Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  No. It looked like my worst fears were right on the mark.

  The grey area between the realms was a lawless place governed by power and fear combined. The lords with power commanded anyone they could persuade to serve them through fear and coercion—but most of them wanted nothing to do with humans. We were helpless apes in comparison to the powerful immortals that lived over on the other side. Only in the invasion, when the doors to Faerie had temporarily opened, had they decided to come out and play.

  And they’d taken everything away from me.

  Chapter 5

  One restless night later, I woke to the sound of pounding on the door. Not my bedroom door, but the flat’s. Swanson? No. He wouldn’t be angry enough to try to break the door down. Surely. I slid out of bed as another knock shook the house.

  “What the hell?” said Isabel sleepily from behind her bedroom door. If she was half asleep, it must be early. I checked the time. Six in the morning.

  “What the hell indeed.” I had my suspicions. Okay, three guesses. One: the landlord. Two: Larsen. Three…

  I opened the door to find Lord Colton stood outside. As usual, he wore a fitted suit and his ridiculously long coat.

  “Do you wear that thing in the summer?” I asked, acutely aware I’d only had the chance to shove a dressing gown over the shorts and T-shirt I wore as pyjamas. He hardly seemed to notice, however—his cool, grey eyes met my gaze.

  “Ivy Lane, I’m retracting my offer of an interview and turning it into an order.”

  I almost laughed in his face. “I don’t take orders. Freelancer here. I pick and choose my clients.” And my working hours. Six am was as uncivilised as you could get.

  “Swanson tells me he came here to speak to you, and then he hired you to help him find his son. You then went over to his house yesterday and attempted to use a witch’s tracker. You failed, and instead those faerie creatures appeared.”

  “Yes…” Damn, he was thorough. And persistent. Not good. Just what I didn’t need right now.

  “I’d like to make you an offer. The mages can be of assistance in this case.”

  This time, I did laugh. He couldn’t sound more pretentious if he tried. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I work alone.”

  Lord Colton blinked. “You won’t consider a partnership? Look at the resources I have at my disposal. I can command every mage in the district.”

  “Yeah, no. Not interested. This isn’t something you can help with.”

  Annoyance flashed in his eyes. “That wasn’t a request. You will partner with the mages, and with me, or you’ll lose this case.” His tone took on a steely edge that would have made me step back if I wasn’t pissed off. Who the hell did he think he was?

  Only the most powerful human magic user in the city.

  I glared. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Why would I work with you?” I put every ounce of derision possible into my tone. I didn’t care if he was practically royalty. He couldn’t order me around in my own house.

  For a heartbeat, I expected him to wave a hand and make me explode into a heap of bloody entrails the way I’d seen another mage take care of a trespasser a few years ago. Instead, his forehead creased in a frown, like he genuinely couldn’t fathom why I wasn’t kneeling at his feet.

  “Why wouldn’t you? You’ll have every—”

  “Every mage in the city. I get it. Look, I’m sure you have a grand plan, but it won’t work. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Was almost being mauled to death by faerie dogs part of the plan?” he queried.

  Oh, he had a sarcastic streak, did he?

  “We hit a snag yesterday.”

  “Your changeling got away, I’m told.”

  “As I said, we hit a snag.” What the hell did I have to do to get rid of this guy? I was kind of tempted to engage one of Isabel’s trespasser spells, but pissing off the head of the mages wasn’t a wise move.

  Then again, neither was working with him. I didn’t need every mage in the district to know who I was. No thanks. I got by without anonymity because nobody who knew me before the invasion was still alive. A hell of a depressing way to get a new start in life. However, some of the faeries might still know my name.

  The Mage Lord took one step towards me so we were practically face to face. Or rather, face to chest. He looked even taller than usual, mostly thanks to the coat, but also because of the breeze that had kicked up behind him, threatening to make me step back into the hallway. Power pretty much radiated from him. But I’d stared down too many of Faerie’s worst nightmare creatures to flinch away from an arrogant human.

  “You’re to come to my office before nightfall for a meeting, or you’ll be formally charged with obstructing an investigation.”

  My jaw unhinged. “You what?”

  He stepped down the doorstep onto the path. “Think on it, Ivy Lane.”

  And just like that, he was gone.

  Holy shit. He’d killed any chance I had of going this alone. Never mind my resolution not to piss him off—I’d done so, and then some. I’d never heard of the mages threatening anyone before. No one who didn’t deserve it, anyway. All I’d done was take a job he’d turned down in the first place.

  Maybe the mages could help, though they had no experience with faeries beyond the superficial everyday stuff. Trolls in the sewers and piskies in the attic—normal. Kidnapping… not so much. As for those hellhounds, he might have been fast enough to kill them, but even a mage couldn’t stand up to the most powerful of Faerie’s creatures.

  “The fucking cheek,” I muttered, turning my back on the door and staring into the dingy hallway.

  “What is it?” Isabel appeared from the flat, her hair sticking up from sleep. She wore a lacy top and a flowery skirt, but not her charms.

  “Mages,” I said. “Head mage showed up here and practically bullied me into working with him. He thinks he has the right to this case.”

  “What a dick,” she commented. “Wait. You insulted the Mage Lord?”

  “He insulted me first,” I said.

  Isabel grinned at me, though worry lingered in her expression. “Are you still going over to Swanson’s today?”

  “Hell, yes. I’m not about to let His Highness steal my job from under my nose.”

  “You told him you were a witch, right?”

  “I had to. He saw me use magic against the hellhounds.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know, right?” I shook my head, walking back into the flat. Of all the people to interfere. The mages didn’t usually pay much attention to anyone outside of their elite circle. As for me, nobody would take me for a magic user if they didn’t see me in action. But he’d seen me do more than fight. He’d seen me turn the faeries’ magic against them. If he poked around and asked another witch if what I’d done was possible, he’d get a ‘hell, no’. And then I’d be in trouble.

  Sighing, I went into my room to dress properly and get my head together. I did need to talk to Swanson again. I’d dropped off all the dodgy spell equipment at clean-up last night, earning raised eyebrows from Larsen. I’d told him I’d caught a bunch of teenagers staging an exorcism, but he didn’t buy it.

  Larsen could wait. I found the latest tracking spell set up in the living room, beside the bottle containing the changeling’s blood I’d taken from the scene yesterday. I was probably tempting fate by leaving it here, but the container was sealed. Like hell would I hand it over to Larsen. He didn’t have a clue just how dangerous the blood of one of the faeries could be, in the wrong hands.

  I’d need to set up the spell somewhere outside, as far away from here as possible. But where…?

  “Ivy!” shouted a voice. Erwin the piskie flew past, blowing a raspberry at me. “You stink of hellhound.”

  Still? I’d scrubbed myself raw in the shower yesterday.

  “Job hazards,” I said. “You haven’t seen a changeling around, have you?”

  The piskie flew into the lampshade, shrieking as the heat burned
his skin. I rolled my eyes. The creature had the sense of a moth.

  “No bad faeries.”

  “Good,” I said. The changeling had fled miles from here, but sometimes I felt like I had ‘faerie bait’ tattooed on my forehead. Still, I’d find an isolated area before I attempted to track down the changeling. Preferably without the Mage Lord getting involved.

  “I have better news,” said Isabel. “There are cookies left over from yesterday.”

  My head snapped up. “Brilliant.” Actually, my mood improved a hundred percent. Isabel’s cookies were delicious, stress-relieving, and calorie free. Now that was witchcraft.

  Naturally, the doorbell rang before I reached the kitchen.

  Isabel went to answer it. I followed, just in case the mage had come back. I didn’t want him threatening my friends.

  “Ivy Lane.” Larsen glared at me from the doorstep. “What’s this?”

  He held up the defunct spell I’d brought in from the Swansons’ house. As usual, he wore jeans and a dirty T-shirt, and smelled strongly of cheap beer. I moved past Isabel to stare him down.

  “A spell,” I said.

  “It’s death magic.” He threw it in my face. “We don’t deal with necromancers here.”

  I caught the spell on reflex. “Neither do I. That’s why I was getting rid of it. There were teenagers—”

  “I’ve had it with your bullshit excuses.” He moved close so his stinking breath wafted in my face. “You’ve been defying my rules for too long. If you’ve been consorting with death mages, you won’t be welcome in my office any longer.”

  Where the hell did that come from?

  “I don’t have anything to do with the necromancers. Ugh.”

  The surly old bastard narrowed his eyes at me. He was part shifter and always claimed he could sniff out lies, but he couldn’t change forms and hadn’t so much as a drop of magical talent. He hated the mages, so there was absolutely no way I’d tell him about the Mage Lord.

  “Get rid of that spell,” said Larsen. “And if you bring anything like that near my office again, you’re fired.”

  Whoa. He walked away, leaving Isabel gawping at me.

  “I’ll have to stick a notice to the door where people can add their names to the ‘Threaten Ivy’ list while I’m at the mages’ place,” I said, staring after him. “Damn.”

  “What, you’re actually going to the Mage Lord?” Isabel tugged her hair loose from her ponytail as I closed the door.

  “What do you take me for? This case is mine. The guy’s a dick, and he’s not taking my job from me.”

  “What’s going on?” Henry Cavanaugh peered from the top of the stairs to the upper flat. He was a wolf shifter, so he’d probably sensed Larsen coming. He and his wife were friendly enough, if a little too willing to let their four-year-old son get too close to my spells. On cue, little George ran downstairs and threw his arms around me. Apparently he didn’t think I smelled like hellhound. “What’s that?”

  Oh, crap. I held the dead summoning spell out of reach. “Nothing.”

  Isabel, realising my dilemma, took the spell from me. “I’ll ask the coven to get rid of it. What was Larsen’s problem?”

  “Hell if I know. Thanks, by the way.” I tilted my head to look at Henry, who came downstairs. “You haven’t seen any faeries around here, have you?”

  Call me paranoid, but I needed to check nothing had followed me home.

  “No. Didn’t you bash a troll’s head in the other day?” he asked, taking George’s hand and leading him away from me.

  “Rumours,” I said. “I just knocked it out.”

  “Come in,” said Isabel. “I made cookies. Henry, do you want some?”

  I led the way into the flat and helped myself to Isabel’s glorious cookies. They tasted like cinnamon and divine goodness, and made me think today wasn’t a complete wreck after all.

  Henry frowned and sniffed at the ceiling. “Has another shifter been here?”

  I hesitated. “No.” Not strictly a lie. I didn’t want the whole world to know the Mage Lord had taken an interest in me.

  Isabel’s eyes were sharp, but she refrained from speaking. Henry’s wolf senses were rarely wrong. And from the flare of his nostrils and the tension in his shoulders, he smelled trouble.

  The Mage Lord practically defined ‘trouble’. But if I refused to go to him, I’d lose my job. Trapped on all sides. I took another cookie as casually as I dared, listening to George’s babbling about his new friends. Shifter kids played much nicer with others than the mages or necromancers—and considerably more so than half-faeries. Considering shifters turned into hairy or scaly monsters on a monthly basis, the Cavanaugh family had their lives together a damn sight better than I did.

  “Can you always smell when another shifter’s been nearby?” asked Isabel.

  “Here I can,” said Henry, taking a delicate bite of the cookie. “The Ley Line interferes otherwise. Goes right through the centre of our territory.”

  Isabel nodded. “Yeah, it does.” Witches’ powers were amplified by the energies swirling around the line. Getting close made spells go haywire, but most magic users, aside from mages, couldn’t use their powers away from it.

  The line used to be invisible. Until the faeries used it as a conduit to open a gate into our world, permanently bringing magic into the spotlight. I didn’t go near it if I could help myself, but maybe the witches living along the line had sensed something screwy when the changeling showed up. If anywhere contained enough energy to summon up a changeling, the Ley Line did. Then again, the Swansons’ house was nowhere near there.

  George tugged at my hand. “You look sad,” he said. “Have another cookie.”

  I loved that kid. “Sure,” I said, taking one. “Just thinking about the job I’m working on. Looking for someone,” I added vaguely to Henry. “It’s to do with the faeries.”

  On cue, Erwin flew through the room with a squeal.

  “I thought I smelled one of them,” said Henry. “It’s not as distinctive as a shifter’s scent. Are you certain one didn’t come here? The whole doorway smells like… power.”

  Power had a smell? I supposed, to shifters, it did. And now Isabel stared openly at me.

  “Not that I know of.” I shrugged. “You and Susie are the only shifters I know. Can you sense which type of shifter it is by scent?”

  Henry took a deep breath, inhaling. “A powerful one. A rare kind of power. I should go.”

  What? “Huh? There’s nobody here. What kind of power?”

  “The type at the top of the shifter chain,” he said. “They’re rare enough not to form their own packs. Tend to be loners. Predators.”

  I thought of the Mage Lord. I can see that.

  Not all shifters banded together. When they’d hidden from the world, they’d once lived in packs, isolated from society, but like witch blood, shifter blood had been diluted enough that a significant portion of the population carried the gene without even knowing it.

  The image of those black scales and claws flashed through my head. The Mage Lord clearly didn’t care who saw what he was. That made him the stark opposite of every shifter I knew.

  “I’m heading out anyway.” I needed to put the changeling’s blood to good use, and I wasn’t about to try any experiments with little kids nearby.

  First, I had a mage—or shifter—to get off my back.

  Chapter 6

  Here we go. I looked up at the headquarters of the mages, an imposing manor-like building with whitewashed walls gleaming in the weak sunlight. Its balconies, endless windows and extensive gardens belonged to a time before the faeries, but the elaborate wards set up around its perimeter told me the mages took their security seriously. Seriously enough to keep riffraff like me out.

  Last time I’d been here had been ten years ago—the day I’d crawled out of Faerie with the lord’s blood still drying on my hands. After wandering around the streets in numb horror and confusion for a few hours, I’d overhear
d a bunch of sharply-dressed men talking about the faeries.

  In this strange new world, faeries seemed to be a given. Piskies fluttered around in packs, sylphs waved from the few trees at the roadside, and nymphs lurked beneath the rivers’ surfaces, eyes glittering. I couldn’t connect this surreal new world with the one I’d left behind. Before, this road had been lined with cars. A single black car with tinted windows was all that remained. Like everyone had vanished.

  I’d run after the men in suits when I heard the word Sidhe. I wore nothing but a ragged dress one of the other captives had given me when a bunch of crazed fire imps had burned my clothes off. I still remembered the harshness of the sun burning the back of my neck and arms. I’d been under shade for so long, everything had looked like a mirage. Including the manor the men walked up to. I’d never given it a second glance before, but in that moment, it looked like a sanctuary.

  One of them had turned back and saw me. Like the others, he wore a smart suit, his hair crisply parted to the side. “Who are you?” he’d asked.

  My throat dry, I croaked out, “Ivy. Please, you have to help me. I don’t know where I am.”

  “You’re at the headquarters of the Mage Lords,” said the man. “What are you, a witchling? What’s with the blood? Who’d you kill?”

  The words had stuck in my throat. A faerie lord. I killed a faerie lord, and I escaped. “Nobody, I just want to go home. Do you—do you have a telephone I can use?”

  “We’re not a charity.” As the others disappeared into the hallway, he’d watched, like he expected me to leave. Like he wanted me to.

  My heart sank into my feet. “Where am I?” I whispered again.

  Mortal time passes in a flicker of infinity, I’d heard in the faerie world. How long might have passed? Were my family—?

  The man had watched me, his expression a mixture of distaste and wariness. “No witches allowed in here.”

  “I’m not a witch,” I said. “I don’t know where I am. I—when did the faeries come?”

  No. No. No.

  “Ten years ago.”

  No.

  That’s when I’d dropped to my knees and screamed. And kept screaming, sure people would come running and help.