Forgotten Destiny Book One

by Odette C. Bell

  That notion came out of nowhere, but I couldn’t let it drop once it settled in my hands.

  I found myself curling my fingers in until my nails dug into my palms. “He wasn’t happy, was he? He didn’t like his job,” I blurted.

  Josh ticked his gaze over to me, that warning look in his narrowed eyes growing clearer.

  Helena just smiled. Not at what I’d said, but at me. Heck, I could’ve suddenly jumped up and pretended to be a monkey, and she would have fixed me with the exact same attention. It didn’t matter to her what I said and did – it mattered what I was.

  I swallowed. Though I could easily have ignored my intuition, stared at my hands, and not engaged again, screw that. “He had troubles at work.… Bullying?” I said out of nowhere.

  “You’re gonna have to forgive her, Helena – this is her first real case. She doesn’t understand the difference between evidence and supposition,” Josh said through clenched teeth.

  “I understand,” Helena said smoothly, and she nodded at me. “Howard was a valued member of staff.”

  She hadn’t answered my question. She’d darted away from the real substance of what I was asking like a politician dancing around budget estimates. I cleared my throat to make my point again.

  I didn’t get the chance. Josh stood up suddenly, yanking his arm up and staring at his watch. Unlike Max Knights’ watch, Josh’s was utilitarian. It also had a crack along the glass. It looked, in other words, as if it was there to tell the time and not to tell other people how rich he was. “Look at that – we have to go. We’ve got another case today. Thank you so much for your time, Helena.”

  “So, will you come tonight or not?” she asked as she rose from behind her chair, her hair tumbling around her shoulders and framing her smile.

  It caught Josh off guard. Or maybe the comment did. He’d clearly lost track of the conversation. He cleared his throat. Despite the fact he gave you the impression he was a player, he looked like a boy right now and not a lot like a man. “Sorry?”

  “She’s talking about the soccer game. The offer for tickets,” I clarified.

  Again Helena focused on me. Every damn time I shifted or said a word, she was like a targeting sensor homing in on me. “Your assistant,” she said, “here is correct. Perhaps she is coming into her powers quicker than she thought.”

  This had nothing to do with my powers and everything to do with the fact I could follow a conversation for more than a phrase or two. I didn’t point that out. I watched Josh. He darted his gaze from left to right, clearly trying to calculate something.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t—” he began, his shoulders dropping a full inch, making him look like a kid who’d just had to give up his favorite toy for a bully.

  “Which stadium are we talking about? Is it the one on Eastside?” I asked.

  Helena nodded.

  “Then we’ll go. Can you please organize our VIP tickets?” I asked flatly with no permission from Josh.

  “Beth,” Josh spluttered.

  I was doing my job. Okay, I’d only had this job for two days, but that wasn’t the point. I, unlike Josh, was not distracted here. And I, unlike Josh, wanted to find Howard. I mean I really wanted to find him. The more I heard about him, the more… something expanded inside of me and told me I had to track this guy down. It wasn’t a sense of impending doom or anything like that. But it was insistent, and the more I tried to ignore it, the more it screamed at me.

  So this was my magic, ha? Or at least the first flicker of it.

  “The game starts at 7:30.” Helena smiled.

  “We’ll be going now, actually,” I said point-blank. “I just thought we’d need tickets to get in. We will, won’t we? Or can we call ahead?” I suddenly realized that technically both Josh and I worked for the government. I didn’t exactly understand how far his powers as a bounty hunter ran, but I could appreciate that he had a certain power to track culprits down. If that meant he could go onto private property like a policeman or not, I didn’t know. But surely there was another way to get into the stadium than relying on Helena.

  Before I could tell her to go hang her tickets, she looked at me curiously. “Why would you like to go now?”

  “Just to check the place out. To look for clues,” I stated. “To figure out what we’re dealing with here. And, heck, it’s probably okay – I imagine we won’t need the tickets.” It was my turn to stand. I brushed my top down. Though Helena looked as if she shopped from the high-end boutiques downtown, I very much looked like I shopped from the rejects bin at the thrift store. I didn’t care. I patted my top down until it was neat. Then I smiled. “Thank you so much for your time.” I turned to walk away.

  Josh had two options. Pull me into line – thus giving Helena the opportunity to focus on me again – or follow me. He actually chose the latter. He mumbled his goodbyes, turned, and walked out.

  The entire time Helena kept her eyes on me until I closed the door behind Josh.

  He didn’t whirl on me. Which was a surprise. I was relatively certain that once the door was closed he would jump on me like a wolf trying to restate its position in the pack.

  Nope. He didn’t say a word. Not a single damn word until we were out of the Hancock building and back in his car.

  Then?

  He turned on me. Move over rabid wolf – it was time to meet the warlock.

  Chapter 8

  I don’t think I’d ever seen Josh as angry. Which was saying something as pretty much the only emotion he’d ever shown me since we’d met was anger.

  “Do you know what you did back there? Do you have any idea—”

  “I took hold of the conversation while we still could. Why didn’t you tell me she would be like that? She was looking at me like I was some kind of ornament she wanted to hang on her wall.”

  This comment derailed Josh’s fury. For about half a second. “That’s not the point. You should’ve left that to me.”

  “So you agree with me, then? Helena was looking at me like I was a piece she wanted to acquire in a game.”

  “I’m not—” he began weakly but trailed off. “Whatever. Look, there’s something you’re going to need to wrap your head around. Finders are extremely rare. You need to be very careful.”

  “Do I?” A real blast of emotion ricocheted through my voice, and my cheeks and lips tingled with adrenaline. The fear and anguish and just plain malcontent I’d been holding back for the past two days bubbled to the surface as I strained against my seatbelt to get to him. “That would have been real handy to know before you paraded me around Madison City’s rich and infamous.”

  I didn’t think it could happen, but it did. Just for a few seconds, that comment shut Josh up. He brought up a hand, patted the back of his head, and leaned back. “Okay, okay – you have a point.”

  I was so stunned, I blinked several times, my mouth gaping open.

  This drew a derisive snort, albeit a soft one. “Look, if you want another crash course, here it is – you’re valuable. That’s why you’ve got a protection order on you. I thought you would have figured that out by now.” He brought a hand off the steering wheel and tapped a finger on his head. “You can locate virtually anything. Stop for a second and think about that.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him I’d had the last several days to think about that. I stopped. My brow scrunched. “There are natural limitations on all magic,” I said, sounding as if I’d learned that fact in school. Which I had. Everyone knew that. Yeah, okay, on the face of it, magical powers were incredible. But we weren’t talking Harry Potter here. People couldn’t wave a wand and kill someone. Okay, wait, that was the wrong example. You could kill people – quite easily – with magic. The point was, it was costly. And short of powerful practitioners kitted out with powerful gear, there were general limitations on witches and warlocks. In other words, people would run out of gas. That crim Maximus had caught in the bottle shop could have kept up his attack maybe for about half an hour before he’d r
un dry of juice. Some of the better-trained security professionals – especially those in the Army – could go for longer. But that wasn’t the point. There were limitations. And if there were limitations on others, that meant there were limitations on me.

  The more defiantly I stared back at Josh only to see him shake his head, the more my lips crumpled in until I bit them hard. “There are limitations on my power, right?” My voice was more fragile now.

  “Yes and no. You can only find things you’re aware of.”

  I scrunched my nose up at that confusing statement. “That’s a little existential. Of course I can only find things I’m aware of. If I found something I couldn’t experience – I wouldn’t be finding it, would I?”

  “I don’t need a lesson in philosophical semantics from you, thank you, Missy,” he dropped back into being a jerk – which was oh-so-easy for him. “What I’m trying to explain is you can only find things that you’ve either seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard. You have to experience them directly before they can pique your powers.”

  “And how exactly am I meant to find Howard? I’ve never seen him.”

  Josh snorted. “The photo will do. Which you’ve already seen. If you actually see someone, however, it’s easier. That’s not the point.”

  “It isn’t? And what is the point?”

  “You’re powerful. Extremely powerful. And people who are powerful,” he brought a hand up and pointed at me, now paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to the road, “are targets.”

  Josh had said a lot of terrifying things to me over our short career together, but this one really got to me. I stiffened until I couldn’t sit any straighter, until it felt as if I’d pull my spine out of the top of my head, and my legs and arms would snap. It took an age to blink, because it took an age to remember that I could. “And that’s why I’m under a protection order, ha?” I asked, voice faint as if somebody had started to erase me. Because yeah – someone had started to erase me. It was one thing being a witch and losing control of the rest of my life. It was quite another to be a target for all the unscrupulous people out there.

  “Yes, that’s why you’re under a protection order. And before you ask,” he stared at me challengingly, obviously knowing what was on my mind, “I am one of the best-placed people in the city to carry that protection order out.”

  “Really?” My voice couldn’t shoot up any higher.

  “Yes, really. Before I became a bounty hunter, I did a stint in the warlock division in the Army. I’ve seen active duty, Missy. And most importantly, I know how to deal with danger.”

  “Knowing how to deal with danger and stopping it before it can happen are two very different things. Do I need to remind you what happened in the bottle shop?” I stopped short of saying that if Max hadn’t been there, I would’ve been a hostage.

  I didn’t need to point that out. One look at Josh’s suddenly hardened expression told me he appreciated that fact more than any other. “It was an accident. The report on that guy was wrong. I didn’t realize he’d be aggressive. Stupid,” he added.

  I didn’t know if Josh meant it was stupid for the guy to try to take me as a hostage, or stupid for him to run from Josh in the first place. Because you know what? Neither was stupid. I was rapidly appreciating two facts. Josh thought he was better than he was. And me? I was much more valuable than I appreciated.

  “That was a mistake – but I’m not going to make mistakes like that again.”

  “Good – so you are going to tell me about all of the creeps in Madison City before you take me to their offices, shove me down in their pretty little chairs, and wait for them to ogle me like diamond rings?”

  “Helena Hancock is an upstanding citizen,” he said with the kind of fervor one only got when they were discussing sensitive political topics.

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “You actually like her that much?”

  “Trust me, of the kingpins, she is by far the easiest to deal with, and the most scrupulous. Plus, she wasn’t staring at you like you were a diamond ring.” He snorted dismissively. “She was simply… intrigued. As anyone would be. You’re the only other finder in town.”

  “About that – how many finders are there around the world? I mean, how rare am I? And you said before when you were talking about Max that there were different kinds of finders. I’m a locator, right? Is that one of the most common subgroups?”

  “Don’t know, don’t know, and don’t know,” he snapped.

  Could I punch him now? Honestly, had I endured enough of this idiot’s brutish behavior to just lash out once? The law would understand, right?

  “Don’t look at me like that.” He narrowed his gaze. “It’s the truth. And before you go googling it, I wouldn’t bother. It won’t work. Finders aren’t exactly announced by their governments. They’re too valuable. So as for figuring out how many of you there are, there’s going to be no way to do that.”

  I stared at him through narrowed eyes. “What about the subgroup of locators? How rare are we?”

  Josh looked away. And that? Wasn’t a good sign.

  Before I could press, he cleared his throat, the vocal equivalent of him changing gears. “Enough of that, anyway. We need to talk about you trying to take hold of conversations that you shouldn’t. Now, I had that conversation in hand.”

  It was my turn to snort, and boy did I do it as loudly as I possibly could. “At first you told me not to speak, then you admonished me for not speaking. I wouldn’t exactly call that having the conversation in hand. Plus, you were letting her get away with lying.”

  “Excuse me?” Once again Josh looked impassioned, as if the mere suggestion that Helena could lie was like saying chocolate tasted like mud.

  It was my turn to bring up a hand and stop him. “She didn’t give a stuff that Howard had run away. What’s more, she knows more than she’s letting on.”

  Josh shook his head, his exasperation clear. “And how exactly, Ms. Detective, do you know that? You see, the rest of us detectives have to wait around to find this thing called evidence.” He brought his hands off the wheel in order to make air quotes around the word evidence.

  I stared at him nonplussed. “It’s a hunch. I don’t need evidence; I know for a fact Howard was bullied. You saw her reaction. Plus, she never directly answered my question – which was a great sign.”

  Josh opened his mouth, but he paused before he dismissed me. “You don’t know anything for sure.”

  “You suspect it too, don’t you? Howard was bullied. The question is, why? At first I thought it would be because he was a witch. But as you’ve already said, Hancock Industries is full of witches. So why bully him?”

  “You are going way out on a limb. Please leave the real work to me. All we have to do is find him.”

  “But to find him, don’t we need to understand him?” I asked.

  “No – we just need to locate him. And you need to leave that—”

  “Before you say up to you, don’t forget what I am.” It was the very first time I’d used the card that I was a finder. And you know what? It felt good.

  Josh maintained steady eye contact before he turned away. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t snap at me. “Fine, whatever. Maybe he was bullied. Maybe it is important to the case. But right now, I’m hungry,” he announced out of the blue.

  “Then we’ll pick something up at the stadium. We need to get there and investigate. Do you need to… I don’t know, pick up a warrant from the magistrate in order to get into the establishment and search around?” This time I was vaguely aware of the fact that what I was saying was stupid. Warrants were for police officers and that was that.

  “You are overestimating our powers. We have the power to track down a culprit when we have reasonable suspicion they are on a premises. That’s about it. We’re not like the police. We can’t just walk onto private property and start asking questions.”

  “The stadium is not private, though. It’s public land.”


  “With private sponsorship. Plus, we need to tread carefully.”

  “Why?”

  “Will you stop with the questions already? I’ll tell you what, we’ll discuss them over lunch. Here’s a cafe.” Abruptly, Josh pulled in to park.

  Again he cut off another car – this time a little old lady in a hatchback. She wound down the window, stuck her finger up, and drove off.

  Josh snorted. “The people of this city have no manners.”

  I stared at him disdainfully as I jumped out of the car. Every time I had to clamber in or out of this monstrosity of a vehicle, I was getting better at it. I was hardly dismounting perfectly like a gymnast spinning off the bar, but at least I didn’t fall face down on the pavement.

  “I’ve always meant to check this little place out. Looks cute,” Josh said as he walked down a small laneway beside us and stopped in front of the store.

  It was my shop. The place where I’d been working for years with Sarah. We’d just gathered together the funds to buy the license for the place off the current owners.

  Suffice to say, I stood in front of the door, and I stared. Was this a joke? Was Josh trying to get on my nerves?

  I’d sent Sarah a couple of emails and texts, but I hadn’t had the balls to call her yet. She was still mightily pissed. Not pissed that I was a witch – she’d already told me multiple times that that didn’t matter. She was only angry that I’d kept it from her for so long. At the first blood test that had suggested I had witch genes, I should’ve told her.

  Sarah would forgive me, in time. But first? We’d have to have an argument.

  I brought my arms up and clutched them around my middle, digging my fingers into my elbows. Josh had already walked in, and there was no way I was going to dart in to grab him back. Sarah was just as observant as me, and she’d see me darting in and through the door, even if she had her back to me.

  So I hung around in front of the café, chewing on my lip nervously.

  From somewhere inside the store, I heard a growl. “Don’t be noncompliant,” Josh snapped. The door was open, so fortunately he didn’t have to scream that for the rest of the street to hear.