by Jayne Hawke
Witch magic had to work within the rules and guidelines laid out by the elements and logic. Fae and god magic had far more freedom.
I removed the protections around my chocolates and slumped down next to Liam.
“Did you spot anyone else?” I asked as I offered him a chocolate.
“Hey! Why does he get one?” Jess asked.
“Because he didn’t spend the entire journey back here trying to steal them.”
Jess narrowed her eyes at me, and I offered the chocolates to Rex.
“Are there any caramels?” Rex asked gruffy.
I pointed out the three types of caramel. He settled on the cocoa creme caramel, a good choice.
“These have magic in them!” Liam said as the tiredness lifted from his face.
“I needed a pick me up,” I said as a popped a strawberry creme into my mouth.
“James is gone?” Elijah asked as he sat next to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders.
“Yea. Three axes to the head and neck.”
“Liam and I set up a digital trail to cover your ass. We made it appear that someone put a hit on James this morning and an outside assassin took him out tonight. You were with me all night,” Castor said.
“Thanks,” I said as I offered him a chocolate.
I appreciated his handling things for me. I knew that between him and Liam no one would be able to unravel the truth of what really happened to James.
The pixie dust hit us all a bit harder than I’d expected. We were still up at seven in the morning when Lucy texted me.
Shame about James, he was useful when he wasn’t a prick. I might have something for you.
“Does this mean I have to buy another stupid chess set?” Jess asked.
I laughed.
“No, you’ve already made the payment. Now we collect the information.”
I texted Lucy back and told her I wasn’t going over there in rush hour and I’d see her in a couple of hours.
Liam and Castor had been looking through databases and surveillance footage to try and see where the guy Jess and I had gone after had come from and if he popped back up. We hadn’t been able to find the hole he’d jumped into on any of the maps we had of the tunnels. Of course, there were plenty tunnel systems beneath the city without maps. Some said that the fae ones kept moving just to keep people on their toes. I could believe it. That was very fae.
I’d done my best to see if anyone had seen or knew the guy. No one knew anything, or if they did they were stonewalling me. It was if he’d just popped up out of nowhere and disappeared again. I was beginning to wonder if he’d been wearing a complicated glamour. I was usually good at being able to feel glamours and illusions, but we were in a rush and they were clearly playing with some top-end magic. That doorway had been unlike anything I’d felt before.
Rex and Jess had gone back out to the Pavilion to see if they could find anything with their shifter’s senses. The chances of them coming back with anything were slim to none. People loved walked across and sitting on that grass. It was a great spot for picnics and the like.
“Was he saying he was very late?” Liam asked.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Did you just make an Alice in Wonderland reference?”
He grinned at me.
“It wouldn’t be the weirdest things the fae have done in this city.”
“Just be grateful that they have a good sense of humour. Don’t forget the forest of souls up North,” Elijah said.
There was supposedly a forest up in Scotland which had been formed when a particularly pissy fae lord had turned an entire town into trees. Rumour had it that the humans weren’t all too happy about the lord’s presence. They were said to be still alive in the trees and that they could be heard screaming on quiet days. Personally, I hadn’t gone looking for it. The lord sounded like the type who believed there was no such thing as too many trees.
Nineteen
Lucy dragged me into her shop and locked the door behind us.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” she hissed.
“You tell me? It looked like a pretty simple acquisitions job,” I said.
She threw her hands in the air and paced in the small space between the seashell jewelry stand and the shelves covered in mugs and such.
“I spent last night performing rituals to cover my ass.”
This sounded really serious.
“There’s some really dangerous shit down in those tunnels. I don’t mean your usual cannibals and the like. I mean fallen gods, shadow monsters, slavers, and the fae that aren’t supposed to be on this plane.”
I was going to have a word with Seth about upping our pay.
“Did you come across anything relating to a clay pot? I’m after a new group of people who came to the city in the last week or two.”
“There were three new groups of people this month. One of them is supposed to be jaguar guardians. Jaguar guardians! Do you have any idea how dangerous they are? They’re demi-gods, or might as well be, given how capable they are. They stand against the gods themselves if they need to!”
I hadn’t heard anything about them standing against the gods. I hoped that was exaggeration, else we might be a tad screwed.
“Ok, what else?”
Lucy took a calming breath.
“There’s a group really into playing creepy music, painting weird symbols around the place, and walking around in a daze.”
“Cult or druggies?”
“My money’s on a newfangled cult. They sound dangerous; be careful. You’re a good customer.”
“And the third?”
“I couldn’t get any real details. They come and go in ways no one can figure out. People have been avoiding them.”
“Do you have a map of where I can find them down there?”
“You can’t afford that information. I’m leaving the city for a week or three. There’s a chance one of them caught me snooping, and I’m far too beautiful to die the kind of death they’d hand out.”
Lucy was prone to melodramatics, so I wasn’t taking her unplanned vacation too seriously. The rest of it did sound concerning, though.
“Can you at least give me a pointer about which part of the city they’re hiding under?”
“The ones who disappear are untrackable.”
“You said people have been avoiding them. How can you avoid something if you don’t know where it is?”
She huffed and began walking away.
“Stay away from the centre of the city and the Pavilion.”
And that was all I was going to get out of her. I felt like I’d overpaid, but it was too late to demand a refund now.
The pixie dust and coffee were all starting to wear off when I walked into Elijah’s office.
“What did Lucy say?” Elijah asked as he handed me a triple espresso.
“There are three dangerous groups down in the sewers. One that might be a cult, or a bunch of druggies. She mentioned dancing and painting weird symbols. One which disappears without a trace, which sound like the ones we’re after. And the third is a bunch of jaguar guardians.”
Elijah’s jaw tightened.
“Could they be after the pots too? Seth did say he thought one of them had turned against him.”
“Maybe. He was lying about something. What if he’s not protecting the pot but stealing it?”
“He’s a good guy. I checked him out,” Liam said.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
Liam gave me a wounded look.
“Yes. He has an excellent record as a guardian.”
Well at least that kept things simple. I didn’t have the wherewithal to figure out the ethical quandary of handing him the pot if he was really the thief.
“Is there somewhere around here I can sleep? All that espresso did was made the room vibrate.”
“I’ll take you back to the pack house,” Elijah said.
“Why aren’t you dying of sleep exhaustion?” I as
ked.
“I suppose I’m just better than you,” he said with a grin.
Twenty
My dreams had been full of James and his traps. I kept being stuck in that agonising shadow trap where every nerve was slowly being diced, overwhelming every fibre of my being with pain. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape. I woke up when my alarm went off, thankful for the awful beeping. It seemed that James was getting the last laugh, the bastard.
“Everything ok?” Elijah asked.
“Just stupid dreams. Any news on the people in the sewers?”
“Word’s spreading about there being a new cult down there.”
He handed me a pair of custard tarts. The pastry was light and flaky, the custard inside sweet and packed full of vanilla.
“You’re spoiling me,” I said with a smile.
“Anything for you, Princess.”
I was never going to live down that nickname.
“Do we know anything about this cult? They can’t have formed in a vacuum.”
“Not yet. The pack is out trying to get information. All we know is, they’re down in the sewers.”
Why couldn’t they be somewhere nice and cosy? A pretty B&B somewhere, a nice lodge on the edge of the forest. No, they had to be down in the dark, damp sewers.
“The abandoned ones, I hope.”
“Yes, thankfully.”
They were going to be a nightmare to find. That meant we were going to be spending a good bit of time traipsing around the sewers in the near future. I made a mental note to pick up plenty of light and fire magic. We were going to need it.
Fire magic was a finicky thing. You could pull some from a candle or a small fire in a grate, but it would run out quickly. There wasn’t enough wild power running through it. I didn’t want to have to keep moving through new charms and stones every two minutes. No, I needed to invest in a good bonfire or wildfire. That would give me enough heat and light to work with for a full day if I needed it.
That type of fire was rare, and thus expensive. Luckily, I knew just the person to go to. Damien ran the top rare magic supply shop in the territory. Threads and Sparks was the place to go if you needed the good stuff. Of course, you needed the bank account to match your magical needs. Luckily I did.
Damien was a snob, which meant that Elijah wouldn’t make it through the door. No non-magic users would. Some shifters tried to argue that their shifting ability was magic, but it wasn’t good enough for the owner of Threads and Sparks. Castor was an exception as a familiar. Damien had tried to buy him off me the first time I’d walked in there. Castor hated that.
“I won’t be long, I just need a few bits of magic to help us down in the sewer,” I told the pack.
They seemed almost grateful to see me making preparations. It was already dark out, and none of us relished the idea of going down into the sewers. No one would back out, but any magic to make the trip easier was welcome. Liam had pulled up every map we could find of the tunnels beneath the city, and there were miles upon miles of them. As Liam reminded us, that was only those that had been mapped.
Threads and Sparks was in the high-class part of the city surrounded by old stone buildings that shimmered with fae magic. It was in stark contrast to the rest of the city which gave me the impression that this was a section the fae had created for themselves. A small group of sidhe spilled out of a heavy black door onto the dark street, laughing and joking in a language I’d never be able to learn. It was lyrical with sharp edges. Most fae spoke English while on the Earth plane, but some of the higher-born ones liked to remind those around them who and what they were. I’d always meant to learn a language they couldn’t learn just to speak it around them.
Damien’s place was a chic store with black-edged windows set into the pure-white stone of the three-storey building which sat between two ancient-looking pale-silver stone buildings. It was striking and always drew my eye the moment I got near to it. Everything about it was so crisp, clean, and precise. The large window showed a sparse interior with a few beautiful vials carefully placed upon small tables scattered throughout the cavernous space.
The magic was all hidden in lock boxes which were hidden behind complicated and dangerous security systems. I’d debating trying to help myself to some magic once, but my ward circumvention wasn’t up to scratch for the type of magic Damien was employing. The magic criss-crossed and intertwined in ways that made my head hurt just looking at it. If I so much as looked at it funny, I’d bring down multiple curses on my head starting at having my blood slowly boil and, while I waited for that to kill me, watching my fingers fall off while all of my fears manifested around me at once. The list went on. He was thorough, I had to give him that.
“Lily, it’s been too long,” Damien purred as he walked towards me.
The lean fae with deep-tanned skin and pitch-black hair greeted me with open arms. The deep-blue silk shirt didn’t hide the power than rolled off him or the efficiency of his lean muscles. His colouring and build was that of an elf, but he lacked their pointed ears or slightly sharpened teeth. My money was on an interesting mix. Elves were incredibly dangerous, thought to be the finest warriors to walk the planes.
“I need some fire magic,” I said.
“Phoenix or wild?”
“Just wild; I don’t have anything quite that special planned.”
Phoenix fire was rarer than hen’s teeth and had the price tag to match it. It would burn through anything in existence, but that seemed like overkill. It was good to know that Damien had some in if I got desperate. I hoped things wouldn’t come to that.
Wildfire would provide light and warmth should I need it. I planned on leaning on my starlight first to give myself night vision, but I wanted to ensure my ass was covered. Fire would act as a weapon, too, if I needed it.
Glancing around the room, I saw that Damien really did have everything. There was air magic from a Dervish. That would be powerful enough to bring down a few buildings, allow me to fly, or to move at high speed for quite a distance. I didn’t want to know the price tag for something like that, though. The unicorn magic was tempting. Unicorn magic was a huge power boost. It would make me better in every conceivable away. It was said to be more addictive than crack, though.
“Is everything ok? You seem a little distant.”
Damien wasn’t my friend. I swung by for some magic now and again. He was digging.
“Yea, I’m great. I was just looking at your selection.”
The walls on all sides were covered in small drawers. Each drawer had a small silver plaque on it with the name of the magic hiding within stamped into it. Every little detail was exact. The plaques were all centred perfectly, every edge lined up adding to the feeling of clean hard edges that filled the store. The drawers slowly changed colour in a sweeping gradient down the wall, from deep black ebony through to the whitest fae woods. It was an elegant and artistic display which added a pretty artistic touch the hard white edges of the rest of the space.
The tables spread throughout the middle of the room were all made from a deep purple wood with soft swirls of silver running through it. Each had a single vial in the middle of the table. The vials had all been engraved with complicated designs. Damien had said those engravings were what the magic within looked like to him.
Wandering over to the closest table I saw the vial flickered and swayed with deep ocean magic. It gently rolled against the glass rising and falling again in a lazy rhythm. The engravings were broad, sweeping, with touches of white at the very peaks. None of the vials out on display contained anything particularly special. They were there purely for aesthetics. Damien had said that he didn’t like the huge open space, it made the store look too much like an office space. The pretty vials caught people’s eye and made them look long enough to understand what was within.
“That’ll be two thousand,” he said as he held up a slender vial bursting with the finest wildfire magic.
I made myself smile instead of cringe
as I reminded myself I could afford it.
Twenty-One
I’d parked three streets over from Damien’s place, as there was never any parking around there. The fire magic was safely tucked inside my jacket, wrapped with protective magics to ensure the vial didn’t break. I’d press the fire down into my charm bracelet when I went home.
Something felt off. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. When I reached out with my magical senses to check the surrounding area, I felt nothing off. There were a couple of shifters meandering nearby, but I didn’t feel any malice there.
A pair of strong hands wrapped around my arms and dragged me into cold darkness. When I took my next breath, I was standing in a narrow alley a mile away. A pair of tanned men with brilliant golden eyes and soft jaguar spots shimmering over their skin were grinning at me. It wasn’t a friendly expression. As their teeth elongated, it was a threat of increasing intensity.
“Did you know that jaguars hunt large crocodiles for fun?” the taller one rumbled.
“Did you drag me into this alley to give me random nature facts?”
He laughed, a savage barking sound.
“We’re here to find out where Seth is. He’s been a very bad boy,” the taller one said.
“Seriously? A very bad boy? Are you going to spank him?” I said.
It probably wasn’t a great idea to be sarcastic to a pair of jaguar guardians, but I couldn’t help myself.
As much fun as it was to kid around, this was also an incredibly dangerous situation. One jaguar guardian under fair circumstances was a challenge. Two when they started with every possible advantage was suicidal. I was proud, but not so proud as to die before admitting that I needed to get clear and get backup while I had the chance. I carry a single spell in a priceless toy taken off someone who thought it was just a charm. It can be any spell, but a personal favourite is my pit trap spell, as handy for assassinating difficult targets as it is for making quick getaways.
With a flick of my wrist, I tossed the spell free of the artifact and, while they were distracted by the sudden appearance of a fully formed spell, I jerked free of their arms. A quick bit of simple earth magic applied to the building behind me to get its assistance in climbing later, I skittered away up the wall like the kid from The Exorcist as a pit too deep to see the bottom of opened beneath them and closed back up over the top once they were safely plummeting.