Seers Stone (Hidden Alchemy Book 1)

by Holly Evans

  We made our way towards the zoo. It was near the heart of the city, so we were able to walk around the perimeter and get a feel for the layout and security while casually wandering. The outside fences were sturdy and practical. They were too tall and smooth to be able to climb. The interior seemed to match the rest of the city in that it was clean, neat, and grey. We stopped in a small cafe with a good view of the zoo and watched to see if any security guards did their rounds, and if so, how often. Conversation was quiet and stilted. Everyone was too focused on the horrors that lay within the bounds of those fences.

  Through the course of the day, we discovered that the zoo was a very minimalist affair with security guards dotted at set points rather than patrolling. The house itself was near the north end of the zoo, allowing it to look over the main attractions and dominate the horizon. We didn’t look at what the attractions were. None of us wanted to know what lay within. Even Erin had lost some of her bounce by the time we got back to our room. We ordered room service. None of us could face being back out in the city.

  “What if we don’t get the stone tomorrow?” Erin asked.

  “We’ll deal with that if or when it happens,” Logan said with a smile.

  The weight of that place hung over us. We looked for distractions. Erin put on a movie. Tyn pored over the map of the zoo and internalised the layout of the paths and escape routes. Logan pulled me into his lap and read through the notes that we had on the stone.

  “Will you hold it, Kit?” he asked me quietly.

  I shook my head.

  “No. It was tempting when I first heard about it, to have my buried potential brought out, but I don’t want to miss out on the experiences and adventures that something like that shortcuts. You?” I asked.

  Logan smiled.

  “No. I have my little bit of magic, that’s good enough for me,” he said.

  Logan was a third-tier earth elemental. He couldn’t really move earth, but he could speak with it. If he placed his hand on a rock or even wood, it would talk to him. It sounded like a curious gift, and it had certainly helped him when he was treasure hunting. Some people would have been disappointed to be a lower tier with magic, but Logan had taken it with grace and a smile. He’d said he didn’t need to be flashy anyway when he’d turned eighteen and it was official that he wouldn’t gain any more magic.

  We all headed to bed early with plans of getting a good night’s sleep and being ready for the coming day and all that it held.

  Tyn refused to stay still during breakfast the next morning. He insisted on pacing around the living area. I didn’t dare tell him he was welcome to remain in the hotel room. He gave me a death glare every time I so much as thought it. We attached the bare essentials to our person, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. I double- and triple-checked that I had the leather pouch for the stone on me, along with my silver kris blade and the pouch of illusion powder. Who knew if we’d need to hide for a few minutes? It would make all the difference in a difficult situation. I didn’t have much left, but it was better than nothing.

  We hid our blades. They weren’t legal in that city. I tucked the alchemy pouch under my leather jacket for fear of someone seeing it. Tyn set his shoulders back and lifted his chin. He was ready. We headed out into the city with steely determination. We were going to face down the horrors and come back with that damn stone.

  47

  Of all the places in that awful city, the zoo was the worst. I’d heard about such places, but I’d hoped that I never needed to step foot in one. There was some twisted humour in the fact that the man who had bought the Seers Stone, the artifact to bring forth hidden magical abilities, ran a zoo that showcased magical beings. Tyn froze at the large black gates marking the entrance to the zoo. His breathing became short and sharp, his pupils dilated. We couldn’t just leave him in the city by himself. We needed him. It was too late for him to go back to the hotel room. We were committed. Logan looked at me with concern etched on his face.

  I walked to Tyn, who was staring unseeing at the simple sign over the gates. It was simple, black paint on glossy white metal:

  zoo

  Three letters that formed a word with such meaning in that moment. It was a place that had stripped sentient beings of their homes, their freedom, their lives, all for entertainment.

  “Tyn, we have to finish this,” I said softly as I touched his arm.

  His attention snapped to me and he frowned.

  “They’d put me in one of their cages if they knew what I was…” he said in a whisper.

  I took a risk, I knew he hated being touched, but I needed to show him some form of support. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him into a gentle hug. He went rigid before he relaxed against me.

  “We won’t let that happen. I promise we won’t,” I said.

  Erin and Logan had come over and joined us. Erin wrapped her arm around the Cait Sidhe’s back.

  “We’ll fight with everything we have for you,” Logan said with a fierce smile.

  Logan remained at a small distance. He was an imposing man, and the Cait Sidhe was already at his very limit. We were trying to comfort him, not push him over the edge.

  “If someone so much as thinks about harming you, we’ll end them,” Erin said, and I believed her.

  I remembered the way she had poked the woman with the end of the broken chair. She had a ferocity in her that had potential to be terrifying. I supposed that she was half predator - that pretty, delicate exterior hid many depths.

  She gave us a mischievous smile and whispered conspiratorially, “Nymphs aren’t as sweet and innocent as they look, and I certainly have my father’s fire.”

  “No offence to you,” Tyn gestured at Logan and me, “but I’ll be sticking with her,” he said with a broad smile as he tilted his chin in Erin’s direction.

  We laughed and the tension slipped away, the moment having passed, thankfully.

  We walked through the gates into the zoo as a tight group. The entry fee was barely more than a cup of coffee. Somehow, that seemed horribly offensive. I felt as though people should at least be paying a good sum to see the beings within the confines of those walls.

  The zoo was relatively quiet. I assumed that most people were in work, and it was the off season. Whatever the reason, it made it a little easier to stomach and navigate. Like the rest of the city, it was drab and grey. Worn concrete formed the winding paths between the boxes that acted as the enclosures. I winced as I read the signs for mermaids, crow shifters, dire wolves and more. They were all sentient beings. The shifters would have been able to hold down jobs and live normal lives in any other city. My heart broke to think how they were suffering. Had they been stolen from normal lives elsewhere? Had they grown up in one of those awful enclosures? I didn’t know which was worse.

  “He’ll be in the big house,” Logan said after a painful silence where we all stood and took in the surroundings.

  “We’ll need a distraction,” I said.

  The plan was simple: figure out a distraction, get into the big house, steal the stone, then high-tail it back to Prague. I was a treasure hunter, not a master thief.

  “We should get a feel for the layout of the zoo and see how things work, then we can figure out a distraction,” Logan said.

  It was one thing to see it from the outside, but getting a closer look at where the keepers and guards were, how the enclosures worked, and such would help.

  “Left. We’ll start on the left side and work our way right,” Erin said.

  We set off at a reasonable pace, trying not to look too closely at the enclosures. We kept Tyn in the middle of the group, trying to protect him as much as we could. He could pass as a non-magical human with ease, but his psyche was battered and bruised enough as it was.

  A ball of rage formed in my stomach as we passed the nymph enclosure. The women had been clothed in heavy cloth and leaned against dying trees surrounded by bare earth. Their eyes were dull and their hair hung lim
p around their thin shoulders. They were dying a horrible death while people passed them by without a care in the world. Erin’s hands clenched into tight fists as she marched past them with nothing more than a passing glimpse. I had no doubt she saw the potential of her mother in there.

  Part of me understood that these people were scared of magic, that they were reacting out of that fear, but the larger part wanted to make them suffer as these poor beings were.

  48

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. Perched on man-made boulders on the far side of the dingy pond was a trio of mermaids. The pond was barely twice as long as they were. I pressed my hand to the glass and looked at the mermaids in horror. They were supposed to be swimming in vast oceans, not locked away in some box with murky water. It didn’t even look like salt water, did the zoo know they were supposed to be in salt water? To add insult to injury, one of the poor creatures had short hair. It lay in jagged layers shorn close to her scalp. She gazed straight ahead, her hand wandering to the empty space where her lustrous long hair should have been. To cut a mermaid’s hair was to cut off one of their fins. What awful cruelty these people had shown.

  The upper halves of the mermaids were covered in fine, delicate scales that shifted colour with the maids’ moods. Once they hit sexual maturity, some of the scales changed colour so that they stood in contrast to the rest of the torso. The resulting markings were completely unique to each mermaid and were thought to reflect their persona. The young one with the shorn-off hair had thin black lines zig-zagging down her back and arms, looking like delicate cracks in her very being. When she turned to look at us, I saw the red lines streaking her cheeks like fresh blood. Nothing deserved to suffer the way she had, all for what? Entertainment?

  “Beautiful, aren’t they? Shame about Arian. The trainer cut her hair, thinking she’d be prettier that way. She’s refused to perform in the shows since. We’re replacing her next week,” a keeper said next to me.

  I swallowed down my rage and bile before I gave her a polite smile and what I hoped was a fascinated expression. Tyn fidgeted next to me and refused to look at her, his rage sparking just below the surface.

  “Have you seen the dire wolves?” the keeper asked. “They’re popular, and usually active at this time of day.”

  My mind went to the wolf familiars in Norway. My heart broke a little.

  “No, are they nearby?” I asked.

  “Just over there,” the keeper gestured to the right.

  We thanked her and went in that direction, more to be away from her than any desire to see the poor wolves.

  “I took photos. Tyn said Fein has connections with the magical beings welfare board, he’ll hand the photos to them. We can’t free them, but we can improve their conditions,” Erin whispered.

  I took a calming breath. We couldn’t free them. As much as I desperately wanted to, we had no way of transporting them all, and they likely couldn’t survive in the wild anymore. The best and only thing we could do was retrieve the Seers Stone and move on. We must choose our battles carefully, and that was not one of mine.

  We had done a complete tour of the zoo, and found ourselves entirely without appetite. We sat down on a wooden bench in front of the enfield enclosure, a small patch of grass with a straggly tree in the middle. The large fox with eagle forelegs and feathers that ran down its spine and into its tail looked at us with intelligent eyes. It rested its fox head on its eagle legs and watched us, ears forward, listening.

  “He’s an arrogant prick. The stone will be in his office. His office will be the large room with the best view over the zoo,” Logan said.

  “We can release a number of beings and cause complete havoc as the distraction,” Tyn said.

  “How do you plan on releasing them?” I asked.

  I’d looked at the enclosures as we’d walked around. They were locked up tight, likely to stop thieves.

  Tyn leaned in and gave me a conspiratorial smile. “I’m a rather good thief. Trust me, I can open those enclosures.”

  “I’m going with Tyn, I can help pick the locks,” Erin said.

  I looked between them. Any thoughts of their innocence had been entirely shattered. Truth be told, I was quite proud. My gaze lingered on Erin for a beat too long and Tyn rolled his eyes. She was full of secrets, and I was increasingly eager to unravel them. There would be plenty of time for that at a later date.

  “So, we’re just going to rock up to the house and steal this stone?” I asked Logan incredulously.

  He ran his thumb along my jawline.

  “You’re in the company of thieves, Kit, just follow my lead,” he said with a soft growl.

  I swallowed down my desire to bite his bottom lip and focused on the task at hand. I hated not being in control, but if I was going to relinquish it to anyone it was going to be Logan.

  49

  Logan slipped his arm around my waist and led me along the narrow path between the neatly trimmed rose bushes and ornamental orange trees. It was the picture of elegance, with intricate mosaics carefully framed by delicate blue flowers occasionally popping up on either side of us. I leaned into Logan and smiled sweetly at the tourists we passed on our way to the house.

  When we had a moment alone, I hissed, “Are we seriously just going to walk up to the front door?”

  “It is open to the public…” he said, mischief dancing in his eyes.

  I had to smile. He was incorrigible.

  “You still have some that stealth dust on you?”

  My hand reflexively went to the small leather pouch on my hip.

  “I do, but it’ll only last five minutes, seven if we’re lucky.”

  “That’s all we’ll need. We can get pretty close to where I bet the office is as tourists.”

  The full extent of the house was revealed as the path opened out into a grand lawn complete with obligatory water feature. It was ostentatious to say the least, with large pillars flanking the main entranceway and a multitude of stained-glass windows. Well-worn gargoyles perched at the corners of the three-story building, their gaze sweeping over the entire zoo laid out before them. An involuntary shudder passed through me. It was soulless and grey, despite the bright colours in the stained glass. I swore that the air was cooler the closer we got to the building, too, as though it were drawing the energy from around it. Of course, that was foolish, I was just letting my imagination run away with me. The zoo playing with my mind.

  “Don’t worry, Kit, I’ll look after you,” Logan teased.

  I glared at him and marched up the shallow steps to the broad wooden door of the building. He knew damn well I didn’t need looking after, but I would miss his teasing if he ever stopped.

  The interior was overwrought and flashy, with thick gilt frames surrounding heavy oil paintings of people in their finery. Heavy deep-red carpets covered the floors and gaudy murals had been painted onto the high ceilings. Everything about it screamed money, and not the classy, dignified type of money, either. The entire place put me on edge. The lack of magic tugged at my senses. The entire city was without magic, but somehow it was even more prominent within the confines of that house. It felt like a void, cold and cruel.

  We ignored the small signs pointing towards the ball room and such on the ground floor and made our way up the wide staircase. Small clusters of visitors gathered around art pieces and antiques. I rolled my eyes and allowed Logan to guide me up to the second floor. I had no interest in the trinkets. I wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible.

  “There,” he whispered as he gestured to a closed off portion of the house that would have a panoramic view over the zoo.

  “And what if you’re wrong?” I whispered back.

  He grinned at me. “Then we’ll figure it out. We always do.”

  I pulled him into a dark alcove and kissed him fiercely while I tugged the leather pouch free from my belt. An older woman made disapproving noises and muttered something as she walked past. Logan took the opportunity to press his fir
m body against mine and gently pin me to the wall. I ignored the woman and fought to focus past Logan’s nips down my neck, which were forming goosebumps and sending shivers down my spine. It really wasn’t the time to get lost in all of that. The moment the hallway was clear, I scattered the dust over our heads, rendering us invisible for a short period of time. I really hoped that Logan’s theory was accurate.

  He took my hand in his and we ducked under the thick velvet rope blocking off the rest of the hallway. We jogged down the hall. I was glad of the thick carpet muffling our footsteps. The first four doors that we passed were relatively simple dark wood with copper door knobs, but the fifth one was covered in carvings. Logan stopped dead in front of the door, his hand wrapped tightly around mine. We could see each other as long as we maintained skin to skin contact. The carvings on the door depicted a scene where a fairy bestowed someone with a small bottle. It struck me as an interesting choice of scene, given the supposed hatred of magic.

  I pressed my palm against the door and could feel the familiar calming thrum of magic somewhere within the room. Logan placed his hand next to mine and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed and his body relaxed as he focused.

  He gave a short nod and whispered, “One person inside. The wood was happy to speak.”

  “Do we have a plan?” I asked.

  He gave me a devilish grin and shoved the door open with his shoulder before he strode inside. I was left with no choice to follow him into the remarkably stark and minimalist room. My heart was pounding in my chest. That wasn’t how I did things. I planned them out. I was subtle and careful.