Mages and Masquerades: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Magic Blood: The Warlock Book 2)

by Katerina Martinez

  “We’ve talked about blood magic before,” she said, “I don’t know how you or the guy Levi knew got away with it, but it’s forbidden here.”

  “That’s funny, considering the practice originated here.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It’s still wrong, though.”

  “It isn’t. Demons aren’t human, and this isn’t blood magic; not yet, anyway. Will you relax and hand me that bag?”

  The one in my hands was starting to fill up. Ivy handed the fresh bag over to me, and like an expert who had done this plenty of times before, I replaced the full bag with an empty one, and handed it to her while I stored the full one. The process took a while to complete, and since the demon was dead I had to use a little apparently forbidden magic to coax it out of his body, but when it was done, I had a backpack thrown over my shoulder with eight packs of demonic blood sloshing around inside it.

  “What do we do about the body?” Ivy asked.

  I shrugged. “Give it a few minutes and it’ll dissolve.”

  “Dissolve? Just like that?”

  I nodded. “Ooh, that reminds me.” I turned around, knelt beside the body, and checked his pockets—suit jacket first, then pants. In them I found a wallet, a set of keys, and a phone. The phone was a burner, so I tossed it in the trash. The keys belonged to a Honda Accord, though where it was I had no idea. I got rid of those, too. But the wallet—there was some cash in there, some credit cards, and a simple black card with a pentagram on one side of it. I thought the pentagram was silver, but as I moved it around under the light, it changed color like a hologram. I slipped the card back into the wallet and pocketed it.

  “My cut?” Ivy asked, her eyebrow arched.

  A grin spread across my face. “Now you’re starting to get it,” I said, then I opened the dead-man’s wallet and handed her half of the night’s takings, before pocketing the wallet again.

  “Okay, so, now what?”

  “Now you go back to the apartment while I go and make some arrangements.”

  “Arrangements?”

  “Didn’t think I was keeping all this, did you?”

  “I don’t know. You do blood magic, I don’t know how any of that works.”

  “I’m gonna get us a little extra money, figured we could use it considering the old nerve center was compromised.”

  “Thanks?”

  “You’re welcome. Now, get yourself back to the others and I’ll meet you soon. This is my street.”

  “Can you at least tell me where you’re going so we know where to look in case you go missing?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, but we aren’t that close yet. I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

  “And if Levi asks?”

  “Tell him I… went…”

  “He can be very persistent, you know. If I don’t have a good enough cover story, he’ll try and come after you.”

  I frowned. “I’ll give you five percent of what I make from this if you come up with a story he’ll swallow.”

  Ivy nodded, grinning. “We’ve got a deal.”

  I watched her take to the street opposite mine and start walking. The Underground station wasn’t far from where we were now, and I knew she’d be with the others soon. Meanwhile, I headed in the other direction, eyes peeled for signs that anyone other than Ivy and the demon were watching us, feet pounding the pavement.

  When I was certain the coast was clear, I pulled my phone from my pocket, and made the call. It was late over here in London, but it would be early enough in the US. There were two rings followed by a series of clicks, then the call connected, like it always did. The line was crackly, delayed by two seconds, and a little distorted, but that was only because it was being re-routed to a dozen points around the world before reaching the person I needed to speak to.

  “Well, well,” the smooth, dark voice on the other line said, “I haven’t heard from you in a very long time.”

  “How did you know it was me?” I asked, flipping my long, red hair across from one shoulder to the other.

  “I have my ways.”

  “Is that supposed to impress me?”

  “C’mon, princess—you know I’m always looking for ways to impress you.”

  “Alright, well, you can impress me by accepting the offer I’m about to make you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Is the line secure?”

  There was a pause then, one filled with crackles and pops that had travelled thousands and thousands of miles, through dozens of countries, just to reach me. “I’m putting on my unimpressed face.”

  “Aww, really? But that’s your least attractive face.”

  “You wanna see my attractive face, you’ve gotta come out here.”

  “You got a first-class ticket for me?”

  “No.”

  “What about a portal, then?”

  “Shit, you know how expensive those things are.”

  “Well, you’d better get one, because I’m walking around the streets of London with eight pints of demon blood in my backpack and nowhere to go. Think you might know of anyone who’d be interested in such a purchase?”

  Another pause. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me you went looking for a demon, killed it, took its blood, and then went looking for a buyer? You’re just as insane as you’ve always been.”

  “Isn’t that why people love me?”

  “It’s why I love you.”

  “Oh, bullshit, you say that to all the girls. Now, do you want the blood or not?”

  “Fuck me, you’re serious…”

  “No, and yes. But we’re burning daylight here, so make with the portal, or I find someone else who might have use for this.”

  “Okay, okay!” his voice rose an octave, “Jesus, yes, I’ll take it. Tell me where you are, give me an hour to call my portal guy, I’ll give you a spot to get to so we can make the trade.”

  “Make it thirty minutes.”

  “If I get one put together in thirty minutes, you’d better be ready to jump through it too.”

  “Tempting, but no. I’ve got my hands full over here. Rain check?”

  “Fine, fine. One hour, I’ll call you.”

  “Good.” I hung up, pocketed the phone, and ducked into the nearest Starbucks I could find, grabbing a latte, a table, and setting the bag between my feet to wait. It took thirty-seven minutes for the call to come through, but when it came, I was ready to go and meet my past for the first time in almost two years.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The cold was starting to bite at the tips of my nose and ears when the fabric of space and time ripped apart directly in front of me. It was like watching a piece of cloth fray from the middle outwards, as though being burned by a flame directly behind it. Only the flame was blue, and bright, and it filled the space it had created with shifting, shimmering light that almost looked like a pool of water suspended in the air.

  I watched it as it rippled and moved, saw its glow bounce off the ground at my feet and the underside of the bridge I was standing beneath, listened to it hum. it was like watching the glint of the moon on the water on a cool, November night. I rarely got a chance to watch a portal form. They were incredibly expensive to produce because they were incredibly dangerous, and Proximi, the only mages who had the power to create portals and thus the ones in line to get the chop if something were to go wrong with their creation, were the ones who got to set the price tag.

  But the demon blood in my bag was worth much, much more than what it would cost to hire a mage to open a portal, even on such short notice. My guy had really scrambled to put this together, and had probably only managed it by paying way more than the asking price, so I was impressed, but I would never tell him that. Not in a million years.

  The portal stabilized, its shimmering surface settling to something that looked like water in zero gravity—a totally smooth, gently pulsing, imperfect circle with frayed edges spilling light in all directions, catching on the frosty grass and f
lowers below and the underside of a small stone bridge above. A breath passed, and then the portal started to shift, millions if little ripples opening along its surface, disturbing the peace, the smoothness, until slowly, the figure of a man began to emerge from the other side, his dark silhouette contrasting starkly with the brightness of the portal around him.

  He shuddered when he was through and dusted himself off, the tips of his hands spitting sparkles of light. “Jesus, I hate those things,” he said.

  The man that had just crossed an incredible distance in a fraction of a second was taller than me by at least a couple of heads; his chestnut hair, once worn at a moderate length, was now shaved almost to a crew cut, and he had the most infuriatingly adorable dimples on his cheeks I had ever seen. Back in High School he’d been an athlete, not the athlete, but an athlete, and that discipline had followed him into adulthood. In fact, he looked even bigger than he had the last time we had seen each other; the black t-shirt he had on clinging tightly to his body, perfectly defining the shape of his chest, his abdomen.

  Jesus Christ, he looks good. I would never tell him that, but damn.

  “You’re gonna freeze to death out here in that t-shirt.”

  “Ah, there’s my Hailey, always looking out for me.”

  “Your Hailey? I don’t think I was ever your Hailey.”

  He tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes, still smiling. “Weren’t you?”

  “No. I also thought you wanted me to go through to you.”

  “I was seven minutes past my deadline with the portal,” he said, a sly smirk appearing across his face, “Knowing you as well as I do, I knew you wouldn’t come through for me, so I figured I’d take matters into my own hands.”

  “You don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do.”

  His grin widened. “I can recall receiving plenty of praise for the many, many, late nights I spent getting to know you.”

  I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help the smile from forming; or the flush of blood from hitting my cheeks. I’d forgotten how insufferable Mason was, and how good looking he was, and just how many times, and in how many places, and in how many ways we’d… “Alright,” I said, snapping myself out of the memories, “You’re gonna have to cut that out right now, or else I’m peddling my wares someplace else.”

  “That would be a decent threat if I thought you knew even a single person who would buy what you’ve got stashed away in there.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Maybe, but I’m a man who trusts his instincts, and my instincts tell me you’ve been over here keeping your head down, like you said you’d be. Otherwise why would you have called me? If I recall, you were the one who said you didn’t wanna see me again.”

  I pointed a finger right at him. “Don’t,” I warned.

  He put his hands up. “I’m sorry, did that hit a nerve?”

  “Stop being an asshole.” I let the bag slip from my shoulder and fall to the floor. “Anyway, I’ve got it all in here. You’ve made the wire into the usual account?”

  “You didn’t give me any instructions, so, no. Didn’t think it was still active.”

  “It’s active.”

  Mason produced his phone from his pocket and I waited while he made a series of quick taps and swipes on the screen. “Alright, done,” he said, depositing his phone back into his pocket.

  After checking my account to verify the transaction—and not freaking out over the amount, which was way more than I’d had in my account at any one time in almost two years—I kicked the bag over to him. It slid across the frosted ground to where he stood, and he stopped it with his foot. He then picked it up, slung it over his shoulder without checking the contents, and stared at the portal before looking over at me again. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Oh God. I hadn’t wanted this to go on any longer for exactly this reason. Talking to Mason was not a good idea, not after the way things had ended, and yet, I couldn’t find a good reason to say no to him, so I didn’t. “Yeah, sure.”

  The grin on his face widened. “You ever think about me?” he asked, flashing a cocky, pearly white smile in my direction.

  “Get lost, Mason,” I said, turning around and rolling my eyes for the second—but what felt like the fiftieth—time tonight, “See you in another two years.”

  “Wanna get a cup of coffee?”

  I stopped, dead in my tracks, and turned to look at him. “What did you just ask me?” I asked.

  “That got your attention, didn’t it?”

  “Getting my attention isn’t exactly difficult to do. I wouldn’t write home about it.”

  “Come get a coffee with me.”

  I sighed. “Mason…”

  “Hailey, it’s been two years. The least you can do is talk to me.”

  “We did talk. Have talked.”

  “Number one, we didn’t talk about it nearly as much as you think. Number two, you left and made it clear you weren’t coming back.”

  “Number three, I asked you to come with me, remember?”

  “Okay, that’s debatable.”

  “Uh, no it isn’t. I told you I was leaving, you knew why, I asked you to come with me.”

  “It’s not like you asked me to plan a move, you asked me to go with you tomorrow because that’s when your flight was.”

  “So, I made a snap decision to ask you to come with me. What was wrong with that?”

  “You didn’t give me a chance to react, Hailey.”

  “I did. You had a chance to say sure, I’ll come, but you didn’t.”

  “And what was I supposed to do? Abandon my life here and move to London with you? We weren’t even exclusive, you made sure I knew that; why would I move to London with someone who wouldn’t even go out on a date with me?”

  “You know, I may not have told you we weren’t exclusive, but while I was with you, there was no one else.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  I stomped my foot on the ground and balled one of my hands into a fist. “See? This is why I haven’t spoken to you in two years. You’re an argumentative asshole!”

  “And you’re an arrogant princess, same as you’ve always been.”

  “Why don’t you go back home, Mason?” I asked, slowly shaking my head, my tone softening. “Just go back home, what are you even still doing here?”

  “I’d asked you to go for a coffee with me, that’s why I’m here.”

  “The answer’s no, Mason. I can’t talk to you right now.”

  “Alright, rain-check then.”

  I turned around again. “Sure, next time I’m in the states, or you’re in London, we’ll talk.”

  There was a pause as I started to walk. “Tomorrow, then?”

  I let my head hang and sighed, my breath pushing from behind my lips in a puff. “What are you talking about, Mason?” I asked, defeated.

  It felt like someone had turned out the lights. In an instant, the shimmering blue was gone, the hum was gone, replaced by the whisper of the night’s cool wind through the bushes and trees. For a moment I wasn’t sure if Mason had left without saying goodbye, and I hated myself for letting that idea sting as hard as it did. Then I heard his feet shuffle against the floor, and I hated him for still being here.

  I rounded on him hard. The portal was gone. “What the hell did you just do?” I asked, glowering.

  He shrugged. “I’m doing business,” he said, throwing my backpack over his shoulder.

  “Business… what does that mean?”

  “It means I now have to sell the product you just sold to me.”

  “So, why are you still here?”

  “Because it just so happens the buyer is here.”

  “No…” I shook my head as if trying to wake from a nightmare. “No way.”

  “Jesus, you could at least sound a little happier to have an old friend sticking around for a few days.”

  “Happy? I’m supposed to be happy that you’re here…”

&
nbsp; “Maybe not double-rainbow across the sky happy, but happy enough?”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because we used to be good friends and you haven’t seen me in a while, I think. I could be wrong, but generally that’s what happens with friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time.”

  I walked up to him. “Mason, do you have any idea what I’m into right now? What you’ve just landed in the middle of?”

  “I don’t, so why don’t you tell me… over coffee?”

  “You just don’t give up, do you?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Which is it? Do I never give up, or do I give up too easily? Because I recall a phone call I made to you once you got to London where you chewed me out for giving up too quickly.”

  I put my hands in mock surrender. “I can’t. I just can’t. I’m going the fuck home, and you’re not following me.”

  “That’s cool, I’m booked into a hotel in—” he checked his phone “—Knightsbridge? Do you know it?”

  “Knightsbridge? Really?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing… Jesus. Look, you’ve made your point. You’re upset that I left, you’ve got things you wanna tell me, you probably wanna yell at me.”

  “I don’t, but—”

  “—hush. I get it, okay? I really do. But you can’t stay here.”

  He scanned the underside of the bridge and the park around us. “Uh, this is a park? And I’m not a bum, so…”

  “In London! You can’t stay in London.”

  “I can, and I will. I have business here.”

  “I’m sure you do, but there’s stuff going on in here that you don’t want to get mixed up in.”

  “So, I won’t get mixed up in it. All you have to do is make sure I don’t go to the wrong places.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  “By making sure you spend time with me while I’m here. Which, you will, of course, because you miss me like crazy.”

  “Do I?”

  “You do. You may not know it, but you do, and that’s okay. Really, it is. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to rescind my offer for a coffee right now.”

  I sighed. “I’ll bite. Why?”