Champagne, Misfits, and Other Shady Magic

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Breaking the silent staring contest I was having with the vampire, Kandy leaned in, taking a deep whiff of her neck where her skin was exposed at the lace edge of her blouse.

  The golden-haired vampire flinched.

  The werewolf chuckled darkly. “Good catch, dowser.”

  The vampire struggled against my hold, finally. Then she panicked, realizing she couldn’t break free. The red of her magic flooded her eyes.

  “Identify yourself,” I spat, already peeved about being stalked by a vampire who had come to Vancouver and not presented herself properly.

  “You identify yourself.” Her tone was heavy on the snark, though she avoided meeting my gaze directly.

  Kandy laughed huskily. “I like her. Too bad she’s an unaligned bloodsucker.”

  The blond raised her chin haughtily. “I have more connections than you’d ever manage in a lifetime, werewolf.”

  “You might be surprised,” I murmured.

  Kandy snorted, raising her arms to display her cuffs. “I don’t need any backing to rip you limb from limb, vampire.”

  “I’d like to see you try.”

  “Sure. Let’s have at it,” Kandy snarled viciously. “You go right ahead and shake off the dowser’s hold. I’ll be right here waiting. I was actually just thinking it might be a good time for a nap.”

  “Or,” I said, “we could just hand you over to the executioner. You might carry the magic of his bloodline, but you’re in Vancouver without permission.”

  The vampire flicked her red-hued gaze back and forth between each of my eyes, as if trying to verify whether I spoke the truth. Then she looked away, saddened.

  That struck me as being a lot of emotion for a vampire. Even though I really only had three from which to judge. Kett, his maker, and Benjamin Garrick.

  “Jasmine,” the vampire whispered.

  Jasmine? Why did that ring a not-so-distant bell?

  She cleared her throat, strengthening her voice and her resolve to introduce herself formally. “Child of Kettil, the executioner and elder of the Conclave.”

  I dropped my hold, taking a step away from the vampire in disbelief. She kept her gaze on the ground and her back against the alley wall. Her bountiful curls obscured her face.

  “Bullshit,” Kandy snarled.

  I glanced at the werewolf.

  “Bull-shitting-shit,” she said.

  “Jasmine … Fairchild,” I said, slowly slotting all the clues together. Her name. Her bright-blue eyes. Even something about the shape of her face. I’d never met Wisteria’s cousin, but the tech witch had done a lot of work for Gran and the witches Convocation, including warding Gran’s laptop for me as a Christmas gift a couple of years earlier.

  “Not anymore,” she whispered. She raised her gaze to meet mine, then quickly twisted her head so she was looking away down the alley. “I was hoping … that he had mentioned me when he visited you this morning.”

  “I’m still calling bullshit,” Kandy said. “Does her magic actually taste like Kett’s?”

  “Yes,” I said, far calmer than I would have thought myself capable of being at this revelatory moment. This was Kett’s secret. This was what … who he’d thought would tear us apart. “But so does his maker’s.”

  That got Jasmine’s attention. “Estelle?”

  “Is that her name? We didn’t exchange pleasantries while she was threatening to rip out my friends’ throats and suck their marrow while I watched.”

  “What … what does my … magic taste like?”

  “Peppermint. Sweeter than Kett’s, though.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, I’m just a treat.”

  I didn’t respond. I wasn’t interested in whatever trauma she had going on, though that might have been nasty of me. Because even though two incidents didn’t make a pattern, something was up in Vancouver, and that was more important.

  I could feel it. The shift in the magical atmosphere, like the smoke that had been plaguing the city. And somehow, for me at least, it had just been further exacerbated by Jasmine’s appearance. The golden-haired vampire could be a cause, or a symptom, or another victim. Though she appeared to be in control of her magic, even if not her stalking instincts.

  Or maybe she wasn’t connected to any of it at all. And therefore she was wasting my time. I kept that dark thought to myself, but really, who could have blamed me? My vampire BFF had made himself a vampire companion — possibly murdering Jasmine Fairchild in the process. Then he’d kept it all secret for months. And I had no idea how I felt about any of it.

  “Really not bullshit?” Kandy asked, a little forlornly.

  “Kett doesn’t have to tell us everything he does,” I said, chiding myself more than the werewolf. “Or why, Kandy.”

  “Hell, yeah, he does!” She gestured toward Jasmine. “He turned a witch!”

  “You turned a sorcerer,” I said mildly.

  “Hey! Not by choice. And private business, dowser!”

  I gave Kandy a look. “Exactly.”

  She glowered at me. “Private business from the likes of her.” She pointed emphatically at the vampire. “Not … you know … pack.”

  “Excuse me,” Jasmine said snarkily. “Pack? You think the executioner … belongs to you?” Apparently, the tech-witch-turned-vampire recovered from disappointment quickly.

  Kandy stepped forward, thrusting her face next to Jasmine’s. Her teeth were bared … and a little too long around the canines. “You think differently, fledgling?”

  Jasmine shifted her gaze to Kandy’s shoulder, proving she wasn’t completely stupid. “Perhaps I’m ill informed.”

  “Yeah,” Kandy said. “Perhaps you should keep your mouth shut while the grown-ups chat.”

  Anger flushed Jasmine’s face. Red-tinted magic whirled in her eyes, but she clamped down on whatever she desperately wanted to say.

  Kandy sniffed derisively, turning her back on the vampire — and completely insulting Jasmine’s predator instincts by doing so.

  Jasmine curled her hands into fists, but she didn’t otherwise move.

  “I can’t believe that Kett would turn a moronic blond bimbo,” Kandy said casually, meaning to be insulting.

  “Hey!” I cried. That scorn cut a little too close to home for comfort.

  “Not you, dowser.” Kandy eyed Jasmine over her shoulder, curling her lip scathingly. “Though he apparently has a type.”

  “Hey — hey, again!”

  “I’m trying to insult the vampire, Jade,” Kandy snapped. “Stop taking it personally.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have a choice,” Jasmine murmured.

  “Who could force Kettil to do anything?” I asked the question rhetorically, though not unkindly.

  Jasmine met my gaze, the red of her magic still ringing the blue of her irises. “You know her.”

  Kandy looked at me questioningly.

  Then the final piece of the puzzle snapped into place. Kett in Seattle three years before, stalking a certain witch while I had hunted for the first instrument of assassination. Then later, asking Gran to assign that same witch to the case he’d been investigating. The connection he shared with Jasmine.

  “Wisteria …” I said.

  “Wisteria.” Jasmine evoked her cousin’s name as she brushed her fingers over a necklace she wore tucked into her silk blouse.

  I eyed the section of the gold chain I could see across the vampire’s collarbone, picking up the faint nutmeg overtones that were layered underneath Jasmine’s too-sweet peppermint. Once again, I quashed the need to handle the magical artifact. Personal property wasn’t mine to collect.

  Yeah, I would just keep telling myself that.

  “She didn’t want me to die,” Jasmine said.

  “Well, she gambled badly, didn’t she?” Kandy laughed harshly.

  I looked toward the mouth of the alley, tasting Kett’s cool peppermint magic moments before he appeared beside me.

  He met my gaze dispassionately, not even glancing Jasmine’
s way. “Circumstances don’t always justify the action. Do they, Jade?”

  His question was so heavily layered that I had no idea how to address everything he was asking all at once. Not in simple terms, anyway.

  Still dressed in the light-gray cashmere sweater and dark-gray jeans he’d been wearing that morning, he didn’t close the couple of feet between us.

  Her gaze glued to her maker, Jasmine shifted away from the wall, but Kett continued to ignore her.

  “My apologies.” Instead of waiting for me to speak, the executioner filled the silence that was stretching between us. Perhaps for the first time ever. “I was unaware the fledgling had wandered. In the sunlight.” He leveled a glance at Jasmine. “She has adapted to her new existence more thoroughly and readily than I … presumed she would.”

  “Well,” Kandy drawled sarcastically, “it’s not like you to underestimate someone. Plus, the dowser’s magic is tasty.”

  A hint of amusement flitted across Kett’s face, but he instantly quelled the emotion, returning his icy gaze to me.

  “Who am I to judge you?” I finally whispered.

  “The only one who truly could,” he murmured. “The only one whose opinion I would … care about.”

  Jasmine flinched, then covered the reaction by scowling at her feet.

  “I was … concerned,” Kett said, summing up a lot of different emotions with the word.

  “Am I so fickle?” I asked, though not as playfully as I’d intended.

  “Never, Jade.” Kett answered me seriously. “Jasmine Fairchild was dying. I was bound by the Conclave to remake a witch from the Fairchild familial line. A punishment for …” He waved his hand, encompassing me, Kandy, and the bakery alley with the gesture.

  “For our relationship?”

  “For the power I was … unexpectedly bequeathed in London. Then Peru.”

  I nodded, understanding that he was talking about being brought back by his grandsire after he’d died in London. Died as a result of taking a blow that would have probably killed me. Then in Peru, he had drunk from Shailaja, even though dragon blood was poisonous to vampires. He had survived that consumption, later indicating that he was holding too much power. And uneasily. So making another vampire had been the Conclave’s solution. Their so-called punishment. And the reason his magic now felt more subdued.

  Turning Jasmine had cost him, in multiple ways.

  But he wasn’t going to lose me over it.

  “He chose Wisteria,” Jasmine said. The interjection was made with some heat, but we all ignored her.

  “There was an accident?” I asked. “A situation that demanded a choice be made?”

  “Yes.” Kett offered me a hint of a smile.

  I closed the space between us, reaching up and touching his cheek. “And you fulfilled your obligation,” I said. “Saving Jasmine’s life in the process.”

  “If you’d like to perceive it that way.”

  I laughed, dropping my hand and crossing to the bakery back door. “If you want to be broody about it, vampire, I can’t stop you.”

  Affronted, Kett lifted his chin. “I am not broody.”

  Kandy started to cackle. Then, as I opened the door into the kitchen, she flung herself at the vampire, hitting him like a cannonball to the chest, then attempting to wrestle him into submission.

  Kett stumbled back, his shiny oxfords too slippery to help mitigate the initial blow. The werewolf twined her legs and arms around him, cackling with mad glee.

  He grunted, but then held his ground stoically.

  To an outside observer, it would likely have appeared that Kandy was preparing to rip Kett’s head off. She wasn’t. The werewolf would, at a minimum, allow a missing adopted pack member to justify his absence before decapitating him in a hissy fit.

  Kandy pressed her hands to Kett’s face, eliciting what might have been a wince of pain. The cuffs made the werewolf strong — stronger even than her magic had already made her.

  I had been studying the magical artifacts over the past year, tying them specifically — and hopefully irrevocably — to Kandy with my alchemy. I thought there might have been a possibility that the artifact had formed a kind of circuit with the werewolf’s magic, so that the stronger Kandy became, the more powerful the cuffs grew. While wearing the artifacts, Kandy had healed — twice in as many years — from wounds that would have been mortal to any other shapeshifter. That manner of extreme healing, alongside her burning through her magical reserves in order to survive, often strengthened magic.

  So with all that considered, Kandy was probably one of the most powerful werewolves in the world. Powerful enough to head her own small pack, which she appeared to be building from the collection of misfits who now called Vancouver home. Powerful enough that Gran wanted her to enforce the magical grid. And to make the executioner of the Conclave wince.

  I glanced over at Jasmine, who was watching the interplay between Kett and Kandy from the shadow of the building with an intense sadness. The former witch was going to have a difficult time transitioning with Kett as her maker, especially if he had actually chosen Wisteria, as Jasmine implied. I loved him, of course. But he wasn’t an easy person to get to know. Loyal to few, beholden to none. As far as I knew, anyway. And if their shared magic was any indication, Jasmine was a heavy magical tie for the executioner.

  I shook off my concerns. Worrying wasn’t going to help either of them. And as I understood it, they had centuries to work it all out. Assuming Kett ever stopped pushing the boundaries of his immortality.

  Of course, the same could be said for me … and Kandy and Warner. All of us were always going to do whatever was in our nature. After all, with power came responsibility and all that, yadda yadda.

  I had managed to hone my sense of duty down to a small territory, but I still couldn’t deny the need to charge in, to use my magic. To try to enforce some sort of harmony. Even if it was just so I could hold that harmony for a little while, and possibly use it as a balm to the wildness that inhabited my soul.

  But right now, I had a bakery to check on, an engagement party to get ready for, and a magical grid to sort out. Hopefully without any more itchy-feet surprises.

  Kandy smashed a harsh kiss to Kett’s lips, then dropped to the ground and smoothed out her T-shirt. All without a word.

  I laughed, utterly delighted with both of my BFFs. Then I stepped into the bakery.

  “Are you staying?” Kandy asked.

  I caught Kett’s answer as the door slowly closed behind me.

  “If you’ll have us.”

  Us.

  Three vampires in Vancouver.

  Gran was so going to lose it.

  The phone in the office was ringing when I entered the bakery kitchen. I almost let it go to voicemail, knowing that the only calls that came through on the landline were special orders, and Bryn booked those.

  Then, impulsively, I dashed into the office on the third ring, picking up the receiver only to hear a dial tone.

  I hung up, not recognizing the 604 number on the call display. But feeling oddly as though I had just missed something important.

  Blossom appeared, perched on the edge of my desk.

  I flinched, then tasted her lemon verbena magic. The brownie was seriously the only Adept who could still sneak up on me.

  “Mistress.” Her voice was deep and perpetually gravelly. Instead of the Cake in a Cup apron that she usually wore as a dress, she was clothed in what I would have sworn was a black dress made out of a hoodie. The white drawstring ties that would normally be part of the hood had been woven through the hem, then cinched, creating a balloon shape just below the brownie’s knees.

  Perhaps this was what she wore on her days off? Though as far as I knew, Blossom didn’t take any time off, ever. She divided her time between the bakery and attending the far seer and the treasure keeper.

  The brownie blinked her large eyes at me.

  I had to stop staring at people too long. I was creeping every
one out.

  “Blossom,” I said with a smile. “You startled me.”

  A wide, pleased grin spread across the brownie’s face. “I know.”

  “Yeah. Hilarious.”

  She laughed huskily.

  That was when I noticed the folded piece of paper in her large hands. Thick white paper, looking as though it had been ripped out of a sketchbook.

  Ah, damn it.

  I knew only one person who drew. And who often had occasion to rip her drawings from a spiral-ringed sketchbook.

  “Is that for me?” I asked.

  Blossom nodded.

  “And there’s no chance it’s from the treasure keeper? Or the far seer?” It said something seriously screwed up about me that I would prefer to be presented with missives from two guardian dragons over one tiny oracle.

  Blossom shook her head. “I wouldn’t have folded it,” she said nervously. “But the oracle did, saying it didn’t matter. This way, maybe the magic won’t spill out?”

  Double freaking damn.

  I couldn’t just refuse the delivery, if only for the sake of not wanting to piss off the brownie. My apartment had never been so clean. Plus, I just liked having Blossom around. She loved the bakery almost as much as I did.

  The brownie held the folded paper out to me, formally and with both hands.

  I took it with a stiff nod, eager to not appear as the coward I was. The taste of tart apple tickled my taste buds. Oracle magic. “I didn’t know you knew Rochelle,” I said, delaying the unveiling of the sure-to-be mind-boggling sketch.

  Blossom placed her hands on her knees, hunkering down on her haunches. “I’m loyal to you, mistress.”

  I looked over at the brownie, surprised. “As I am to you, Blossom.”

  She nodded knowingly. “But I do also like farm-fresh eggs.”

  “From deathlayer chickens!” I laughed. Apparently, the brownie had adopted the oracle as well. “Who wouldn’t?”

  Blossom nodded, dropping her dark-eyed gaze to the folded paper in my hands.

  I sighed, then unfolded the sketch.

  Rendered in thick black charcoal, an octagon-shaped object occupied the center of the oracle’s drawing. It appeared to be cupped in an open palm. Slender wisps of what looked like severed string or ribbon emanated from each sharp edge of the octagon. Or maybe that was just how the oracle drew magic? Or magical ties?