Champagne, Misfits, and Other Shady Magic

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Lines had been crossed. ‘Never’ wasn’t a concept I could fully embrace anymore. At least not if I didn’t want to be a complete hypocrite.

  Perhaps there was nothing that couldn’t be destroyed given the right circumstances … or the right weapon. I touched my necklace, currently wound only once around my neck so that it hung to just above my belly button. Besides the wedding rings that I had diligently collected over years for the traces of residual magic they held, the heavy gold chain was now home to the instruments of assassination. And I was the wielder. Capable of killing creatures that were otherwise immortal.

  The leech slid back into the deep shadows of the tree, slinking away from me as though it could feel the shift in my mood. And I didn’t doubt that it could. The dreadful magic that had called it forth and bound it to a human soul resided in me now … completely absorbed until it had become indistinguishable from my own power. The magic of a rogue dragon, daughter of the former treasure keeper.

  Brushing away the useless guilt that had intruded on my otherwise lovely evening, I loosened my hold on my necklace. I dug into my jeans for the three flat pieces of sea glass that I’d taken to carrying with me since the leeches had followed me to Vancouver. They were always in my pocket, along with any gold coins I pilfered from Warner’s stash. Roughly the size of a misshapen quarter, each of the blue, green, and brown shards had been smoothed by the sea, then imbued with my magic. Yes, by simply being in my pocket.

  I stepped to the side of the path, carefully balancing the pieces of sea glass on the top rail of the chain-link fence that ran between the park and the busy street.

  The shadow leech shifted forward, peering eagerly through the hanging branches over my shoulder at my offering.

  “Stay away from the grid magic, leech,” I murmured. Then I jogged across the road, leaving the sea glass and the residual it contained behind. Feeding the leech as I would a feral cat.

  I had murdered its former master, after all. It was my responsibility now.

  2

  I continued jogging up the steep hill, running all the way up to West Fourth Avenue in the hopes of burning off the rest of the tasty residual energy I was still carrying with me. So I could sleep. By the time I turned left into the alley off Vine Street and caught sight of the bakery door, a light sweat was beading my forehead. I slowed as I approached, already anticipating the comforting weight of the blood wards slipping across my skin as I stepped into my nirvana —

  A thick parchment envelope appeared before me with a burst of smoky dragon magic, slapping against my chest before I could duck out of the way.

  Oh, crappity crap.

  The other shoe had just dropped.

  I snatched the envelope, not wanting anyone who might have been looking out of the apartment building backing onto the alley to notice me staring at it — while it hung suspended in midair.

  I immediately recognized the handwriting scrawled across the front of what I was fairly certain was a summons to appear before the Guardian Council.

  Jade Godfrey.

  Wielder of the Instruments of Assassination.

  Pulou. The treasure keeper. My former boss and general asshole. Well, at least he had been since I’d retrieved my knife, necklace, and katana without his permission, and had inadvertently claimed the instruments of assassination at the same time. He didn’t trust me, believing that I’d colluded with Chi Wen, the far seer, to kill Shailaja and take her power along with the magical artifacts.

  To be fair, when Pulou had locked me up in one of the magical dampening cells he housed in his territory of Antarctica, his brain might still have been scrambled by the centipedes that Shailaja had unleashed against him.

  But mitigating circumstances or not, I was holding firmly to my grudge. I didn’t like my loyalty being questioned. Kandy, Kett, Warner, and Drake had almost died collecting the instruments — all at the treasure keeper’s behest.

  The envelope started to vibrate in my hand. I knew that if I didn’t open it voluntarily, it would explode all over me. Then I’d be stuck baking with the taste of Pulou’s black-tea-and-heavy-cream magic choking me all morning.

  I glanced mournfully at the back door of the bakery.

  I’d been so close.

  I pressed my finger to the golden seal, noting the dragon image within the wax. It was reminiscent of the tattoo that had once bound Warner to the instruments.

  The envelope unfurled. The message contained within was deceptively simple.

  You are summoned.

  Council Chambers of the Guardian Nine.

  Damn it all to hell.

  I needed sleep. I was supposed to bake. And my Gran was hosting a freaking engagement party for Warner and me that night. A trip to the nexus — where time had its own way of doing things — and being questioned by the nine most powerful Adepts in the world wasn’t going to fit into my tight schedule.

  I refolded the envelope, tucking it into my back pocket and reaching for the door handle. The welcoming magic of the wards slid across my hand. Stepping into the dark kitchen, I almost missed the three pieces of sea glass carefully placed on the threshold.

  I collected the glass fragments, which were now devoid of magic, and tucked them into my front pocket. The shadow leech had siphoned off the magic, then had left the glass for me to find. The exchange was a game we played every couple of days.

  Shutting the door behind me, I almost turned right up the stairs and retreated into my apartment. Almost gave into the impulse to bury myself beneath my goose-down duvet and ignore the summons.

  Instead, I stepped forward in the dark, placing my hand on the cool steel of my workstation. With my other hand, I wound my necklace around my neck twice more so that it lay tightly across my collarbone. Then I reached out with my dowser senses, first scanning the footprint of the bakery, then upward into the apartments above, and finding all that space empty of magical signatures.

  Warner wasn’t waiting for me.

  Sigh.

  I stepped into my office, unable to justify delaying the inevitable — and pissy enough that I had no intention of changing out of my printed T-shirt and jeans and into more appropriate attire for an audience with the guardian nine. Whatever that appropriate attire might have been. Not bothering with the lights, I opened the large standing safe tucked behind the door. Then I retrieved my katana from its magically fortified depths.

  Strapping the weapon with which I’d decapitated a dragon over my back, I locked the safe, then crossed back through the kitchen and into my pantry.

  The delectable scents of cocoa, vanilla, and spices clung to me as I passed through, opening the door to the basement and descending the open-tread stairs. Standing on the dirt floor before the portal, I reached out to the magic slumbering in the brick-and-concrete wall underneath my kitchen. It responded eagerly, twirling around my raised hand.

  After I had claimed the instruments of assassination and left the nexus in the throes of a childish temper tantrum, I’d realized that the portal magic felt different. I had absorbed the magic of the daughter of the former treasure keeper, and that magic — now embodied within the current treasure keeper — had originally created the portal I was standing before.

  I could have closed the gateway to the guardian nexus then, but I didn’t. And though I hadn’t crossed through it myself for over a year and a half, Warner and Drake used the portal often. As far as I was aware, they were the only dragons who knew the portal existed at all, in addition to Pulou himself. I had never caught anyone else, not even my father, using it.

  Done contemplating the past and incapable of doing anything about the immediate future, I stepped through the portal magic. My right foot fell upon the white marble of the nexus without any pause or shift in transition. The passage was seamless, almost instantaneous.

  Nine pillars of gold, nine ornately carved doors, and all the overwhelming magic that came with the nexus assaulted all my senses. For a moment, I was blinded by it. Then, buffered by my
necklace and my own acquired immunity, the intense magic settled and my sight cleared.

  A broad-shouldered figure swathed in black leather waited for me at the very center of the round room. He lifted his dark-blond head, pinning me with his fierce gaze. Surrounded by the garish gold of the nexus, his eyes were more blue than green. A half-healed wound marred the right side of his face and neck. A deep slash, most likely inflicted by a demon of some power. Because anything else would have healed almost instantly.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  The taste of deeply dark chocolate, sweet-stewed cherries, and dense whipped cream — delectable black forest cake — flooded my mouth, almost as though he had reached out and grabbed me with his magic.

  My knees weakened.

  Then I was in his arms, stretched up on my toes, wrapped around his shoulders and neck, and pressing my lips against his fervently.

  Warner.

  Mine.

  He wrapped his hands around my face, tucking his long fingers into the thick curls at my temples and softening the kiss enough to whisper, “Jade …”

  I opened my eyes, meeting his heated gaze. Then I hovered my hand over the vicious, practically-still-bleeding gouge across his cheek and neck. “You’re hurt.”

  Warner shrugged, pressing his lips lightly against mine. Loving touches, full of promise. “The blade was unusual.”

  “A knife cut you like this? How is that possible?”

  “Magic I hadn’t confronted before. Wielded by an elf.”

  “An elf …” That was something I hadn’t expected to hear. “As in ‘worse than vampires?’ ” I remembered the exchange I’d had with Warner when we first met, in which I joked about elves, having believed up to that point that they were harmless mythical creatures.

  Apparently they weren’t either of those things.

  “It was nothing your father and I couldn’t handle. A few dimensional interlopers at a rift that Pulou had previously sealed. I will not be caught so off guard next time.”

  I closed my eyes, kissing him lingeringly. My desire to wring every last bit of information from him warred with my determination to keep my distance from anything having to do with the guardians. Focusing instead on the heat of his skin and the press of his lips, I tangled my fingers in the hair at the back of his neck — and realized that it was longer than it should have been. I’d seen him only three days before.

  Unable to let the idea of the elves and the wound completely go, I broke the kiss but not the embrace. “How long have you been gone?”

  Warner shook his head. “Feels like weeks. But it’s not important now. Not when I’ve got you in my arms.” He kissed me again, somehow searing everything he didn’t want to talk about into my lips.

  I wasn’t completely surprised at the discrepancy in the passage of time. He had been with my father, and time moved oddly around all of the nine guardians. I opened my mouth, flicking my tongue against his playfully. But Warner didn’t want to tease. He slipped his hand underneath the back of my T-shirt, seeking skin-to-skin contact. His tasty magic followed in the wake of his touch, and I melted into the moment.

  “Wait,” he murmured. “I didn’t miss Pearl’s party, did I?”

  “It’s tonight. Hours away.”

  “Ah, good. That’s good.” He slipped a hand down to cup my ass and press me against him. Unfortunately, he got a handful of the parchment in my back pocket, which suddenly reminded me that we were groping each other in the middle of the nexus.

  I sighed. “I’ve been summoned.”

  “I know.” Warner groaned lightly, then forced himself to step away.

  I allowed my fingers to traverse the muscled steel of his arms, then tangled them with his. When I met his gaze, he was looking at me steadily.

  “I won’t let them keep you, Jade.”

  I nodded, trying to ignore the doubts that flared up to nag at me.

  He pressed a kiss to my hand, then to my palm. “They’ll rule in your favor.”

  I nodded, more vigorously this time. “Where is this damn council chamber, then?”

  Warner nodded toward the archway that led to the residential wing of the nexus. If you could call it a wing. The architecture of the guardian headquarters was entirely capricious.

  “Really?”

  “You have to present yourself and it will open.”

  “What, really?” I groaned. “Stand in front of the archway and beg for entry?”

  Warner stifled a laugh. “And you won’t be able to bring the weapons.”

  “I’m the wielder of the instruments of assassination,” I said indignantly. Then I touched the hilt of my sword over my right shoulder. “And the dragon slayer.”

  “Exactly.” Warner sounded far too amused. “I think the T-shirt makes that pretty clear, though. Don’t you?”

  I glanced down at the printing emblazoned across my chest. Never mind the cupcakes. I can totally kick your ass. Then I looked up at Warner.

  He wagged his eyebrows at me, leering.

  “Fine. But this is the second freaking time tonight.” As if summoned by my acquiescence, a rough-hewn wooden sideboard with carved legs appeared a few feet in front of the archway.

  “Second time?”

  “I had to take them off to help raise the grid.” Eyeing the table distrustfully, I caught a whiff of lemon verbena-scented magic. Blossom’s magic — the brownie who had pretty much declared the bakery and my apartment her territory, along with Gran’s house and Warner’s family home in Stockholm, though he didn’t live there full-time.

  “Were the witches successful in the casting?”

  “Yep. It was quite the high.”

  “I’m sorry I missed it,” he murmured, letting me know with another lusty look that he meant seeing me surrounded by the magic, rather than observing the actual process.

  I laughed, pressing myself against him and darting my tongue just through his lips. But before he could close the embrace, I slipped away, already pulling the katana off over my head and shoulders.

  There were very few people I would trust to guard my weapons, but Blossom easily made the short list. Mostly because the brownie was crazy possessive, and the only Adept I knew who could move around me without my knowledge. And if she could do that to me, with my ability to taste magic, I had no doubt that anyone who wanted to lay hands on my necklace or my knife wouldn’t be able to track her either.

  So, dutifully disengaged from my delectable fiance, I shed my artifacts one at a time, laying them across the pockmarked table.

  Warner set his curved knife — another artifact of my own construction, which could cut through any magic — next to my jade blade. As he did, he paused to brush his fingers across two of the rune-scribed, age-darkened gold wedding rings attached to my necklace. Dragon magic stirred beneath his touch. Guardian magic, actually. One of the two rings had belonged to his mother, who had been the guardian of Northern Europe when she had Warner and was married to his father.

  “Blossom won’t let anyone take it,” I said.

  Warner raised the same two fingers, brushing the magic that he’d stirred against my lips. Desire shot through me so intensely that I had to struggle to contain a groan.

  “Who could possibly take anything from you, Jade? Who could claim anything you didn’t want to give?”

  Feeling as though the only thing that held me upright was the featherlight touch of his fingers on my bottom lip, all I could do was stare deeply into Warner’s eyes. The gold of his dragon magic simmered at the edges of the starburst of blue around his pupils.

  No matter the pending trial, no matter the very public location, I wanted him more than I had ever wanted him before. The feeling was so acute that it held me frozen in place. Forcing myself to act, I nipped playfully at his fingertips, claiming the magic still dancing on his skin.

  He laughed huskily.

  Then a large double door appeared in the archway on the other side of the table. An Asian-inspired dragon motif stood out
in gold relief from the dark wood — nine dragons set within what appeared to be fire, water, earth, and air, and with different gemstones denoting each of their eyes.

  Warner dropped his hand, stepping behind me as I crossed around the table without another word. I was ready to face the guardians. I was ready to answer their questions. And I was certainly prepared to stand my ground.

  Yes, I had killed Shailaja.

  Yes, I had taken her magic and had avoided dying myself.

  Yes, I was the dragon slayer. The wielder of the instruments of assassination. I had claimed my destiny. I’d been presented with a choice. And I’d chosen.

  The door before me opened of its own accord. My step faltered as the room beyond came into view.

  The decor of the chamber of the Guardian Council echoed the gaudy gold-and-white marble of the nexus. The room was so vast that I felt quite certain its outer edges didn’t actually exist in this reality … or dimension … or wherever the hell the nexus existed at all.

  But oddly, for all its size, the room was empty except for the nine ornate chairs sitting on a three-foot-high rectangular platform. I had the weirdest feeling that there should have been an altar standing before the chairs. But why, or what purpose it would have served, I didn’t know.

  Each high-backed throne was ornately carved of what appeared to be solid gold, and covered in velvet fabric of various shades. I felt certain that if I could compare each chair to the nine doors of the nexus, I’d find that they matched, one pair each. Fleur de lis for the portal that led to the territories of Suanmi the fire breather in Western Europe. First Nations engraving, matching the door through which I’d just arrived, for the territory of Haoxin the guardian of North America. An Incan or Mayan design for Qiuniu’s territory of South America, and so forth.

  I also had a sinking, sickening feeling that I’d seen this room, this chamber, before. Not that I’d been there exactly, but that I had seen something terrible take place there. Something that floated in the back of my mind like a memory that wasn’t entirely my own.