by D. R. Rosier
Katia kissed all three of us, “I’m going to use your desk to get that stuff set up.”
I nodded, “Alright, should we put a second desk in here, or we could transform one of the other bedrooms into a second office. I don’t think we’re having seven kids.”
Katia laughed, “Damned right we aren’t, a second office? I’d rather be in here with you, but I’ll probably be on the phone a lot getting things set up, and that would distract your studying.”
I grinned impudently, “Fine, you’re my manager, so get it done.”
Katia glared, she was damned sexy doing it too, and I kissed her breathless to shut her up before she could start, and then quickly stepped back. Julia had perfect timing, and got us out of there before Katia could recover from my sensual assault and get me back. I had no doubt she would later though, our relationship had always had an element of the playful teasing in it, and I didn’t want to lose that despite the crazy ass circumstances we found ourselves in.
The snake shifter mansion looked more like a castle or keep than a mansion. A gigantic red brick edifice, that brought to mind the word behemoth. I knew the snake and wolf shifters were the most plentiful, but it hadn’t really sunk in until I took in their pack house. If house could be used. It was three stories from the front at least, and had a lot of rooms, though how many I didn’t hazard a guess.
I followed Julia up to the front door, with Lilith at my side. We had to wait almost two minutes before Damon arrived at door.
I nodded politely, “Head Alpha.”
He replied, “Warlock, before we begin, I wish to know exactly what these wards will do.”
I said, “They won’t be the same as the others. I keyed their protections and defense by two parameters, they had to have violent intentions, and they have to be possessed. The wards won’t do anything except defend against a vampire attack. First, it will physically deny them entry, second, it will put them to sleep.”
He asked, “Sleep?” a little taken back. Perhaps because it was non-lethal?
I nodded, “They’ll be rendered harmless, then you can decide if you want to kill them or not, or capture and question. It will protect your people while giving you the greatest number of options, and leave the decisions in your hands. There are other benefits as well, the wards against earth, air, water and fire will protect the building from things like floods, earthquakes, accidental fires, and strong wind storms. Within reason of course.”
He nodded, “Within reason?”
I shrugged, “It will work fine to stop a fire from a lightning strike, or even an untended candle or electrical short, but it has limits. A determined arsonist would succeed.”
He said, “Alright, and all seven will be the same?”
I nodded in agreement.
He waved, “Follow me.”
I followed him into the large mansion, and saw the hallway went straight back, as well as to the sides into stairwells, followed shortly by hallways. Deeper straight ahead, a good hundred feet, was a second hallway which broke left or right. There was a large window there, and I was shocked at just how large the place was. They had a very spacious center courtyard, and I could see the house was a large box structure surrounding it.
Through the window in the courtyard it looked like a jungle, and there was a greenhouse ceiling covering it all, with various pipes I assumed were used to increase the humidity and heat the place. In short, it was a snake’s playground.
It wasn’t lost on me that we hadn’t ran into anyone else, and I wondered if he’d cleared the hallways to our destination. That didn’t really surprise me, and it was probably just as well. We followed him through several more hallways and then down into a basement. This first pack house would take me hours, it was incredibly huge and I’d have to ward the whole thing. The bigger the building, the larger the amount of wards needed, and the more magic I’d have to channel into them.
It was going to be a long day I decided, especially with Damon looking over my shoulder, as I cast my first earth spell and inscribed the first set of wards into the foundation…
Chapter Nine
Samantha woke up on a hard stone floor with a splitting headache, and her mind quickly intoned a healing spell. Nothing happened. Her eyes popped open in alarm, as she realized all her usual protection spells and various other spells were gone from her mind, not to mention she didn’t feel magic at all. She groaned as she saw she was in a cell, one that suppressed magic.
She was helpless, and that feeling made her angry, but cautious.
She looked around the room, there was no one else there but her. She also felt grimy, gross, and annoyed that she couldn’t use her magic to clean up and make herself presentable. She didn’t think she was a fussy person that way, but she’d never been cut off before, and was used to looking her best.
Most of all, she felt betrayed by the people she trusted. She knew she’d screwed up politically, but she’d always been loyal and those idiots knew she wasn’t interested in taking one of the council spots. At least, she thought they’d known, apparently not. While the charge Jake had made against her was technically true, things like that weren’t uncommon in the ranks.
It was just a convenient way for the council to make her persona non-gratis. She felt a little uneasy about being powerless, and was a little worried they might mean to get rid of her in a more permanent way. The thought would have been unthinkable just days ago, but now that she knew the laws were only used to keep the council in power, and otherwise ignored when they conflicted with their best interests, she really couldn’t be sure what they were capable of.
She shivered, a five-year-old mage could kill her right now, easily. She really hated being defenseless.
The prospect of dying scared her, but to her the other option of being fired and locked out of her chosen profession and mage government service was almost worse. Investigation and magic was her life, her passion, and it was an escape from the fact that she’d never really dealt with people all that well. She was the black sheep in her family, and uninterested in marrying for power, influence, or because a man had good genes to pass on to her children.
She’d always wanted more. Yes, she wanted to be admired for her prowess and ability in magic, but she also needed to be recognized for herself, Samantha Antonin, not just her power. A cold calculated mating had never appealed to her, to the horror and disgust of her parents. She wanted to be… desired and cherished, for her magic, mind, body, and soul. In other words, for all that she was.
She wasn’t stupid, she knew that would never happen, not in mage society at least, which brought her back full circle, to the fact that she was about to lose that hiding place, where at least in her investigations and magic she could feel useful, and escape her ridiculous wants in that focus.
No, she had already lost it. It was just a matter of if she’d leave this cell alive, or not.
What would she do if she got out? She could still research and improve her magic, perhaps even beyond the ground-breaking advancements she’d already made, she was still young after all. Twenty-five wasn’t even a tenth of her life span, assuming it wasn’t cut short that is. Still, that wasn’t enough, and would totally isolate her from people, it hadn’t the best, but at least she had professional colleagues in her role as investigator, and met new people. Not true friendships perhaps, but better than nothing.
She frowned. She didn’t think she wanted too much, were her desires really unreasonable? She knew humans had it, and she knew the warlock had it too, with his human mate, and perhaps the other two as well. She knew she was a little obsessed with the warlock, but the truth was, despite being a genius, an excellent investigator, and brilliant with magic, she was lonely. What she’d seen in him was what she’d looked for and not found in so many others, Katia was a very lucky woman.
The truth was, performing magical research as her only outlet would destroy her, and be a hundred times worse.
She wondered if she could do something
private that way, offer her services as an independent mage separate from the government to the shifters and vampires, but chances are she’d be shut down hard by the council. All it would take is a phone call from Carlos, and the vampires and shifters wouldn’t deal with her. They might even label her a rogue if she tried, mages that didn’t work for the government normally had jobs in the human sector, and led normal lives.
She knew that wouldn’t work for her either, a human couldn’t share her passion with her.
She sighed, and then bit her lip in thought. The mage council could stop her from working with vampires and shifters, but what if she offered her talents to Andrew? They’d probably declare her rogue, but she didn’t think they’d be able to stop her. The wards in the council room were formidable, but outside that room she doubted they could take her.
Was she really considering this? She knew Andrew wasn’t, and could never be hers, not in the way she dreamed and wanted a man like him, but she was sure he’d at least the potential to be friends. It wasn’t even really him the person, he just epitomized the ideal relationship she’d always wanted in her mind. For all she knew, she’d built it up in her head.
She was already, or would quickly be blacklisted by all mages anyway, so what would stop her?
The idea was insane, would she really offer her consulting services to the warlock, when she called and told him to avoid the rest of the mages? She owed him that call, after she’d been used as a patsy, at the very least. She wasn’t so sure about the other part though. She was almost sure he’d accept though, he was new at this, and her expertise could help him learn much faster, and also subsidize her own research.
If the mages didn’t want her, or want to satisfy her needs, then she shouldn’t care what they thought. She’d have to think about it though, deciding that with a headache while helpless in a cage wasn’t exactly the best circumstances to start planning her future.
A cleared throat knocked her out of her musings. She looked up in surprise to see Carlos looking down at her. She didn’t even hear him come in, she hated when she lost connection to the world around her, but it happened all the time. She got lost in her own thoughts. She felt loomed over, and didn’t like it at all, so she slowly stood up, ran her hands through her hair, straightened her shirt and blazer, and then smoothed her pants.
She grimaced, it was the best she could do. She knew her hair was a lost cause without magic, people always said her strawberry blonde curls were beautiful, but they tangled all the time, how did human women even deal with that?
Carlos asked, “Do you understand your position?”
She nodded, “I think so, why don’t you explain it, just to be sure.”
Carlos looked around uncomfortably, he was clearly squeamish about his tactics, but just as clearly, that wasn’t going to stop him.
“If anyone else asked me that I’d have said they were screwing with me,” he sighed and gathered his thoughts, “You’re out of government, and the charges against you have been suspended. If you attempt to challenge anyone on the council, the charges will be brought against you, your time in government is in the past, don’t let it come to that. The vote on whether to prosecute now was rather close, so I’d advise you to join the public sector and keep your head down.”
She sighed, “It’s what I figured, I was just afraid it might be even worse.”
Carlos opened her cell, “If you want, I can arrange some contacts for you, help you find a job.”
She gazed at him as she walked out, and decided he was being genuine. No doubt as a salve to his conscious for being a power hungry piece of offal. She also let out a sigh of relief as she felt her access to magic come back.
Carlos said, “I’ll leave you to pull yourself together, and you know the way out.”
She watched as he turned and walked out.
She cast her partition spell, followed by protection spells. Fire, water, air, earth, general magic, and physical. Then she cast the protection spell she’d designed to counter the stealth gossamer infiltration magic she’d designed, just in case she ran into anyone that figured out something similar. She knew she was exceptionally intelligent and creative with magic use, but she was hardly the best, there was always someone better, right?
Then she prepared several other spells, telekinesis and levitation among them. The others for various other encounters, where stealth or quick offense would be necessary.
Once she felt safe, she cast spells to clean herself up, fix her hair, clean her clothes, healed her headache and any other damage to her body, no doubt from her fall to the ground when the wards put her to sleep.
She blew out a breath, and finally felt safe. She hadn’t been unguarded by magic like that since she was fourteen, almost eleven years. She walked over to the evidence locker, and grabbed her cell phone and purse, and then headed toward the front door. Several of her colleagues wouldn’t even look at her as she passed them by, and she felt tears gather in her eyes but pushed it down. She wouldn’t show weakness, not here, not now.
Thank goodness, she didn’t run into Jake, or she’d have started her fugitive status just five minutes after being released.
She spent the morning thinking about her life, and where it was going, while she went to IHOP for breakfast, and did a little shopping. Summer was coming, and she picked up a few new cute but professional looking sundresses, and about ten pairs of shoes, which cheered her up a bit.
Then she went home, and thought some more about what she should do. Her apartment was nice, but kind of small. Just one bedroom and bath, living room, and a decent sized kitchen. Most of her earnings were in the bank. She’d never gotten a better place because… well she wasn’t really sure why. Maybe she’d just never truly given up on the dream of finding a man that would want all of her, not just her magic. She didn’t need bigger, and what was the point on spending money for a big home, if she’d just have to move again when she found that man.
She realized her whole life had kind of revolved around that, waiting on that to happen.
She didn’t want a human job, and she still had her own research. She needed more though, and had ran it through her mind a bunch of times. The only option she really had, which would allow her to share her passions with others, and maybe even make a true friendship for once, was to offer her services to the warlock. Dare she hope for more than one friend?
The mage government sure as hell wouldn’t be doing it. Which reminded her she needed to call him for more than one reason, she still owed him a heads up for her unwitting part in the deception to kill his guardian along with Andrew himself. She knew she was a bit scatter brained at times, and decided to just do it and get it over with, before she got lost in her mind and descended into foolish dreams again.
Whatever the reality of it turned out to be, it had to be better than being a hermit, the crazy mage lady who worked on her magic and did nothing else.
She dug through her purse, and discovered the card was missing. They must have searched her purse and taken it out. She wondered if anything else was missing. She frowned in annoyance, and cast a memory spell on herself, a picture of the card as she had seen it at the restaurant popped into her mind’s eye, and she programmed the business and cell number into her phone. Then released the spell.
She decided the business number first, and dialed.
“Moore residence,” answered a pleasant female voice.
She recognized it as Katia’s from her modified scry spell she’d used to spy on Andrew that afternoon. She blushed as she recalled Andrew’s naked body, and Katia’s, as the woman cried out in ecstasy beneath his firm thrusts…
She shook her head, clearing that thought. She hoped she’d get over that soon, she couldn’t work with him if she always imagined him unclothed and having sex… while wishing it was her.
“Hello, this is Samantha Antonin, can I speak to Andrew please?”
Katia replied, “I’m afraid he’s out all day, can I take a message?”
>
She ignored the stab of disappointment she felt.
“Umm, could you tell him that he was right about the mage council playing both of us. I no longer work for them, and am… independent now. I also wanted to offer the same consulting services I’d previously offered on behalf of my government in good faith, just don’t use the office number on the card I gave, use the cell.”
Katia asked, “Like the analysis of his wards you did? He was very impressed, and learned a lot from it.”
She blushed in pleasure at the compliment.
She replied, “Exactly.”
She’d just hoped that he’d call her back, in the meantime she’d work on her own stuff, and slowly go crazy. She realized she was being a bit melodramatic, but she truly was worried about it, air mages weren’t meant to be loners, it wasn’t in their nature.
Katia said, “Would you be interested in full time employment instead?”
She froze, surely she didn’t hear right, “What?” and then she winced at her clueless tone.
Katia said, “Full time employment, work for Andrew instead of just consulting.”
Her thoughts were bouncing around, finally they settled on a somewhat coherent thought.
She replied, “What kind of responsibilities?”
“Primarily education. He studies hard, but often has to stop to look in other books for explanations on explanations, and so on for real understanding. It slows down his progress a lot. I was thinking having you around to answer questions and perhaps even guide his studies, he’d get more done in a shorter time. Other things would include an analysis on our home wards and possible improvements, and there’d be the possibility of field work. Also, advice on how to deal with the political landscape here in Seattle, we already have a shifter point of view for the local politics, but a mage’s wouldn’t hurt.”
She asked, “He’s okay with all that?”
Katia said, “I’ll run it by him, but I’m sure. He was impressed by you and your integrity. Of course, if you do accept, you’ll need to swear a pact not to do harm to him or any in his house, which would only be binding while you’re employed and in our home.”