by K. F. Breene
“Shoo,” I mouthed, and motioned for him to get away. I had enough to worry about without his vampiric protective malfunction tripping me up. “Go!” I waved at him again until he grudgingly moved to the side.
The deep breath I took didn’t still my raging heart. Adrenaline surged within me, preparing me for a showdown. Making me want to kick the door open with guns blazing, ready to take the O.K. Corral. I was not a subtle person.
I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob and held my breath as I turned it. The latch clicked and I froze. No sound issued from within. I slowly pushed open the door. The bottom rubbed against something. A rug.
That sound would be heard.
I threw the door open the rest of the way and jumped into the room, my sword drawn in front of me, ready to cut through a hex. Something leapt out from the right, streaking through the air. A wall of fire roared in front of me. I hadn’t meant to summon it. A spire of flame shot out, raking across the back of something small and headed straight for me. I hadn’t meant to summon that, either. The thing screeched and darted away, its tail on fire. I cut out all the flame, getting a grip, just in time to see the creature disappear under the bed.
Chapter Eighteen
I stalked forward and swept my gaze across the room. The rumpled covers indicated someone had slept there last night, but it was currently empty. Small artifacts littered the dresser and one of two nightstands. He was single and often slept alone. Somewhat neat, but not anal about it.
My boots creaked as I sank down onto my haunches, trying to see whatever had darted under the bed.
As if hearing my unspoken question, Darius said, “It was a cat.”
I pulled in a breath. “That thing jumping at me was a cat?”
“Yes. You firebombed a kitty.”
“Crap. What kind of a monster sets fire to a cat?” I grimaced and got on my hands and knees. “Are you sure? I don’t want some creature that you mistakenly thought was a cat to dart out at my face.”
“I am sure, yes. It was a black cat.”
I crawled a little closer, searching for it. The smell of burned hair tickled my nose, making me potentially feel worse. Potentially, because I wasn’t fully convinced it was an actual cat, and not some vile thing with three rows of teeth that the mage had found lurking in the wilds of the Realm. I’d seen some crazy things in my life.
A lump much too close to my face shuddered and hissed. Something flung out at me. I jerked back. Flame roared in front of my face again, blocking anything from advancing.
“Of all the things to fear, a cat gets you jumpy?” Darius asked with humor ringing in his voice.
I sighed and ripped down the wall of fire. “Are you positive it’s a cat? I think it threw something at me.”
Darius was hunched behind me, looking under the bed. “It struck out with its paw. When you first opened the door, it was trying to get out of the room. You stopped it handily. And now it is afraid of you. Rightly so.”
“At least it’s alive.” I took a deep breath and sat back. “Well, this makes me an asshole.”
“Yes. Get out of the way. I’ll bring it out.”
I scooted to the side. “Vampires aren’t afraid of cats?”
“Why would my kind fear a defenseless animal?”
“Well, when you put it like that…” I stood as he somehow coaxed the animal out from under the bed. He cuddled it in his arms, stroking its black head. “So, you actually like cats. Huh. The things you learn.”
“I like ordinary cats, yes.”
“As opposed to?”
“Cat shifters.”
“Right.” I peered closer, trying to see if I should doctor its butt. Its hiss had me backing up again.
“This animal will likely never trust you again.” Darius took it toward the door, looking it over. “The burns are mild. Had she been a human, you would’ve done very little damage.”
“That was the point. I wasn’t trying to kill him, remember? I bet he would’ve pissed his pants, though.” I took a deep breath and rubbed my chest where my heart was slowing. “The fire treated the cat like I’d meant to treat the guy, so that’s good. But I didn’t mean to do that. I thought I was better at controlling my fire, but clearly I’m not great when it comes to blind reactions.”
“You are on the doorstep of mastery. More practice and you’ll be able to control your power in both situations.” Darius stepped through the door. “Since the mage is clearly not home, I will doctor this animal while you figure out what other poor, defenseless creature to bully next.”
“It jumped at me! That is hardly my fault.” I frowned as Darius moved away. I doubted I’d live that one down anytime soon.
I fired off a quick text to Callie, asking if they had anything. As I waited for a reply, I approached the mage’s dresser, looking through the items on top. Loose change, a wadded-up tissue (which I didn’t touch), and a tube of lip balm. His nightstand had a bottle of water, a book with a bunch of dog-eared pages, and an alarm clock. The first drawer held supplies for alone time, including a bottle of lotion. The other drawers were filled with all street clothes.
His closet was divided into two sections. The first was what I’d suspect—hanging clothes, including some robes, all black except for a red one. The other half of the closet was taken up by plastic shelving.
A grin pulled at my lips.
Each shelf was stacked with several small tubs, all labeled with various kinds of spells or ingredients. I glanced over the ingredients first, finding a couple of rare ones that Callie and Dizzy would love to have. Those I pulled out and placed on the ground.
Next I pored over the spell casings, grinning harder when I saw the powerful ones at the bottom were labeled with the Latin incantations needed to unleash them. Oh, mages and their elitist use of Latin. It made using stolen spells so easy. Had it been French, or German, I would’ve been lost.
I pulled out all the tubs of spells. I’d be relieving him of his hard work. Assuming he was guilty, of course. If he wasn’t guilty…well, I’d only steal a little off the top. Old habits died hard.
“The kitten will be okay,” Darius said, re-entering the room sans cat. He looked down at the items I was collecting. “He is organized. Did he make all of those?”
“There are one or two that feel a little off compared to the others, but I’d say he made most of them. He might be a disgusting murderer, but he seems highly experienced. He’s been at the mage trade for a while.”
“Is there anything to suggest he is the one calling the demons?”
“Not yet. But I’ve only searched one room. I have a whole house to go.” Excitement ran through me. “I love rifling through people’s things. It’s a personality flaw I don’t apologize for.”
“You should.” Darius bent over the spells, reading the labels. He took a few of each, tucking them into the hyper-organized satchel he wore whenever we were on the job.
I quickly rifled through the spare room, but my original assessment had been right. It was barren of interesting things. The bathroom wasn’t intriguing, either.
Back downstairs, I was just starting to look around when my phone buzzed. Callie. We’re getting a lot of shifty eyes. Most people seem to know something, but no one wants to talk. It reeks of the guild. They have their corrupt paws all over this town, the filthy bastards.
Keep at it, I texted back. Just remember—low profile.
You’d probably get more done if you shook things up, Callie responded.
Only if I knew who to shake. Since I didn’t, I would just create a lot of noise, get labeled a disturber of the peace, and push people into steering clear. I’d learned that much last night at the restaurant.
I missed Red. Whenever I needed information back home, he was the first person I shook down. Even if he didn’t have clear facts, the rumors he collected usually pointed me in a viable direction. I was sure there was someone like that around these parts—a magical weak link, if you will—I just had no idea how to
find them. It was starting to get aggravating.
Still, this guy was a good lead. I really hoped he was guilty. Not only because it would mean my work here was (mostly) done, but because it would mitigate the cat-with-the-burned-butt situation. Things like that were hard to explain to innocent people just trying to live their lives.
He had a small office downstairs. I skimmed my finger along the spines of the books in his bookcase, hunting for anything of note. Two books seemed interesting, so I took those down. “Ah ha!” I pulled a volume from the top shelf. “A book about possessions. Guilty.”
“Many people have—”
I jumped and spun, the book leaving my hand a moment later. It flew through the air, only missing Darius’s head because he ducked out of the way, and slammed against the wall behind him. It fell to the ground.
“Don’t sneak up on people!” I said a little too loudly, holding out my hand for the book.
With a grin, he bent to retrieve it. “As I was saying, many people have books on possessions. I, myself, have one. As, I’m sure, do you.”
“This guy was suspect when he spoke in a public place about the screams of dying people. These are just nails in his coffin.”
“Won’t you be embarrassed if you are wrong?”
“Not embarrassed so much as let down that I couldn’t have all the stuff I want to steal.” I stacked up the books and set them on the coffee table in the living room.
“Aren’t you going to look through his computer?” Darius asked as I hunted through the living room.
“Not yet. We can take that with us. I want to seek out stuff hidden in the folds of this house.” I snatched a piece of discarded chalk off the mantelpiece and held it up. “Heavily used. Smooth, too. They’re doing the summoning somewhere inside. The smudges of dirt suggest it’s somewhere that isn’t cleaned too often. That could be a house, but judging by the cleanliness of his house, I’d bet not.”
“That could be for his own use.”
“It is for his own use, since our guy is doing this for himself as much as his crew. But let’s look at the facts. He’s experienced, knows how to work some pretty powerful spells, is organized, and lives in a place where the Mages’ Guild has a heavy influence. Now we learn he is writing things in chalk. Many people do this, sure. I’ve seen more than a few amateurs in the graveyard. But not many people do it inside.” I paused, connecting the dots.
“What?” Darius asked.
“Scuffs like this could come from a garage.” I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything in this one, but I was in a hurry. Maybe…” I cut across the house and let myself into the garage, followed by Darius.
“We’ve found the manufacturer of the casings,” Darius said, looking into one of the stacked boxes. “He bought in bulk. Or someone else did and he is storing them.”
“Ha! Guilty!”
“They could just be—”
“No way. That’s super guilt, right there. He’s a criminal, which means I don’t have to feel bad about ransacking his house. I am definitely taking all his crap, yo. Happy days to me.”
“Your moral compass is ambiguous.”
“Like you can talk.” I scoffed and looked at the ground, trying to find any outlines in the cleared-away space. In the dark, contrast was low, even for my vision. Still scanning, I flicked on the light and backtracked, trying to find a hint of an outline.
“Nothing,” I said with my hands on my hips. “He’s not practicing here.”
“Hmmm,” Darius said, as if I’d said something of great interest. “He—they—may have been practicing in New Orleans, did you think of that?” He moved toward the shelves on the side. “Maybe they wanted a space away from the guild’s influence until they knew what they were doing. Or maybe the guild approves, and it sent them to another city with high magical traffic in case they couldn’t contain the demon. NOLA has the best bounty hunter in the nation. If a demon got loose, there would be no better place for it to happen.”
“I do love flattery, but I am far from the best in the nation. Still, you do have some valid points.”
“That statement was not bent toward flattery. You are known for your prowess.”
“Uh-huh.” I could name five bounty hunters across the world who were legends in the business, and none of them were named Reagan. “Anyway, back to it. I want to have the place catalogued before he gets home.”
“You don’t have enough evidence to convict him yet,” Darius said, pulling a knife out of a box.
“I’m not looking for evidence; I’m looking for additions to my magic collection. And Callie’s. The evidence I’ll beat out of him. That part is easy.”
Darius held up the knife. “The blade has blood on it.”
“There you go. You spoke too soon.”
“It is a hunting knife. It could be animal blood.”
“I haven’t found any hunting rifles, or even a crossbow. He’s some hunter if he’s bagging deer without any way to shoot them.”
“There are other things to hunt.”
“I assume those other things just die on cue? Because otherwise, he’d need a weapon for whatever he was killing.” I shifted from side to side, impatient with his slow, methodical approach to evidence collection. “I’ll see you in there. You take too long.”
“The treasure is in the details.”
I pushed through the door and rounded the corner while brainstorming the other spots people tended to hide things. I should search a closet downstairs. Maybe look harder in the living room.
A shape caught my eye next to the front door. The open front door.
Shock ran through me, and I staggered to a stop, facing a man who had keys dangling uselessly from his fingers. He stared at me as I stared at him, both of us surprised someone else was in the house. That lasted a blink of an eye. Then we were action.
I dove to the side as the keys shot toward me. He hadn’t thrown them. They had zipped from his hand.
What the hell magic was that?
I ripped out my sword again, having put it away after the episode with the cat, and ducked behind the couch. A swell of power engulfed the room, popping my ears and churning the air.
That was way too much power for the man who had created those spells upstairs.
I may have made a grievous error in coming here.
Chapter Nineteen
“My, my. That was quick,” the man said. His voice was too raspy for a human, and power swirled around his words. “She has found me.”
“I don’t know what that means.” I dug through my pouch, feeling the vibrations of the few casings I had, since I stupidly hadn’t pocketed any from upstairs yet, until my fingers glanced off a spell that would work. I yanked it out and pinched, then popped up and threw it.
A sheet of air slammed into me. It threw me back, ass over end, until I knocked against the wall. The fire inside me, which usually swelled in times like these, diminished. Instead, that block of cold I’d felt while levitating grew, pulsing up through my body. A new power bled into my bloodstream, one that spread tingles across my scalp and down to the base of my spine.
A high-pitched scream sounded as the figure by the door wriggled in pain. Sparkling pink foam was burning the skin on his arms. I surged forward, sword out, ready for his counter-spell or another weird air attack.
It came when I’d cut the distance between us in half.
A block of magic sailed through the air. I cut through it with my sword. It sparked before sizzling away. Another came right after, the same intensity, but half as powerful as the ability this man had displayed with the solid air. He was using casings now.
Before I could surge forward again, the furniture bumped forward, moved into my path by unseen hands.
“Do you have the demon in you?” I asked, out of breath and not sure why. The cold thing in my stomach pounded. I knew how to work my fire. I didn’t know how to work this new feeling. It wasn’t responding the way my power usually did.
“I do
not.” The man grinned and tilted his head in an inhuman way, studying me. His laugh sounded like skeletons dancing on graves. “But I do have the power of the underworld coursing through me. It feels marvelous.”
“It does now, sure. Wait until it starts to erode you. That won’t feel as great.”
His renewed laughter froze my blood. “Ah, but I will be allowed to go free if I deliver the goods to my master. You are Reagan Somerset, are you not? Here from New Orleans?”
“Who’s your master?”
“Are you the girl he seeks? The heir?”
The cold hand of dread wrapped around me. “Nope. The only thrones I know of are made of porcelain. Who’s your master?”
“I will take that as a…maybe.” His smile could curdle milk. “Come with me. We will see if I get a big prize.”
He grabbed something invisible in front of him. Air condensed around my body before lifting me partway off the ground. Huh. The demon had given him the power to move things with his mind.
“This is bad,” I mumbled, reaching for my fire to break out of the air grip. It was hampered, though, overcome by that block of ice swelling within my middle and pumping out through my limbs.
“Say, listen,” I said as he pulled me through the air toward him. My toes scraped the rug. “That power you feel right now, did the demon show you how to use it?”
“It is my life’s blood. It is my soul. Using it is my given right.”
“That didn’t answer my question. What does it feel like? Is it cold? I’m just trying to compare notes, you understand.”
“It feels like worlds colliding. Almighty. All-powerful. Eternal.”
“Wow. No, there is no way you are getting out of this alive. I hate to break it to you, but that demon hung a gullible sign around your neck.” I stopped directly in front of the guy, a forty-something with slightly mussed brown hair, a decent complexion, and crazed eyes. He’d probably been normal once. That ship had sailed.
The man stared at me as if waiting for me to do something.