I opened my mouth, then closed it. I had no idea what to say to him. Finally, I said the only thing that currently seemed to matter.
“I can’t transform. It’s...gone.”
Eric’s hesitation broke. He crossed to me in two big steps and wrapped me up in his big, comforting arms. I willed the tears to come. I wanted to break down now, with someone I trusted holding me. That was better than the frantic spurts of anger and tears I’d had in the car with De Vries.
But this was too big to cry about—too life changing. It was just like when that sorcerer had shot my mom. It took me far too long to really comprehend the loss. The anger faded, leaving me spent and cold and thin, but grief still hadn’t gotten the message.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Eric said. A massive hand cradled my head, tucking me against his chest. I buried my face against him, half hoping I might suffocate. At least then I wouldn’t have to face everything that was ahead of me. Death at the hands of the Guild, or life, missing half of my soul.
“How is it going to be okay?” I managed.
His other hand rubbed my back. “I don’t fucking know. It just will,” he said. “I’m speaking at your trial. As your mentor, I know you best. I was there when you helped take Gwydian.”
I shuddered again at the name. “De Vries said they had the enslavement spell.”
Eric froze.
It occurred to me, then, that he might have known about that. Deepti certainly had—after all, she’d been the one to figure it out. Half of me wanted to pull out of his arms, scream at him for betraying me.
But I’d never made them promise not to use the enslavement spell. I’d thought refusing to give it to them would be enough to ensure it could never be used again.
And then they’d unraveled the secrets of that horrible spell and set it down in Guild procedure like it was no more terrible than handcuffs.
But they hadn’t really known me yet. At that time, they hadn’t really cared. I couldn’t bring myself to blame them for it. I didn’t have the capacity for more hurt feelings.
Eric stepped back, taking my head in both hands so I was forced to look right at him. “I won’t let them do that to you again,” he said.
My breath sharpened. “How?” I couldn’t see a way they wouldn’t use it now, not after I’d freaked out on Enforcer Randolph.
“I’m going to argue for a power dampener. Since you turned yourself in, there’s a good chance they’ll agree to it.”
“Not after what just happened.”
“De Vries said you panicked when he mentioned the enslavement spell. Given your history, the twelve will understand that subjecting you to that is an unnecessary cruelty when a power dampener is an alternative. Especially now.”
I swallowed, not daring to feel hopeful. “Now that I can’t transform?”
“Yes. That, I’m guessing, would have been the main reason for an enslavement spell. It would have been the only way to be sure you couldn’t slip your restraints.”
I stepped back, and Eric dropped his hands from my face. My hand strayed under the edge of the robe, feeling for the clotted stripe bisecting my tattoo. It was sore, but it didn’t hurt much anymore. It didn’t feel like enough pain, for something that had ripped my life into such an unrecognizable mess.
Eric’s forehead creased. “Why’d you do it?”
I sank onto the edge of the bed. “You know why.”
He sighed. “Yeah. But you’d have been okay.”
I traced my fingers across the slightly-raised tattoo. “Maybe. But I’m tired of running. And I’m tired of messing up people’s lives. If I ran, you and Deepti would have gotten into trouble. At least this way, whatever happens is going to be clean.”
“Like your death?”
I shrugged.
Eric crouched in front of me. “That is not the response you should have to the possibility of your own execution!”
“What do you want me to say?” I demanded. “You think I want to die? Everything was finally getting good. I wanted the biggest problem in my life to be feeling guilty over Jaesung’s knee. Then this bullshit happened, and everything just...” I lifted my hand, then dropped it to my side. “I can’t do it. I can’t have a normal life. I don’t know why I ever thought I could. And now I’ve dragged you all down with me.”
Eric was quiet for a minute. I counted our breaths. Fifteen, before he moved his hand to cover mine on the cot. Seven more before he spoke.
“You haven’t dragged us down,” he said. “If anything, you’ve forced us all to become stronger. Ten years ago, when I met Kelly, I encountered one way in which the system the Guild had put in place was failing. I found a loophole. I vouched for him, and that was good enough for the Henard Guild’s leader. Then I became the Henard Guild’s leader, and things stayed fine. There are a lot of problems with Guild policy. I’ve spent the last decade wiggling around them, bending the rules when I needed to for the sake of good people. And then there’s you.”
I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t really believe his insistence that my presence was a good influence, no matter how he tried to spin it.
“You don’t fit into the rules,” he said, turning my palm up. “On the one hand, you’re a victim of violence and enslavement. You should have been protected by the Guild, and we failed you. We have no policy for how to handle victims, and we should.” He clasped the fingers of my opposite hand.
“On the other side, you’re a powerful sorceress—one with two dangerous powers—who doesn’t want to be beholden to the Guild. Even if one of those powers no longer applies, there’s very little chance the Guild will just allow you to go around unchecked.”
He squeezed my fingers. “The biggest problem is that you used sanguimancy. Even though you used it to help catch sanguimancers, and you helped us catch Gwydian, we don’t have rules for exceptions. There’s nothing like you on the books, which means...”
I let out a shaky breath and pulled my hands away. I didn’t want to hear him say how doomed I was.
Eric reached up, turning my chin toward him. His honey brown eyes were solemn, but there was a spark in them I hadn’t seen before—a fire struggling to catching hold.
“Which means the rules have to change. And I’m going to change them.”
I…couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. How was he going to change the rules? Eric was a detective. An Enforcer. His life consisted of making sure people obeyed the rules, not changing the rules to fit people’s needs.
“What?” I whispered.
He smiled, the kind of smile that was at once sad and determined. “There should be room for people like you. People like Kelly. I’ve put this off too long, hoping someone else would do it.”
He stood and, cupping my face in both of his big hands, kissed my forehead. “Keep yourself together,” he said.
Then he was at the door, knocking on the back, and the white mandalas over the knob and lock flickered out. Eric twisted the knob, but before he opened the door, he turned back and looked at me.
“We’ve got to change the world, Perrita.”
Chapter 24
jaesung
“Why can’t you just admit that I was right?” Krista said, dodging around a discarded fast-food bag as we followed my phone’s GPS to the address for Batch, Please!
“Because you couldn’t actually tell the dude who ran into me was a sorcerer,” I said. “You just guessed. And he might not have been the one who slipped me the card anyway.”
She snorted. “You’re just mad because I caught it and you didn’t. Admit it. I’m a wizard, and my plan worked.”
“Walking around aimlessly isn’t a plan,” I said. I was not going to gratify her lucky guess. The fact that fate was taunting me by making all of Krista’s stupid ideas pan out was supremely frustrating. It foretold massive amounts of damage-control later on, when the world actually started to operate under Murphy’s Law again.
The cupcake shop was on the other side of the harbor, tu
cked away in a clutch of tall buildings packed with upscale restaurants and stores like Zara and Anthropologie. It was the narrowest shopfront, just wide enough for a door and a small front-window display. Currently, the window held a five-tiered tower loaded with enough calories to make a sorcerer fat.
“Is that a cupcake in a teacup?” Krista said. “Is that a marzipan teacup poodle on top of a cupcake in a teacup?”
“I’m not sure what marzipan is, but there’s a thing that sure looks like a teacup poodle on a cupcake in a teacup.”
Krista’s eyes bugged. “I need it.”
I dragged her away from the display before she could make overtures toward the rainbow buttercream.
“Is that a unicorn?”
“Let's focus on the vaguely threatening message right now,” I said, dragging her through the door. “Unicorn cupcakes later.”
Inside, the shop was striped in shades of pink with a huge black chalkboard menu over the counter display. To the left was a series of hooks with pot-holders, spatulas, and cookbooks all bearing the same sassy black font in the shop’s name. On the right, behind the window display, sat a single iron bistro table.
And at the table, sat the black man who’d run into me on the quay. Krista shot me a look of triumph. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Our anti-pickpocket was chowing down on a cupcake, and there was a smear of yellow frosting on his carefully-trimmed goatee. He was so consumed with the process of demolishing his snack that he didn’t notice us walk in.
I hooked the table’s second chair and sprawled into it, jaw tight. My nerves were jangling, and it felt like there was a fist shoved beneath my sternum. I let all the surliness I felt transfer into my body—posture like a fourteen-year-old in detention, arms crossed, jaw locked.
Krista, meanwhile, plopped onto the window sill right behind the display, obviously missing the sign that said, “THIS IS NOT A CHAIR”.
“Hi,” she said.
The sorcerer—at least I assumed he was a sorcerer—had jerked to attention when I sat down. He’d gone tense, as if prepared to defend himself. Krista’s friendly greeting seemed to throw him off.
As he was stuck shifting mental gears, I pulled the business card from my pocket and slid it across the table’s wrought iron top. “We’re here about this,” I said. “Is it supposed to be a threat?”
I noticed the woman at the counter look over at us. Then a timer went off in the back, and she ducked through a door to tend her oven. I'll admit, a cupcake shop was a weird place for mafia-like information brokering.
“It’s not a threat,” the sorcerer said. “We have information for you, Mr. Park.”
My back tensed at the sound of my name. “What kind of information?”
He stood, and the iron chair screeched on the floor. He wiped his mouth and dusted crumbs off his neon shirt, which I now saw bore the Batch, Please! logo. Okay. So there was a broker of magical information whose front was… cupcakes.
That was fucking weird.
“Follow me,” the sorcerer said.
I glanced at Krista, who shrugged. We followed him through a gap at the end of the counter, past a bathroom, and into a smallish office. On our right sat a desk with a laptop and an open bag of pretzels, and on the left was a swinging door that must have led to the kitchen.
I had time to take in the rack of paper goods and a massive steel freezer door before my vision flashed a simmering shade of magenta.
I reacted at once, shoving Krista back through the door, even as my eyes burned with the outline of about twenty mandalas. Power arced to my extremities, sparking as it wound stinging loops around my forearms and ankles. I hurled myself backward, but I might as well have been chained to the spot. I couldn’t break the connection.
My pulse slammed in my ears, and I jerked back against the magical connection. In hound form, I could bite the spell and tear the magic, but did I have the energy for that? I hadn’t slept or eaten enough. What if I got stuck as a wolf for the rest of the day? How would I get back to the hotel?
Krista slammed back through the door and grabbed my arm. “Jae, what the fuck!”
“Don’t!” I snapped, and she jerked back her hands.
“What?” She walked around in front of me, waving her hand in my face. “Yo. You okay? What did you do to him?” She demanded of the sorcerer, but he was already ducking through the swinging door. “Hey!” She said, starting after him.
I blinked at her. How was she not stuck? Did the mandalas only trigger once? It didn’t matter. We’d been tricked, and I had to get her out of there.
“Krista, no!” I said. “Run! I’m stuck—there’s a spell here that-”
The swinging door bumped open, cutting off Krista’s exit.
The woman from the front counter walked in, drying her hands on a rag. In the dim back-office light, she was limned in the magenta glow of the mandalas. Five feet tall and somewhere in her forties, the woman had a short blonde bob that said ‘I’d like to speak to the manager’ and a sharp expression that said, ‘I will shove a whisk down your throat if you piss me off’. Her lavender apron was embroidered with the name Drew.
Drew ignored Krista, stepping straight up to me, where she had to crane her neck to study me. Her blue eyes caught the reflection of the mandalas as she passed her gaze over my face, then right down the rest of me.
“Interesting,” she said, taking a step around behind me. Her voice was childish, as if it hadn't matured past twelve. “What are you?”
I bristled. “Korean.”
“Not that,” she said, and poked me in the shoulder as she came back around in front. “Magically. You can’t be a sorcerer—you’d be half unconscious.”
“What the hell is going on?” Krista demanded. She stomped up to the smaller woman, who didn’t even flinch as Krista’s black boots came within an inch of her toes. In face, she gave her a sparkling grin.
“Oh, honey, you may not be magical,” Drew said, “but you are interesting. How did someone like you get involved in all this mess? Was it Miss D’Argent?” She turned to me. “Or was it you.”
“Let her go,” I said. “Krista, leave.”
Drew gave a tinkling laugh that wouldn't have sounded out of place at a brunch. Then she waved a hand, and clenched her fingers into a tight little fist.
All the light snapped free from the mandalas and fizzled away, spinning out like fireworks. I reeled back, muscles suddenly aching with freedom. I hadn’t realized I’d still been straining against them. Krista darted out a hand and grabbed my arm, both steadying me and stepping into my side. We leaned into each other, a united front, a wall against the potential threat posed by this tiny, evil soccer mom.
“I can’t help it if you triggered my wards, Mr. Park. I was expecting mundanes.” Drew’s grin was a performance of politeness, eyes gleaming just as eerily without the neon reflections of her magic. “So what are you? Sylph? Fire Friend?”
I clenched my jaw. Like there was any way in hell I’d tell her I was an illegal shapeshifter.
“Maybe we should start with who you are, Drew,” I said. “Since you clearly know us.”
She sank onto the office chair by the desk and picked a pretzel from the bag. Her feet didn't even reach the floor, and she kicked them back and forth as she inspected the pretzel, as though noting the placement of every grain of salt.
“I'm someone with valuable information. But I'm also a business woman. Everything from here on out will cost you.”
Krista’s hand tightened on my arm. “Cost us what?”
The sorceress rolled her eyes, as if we were impossibly slow. “I dunno. Do you have ten thousand dollars on hand?”
I raised an eyebrow. “We’re college students. What do you think?”
“Then we trade for information.” She crossed her legs and swung back and forth a little in her office chair, watching us. Or, really, watching me. “What is it about you?” She said. “You’re a dancer, but sylph doesn’t feel right
for you. Your energy is too grounded for that. But you’re not an Earth Friend either.”
My pulse was almost painful in my throat. I could feel the fury knotting under my sternum, threatening to spill over. This woman knew Helena was in danger, but instead of being helpful, she was playing with us, seeing how much information she could tease out.
I was a spellhound. That knowledge would be worth a lot to someone. If Deepti’s prediction was right, the rest of the Guild would hunt me down if they found out what I was. Which meant I would be giving lawful-evil Kristin Chenoweth either a threat to dangle over my head, or a noose to hang me with.
Was I willing to take that risk for Helena?
Even as I thought it, I knew the answer. It wasn’t even a question.
I squared my shoulders and fixed Drew with a stare, forcing all my anger and determination into that look.
“Tell me what the vigilantes are planning for Helena, and I’ll tell you what I am.”
A chuckle. “Sorry, honey, but I'm not sure your identity is worth that much.”
“It is.”
I didn’t blink. I didn’t move my gaze. I didn’t let myself waver even slightly as I fixed her with my stare. She jiggled her foot a moment, assessing me like a discounted cut of meat. Was I worth the risk?
At last, she nodded. “Okay, you first.”
“Not a chance.”
“You must not love your girlfriend very much.”
I didn’t budge, even as Krista’s grip on my arm became painful. “I think I’ve demonstrated that I do.”
“Mr. Park,” she said, rocking herself out of the chair and wandering toward the door to the kitchen. She lifted onto her tiptoes to peer through the small plexiglass window, probably checking the timer on one of her ovens. “It’s much safer for you to make the first move. If I do it, and your information isn't worth the price, you’ll either have to make up the difference, or you’ll disappear.”
You’ll disappear.
She didn’t say it like a threat. She said it like a fact.
Which, of course, made it that much worse.
“This is extortion,” Krista breathed.
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