Gina stared at the mage’s unconscious sprawl. It reminded her…“Would your Collegium send someone down here to watch over you?” She couldn’t read Lewis’s expression in the dark, so she flicked on the porch light.
Ah.
She flicked off the light. Apparently the Collegium could and would send someone to watch over, a euphemism for “to spy on”, its president, and Lewis was not happy about it. “There’s an unconscious body behind in my neighbor’s treehouse. The treehouse is elaborate and unused now that the kids are at college, and I’m guessing your…watcher chose it as their base to try and observe things here, and the fire mage got the jump on them.”
“Got the jump on a guardian, but not on you.” Lewis’s tone was neutral.
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat. Her toes were freezing on the cold boards of the porch. “Everyone underestimates house witches.”
“You like it that way.” Just a hint of amusement in his voice, warming it.
Something in her relaxed. “Do you want to retrieve your guardian?”
“Not particularly. But I’ll check that whoever it is lives.” He ghosted off the porch.
Gina looked at the shadowy lump that was the unconscious fire mage. She’d never had a prisoner before. What was the protocol? She didn’t want the intruder inside her house.
She went inside and upstairs to dress quickly. It was bliss to her poor toes to slip on warm socks. She laced up her sneakers and ran back downstairs.
“You must be freezing,” she said to Lewis.
He’d returned and stood on the porch. He’d found the porch light and switched it on. “It is cold,” he said absently, attention on the fire mage.
Gina rolled her eyes.
“This one’s awake,” he added.
“Are you sure?” She stared at the mage.
Lewis didn’t bother to answer her. He crouched beside the man playing possum. “The guardian you coshed has some questions and he’s unlikely to be overly particular about how he gets those answers. He has a worse headache than you.”
The mage’s eyes opened. “I doubt that.”
“Who hired you and for what purpose?”
Gina had met fire mages before. They tended to be flamboyant.
But whatever bravado this one usually exhibited, it shriveled in the face of Lewis’s glare. Or perhaps the man’s headache really was that bad. He confessed instantly. “Don’t know names. A guy came up to me in a bar. He didn’t feel like he had magic, but he knew I did. He knew my name, my game.”
“And what is your game?”
The man wriggled.
“You call flame,” Lewis said. “And I’m dumping you in the ocean.”
The fire mage froze. “He said you were tough.”
Gina couldn’t believe it. “You’re an idiot. You took a job against the president of the Collegium.”
“No!” their prisoner yelped. “No. You can’t be.”
Lewis relaxed back on his heels, straightened and stood.
The fire mage’s words tumbled out in a jumble of self-exculpation. “The guy at the bar said you were just some dude. He said that she was his wife and he wanted you taught a lesson. That’s what I do.”
“You terrorize women,” Lewis clarified. The flatness of his voice was scary.
“Nah. I go after the ones that stray.”
Gina tightened the hammock around the man, eliciting a protesting squawk.
“Before you dispose of him…” Lewis put a detaining hand on her arm. He studied the fire mage. “Why didn’t you take the presence of a guardian watching the house as a hint that you were in over your head?”
Good question. Gina released the ropes enough for the man to answer.
“Because I was paid a crap load of money.”
Lewis took his hand off her arm. “Go ahead.”
Her anger gave her magic a boost. The fire mage shot up in the air and sailed out over the ocean. There was a loud splash. The hammock returned, dry, to the house and folded itself neatly by the top step.
Lewis got out his phone and snapped an order into it. “Collect the fire mage from the sea. He can be your gift to Kora when you tell her I won’t be in today.” He clicked off the phone.
“I don’t have an ex-boyfriend who would do this,” she said, ignoring the command to the injured guardian, and, for now, the interesting information that Lewis’s plans had changed.
He ignored her comment on the quality of her ex-boyfriends. “This was the Group of 5. They joined the dots. Obvious when you think about it.”
“Pardon? No, wait. You have to be freezing.” His naked chest kept distracting her. “I’ll make coffee while you grab a shirt.” Neither of them would get any more sleep that night.
“Breakfast,” Lewis said.
She blinked at him. “Now?”
“I’ll make toast.” He moved towards the kitchen. “What are Morag’s sleeping patterns? How soon can I visit her? I’d like to return to the dragon’s den as soon as possible to practice the Deeper Path. The sooner my translocation is confident, the sooner I can progress to more useful things.”
“Translocation is useful.” It was too early for the noise of grinding fresh coffee beans. Gina took ground beans from the freezer and measured them into the coffee maker.
“Translocation is nothing compared to the magic I used to have. Last year, I could have handled the fire mage.”
“I didn’t see your lack of magic slow you down.”
“But you had to defend us. You did a good job.”
She felt a small glow of pride. A compliment like that from the former commander of the guardians was like winning gold.
“So, when can I visit Morag again?” he pushed.
“Any time, as long as you’re prepared to wait for her attention.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied, and investigated the bread box. “It’s empty!”
She looked away from her intense study of the coffee maker. Coffee, the necessity of life. “It happens. I’m a house witch, not a miracle worker.”
“Sorry. It wasn’t a complaint. You’re so Zen in the kitchen, I just expected…when does your cousin’s bakery open? I’ll get us both breakfast.”
She had to smile. His was a good apology. “I intended to visit the bakery this morning, myself. Hence the lack of bread. How about an English breakfast? Porridge and a fry-up?”
“That’s too much trouble.”
“Not once I’ve had coffee.”
He took her at her word. “I have a couple of phone calls to make.”
She’d bet he did, cancelling engagements for the day. His schedule would be a nightmare. “Thirty minutes.”
He retreated, and she sipped coffee and puttered around the kitchen. The radio played old show tunes and it was a gentle, almost pleasant start to the day, if she ignored the situation with the fire mage that had woken them.
The fresh raspberries were tart and sweet with the creamy oatmeal. Gina ate her bowl standing by the stove and watching sausages spit, the bacon sizzle and halved tomatoes caramelize.
Lewis entered and ate a bowl of oatmeal, sans raspberries or sugar.
He ate it fast, which gave Gina a suspicious thought. “You don’t like oatmeal, do you?”
“It’s filling.” He scraped the bowl clean.
She cracked two eggs and fried them sunny-side-up before sliding most of the fry-up onto Lewis’s plate, and a smaller serving of bacon and tomato onto her own. “So…”
He picked up his knife and fork.
“Can you explain how you think the Group of 5 tracked me back to my home?” She intended to start her own search of the internet for answers, but if Lewis had a starting point for the search, she’d take it.
“Yeah.” He ate some bacon. “I think they ignored your cyber identity and put together the real world facts—or the facts as they know them. Our cover story is that you’re my girlfriend. They added up that, plus your software consultancy and concluded you
were a likely person to be pursuing them.”
She considered that. It made obvious sense, except for one point. “I’m not a guardian.” She couldn’t find a more tactful way to register the underlying issue: would Lewis put a genuine girlfriend at risk of the Group of 5’s attention?
No, that was unfair. He had tried to get her to retire from chasing them once she’d reported how swiftly the unknown fifth member of the group had come after her false identity online. He’d only requested her assistance in navigating the dark web because he thought it safe.
And how had she responded when he’d suggested she drop the case? With an emphatic “no”. Which, when she thought about it, was probably the likely response of any woman who got involved with Lewis. He wouldn’t hook up with a wimp.
“You handled the fire mage just fine,” he said. “Better than the guardian who was meant to be guarding me—and that’s something I’m taking up with Kora. A secret bodyguard who isn’t up to the job is worse than not having one.”
“Kora looked stressed,” Gina commented.
“She’s more stressed, now.”
“You woke her up?” She stared at him as tomato juice dripped from her suspended fork.
“Woke her up, informed her of her chosen guardian’s failure, and told her I won’t be in the office today and if she sends anyone else to spy on me, she’ll find they disappear.”
“You’d translocate them?” The tomato fell off her fork.
“No, but I know a number of retired guardians who’d be happy to offer any of the current crop an intensive and unrequested training session.”
“Ouch.” She scooped up her tomato and savored the fresh basil she’d chopped and sprinkled over it.
“You don’t think that’s too harsh?” he looked at her quizzically.
She crunched some bacon. “This one let a fire mage conk him on the head and attack us. I think there should be some sort of punishment for that.”
“You’d make a solid guardian trainer. Every lesson reinforced.” He finished the last bite of sausage, having swished it through a small pool of egg yolk on his plate.
She grinned. “More coffee?”
“No, thanks. I’ll clean up, then go visit Morag.”
“We’ll visit Morag,” she corrected.
“If you like.”
“I can work as easily there as here. Morag links me to the internet, and no one can track me back through the loops she uses. Setting a firebug on me has just made this personal.”
It had made it personal for Lewis, too, but he didn’t tell Gina. He felt responsible, though. The Group of 5 wouldn’t have sent a fire mage after her if he hadn’t let himself get caught up with her dragon and his not-so-considered plan of utilizing Gina’s hacking skills.
He owed her protection, and without magic, he couldn’t deliver it.
The Collegium guardians weren’t his personal security force—and no more than he would Gina appreciate being shadowed by them. So they weren’t a defense.
Morag had to show him how to use the Deeper Path for more than popping in and out of places. At a minimum, he needed to know if his translocation just worked for him or if holding onto someone, he could bring them with him. Then he and Gina could never be trapped.
The image of the cruise ship he’d saved in the North West Passage played in his brain. He’d seen the stricken vessel after the unnatural storm abated. He’d been aboard the rescue mission. Magic burned he might have been, but he’d been a functioning, trained pair of hands for manual labor. The exhausted remnants of terror on the survivors’ faces had shown him the horror of helpless captivity.
To be at the mercy of forces beyond your control was part of life. But to be battered by powers directed by evil intent…that was soul-crushing.
He walked into the under-the-stairs closet with Gina, and out to Morag’s chamber.
Gina seated herself at the table and opened one of the two laptops she carried.
He walked three steps away and let the chamber’s other dimensions carry him further as he shifted into clarity of sight. He could still see Gina and the silver tinsel that linked her laptop to the internet. Curious, he followed that tinsel and found a deeper layer, one flashing with numbers and logic, structures he couldn’t comprehend.
“The human internet crudely mimics the universal ordering of information,” Morag said. “I noted the fire mage’s intrusion on Gina’s home.”
Lewis glanced at Gina, who worked on, unaware of Morag’s presence or the conversation. “Would you have saved her?”
“Non-intervention.” Pale yellow smoke gusted from the dragon’s nostrils. “But Gina’s home has been in her family many years. Dragon knights before her have lived there or visited family in it. Three of them, including Gina’s aunt, have travelled the Deeper Path. They sunk protections in multiple dimensions around the house. Look at its borders with clarity of sight.”
So Gina was truly safe in her home. Tension that had clawed at Lewis’s gut relaxed. “I still need to learn.”
“Yes.” The dragon unfolded her vast wings. “Watch how I change your three dimensional reality.”
Four hours later he was cold through to his bones, but what he had learned…it made the magic he’d burned out seem like a child’s toy: shiny and comforting, but limited. Now he could ripple the world, plucking things from one dimension to change their place or shape or some other characteristic in another dimension. What seemed far away or unrelated in three dimensions, might be closely linked in five dimensions, or even the same thing in six dimensions.
Morag showed him the seventh dimension. But it broke his concentration.
“Enough,” she said.
“Morag, you’re here.” Gina looked up from the two laptops and smiled. “Lewis was hoping for some more training.”
The dragon hunkered down on the floor, tail curling around her clawed front feet. The opal walls danced pale reflected color over her black skin. Her blue alien eyes darkened. “He received it.”
“Oh. I thought I was to observe his Deeper Path training.”
Lewis knew there was something odd in her tone, but his mind was still on all that he’d learned. He understood why it was called the Deeper Path. It compelled you further into the unknown.
“I miscalculated,” Morag said.
That caught his attention.
“I thought that there would be time and safety for you to observe Lewis.” The dragon sighed, smokeless this time. “But there are other players, people who would make you unsafe. Having showed Lewis the Deeper Path he needed to learn enough of it swiftly so as not to cause damage.” Her alien eyes studied him. “Fortunately, he is not a reckless man.”
“No, he’s not.” Gina closed the laptops. She concentrated very hard on the action.
“Visit me soon, Gina.” Morag vanished.
Gina’s mouth compressed. She stood, holding the laptops and walked towards the space that linked her to the closet under the stairs in her home.
Lewis waited a moment. He didn’t need to use Morag’s translocation structure. He found the near-link from the dragon’s den to Gina’s kitchen and crossed into it.
Gina blinked as she walked into the kitchen and found him facing her. The knuckles of her hands went white where she gripped the laptops. “I guess you don’t need our cover story any more. You can visit Morag whenever you like.”
“I have her permission to do so,” he confirmed.
“And you won’t have to use portal travel anymore.”
“I still need to conform to ordinary behavior patterns. I can translocate when it won’t attract attention.”
“Uh huh.” She put the laptops on the kitchen table.
He thought he understood her concern. “You won’t need to pretend to be my girlfriend any longer. Then, if you don’t track the Group of 5 through the dark web anymore, they’ll lose interest in you.”
“Hmm.”
“And Morag says you’re safe here.”
She looked at him then. “How long did you train with Morag this morning?”
“From within a few minutes of arriving in her home.”
“Hmm.” Gina pulled her phone out of a pocket. “I think…no signal?”
He switched on his phone. “The network must have gone down. If the Collegium was trying to contact me, they’d have sent someone in person through Emmaline’s portal. Is there anyone standing outside your wards?”
“They’ll think we ignored them on purpose.” Gina’s green eyes narrowed in a frown of concentration before widening in shock. She dashed to the window. “Lewis!”
“What?” Standing beside her at the window he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The midday sun had burned away the night’s sea fog. The garden was green and tidy with splashes of color from all the flowers.
He slammed into clarity of sight, and the scene lit with a swirling silver energy. The garden remained peaceful, but out beyond the protective wards, vast amounts of energy surged. Someone, or more than one someone, was throwing around magic. “What do you see?”
“I can’t see past the garden.” Gina gripped the counter edge, pushing up on her toes. “But when I stretch out to sense the outer edge of the house’s wards, there’s trouble. The attic!”
She dashed across the kitchen and opened a cupboard door.
Lewis blinked. Not a cupboard. A staircase. When the house was built, these would have been the servants’ stairs, narrow and steep.
Gina ran up them and he followed.
The attic windows were small and square, tucked beneath the eaves of the house, but they provided a commanding view back towards town. Ignoring the stacked boxes and shrouded furniture in the center of the floor space, he accepted a pair of binoculars Gina translocated and handed to him.
A second pair appeared in her hand, and she adjusted and focused them. “There. Beyond the crooked pine tree. Can you see the crows circling? I’ve lifted the look-away spell, just for the moment.”
And without the spell’s obscuring aura, the chaos was obvious. Four guardians, one of whom was Kora, fought against seven highly effective combat mages. They had to be mages or Kora could have disabled them instantly. As it was, from the way the attackers had backed Kora and her three colleagues against the protective and defensive ward of Gina’s home, the Group of 5 must have spent a fortune to hire the best.
Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3) Page 11