Feral Magic

by Nicolette Jinks

  He grabbed my elbow. “It’s nine in the morning, past time to get to work, and I need the help for the festivities.”

  “So,” I hissed, yanking my arm away from him and not caring when I staggered a little. “For three days you treat me like I’m going out of my way to annoy you, and when I find someone else to be with, you get jealous.”

  Mordon’s face turned to stone and he said, “My leader is relying on me to keep you safe, and how am I supposed to do that when you disappear?”

  I sighed and slapped my sides. “Aren’t you the least bit worried about what I did or who I was with?”

  He winced; he had thought of it. “I am not jealous.”

  “I think we established that,” I said, then sighed. “To save you the time of finding out for yourself, I was with Barnes at a snail race. We gambled, cleaned out the house, had too much to drink, met up with my brother and his wife, and I was the biggest flirt in the joint.”

  Mordon stared at me for a minute, then his stone facade cracked and he seemed instantly older; he sat in a chair. “I know.”

  I stared at him, wondering for an instant if he had tracked down a couple people from the Mermaid, but most people who had been there were in worse shape than I. Heart stopping for a beat, I said, “You followed me.”

  Had I seen him there? I couldn’t remember. The haze and drinks combined with the bustle of the night made everything blend together. Now that I gave him a second look, he had dark circles under his eyes and oily skin. Mordon did not confirm my words, but he didn’t object to them, either.

  I sat next to him. “Alright,” I said, “I’ll make you a deal. If you can keep your temper under control for the next few days, I will help you in the shop and I won’t dart out the back door.”

  He stared into nothing for a few seconds, then shook himself. “Good. Take a half hour to get cleaned up. Tourists and visitors from all walks of life are going to be coming into the shop. We need to be on our best behavior.”

  “Clean up, yourself,” I said, winking, “You look like you’ve spent half a day and an entire night trying to hide in a tavern.”

  He let out a barking laugh. “You’re one to talk.”

  I stood up and glanced at him over my shoulder the way Simbalene taught me to, with just a hint of a smile. Then I went through my french doors, shutting the curtain in between them.

  Still groggy, I stepped out of my shower and into the day dress; the only shoes I had that would go with it were the strappy ones I bought what seemed like ages ago. Not wanting to dry my wet hair, I left it to hang about my shoulders.

  I made my way to the shop and still had a few minutes left; it seemed that Mordon was taking longer than I had. Not sure if I should open up without him, I instead wandered through the shop...and discovered a nook behind one of the antique room dividers. Candle stubs sat in molten piles of wax, fresh candles were on the floor with a book left open to a page. I skimmed the spell, finding it to be a tracking spell. The coffin rattled and startled me, then I realized the theft bothered Mordon much more than he let on. But why was he hiding this instead of asking Leif for help?

  I resisted touching the book, but a breeze swept over the floor and fluttered the page, turning it for me.

  The spell called for the blood of the caster.

  Blood was not used in sorcering-approved spells. It was hardly the worst spell I had ever read, but spells like these were seen as gateway spells to darker ones; the power rush that came from them was addictive and it tainted the mind. Frowning, I stepped back into the openness of the cluttered shop.

  Mordon could try all he wanted to do that spell, but he wouldn’t be able to do it. It wasn’t for lack of power or skill; it was out of his element. He was fire, and while he had limited skills with other elements, he had no ability with this one. Clearly he had tried, and he was going to keep on trying. My gut stilled at my next thought.

  I could do it. I could hunt down the Lady of the Vase. Did I dare admit it to anyone? Mordon was headstrong, Mordon was reckless; people expected this sort of spell from either him or Barnes. Not of me.

  I wanted to find the Vase. Too much time had passed since my last lead, and I wanted to free Railey. Sometimes, when I slept but wasn’t tired, I dreamed I was part of that shadow dragon, fighting to keep my memories separate from the others, wondering if that most recent memory was one I’d forgotten—or if it was never mine to start with. Leif would dismiss me on the spot if he found out that I had done a gray spell like that one. Barnes might turn his cheek. Lilly would be astonished. Mordon...he would be disappointed, possibly suspicious. But he needed to find the vase, and he would never succeed on his own. I didn’t want to approach him about it—it would mean acknowledging that I wasn’t telling anyone else, and that would make Mordon uncertain about me.

  I needed to make it seem as though he was the one doing it. If I waited with him and worked the spell in secret, he would know. No, what I needed was to enchant something—something that he would use during the spell at an appropriate moment...his knife. Whatever he was using to let loose a couple drops of blood would be perfect. I’d just need to find what it was and borrow it for an hour...

  “Ready?”

  Mordon surprised me; I jumped. He laughed. “Caught you daydreaming?”

  “I suppose so,” I said, not that he was paying me much mind. He seemed distracted himself. After all the attention I got last night in a wrinkled shirt and pants, I felt a little miffed that he should be oblivious of me in a dress and heels. Maybe I was overdressed, I considered, but my worries were pushed away once Mordon opened the doors and people poured through.

  I wore my best smile and tried to look eager to help the customers, and was rewarded with customers with full pocketbooks. They quizzed me on the history of items in the shop, and I surprised myself with how much I’d learned by mutely nodding at Mordon and browsing through his books. When I didn’t know something, it was either not a big deal or we found Mordon.

  The sentient shop seemed to solidify its relationship with me, shifting the wind for me to follow a trail or subtly shifting books to the side. During the lunch lull, when I still saw more customers come through than I had seen in all the days before, Lilly brought us food, and I sat in a chair, resting my head against a column. In my head, the shop rumbled and purred like a happy kitten. It stopped when I pulled away, but it still gave me a fuzzy feeling that kept me relaxed and calm for the rest of the day.

  Mordon said farewell to the last customer, following him to the door to shut it before anyone else entered. We worked well past dinner and my feet ached. I sat on the counter and teased, “What’s our register at today?”

  A thoughtful expression passed over his face and he started rifling through the coins and bills.

  “I wasn’t being serious,” I said.

  “Nevertheless, you were above and beyond today and I think it should be payday since you’ve been working for me for almost two weeks.”

  I whistled. “Two weeks! That ball thing is supposed to be here soon, isn’t it?”

  What had happened to my two weeks to brings this team together? Would Leif think that I’d made progress? I at the very least seemed to have contained my feral magic, though I didn’t have the strict obedience that most sorcerers tried to impose on their magic.

  “It’s in two days,” Mordon said and sighed, then gave me a little smile. “I had hoped you would have time to work on your illusion, and I wanted to know...who have you chosen for your guardian?”

  “That would be a smart thing for me to appoint, wouldn’t it?” I said, staring up at the airplane and admiring the night sky. Mordon dropped a drawstring bag next to my elbow; it sounded of jingling coins.

  “Only the most powerful of sorceresses have decided against it.”

  “Mmm, I don’t exactly fit into that category, do I?”

  “Maybe not in terms of magic,” he whispered, yet another one of those asides I thought I shouldn’t be able to hear. He sp
oke louder, “Leif doesn’t have a ward, and he’s very highly regarded. Barnes would be stretched a little thin, but you two do seem to operate so very well together.”

  I laughed, enjoying its pitch under the stars and the moon. “Barnes! The grumpy man sure has a party side to him, doesn’t he?” I shook my head, noticed a couple rat tails in my hair, and combed them out with my fingers. “We’re no good for each other.”

  “What do you mean by that? You get along fabulously.” Mordon sounded bitter.

  I kept unknotting my hair. “Because he’s a dark elemental. He’s got these urges comin’ in through his magic, and I’ll bet that every time he walks onto a crime scene, he feels what made it come about. He feels the victim’s panic, and he gets a thrill the same way the perpetrator did. And when the case is over and he looks at his empty home, he is swarmed by the emotions and passions of every single case he ever worked on. So he goes and lives on the wild side, just enough to exhaust those feelings so he can limp to the couch and sleep for three hours.”

  I stared into the plane’s cockpit and let loose a small sigh that carried the weight of a decade of nightmares.

  “You’ve felt it?”

  “Railey did. She was a dark elemental, too, not as strong as Barnes but maybe she would have been with time.”

  “...and when she became your ghost, her memories, her nightmares became part of you.”

  I let out a shuddering breath. “I still feel her when all is quiet like this.” Setting my jaw, I said, “I want your knife.”

  For three heartbeats, Mordon did not move or breathe. “Why?”

  “I need to open a box.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” he asked, very slowly.

  “Railey needs me to find her, and it’s been two weeks of waiting. Don’t interrupt me. You’re very close to finding the next link in the chain, but without a modification to the knife, you won’t get any closer than the next set of candles.”

  He let out a breath. “Tell me what needs done and I will do it.”

  “You don’t have the time and knowledge. I will give it back to you first thing in the morning.”

  Mordon stood in front of me and locked eyes for a second. He had the control to not let magic take over, but the piercing intensity of his gaze struck home. “Why haven’t you told anyone about me?”

  “I need to find Railey again, and I know you can contain yourself. That spell is a loaded gun, and I don’t fear guns. I fear those who are behind them.” I watched the fire in his eyes, and my hand brushed the rough skin of his cheek. “I don’t fear you. I don’t fear my guardian.”

  Mordon broke my gaze, looking at my face but not locking eyes. “It is customary to ask.”

  I jumped off the counter, my bare feet touching wood floor. “It’s never really been a question since the beginning, has it?” I picked up my shoes and walked to the wainscoting door. Mordon opened it for me and held out his hand.

  In it rested a knife. Taking it and hiding it beneath my shoes should I bump into one of the others, I went upstairs.

  Lilly pursued me with a bowl of stew and Barnes brought out a jug of brandy he had been hiding for several years in a cabinet; I politely asked to change clothes, then promised to be right out. By the time I was in fresh clothes, Mordon lounged in a chair with a bowl full of broth and meat chunks and the other two were setting up Kill Dr. Lucky. Mordon and Barnes had never seen it before, but I had played it and it was a favorite of Leif’s. It was a board game—modified to enact the scenes described on the cards—where every player tries to kill Dr. Lucky. Though Barnes was particularly skeptical, he was soon having the most entertainment out of all of us. I will admit, the game got better the more of his brandy we sampled. By the time Lilly killed Dr. Lucky with a candlestick (he tripped over it and rolled down the steps, coming to his death in the library; in the end, Dr. Lucky’s deaths were usually very unlucky), it was past midnight and each one of us had a hard time crawling out of our seats and going to bed.

  Sweet as Lilly had been, the amount of time the game took up made me irritated. It meant I had that much less energy to figure out how to enchant Mordon’s knife to make it look like a simple modification, but in reality be the entire spell he wanted to perform. Ugh, how it bothered me to do complex spells!

  I got to sleep by two in the morning, treating myself to a crash test in enchanting—I wasn’t the best, I went through both of my practice items until my results were passable—and the spell itself I had to transcribe onto the back of the disenchanted paper before I could work it, and a rough attempt at an illusion which was surprisingly effective.

  Mordon woke me up early the next morning by sending Lilly in to rouse me, which she did with all the vigor and enthusiasm that four cups of coffee, several dashes of sugar, and a heap of chocolate combined into one tiny cup gave her. I tossed a shoe at her, which she caught, and my efforts were rewarded with a new pair of shoes in my face. Lilly discovered we wore the same size and she had apparently decided to lend me some of her shoes.

  “Wear the red dress today,” Lilly ordered, “You can’t have return customers see you wearing the same thing twice.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her, thinking. “What are you up to?”

  She blushed. “What do you mean?”

  “The last couple of day’s you’ve been...absent mentally.” I hadn’t paid it any real attention earlier because I’d been preoccupied with my own thoughts, but she was extra-dressed up today, and I had a feeling it wasn’t due to the festivities.

  She wrung out her hands then seemed past the point of bursting. “Put on your shoes, I’ll work on your hair (you never do anything with it!)...I met someone. I doubt it’ll go anywhere, but he’s patient and such a romantic!”

  I paused while working the shoe over my heel, wincing as Lilly tugged a hair out. “Anyone I know?”

  She gave my hair a yank that could not have been accidental. “No, and I’m keeping mum until I’m good and ready.”

  “Fine by me.” If it really was no one I knew, her odds of success were pretty decent.

  “There, done,” Lilly said. “You’d better get moving’, I hear half the customers are showing up to see you.”

  “Ha!” I shouted after her, then wondered if she was being serious.

  I slipped Mordon his knife when I came down the stairs. He put it in the hilt on his belt and said, “You’re late.”

  “Not by much. I had to tidy up, you know.” I winked, then became part of the ebb and flow of customers yet again.

  This day was just as busy as the last, more people who just wanted to look, but the people who bought purchased the expensive items. One seriously was thinking about buying the airplane, and I was glad when he decided it was six inches too long to fit perfectly in his showroom.

  It was nightfall again before we quit, and Barnes had Mordon pulled aside with an attempted thief when Leif came to sit next to me. My gut twisted when I saw Leif’s taut frown.

  “Give me one reason not to throw you out right now,” Leif said calmly.

  “It is in your best interests not to.”

  “It is in my best interest to keep someone who secretly does dark magic?” Lilly must have felt the remnants of my spell in my suite and told him; I had been sloppy.

  “It’s gray magic.”

  “That is so much better.”

  “Yes, it is, and you need to knock off the drama before you do something stupid.”

  Leif’s blue eyes stared into nothing. “Convince me.”

  “I’m your link between you and the rest. No, I’m not gooey sweetness like Lilly, I’m not crass like Barnes, or loyal like Mordon. I’m really much more like you, but I’ve been backed into a corner and I understand the others in a way you cannot. Now, this means that you are going to have to trust me. They trust me, or they’re learning to. Would you rather they keep to themselves, or that they have a buffer, someone who can decide if it is a secret worth keeping?”

  Leif sig
hed. “What is going on here?”

  “We’re following the trail of the vase that was stolen.”

  “You think it’ll help you find Railey.”

  His words jarred me; I’d never questioned it, but it did seem a peculiar leap in judgment. A theft linking up with Unwritten magic was just bizarre. “Yes.” I still knew they were connected, but I couldn’t say how.

  Leif crossed his arms and leaned back, looking at Mordon and Barnes who were ending their talk with the kid. “You are deep in the feral magic. The question is if you can trust it.”

  “I think I need to,” I said. “If I can’t trust my magic, I can’t trust any decision I make.”