The three of them stared at her.
Cheri put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s the aftereffect of losing your tattoo. It has to be. Your reality got turned inside out twice, first when Daniel forced that Ink on you, and then, second, when that Ink came off in the worst possible way. Give it time.”
“Maybe so,” Isa said. “If you don’t like the philosophy treatise as rule two, try this on for size. I was taught that magic is only as good as your concentration and focus. I don’t know if you can train to get more magic, I suspect every branch of the military is researching to find out, but I do know that concentration is a muscle. It can be developed.”
“It’s also the thing that can be drugged away, right?” Oki said. “That’s why Live Ink means no mind-altering substances.”
“Absolutely.”
“Is that rule three?” Troy asked.
“Specific to Live Ink,” Isa said, shaking her head. “This is a labyrinth, isn’t it?”
“A whole series of rulebooks? Applicable to different situations,” he said.
“Oh, no. I have a job.”
“We’d help you,” Oki said. “So what are the limits? When do you—does anyone—run out of magic?”
“For me, it was working with someone whose power doesn’t mesh with mine,” Isa said. “Nothing since has bled me dry faster or more completely than that.”
Troy grimaced. “Apprenticing alongside Daniel?”
Isa nodded. “It’s one of the many reasons I believed I was an idiot when I was an apprentice. I’d trained so hard on the reservation and then I got here and didn’t seem to have enough power to do Live Ink bigger than a postcard.”
“If you were an idiot about anything, ever,” Cheri said, “it was for dating Daniel past the point that it became clear he was trying to grow his power at the expense of yours.”
“Hindsight,” Isa said and lifted her beer. “Maybe that’s rule three. Don’t let anyone feed off of you.”
Her friends laughed.
The song ended, but the band dove straight into their next piece. Cheri drained her glass, rocketed to her feet, and held out a hand.
“Let’s go, you’re dancing!”
“Wait. What?”
Oki jumped up, grabbed her hands, and pulled.
Cheri, Oki, and Isa found a few inches of space on the floor, squeezed in, and danced. When Troy joined them, they won considerably more room. Nathalie even hopped offstage to dance with them at one point.
The physical exertion in time with the music didn’t drive away the chill plaguing Isa the way she’d hoped it would. Silvery frost, sharp and biting, traced the scars inside her again. In the middle of the crowded dance floor, uneasiness crept over her. The flesh between her shoulder blades tightened.
Power rose from her center like a dog lifting his nose to test the breeze. It yanked her around to stare at the eastern wall of the tavern. She scowled. “What the hell?”
A fist of multicolored, multivoiced magic slammed her. Ears ringing, she rocked and stumbled.
That was a magical scream for help if ever she’d heard one. Felt. Ouch. Gold surged to the underside of her skin, shoving away the bruising magic.
Oki slumped. Ashen, Troy grabbed her. She sagged, limp, in his arms. Troy helped her to a chair.
Dancers stumbled as people sensitive to magic registered the hit and either fell or fainted outright.
Nathalie fumbled a chord. The music crashed to a stop.
Isa’s cell phone buzzed in her back pocket. The faint strains of “I Shot the Sheriff” played into the silence, then died.
Onstage, Nathalie snorted.
Isa grabbed the phone. Maybe now that she was dating Officer Steve Corvane, head of the Seattle Police Department Acts of Magic Unit, she ought to change his ring and text tone.
911 where r u? Steve’s text said.
Isa frowned. Had Steve felt that hit? Or was whatever had caused it generating emergency calls to the police already?
Her heart bumped against her ribs.
Oki’s party. U were invited. Come on down, Isa answered, edging off the dance floor.
People were recovering. Nervous laughter and a few “I’m fine, just need another beer” statements signaled the return to normalcy.
“I’m okay,” Nathalie said from stage. “Sorry.”
The phone buzzed in Isa’s hand. Meet @ shop. 5 min.
Isa shoved the phone into her back pocket and grabbed her coat.
“Something just happened, didn’t it? With magic. And Steve expects you to help?” Troy asked.
She hadn’t heard him follow her. She nodded. “He’s issuing orders.”
Troy’s brow lowered. “Steve’s sense of self-preservation is usually better than that.”
“I—” She hesitated, not sure how to give voice to the uneasy frisson lighting up her internal scar tissue. “I’ve got to go.”
She tilted her head at Oki, who’d achieved her feet and was busy denying that she needed to sit down. “If she has any further trouble, get her to the containment studio and close the door.”
Troy frowned. “Rule four. Gotcha. Do what you have to. We’ve got your critters covered.”
“Thank you.”
She glanced at the stage.
Nat lifted her chin in one of those all-purpose gestures that could mean “all good,” “so long,” or “see you later.”
Maybe Isa wouldn’t change Steve’s ring tone. When her friends heard it, they knew she’d been summoned to consult for the Seattle Police Department’s Acts of Magic Unit. Isa strode out the front door into blinding afternoon sunlight. Typical April weather that couldn’t make up its mind.
At least one driver on Ballard Ave had been hit by the magic surge that had kicked Isa and Oki in the gut. The white minivan had swerved into the side of a parked car. People surrounded the vehicle. The driver pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead, as if still trying to drive dizziness away.
The block and a half to Nightmare Ink stretched long, even though Isa jogged it, dodging the people wandering between the shops and restaurants lining the avenue.
Steve wasn’t there yet.
Isa went inside, locked the door behind her, and clattered down the narrow stairs to the basement. She’d built her metal and basalt containment studio into the bedrock of the place so it could ground magical energy rather than let it escape out into the world the way that rainbow-hued fist had. Ducking into the dark studio, she grabbed a backpack she kept on a rack Troy had built beside the door.
Working as Steve’s Live Ink consultant, Isa had learned to keep a kit of all the things she might need at a crime scene packed and ready to go. She slung the pack containing Live Ink, stasis paper, and binding ink to her back.
Upstairs, the Nepalese goat bell tied to the door jingled. She’d locked that door. Someone with a key to the shop, then. Which, given her friends, didn’t narrow the field much.
Frowning, she glanced up the staircase. “Steve?”
“Nah.” Troy poked his head around the door at the top of the stairs and peered down at her. “You okay?”
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
“Nat. Oki and Cheri,” he said, flashing a grin. “Worrying.”
“You weren’t?” Isa asked as she climbed the stairs.
“I know when I’m outgunned, Ice.” He stepped aside and held the door open.
Smiling, she drew breath to comment.
A bolt of puce magic slammed through her sternum. It knocked the air from her lungs and set her heart to pounding. Tottering on the top step, she gasped. What the hell? Another one?
Troy snagged her gray-and-black jacket and yanked her into the lobby.
Gunfire. Two shots. Three. Near enough that the percussion wave rattled her bones.
Screams erupted
from the street, the noise ghostly, filtered as it was through the brick, steel, and plate glass of the building.
Was this another wave of the initial strike that had hit at the Tractor? The magic didn’t look or sting in the same way. A single color dominated the attack, which was different. The first one had clearly been multiple cries for help.
This bolt had been an unshielded attempt to kill.
Chest aching, Isa dove for the front door. Innocent people on the streets would be as vulnerable to magic as to gunfire. She couldn’t do anything about bullets. She could interrupt a magical attack.
She barreled out onto the uneven sidewalk into the chilly spring breeze. At least the rain had stopped.
Red-brown power pierced her chest again, a spreading bloodstain of terror. Isa marshaled her magic, not to block the attack, but to trace it to its source.
Liquid gold, cold and bright as midwinter sunshine, rose from within to obey. She opened her etheric eye.
West.
Did consulting for the Seattle Police Department Acts of Magic Unit give her the obligation, not to mention the right, to respond? Or was that a matter of sheer human decency?
“Isa!” Troy yelled from the doorway.
Isa pulled up short and spun to face him. “Call Steve! Report the gunfire! Tell him unshielded magic attack!”
Maybe she hadn’t shielded, either. Troy jolted back a step when Isa met his eye. Hastily, she pulled her power back into the confines of her skin and bone and slammed a shield into place. Rule five: Shield.
Hands shaking, her business partner unhooked his cell phone from his belt clip and dialed.
Isa’s fingers curled on the strap of her brown leather backpack. She strode around the corner of the building. West.
Someone screamed. Sharp. Gurgling.
Her heart slammed into her ribs. Breathing too quickly, she risked twisting an ankle running downhill. Unconscious bodies slumped on the sidewalks. One or two were already recovering and stirring. Isa caught glimpses of pale, wide-eyed faces peeking out of the shops lining the street.
She picked up speed. Wrought iron fence posts, pointing at the sky, blurred past.
Cars littered Shilshole Avenue, still running, fenders dented, hoods crumpled, and in one case, radiator fluid dripping. A couple of drivers slumped behind the wheels. The few conscious drivers she spotted as she ran held cell phones to their ears.
She ducked between a pair of parked cars. Sunlight filtered through the patchy clouds showed through the tinted windows of a dark luxury SUV, illuminating the shadows of people inside.
As she darted between their car and the dented primer gray door of an ancient pickup, the hair at the back of her neck lifted in warning focused on the SUV.
What was that about?
Another flare of brownish-red magic rippled through the street.
No time to decipher the reaction to the four silhouettes inside the vehicle.
She found a stretch of asphalt not blocked by an accident and ran across the street to the gravel on the other side. She jumped the decrepit railroad tracks paralleling the shore of the boat canal.
A rising cloud of blue gun smoke directed her into the crumbling parking lot of a shuttered restaurant. Between the rows of parked cars, Isa spotted someone on the ground.
A huge, white bird, wings beating, swooped over the body.
Pausing in the dubious shelter of the parking rate sign, she renewed her shield and once more shifted her eyesight out of the ordinary into the etheric. Sunshine broke through fast-moving slate-colored clouds. The yellow rays slanted to earth, competing with the splashes, trails, and pools of other people’s magic.
The bird hit the person huddled on the ground with his arms wrapped around his head. It looked like an owl, save that it was the size of Gus, Isa’s forty-pound dog.
An agonized shriek followed the thud of flesh impacting flesh.
“Lady! What the hell are you doing?” a male voice bellowed behind her.
The man on the ground rolled, dislodging the bird. It shrieked and launched skyward.
Sobbing, the man lifted a gun. Three shots exploded across the parking lot, so close she caught the muzzle flash. That was the only way she could count the shots. After the first, her ears buzzed and ached as if stuffed too full with cotton.
The man on the ground hemorrhaged magic the color of old blood. As Isa stared, her breath caught in the confusion of trying to make sense of a barn owl attacking a grown man in broad daylight, a tendril of dusty yellow erupted from the man’s flickering aura.
Live Ink pulling free?
Unless she got close enough for touch, she wouldn’t know for sure, and the longer she stood looking, the greater the chances the tattoo would pull free and escape. The last time that had happened, three people had died, one of them a critical witness in an organized crime case. The other two had been Acts of Magic Bureau of Investigations—federal—agents.
Isa stepped into the open, pulling up enough magic to color even her mundane vision gold.
A hand closed hard around her upper arm, stopping her.
She glared over her shoulder at the owner of the hand.
The man wore a slick black business suit. He was a boulder, broad, thick, and immovable.
Instinct whispered, Danger. Isa ground the internal warning between her teeth and yanked her arm free. The waffle weave cotton of her shirt tried to stay behind in his grasp. It took a few layers of skin.
The man grimaced, his clenched teeth bared. His dark brown eyes flicked away, as if seeking escape from the rising tide of gold moving through Isa. He tried to say something.
Her ears, still ringing in response to the gunfire, refused to register anything more than the fact that he was speaking. All she got was a thick, muted parody of sound, not words.
She slid away from him and raced for the incomprehensible attack under way in the parking lot.
Had the guy on the ground tried to fight the owl with magic? Only he glowed with the faltering brown-red magic that had slammed through the surrounding blocks.
In the time she’d wasted shaking off someone trying to protect her, the bird hit the man again. Its beak came up bloody.
Isa shouted.
The owl turned orange coal eyes upon her. Silver magic, pure and inhuman, warped the air around the creature like the shimmering waves of heat rising from sunbaked asphalt.
Magic leaked out of her on an exhaled breath. Isa stumbled. Her power collapsed, sinking into her core as if running from a bogeyman.
That was no owl.
Chapter Two
A high-pitched whine kicked Isa’s brain.
She’d seen eyes like this once before. And she shouldn’t look into them. Where did that knowledge come from?
Ripping her gaze away from the unearthly orange filling her vision left her sweating and gasping. Memory opened before her. Murmur had still been a part of her. He’d known this thing, had been afraid of it. It was from his world. What had he called it?
A Magic Eater.
Don’t look it in the eye, but don’t let it out of sight.
Isa glanced back, determined to track the thing without letting it catch her gaze again.
It lifted sharp-edged wings. Wicked, bloody hooks glistened at each wing tip. It opened its beak in a cry she couldn’t hear and launched at her.
Through the spurt of adrenaline burning a hole in her gut, Isa reached for power.
Nothing answered.
The thing dove for her upturned face.
She threw herself to one side, hit a car hood, and slid to the ground in front of the bumper. The wind from the Magic Eater’s dive buffeted her as it missed and beat wings as wide as she was tall to pull up.
Isa rolled.
The pack slung over her left shoulder stopped her cold, face up to a fresh sp
urt of icy rain. And to the talons of the winged monster circling for another strike.
She threw herself right and scrambled to her hands and knees.
The owl struck her shoulder. Or would have, had the backpack not been there to take the blow rather than her flesh. Her hair fluttered around her face, responding to the rhythmic gusts stirred by flapping wings.
Shaking, bile biting the back of her throat, she bolted for the narrow space between two parked cars. Gravel atop crumbling concrete and green shards of broken glass dug into her skin. She didn’t care.
Hampered by the cars, the Magic Eater would have to attack from the ground rather than from the air.
Isa slid her pack to the ground and slammed her back against a shiny blue car door.
A whirl of bloodstained white dropped to the ground in front of the cars where she sheltered.
She fumbled the backpack open, clutching within for anything she could use against the creature.
What the hell had Murmur said about how to kill one?
A chill walked up her spine. That’s right. She couldn’t. Only someone without magic could.
Movement between the cars.
Her hand closed on a crystal vial. Nothing pinged her fingers. Her bottle of binding ink. A light flashed on inside her head. If someone without magic could destroy a Magic Eater, what would ink Isa had brewed to bind and destroy a creature of magic do?
The monster stalked between the cars, scoring the metal and paint with those wing-tip talons.
Isa wrestled the top from the ink vial, risked focusing on the frame of the too-close-to-her creature, and flung the binding ink in its face.
They both froze.
Nothing happened.
Isa sobbed in a breath.
The thing blinked in so owl-like a fashion, Isa nearly succumbed to the urge to meet its gaze.
Hurling the empty vial at it for good measure, she swung around on her butt, braced her hands behind her, drew her legs to her chest, and kicked with all her might.
She connected.
It fell backward, flailing.
Isa struggled to achieve her feet. Her legs responded as if her frantic commands to get up had to travel through molasses. Why wouldn’t her legs work? Gasping, keeping the Magic Eater in her peripheral vision, Isa hauled herself up the passenger’s door of the blue car.
Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) Page 2