Sighing, the Chief Mage picked up the paper, his violet eyes scanning the article. They narrowed as the seconds ticked by. “The Herald is reporting high incidence of drug use among shifters.”
I folded my arms. “Yeah, and you don’t see a problem with that?” I decided not to mention that the Herald had basically painted shifters as irresponsible druggies who were a danger to society and practically outright demanded that the mages annihilate them. The Chief Mage probably wouldn’t care.
“Of course there’s a problem.” The Chief Mage slowly set the paper down. “Shifters aren’t affected by narcotics. We bred you that way specifically so that as soldiers you wouldn’t be susceptible to the drugs and poisons normal humans would die from.”
I decided to pretend he didn’t say that last part – the last thing I needed was to get into another argument with him over the cruelty mages had inflicted upon shifters through the centuries. “Right. And all the shifter deaths in the papers that appear to be poison-related… those shouldn’t be possible either, right?”
The Chief Mage scowled. “This is not the appropriate time for this conversation, Miss Baine. My time is limited, and has been set aside so that we can work on your magical education, not on solving murders.”
“Oh yeah?” I scowled, wanting very much to plow my fist into that superior expression.
And that’s when an idea came to me.
“Why can’t we combine both?” I asked, dropping my scowl in favor of a sly grin.
Iannis looked taken aback. “What exactly are you proposing?”
I propped my hands on my hips. “I’m proposing that you teach me some kind of spell that I can use to drag your stiff ass around the city and show you what’s really going on in this town.”
I expected him to snap at me for the comment about his ass, but instead he simply pressed his lips together in thought, saying nothing as a calculating gleam shone in his violet eyes.
“You’re proposing some kind of... reconnaissance?” he finally asked. “Where we can observe without being observed ourselves?”
I arched a brow. Did he have to make everything sound so academic?
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Very well.” His lips curved into a small smile. Electricity skipped through my veins. “I will play your game. This spell is a bit beyond your current skill level, but if you master it, I will do as you ask.”
We spent the next two hours struggling through an illusion spell - or rather, I struggled while Iannis stood in front of me and showed off. He made it look easy, the way he flickered from the form of a young girl to a hulking dog to a hunched old man, while I had trouble maintaining the singular form I was trying to recreate. By the time I’d mastered it, I was sweaty, hungry, and had a hell of a headache.
“Well done,” the Chief Mage said as I stood there in my new form. I wasn’t sure if the admiration in his eyes was due to my magical prowess or because I looked like a curvy redhead. Either way, though, it was gratifying. If I could distract someone as rigid and logical as Iannis with an illusion, then I could do it to lesser-willed people too, which would come in handy as an Enforcer.
“Am I ever going to get my Enforcer’s bracelet back?” I asked grumpily, now that I’d been reminded of it.
The Chief Mage arched a brow. “In due time.” He flickered from his own form to that of a muscular human with shaggy blond hair, tight red pants and an electric blue shirt that stretched across his broad chest. “For now, I suggest we go and embark upon this adventure of yours... and perhaps get some sustenance for you as well.”
I snorted, trying not to stare. For a stuffy old mage he seemed to have a good grip on human fashion sense. “You’re going to have to lose the ‘holier than thou’ dialect if you want to blend in,” I told him. “No human looking like you is going to talk like that.”
“Alright,” he said easily. “Let’s go have some fun on the town, huh?”
I blinked. That was a lot easier for him than I’d thought it would be. “Let’s,” I agreed uncertainly, no longer sure this ‘adventure’ was going to go quite the way I thought it would.
My steambike would only make us stand out, so we took a cab to the Sycamore, a popular gastro pub in Maintown that served as the local watering hole for humans. The cab let us off on Argent Street, across from the restaurant, and I took a moment to eye the place nervously as Iannis paid the fare. The black-and-red corner building had a line snaking out the door, and every single one of those trendy men and women were one hundred percent human, not a single shifter in sight.
“Alright,” Iannis said as the cab drove off. “Let’s go.”
“Wait.”
He paused, his foot already halfway off the curb.
“What names are we going by? We can’t exactly go in there using our own.” My name was unusual enough as it was, and now it was being printed all over the papers. And I doubted there was a human named after the Chief Mage.
Iannis shrugged. “You can call me Ian for the occasion,” he decided. “And you’ll be Nadia.”
“Nadia?” I grumbled, but then he hooked his arm through mine and I forgot all about complaining about the name, which wouldn’t have been my first choice. A warm current flowed through me as he tucked my body against his and escorted me across the street.
“Umm, what are you doing?” I muttered as we headed for the back of the line.
Iannis didn’t even look down at me. “We’re getting in line. It would be suspicious if I used my rank or my magic to try and bypass all these people to gain entrance.”
I would have rolled my eyes if I hadn’t been so damned uncomfortable. “No, I meant what are you doing here?” I hissed, tugging a little on my arm through his to draw attention to it.
He arched his brow as he looked down at me with pale blue eyes like Comenius’s, and suddenly I wished they were their normal violet hue. I tugged at the collar of my jacket nervously, uncomfortably warm beneath his gaze.
“We’re undercover, aren’t we?” he murmured, knowing that my sensitive ears would catch his words despite the buzz of conversation from the line. “If we’re coming here as a couple we should look the part.”
I gritted my teeth as heat continued to spread throughout my body, and glanced up at the moon as we settled in at the back of the line. It hung bright and round in the inky, star-splattered sky, perilously close to being full, and my hormones surged in response to its magical pull. Shifters were always strongest at the height of the lunar cycle – for some reason it gave us a boost, allowing us to shift more frequently and faster than usual.
“Are you alright?”
I glanced up to see Iannis watching me, once again disconcerted by the fact that I was looking up at a tanned blond rather than a pale redhead. His illusion was so good that even I couldn’t see through it – which boded well for us, as it meant none of the humans in the bar would be able to either.
Unfortunately that thought didn’t do anything to calm my nerves.
“I’m fine,” I told him, giving him a sweet smile I didn’t feel, in case anyone was looking. “Why do you ask?”
He dropped my hand and slipped his arm around my waist, drawing me in against his body. “I sense a lot of tension coming from you,” he murmured into my hair as his big hand rubbed up and down the curve where my hip met my torso. “I’ve seen males do this with their females to offer them comfort in social situations. Is it helping?”
“No,” I hissed, keeping my voice down so the other humans in line wouldn’t hear. I shivered as white-hot sparks skipped up and down my nerve endings. “Probably because you’re not my male and I’m not your female.”
“You are for the purposes of this outing,” he pointed out, but he stopped rubbing his hand up and down my side. “Though perhaps your overly emotional mind can’t make that distinction.”
“That. Is. Not. The. Point.” I sucked in a deep breath through my nostrils to keep from decking him, annoyed by his jab at my race. Shifters were
more emotional than the average human as a general rule, but he didn’t have to keep rubbing it in. Unfortunately, taking a breath didn’t help calm my nerves as it only caused me to inhale his musky sandalwood scent. The sparks raced through my body double-time, and I bit my lip.
“You’re right, of course.” He had the grace to look apologetic. “I suppose I’m going off topic.”
Ya think? I turned my attention to the conversations around us and did my best to ignore my unlikely date.
To my annoyance, no one was talking about anything interesting, and we spent the next twenty minutes crawling at a snail’s pace toward the entrance, Iannis’s hard body pressed against mine. My traitorous mind wondered if the muscles moving beneath his t-shirt were his, or if they were just part of the illusion. After all, he’d changed his coloring, outfit and facial features, but his weight-height proportions seemed to be the same…
This is so not helping.
I was saved from my raging hormones by the doorman, who gave us a cursory inspection before allowing us into the bar. The color scheme on the inside was exactly the same as the outside, with burgundy drapes covering the walls and black, glossy countertops and tables everywhere. Light music blended with the buzz of chatter as patrons sat and talked, and the aroma of fried foods made my stomach growl.
Iannis led me to the crowded bar, and we somehow managed to find two burgundy and black barstools near the middle. We ordered drinks from the bartender, who served them up along with two menus for us to look at.
I arched a brow as Iannis raised a beer bottle to his lips, tickled by the incongruity of the sight. “Know what you want?” I asked, noticing that he hadn’t touched the menu.
He nodded. “I’m partial to the pork belly donuts and the beer-battered tilapia.”
My jaw dropped. “You’ve been here before?”
He grinned at me, and my stomach flip-flopped. “You don’t really think I’ve never ventured out into the city, do you?” he asked, leaning in so he could murmur in my ear. I shivered as his warm, beer-scented breath tickled my earlobe. “Perhaps it’s been a while since I’ve been out, but I’m not as stuffy as you might think, Miss Baine.”
He sat back to enjoy his beer, and I snatched up the menu and began perusing the selection to cover my amazement. Sure enough, both the donuts and the tilapia were listed on the menu, along with a slew of other things. I decided on the lamb burger and an order of donuts for myself, and set the menu down so I could focus on the conversations going on around the bar.
“Hey,” Iannis said casually to a pair of young male humans wearing band t-shirts and shredded pants sitting next to us. “You two studying at the Academy?”
“Yeah.” The human closest to us lifted his can of beer in greeting. He was lean as a whip, and sported a bright blue mohawk, a septum piercing, and a days-old shiner on his right eye. “Going for an engineering degree, and my buddy here’s doing music.” He nudged his friend, a muscular guy with shaggy black hair and sunglasses. “How about you?”
Iannis leaned casually against the counter. “I’m majoring in chemistry, and my girlfriend Nadia’s going to culinary school.” He snagged me by the waist, and I swallowed a yelp as he drew me onto his lap. My heart rate skyrocketed as he looped his long, lanky arms around my hips, resting his clasped hands on the tops of my thighs, and my cheeks burned as his lips brushed my cheek before he grinned at the two humans. “She makes a killer lasagna.”
“That’s pretty sweet,” Shaggy Black Hair said, looking me up and down, and I knew he wasn’t just talking about my imagined culinary skills. “My band makes the rounds at a lot of restaurants around here. I could put in a good word if you need one.”
“Thanks.” I smiled sweetly, burying the urge to slam my heel into Iannis’s shin. I had no idea Mr. Ice King would throw himself into his role with such enthusiasm, or I might’ve thought twice about going out with him tonight. “So, how are things going for you two at the Academy?”
“Ugh.” Blue Mohawk rolled his eyes. “Don’t get me started. You’d think that the Mage’s Guild would stick to their own schools and apprenticeships, but a few of ‘em have been dropping in on the humanities classes at the Academy. They thumb their noses at science or engineering, take the best seats and most of them refuse to work with any of us humans.” He curled his lip. “They think that magic is the only viable way to accomplish things.”
“Well that’s just stupid,” Iannis chimed in, surprising me. His muscular thighs shifted beneath me, sending the butterflies in my stomach into a frenzy. “We have an electrical plant in Solantha that powers most areas of the city, including this building.” He waved an arm to indicate the bulbs hanging down from the ceiling.
I twisted in his lap to look down at him, and he simply stared up at me quizzically as if he couldn’t comprehend the skepticism on my face. It threw me off balance that he could understand the argument for technology so well, yet not permit much of it in the castle. Since I couldn’t call him on it, I turned back to the two humans.
“… yeah, and it doesn’t help things that those feckless shifters are always causing trouble, too,” Shaggy Black Hair was saying.
“Excuse me?” I said, a little too sharply, and the humans blinked.
Shaggy scowled at me. “There’ve been a lot of shifter-human fights breaking out on campus recently,” he said. “Some kinda drug’s been going around makin’ em crazy. Now that they’ve finally got a way to get high, they just can’t keep a lid on themselves.”
Blue Mohawk nodded, pointing to the shiner on his face. “Yeah, I got this from a rabbit shifter because I bumped into him in the hallway last week.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s crazy!” Rabbit shifters weren’t known for being particularly aggressive. I couldn’t imagine one getting into a fistfight over a simple accident.
Shaggy gave me the stink eye. “Seems like you’re defending the shifters, pretty lady. Don’t know if that’ll make you very popular around here.”
Iannis tightened his arms around my waist and straightened in his stool. “You’ll have to forgive her – she grew up in Rowanville, and as you know things are different over there.”
The two humans nodded. “I guess so,” Shaggy said suspiciously. “But still, you’d have to be blind not to see what’s been happening these last few days. These violent outbreaks are getting worse.”
Worry began to brew in my gut, and I stiffened. We were going to have to track down the source of these drugs, and soon, or the reputation of shifters as a race would be ruined. I squirmed in Iannis’s lap, suddenly tired of sitting here and making small talk, but he gave my hip a warning squeeze.
“Yeah, and worse, the mages aren’t doing anything about it,” Blue Mohawk added. Despite his shiner, he seemed more blasé about the whole thing, and simply sighed before taking a long drink from his beer bottle. “By the time they get around to it, there’ll probably be a civil war or something between humans and shifters. Lazy bastards are too busy up in their ivory towers, practicing their sacred magic spells, to think about anything else.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, raising my glass. I tossed Iannis the stink eye before downing my drink, happy that the hatred had been redirected back to mages again, who were clearly the root of the problem, and not shifters.
“Well, it was nice to meet you guys, but we’re catching a play later tonight with some friends and we’d better get going.” Blue Mohawk slid off his barstool, and Shaggy Black Hair followed suit. “See you around sometime, huh?”
“Yeah, see you.” Iannis lifted his beer to them in salute and took another long pull from it as they walked off.
A mixture of relief and triumph filled my chest as I leaned in to whisper in his ear. “See? I told you things are bad out here. I’m not the only one who hates mages.”
“Yes, and it seems that, at least in Maintown, mages aren’t the only ones who are hated.” He grinned at me.
Heat scalded the tips of my ears. “That’s no
t fair,” I said hotly.
He held up a long-fingered hand. “I know, I know,” he said. “All of this talk about drugs and shifters is alarming. It will be looked into.”
The gravity of his voice and expression settled me – this was the Iannis I knew. But before I could open my mouth, the bartender finally returned with our food.
“Thank Magorah,” I groaned, hopping back onto my own stool so I could grab my lamb burger. I bit into it, and closed my eyes as the rich flavors burst across my tongue. I’d forgotten how hungry I was.
We ate in silence, Iannis calmly eating his tilapia as I wolfed down my burger. I finished the thing in less than five minutes, and was about to start in on my donuts when a brunette in a slinky black dress inserted herself between us. She leaned her bare shoulders against the counter, smelling of perfume and stale sweat, and I wrinkled my nose.
“Hey sugar,” she said in a high, breathy voice, batting her long lashes at Iannis. “Care to have a drink with me?”
Iannis arched his blond brows, his pale eyes running up and down her body in a way that made my blood boil. “I –”
“We’ve got a play to catch,” I snapped, sliding off my barstool. The girl glared at me, and I gave her a smile that was both sweet and deadly as I snatched Iannis’s hand and pulled him off his own barstool. “Sorry, sweetheart, but go and pick on someone else’s guy.”
“‘Someone else’s guy’?” Iannis murmured as I dragged him out of the club, his voice tinged with amusement. “I thought we’d established that I wasn’t your male and you weren’t my female.”
“You are for the purposes of this outing,” I retorted, tossing his words right back into his face as I hailed a cab. My fingers tightened around his, and for reasons best not examined, I didn’t let go until we were safely headed back to the palace. Maybe I hated it there, but within those walls at least I understood the territory and rules between us.
Burned by Magic: a New Adult Fantasy Novel (The Baine Chronicles Book 1) Page 17