“Shop?”
“Antiquities. I'm not surprised if Andrews got loaded up with oodles of curses. You're lucky the ghosts decided to be my problem instead of yours.”
“Fera,” Mordon said softly. “I'm not in the mood.”
Jason deflated, stepping backwards slightly. I shook my head at Mordon.
“He's not the one you get to yell at. Too low on the food chain.”
Jason was quick to agree. “You're meeting with Mr. Mason. He's in the central office.” Jason pointed straight ahead to where a section of the building was walled off in a giant cube. He added tentatively, “I have to watch the front while the others are out, but you can wait with me if you'd prefer?”
I realized Jason liked me, even with a baby plastered to my front by a giant stretchy blanketlike thing. “Thank you, but I will stay with Mordon.”
The smile disappeared. Jason was clearly troubled by my refusal, and he gave it one last chance. “Mr. Mason doesn't like surprises.”
“Then he'll certainly hate me.” I caught a glimpse of Jason's astonishment as I spun on my heel and advanced towards the office. Mordon caught up to me in time to open the white paneled door.
Mr. Mason was a tall, bald man who could have done well to lose half his bodyweight. That way he'd only have a beer belly. His arms were muscular, though, and didn't wriggle at all when he shook my hand.
“I'm Fera, this is Mordon Meadows. We came to speak with you about an invoice you mistakenly sent us.”
Mr. Mason motioned for us to take the leather seats across from his desk. He sat on the edge of the glossy wood, struck a match, and applied it to a cigarette.
“Please put that out,” I said, laying a hand on Anna's head.
He smiled around the cigarette, taking in a breath. Smoke swirled as he spoke. “Now to the matter of the invoice. There is no mistake. We traced our grotesque to King's Ransom Magical Antiquities which belongs to Mordon Meadows here.”
He stopped to take a puff. Silently, I willed the air to leave the cigarette in a vacuum, effectively snuffing it out. Confused, Mr. Mason tried to light it again. The fire went out. He tried a third match with the same results.
While he was fumbling with the matches, I took the papers from Mordon. “Mr. Mason, this is our proposed settlement,” I said and handed them to him folded up.
When Mr. Mason unfolded them, a spark jumped from the page, formed the brief glimmer of the Constable's badge, and disappeared. He was still staring at the spot the symbol used to be when I said, “You have been served with a notice of charges. Your bill is hereby postponed until the conclusion of those claims. We'll be leaving now.”
Startled, Mordon asked, “We will?”
Mr. Mason was just as dumbfounded as Mordon, but got to his feet quickly when I made as though to move.
“Wait, there was someone who wanted to meet you,” Mr. Mason said, torn between stopping me and reading the papers I'd handed him.
“Who?” Mordon asked.
Mr. Mason hesitated. “They paid cash. I don't know who they are.”
I held Mordon's glance, reading the unease in his eyes. One thing was for certain: it would not do to meet these people on their terms. If we'd made the arrangements, yes, but not here and not now.
Wobbling as I stood, I thought quickly about what we'd do once we were home safely.
The door opened. I flinched instinctively, the air about me suddenly thick with the scent of honeysuckle. Mordon tensed. Mr. Mason hurried forward, one hand held out to greet the newcomers.
Five burly people entered, all of them in black armor with visors drawn over their eyes. According to the way they moved, they were military trained. One of them had a staff with glowing runes down it.
“I am the chief of the Blackwings,” he said.
“Was there a reason you wished to meet with me?” Mordon asked, curling a fist behind his back.
“My employer wishes it.” He jerked his head to the door. “Woman, leave us. Now.”
“No way, dude, I'm a better conversationalist than Meadows any day.” I flashed the chief a cocky grin.
I was right to call him 'dude'. The chief's body stiffened in sheer annoyance. He raised a hand and twitched a finger. One of his people stepped forward to forcibly remove me. Mordon inserted himself between me and the Blackwing, who froze in indecision.
“Say, is anyone else wondering why they want me outside this room?” I asked.
“That is the least of our concerns at this time.” Mordon stared at the Blackwing's chief. “Was it you who hired the grotesque?”
“I am bound to confidentiality,” the chief said.
“Indeed, I imagine that you are. Yet there cannot be very many who can afford your services on top of the security subcontractor.”
“Speculation on your behalf. If your woman will not leave, then we will remove her once we're done with you.”
“Gentlemen, stop this now,” Mr. Mason said, advancing his large frame forward to block out my sight of the chief. “You said you wanted to talk.”
The chief regarded Mr. Mason silently for a second. “Yes,” the chief said. “I did.”
Mr. Mason visibly relaxed. He angled to see Mordon and me, as if he was going to invite all of us to pull up a chair and discuss matters amicably.
There was a pop. Mr. Mason gasped and staggered, holding both hands to his stomach. Blood seeped from around his fingers. He opened his mouth to yell, and instant fire consumed his body from the inside out. Mordon pushed me back until I was pressed up against the far wall. When I next glimpsed Mr. Mason, he was a heap of black ashes and the room stank of burning blubber.
“I assume you will be more reasonable, Meadows. I hear you are a competent combatant. For the woman's sake, I hope this is true.”
Mordon's nails grew into long talons, but there was not enough space in this office to accommodate his full dragon form. “What do you want, Blackwing?”
The chief shrugged and motioned for his men to fan out behind him. “My client wants you out of the way, but I am willing to make a bargain. If you prove to be suitable, I have an alternative to my client's desires. What do you—”
The lights went out, cutting him off. Mordon grasped my hand to hold me still.
“Turn those back on!” the chief demanded.
“Leot,” Mordon said. A shimmering blue orb appeared in the air over his hand, making his rings seem to come to life. One of the chief's men were down. His eyes narrowed at Mordon.
“You will pay for this, drake.”
A shadow darted from the corner of the ceiling, plunging with a shriek onto another of the chief's men. Blood splattered across the floor. No one even got a spell off before the shadow was gone again.
Mordon simply said, “That was not me.”
“If it was not you then who was it?!”
The chief checked a grab for Mordon's shirt, evidently realizing that Mordon would not tolerate a physical touch.
Through the filtered light in Mordon's hand, I caught a glimpse of movement on the wall. Thinking it was the shadow, I faced it full-on and realized that the movement wasn't a shadow. It was the slow, methodical appearance of dark lines against a pale gray wall. The lines started off faded and became intense, generating a light all their own. Then they faded, wrote more lines, and glowed again. One of the chief’s men put his hand behind his back; I was sure I didn't want to learn what he was about to do.
“Look at the walls,” I hissed.
Everyone responded at once, checking the wall nearest them.
Symbols showed in Mordon's light, shimmering, fading, and growing. As we heard the last breath leave one of the Blackwings, new symbols scratched into the drywall right beside two other recently made marks.
“What is that?” the chief said. He struck a match, one which had abnormally powerful flames, and drew close to the wall. Cautiously he reached forward, touched the tip of a forefinger to a symbol. A bit came away on his hand. He tested it between thumb a
nd forefinger, sniffed it. “This is blood.”
Mordon eyed me warily. “Fera, is it...?”
I shivered. “An Unwritten. Colonial-era demonic. It's soul harvesting.”
Mordon's light flickered, making raw energy jolt through my veins. I flinched, put my back against Mordon's side.
A man cried out.
Spells zinged through the air, illuminating the space with bursts of red and orange. The ceiling trembled and walls shook beneath the blows they sustained. I yelped, muffling it as best I could. Mordon took me by the shoulder and hauled us both behind the desk.
A spell splintered one of the chairs with a great snapping noise. Wood tumbled across the floor. Heart drumming madly in my ears, I hid my head, sheltering Anna as best I could. Amazingly, Anna was sleeping through this.
Silence followed.
The Che if and his men started talking in hushed voices.
“Who's it got?”
“Paige and Ian, Sir.”
He swore.
I realized the walls were glowing again. I pried myself free from Mordon's tight grasp. Memories of Railey and me in this position years ago flitted through my mind. She'd been better about dissecting this spell, but I was competent enough. I found something that looked vital to the spell's ability to function.
“Where'd they go? You can't escape me!” the Chief said.
“Want a bet?” Mordon whispered. “Fera, compass?”
It was in the diaper bag slung around my shoulders, an oversize purse that Lilly had given me. Of course, the compass was in a zipper pocket. For easy access.
The zipper being drawn was so very loud.
“What's that?” a Blackwing hissed.
“Calm down, it's just me,” I snapped angrily, loud enough to hide some of the rustling.
“Where are you?”
“Hiding from your idiot spells. Spray and pray won't hold up against an Unwritten, you ignorant dolt,” I said.
There was a second of silent. The clink of a chain as Mordon grabbed the compass and felt its face.
“Dolt?” one of them asked.
“It means you're dumb,” I said.
A pause, then, “Dumb? Is that the best insult you know?”
“I won't waste my breath on two whole syllables to describe you.”
Mordon snorted, an attempt to abort a real laugh. I smiled to myself.
Then the room temperature plummeted. I went still, trying to reach out to my magic. It wasn't responding. I knew that any spells I tried to cast right now wouldn't happen. I breathed shallowly, tensely waiting. My perspiration chilled, formed tiny droplets of ice. They stung as I brushed them off my arms.
A man slammed into the wall with a sickening crunch, silencing all murmured conversation. A volley of spells replaced the momentary peace. Mordon fumbled fast with the compass.
My magic rushed all about me in an instant.
Something in this room was breathing now, a heavy, rattling breath. With the stirring of my magic, I could feel a very real, physical presence in the center of the room—a skeleton figure with a thin layer of tissue and taut skin.
I tried to think.
This Unwritten was a perfected version of the one that had killed Railey. There should be ceremonial bones around—one, at least. If Mr. Mason didn't know of the Unwritten, then he wouldn't have seen the bone in his daily activities. But it should be nearby, but where?
The monster in the room lunged. He grabbed one of the last two Blackwings. Blood hit the floor. Both men yelled. The monster had his teeth in the jugular, from the sounds of things.
The Chief hit the monster with a series of spells. It shrieked, a strange noise consisting of several voices crying out in pain. Anna joined in the noise with a terrified scream.
Between the illuminating flashes of spells, I saw a manilla envelope sitting on the desk. Unopened. It felt like a bone was inside. Mordon flung the compass's chain over my neck. The wind around us began to spiral.
Hurriedly, before we left entirely, I whacked the package time and again over the wall until I heard the bone snap and saw the symbols fade from my vision.
We were gone with the portal.
Chapter Thirteen
Mordon angled his magnifying glass to see the enchantment etched in my rose-ornamented Earhart compass.
“Who could have ever foreseen that plan going wrong?” Leif asked. “Let's all go to an impromptu meeting at a secondary location with people we've never seen before—and tell no one else about it.”
“Yes, exactly, I'm so glad I don't have to explain,” I said.
This earned me a deadpan stare from Leif. “It is called sarcasm, Fera.”
“In that case, you don't do it very well.”
Even Lilly was unimpressed by my behavior. Our entire coven sat in the commons lounge. Mordon and I had beaten everyone else home, and while he was working on my compass I was fixing a roast, with a big pasta salad for Lilly, when the others had returned to smell adventure in the air. Mordon had told them, and now was the time for animated chatter.
“As thanks for your efforts, you broke your favorite toy,” Leif said, extending his hand toward Mordon.
My poor compass. It had endured so much abuse from me and yet kept going for a long time. “It wouldn't be such a problem if Mordon had any others to harvest donor parts off of. I think it's the back that's damaged.”
“The needle is bent, and the glass could stand to be replaced,” Mordon said.
“That's, like, half the compass.”
“I can search for other models or have a smith custom make parts,” Mordon said, rolling his shoulders for the first time since he'd hunched over the trinket. He set the compass aside. “It's worth a full restoration, but it won't be finished for weeks.”
Barnes said, “I know a proper tinkerer who will mend it. You'll get it back in a couple a months.”
Mordon considered the idea with a tired expression. “We may have to do just that.”
Lilly finished her examination of the bill from Mason Security. She took pins out of her red hair one by one as she spoke. “The seal is a forgery. I would bet that the Constabulary doesn't have a duplicate record of it.”
Intrigued, I picked up the page. “How do you know?”
“The slant of the lettering is wrong. This is to the right. Constabulary typeface is upright. Also, the scales are smudged just enough that you miss the important details.” She pursed her lips. “It is clove. Very close. Whoever forged this has seen a lot of legitimate documents. They work closely with the Constables and law, but aren't an employee.”
“How do you figure?”
Barnes said, “An employee would use an authentic stamp, and just not record it.”
“So,” I said, “the letter was notarized by someone who sees this a lot. Why bother with the stamp at all? Was it to prompt Mordon to respond?”
“Possibly,” Mordon said. “They didn't plan on you. They wanted us separated.”
“Yeah, I gathered that. But why bother with the Constabulary part of it, unless it was for real? Mr. Mason did want money. It'd be better for him to have a legit document to take to court if need be.”
Mordon shrugged. “It was a set-up.”
“Oh, sure, but think about it. He knows Mordon wouldn't pay full price, but perhaps he'd pay part of the bill. Or be forced to do so. But he'd only get Mordon forced if the courts agreed with him, which they wouldn't do if Mason presented a fake document. And if Mason got reparations from the Blackwings for setting up a meeting...” I let my words trail off. “He wouldn't have wanted a legitimate meeting notarized by the legal system if he knew that the Blackwings were going to do something illegal. Like attack him.”
Mordon leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Let's think of this. Mr. Mason wants money, like you said. He gets approached by his client to meet with me. Mr. Mason thinks he may make a quick dinaire off of me, too, but he needs the Constable's emblem. But the Blackwings don't want that. So, what, do they of
fer to present the letter to Constables for him?”
“And have a fake emblem on it instead?” I asked.
Barnes stopped twitching his mustache. “Wait. Any letter goes to the understaff. Some of them are paid by outsiders if the staff sees anything interesting.”
I frowned. “And interesting topics include anything related to King's Ransom, my name, Mordon's name, or our coven, correct?”
Barnes nodded. “Suppose that Mr. Mason did submit this to the office. Here is the time stamp by the first clerk before it gets dispersed to the proper desk.”
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