Undercover Magic

by Linsey Hall

  Del glanced at her watch, her blue eyes flashing with annoyance. “He’s twenty minutes late. Old Man Bastard said he should be here at eight.”

  Old Man Bastard—OMB for short—was our boss. His name said it all. Del, Nix, and I were FireSouls, the most despised species of supernatural because we could steal other magical being’s powers if we killed them. We’d never done that, of course, but OMB didn’t care. He’d figured out our secret when we were too young to hide it effectively and had been blackmailing us to work for him ever since.

  It’d been four years of finding and stealing treasure on his behalf. Treasure hunting was our other talent, a gift from the dragon with whom legend said we shared a soul. No one had seen a dragon in centuries, so I wasn’t sure if the legend was even true, but dragons were covetous, so it made sense they had a knack for finding treasure.

  “What are we after again?” Nix asked.

  “A pair of obsidian daggers,” Del said. “Nice ones.”

  “And how much is this job worth?” Nix repeated my earlier question. Money was always on our minds. It was our only chance at buying our freedom, but OMB didn’t pay us enough for it to be feasible anytime soon. We kept meticulous track of our earnings and saved like misers anyway.

  “A thousand each.”

  “Damn, that’s pathetic.” I slouched back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling, too bummed about our crappy pay to even be impressed by the stonework and vines above my head.

  “Hey, pretty ladies.” The oily voice made my skin crawl. We just couldn’t get a break in here. I looked up to see Clarence, our contact.

  Clarence was a tall man, slender as a vine, and had the slicked back hair and pencil-thin mustache of a 1940s movie star. Unfortunately, it didn’t work on him. Probably because his stare was like a lizard’s. He was more Gomez Addams than Clark Gable. I’d bet anything that he liked working for OMB.

  “Hey, Clarence,” I said. “Pull up a seat and tell us how to get into the temple.”

  Clarence slid into a chair, his movement eerily snakelike. I shivered and scooted my chair away, bumping into Del. The scent of her magic flared, a clean hit of fresh laundry, as she no doubt suppressed her instinct to transport away from Clarence. If I had her gift of teleportation, I’d have to repress it as well.

  “How about a drink first?” Clarence said.

  Del growled, but Nix interjected, her voice almost nice. She had the most self control out of the three of us. “No can do, Clarence. You know… Mr. Oribis”—her voice tripped on the name, probably because she wanted to call him OMB—“wants the daggers soon. Maybe next time, though.”

  “Next time.” Clarence shook his head like he didn’t believe her. He might be a snake, but he was a clever one. His chest puffed up a bit. “You know I’m the only one who knows how to get into the temple. How to get into any of the places in this jungle.”

  “And we’re so grateful you’re meeting with us. Mr. Oribis is so grateful.” Nix dug into her pocket and pulled out the crumpled envelope that contained Clarence’s pay. We’d counted it and found—unsurprisingly—that it was more than ours combined, even though all he had to do was chat with us for two minutes. I’d wanted to scream when I’d seen it.

  Clarence’s gaze snapped to the money. “All right, all right.”

  Apparently his need to be flattered went out the window when cash was in front of his face. Couldn’t blame him, though. I was the same way.

  “So, what are we up against?” I asked.

  The temple containing the daggers had been built by supernaturals over a thousand years ago. Like other temples of its kind, it was magically protected. Clarence’s intel would save us a ton of time and damage to the temple if we could get around the enchantments rather than breaking through them.

  “Dvarapala. A big one.”

  “A gatekeeper?” I’d seen one of the giant, stone monster statues at another temple before.

  “Yep.” He nodded slowly. “Impossible to get through. The temple’s as big as the Titanic—hidden from humans, of course—but no one’s been inside in centuries, they say.”

  Hidden from humans was a given. They had no idea supernaturals existed, and we wanted to keep it that way.

  “So how’d you figure out the way in?” Del asked. “And why haven’t you gone in? Bet there’s lots of stuff you could fence in there. Temples are usually full of treasure.”

  “A bit of pertinent research told me how to get in. And I’d rather sell the entrance information and save my hide. It won’t be easy to get past the booby traps in there.”

  Hide? Snakeskin, more like. Though he had a point. I didn’t think he’d last long trying to get through a temple on his own.

  “So? Spill it,” I said, anxious to get going.

  He leaned in, and the overpowering scent of cologne and sweat hit me. I grimaced, held my breath, then leaned forward to hear his whispers.

  As soon as Clarence walked away, the communications charms around my neck vibrated. I jumped, then groaned. Only one person had access to this charm.

  I shoved the small package Clarence had given me into my short’s pocket and pressed my fingertips to the comms charm, igniting its magic.

  “Hello, Mr. Oribis.” I swallowed my bile at having to be polite.

  “Girls,” he grumbled.

  Nix made a gagging face. We hated when he called us girls.

  “Change of plans. You need to go to the temple tonight.”

  “What? But it’s dark. We’re going tomorrow.” He never changed the plans on us. This was weird.

  “I need the daggers sooner. Go tonight.”

  My mind raced. “The jungle is more dangerous in the dark. We’ll do it if you pay us more.”

  “Twice the usual,” Del said.

  A tinny laugh echoed from the charm. “Pay you more? You’re lucky I pay you at all.”

  I gritted my teeth and said, “But we’ve been working for you for four years without a raise.”

  “And you’ll be working for me for four more years. And four after that. And four after that.” Annoyance lurked in his tone. So did his low opinion of us.

  Del’s and Nix’s brows crinkled in distress. We’d always suspected that OMB wasn’t planning to let us buy our freedom, but he’d dangled that carrot in front of us. What he’d just said made that seem like a big fat lie, though. One we could add to the many others he’d told us.

  An urge to rebel, to stand up to the bully who controlled our lives, seethed in my chest.

  “No,” I said. “You treat us like crap, and I’m sick of it. Pay us fairly.”

  “I treat you like crap, as you so eloquently put it, because that is exactly what you are. FireSouls.” He spit the last word, imbuing it with so much venom I thought it might poison me.

  I flinched, frantically glancing around to see if anyone in the bar had heard what he’d called us. Fortunately, they were all distracted. That didn’t stop my heart from thundering in my ears as rage replaced the fear. I opened my mouth to shout at him, but snapped it shut. I was too afraid of pissing him off.

  “Get it by dawn,” he barked. “Or I’m turning one of you in to the Order of the Magica. Prison will be the least of your worries. They might just execute you.”

  I gasped. “You wouldn’t.” Our government hunted and imprisoned—or destroyed—FireSouls.

  “Oh, I would. And I’d enjoy it. The three of you have been more trouble than you’re worth. You’re getting cocky, thinking you have a say in things like this. Get the daggers by dawn, or one of you ends up in the hands of the Order.”

  My skin chilled, and the floor felt like it had dropped out from under me. He was serious.

  “Fine.” I bit off the end of the word, barely keeping my voice from shaking. “We’ll do it tonight. Del will transport them to you as soon as we have them.”

  “Excellent.” Satisfaction rang in his tone, and my skin crawled. “Don’t disappoint me, or you know what will happen.”

 
The magic in the charm died. He’d broken the connection.

  I collapsed back against the chair. In times like these, I wished I had it in me to kill. Sure, I offed demons when they came at me on our jobs, but that was easy because they didn’t actually die. Killing their earthly bodies just sent them back to their hell.

  But I couldn’t kill another supernatural. Not even OMB. It might get us out of this lifetime of servitude, but I didn’t have it in me. And what if I failed? I was too afraid of his rage—and the consequences—if I didn’t succeed.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Nix’s green eyes were stark in her pale face. “He means it.”

  “Yeah.” Del’s voice shook. “We need to get those daggers.”

  “Now,” I said.

  “I wish I could just conjure a forgery,” Nix said. “I really don’t want to go out into the jungle tonight. Getting past the Dvarapala in the dark will suck.”

  Nix was a conjurer, able to create almost anything using just her magic. Massive or complex things, like airplanes or guns, were outside of her ability, but a couple of daggers wouldn’t be hard.

  Trouble was, they were a magical artifact, enchanted with the ability to return to whoever had thrown them. Like boomerangs. Though Nix could conjure the daggers, we couldn’t enchant them.

  “We need to go. We only have six hours until dawn.” I grabbed my short swords from the table and stood, shoving them into the holsters strapped to my back.

  A hush descended over the crowded bar.

  I stiffened, but the sound of the staticky TV in the corner made me relax. They weren’t interested in me. Just the news, which was probably being routed through a dozen techno-witches to get this far into the jungle.

  The grave voice of the female reporter echoed through the quiet bar. “The FireSoul was apprehended outside of his apartment in Magic’s Bend, Oregon. He is currently in the custody of the Order of the Magica, and his trial is scheduled for tomorrow morning. My sources report that execution is possible.”

  I stifled a crazed laugh. Perfect timing. Just what we needed to hear after OMB’s threat. A reminder of what would happen if he turned us into the Order of the Magica. The hush that had descended over the previously rowdy crowd—the kind of hush you get at the scene of a big accident—indicated what an interesting freaking topic this was. FireSouls were the bogeymen. I was the bogeyman, even though I didn’t use my powers. But as long as no one found out, we were safe.

  My gaze darted to Del and Nix. They nodded toward the door. It was definitely time to go.

  As the newscaster turned her report toward something more boring and the crowd got rowdy again, we threaded our way between the tiny tables and chairs.

  I shoved the heavy wooden door open and sucked in a breath of sticky jungle air, relieved to be out of the bar. Night creatures screeched, and moonlight filtered through the trees above. The jungle would be a nice place if it weren’t full of things that wanted to kill us.

  “We’re never escaping him, are we?” Nix said softly.

  “We will.” Somehow. Someday. “Let’s just deal with this for now.”

  We found our motorcycles, which were parked in the lot with a dozen other identical ones. They were hulking beasts with massive, all-terrain tires meant for the jungle floor. We’d done a lot of work in Southeast Asia this year, and these were our favored forms of transportation in this part of the world.

  Del could transport us, but it was better if she saved her power. It wasn’t infinite, though it did regenerate. But we’d learned a long time ago to save Del’s power for our escape. Nothing worse than being trapped in a temple with pissed off guardians and a few tripped booby traps.

  We’d scouted out the location of the temple earlier that day, so we knew where to go.

  I swung my leg over Secretariat—I liked to name my vehicles—and kicked the clutch. The engine roared to life. Nix and Del followed, and we peeled out of the lot, leaving the dingy yellow light of the bar behind.

  Our headlights illuminated the dirt road as we sped through the night. Huge fig trees dotted the path on either side, their twisted trunks and roots forming an eerie corridor. Elephant-ear sized leaves swayed in the wind, a dark emerald that gleamed in the light.

  Jungle animals howled, and enormous lightning bugs flitted along the path. They were too big to be regular bugs, so they were most likely some kind of fairy, but I wasn’t going to stop to investigate. There were dangerous creatures in the jungle at night—one of the reasons we hadn’t wanted to go now—and in our world, fairies could be considered dangerous.

  Especially if you called them lightning bugs.

  A roar sounded in the distance, echoing through the jungle and making the leaves rustle on either side as small animals scurried for safety.

  The roar came again, only closer.

  Then another, and another.

  “Oh shit,” I muttered. This was bad.

  ~~~

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  Author’s Note

  Thanks for reading Undercover Magic! If you’ve read any of my previous books, you may have noticed that I have a fondness for including historical places and mythological elements. I did the same with Undercover Magic. Sometimes the history of these things is so interesting that I want to share more, so I like to do it in the Author’s Note instead of the story itself.

  On of the biggest historical elements of the book is Cade—otherwise known as Belatucadros, the Celtic god of war. The Celts were not actually a single kingdom or religion—rather, they were a people who shared cultural similarities during the Iron Age. Between 800 BC and 500 AD, they lived in a vast territory stretching from Ireland all the way to Eastern Europe and down into Spain, Portugal, and parts of Italy. Though we think of Celtic as being traditionally Irish and Scottish, it originated in what is now Austria. Celtic culture then spread outward, covering most of Europe. Because of the Roman Conquest, Ireland and the British Isles were the last places to have Celtic-speaking communities (all the way up to the 6th century AD), which is why we initially think of them when we hear the word Celtic.

  Because of the massive spread of Celtic culture and the many different kinds of Celts, there were multiple Celtic gods of war. Belatucadros was worshiped in northern Britain around the time of the Roman Conquest at the beginning of the first millennium AD. Evidence of his existence (in the minds of the ancient Celts and Romans) exists from 28 inscriptions on Hadrian’s Wall, which was built to keep the Romans from conquering what is now Scotland. Roman soldiers actually worshiped Belatucadros, who is associated with their war god, Mars. His name is often translated as ‘fair slayer’ or ‘fair shining one’. So I suppose he was handsome, which works for Cade.

  As for the rest of the history in Undercover Magic, the scene in Venice was really fun to write, because Venice is full of great historical places. Poveglia Island really is a plague quarantine island used in 1776 to house plague victims who came in on ships destined for Venice. There was an asylum for the mentally ill built on the island in the early 20th century, and the island is now mostly abandoned.

  The Vampire of Venice is based on a body discovered on the plague island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, which is located close to Poveglia Island. The skeleton of a woman was dated to the Venetian plague of 1576 and was found with a brick jammed between her jaws. This was a medieval practice meant to prevent vampires from continuing to feed after they’d been put into the ground.

  San Zaccaria is a real church in Venice with a flooded crypt. But even more interesting than that —the room of skulls and bones is based on a real place. It is based on the Capuchin Crypt in Rome (though there is a similar one in Paris). The Capuchin crypt is decorated with the skeletal remains of 3,700 bodies that are believed to be the Capuchin friars who served the order between 1528 and 1870.

  The first bodies used to decorate the crypt in 1631 came from the friar’s old monastery—they brought 300 wagons full of t
he bones of deceased friars. The new additions to the crypt were allowed to decompose for roughly 30 years in the soil before being exhumed and placed in the crypt. There are six rooms in the crypt—the Crypt of the Skulls, the Crypt of the Pelvises, the Crpyt of the Leg Bones and Thigh Bones, the Crypt of Three Skeletons, the Crypt of the Resurrection, and the Mass Chapel. This place is meant to be a reminder of our mortality and short time on earth.

  The fist fight bridge that Cade and Bree drive under in their boat is based on Ponte dei Pugni, the Bridge of Fists. The tradition of fighting atop the bridge began in the early 17th century, and they were hugely popular. They were held in neighborhoods all over Venice (on more than one bridge) and the fighters were often sponsored by the wealthy elite. Four fighters would stand on the bridge—one in each corner—and fight to throw the others off into the water. The last remaining fighter won. In 1705, the fight devolved into a riot and they were outlawed for good.

  As for some of the history in the rest of the book—Arach is Gaelic for dragon. The Bad Water is a real place in Death Valley—an ancient dried out salt lake—but I don’t think there are any salt monsters there. The final scene at the Aztec city is based on Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital (1321-1525 AD). It was once surrounded by a marshy lake, though it now is in the middle of Mexico city. The giant frog, called the Cueyatle, is one of their mythical beasts. And the winged snake that attacks Bree on pyramid is Quetzacoatle, a god who contributed to the creation of mankind. He was protecting the sacrifice, which hadn’t happened there in a long time.

  I mention that Cass, Del, and Nix are treasure hunters who return the artifact to its original resting place. They do this because its morally and legally the right thing to do, and I am an archaeologist as well as a writer, so it is important to me.

  Well, I think that’s it for the history and mythology in Undercover Magic. I hope you enjoyed the book and will come back for more of Bree, Ana, and Cade!