He had a point. Any of Chase’s jackets would be large enough to look like I was wearing a muumuu or a small tent tarp. I shrugged into the jacket and flipped the hood up over my head. As ugly as it was, the thing was undeniably warm and comfortable.
“Let’s go Mage Barbie,” said Chase from the door.
“Don’t push me. I will turn you into a newt without feeling even a little bit bad about it.”
Chase froze halfway down the front stairs, his heavy suitcase nearly toppling down onto him when it slipped down a step and caught him by surprise.
“Can you really do that?” he asked.
“Of course not, you idiot. That kind of fairytale junk isn’t real.” I thought about it as I followed him to the car. “Well, maybe some of it is. I did see an enchanted mirror once, but it killed anyone who looked into it. There was no ‘mirror mirror on the wall’ business. Only disfigurement and death.”
“That’s not making me feel better,” said Chase as the driver came out to help him with his bag.
“It’s okay, I got it,” I said when the driver tried to take mine.
I slipped my arm out of one strap and slid the whole thing around to my front as I got in. Some habits die hard, and letting other people come between me and my belongings is not something I’ve ever been comfortable with.
“What the hell do you have in your suitcase?” I asked Chase as the driver started the car and pulled out onto the road.
“Stuff,” he said with a shrug.
“Stuff? It looks like you packed for three months.”
“I had to bring some clothes, a laptop, cameras, portable wifi hotspot, power bricks, toiletries, notebooks, hiking boots, some books, my towel—”
“You own hiking boots?” I interrupted.
His face reddened a little. “I was trying to impress this girl a couple years back, and she was all into hiking so I went and got a full setup.”
“And how many times have you actually been hiking since then?”
“Never,” he mumbled.
I bit back another sarcastic comment and turned to stare out the window as the city flashed by. My magic reserves were at about three quarters of what I’d like them to be, and they were going to deplete significantly with the work I was going to have to do to get through security. The spells involved in making someone see something other than what’s really there were extremely complicated, and I’d never been all that good at them to begin with. The mage who’d taught me the trick had been such a master that he’d appeared as someone else every time we’d met for lessons. Not once had I been able to see through his illusions to his true face, even with my mage sight active.
The car lurched suddenly to the right, slamming me into the window before I rebounded in time for us to hit a big pothole. The jarring shock of it reverberated through my bones, and I clamped my teeth together so hard I practically bit my tongue in half.
“Woah, what’s up Alex?” asked Chase.
He stared at me like I’d peeled back the skin on my face to reveal my true identity as a Klingon.
“What do you mean? Didn’t you feel that?”
The world lurched upward so suddenly I felt my throat fall into my stomach. My vision became a white-hazed blur, and a primal scream cut through my consciousness with such ferocity I clamped my hands over my ears in a futile attempt to shut it out. It was only when vague shapes started flashing in front of me that I understood that the car hadn’t moved at all irregularly. Whatever was happening was only affecting me.
“Stop the car!” I heard Chase yell at the driver.
The car swerved to the curb and came to a stop so abrupt it threw me against my seatbelt. I punched the belt release button and clawed at the door handle, desperate for fresh air. My chest felt suddenly tight and painful. Had I not known better, I’d have though I’d been shot or stabbed.
I lurched across the sidewalk and onto the grass in a long field that bordered the airport. Panting like a dog, I felt control of my muscles slip away. I gathered energy for a simple focus spell, then cast it on myself before I lost the ability to do even that. The spell gave me some ability to separate the visions and psychosomatic symptoms from reality. Nothing was outwardly attacking me, and it was only then I understood what I was happening.
Vague shapes resolved into the furniture and paintings in Lorelai’s house. I didn’t have the first clue as to how she’d formed such a strong mental connection with me, but as near as I could tell, everything I saw and felt was a projection of what she was experiencing at that moment.
It was then I saw the kryte. Looking none the worse for wear after bathing in mage fire, it stood over Lorelai, its deadly claw hand dripping crimson. The vision tilted downwards, and I saw that the source of my chest pain was a psychic projection of the all too real puncture wound in the center of Lorelai’s chest. Thick and dark red blood pulsed out of it with every beat of her heart.
A flash of light flared so brightly that I screwed my eyes shut and covered them with my hands in an effort to block it out. When it subsided a few seconds later, I opened my eyes and looked up, barely able to make out the fuzzy shape of Chase hovering over me.
“What happened, Alex? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “We have to go back to the city though.”
“What about Scotland?” he asked. “Our flight leaves in two hours. If we go into the city now, we’ll never make it back in time.”
I took his hand and let him help me to my feet. I knew I’d only been seeing what Lorelai had gone through, and that the pain had been my body’s way of responding to the panic signals flooding my brain, but I couldn’t help but unzip my hoodie to peer down my t-shirt. The vision had been so vivid that I couldn’t fully calm myself down until I’d confirmed that I didn’t actually have a hole in the middle of my chest.
“We need to go,” I said after I snapped out of my dazed inspection of my body. “If we don’t, someone important might die. I have to know what happened just now.”
“You heard the lady,” said Chase as we jumped back into the car. “Turn this thing around.”
The driver cut across three lanes and made a tight u-turn that put us in the direction of Lorelai’s house. I gave him the address, anxiety flaring when he told me it would take us twenty minutes to get there. I didn’t know exactly what kind of fae Lorelai was beneath that human disguise of hers, but I hoped it was something that could survive an injury that would have instantly killed a human. The fae didn’t necessarily take on the same biology as humans when they mimicked the form, and although I might have once been happy to imagine Lorelai meeting her untimely end to a creature like the kryte, I realized then I didn’t hate her quite so much as I’d thought. I’d blamed her for a lot of things since our first encounter, but blaming a fae creature for behaving the way it does is like getting mad at a rock because it’s too hard, or hating water because it’s too wet.
The fae were what the fae were, and although some mages thought of them as animals, I’d often wondered if the black and white way of thinking so common among many of their kind was something more refined than our ever-shifting lines of right and wrong. There was something beautiful in the simplicity of knowing what you were and what your place in the world was. Fae like Lorelai had such clarity of confidence in their actions it was hard not envy them sometimes.
Not that I envied Lorelai just then. I had no idea whether she still lived when I finally jumped out of the car and ran up to her house. The door sat wide open, and I heard people yelling and moving about before I even made it to the room where I’d witnessed the attack through Lorelai’s eyes.
“Lorelai!” I shouted as I ran to her side.
Someone had propped her head up on a pillow, and she lay on the ground with robe pulled open to expose the gaping chest wound. Kumiko knelt beside her, head bowed in what looked like prayer, hands hovering a few inches over Lorelai’s body.
“Alex,” said Lorelai when she saw me. “I felt you wit
h me. Are you okay, love?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “What happened? Are you hurt? What happened to the kryte?”
“I’ll be okay, thanks to Kumiko here.”
That’s when it sank in what Kumiko really was. “She’s kitsune.”
Kumiko’s mouth twitched downward at the corners, as though she resented having to put up with my interference. I could only imagine what kind of energy output she was maintaining to keep Lorelai stable enough to talk. If I’d been Kumiko, I’d have told me to fuck right off so I could do my job, but instead she remained silent and did an admirable job of ignoring me completely.
“Did you cause the blast of light?” I asked Kumiko. “Are you the one who fought the kryte off?”
Lorelai smiled and laid a hand on my knee. “That was my doing. I’m not without my ability to protect myself. The beast was able to enter my home without me detecting its presence, and that’s the only reason it managed to get close enough to do this much damage. I can only guess that someone had given in a ward of some kind to shield it from me until it was too late.”
“Did you kill it?” asked Chase from over my shoulder.
In my rush to check on Lorelai, I’d forgotten he’d even been in the car with me.
“No,” said Lorelai. “It ran before I could do anything more. Creatures such as it fear the light.”
A wave of disappointment crashed over me, and I tried not to let it show. My life would have been so much easier had she taken the beast out of the equation.
“Why did it come for you, Lorelai?” I asked. “What possible reason could anyone have for risking an attack on you?”
“I’ve been looking into your problem,” she replied softly. “I’d contacted a few trusted sources close to the Conclave to see if any of them had their hands in this. Word must have gotten out I was digging too close to something, and someone obviously thought it worth the risk to come after me.”
“What will you do now?” I asked.
“Nothing, I’m afraid.” She closed her eyes and winced.
I noticed sweat beading on her brow, and it hit me how frail she looked. I’d always assumed Lorelai was as close to immortal as could be, and it was a shock to see her so close to death.
“Don’t look so worried,” she said as if sensing my thoughts. Lorelai shifted her hand to take and squeeze mine. “Kumiko is a powerful healer, and I’ve already made arrangements to recover in safety. The house has been put under full lock down, and nothing is getting through my defenses before I can be moved.”
“How do I fight this thing?” I asked. “Someone is obviously behind all of this, but I don’t now how to find them. The only clues I have are either too dangerous to chase after, or most likely lost to history.”
“Talk to Jessica,” said Lorelai, her words coming more slowly now. “She can help you get in touch with the Conclave. This has grown much larger than the simple murder you first set out to investigate. You’re going to need their resources.”
“What does Jessica have to do with the Conclave?” I asked.
“Trust me,” said Lorelai.
“She needs to rest now,” Kumiko snapped. “Please leave.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but I could see Lorelai’s eyes had glazed over. She looked up at me still, but her focus was off, as though she was staring at something on the wall behind me. Not even the fae could lose that much blood and still be okay. That, plus whatever she’d done to secure the house from further intrusion had clearly taken a toll on her.
“Come on,” I said to Chase as I stood up. “Our trip to Scotland is off.”
Chapter Seventeen
My loyal companions Fear and Doubt were louder than ever on the walk back to the car. They’d each gotten a good long look at Lorelai’s broken and battered body, and they had very strong opinions about how my magical competence would fare against an unknown mage who was powerful enough to control a beast like the kryte. Conjuring and setting loose a fae creature was one thing, but it was something else altogether to maintain a hold on it in order to torture and kill several people, steal the Amulet of Duan Marbhaidh, then attack one of the most powerful fae creatures I knew.
There was no way I could win against an opponent like that. Almost all mages came up through rigorous and ritualized systems of training. They attained rank by means of apprenticeship under other established mages who’d undergone their own lifelong training. By the time I’d even learned such a system existed, I’d been too old for many to want to take me. Worse, I’d been too stubborn to accept offers from those few who were generous enough to make them. Anyone with enough power to circumvent the wards at my apartment like they hadn’t even existed would most certainly have to be a classically trained mage of the highest order. In contrast, I was nothing more than a glorified hedge-mage who’d been lucky with a few charitable teachers over the last few years.
Sure, I could cast a few spells and impress someone like Chase without trying all that hard, but I was nothing compared to most of the magic users operating around the world. I’d told Chase there were only a few thousand mages like me in existence, but I’d only been talking about people with the potential to shape their ability into spells. When it came to refined knowledge and application, I was solidly at the back of the class and completely out of my element. It was difficult to really say for sure, but if I had to put a number on it, I’d say there were fewer than twenty or thirty master mages with the kind of power I was most likely up against.
Which was why I had to accept that Lorelai was right in suggesting I go see the Conclave.
“So what exactly is the Concl— ow!”
I’d punched Chase in the thigh hard enough to keep him from saying things he shouldn’t in front of our driver. It only took me a second to throw up a small spell that absorbed and distorted sound waves coming from the localized area of the back seat. I’d already scanned the driver with my sight. Since he was ungifted, he’d hear nothing but mumbling from the backseat.
“First rule of magic club: you do not ever talk about secret magic shit around anyone. Got it? That is the kind of thing that gets people like you and me killed without warning.”
“Sorry,” said Chase, clearly feeling chastised. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s not your fault,” I offered. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, but this is really serious. You absolutely cannot talk about this to anyone outside of the people I introduce you to. Not even on the internet.”
“Wait, aren’t you talking about it now?”
I explained the sound dampening spell I’d cast, and when he gave me a skeptical stare, I shrunk the spell down to the size of my head and spoke a garbled mess of sounds I knew would come across about as clear as if we were swimming in jello.
“That’s pretty cool,” he said when I’d expanded it to include him again. “Maybe now you can tell me what the hell the Conclave is?”
“The Conclave is a cabal of high powered mages and fae who basically hold power over the rest of us. They’re the magical equivalent of the government, the police, the army, and the United Nations.”
“That’s all, huh?”
“They’re also all borderline megalomaniacs who don’t like it when anyone steps out of line. The best thing someone like me can do is to stay below their radar. Contacting them is going to mean letting them know I exist, and that’s not something I’m too excited about.”
“Do you really need to do it?” asked Chase. “Can’t we figure this out on our own?”
I shook my head. “It’s not looking good at this point. If whoever is behind this went after Lorelai, things are a lot more serious than I thought.”
“Yeah, about that. What the hell was that place? One of the guys was running around without any clothes on, and he didn’t seem too concerned about it. He just stood there with his junk hanging out like it was totally normal. How exactly do you know this Lorelai person?”
“That’s hard to explain.”
We
were close to Jessica’s apartment, so I warned Chase to keep his talk to more mundane matters before I snapped off the sound blocking spell. I could tell there were more questions Chase was practically frothing at the mouth to ask, but I knew each answer I gave him would only spawn two more threads of thought he’d feel compelled to yank on. The guy processed information so quickly I’d often teased him about having a computer for a brain. It was useful when it came to solving game puzzles or working through huge sets of data like what we’d slogged through to research Carolus’s grimoire, but it got annoying fast when you were the one he was trying to milk for information.
The car pulled up at the address I’d given, and I hopped out and slung my bag over my shoulder.
“We need to get rid of the car,” I said.
“How are we going to get around after this?”
“We’ll figure it out. Right now, we need to avoid anything that could let someone track us. It’s not worth the risk that whoever is after me might find out about you and start tracking your cards. We’re also going to have to stick to cash as much as possible from now on.”
Chase paid the driver, then hauled his suitcase out of the trunk. I watched him pop the handle up so he could roll it along the walkway to Jessica’s apartment.
I did my little trick with the front door lock, and we went directly to Jessica’s first floor apartment.
“Alex?” asked Jessica when she opened the door.
She wore sweatpants and a baggy sweater, her hair was a mess, and sleep lines creased the skin on the left side of her face.
“Sorry we woke you. Can we come in?”
Jessica eyed Chase then groaned as she turned and walked into her living room, leaving the door open for us. Chase wrestled his suitcase in behind me, and I heard him close the door as I went to join Jess on the couch.
Jessica pulled a cigarette from a crumpled pack and placed it between her lips. She held the lighter up to it, and spoke before lighting it, the cigarette bouncing between her lips. “It’s too early for whatever it is you came here for.”
Black Magic (Black Records Book 1) Page 16