell.
Malcolm popped to my side. “What?”
I pointed to the page. “I found it!”
“Found what?”
I picked up the book, a rather dry tome on harnad history and myth, and read: “‘In the year 1648, a small village in Germany was destroyed by fire. Witnesses reported that the fire moved with unnatural speed, devouring everything and everyone in the village in a matter of seconds. The fire was said to have been the work of a local harnad leader, a man named Adelbert, who had been driven from the village after suspicions of witchcraft years before.’”
“What does this have to do with—”
“I’m getting there. ‘Only one family survived the fire. Adelbert warned a young woman named Alide, whom he had hoped to marry before his banishment, that he was returning to take his revenge on the town and she should take her family and leave. He told her that he was in possession of an object of power he referred to as der Zauberkasten, which he claimed would destroy the village.’”
“What else does it say?” Malcolm asked.
I read on. “‘The Adelbert Kasten, as it came to be called, is often considered to be a mythical object, as no reliable sources have ever documented its existence. It has been described by various anecdotal sources as a wooden box or chest with a lid. One account from mid-eighteenth-century France references the Kasten as a reliquary containing bones supposedly belonging to Adelbert himself. Another report, this one recorded by a monk in eighteenth-century Germany, describes the Kasten as wielding enormous destructive power when filled with the lifeblood or severed body parts of mages representing all four cardinal elements: air, fire, earth, and water. Such an object would be of obvious interest to a harnad, whose members regularly practice ritual blood magic, but there is no record of the Kasten being used since 1748 in Europe, and never in the United States. The evidence seems to suggest that if Adelbert’s Kasten ever existed at all, it has been lost to time.’ That’s all it says.”
“Holy shit,” Malcolm said after a moment.
We stared at each other.
“So this Kasten is some sort of magical weapon of mass destruction that runs on the blood or body parts of mages?” Malcolm asked. “Do we think it’s possible Betty Morrison and her harnad had it and she was keeping it hidden in her bookcase?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t know. The person who wrote this book certainly seems to think it probably didn’t really exist, but Natalie’s got a letter from John West to Betty thanking her for keeping it safe. Whether that was what was in the bookcase, I don’t know.”
I picked up my phone and called Natalie again.
“Hey, Alice,” she said breathlessly. I heard traffic sounds in the background. It sounded like she was downtown. “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to call you. I’m having to run some errands and deal with an accountant, and it’s taking all day.”
“That’s okay. Did you get in touch with the lawyer?”
“I left a message,” Natalie replied. “He hasn’t called me back yet. If I don’t hear from him today, I’ll call him again in the morning.”
I debated telling her what I’d found out about the Kasten, then decided it was a conversation better had in person. “Okay, great. Let me know what you find out.” We said our good-byes and hung up.
“What’s the plan for the rest of the day?” Malcolm asked.
I glanced at the clock on my phone. “Well, it’s almost four. Now that we know what the Kasten is—or might be—I think I need to know more about John West.”
Malcolm floated back and forth nervously. “Well, we know he’s a high-level fire mage, and if he’s in a harnad, that means he’s probably a high-level blood mage as well.”
“I’d like to get a sense of his magic so I could recognize it again, and to know exactly what I might be up against if it turns out he’s in the middle of all this.” I started gathering up the books on the table.
“Are you going to use a ruse so you can shake hands with him?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It worked with Peter and the others because they have low-level magic and they have no idea how to use it. West is a high-level mage. If I touched him with my shields even partially down, he’d sense me immediately. I don’t want to attract the attention of anyone in a harnad, least of all a high-level fire mage.”
“I could do it,” Malcolm suggested. “Like I did today, with the spell detector.”
I thought about it but shook my head again. “No, it’s dangerous for you too. Even with the masking spell, you’re still vulnerable. All I need to do is get near him and I should be able to sense his magic.”
My phone rang. I glanced at the screen. Wolf. I remembered he’d invited me to dinner tonight and I hadn’t had time to think about it today.
I answered the call. “Hi, Sean.”
“Hi, Allie.” I smiled at the sound of his familiar voice: deep and a little growly. “I’m leaving the office and thought I’d check in and see if you were interested in getting dinner tonight.”
“I was just about to head out to check on a person of interest who’s come up in the last day. It may take up most of my evening.”
“Want a colleague along for the ride? You can catch me up on the situation with Vaughan.”
I thought about that. As a pack associate, I did owe its alpha a summary of what had transpired at my meeting with Charles. Plus, having Sean along was good camouflage for surveilling West. “That would work. I need to be at his office before he leaves work at five, though.”
“It’s four now. I can be at your place in twenty. Is that enough time?”
“Should be. I’ll be ready.”
“See you in twenty.” We disconnected.
I finished collecting the books on the table and took them over to the cabinet. Malcolm followed me.
As I was putting them back on the shelves, he said, “So this thing with the werewolf.”
“There’s no ‘thing’ with Sean. He’s useful.”
“‘Useful,’ huh?” Malcolm didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. “Useful for what?”
“Professionally useful.” I put up the last book and closed the cabinet. “It was easier to get access to Natalie’s aunts and uncle with him posing as a colleague or fiancé. I can use his car to surveil West. My alli
ance with his pack strengthens my reputation in the supe community and improves my bargaining position with the vamps.”
“What alliance?”
I told Malcolm about my new status as pack associate and briefly recapped my meeting with Charles as we went upstairs and into my storage room.
He was understandably concerned about my close call with Charles, but wasn’t easily distracted from his original question. “Sean may be useful, but it’s more than that,” Malcolm said as I pinned my hair up and reached for a blonde wig. “I saw the way you smiled when the phone rang.”
I slipped the wig on carefully, then adjusted it in the mirror and used my fingers to gently comb out the hair. When I was satisfied with how it looked, I slipped on a pair of thick-framed fake glasses and left the storage room, turning the light off and closing the door.
“I do like his company.” I checked to make sure I had everything I needed in my bag. “He’s a good colleague and a good resource. Anything else that happens is purely recreational.”
Malcolm grinned. “Good for you. All work and no play makes Alice a dull girl.”
I scowled at him. “Whether or not I ‘play’ is none of your business.”
“Duly noted. But if you’re planning on having ‘playtime’ tonight, warn me so I can go hide out at Nat’s house, okay?”
Aggravated, I dove at him, magic sparking on my fingertips. With a laugh, he vanished.
Chapter 19
Forty-five minutes later, Sean and I were parked outside a small office building just east of downtown, reading online reviews of John West’s investment company and news stories about his fire magic. Most of the comments on the stories were from local contractors who had used his services. A couple of fire departments had hired him to help manage some wildfires, and apparently he’d saved a lot of lives and property.
To hear the city’s fire chief tell it, John West was a hero who’d fearlessly walked into a wildfire and controlled it so it could be contained. I did an Internet search for the incident and found news footage. Sean and I watched in stunned silence.
“I can see why you’re keeping your distance on this one,” Sean said after we’d seen the video twice. “Have you ever seen anyone control that much fire at once?”
“Yes.” My grandfather could, not that he’d ever used it to help anyone. “But it’s very rare. As much as I’d like to avoid him and anyone else in his harnad, if there is one, forewarned is forearmed. If I end up having to meet him, I don’t want to go in blind.”
“That is true, though in this case, I’m not sure how much good it might do you.”
I stayed quiet and watched the video again.
On the way to West’s office, I’d told Sean about my meeting with Charles and the vampire’s demand for my blood. Though his hands tightened on the steering wheel until it creaked, his only comments were professional and neutral. I’d also told him who we thought West might be—a blood mage and member of a local harnad—but didn’t mention the Kasten. If that was what was missing from Betty’s library, and it was an object of power, the fewer people who were aware of its existence, the better, until Malcolm and I knew more about it.
Once the video ended, I read up more on West’s bio while we waited. As five o’clock approached, lights started turning off in the various offices and people started pouring out of the building. I didn’t see any sign of John West until ten after, when he suddenly came out the front door.
“That’s him,” I said to Sean.
Despite being in his seventies, West looked lean, like a runner, with silver hair brushed back from hard, blue eyes that reminded me of my grandfather’s cold gaze. The fire mage scanned the parking lot as he walked briskly to a black BMW, laid his suit jacket carefully across the backseat, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Sean started his car and fell in behind him, keeping his distance as we battled rush-hour traffic on our way north of town. I knew West’s house was on the east side, so I wondered where we were going. It was probably too much to hope that he was headed to a harnad meeting.
When he finally turned through the gates of the art museum, Sean asked, “What are we doing here?”
“No idea.” I thought the museum normally closed at six, but the parking lot still had quite a few cars in it. West parked, put his suit jacket back on, and headed into the museum.
“He may be meeting somebody,” Sean commented.
“Could be.” I checked my wig in the mirror on the visor, unfastened my seat belt, and opened my door. Sean and I exited the car. I slung my bag over my shoulder, and we headed into the museum.
When we stepped inside, I scanned the enormous lobby and spotted West heading toward the auditorium. An easel beside the reception desk advertised a special presentation tonight by an art historian on the Italian High Renaissance.
“Are you here for the lecture?” the woman behind the desk asked us cheerfully.
West went into the auditorium, so it looked like we were. I paid for our admission, and Sean and I put museum stickers on our shirts.
When we got to the auditorium, I spotted John West holding a glass of wine and looking over a spread of hors d’oeuvres.
Sean and I went to the cash bar. He bought water for me and a beer for himself, and then we browsed the long table of bite-sized appetizers. Food and drinks in hand, we staked out a spot along the wall where I could keep an eye on West as Sean chatted about his day. West spoke to no one; unlike most of the other attendees, he stood off by himself, sipping his wine.
A few minutes before six, people started to move to the seats. We managed to snag the seats behind West. I put my bag and jacket in the seat next to mine. The auditorium was only about a third full, but I didn’t want anyone sitting down next to us.
A museum employee came out, and I half listened as she welcomed everyone to the museum and said a few words about the evening’s speaker, an art historian named Dr. Jacob Altman. I pictured a dusty old man with horn-rimmed glasses carrying an overflowing briefcase.
When the presenter came out, however, I was surprised that Dr. Altman was an enthusiastic young man with unruly hair and Converse sneakers. Instead of an old, battered briefcase, he carried a MacBook Pro that he connected at the lectern, and fired up a very modern PowerPoint.
As the art historian lectured us on the finer points of High Renaissance art, I watched John West. The older man seemed to be listening intently and taking notes in a small notebook. It was looking more and more like he was simply here to learn about a bunch of sixteenth-century painters I’d never heard of.
When the presentation was well underway and I was certain West’s attention was focused on the lecture, I closed my eyes and concentrated on his magical energy as it buzzed against the edges of my senses. Slowly, I reached out with my mind.
White-hot fire screamed through the crack in my shields like a blowtorch through tissue paper. The sheer power of West’s magic blazed through my brain in a shockwave that felt like it would take off the back of my skull. The energy level was nearly incomprehensible. My senses shut down, and my arms and legs went rigid with strain. I had to raise my shields or risk permanent damage.
It took an excruciatingly long time and every ounce of strength I had to raise my tattered shields and block him out.
When awareness returned, I realized I was half slumped in my chair and sweating profusely. I heard a strange sound I slowly recognized as applause; apparently, the presentation was over. I had no idea how much time had passed while I was semiconscious; it might have been as much as ten or fifteen minutes. The audience was filing out of the auditorium.
My entire body hurt as if all my nerve endings had been seared, but the agony was receding like a tide going out. As the fog lifted and my vision cleared, I became aware of a different kind of pain. Sean was gripping my right wrist tightly enough to bruise, and probably had been for a while, judging by the ache.
When I looked at him, his eyes shone gold. “Allie,” he said rough
ly. “Tell me you can hear me.”
I stared at him uncomprehendingly. I heard the words, but they weren’t connecting with anything. I wondered if I’d shorted something out in my brain.
A blank stare wasn’t the response Sean was looking for. As West finished collecting his belongings and stood, heading for the exit, Sean gripped my chin and leaned closer. His eyes glowed. “Alice,” he said, and a little shiver of something ran down my spine. “Wake up and talk to me.”
It felt like someone took their hand and brushed away the cobwebs. Somehow, though I wasn’t a shifter, Sean had been able to use his alpha influence to help me recover. I shuddered and exhaled a long, shaky breath. As my straining muscles suddenly relaxed, I fell forward against his chest, making a pained noise when my nose hit his sternum.
Sean tipped my chin up to look me in the eyes as I rubbed my nose. “You with me now?”
“I’m with you.” My voice still sounded a little thin, but at least I could think clearly.
“Give yourself a minute,” Sean said. “West went into the men’s room.”
How he’d seen that with his focus on me, I had no idea, but I was grateful for the extra few minutes to clear my head and regain muscle control.
By the time West exited the bathroom, Sean and I were making our way toward the auditorium doors. My legs were wobbly, but I was walking on my own.
We followed West back out to the parking lot. “You doing okay?” Sean asked as we got in the car.
“I feel much better.” I put my bag on the floor and buckled in.
West left the lot, heading east, and Sean followed at a distance. As he drove, I thought about what I’d felt. John West was, by far, the most powerful fire mage I had ever encountered, and that was saying something. West made my grandfather’s fire magic feel like a birthday candle by comparison. Perhaps more chilling, West’s blood magic would likely be as strong or stronger than his fire magic. I thought of what my grandfather could do with his fire magic, and then imagined someone stronger, and with high-level blood magic too. I felt nauseous.