Feral Magic: An Urban Fantasy Romance-Thriller

by Nicolette Jinks

  Chapter Two

  I was nervous. Facing the music seemed scarier than running, more permanent.

  Sweat coated my palms when I looked down at my mug shot yet again. Though the subject had wild hair and was coated in dust, I knew that was my necklace in the photograph. I'd carved it from ebony wood and painted the butterfly wings with pigment from Picasso's paints.

  This whole ghost town was nothing but a series of portals. It was a dead railroad stop, still boasting the remains of a water tower for old steam engines. Shells of buildings surrounded me. Scattered in various remote locations, there were plenty of these portal stations. Charitable organizations and for-profit businesses were the primary contributors to these places. I liked Silverton because it was seldom used and I didn't have to elbow commuter traffic. Also, I'd managed to arrange for all of my favorite places to be linked up here.

  I let out a shaking breath, watching the pine trees for sign of the ghosts I felt tickling my skin. If I would have had my magic, I would have thought it was nothing but a guard spell. My gut twisted and I looked at the newspaper rolled up in my fist.

  PLEASE VISIT CONSTABLE BARNES AT DOOR 921, KING'S RANSOM MAGICAL ANTIQUITIES, IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION.

  A shop door? It was likely the easiest portal to access. Portals in the sorcering community came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, both literally and figuratively. For a simple single-rider Point A to Point B portal, a sound trinket or spell could do the trick. However, for a place which sees a lot of foot traffic, it was safest to establish a permanent portal. Father had taught me to think of it like a slide with a set start and end. Then there were the Open Door Portals. Any number of beginning points would take the rider to the destination. A professional had to make those, for very good reason.

  Myself, I didn't have the ability to cast spells. Yet, coming from a family of magically-inclined people, I had to have some sort of portalling capability. Meet my compass. It was simultaneously my most treasured and most abused trinket, enchanted with the best Earhart spell that grovelling could buy.

  Though I always had taken care of my Earhart compass with such pride, there was a crack over the glass and the brass on the back had gouges through etched roses. I wished I'd known what happened to it, what had happened to me.

  Door 921 was on the remains of a livery.

  And someone was already there, waiting. A skinny man with slicked back blond hair and a showman's smile. He was trying the portal I wanted to use. Relief hit me. For a second, I'd thought that it was someone who meant trouble.

  “Is there something wrong with the portal?” I asked, trying to act all normal.

  “No. But it is locked. Shopkeeper is likely out. It's lunchtime, I think.”

  “Oh.” I considered this information. Chilling out around here wasn't an option. Not with a bounty on my head and hunters on my tail. I didn't want to go down the doors I did know, and I didn't want to find out where the others went. Civilization was fifty-one miles away as the crow flies, to speak nothing of the mountain roads curving back on themselves. Hitch-hiking wasn't in my repertoire, and I didn't have the strength to use the compass. Not yet. Assuming that “Death” was wrong and the compass would work yet again. I glanced at the lock on the door.

  My key would fit the slot. Except that was forced entry. Hmm. I imagined it would be easier to explain why I broke into a building than why I hadn't turned myself in.

  Leave, I urged the man. Leave.

  We stood there, neither one of us leaving although we both ought to take the hint and return later.

  “Fera?” he asked. My heart triple pounded in my chest as I recognized a voice from the past. “Do you recognize me?”

  Not at first, no.

  And then I knew him in a flash.

  It was Griff, the creature who cursed me to a magicless existence ages ago. I thought I'd be angry when I saw him next, but I wasn't. Terror froze me in place, I couldn't have spoken even if I knew what to say.

  Suddenly, taking a random mystery door seemed very appealing.

  “How would you like an alternative to going to the dungeons?” he asked, rooting me to the spot.

  “I am not going to the dungeons.”

  He lifted one shoulder. “There is a slim chance our old friends may temper the sentence. They've grown up to be judges, have you heard? You'll see them if you go through that portal.”

  “Who?”

  “Leif and Lilly Frey. Who else?”

  Great, so of the original five, one of us is dead, two are law-abiding perfectionists, and one of us is on the run. Griff's name had been mentioned before in my presence. It was said he hadn't turned out too well. But he knew things, and I didn't.

  “Supposing I would go to jail. What would it be for?”

  “Breaking and entering. Vandalism.” His lip slanted in a faint smile. “Theft.”

  Ironically, all the things that I thought my barn was a victim of. I tried not to panic. “How would you know?”

  “It is my business to know.”

  Yes, yes it was. He was supposed to know all sorts of things. If someone wanted some spell made and they hadn't the money to afford his prices, he accepted another form of payment: information. Which made me really wonder why he was here, of all places, when he hadn't dared to show his face to me in years.

  The last thing I wanted was to be connected with him. Especially not to owe him something. I said, “I'll be fine. I'm innocent.”

  I tried to remember the dreams I'd had earlier. Bits came to me as I paused to breathe and wipe the sweat off my brow, or to rest my burned leg. Eventually I remembered a few things, which may have been real, or may have been tied together with strings of imagination.

  I had gathered the list the witch doctor had sent me within days, but I had spent a full week experimenting before I sent for the witch doctor. The larvae and fungi was my big issue. Nothing had worked, and if she had a trick, I wanted to learn what that trick was. Potion commissions were few, but paid enough to keep me going. Which was why I was thinking of a booth at Oberon's Market, perhaps.

  “You are absolutely sure? Would you happen to have a watertight alibi for the last few days?”

  Shit.

  “I have a feeling that you do,” I said sweetly. Because of course he would. There was a reason he wasn't in the dungeons already. I swallowed. “They can do whatever truth spell they want. It'll be fine.”

  He gave me a big smile. “I do love that about you.”

  “What?”

  “Your resilience. So quick to make the best of a bad situation.”

  He could be toying with me, but I couldn't tell. “How bad?”

  “Oh, I cannot speak without any hard evidence, naturally.”

  “Naturally.”

  “But, I suppose as we have nothing else to do but burn time, we can catch up on gossip.”

  I couldn't believe he was going to tell me. Thank goodness. “What kind of gossip?”

  “The kind that starts with your most recent client. The mysterious Meredith Cole.”

  I vaguely remembered her. Too vaguely. As if I was remembering a dream…from last night… “Oh,” I said. “Wait.”

  In the notebook where I kept all my records, I flipped to where a letter was held between the pages.

  Miss Feraline Swift,

  I write you in the most urgent matter. My house is out of control. It wants to kill me. Please help. I will pay double your asking price.

  Madame Meredith Cole.

  Had I answered it? Maybe. Probably.

  I had in my dreams. I'd been in a spook house with Railey. There had been a ghost hiding from us. It had been a nice house, a sorcerer's house. It was strange to see a ghost, even that of a child, living with spell-casters. The two seldom mixed. There had been a secret room with black magic written on the walls and a book depicting ceremonial bones.

  Except those were just mandrake dreams. Had to be.

  In the real world, then. Would I answer it?<
br />
  I thought back to the cupboards empty of all but rice and lentils and what I'd eaten for breakfast. All my savings lately had gone to buying potion ingredients. I probably would have gone to put food on the table and earn the entry fee for a booth at one of the magic marketplaces.

  Griff was waiting. I tried to blow the letter off. “So the woman was a bit paranoid. What of it?”

  I didn't like Griff's smile now. It was the Oh-Dear-Didn't-You-Know smirk of a jerk who was going to get his face punched in, except I didn't want to risk him not telling me what I didn't know.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Suffice it to say, she did not write that letter.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ah, but I don't feel like standing out in the heat any longer. It's so miserable. I'm afraid that unless we can go talk someplace private and cool, I won't be able to answer your questions.” He stared pointedly at my closed fist. “And Olrick mentioned paying you with a certain key which makes all doors magically open themselves.”

  “Did he?”

  “And if I leave without cooling down, I may find a nice bar to cool down in, where I'm sure people will be asking where I've been and who I've seen.”

  I was going to regret this.

  I huffed a sigh and dug out the key. My other ear popped in a moment of agonizing bliss, and I took a few seconds to savor it. Of course, I would win out on the air pressure battle just in time to go through another portal. Shrugging, I knelt down and ground my key into the lock.

  I felt it tug and twist as it formed itself to the tumblers, as it met with spells and soothed them down. Under my fingers, the key rotated and I heard a click, then the grind of a deadbolt, and the slip of a chain. It was as though a person were behind the door, unlocking it.

  The door glided inward easily even as it passed through two feet of cow dung and straw stratified over a century of ill use. The inside of the livery faded after a few inches, and I saw a wooden airplane hanging from a glass ceiling. Wooden flooring superimposed over the muck of an abandoned stable, and I knew I was seeing two places at once, like one photo printed over the top of another.

  “Shall we?” Griff extended his arm with a sweeping bow, inviting me to lead the way.

  Behind me the dusty ghost town was exactly as it always had been, but I thought I heard the distant chug of a train and the whistle of cowboys calling their dogs. I shivered. Taking a final breath of mountain air streaked with sweet tobacco, I braced myself for a rough portal. Best to get it over with. See what crimes I'd done that I couldn't remember. And pay for them. I stepped inside.

  The movement was as easy as stepping into another room, one filled with spider webs which caught on my skin. Shuddering, I rubbed my arms and shook out my hair, watching the floor for creepy crawlies even though I knew the sensation was probably a warding spell.

  I turned around and found myself in the promised antiquities shop. I was alone. I blinked in confusion, not sure what to think.

  “Hello?” I called.

  The reply was a lazy draft which smelled of dust and old books.

  I examined a stack of news papers, then saw where more stacks of it piled up behind the counter. Trinkets of all kinds—pens, barrets, jewellery, belts and letter openers were the most common—shone in the light beneath a glass display case. I waded through narrow isles, admiring the rows upon rows of books. Curiosities lined the walls, a sarcophagus, a suit of armor, a narrow tapestry depicting farmland and a dragon in her den.

  “Clever trinket Olrick made. We did not even set off any wards,” Griff said admiringly, shutting the great arched door behind him. “Lord Meadows would have cut our conversation uncomfortably short had he known that he had intruders.”

  “Lord Meadows?”

  “The man who runs this establishment. He has a reputation for being the sort of man that one does not cross for any reason.”

  Of course not. Just my luck. “I guess this is why he's in the same social circle as Constable Barnes?”

  “Same coven, not just social friends. And Leif and Lilly, too.”

  My actions were starting to look very bad. “What is this about Meredith Cole? Why didn't she write the letter? She dead?”

  “Some would say so. The official word is that she's on vacation. A very long one. Same with their son.”

  “So, either someone else is using her name, or she hired me to cleanse a house she no longer lives in.” Just-so-coincidentally this was while I was tripping out on mandrake. Or something. I doubted that I'd actually go on a house call while semi-lucid, which made this whole thing so much more confusing.

  “And, that isn't all. The missing Meredith Cole has also hired numerous other bogey busters. None of them have been seen since.”

  “Any rumors?”

  “All too few. In fact, there is a conspicuous lack of house staff in the Cole residence.”

  “It's not like house staff is common anymore.”

  “It is if you live on as much money as Mr. Cole has.”

  “Ah.” This wasn't looking good. “This is all suspicious, but it's nothing substantial.”

  “If you want substance, you'll have to find it yourself. How about it?”

  “How about what?”

  “Come along with me. You've escaped his grasp this long. Others are keen to learn how. I can keep you safe.”

  If I went along with the likes of Griff, Uncle Don, my father, and all the Hunters would swoop down to give my sorry butt a whooping unlike anything the dungeon guards would dare to do. Facing the music was one thing in my family; hiding beneath a sketchy gryphon's wing was entirely another. “No.”

  “If you stay to talk with the constables, what will you tell them?”

  “The truth.”

  Griff made a crooning noise. “The truth from a trixster is a slippery thing.” He paused. “Are you sure you won't come with me? I can calm Cole's wrath, protect you from further suspicion, and train up your magic.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “No one has been able to remove that curse.”

  Griff paused, his eyes glinting all too cheerfully. “Death has.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Perhaps a demonstration is in order. If you're feral, your magic will come to help you. And if you can't control it, perhaps you will reconsider my offer.”

  “Griff, what are you—”

  As I watched, he deliberately set off the shop wards by raising his hand and blowing a decorative wooden screen into smithereens. Half swung on its hinges, half flew through the air, exactly the same spell as the one which had broken into my home.

  Shards pelted the floorboards; one struck my arm. Blood seeped around my fingers. When I looked down, I saw bright red drops on the floor.

  “Griff!”

  He reached into a pouch at his belt and poured pea sized pebbles into his hand. Almost too late, I realized they were stones charged with spells, ready to be used in an instant. Muscles suddenly alive, I dove behind a bookshelf just as he threw them.

  They smashed upon an invisible wall. Sparks flew at the contact, and spells poured out of the stones and combated with the wards of the shop in a hissing and spitting battle of ice against green flames. Invading spells against the defending wards. Glad as I was not to have set them off myself, I was hardly happy to be in their path now.

  The flames spread, running down the lines of the floorboards and shooting up like a welding torch. My heart stopped in my throat when the flames rushed towards me. I scaled onto a bookshelf the height of my shoulder, wobbling on it as green flames ate the empty space I left behind.

  I smelled something molten. The discarded pebbles bubbled in puddles on wood planks. The shop itself, and its contents, remained exactly as they used to be, as though the fire around them was a mere illusion. But I felt the heat burning my skin. And I felt the air thinning in my lungs. I didn't know what I'd do, besides filter the air through my shirt and hope to outlast the invader.

  Griff tossed a fresh
batch of pebbles. More hissing. I heard the wood groan all around me, in the floor, in the bookshelves, in the wall and ceiling. A fresh shiver went through me as I thought that the glass above could shatter, and I'd be in the way of its fall.

  “What are you doing?”

  This time the flames died a little lower. Griff called fog around his fingers, occasionally revealing glimpses of a ball of ice growing in his palm. He knelt down and rolled the ball. It parted through the walls of flames and stopped in front of the register. Mist streamed away from the ice, snuffing out flames as it went, growing taller and stronger as Griff grew more strained.

  The wood groaned louder and louder, as though it were calling out. I felt bad for the wards and wished there was something I could do—but there was nothing, I hadn't been one of the people to put them up.

  Griff held onto his spell longer, just enough to clear the front portion of the shop, and his eyes opened and he stepped inside. He called out, “I have tripped the wards! They burn everything that does not belong. You must know by now that the only way out is with me. Step forward, and I will take you back with me. You can't stay in the flames for long.”

  I felt a chill at his words despite the sweat dripping down my back. My skin felt red, as though it were starting to blister, and my actual burn hurt. It hurt a lot. Griff had stopped his mists a mere five feet from where I hid, and I saw now that it formed a frost circle around him exclusively.

  “Why should I come with you?”

  “I think the two of us can help each other out.”

  I snorted and rubbed my arms, trying to hide them from the heat and not succeeding. I said, “You've come for my bounty.”

  His smile was a crease through taut skin. Sweat marked his hairline. His circle of frost receded a few inches. Griff lifted the Tribune and held it in the air. “Not for this bounty. Why would I bother talking to you? I'll teach you how to control it.”

  Control what? I thought, but felt a shiver run down my spine as I suspected his answer. Was it possible that I had regained my magic? But if I had, then I should feel it, I should know that it was there, I should be able to make it do things. I didn't feel it. I couldn't control it. It wasn't there, couldn't be there. Nevertheless I found myself saying, “Why should I go with you?”

  “If they believe whatever you tell them, and if you can find someone to take guardianship over you, you'll be as good as chained. You'll be under house arrest. You won't be able to go into public. You won't be able to do so many things. Come, now, it must be getting hot.”

  I hid my arms under my shirt now. It felt like a sunburn was growing on the back of my neck.

  Griff smiled and extended a hand in my direction. Frost went where he pointed, advancing toward me. I scooted backwards and slipped on my invisibility ring as he said, “You were a scint. But your magic is back now, and you can't control it, can you? Not many scints can overcome feral magic, but you've done it. That makes you valuable. Step forward. Come away. I'll teach you how to be a sorceress again. You won't get such an offer from a constable.”

  For a second, I stopped scooting.

  If my magic was back and it had come back feral, then he was right.

  Even though I didn't believe him, I did know that people in such a position were never treated well by law enforcement. It was a magical equivalent of unmedicated schizophrenia. The magic had a will of its own. It could take over a body and use it the way a sorcerer uses magic.

  I didn't know who he worked for. Then again, I also didn't know Constable Barnes.

  I felt like I was torn in half. His words made sense. Griff was clearly powerful, to be able to walk into a sorcerer's warded home ground like he had just done. He could keep me safe from those who hunted me. He could teach me.

  But I didn't trust him.

  I wanted to be here, even if I didn't know why.

  It had been a bad idea to come here in the first place. Everything involved in this was just a bad idea.

  The airplane swayed above me. A burst of wind tore through the busted door, ripped the paper out of his hand. The flames leaped around me, growing high and strong and hot.

  Griff laughed and held out his arms, his coat billowing about his waist as he embraced the wind. His frost circle drew tighter and tighter about him.

  “You can't control it at all, can you?” He turned to me and stretched out an arm. “At least you can speak coherently. You have a chance, if you come along.”

  I didn't say anything. The wind was running through my hair, breathing fresh air over my skin. I drank it in, felt the way it flowed down my throat, filled my lungs, the way it left my nostrils, the way it woke up every cell in my body and pulsed with every beat of my heart. I began to feel the way it funneled in one door and poured out a portal, kissing the flames with renewed power to drive back Griff.

  I felt my magic. I had magic again. Yet, I couldn't control it.

  Griff uttered quick, sharp words which slanted through the air, cutting through the wards of the shop, and gouged a hole into the fabric of the world. A tear in space appeared before him, on the other end a building began to come into focus.

  “He's coming back.” Griff snapped, his fingers moving in a hurried motion to finish the portal. “You need to come to me right now! Come!”

  His words spiraled through my thoughts, using my fear and indecision to batter my resolve and weaken reasoning. What had made sense before no longer did. It had been a mistake to come here, hadn't it? I should have realized that the witch doctor had gotten it right, that I did have my magic back, and that the last thing I should do was turn myself in. He was right. They'd chain me up one way or another, be it with physical restraints or treatments or even legislation. What had even convinced me to come in the first place?

  Yet my gut still said stay. Why?

  I stopped myself from crawling, realizing: he had put a spell on me! He wasn't inviting me to come along, he was coercing me.

  Pain stung my ears as the spell slipped, and I cried out as we fought a battle of wills. Through bleary eyes, I saw him intensify both portal and the spell on me, letting his protective ice fade. I felt my body scream in agony, demanding that I go forward, that I go with Griff. But if I were to so much as move a finger, I felt the air about me thicken, as though I were moving through water instead of air.

  “Come along!”

  I clapped my hands over my ears, feeling my illusion ring slip from my grasp and fall into my lap. I had meant it to be a distraction, but now I could only fight my own body, fight to contain panic as my own magic crushed in about me and I was drowning.

  Power surged through the shop and the flames bolted to the ceiling, flashing before my eyes so brightly that it felt like someone had flipped on the lights in the middle of the night. I squinted my eyes open in time to see a man step through the fire, his hair seeming to be the flames. Relief and nerves hit me at once, and my magic abandoned me to fan the fire about his hands.

  Green parted around him like a curtain, and he grabbed an ember and threw it. It struck Griff's frost shield, which collapsed about him.

  Griff jumped through the portal, taking with him a large vase slung under his elbow. Why he wanted it, I couldn't even guess. To make it look like a robbery? As the vase went by, I thought I should know the face painted upon the white surface, but I shook my head. The painting was a common motif of a blonde haired blue eyed beauty, and nothing more.

  “Stop!” yelled a shorter man who appeared just after the first. He moved much faster than his middle age and stature suggested. In a dark streak, he made it through as the portal was closing.

  The first man muttered something and ran to where the portal had sealed up. Jewels on his fingers glinted in the firelight. He seemed ready to try to open the portal again, but something stopped him. He turned and looked around, knowing that something was off but not understanding what that something was. The green and red of his eyes made my breath hitch. He had vertical pupils which blinked into normal
eyes so quickly that I thought I had imagined it.

  The shopkeeper, Lord Meadows, if Griff's rumors were true, snapped his fingers. The green warding fire sucked back down through the floorboards. Cracks in the wood all around me swelled shut and the floor reflected light with polish. The man closed his eyes and breathed in. Then he said, “Who is my trespasser?”

  Trespasser. I remembered what Griff had said my crimes had been. Breaking and entering. Vandalism.

  Theft.

  That slippery eel!

  All along, Griff had wanted that stupid vase!

  He'd set me up and I'd gone and put my foot in the trap, all for a couple of rumors.