Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  Yeah. Another urge to laugh. Keep telling ourselves that.

  No, Ana decided, her head clearing a little. There was nothing exciting or exotic about riding in the trunk of a car.

  “So what are you anyway?”

  Silence.

  Ana sighed and sucked in another breath that, despite her mind already having cleared up, proved that the mage’s scent was still a pleasant one.

  Crazy, she thought as she adjusted her knee, which was beginning to fall asleep under her awkwardly positioned body. I’m definitely going—

  What’s crazy is asking yourself questions as though it’s not still you. Next we’ll be accusing our knee why it’s cramping, right?

  Ana, caught off guard by the thoughts’ response, didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Crazy.” It—she?—had used the word “crazy,” the same word Ana had thought. Which meant…

  So you can hear me right now? she formed the question in her mind—a thought in its own right—as an experiment.

  Can you not typically hear your own thoughts?

  Ana, in a strange moment of inner conflict, decided that she didn’t like herself very much.

  Well, we certainly never thought very highly of ourselves, so let’s consider this a step up. Self-loathing certainly feels more productive than no self-esteem. Least now there’s something about us not to like, right?

  You’re not me, Ana thought back. I don’t think like that. I’d never have those sorts of thoughts.

  Of course not. The urge to laugh returned. We were boring before today, remember?

  I was not boring, Ana defended. And I don’t like being treated like a fool. I never talked to myself in my head before. I never had violent thoughts before. I certainly never had any magic to follow through on violent thoughts before. And I never had that awful mark on my arm before. You expect me to believe that all that is a coincidence?

  No. That would be stupid.

  Exactly. Ana wanted to scream…or hit herself. Neither of which seemed like a good idea in the long run. So if you agree—

  Since we agree, the thought corrected.

  So if you agree, Ana repeated the thought, challenging the other thoughts to try for another correction. There was none. Then all of this—you included—are not a part of me.

  A fair conclusion. Ana caught herself rolling her eyes inwardly. But, if we may, there is another way to look at this.

  Ana didn’t humor the thoughts with a response.

  If we get a cut on our finger and that cut, say, gets infected, is the infection still a part of us?

  Ana rolled her eyes again, this time of her own free will. I don’t see what that has to do with—

  We. We we we we we. ‘We don’t see what that...’—forget it. We’re being dumb. Anyway, if we get an infection—all red and swollen and pussy—it’s still a part of us, but that doesn’t mean that our entire body is all red and swollen and pussy, right? Not at first, at least; let things go untreated.

  She considered this for a moment. Then you…I mean, these dark, awful thoughts, are a part of me reacting to this mark? Then I really am going crazy?

  Could be. We did lock ourselves in a magical stranger’s trunk and are presently huffing on his love-stink like its—

  “Oh my…” Ana caught herself before she yelled and groaned. “It is not like that. That’s…”

  She stopped herself before she could say “crazy.”

  The urge to laugh at herself swelled again, and this time a chuckle squeezed past and was instantly muffled in the lambskin lining of the leather jacket.

  At that moment a horn blared a short distance from Ana’s hiding place and the car she was stowing away in gave a sudden swerve.

  Swallowing the urge to cry out at the shift and holding her breath in anticipation for whatever might happen next, Ana was rewarded with a once again straight-yet-bumpy—the closest thing, she’d realized, she’d ever get to “smooth”—ride.

  I don’t care what you say—or think. Ana, wanting to focus on her breathing, finally continued the bizarre conversation in her thoughts. There is a very real difference between you and me; and I don’t think anybody, crazy or not, could look at this exchange and say otherwise.

  Yeah. That’s fair, the thoughts’ resignation felt like more of a relief than it should have. An infection can be isolated from the rest of the body, so why can’t the same be said here.

  So you’re admitting that you’re not me? Ana thought, suddenly hopeful to be getting somewhere.

  No. Simply admitting that a person can point to one spot on their body and say ‘infected’ and another part and say ‘not infected.’

  Ana found herself wanting to laugh, but only because of how ridiculous the inward argument was beginning to feel.

  Gives whole new meaning to ‘inner conflict,’ she thought.

  Right? came the thoughts’ response.

  Ana sighed and nearly growled. I wasn’t talking to you.

  Wanna guess how crazy that sounds when you remember that these are all OUR thoughts?

  Ana felt her heart skip a beat in her chest at that.

  Maybe she really was going crazy.

  Chapter 6

  Aderyn liked to show off.

  It wasn’t a fact that he took any real pride in—not like the pride he took in the specific things he showed off. Nor was it something he was ashamed of. Sort of defeated the purpose of showing off if you just turned around and felt shame for it.

  “If you were proud, you were loud; if you were ashamed, what’s your name?” Though his father hadn’t been one for life lessons (or morally sound ones), the “ol’ family motto” was never far from the young mage’s mind.

  And the cursed ring—ex-cursed ring—hadn’t been too far from his palm since he’d finished at the Sybii camp. That had been neither the nightmare that some of his kin made it out to be nor the surreal circus others described. It had simply been an excursion into a camp of excitable oddballs who seemed to prefer goats over cats and old, guttural languages over the newer ones.

  Most of them, at least.

  The cute sibyl girl with the weak sales pitch was in a league of her own, but mostly because she’d spoken to him with sentences containing words he understood—from what he’d actually listened to, of course—and was one of the only ones who didn’t smell like dust, magic, and livestock.

  In fact, comforted by the privacy of his ’67 Pontiac GTO, he’d even go so far as to say that she’d smelled pretty good. Like fresh lilacs, hot tea, and chilled lemons.

  Something else about her, though…

  Aderyn felt his right shoulder stretch and, a moment later, the hand of that arm close around something familiar. Then, though he hadn’t meant to grab it and wasn’t certain how he’d blindly found it on the passenger seat where he’d left it to roll around, he found himself rubbing the surface of the ex-cursed ring with the pad of his thumb.

  That curse had been a doozy, and he’d even been pleasantly surprised at the sibyl’s reluctance to sell it to him. Many with that burden would have been eager to put it as far from them and their loved ones as possible, especially if they were in constant contact with as much magic and enchantments surrounding them as the sibyl and his camp. The ring—or, more appropriately, the curse within the ring—wanted magic; needed it, in fact.

  If unworn, it would have taken whatever magic surrounded it and turned it backward—inverted it—until everything became a curse.

  A fine thing to hold onto if you’re in the market of reversing curses, Aderyn supposed, but the likelihood of somebody with such a crippling curse lucking out and coming across a ring with an inversion spell laced throughout it was—what?—one in a billion? A trillion? A billion trillions?

  Besides, the cursed typically had a run of bad luck, and wouldn’t stumbling across that sort of ring be a stroke of immeasurable fortuity? Never in a million years did he see something like that doing anybody any favors, and in a camp teeming with all manner of magic, t
he ring might have turned every last valuable trinket and spell into a curse.

  That the sibyl hadn’t given it away was nothing short of something warranting sainthood. That it had taken nearly three hundred dollars to buy it off the old man…well, there was saintliness and then there was godliness. Or just plain stupid.

  In either case, Aderyn had seen the curse for what it was the moment he’d laid eyes on the ring and wanted it for one simple purpose: to undo what it held. And, true to his word, he had. He hoped the old man had seen him yank the curse out of the ring as he’d sauntered off with it.

  After all, Aderyn liked to show off.

  And wouldn’t yanking a curse of that severity straight from the source before the very eyes of the previous owner who’d feared it so much be the A-game of showing off?

  Damn right, it would be.

  But why was he still holding onto it? The thing was practically worthless now. There weren’t enough karats to pay for the gas he’d burn to drive to a pawn shop, and the emerald was the sort of thing that a jeweler would deem “cute” before handing it back. A proud moment of showing off or not, Aderyn needed to admit that he’d slapped down three hundred dollars for the chance to show off.

  Suddenly he liked the idea of it even less. And that the worthless, ex-cursed thing kept reminding him of the strange sibyl girl only irritated him that much more.

  As a sign on the side of the road declaring the next exit was thirty-five miles away drew nearer, Aderyn leaned over and worked the crank on the passenger-side window, righting his Pontiac as he started to swerve.

  Tyler leaned on his horn behind him to alert him that he was breaking formation.

  Thanks, Ty.

  He hurried to throw the worthless hunk of cheap gold and its laughable gem at the passing sign.

  If it made any impact, he was already too far from it to hear.

  “Do you realize what you’re asking me to do?” the voivode demanded, his fisted hands beginning to shake at his sides. “She is my daughter.”

  “And that makes her a daughter to all of us,” one of his advisors argued, glancing down at his hands more as a recognition of the gesture than out of concern for what he might do with them. “But that doesn’t change what must be done.”

  The phuri dai nodded, loosing a sigh that was, as far as the voivode was concerned, louder than it needed to be.

  “It was there,” she mumbled, smacking her old lip several times before adding, “I didn’t want it to be so, but it was there.”

  The voivode sneered and, passing his gaze one-by-one over the occupants of the Ceremony Hall, offered each of them an even dose of his disapproval.

  “An ancient tale.” He spoke slowly as he finally started to walk around the room, letting his feet carry him along the path his gaze had taken. “Barely even a legend anymore.” He stopped before the phuri dai and set his jaw as he asked, “And you expect me to cast Analetta on nothing more than blind faith in what that mark might mean?”

  “What else could it mean?”

  “Those tales, ancient or not, have kept us alive and strong.”

  “And what if you’re wrong?”

  “Can we be certain she’s even herself anymore?”

  The phuri dai looked up at the voivode, her own eyes filled with sadness. “It was there,” she repeated, “and that—that it exists and that it exists on her—is evidence enough that the stories should be heeded as a warning and not merely legend.”

  The voivode’s breath caught at that; his heart sinking.

  Analetta, his daughter, would have to be banished for the safety of his people.

  “What of the ring?” one of the advisors, one who’d remained silent and solemn in the back the entire time, finally asked. Though his voice was even and loud enough, though barely, the occupants of the room looked at him as though they hadn’t heard his words. With this confusion hanging heavy, he repeated, “What of the ring?”—though he did nothing to raise his voice or slow his speech.

  A few of the elders shifted at this, and the voivode caught sight of a glimmer of something in their eyes that looked almost like hope.

  “The ring?” he asked, taking a step toward the advisor without meaning to.

  The advisor nodded, gulping nervously at the sight of his approach. “It’s traveled with us for some time,” he explained, “though many weren’t happy about that. It was, I believe, something we gained due to a lost wager or a cruel prank—I’m actually unsure of the specifics.”

  “While I,” the voivode growled, “am uninterested in them. What of it?”

  “W-well,” the advisor stammered as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, “it’s said to reverse the effects of magic. Love spells turn to hate curses. Wealth charms will lead to poverty. Protection turns to—”

  “I get it,” the voivode spat, closing the distance further. “What are you implying?”

  “If all magic is reversed—good spells going bad and such—then it only stands to reason that it would work the other way around. If the mark truly does represent some curse on Analetta, then…”

  The voivode’s eyes widened with realization. “Then the ring would undo the danger it represents.”

  He was already heading for the entrance before any of the others could say anything more. None of them spoke another word, though; they only hurried to follow.

  Tybalt was tired.

  Tybalt was hungry.

  But, most of all, Tybalt was determined.

  It was not a good combination for anybody but Tybalt, who was quite good at funneling negative energy into productive outcomes. His team knew that, when such moments were upon their boss, they would be worked to the bone (if not further). However, tough as these moments were on those who followed him, it boded far, far worse for those who did not. And even less so for those who dared to stand in his way. The only ones who’d need fear more than this were the ones he sought to destroy.

  And destroy them he would.

  Tired or not. Hungry or not. They would be destroyed.

  Because Tybalt was never not determined.

  Spotting a cluster of nondescript vehicles in the distance, he nodded—not bothering to lift a hand to gesture at the otherwise barren stretch of desert—toward it. “There.”

  His driver needed no further instructions. The black SUV turned so slightly that the oily black contents of Tybalt’s coffee cup didn’t even shift. Then, behind them, more SUVs like it mirrored the change in direction. Tybalt didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know this; his team knew precision to be their one true religion, and knew him to be their one true god. To not follow exactly as he led was to invite a punishment of biblical proportions.

  And, having seen what he was capable of, there were none who’d think it anything less than biblical.

  The voivode was halfway into the camp, already beginning to realize he wasn’t sure exactly who or what it was he was looking for, when he spotted the growing cloud of kicked-up sand in the distance. Though it wasn’t an uncommon sight—outsiders were welcome to come, encouraged even, and cars had a way of stirring up the desert—there was a dark aura around this particular approach.

  That, and it wasn’t common for their typical visitors to come in such large crowds. Or in matching black SUVs.

  Even the mages’ caravan hadn’t been so dramatic.

  And the mages, by their nature, lived for drama.

  “What’s all this then?” he muttered to himself.

  Odd or not—though it was most certainly that—he wasn’t about to let anything distract him from his goal. Turning, he caught sight of, and soon after caught the wrist of, the advisor who’d first mentioned the ring.

  “Where?”

  It was a simple question, but enough still for the advisor to nod toward a weather-beaten Winnebago. Ronald’s Winnebago. The owner, a few years younger than the voivode, was seated on the front steps, wearing a sun-bleached tank top over a pair of too-large cutoff shorts that sagged and
flapped below his knees as a small wind passed. Though he held the tattered remains of what had once been a copy of People Magazine, he made no effort to read from it as he watched the approaching SUVs and their growing cloud of sand on the horizon.

  “Ronald,” the voivode called to him as he approached.

  Looking away from the newcomers, the man smiled as he recognized the voivode and moved to stand, excited to be a part of their leader’s business. Then, catching sight of the expressions the voivode and those following behind him wore, Ronald’s features grew wary.

  Ronald opened his mouth to speak.

  “The ring?” the voivode demanded, not caring what the man might have to say.

  The word seemed to lose meaning within Ronald’s ears. His eyes narrowed in confusion, his mind trying to make sense of the voivode’s otherwise simple demand. But there was a complication. The voivode saw it in Ronald’s eyes even before Ronald saw it.

  “The ring?” Ronald’s face shifted as though he wanted to laugh at a joke that he was suddenly realizing wasn’t funny. Smirking, scowling, back to smirking, shaking his head. Getting closer and closer to crying. “What of it? It’s better that it’s gone,” he finally said, seeming to defend the obstacle before even addressing it.

  “Gone?” the voivode repeated, grabbing the man by his bare, sun-baked shoulders. “Gone? Gone where?”

  The intensity in his leader’s eyes and the thunder in his voice sent Ronald into panicked stammers.

  “Th-th-the-the…th-the—”

  “Where?”

  “The mages.” Ronald seemed to cough up the answer like a bad piece of meat. “A boy in their entourage demanded it, offered me—”

  “And you sold it to him?” one of the elders demanded. “To a mage? A people whose very lifestyle is built around magic? You sold an inversion curse to—”

  “He removed it,” Ronald interrupted, holding up his hands as if to protect himself from an attack. “The young mage ripped the curse right out of the damned thing. Like the skin off a piece of fruit. He just…” Ronald mimed the act of pulling something free from one hand with the other and then throwing the imaginary waste aside, “and poof—it was gone.”