Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  Lord Colton regarded the man with a frown. “Must you be so dramatic?”

  I snorted. He was plenty dramatic himself. I turned to the new mystery guy, who lowered his hood to reveal a crop of dark red hair. His coat was similar in style to Lord Colton’s. He must be another of the Mage Lords.

  “You’re Ivy?” He held out a hand. “I’m Drake, Vance’s second-in-command.”

  “And a fire conjurer?” I shook his hand warily, but it didn’t burn to touch. Interesting. His casual manner was a sharp contrast to Lord Colton’s, but he must pack some serious firepower to have the title of second most powerful mage.

  “That’s me. What’s with them?” He indicated the circle, which blazed, keeping the changelings contained.

  “We’re questioning suspects,” said Lord Colton.

  Drake grinned at the changelings, who howled and dived away from him, pitching against the outside of the circle and tumbling into a heap. “You didn’t pull the blade on them? Isn’t that a witch’s trap?”

  “It’s not worth expending my power on an interrogation,” said Lord Colton.

  “Ha. More like you overextended it in the fight with those hellhounds.”

  I glanced at him, surprised. So the Mage Lord did have a limit. And apparently his fellow mages didn’t mind pointing it out. I stowed that information away for later.

  “Anything else you want to ask them?” Lord Colton directed this at me. Changing the subject, huh. I guess the head mage needed everyone to see him as invincible.

  “I think we’ve covered everything,” I said. By that, of course, I meant we hadn’t learned a damn thing. “Care to help carry the changelings back? I can pick up the spell cage so they won’t escape.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You want to keep them in your house?”

  “I thought you arrested faeries who broke the rules.”

  “Larsen’s the one in charge of minor cases like this,” he said.

  I groaned. That figured. He wouldn’t be pleased with me. But letting those changelings run away free would get me worse than a threat. “Fine.”

  “Drake, is anything else happening?” asked Lord Colton.

  “It’s bad news,” said Drake, his smile fading. “A second child is missing, this one the daughter of two necromancers.”

  Chapter 8

  “Where?” I asked immediately. Oh. Shit.

  “Finchley Road,” said Drake, checking something on his phone. “Two of our people are over there now. I’d be there, but I heard you’d decided to go wandering off with a witch in search of a changeling.”

  Other side of town. Damn. “How d’you know it’s linked to this case?” I asked him.

  “Because those little buggers followed me here after I unmasked them,” he said. “One of them was trying to impersonate a teenage girl. Not very successfully, I might add.”

  Normally, the mental image would make me smile. Except his words brought a different image to mind. “A teenage girl?” My voice rose on the last word, much as I tried to hide it.

  “Yeah. Her name’s Melanie Climes. I’ve just spoken to her family.”

  “Necromancers?” asked Lord Colton. “So you followed this creature all the way here?”

  “I brought a car,” he said. “Little bastards move fast.”

  The changelings tripped over one another in an effort to escape the circle. I rolled my eyes at them, trying to suppress the tightening feeling in my chest. Another child taken, and I’d come no closer to finding the culprit.

  “Have you taken on the case, then?” I asked. “If it’s linked to the other changeling—and they’re brothers, so I have a feeling it might be—I’d like to talk to the victim’s family.”

  Drake looked from me to Lord Colton. “What do you say, Vance?”

  Lord Colton turned to me. “What are you going to tell Mr Swanson?”

  “That I caught the changeling. At least it won’t be bothering him anymore.” I faced the three small creatures in the circle. “Did any of you use magic after you were told to impersonate humans?”

  It was the most roundabout way I could think of to figure out who was responsible for the hellhound trap. These creatures were the lowest rank of Faerie. They’d been set up as much as we had, I was certain. Somebody else had laid the trap.

  “No magic, none,” said the first changeling, as its brothers howled and beat at the circle’s side. “Can’t use magic.”

  What? “You can’t?”

  “No magic,” said another. “None. Magic is bad.”

  So much for that. I’d known most lesser fey couldn’t so much as conjure up a spark, but I’d thought changelings might.

  “What about those illegal necromantic traps in the Swansons’ house?” I asked. “Did you have anything to do with them?”

  Lord Colton’s gaze shifted to me at those words, but I kept watching the changeling.

  “No. Wasn’t us.”

  Great. “Did you see who set them up?”

  “No. No bad magic.”

  “Bad magic?” asked Lord Colton, moving towards the circle. “I was under the impression all faeries could access a certain amount of magic in this realm.”

  “You did read the handbook,” I said. “Not all of them can, actually. Not if they’ve been ordered not to, for instance.”

  His sharp gaze met mine. Why was he looking at me like that?

  “The piskie in my room can’t use magic,” I said. “Most low-born faeries can’t. They’re too stupid to.”

  Three shrill voices protested. I tuned them out. “They’re not going to give us any useful information. I can carry them if need be, but did you say you brought a car?” I directed this at Drake, who grinned at me.

  “Someone’s angling for a lift?”

  I shrugged. “Figured it’d be easier to get to the Climes’ house that way. Saves time.”

  “The Climes case isn’t yours,” said Lord Colton, to me.

  What was his issue? “It’s connected, isn’t it?”

  “I’d say it is,” said Drake. “Come on, then.”

  Lord Colton glared at me. “If you’re volunteering to carry those changelings, you’re welcome to it.”

  “It’s no problem.” Actually, it was. As I crouched down, all three changelings tried to jump on my face. I had to close my eyes to concentrate on picking up the spell circle without accidentally deactivating it. As I lifted the circle to balance it in my arms, the lines converged, forming a cage. Three screaming voices hit my eardrums.

  “Quiet,” I snapped. “If you don’t shut up, I’ll pitch you into the canal.”

  Drake burst out laughing. “Where’d you find her, Vance?”

  I strode ahead, not particularly keen to hear them talking about me. Once we left the field, we came to a black car parked in the deserted street. Drake climbed into the front. To my surprise, Lord Colton didn’t call shotgun, but joined me in the back.

  “What?” I asked him over the cage of still-shrieking changelings.

  His eyes narrowed and a sharp knife appeared above the cage. “Be quiet.”

  All three voices stopped.

  “Nice,” I said, settling back in my seat. “Now are you going to explain why you keep glaring at me?”

  “So you did find necromantic equipment at the Swansons’?” I didn’t miss the accusation in his tone.

  Oh. I’d forgotten I let that slip—and now this new disappearance had happened right on necromancer territory, I guess it hit him I hadn’t told him everything.

  “Yes,” I said, as the car rumbled to life and we headed down the road. “At the time, I thought you’d arrest them on suspicion of practising dark magic, so I took the burden off their hands.”

  “You thought I’d do that?” He frowned. “We never arrest without an investigation. We’d simply make inquiries within the Necromantic Guild to find out where it came from.”

  I wanted to hit myself in the forehead. Idiot. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I’d been so wrapped up i
n disposing of the evidence, I’d overlooked the obvious. The Mage Lords might be too fond of their power, but they wouldn’t arrest innocent people. I knew that now, but when I’d first met the Mage Lord, I couldn’t have been sure.

  I drew in a breath. “You’ve given me an idea. Do you have contacts in the Necromancer Guild, then?”

  “We have regular meetings to make sure nothing’s amiss,” he said. “Obviously nobody’s brought up this case yet, but now I know they might have been involved, this isn’t something we can overlook.” His tone, however, sounded more like he blamed me than the necromancers.

  I stood my ground. “You threatened to charge me for obstructing an investigation just for doing my job,” I said. “When I found all the dark magic crap in the kid’s room, what was I supposed to think? I sure as hell didn’t trust you to dispose of it without causing a scene or arresting the Swansons.”

  “What was there?”

  “A couple of defunct summoning circles and a lot of dead rats. I already got rid of the changeling’s blood.”

  “So that’s where you got it.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ll certainly be making enquiries.” He took out his phone—from thin air. Didn’t he keep anything on him? I supposed he didn’t have to bother if he could bend the laws of physics whenever he felt like it. He barked a few orders into the phone and hung up.

  “Not on friendly terms, then?”

  “They’re necromancers,” he said, as if that explained anything at all.

  “And?”

  “If dark magic’s involved, it’s on them. Ninety-nine percent of the time.”

  I blinked. “Okay. But one of their kids was a victim. You sure nobody wanted to set them up?”

  I didn’t have a strong opinion on necromancers, but someone had used their spells to cover up a trap with a hellhound sitting in it. Hellhounds weren’t necromancy. They were faeries. And faeries and necromancers had nothing to do with one another—primarily because the former were immortal, and the latter did death magic. Like opposite ends of the magical spectrum. I couldn’t see that as grounds to blame someone who might be the least likely to be involved… unless the culprits were banking on the mages’ distrust of necromancers.

  “You seem to have given this a lot of thought,” the Mage Lord said.

  “Are you accusing me of being involved?”

  “No,” he said. “But you did cover up what you found at the Swansons’.”

  “I told you why. If you made a better first impression, I might not have jumped to conclusions.”

  Drake turned around from the front seat of the car. “What did you do, Vance?”

  “Refused to help rescue a missing kid,” I said. “And pulled out his sword in the middle of a pub in witch district.”

  “Really, Vance?” Drake smirked at him, nearly crashing the car in the process. I gripped the seat with both hands to keep from being sent flying as he faced the front again and spun the car around. “You’re usually better at giving a nice first impression to pretty ladies.”

  Oh, please.

  “The first time I saw Ivy, she jumped ten feet into the air to cut a hellhound’s throat,” said Lord Colton, leaning back in his seat. “Make of that what you will.”

  “Damn,” said Drake, turning back to the front again before we collided with a wall. “You’re a witch, right? You don’t act like one.”

  “You’re one to talk,” I said. I almost said I thought all mages were stuck up like your boss is, but managed to hold my tongue.

  “Just curious,” said Drake. “We haven’t hired a witch in a while. Well, ever.”

  “Drake, for god’s sake, pay attention to the road,” said Lord Colton, as we veered into a main street and the car’s side scraped against a broken-down lamp post.

  “Hey, not all of us can take shortcuts through space-time.” Drake didn’t appear ruffled by his boss shouting at him. Maybe the mages weren’t as uptight as I’d thought.

  “Space-time,” I said, leaning forward. “So can he grab people or animals and haul them across the city? He wouldn’t answer.”

  Lord Colton shot me an irritated look.

  “Ha,” said Drake. “Technically, he can, but it expends all his power. Living things use a lot of energy.”

  “How far can he reach? The other side of the world?”

  Drake turned to him. “Didn’t you have a fifteen foot range, the last time we checked?”

  “At least,” said Lord Colton tightly. “What did I say about watching the road?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  I glanced down at the spell cage. Three angry faces glared up at me. “You’re handing these changelings over to Larsen. I want to talk to him first. They might be nuisances, but he’s downright brutal to any non-humans we drag in there.”

  “I thought you hated faeries,” said Lord Colton.

  “Strongly dislike,” I corrected. “These little bastards were in the wrong place at the wrong time, sounds like.” I didn’t trust them at all, but neither did I want to subject a living creature to Larsen’s cruelty.

  Lord Colton watched me. He didn’t look angry anymore. “You’re not like his other mercs.”

  “In what way?”

  “Half of them have been arrested for public aggression, haven’t they?”

  “I don’t know. They’re not my colleagues.” I respected my fellow mercenaries in general, but most of them were more into killing monsters for profit. Not my style.

  “I suppose not.” He glanced up as we drove through what I recognised as shifter territory, marked by fences and houses with elaborate lock systems. “You don’t strike me as a glory hunter.”

  Probing for information again? “I’m not hunting for anything except enough cash to keep a roof over my head. So are most mercs, come to that.”

  “And the time you killed the hydra in the canal?”

  Dammit. Just how much had Larsen told him? From the tilt of his head, Drake was listening in, too. Looked like he’d heard my entire resume.

  “It was eating people,” I said. “Nobody else wanted to get too close. The other mercs made all kinds of excuses.” It had been the closest I’d come to outing myself, but nobody else had wanted to step in. Including the mages, actually. “Guess your firepower wouldn’t do much good against a giant water beast.”

  Drake grinned. “Now I know why Vance is so keen to spend time with you. You don’t tell him he’s wonderful at everything.”

  “And other people do?” I smirked. “If you ever want brutal honesty from me, you need only ask.”

  To my consternation, Lord Colton laughed. As did Drake.

  “Can we keep her?” said Drake.

  “In your dreams.”

  We turned into a road that bordered on a field behind a high metal fence. Ah. Necromancer territory. They needed the fences to keep the corpses caged in case someone messed with the veil. This area had been hit hard by the war, and with the Ley Line running through the middle, it was a prime area for summoning the undead. On the orders of the Mage Lords, the necromancers had stepped in immediately after the war and cordoned off this territory before more dead people than living roamed the streets. Since then, there’d been an uneasy alliance between them. Right now, I figured the alliance was even shakier than I’d thought.

  The necromancers’ main headquarters looked quiet as, well, the grave. Thick leafless trees bordered the pavement, and the building itself hunched in their shadow, its stone form a stark contrast to the mages’ elaborately decorated manor. A chill wrapped around me. I doubted the current necromancer leader remembered me, but I’d still rather be almost anywhere but here.

  In captivity, I’d run through imaginary news stories about my disappearance. Ivy Lane, thirteen years old. Please come home, darling. We’re always looking for you. But no frantic parents had awaited me when I’d made it back. My home, along with the entire section of town, had been destroyed when the dark forces of Faerie rose, stirring up evil on both sides of the grave. I never di
d find out what exactly killed my parents—not for lack of trying. I’d bribed a necromancer with an entire month’s pay to reach my parents on the other side of the veil. But too many people had died here when the human and faerie worlds collided, and even the necromancers couldn’t reach them. After, I never went to that part of town. No point in stirring up old ghosts. Until now.

  “I have to say, I think we have better taste in decor,” Drake commented as we approached the gloomy-looking building at the end of the long fence. Its bricks were the colour of soot, probably due to a permanent spell. Like the mages, the city’s necromancers were egotistical in their own way.

  “Nice,” I said, glancing at the skull-shaped door knocker. “That’s how you play up to stereotypes.”

  Lord Colton rapped on the door. A short, angry-looking man answered immediately.

  “What?” he said. His smart suit was more rumpled than the ever-immaculate Mage Lord’s, but he looked, ironically, like a funeral director.

  “As you gathered from my call earlier, we’re here to talk to you about the illegal purchase of necromantic equipment from your guild.”

  “Bullshit,” said the man. “I’ve logged every purchase and nothing was removed from the stores on that day.”

  Well. So much for that.

  “Ask Larsen Crawley,” said Lord Colton, a lot more calmly than I felt, “and you’ll see a number of necromantic instruments were recently turned in after being found in a human home. My resources say somebody was trying to summon a spirit.”

  The necromancer shrugged. “Idiot kids try to do that all the time. I can’t police everyone.”

  “It’s your job to, Lord Evander,” said Lord Colton, coldly.

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

  Whoa. At this rate, I’d see what a mage-versus-necromancer standoff would look like. The short guy looked pretty pathetic compared to the tall, imposing mage, but necromancers did have power over life and death. To some extent. My money was still on the Mage Lord.