The Magic's in the Music (Magic Series Book 5)

by Susan Squires

  Damn. The look in his mother’s eyes was cheating. But then, she’d never been fair.

  “Not a good idea.” He poured until his glass was full again.

  “I brought your flute.”

  He jerked his head toward Jane, who held up the offending instrument. He’d asked her to remove it from his room. That didn’t mean he wanted it dogging him to the dinner table.

  Into the silence, his mother said, “Lanyon?”

  Looking around the table, he saw they were all staring at him like he might get up and start throwing things. That was actually a possibility. But his mother had asked him. And he knew what he’d put her through this last year and a half. Maybe he owed her this.

  He pushed up from the table. His chair scraping on the tiles made a screeching noise. He stalked over to where Jane held out the flute and snatched it from her hand. He could do this. He stood there, clutching the flute. He just had to get the anger under control.

  There. He had it stuffed down far enough. Maybe. He stood right where he was. Those on the near side of the table craned around to watch him. He couldn’t face them, not and maintain his calm, so he shut his eyes.

  He’d play her a lullaby. That was safe.

  He lifted the flute to his lips. You can do this. The notes started simply, the tone of his flute pure and sweet. The melody spoke of comfort, of safety, myths that those were these days. But sometimes a lie was the greater gift. He couldn’t let his bitterness ruin things for his mother. Not tonight. The melody grew more complex, variations on the simple theme. He tried to keep his mind a clean slate. He tried to remember what innocence sounded like.

  Minor keys started creeping in. That was still okay. Lots of lullabies conveyed a little tristesse, and his mother would recognize that for what it was—an apology of sorts. The notes began to cycle up, swirling in minor sevenths. Had he just crossed the line into blues? Notes followed notes with a layering of jazz. He was swept up with them. They slid into frantic staccato, thrumming, insistent. He tried to bring them back, but they spun out of control. He was losing it. He was more Bartok than Bach, and then even Bartok was left behind and the music swelled like an angry, flooded river. Just what he’d dreaded. In a moment the whole house would be enveloped in the red swirl of anger that lived in his heart these days.

  He had to stop. If he couldn’t get back to sanity, he had to just rip the music out and let it die. He made a gigantic effort and jerked the flute from his lips.

  The notes still hung, wild and angry echoes, in the air. He opened his eyes to see horrified expressions around the table. With a gurgling cry, he wrenched himself around and lurched to the front door, grabbing his backpack on the way. He tossed the flute across the foyer. It clattered across the tile as he jerked the great wood door open.

  He slammed the door behind him. Edwards and Ernie started toward him from where they had been talking quietly under the portico.

  “Don’t,” he said in a strangled voice. He stumbled up the driveway.

  He had to get out of here, back to Hollywood. The music still boiled in his loins, its pressure unreleased. If he didn’t find a way to let it out, he’d end up at County in a locked ward. Maybe he’d end up there anyway. Unless Morgan got him first.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‡

  Tris Tremaine stared after his little brother, along with the rest of the family. The silence stretched around the table. His mother looked physically ill with worry. Why did Lan have to court danger by wandering around the city where Morgan could get him? And what was with that music? That kid had to get his shit together, fast.

  To Tris’s amazement, it was Senior who finally spoke. “Not shure…I’ve ever sheen shomeone in so much…p-pain,” he said haltingly.

  “Poor Lan,” Jane murmured.

  Kemble looked as frustrated and angry with their brother as Tris felt. But no one wanted to bring up exactly why Lan was disintegrating right before their eyes.

  Senior surprised him again. “I’m the reashon.”

  “No, you’re not,” their mother said.

  “Probably has something to do with the fact that Morgan and the Clan broke into the only place he thought was safe and nearly killed us all,” Tris offered gruffly.

  “No.” His father’s voice was surprisingly strong. He’d been making progress in his physical and speech therapy sessions, but it was painfully slow. It had been more eighteen months since one of Morgan’s Clan had shot him in the head. “He thought he…could d-depend on me. T-to keep ush shafe.”

  “Don’t take this on yourself, Senior,” Kemble muttered. “That boy needs his ass kicked. He’s courting disaster on purpose. Alcohol. Drugs, I’m sure. Running around where Morgan can find him whenever she wants.”

  “He’s not a boy, Kemble.” Jane put her hand on her husband’s arm. “He’s twenty-five in another month.”

  “Okay,” Kemble said. He sounded exasperated. “That man needs his ass kicked.”

  Jane looked to Senior and then to Tris’s mother, helplessly. The scrape of Tammy’s chair grated across everyone’s nerves. Tris felt his wife start.

  “I’m going to check on the horses,” Tammy murmured and slipped away.

  Talk about disintegrating. The laughing little girl that had once been Tammy was gone as well. What was happening to the family? His mother was distant and sad because she couldn’t heal Senior. Morgan had taken her power somehow using the Wand Talisman. Senior was a shell of his former self. Kemble was trying a little too hard to lead in Senior’s place. At least Drew wasn’t half-catatonic all the time as her visions washed over her. But she was still fragile. He and Maggie worried about Jesse and Elizabeth constantly. How could they have brought another life into this kind of danger? The joy of family that Tris had finally discovered was slipping away.

  “I think Lan is feeling a little like Tris must have felt.” Jane turned her soft eyes on him.

  “Me?” Tris growled. “Was I ever such an arch ass-hat?”

  Jane smiled. “We’ll have to ask Maggie about that.”

  “I’m not goading that bull,” his tiny wife said. But he knew she’d goaded plenty of bulls in her time. It was all he could do to keep her from rodeoing even now. Good thing little Elizabeth had more influence on his wife than he did. Or maybe it was the Clan.

  “I just meant that you were running away from something the year you took to the road on your Harley, Tris,” Jane said, apologizing as usual for being right. “I think Lan is running, too.”

  Tris saw Kemble get a thoughtful look, and glance to Tris. That might be bad. Big brother was real good at coming up with assignments for people.

  “I just hope he doesn’t run right off a cliff,” Tris muttered.

  *

  Lanyon had the guy in the Nissan drop him off on the Boulevard east of the music scene, where the sidewalks were a little dirtier and every corner became a marketplace for all sorts of illegal activities. He hiked up the hill several blocks to his latest flophouse. He hadn’t been back here in several days, but the Harley Softail Nightrider Tris had given him was still chained to one of the metal posts that held up the sagging, second story balcony. He felt lightheaded with chaotic thoughts, ribbons of music and shards of guilt as he threw open the door. The avocado-green and gold bedspread assaulted his senses. It looked like vomit. He grabbed his leather duster. Once he’d played maybe he’d be able to get some rest.

  He thrust his arm into the sleeve of his duster and pulled on the soft leather on. Grabbing his backpack, he made for the door. Fuck it. He’d take the bike tonight. Harder to get away without being seen, but he almost didn’t care about that anymore. He wouldn’t care about anything anymore. How many times had he resolved that? And yet he had tried to play the flute for his mother’s fucking birthday. What a chump.

  He put the backpack in the saddlebag of his Harley and threw his leg over the seat. The chaos churning in his belly and his loins was shouting, ‘Club, now!’

  He revved the bike
’s engine. He needed a guitar, or keyboards, or bass in his hands immediately. Hell, he’d take an accordion at this point or a ukulele.

  What if he saw her tonight?

  That instant attraction he’d felt was not natural. And he knew what unnatural attraction might mean. His whole family consisted of shining examples. If he carried the Merlin gene, as they did, when he met someone else with the gene…

  He’d be sucked into his family’s destiny. He’d never escape that pre-ordained fate that said he’d have a magic power, a love that would last a lifetime, and an obligation to use the power in a fruitless struggle with the forces of Morgan’s darkness. He’d have to, just to protect the one who was his soul mate. And he wouldn’t even have a choice about who it was. No control over the whole process whatsoever. For a while, he’d hoped the gene had passed him by. But when even Kemble proved to have the gene and had met his Destiny in Jane—at thirty-nine, no less—Lan knew he was doomed. Once destiny struck, he’d never be able to drift away into nothingness, letting the waters of his fate at Morgan’s hands close over his head.

  He’d lose any control over his life, even if the only control he could find right now was to throw himself on Morgan’s pyre and let it consume him.

  The pain in his gut ramped up. He needed music. But he wasn’t going to risk meeting that girl again, just in case she was the One.

  Diamondback. He’d been there last night. No one looking for him would be back there tonight. Everybody knew he didn’t go to the same club twice in a row. The place would be a graveyard.

  How appropriate.

  *

  Jason went into battle mode and threw up a Cloak over Morgan, Duncan and Rick as they all came out of the ravine. The world went red. Presto, change-o, they were invisible. The moon was an icy orb hanging in the sky above the desert mountains. The drab concrete of Ulaanbaatar was more than two hundred kilometers behind them. Jason steeled himself against the icy wind that whistled off the steppes and right in under his coat, making it feel far colder than the twenty-eight degrees he knew it was. “Everybody know their role?”

  “I levitate,” Duncan said. The reedy geek needed either some shampoo or a buzz cut.

  “I rust,” Rick smirked. Jason wondered if the kid was ready for how brutal this would be.

  No one had to ask Morgan if she was ready to use the Wand. “We sneak in. We sneak out,” she said. She needed quiet for her ‘performance’ tonight. Other than that, Jason knew she didn’t care how many people got killed.

  They headed toward the compound. It seemed a miracle to Jason that they’d found the place. It had been hidden for centuries. The Onan river had been redirected over the gravesite in the Thirteenth Century. Genghis Khan’s soldiers had killed the two thousand people who’d come to the funeral, and were themselves executed in turn. But time had changed the river’s course and new imaging technology—magnet-something, and sonic stuff and satellite pictures—made searching more practical. Voila. Archeologists had found the tomb in time to provide Morgan with another genius general to add to her collection.

  Guys in fatigues stalked around the fence with automatic weapons. He couldn’t read Mongolian, but danger signs on the fence for electricity were universal. Pickups and Humvees patrolled, loaded with tripods that held WWII-era Brownings. Searchlights crisscrossed the compound. Outside the fence many tents served as a bivouac for the soldiers. Piece of cake.

  Silently, they made their way toward a gate, stopping to let vehicles pass. They waited until the two sentries crossed in front of them, saluting, then slid between their retreating forms.

  Duncan lifted one hand. They rose evenly, as though they were a single being, and drifted over the electrified fence to land lightly on the other side. Duncan looked smug, the creep.

  Inside it seemed the army hadn’t thought guards were necessary since everyone here was dead. The treasures had been removed over the last months and were under the highest security at an unknown location in Ulaanbaatar while they were cleaned and catalogued. The rumor mills agreed it was a trove of unparalleled wealth.

  What had been left at the actual gravesite were the chaotic holes of the digs and some random equipment. Stakes connected with lines marked the locations of long gone walls and structures. A light shone through the dirty windows of a shack where they’d probably packed up the treasures. A silhouette moved inside. Someone was working late. No. Two someones.

  “I’ll take care of them,” Jason whispered.

  “No,” Morgan hissed. “We need them to pinpoint the location of Genghis Khan’s remains.”

  Jason couldn’t help his anger. The defenses were primitive, but tanks and machine guns could still kill you. “How do you even know the guy’s bones are still here?”

  Morgan strode toward a smaller hole in the ground. The others struggled to keep up. “The new Minister of Antiquities told me they thought the remains were best left where they were—no one wants to offend the spirit of Genghis Khan.”

  “So why, exactly, did the minister tell you how to find the remains then?”

  The small hole revealed steps of new wood descending into the darkness. Jason heard Duncan and Rick gasp. Morgan just smiled. This was it. Jason was damn sure they could all feel it. An aura of power drifted up out of the abyss.

  “The minister had a dead wife.”

  Jason took two slow breaths. Morgan had the ultimate bribery tool. Or threat. Jason had felt its power, in a bad way. She’d brought back to the living the last person in the world he’d ever wanted to see. Jason had been forced to kill his father all over again. Not before she let the old devil have his way with Jason, though. How many times had he killed his father now, in real life, not just in his nightmares? Too many. He pushed those thoughts aside. Just do what she wanted. That was the lesson here.

  “Now get me one who knows where they’ve left the remains. It will save time, Morgan hissed.”

  Jason ducked out from under the Cloak. He slipped up to the little shed and peered inside. Channels of light crisscrossed the sky overhead. Inside the hut, a younger man and a woman in dirt-smeared lab coats bent over what looked like clods of dirt on a table.

  He pulled his Sig Sauer and fitted it with a silencer. One kick and the door practically came off its hinges. The kid gasped. The woman stepped in front of the kid They both had the broad cheekbones and high foreheads of the steppes. The woman started speaking rapidly.

  But they’d already told him all he needed to know.

  He put two quick bullets in the kid’s forehead and grabbed the woman. By the time the kid hit the floor, he had the older woman out the door and was hustling her over to where a faint ripple in the atmosphere outlined the Cloak. He kept the Sig tucked against her ribs. He jerked the woman under the Cloak.

  “She’s the boss. She’ll know where the grave is,” he reported.

  Morgan smiled. He felt the woman flinch. Not many could see Morgan smile without an instinctive recoil. “Do you understand English?”

  The woman nodded. A black trail of blood wound down from her temple.

  “Good.” Morgan led the way down the stairs, the Wand thunking on the steps like a hiker’s staff. “Rick, some light. Jason, lift the Cloak.”

  Rick’s beam flicked on. It revealed rough-hewn rock and dirt walls close on each side of the narrow stair. Good thing Jason didn’t have claustrophobia. At the bottom, an excavated room opened out into darkness. It smelled of damp earth and rot. Rick shone his light around. The place was chaos. Fallen scaffolding cluttered the edges. Lights on stands, dark now, and piles of dirt were surrounded by discarded baskets that must have been used to take excavated debris up the stairs.

  Morgan turned on the woman. “Where is he?” she hissed, her eyes glowing both from the light of Rick’s flashlight and a frightening inner excitement.

  The woman’s knees gave out. Only Jason’s grip kept her from falling to the dirt floor. “My soul is forfeit if I betray Genghis Khan,” she sobbed.

  T
he woman would shortly be useless with hysteria. Morgan set her lips. “He is Genghis Khan no more. His armies are gone—his title means nothing now. But the man who held that title, Temüjin, he would want me to disturb him. His spirit will thank you for your service.”

  The woman moaned, shaking her head. “He wants rest.”

  Morgan laughed. “If you think that you must not know Temüjin, for all your study. He wants to conquer. He wants to live. He wants to again be Genghis Khan, and I—only I—can give him that.”

  That stopped the woman’s heaving sobs. “Live?”

  “Live.” Morgan bore down on the woman. “Don’t stand in the way of Genghis Khan rising again.”

  The woman glanced nervously to the left. Jason jerked his attention to follow her stare to a raised area about two feet high that ran along the east wall of the excavation.

  Morgan’s head turned slowly in that direction. “I’m done with her.” She stalked away. The wrought silver of the Wand gleamed in the light.

  Jason put two bullets in the woman’s head. The Mongol scientist collapsed to the ground. “Duncan, get the work lights functioning.” Duncan took off. When Jason reached the raised area, Morgan was standing over a hole in the dirt. He peered down the beam of Morgan’s light.

  What was that? Rotted wood? The boards had been heavy, almost beams they were so thick. They looked porous now with age.

  The work lights flashed on, flickered once and stabilized, blinding after the darkness. The coffin was broken in several places, revealing only darkness within.

  “Break it open,” she said her voice hoarse with anticipation.

  Jason heaved in a breath and stepped up. He grabbed a pickaxe leaning against the dirt wall. Heaving it up, he brought it down on one end of the rude inner coffin of a king. The wood didn’t so much split as disintegrate. He didn’t raise the axe again. Instead, he heaved on the broken beams. They splintered and he tossed the shards up and out of the hole. When Jason had revealed the interior of the coffin, it was as he’d suspected. The earth in Mongolia this close to the river wasn’t dry sand as in Egypt. The wrappings were moldered and largely disintegrated. The flesh had rotted away rather than mummified. Even the skeleton was only partially intact. Morgan’s light played over bones that poked up at odd angles through damp silt that might be dirt or the sludge of flesh that had succumbed to the attack of time, insects and rot. The skull’s jaw was long ago detached, leaving only empty eye sockets and jutting random upper teeth.