Ashes of the Phoenix

by Jess Haines

  “It’s mine,” he hissed.

  “Stop him!” Lyra cried, beating her wings and claws against the shield.

  James didn’t need to be told twice. He uttered a counter-spell that took out the shield, and followed up with an incantation that should have frozen Edward in place.

  Before he could finish casting the second spell, Edward placed his palm against James’s chest and sent him careening across the sidewalk. He narrowly missed the fat trunk of a Canary Island date palm tree and slammed to a stop against the hood of a parked car hard enough to crack the windshield. The alarm blared, echoing down the street, and all James could do was groan as Edward straightened the collar of his button-down shirt and stepped out of the store, casually kicking Lyra aside in a tumble of feathers.

  Both of them were too stunned to move as Edward laughed and strolled away, mockingly waving the book by way of goodbye.

  Chapter 3

  Lyra’s eyes cracked open. While the pain was nothing compared to what she had experienced only a few minutes before when Edward had forced her transformation, a lingering ache in her chest made her first few breaths wheeze through her beak.

  The colors around her were dizzyingly vivid. She’d never needed glasses but everything, from the individual blades of grass peeking up between cracks in the sidewalk across the street to the spots on the ladybug marching sedately between her splayed legs, was as crisp and clear as if she was looking at them with a magnifying glass.

  Granted, a magnifying glass that had a weird UV effect, as if she’d stepped into the lair of Alice in Wonderland’s caterpillar. A nearby dandelion was a corona of color, no longer a simple yellow; the center was a vivid red-orange, and the petals surrounded it like a lion’s mane of white. The palm trees carefully placed every few yards on both sides of the street had blue-white splashes near their bases. Similar blue-white speckles were all over the sidewalk, and a few on the sides of buildings. Everything around her gave off such incredible colors that it was like seeing the world through the high-def lens of an alternate, cartoon reality.

  A few hard blinks didn’t dispel the LSD trip.

  She closed her eyes and counted to ten.

  Nope.

  Tucking away the little piece of her that was screaming in panic and wanted to sit and rock back and forth until the crazy world around her went away, she clung to the hope that James might know what in the hell had happened. More important, how to turn things back to normal and make her human again.

  He was still lying prone on the hood of the car. She slowly rolled to her feet, legs awkwardly spread for balance. Pigeon-like, head bobbing, she waddled over to him, squinting against the weirdly bright colors that she’d never noticed on his skin before. The tattoo-like markings made no sense, though a few were in familiar shapes that looked like something she might find in some of the tomes in the back room. Whatever they were, they didn’t look like the sort of thing you could get at just any body art and piercings shop. Not with the strange blue-white glow they were emitting, even under full sunlight. The symbols were different but had a similar phosphorescent quality as the one she’d seen on the back of Edward’s hand.

  Lyra nudged his foot with her wing. He didn’t react.

  With a whistling sigh, she stepped back. Feeling stupid, she spread her wings and gave a couple of half-hearted flaps. It didn’t accomplish much more than pushing her back across the sidewalk a couple of feet, her talons skittering over concrete. This whole flying business wasn’t as easy as the pigeons and sparrows that always hung out on the awning above the coffee shop across the street made it look.

  Trying a new tactic, she attempted to use her hind claws to climb up his pant leg instead. While she ended up having to use her beak to cling to his jeans as she inched her way up, it was more effective. She made her way up his chest, spreading her wings for balance as she used one foot to prod at his cheek.

  It took a moment, but soon he was squinting up at her, lifting a hand to shade his eyes. Then yelped as it settled in that the weight on his chest was a huge bird radiating heat like a furnace. He shoved at her reflexively.

  Lyra hopped back, flailing her wings.

  “Oooh, Mommy, look at the parrot!”

  A little girl coming out of the dance studio a few buildings down was tugging her mother’s wrist, pointing at the pair. Rubbing the back of his head with one hand, James hastily rolled to his feet, scooping Lyra up with the other hand, ignoring her indignant squawks as he held her to his chest and ducked inside the book store. He let her go as soon as they were inside, turning around to pop the lock and rest his brow against his forearm as he leaned against the door.

  “I’m really hoping you have an explanation,” he said without turning around, “because that guy having his hands on that particular book spells catastrophe on a level you can’t comprehend.”

  She paced back and forth, head bobbing in agitation. “Let me out of here. I have to find him. He has to turn me back!”

  James turned around, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It might have escaped your notice, but you’re not in any shape to go chasing after anyone right now. Best case, you’ll end up in a zoo. Worst case, he’ll figure out what he just walked away from and come back for you.”

  Lyra huffed, her chest feathers puffing out as she came to a halt in front of him. “What do you mean? Help me! Can you turn me back?”

  He hesitated. “I can try, but I’ve never seen a spell like this actually work. This kind of transformation shouldn’t be possible. I don’t want to hurt you...”

  “Too late for that,” she snapped. Then lowered her head, her crest going flat. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take this out on you.”

  He slumped to the floor, reaching out to skim his fingertips over her feathers. He examined the fine coat of ash it left behind, rubbing his fingers together to send tiny flecks to dance with the dust drifting in the sunbeams around them.

  “Tell me what you know. Did he give you his name? Did you hear the words of the spell he cast? Remember what gestures he made? Anything could help.”

  Lyra took to a nervous strut back and forth across the floor, recounting what details she could. James said nothing, taking it all in, though he frowned deeply upon hearing how Edward had gotten around the anti-theft wards. More so once she mentioned the symbol she had seen on the back of Edward’s hand.

  Once she had finished, James nodded, then sat forward. He ran his hand along the contours of her body from about an inch above her feathers. She could have sworn she felt his touch, even though he never made physical contact.

  “I don’t know how, but he’s given you what we call Sight. You shouldn’t have been able to see that mark on him, or the marks on me. Hell, even I can’t see them without concentration. Maybe it’s because of what you are now. Whatever the reason, you’re going to be—pardon the pun—the hottest commodity in town as soon as wind of what you are gets out. I need to think for a minute.”

  She poked at his foot with a claw. “Turn me back! You’ve got magic. You can do it, can’t you?”

  “This is way out of my league, Lyra. I can try, but chances are I’ll make things worse. You’ve seen what I do. This isn’t it.”

  Her wings fanned as she resumed stalking back and forth. “What the hell, James? You’ve been trying to get your hands on that book for weeks. Don’t give me that line of bull. You know something about this! I know you do!”

  He rolled to his feet, thrusting out an accusatory finger. “You let him have the book, so don’t play righteous with me. I told you it was dangerous but you didn’t listen. Listen to me now. I could kill you, Lyra. You’ll be dead if I screw up even an inch. This isn’t an illusion I can break. He completely changed you on a cellular level. Unraveling this mess is going to be a goddamned nightmare, even with the book. Not to mention what you are. If anybody in this town even gets a whiff of it, you’ll probably end up in somebody’s lab.”

  “What? Why?” she cried.

  �
�Why do you think? He turned you into a freaking phoenix.”

  Chapter 4

  Lyra’s beak dropped open. “A what?”

  “You know. Bird that catches on fire? Reborn from the ashes? Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it.” She glowered at him. He threw his hands up, then stalked toward the checkout counter. “What? You asked.”

  He followed the scent to its source, snagging the mug of now ice cold coffee she had tucked away on a shelf under the counter. He wrinkled his nose, but took a gulp of it anyway.

  She eyed the counter, then took a calculated leap, flapping her wings and landing on the countertop with a screech of claws on wood. She hadn’t counted on her own momentum and ended up sliding right into James’s chest, taking out the bookmarks, neatly stacked flyers for Friday night open mic at the coffee shop across the street, and cardboard display of the latest J.D. Robb release, in the process.

  With a low curse, he set the coffee mug to one side, plucking at the growing stain running down his shirt with one hand, the other carefully sliding under Lyra to help her onto the counter.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered.

  He didn’t respond, leaning down to pick up the mess on the floor. Grimacing as the cold, wet spot on the shirt stuck to his skin, he quickly stood back up and peeled it off. He tossed the shirt aside, giving Lyra an excellent view of his toned chest and abs. For a second—just a second—she completely forgot why he always got under her skin and simply admired the view. Even with the blue marks looking like the world’s cheesiest tribal tattoos done in neon lights, she couldn’t shake the recent, vivid memory of a more pleasant time when she’d seen him shirtless, and how tempting it was to entertain the thought of reliving that memory once he got her back to normal.

  Then, as he put the last bookmark on the counter, he turned to the till and popped open the register. She hissed, furious, one of her claws lashing out.

  “Get out of there!”

  He batted it away, gritting his teeth at the fine red lines her talons left behind. “Will you relax? I’m looking for that guy’s receipt!”

  Abashed, she turned away, ducking her head. There was no graceful way to shield her embarrassment; every move she made was a flamboyant swirl of feathers that made her even more flustered.

  “This would go a little faster if you told me where it is,” he said.

  “His credit card didn’t go through. I don’t think the decline slips will be any help, they don’t have much information.”

  He placed a palm on the counter and leaned over, silently counting to ten. He then turned dark blue eyes on her in a piercing look that had her flinching back.

  “Please,” he said, carefully enunciating every word, “stop making this more difficult than it already is. What did he pay with? Cash? Help me out here.”

  She looked around, then peered around the floor behind the counter. “There. On the floor.”

  James twisted around, then picked up the crumpled bill from where it had fallen behind the chair. He sighed. “Cheap bastard, but a clever one. Wizards usually are.”

  Lyra didn’t care for the note of admiration there, but she said nothing about it. She kept her beak busy picking up the mess of bookmarks and putting them back on the rack. James lost himself in a spell, streamers of light forming around the dollar bill and twisting around his hands, making her squint against it.

  If she didn’t get a handle on her temper, she might lose what little shot she had at having his help. It didn’t matter that she was going through the craziest crisis of her life. He was right; she might deal in arcane books, but when it came to the real deal, she was way out of her league. Right now, he was her best option.

  Her only option, if she was being honest.

  She could continue to be pissed at him for trying to rob her when this mess was over. Until then, she’d keep a lid on the snark, and try to shift her attitude to be helpful instead of questioning him every step of the way.

  Once she was herself again, she would revisit her attitude adjustment.

  The light swirling around his hands soon faded in a shower of dying sparks.

  “Got hi... oh. Oh, this is bad.”

  Lyra peered at the dollar bill in his cupped hands, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “Aside from the obvious, what now?”

  James hesitated just long enough for her to gather he was hiding something. As he shifted his attention off the bill and to her, his expression turned grave. “I know where he is, but we can’t follow him. Not yet.”

  She gestured with a claw for him to continue.

  “It’s a mage market. I can’t bring you there, you’ll attract way too much attention.”

  “I’m not going to let him get away that easy. I have to leave this store sometime to find the book. Just take me with you.”

  He ran a hand through his hair in agitation, dislodging a few flakes of ash that had settled there. He opened his mouth to object again, but she cut him off.

  “I know it’s dangerous. You can pretend I’m you’re familiar, can’t you? Nobody would mess with me if they think I’m bound to you.”

  That gave him pause. Resigned, he nodded. “All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Chapter 5

  James was at a loss.

  On the one hand, he didn’t want to see Lyra get hurt. On the other, if he let her out of his sight, he didn’t have a doubt in his mind that she would attempt to hunt that book down on her own.

  As he muttered a few words over his shirt, removing the stain, he avoided looking at her in case she might pick up on his nervousness. She had no idea both how valuable she was to magi and others who used components to cast their spells, and how badly he needed to get to that book before she did.

  Trouble was, he couldn’t take her to where the book was, or tell her why. He’d tried to take it before she knew what she had on her hands, but she’d caught him in the act and added those wards to protect it. Wards had never been his strong suit, and breaking them wasn’t going to put him back on her good side.

  So he’d worked odd jobs and pulled a few strings to get a chunk of cash together to purchase it legitimately—only to find the mess he had now walked into.

  Edward wanted the book for the same reason he did; they both owed debts to Victor Thorn, a powerful warlock who was sometimes joked about (never to his face) being the town’s very own Vito Corleone. While it was unlikely James would find a horse’s severed head in his bed if he ticked off Victor, it wasn’t a far stretch to believe that crossing the sorcerer could land him a pair of cement boots and a long drop off the nearby piers. Why waste the magic when there was a convenient dumping ground for bodies so close to home?

  As soon as James had made the mistake of mentioning the book containing spells of fire to Victor, that had landed him the task of bringing it to the warlock as repayment for his debts. Never one to hedge his bets, Victor must have sent Edward after hearing about the first failed attempt to collect the book.

  How he was going to keep this secret from Lyra during their search was a challenge he was in no frame of mind to deal with at that moment. He shrugged the shirt back on and settled her on his shoulder, hiding a pained wince as her claws dug in through his shirt. Though she weighed little as a bird, her new talons were poking his skin something fierce.

  “Stay quiet while we’re out there,” he told her. “We don’t need some tourist realizing you’re not really a bird. Or another mage to figure out what you are.”

  “Why is that such a big deal? Maybe they’ll help me.”

  “Or maybe they’ll use your parts for spells. A single phoenix feather can power a thousand spells—I’m sure you can imagine what they’d do with the rest of you—but even so much as a feather is as rare as hens’ teeth.”

  He snorted a laugh at her beady-eyed glare.

  “Sorry, I guess that was in poor taste. Let me think. Rare as a unicorn’s horn. Rare as a dragon’s scale. Rare as a real sighting of the Loch Nes
s monster. Better?”

  She shook her head, crest flaring. “Not by much. Come on, let’s go find that book. Hi-yo, Silver! Away!”

  With a roll of his eyes, he started forward. As they stepped out into the wet summer heat, he absently lifted a hand to steady her, then locked up using the key that had once allowed him access to far more than her store. Thankfully, she didn’t say a thing about it.

  Then again, she kept peering around, blinking as if confused. Maybe she hadn’t noticed that he had never returned his key. If she was truly seeing the ley lines and wild magic swirling through the world around her, he had no doubt she was going through some sensory overload in addition to whatever stress had been piled on her from the shapeshift.

  It was hardly unheard of for a person to go through a shift and experience some trauma in the process, but usually there was a predictable (if unfortunate) reason for said appearance of the person’s animal side. Either a werewolf bite or the activation of a select set of genes passed down from shifter parents. There were spells that cast illusions that might make a person look like a shifter, but true metamorphosis was rarer than a phoenix.

  What had happened to her was an anomaly unlike anything he’d ever seen. As he walked, he wracked his brains, thinking of any and every variation of a transmogrification spell he had ever cast or seen used by another mage. No matter which way he looked at it—and he had tried not to tip her off as he scanned the changes to her body and ran his fingers over her aura—this was a brand of magic that required the book, and quite possibly a level of skill beyond his abilities, to reverse.

  He thought of all this, squinting against the Florida sun and wishing mightily that he hadn’t forgot his sunglasses on the kitchen counter in his apartment.

  Luckily, the Tidal Tomes was not too far from the tourist trap known as St. George Street. A pedestrian-only thoroughfare, the street was considered the heart of the city of St. Augustine, and was full of art galleries, restaurants, and quaint, unique (read: tacky) shops. While many of the buildings had been reconstructed, there were plaques on many of them denoting their historical significance. It didn’t do much to help the chintzy feel to some of the souvenir shops or snack shacks that all did a brisk business during tourist season, but it did make for some interesting reading about some of the buildings built over the bones of one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the United States.