Then there was the sticky bit about the elder vampire of London being seriously pissed with me. Not because I almost got Kett — his grandson by blood — killed, but because he’d had to divide his power to save him.
However, if the theft was dragon certified, then it became a ‘reclamation’ of a magical object deemed too powerful to be loose in the world. Even though that would still piss off the sorcerers — and probably the vampire — no one could stand against me without standing against the guardians.
Yeah, I had it all worked out. I just hoped Blackwell was home when I knocked on the door of his freaking castle. I wanted to see his face when I ‘officially’ waltzed in and took the circlet from him.
Hell, I wanted him to try to stop me.
I was almost dozing by the time the portal behind me — the door that my father and the healer had exited through — opened in a wash of golden magic. I pivoted, standing in the buoyant power and facing the door just as Pulou the treasure keeper stepped through into the nexus. As I once again awkwardly curtsied, I noted that my necklace thrummed softly against my collarbone and that my neck felt normal once again.
“There you are, alchemist,” Pulou said, his deep voice booming through the quiet of the room. “I’ve been waiting.”
I opened my mouth to be all bitchy about the fact that I had been waiting freaking eons for him, but then he threw back his head and laughed.
Ah, dragons loved to laugh.
The portal closed behind Pulou. The treasure keeper was a dark-haired bear of a man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, when in reality he was more than five hundred years old. He wore his typical full-length fur coat despite the fact it was late summer … though I guess it wasn’t summer where he’d just come from.
Anyway.
The fur coat was actually some sort of manifestation of the treasure keepers’ magic, just as the sword was a manifestation of my father’s warrior power. Pulou had taken a magical object I’d made ten months ago on the beach in Tofino, somehow shrunk it, and then stored it in an inner pocket of his coat. The magic that accompanied this feat had scrambled my brain, and left me with the impression that something extradimensional had occurred while I dumbly watched and didn’t even remotely comprehend.
I was epically happy to never have to lay eyes on that object again, so I wasn’t terribly desperate to wrap my head around the process. I’d twisted my katana — a gift from my father — into a circle around my sister’s neck and filled it with all the magic Sienna had stolen from all the Adepts she’d killed and drained. Then I’d taken every last drop of her magic. Such a thing shouldn’t have been possible. But I had done it, half dead and under great duress. It was a secret known only to the treasure keeper and me. An ability he thought too dangerous for anyone else to know of, and I agreed.
I was already unique enough, when it came to power and heritage. I didn’t need to be feared or even hunted by the Adept world. I just wanted to bake my cupcakes and steal Blackwell’s circlet.
“Treasure keeper, I have a request,” I said.
“Do you?” he asked, rather amused.
I nodded, and then launched into the speech I’d prepared. “Mot Blackwell, who’s a sorcerer, houses an extensive collection of magical artifacts …” — Pulou was frowning, just slightly, at me, but in a way that made me think I might be speaking gibberish — “… in his castle … Blackness Castle … in Scotland.”
“That is the territory of the guardian Suanmi.”
“Yes, but … he has this platinum and raw diamond circlet that’s some sort of dampener, an inhibitor —”
“Dragons do not steal.”
“Such an object should not be in the hands of such a sorcerer.” I tried to retreat back to my prepared argument, but Pulou immediately derailed me again.
“Would this dampener work against you … or me … or any of the dragons?”
“Well … I … I’m not sure.”
“The task I have for you is of much greater and immediate importance.”
Ten months, I almost screamed. I’ve been waiting for permission for ten months. I could have cracked Blackwell’s wards — again — and waltzed in to lift the offending inhibitor months ago.
Pulou lifted one bushy eyebrow at me. I swallowed my inner brat, and when I could speak politely again I did so.
“It would be an honor, guardian, to hunt for treasure you deem of great importance.”
“All sorcerers are tinged darkly,” Pulou said. “That is just their way. Be sure that Suanmi has an eye on this Blackwell, if he is even worthy of such attention. I’m sure Drake has filled his guardian in on his escapade.”
I nodded. “I was going to bring peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes, but I was worried I would be … incapable of getting them to you without interference.”
“To bribe me with?”
“Yes.”
“I will come to the bakery.”
“Oh … I …” Visions of Pulou eating every last cupcake in the bakery flooded my mind. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Nothing to it. I should check on the portal as well. Perhaps tomorrow?”
I nodded. Last time Pulou had used the word “tomorrow,” the actual time lapse had been three months.
“Speaking of the portal —”
“We weren’t.”
“No, I … it’s an expression.”
“I know.”
Right. No talking about the sword filled with Sienna’s stolen magic — check. No talking about the portal in the bakery basement — double check. No going after Blackwell or his circlet without incurring Suanmi’s wrath — triple check.
I fished around in my satchel and found the charmed gold Cartier pen by the taste of its sorcerer magic. I held the pen out to the treasure keeper, presenting it on my open palm. Dragons preferred to be formal about such things.
“As tasked, treasure keeper,” I said. I neglected to mention that I hadn’t fixed its little writing-on-everything-at-a-whim glitch, because I found it entertaining. Plus, I wanted to see if dragons were prankable.
“I propose a trade,” Pulou said.
He pulled a folded piece of parchment — crumpled along with some candy wrappers — from his outer pocket and held it out to me. The candy wrappers fell to the floor and disappeared. Impressive cleaning spell. No wonder the nexus was always so pristine and practically ageless. Though how did it decide what was garbage?
I had to smirk at the presence of the candy wrappers, though. I came by my sweet tooth genetically. At least, that was how I currently justified my chocolate consumption levels.
The treasure keeper plucked the charmed pen out of my hand at the same time as I took the offered bundle from him. The moment I touched it, I thought — and immediately dismissed — that it might be skin. As in, human.
I ignored the bile threatening to rise at the back of my throat, unfolded the please-don’t-be-human-skin parchment, and stared at all the pretty colors and shapes drawn on it. I had an inkling it was supposed to be a map — based on the plethora of green and blue — but I had no freaking idea how to read it. I think the triangles were supposed to be mountains? Honestly, it looked like it belonged under glass in a museum, not in my hand and soon-to-be stained with chocolate.
“A task more worthy of the alchemist’s skills,” Pulou said. “A task more interesting.” I wasn’t a hundred percent sure he wasn’t mocking me with the ‘alchemist’s skills’ part, but I was too intrigued — in a slightly disgusted way — to fret about it.
“This … this isn’t a tattoo, is it?”
“Yes, from my predecessor. Entrusted to me when I assumed his guardianship.”
The ‘tattoo’ was about as wide and long as my back, and undoubtedly that was where it had been placed … you know, before it was … removed. I was holding what was possibly a map previously tattooed on and then skinned from a guardian dragon. A flower-and-leaf motif along one side, multicolor
ed striped circles in either corner, and what appeared to be interconnected blocks along the other side, blurred its purpose for me. It sleepily thrummed with magic.
“I must go. Bixi calls.”
My meetings with Pulou were always exceedingly brief, and usually ended with me firing questions at the treasure keeper’s back as he was called away to open a portal for another guardian elsewhere in the world. Bixi was the guardian of North Africa. In human form she was the spitting image of Cleopatra, but her guardian-inherited ability was shapeshifting.
Pulou brushed by me. His magic was a far more bearable version of Suanmi’s. It didn’t constantly boil around him as the fire breather’s power did.
“Should I come back tomorrow for further instruction? Will we hunt together?”
“My magic will not help in this hunt. You must go where guardians dare not tread.”
Wait, what? Um, that didn’t sound good at all. “ ‘Dare not tread’?” I said. “But not like, ‘cannot tread,’ right? Not like this could kill me?”
“I do not hold you in such low regard, Jade Godfrey,” Pulou said. His tone was as serious as I’d ever heard it. “But I have now given you access to all the knowledge I possess in the matter. Unfortunately, my predecessor’s journals were lost in a fire before I had a chance to study them.”
He gestured toward the tattoo that I continued to hold gingerly by the edges. “As I’m sure you can taste, the tattoo was created by an alchemist. Luckily for me, you’re also an alchemist. Figure out how to read it, and then we shall talk about guardian myths.”
The treasure keeper pulled open a door covered in hieroglyphics. Or at least hundreds of shapes that I was guessing were ancient Egyptian writing, based on my extensive film-and-TV accumulated knowledge. The portal magic flooded the nexus, making my brain momentarily stutter. I swore the golden magic reached out for Pulou, as if welcoming him home with a cozy hug.
Pulou stepped into the portal.
“Wait!” I cried after him — regaining the use of my tongue if not my brain — as he disappeared from my sight. “At least tell me if it’s a map!”
The door snapped shut behind the treasure keeper.
I was once again alone in the nexus. Why did I have the feeling that I was the one who’d just gotten pranked?
It is a map.
I looked up. Pulou’s voice echoed through the nexus, but he hadn’t returned.
I sighed, carefully refolded the parchment along the lines that already creased it, and tucked it into my trusty Matt & Nat satchel.
Right. I finally got assigned a real treasure-hunting mission, but first I had to figure out how to read a map that even a guardian couldn’t read … great. It was like being stuck in a high school geography class all over again when I’d never been better than a C+ student. And I’d really, really been looking forward to stealing the circlet from Blackwell’s castle. Whoops, I meant reclaiming the inhibitor. Yeah, and kicking the sorcerer’s ass if he tried to stop me. I had unresolved feelings for Blackwell. As in, I was really resolved he was evil through and through, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
Okay.
If it was a map, someone should be able to read it. If Pulou thought that someone was me, then who was I to question one of the guardian nine?
I turned toward the First Nations-carved cedar door, through which I’d entered the nexus hours ago, and willed the portal to take me home.
∞
“It’s my belated birthday.” Kandy the green-haired werewolf stood — arms crossed and glowering — in the middle of the bakery basement. She’d been waiting for me the moment I stepped from the portal onto the hard-packed dirt floor.
“I know,” I answered, giving her a blazing smile. It was her belated birthday because she’d gone camping with her Norwegian buddy, Jorgen, on the weekend of her actual birthday, August 8th. I’d been invited, but I had a feeling that my and a werewolf’s idea of camping were completely different. Plus, I still wasn’t sure whether I would have been crashing a date or not. Kandy was super close-mouthed about anything remotely personal. Her personal. Not mine, of course.
I hadn’t even known that Kandy was a physiotherapist until she got certified to work in Canada and started picking up shifts at the clinic a couple of blocks down the street. Even then, I think she only told me because she needed a reference for work visa purposes.
I’d created four new cupcakes — Sass in a Cup, Tease in a Cup, Flirt in a Cup, and Tart in a Cup — with the taste of Kandy’s dark-chocolate berry-infused magic in mind, though without the bitter finish. I’d given Kandy two of her birthday cupcakes for her camping trip, because my main gift hadn’t been ready until today. My now-twenty-six-year-old werewolf best friend was perfectly happy to have two chances to eat cupcakes especially made for her, and I was more than happy to make them.
“You’re late.”
“Am I?” I said, as if I didn’t know we had any plans at all. Then I dug into the inner side pocket of my satchel, carefully avoiding touching the dragonskin map, and pulled out a folded, printed piece of paper. I handed the paper to Kandy.
Her glower deepened as she snatched the paper from me. The green-haired werewolf was about two inches shorter than me, and favored tank tops and ripped jeans. But tonight she was dressed in sleek black pants that fit her lithe body like a rubber glove and rode almost embarrassingly low on her nonexistent hips. Her black satin halter top draped, rather becomingly, down to the small of her back. Her hair, which she’d been growing out, was gelled straight up in various three-inch spikes all over her head.
I was going to need to change.
Kandy unfolded the paper and read the tickets I’d printed. I’d bought us two spots in a truffle-making course at Chocolate Arts that night.
Kandy huffed, hiding her approval of the gift behind her grumpiness. “So that takes care of dinner. Then what?” she asked.
I laughed. “Oh, I’ve got a few ideas. There might even be dancing.”
“You have exactly thirty minutes to look respectable enough to be by my side tonight.”
“Aye, aye, belated-birthday captain,” I said with a salute. Then I stepped past the werewolf to climb the wooden stairs that led out of the basement and into the pantry of my bakery above.
Kandy stopped me by wrapping her arm around my neck from behind, pressing her face into the curls at the back of my neck. It was like being held — carefully — by steel bands.
“Sometimes I worry you won’t come back,” she whispered. “When you go through the portal.”
“I won’t leave you.”
I felt Kandy nod, but she didn’t immediately release me. Ten months ago, she had chosen to stay in Vancouver with me instead of returning to the base of the West Coast North American Pack in Portland, though she’d visited at least once a month since making that decision. She really wasn’t a fan of the pack’s new beta, Audrey. And I also thought Kandy held some guilt about the death of a fledgling werewolf, Jeremy, at the hands of my sister over a year ago. Guilt because she was technically a pack enforcer, and she should have protected him better. She swore she stayed for my protection, along with some political mumbo jumbo about alliances and whatever. Except Kandy was the least political person I knew.
She also might have stayed because she thought Desmond had broken my heart. He hadn’t — we weren’t meant to be together despite all odds or anything — but he’d dented it pretty good. No matter that Sienna had deserved it. I wasn’t about to forgive him for killing my sister.
I hadn’t heard from or spoken to Kandy’s alpha since January, when I’d chosen to aid Rochelle instead of helping the pack get their collective hands around Blackwell’s neck. The visit had resulted in claws and knives unsheathed and insults exchanged, and had probably widened the divide between Desmond and me rather than repaired anything.
I wasn’t going to be a political ally — in or out of Desmond’s bed — and that’s all he wanted me in
his life for anyway. It was time to move on. Didn’t we all deserve to fall head over heels for someone who utterly adored us in return?
Sigh.
“I thought there would be more cupcakes,” Kandy muttered into my hair.
“There will be cupcakes. Two new ones, plus the first two you already tasted.”
“I looked everywhere.”
I laughed. “I baked them at Gran’s.”
Kandy swore and released me. “What are you waiting for, then?” she growled. Then she dashed ahead of me up the stairs.
Not all werewolves kept their emotions so far in check as Kandy did, but tears and robust laughter were rare occurrences with my best friend. We were complete opposites that way.
∞
I switched out my T-shirt for a light-blue silk peasant blouse with a drawstring neck, and my jeans for a black silk skirt. The skirt had the most perfect, subtly ruffled edge that fell just above my knees. I kept my necklace coiled three times around my neck, where it rested nicely on my collarbone, and strapped the invisible sheath for my jade knife to my bare thigh. The skirt was loose enough that it didn’t show the outline of the knife when I was standing, but I’d have to be careful when sitting down. I usually left the unnerving of people to Kandy, and it was her belated birthday after all. I slipped on a pair of black Fluevogs — classic Gorgeous Minis — to complete the look. Thankfully I’d gotten my legs waxed last weekend, so I was good to go barelegged.
I hustled through the apartment to join Kandy in the living room, where she was sharing a glass of red wine with my mother, Scarlett. As I crossed by the kitchen, Scarlett smiled, her strawberry blond hair its usual perfect smooth wave down her back.
A plate of candied salmon, cream cheese, and onion-and-garlic brown rice crackers sat on the gray granite kitchen island, and I fell on this treat without a word. I had to compete with Kandy, though, and the salmon was already half gone. Scarlett laughed and touched my shoulder lightly. Her magic tingled through the thin silk of my blouse. She touched me every time she saw me these days, as if reassuring herself I was actually beside her. Gran as well. I’d scared them very badly in Tofino. Or rather, Sienna almost killing me in Tofino had scared my mother and grandmother terribly.
Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser Series Book 4) Page 3