“You can see magic without a circle?” I asked. Most witches could feel magic, but very few could see it — like I did — without casting a circle.
Wisteria nodded, then shook her head to deny her involuntary admission. Her lips were so tightly pursed that I could see the outline of her teeth beneath her skin. Most Adepts were cagey about their abilities. It was probably rude that I had asked in the first place.
I looked away, directing my attention to the map before me and giving the witch some time to control her reaction. The tattoo map thrummed with spicy dragon magic, but it didn’t look any different in the lighting of the cafe than it had in the golden wash of the dragon nexus or the track lighting of the bakery. It was still a jumbled mess of green, blue, and black lines, surrounded by striped circles, leaves, and industrial blocks.
“It’s skin?” Wisteria asked. Her voice was pitched a little higher than normal, but she was obviously attempting to get down to business.
“Yes.”
Wisteria stared at the map, not speaking. She was clutching her hands together against her chest, her knuckles white.
“Is it …” She cut off own her question, then started again with her voice more modulated and muted. “Is it dragonskin?”
Smart witch. As far as I knew, she’d only met one half-dragon — me — in person and only seen one fledgling guardian in action — Drake.
“Yes —”
Something hit the window beside me. Wisteria flinched. It sounded like a bird, but when I turned to look, I couldn’t see anything but the deep shadows of the buildings across the street.
Then the shadow shifted where no shadow could be. It pressed against the window, spreading like stumpy fingers along the edges of the glass.
“What … is … that?” Wisteria murmured.
“What color is it? To you?” I wanted a confirmation of the black seething mass I was seeing.
Wisteria shook her head, but I wasn’t sure if she couldn’t see its magic or was refusing to look.
The black mass, a deeper black than any of the other shadows on the street, suddenly peeled back off the window. Warner was standing on the other side of the glass and holding the seething mass aloft. It was writhing in his grasp, attempting to grab on to his arm, shoulder, and hip. Or more specifically, I could see it attempting to adhere itself to Warner’s magic.
The sentinel locked his gaze to mine. Then, with a grim sort of satisfaction, he grabbed another section of the black, roiling mass and ripped the shadow in half. The dark magic disintegrated into nothing. No ash or sand was left behind, as it was with the demons I’d seen vanquished. Vanquished, not killed, because my father had informed me that demons were from another dimension. Though that was only relevant if the shadows were some sort of demon. Warner and Pulou thought they were demon scouts, but now I wasn’t so sure.
Warner flicked his green gaze to Wisteria, who was staring at him with wide eyes. Then he turned on his heel into the shadows beyond the streetlights, disappearing as thoroughly as the vampire usually did.
“Well, that teaches me,” I muttered.
“What?” Wisteria asked breathlessly.
“Warner is pissed at me.”
Two bright pinpoints of red light across the street winked out. That was the only hint I had of Kett’s location. He was watching us from the stoop across the road, the red glow emanating from his eyes indicating that he had been powering up somehow.
“Warner?”
“The dragon, you know, hanging around outside the window, ripping shadow demons in half.”
“Dragon? Window? Shadow demons?”
The witch was shaken, still staring out the window and attempting to see the unseeable. But instead of feeling badly for her, all I could think about was her demanding triple pay, expenses, and a healer on call in order to meet with me. I imagined her inputting the receipt for the mini cheesecakes on an expense report, carefully broken out with the tax in a separate column.
“You still have that healer on call, don’t you?” I’d meant to be sarcastic but the question came out angry instead.
Wisteria cranked her head back to look at me, some retort — or maybe an apology — on her lips. But then she swallowed whatever she was going to say and stiffly nodded.
“Can you cast in a hotel room?” I had no idea how Wisteria practiced magic. Except she had to be able to do so on call, and on location, in order to execute the duties of her job.
The witch nodded, rose gracefully to her feet, and pulled her too-large designer bag off the back of her chair. With the bag hung over her shoulder, she stood waiting for her orders like a good little soldier.
I grabbed what was left of the desserts and walked out of the cafe, expecting the witch to follow.
She did.
Yeah, we weren’t going to be friends anytime soon.
∞
I could feel shadows shifting around us as we hustled along the sidewalk back to the hotel, but I couldn’t taste any new or different magic in the darkness. Wisteria clutched her huge purse to her chest, kept her eyes straight ahead, and her pretty pumps firmly planted in the pools of light emanating from the street lamps. Pretending that dangerous magic didn’t exist wasn’t the best MO. But it seemed to work for the reconstructionist, because we made it to the hotel without incident.
If the shadows were seeking the map like Warner thought they were, I wasn’t sure why they’d pressed against the window in the diner but didn’t try to grab me on the street.
I couldn’t tell if Kett and Warner followed Wisteria and me around the block and back into the hotel, but Kandy joined us in the lobby. She quickly relieved me of the half-eaten mini cheesecakes.
“Witch,” the green-haired werewolf said to Wisteria.
“Kandy,” the reconstructionist replied coolly.
We paused before the elevators. Kandy was grinning at Wisteria in a way that was sure to end in someone getting hurt. Probably me.
“Cool in here, hey?” Kandy asked me.
“Warner and the shadow thing freaked the reconstructionist out,” I replied.
“Shadow thing?”
“Demon or whatever. Warner tore it up.”
“Really? I just saw him twisting his hands in the air. I figured it was some sort of weird dragon sign language.”
I laughed, then focused on the pertinent part of Kandy’s statement. “You couldn’t see the shadow move across the window?”
Kandy shook her head. “The air was a bit musty, but I couldn’t see anything.”
Interesting. A shifter should be able to see demons. Even partly manifested ones. But typically they couldn’t see magic, only scent it. So did that mean the shadows were some sort of magic? And not demon scouts?
The werewolf then eyed Wisteria, who stoically didn’t meet her gaze. “She doesn’t look freaked.”
“Yeah. She and Kett should play poker.”
“That would be insanely boring.”
“Agreed.”
The elevator announced its arrival with a cheerful ping as its doors slid open. We stepped inside in two strides, Wisteria between Kandy and me. The werewolf hit the button for the fourth floor and popped the last half of cheesecake into her mouth — the quadruple chocolate. I was momentarily sorrowful to see the end of its creamy goodness.
As the doors of the elevator slid closed, Warner stepped inside at the last possible second, angling sideways. He brushed between Wisteria and me to fill the spot behind us. He’d clearly gotten over his trouble with confined spaces. That was quick.
“Chameleon,” I muttered to myself, repeating Kett’s word.
Warner didn’t speak. I could see his reflection in the polished steel, or chrome, or whatever of the elevator door. Standing sternly behind us — and despite the sexy leather jacket, tight T-shirt, and low-slung jeans — he looked exactly as advertised. A sentinel. A soldier whose job it was to stand watch over something precious, or sacred, or vuln
erable.
Wisteria took a step away from Warner and me, closer to Kandy. She was almost the same height as the werewolf, and easily two inches shorter than my five feet nine inches.
And now I was suddenly feeling like the heel I was.
I sighed.
“And what is up with you, alchemist?” Kandy asked.
“Wisteria thinks I’m going to get her killed, and Warner thinks I’m completely incapable … of anything.”
“Killed is a strong … word,” Wisteria said.
“But probably pretty close to the truth,” Kandy said — again, far too gleefully. “But think of how much fun we’ll have first.”
“I doubt that’ll help, Kandy,” I said. “Note how the sentinel here remains silent.”
“I do as tasked, warrior’s daughter. No more, no less.” Warner’s tone was deliberate and flat as he threw my own words back in my face … well, at the back of my head.
The elevator bumped to a stop. I noted Warner gripping the handrail that ran around the interior, and hoped he didn’t dent it. We were already going to have to confess to the broken cabinet door and elevator button.
Kandy stepped out into the hall. Wisteria followed her. I looked back at Warner and whispered, “I know you were just trying to take the piss out of me, but you probably didn’t need to mention the warrior’s daughter part in front of the reconstructionist.”
Warner had the decency to look chagrined. Dragons were all about containing deep, dark secrets, but not fantastic about keeping their mouths shut. I didn’t know Wisteria very well — as in, not at all — but she wasn’t a witch in my coven. And my parentage drew too much attention already.
The doors started to close and I stopped them with a thrust of my arm.
Warner stepped out of the elevator and nodded to me formally. “My apologies, alchemist.”
“And mine,” I said. “Why don’t we reboot?” Off Warner’s frown, I added, “You know, like you waking up from the deep sleep.”
“Ah, yes. I understand … reboot. Start again.”
“Yep.”
“I’m … taking longer to adapt than usual,” he said, casting his gaze around the short hall that branched off for the elevator and stairs.
“I imagine the world is a very different place.”
He locked his gaze to mine, his eyes more blue than green in this light. “I will persevere.”
“Yeah, I’m guessing that’s your middle name, sixteenth century.” I turned to follow Kandy and Wisteria back to the suite. “Warner Perseverance Jiaotuson.”
“It doesn’t help that your idiom is all at once playful, esoteric, and, at times, bemusing.”
I’d have to look up two of those words in a dictionary later — just for clarification — but I got the gist. “Yeah, I get that. Like, a lot.”
∞
Back in the suite, Wisteria gestured toward the glass coffee table that sat directly in front of the dark-beige couch. I think the couch folded out into a bed, but was fairly certain we weren’t going to be testing that assumption during this trip.
I gathered that the witch wanted me to place the map on the table, so I did. Kandy retreated to the far side of the room and found the minibar in a niche I hadn’t noticed tucked underneath the stairs.
Warner paced the windows, closing all the curtains but leaving himself a couple of inches to peer out. The air was a bit stale in the room, but I didn’t mention it. I figured Warner would have a heart attack if I tried to open a window, and I really wasn’t a fan of air conditioning.
Wisteria pulled four pillar candles out of her huge bag — white, green, blue, and red — which she placed at north, south, west, and east points around the map.
“I’m still not exactly clear what you want me to do here.” The reconstructionist spoke to me, though she was watching Warner as he paced the edges of the room.
“We think the magic is layered,” I said. “Maybe with a different map on each layer.” Then, exploring the idea out loud, I continued. “Or maybe it’s like a puzzle and the layers just need to be shifted.”
“You can see that?”
“No. It just looks jumbled to me.”
Wisteria peered down at the map and then nodded. “You think I can pull a picture from the residual magic.”
“That’s what you do.”
Wisteria looked doubtful. “I reconstruct magical events.”
“And this is full of magic.”
Wisteria’s gaze flicked to Warner and then to me. “So is the room.”
I nodded toward the coffee table and the witches’ circle she’d started to construct with the candles. “You have your boundary. We won’t cross it.”
“I’m guessing you want to see what I see.”
“Is that possible? Without you storing it in one of your cube things? It shouldn’t be stored anywhere.”
Wisteria nodded, but she didn’t look happy about it.
Something buffeted the windows to the east. I took a couple of steps back from the coffee table to look out. Warner crossed to stand beside me. I could still see the block letters spelling ‘chocolate’ in the sign for the Chocolate Box up the street.
“The wind?” I murmured.
“No,” Warner replied. Then he spoke over his shoulder to Wisteria. “Close your circle, witch.” He lifted the curtain just enough to look south up First Avenue.
Wisteria, who’d been circling the table, didn’t respond. But she did begin lighting the candles as she passed them a second time. Her shoes and lightly tinted stockings were tucked off to one side, next to her massive purse. I hadn’t seen her remove them to walk barefoot on the carpet. Most witches preferred to cast outdoors, closer to the earth magic they summoned and controlled. I liked the dirt floor of my bakery basement.
Something crept across the glass of the window next to me, but when I looked out, I couldn’t see anything moving in the dark. The exterior lights of the hotel only illuminated the first storey, and there weren’t any balconies on this side of the building. So the night could be filled with shadow demons and I wouldn’t know it. It was odd to be possibly surrounded by nasty magic and not taste it.
I willed my jade knife into my hand from the invisible sheath at my hip. “Why didn’t they attack on the street? When we were out in the open?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Warner muttered. He sounded epically frustrated.
Wisteria’s sweet nutmeg magic swirled around the candles, and I wondered if the reconstructionist fed the spell with her own power. That seemed like a risky thing to do, and even more draining than a regular casting. But then, Wisteria Fairchild had a lot of magic held in reserve.
Kandy wandered back into the living room, a cola in one hand and a half-eaten milk-chocolate-and-nougat Toblerone bar in the other. She lifted her chin and scented the air. The green of her shapeshifter magic rolled across her eyes.
The windows started rattling … one at a time, then all three at once. Wisteria let out a quickly suppressed hiss of fear, but kept her attention on her candles and the magic she was wielding.
“Close the circle, witch,” Warner repeated. He stepped back from the window as if expecting something to come through it at any minute.
The reconstructionist sank down with her back to Warner and me, sitting on the floor at the edge of the coffee table. As she settled, her magic gathered through her and into the circle as if called back to task. The circle snapped closed abruptly, taking most of the sweet nutmeg taste with it. Wisteria had sealed her magic in with the residual magic that constantly thrummed from the map. At least I thought it was residual. It was kind of like snapping a lid closed on a snug Tupperware container.
The rattling of the windows ceased.
Warner was staring at my chest, and I could feel a blush rise to my cheeks before I realized he was looking at my necklace.
Right.
Silly me.
“How long were you outside
the wards of the bakery that night in the alley?” he asked. It was obvious he was piecing something together.
“Hours.”
Wisteria held her hands palm forward toward the map and the circle of magic that now surrounded it. If anything shifted in the circle at this gesture, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see or taste any magic beyond the circle at all.
“The necklace you wear is a shielding artifact? A personal ward?”
“Sure.”
“It must be helping to keep the shadow scouts at bay.”
“One showed up in the alley, right before you did.”
“Perhaps after hours of trying to pinpoint you, and perhaps traveling from a great distance.”
“Pulou carried the map for centuries, without a necklace.”
Warner laughed. “The treasure keeper is as his title implies. He has no need for such devices.”
“When I took it out in the cafe, the shadow appeared.”
“Or simply gained strength. Here as well.” He gestured to the windows.
I lifted my fingers to thread them through the wedding rings of my necklace. Warner started pacing the windows again, systematically checking them.
Kandy climbed up on the back of the couch and perched there, peering down at the map and the witches’ circle. Her eyes still blazed green, but by her expression, she couldn’t see any more than I could within the closed circle.
Wisteria held up her hand, as if expecting it to be taken.
I hesitated. I wasn’t big on touching other Adepts. I tasted their magic much more intensely when I was physically connected.
Wisteria half turned her head to me and widened her fingers impatiently.
I stepped forward and took the witch’s hand as I sunk cross-legged beside her at the coffee table. Her magic instantly tingled through my fingers and up my arm, but it wasn’t overly intense. I assumed she had her magic concentrated on the witches’ circle before her.
Now that I was touching the reconstructionist, I could see what she saw within the circle.
I leaned forward. She had managed to pull a sort of 3D rendering off the map, but the image was still all jumbled.
Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser Series Book 4) Page 11