“I’m sure.”
“What did he mean when he called Conlin a waypoint?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what do you know?”
I folded the page back up and tucked it into my pocket. “I know that Adazi has Devan, which means I can’t return you to Arcanus just yet. I’m sorry.” I met her eyes and noted that she didn’t seem terribly disappointed. “I know that he’s more powerful than you and I are. And I know he’s either incredibly skilled or…” I didn’t know what else. Nothing else made sense. “Beyond that? Pretty much nothing.”
“What are you afraid of?”
I sighed, thinking of how Adazi had moved around me, the flickering sense I had as he did. “I’ve never heard of anyone else using a painter’s power other than us, but the way he jumped down from the loft and the way he moved to avoid me focusing the charm on him gave it away. And then there was his breath.” I made a face and stuck my tongue out. “It was like he swallowed death. Nothing I want to smell again.”
“And bad breath and a few fancy jumps makes him something other than human?”
I shrugged. “Do you have any other explanations?”
Taylor motioned me outside the garage into the fading sunlight. Once there, she made a quick arcing pattern in green ink with her wrist, the movement clearly practiced. When she infused the pattern with power, she jumped, soaring nearly ten feet in the air. She landed in a rolling tumble and came to her feet just inside the garage. Amusement shone on her face.
“What were you, some kind of circus performer before they trained you?”
She smiled. “You’re clearly skilled with certain patterns, Oliver, but you didn’t spend much time in Arcanus. The painters there have spent years mastering ways to use color and shapes to allow painters to do amazing things.”
I stuffed the folded page into my pocket and walked outside to peer at the pattern she’d used. It was a zigzagging mark that ended with a curving upstroke. At least I understood how Taylor had jumped.
“Did you see Adazi move?” I asked, still studying the ground. Could I have been wrong? Could Adazi be nothing more than a skilled painter? It would be a simpler solution, but one that still didn’t feel quite right. I couldn’t shake the sense that Devan should have detected a painter approaching. With her magic, she should have managed to sense Adazi, unless she’d thought it was me.
I hadn’t really considered that option.
Taylor tipped her head. “I did. There are ways even painters can move like that, but doing so is dangerous.”
Taylor meant patterns placed on the painters themselves. Mods. Dangerous patterns, but no different from what Adazi had done when he placed the marker of promise on himself.
“All right, so he might still be human. Either way, I have to figure out what this thing is,” I said, tapping the folded piece of paper in my pocket, “and get it to him so he’ll release Devan.”
And only three days to do it.
How was I going to learn what Adazi wanted, take it from someone more powerful than him, and get it to Adazi in the next three days? Doing that seemed impossible. Almost as impossible as the fact that I was still alive after all the time I spent serving the Trelking. I shouldn’t be, not with some of what I’d gone through, but Devan had helped, had kept me safe when my magic failed. I owed her this.
I started toward the house. Taylor ran after me. “Where are you going?”
“I need to understand what Adazi said to me. He called Conlin a waypoint. Why would he have told me that unless it was important for what he needed? And he referred to my father several times.”
“Most know of the Elder,” Taylor reminded.
I glanced over at her as I opened the door to the house. A tingle of energy washed over me as the protections around the house surged into place. “Yeah, maybe in this world many know of the Elder, but Adazi has not lived in this world. He serves his own interests. Sometimes, the Druist Mage. So what would my father know about that would help someone like Adazi?”
I made my way to the back of the house and triggered the arcane patterns on the wall. These were patterns designed to trick the eye, to draw someone’s attention away from what they thought they could see. After leaving Arcanus, I spent much of my time learning and using the arcane patterns. They were powerful in a different way from patterns the masters of Arcanus were willing to teach. These patterns focused energy differently and in a way that, if done incorrectly, could damage or kill the painter.
My father was a master of arcane patterns. I hadn’t known this until I left Arcanus and returned to his home in Conlin, where it became clear from the way he’d used them to hide the basement level. Over the last ten years, time spent studying with the Trelking on the other side of the Threshold, I’d gained skill with them, as well. Maybe not quite to his level, but enough that I could at least open the door to the basement, and I could use the patterns when needed. I had thought there were few willing to master these patterns, but then I met Taylor. She didn’t have my ease—skill gained from my decade learning under the Trelking—but she was more skilled than anyone else I’d met from Arcanus.
She triggered the gateway with a practiced ease. It hadn’t even taken her long to figure out the entrance. In the short time she was in my house before the shifter attack, she managed to sneak downstairs, steal my father’s book, and escape. All before I managed to barely keep the house together.
Of course, she was an artist.
Pale yellow light flickered on in the basement. The dampness to the air gave it an oppressive feel, one I suspect my father welcomed. It matched the type of room he’d claimed for himself in Arcanus. Not the most expansive of rooms, but one that was cozy and closer to the library in its own little wing, nothing like the rooms the other masters claimed. I couldn’t see them, but I felt the patterns of power worked within the walls of the basement. They were there, distinct and pulling on a distant awareness.
The old wooden desk filled much of the space in the basement. I’d searched through the desk since returning, thinking that there might be something hidden within one of the half-dozen drawers, but there had been nothing. Only a few notes made in my father’s hand. Those had value to me, but probably not to anyone else. I had hoped to find ink mixed by him. The Elder had more skill with inks than any other painter alive. That was part of the reason the house remained so well protected. I’d found none.
Tall bookshelves filled the remaining space. The books shoved into the shelves hadn’t been anything too exciting. Mostly journals and history books that were more like encyclopedias, nothing with patterns or anything in my father’s handwriting that would really be all that useful. But these shelves were all I had.
If Adazi was right and Conlin was some sort of a waypoint, wouldn’t my father have kept records? There had to be something here that would explain what the hell Adazi meant by referring to it that way. Something that would explain what Adazi was after.
I stopped at the tallest shelf. The top two shelves were composed entirely of historical-type books, things that my father must have considered important. I scanned the titles, seeing everything from US history to European history, to older, looking back toward medieval times. He had a copy of the bible and the Koran on one of the shelves, both with spines bent, telling me he had spent time studying them.
“What are you looking for?” Taylor asked.
I shook my head. “Anything that might give me answers. If I can’t figure out what he’s after, then Devan is lost.”
“You don’t think he’ll really kill her, do you?”
I looked over. “Not Adazi. Devan is too valuable. Even if he isn’t here for the Druist Mage, he’ll only take her to him. And then, the gods only know what will happen to her.”
I didn’t let myself think of what might happen. I tried to avoid thinking of what already had happened to Devan. Captured by Adazi, trapped and held, was it possible that she wasn’t even still alive?
I ha
d to admit that it was.
If Adazi had killed her, I would get revenge, even if it meant crossing the Threshold again. That might be nothing more than a suicide mission, but I didn’t care.
Taylor moved to one of the other bookshelves and started looked through the books there. “Where do you think we should start?”
“We? You don’t have to do this. Anything I do will only draw the attention of Adazi and the Druist Mage. And I already think Adazi knows too much about you.”
Taylor shrugged. “Devan helped when I made the mistake of trying to steal the Elder’s book. She helped bury the gate before the hunters had a chance to attack. And I think she saved your life. Why wouldn’t I offer to help?”
A knot formed in my throat. All I could say was, “Thanks.”
Taylor had made her way through most of the shelves before finally stopping in front of the lowest shelf. There, she crouched down, pulling one book after another off the shelf. “What are these?”
“Journals of some kind. Don’t really know. They’re not my father’s.”
Taylor selected a few and set them on her lap, propping them open as she read. She flipped through the pages quickly and then moved on to the next, and the next. “Why would the Elder keep these?”
I looked over her shoulder. The journal she looked at now had a tight, flowing script. Nothing like my father’s perfectly neat handwriting. I didn’t recognize the language. I could tell from the way Taylor simply flipped the pages that she didn’t, either.
“Sentimental?” I said.
She frowned at me. “When did you ever know the Elder to be sentimental about anything?”
“Not often,” I said.
Taylor was right. My father never kept anything without a good reason. So if he’d kept these journals, then maybe there was something in them we could use.
I grabbed a couple off the shelf and sat down next to her. My leg brushed against hers, and I felt the warmth flowing from her leg. Taylor looked up at me through her dark hair. I looked at the journals I’d grabbed. They looked much like the others. One had a thick cardboard cover and the other had stamped leather. A tight script much like in the journal Taylor paged through covered the pages of the cardboard-covered book. A looser, flowing script worked along the pages of the leather-bound book.
Nothing in the journals really made any sense. As I paged through, I couldn’t shake the sense that Taylor was right about the journals, only I couldn’t read them. Without any way to translate the pages, nothing in them would make sense. Either my father had a key to the translation, or he knew how to read the language.
I closed the journals and sighed. “Not much helpful here,” I said.
Taylor glanced over at me. “You’re giving up too quickly.”
I grunted. “Not giving up, just recognizing my limits. Nothing here that’ll help me. And I can’t simply sit around while Adazi has Devan.”
Taylor leaned back against the shelf and drew her knees up to her chest. It made her look small and young. “What else can you do? You don’t even know what it is he wants.”
I’d been thinking about that. I might not know what Adazi wanted, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone in Conlin who could help. Only, I wasn’t sure how much help Jakes would be willing to provide, especially when it came to Adazi.
From what Adazi had said, and from what I’d seen, there were others in Conlin with magical inclinations. Whatever he wanted had something to do with that, though I still didn’t know what. I didn’t even really know where to begin, but it seemed the place to start would be there.
I stood and paced the room, trying to piece together what I could. Until I could figure out what Adazi wanted for Devan, I had no real way of getting her back. And he’d given me three days. Not enough.
As I started up the stairs, Taylor called after me. “Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“I see that.”
I leaned on the handrail, the carvings pressing beneath my hand. “See what you can come up with. Maybe my father coded some way to translate these in one of his journals.”
Taylor shifted noisily on the ground. “You want me to go through the Elder’s journals?”
Not really, but I couldn’t say that. Instead, I said, “Do what you have to so I can find Devan.”
* * *
The old Ford rumbled as I rambled through town. I drove aimlessly, letting the sense of the town guide me. What I needed was to find whatever magical entities might be living in Conlin. And if Adazi knew of them, they must be powerful enough for me to find. At least, that’s what I told myself.
My eyes scanned houses as I passed. Rows of old brick homes, most well maintained and still solid, lined Thistle Street. I stopped at a stoplight, glanced down Main Street—yes, Conlin has a real honest to goodness Main Street with shops lining it and everything—before continuing onward. To the west ran Washington Street as it wound up toward Settler Hill. There was nothing there but an old monument to the town’s founders.
I thought about stopping at the park. If there was anyplace in Conlin infused with magical energy, that would be it, but I’d been through the park enough times to know there wasn’t anything there besides the sculptures. And if Adazi wanted one of the sculptures, he could go to the park on his own. He didn’t really need me to take anything from it. Not that I could. The sculptures were fixed in place. As far as I knew, no one could move them.
A few shops caught my eye on the outer edge of town. There was the local veterinarian with the big dog runs out back for boarders. Nothing about the vet triggered anything for me, though I began to wonder if he knew about the shifters in town. There was The Pawn Shop with its cluttered windows and faded sign overhead. Nothing about it really set off any tingling sensation. Then there was the Rooster.
Something drew me to pull in. Jakes had been there, and I didn’t see sign of his car, but what if there were others inside who might know more than they let on? For a total dive of a diner, the Rooster had its regulars, though in the times I’d stopped, none of them made me think they had any real magical ability. The same could have been said about Jakes, though.
I stepped in, the bell over the door jingling as I did. The counter where I’d seen Jakes earlier in the day was empty. An older man sat in a corner booth eating a burger and fries. He glanced up at me, his eyes slowly drifting back down until they settled back onto his burger. He plucked another fry off his plate and slowly chewed it.
The jukebox was silent, though the neon around the inside was lit up, making it seem like it glowed, some sort of magical jukebox. Maybe after what Devan had done with it, it was.
Tom Brindle came from the back room and frowned when he saw me, pushing his glasses up on his nose and wiping his hands along the apron covering his belly. “Oliver. Not used to seeing you here quite so often.”
I shook my head. “Yeah. Me, neither, Tom.”
“Not used to seeing you without Devan, either. Run a place like the Rooster, and you get pretty good at seeing things, you know.”
The frustration building in me rose above the point where I could handle it. I dropped onto a stool along the counter and smashed my hands down.
“What is it?” Tom asked. He rested his elbows on the counter and fixed me with concerned eyes.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” I said.
“Maybe you start by telling me what happened between you and your friend.”
I stared at the counter, picking at my fingers, wishing I knew something to say. Maybe I just needed to go and find Jakes. That would be easiest and might get me the answers I needed, but I didn’t know if he’d be willing to intervene. The last time I’d seen him, he hadn’t really wanted to do much of anything, happy to let Devan be returned to the Trelking, even knowing what the Druist Mage might do to her.
“I’m not sure you would understand,” I said.
“Try me.”
I looked up. The glimmer I always thought I saw i
n Tom’s eyes actually seemed to wink. Not that Tom winked, but whatever it was that worked behind his eyes definitely did.
My fidgeting stopped and my heart jumped. Had I really just seen that?
Tom pulled a rag out from a back pocket and began wiping it across the counter. “You know, I was surprised when you returned to town. Been gone so long, most thought that house would stay empty. Of course, Sheriff Jakes made sure to keep away squatters. He and your old man were always pretty close. Shame how he died.”
The way he said it told me that he knew more about how the older Jakes had died. Hell, I didn’t really know what all had happened that night, other than that by the time I reached the center of the park, one of the shifters had been down. I learned later that it had been Jakes’s dad.
“Tom,” I said, keeping my voice controlled. I made a point of fixing him with a level stare. “What do you know about how Jakes died?”
He arched a brow at me as he wiped across the counter, pausing to push his glasses back up his nose. “Same as you, Oliver.” He hesitated. “Paper covered it pretty well. Given how long he served, not surprised by the amount of press or the write up. If anything, they didn’t cover it well enough.”
I let out a breath. Maybe I’d been misreading things. Tom didn’t really know anything at all. I was about to get back up, when he went on.
“Though when you were in here talking to Sam this morning, I started to realize maybe there might have been more to it than the paper let on. Maybe I hadn’t imagined hearing the howls that night he died.”
He turned and started into the kitchen.
I watched him go, uncertain what to say at first. Then I jumped up and started after him, weaving around the counter and through the door to the back. The old man eating his burger barely looked over at me.
The back of the diner looked like every functional kitchen you ever saw: long butcher-block counter, large, cast-iron gas cooktop, rows of pots hanging from hooks overhead. Tom had already disappeared into a cooler near the back wall. I started after him when Kacey appeared from behind a different door.
The Painter Mage: Books 1-3 Page 22