The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  “He already knows I’m here and hasn’t sent anyone.”

  “Yet.”

  “When he does, don’t you think it’s better if I’m with you?” Devan asked.

  I shrugged and pushed my plate away from me. “It’s never been about me.”

  “It’s always about you, Ollie.” She popped the remaining fries into her mouth and smiled, showing me the half-chewed food. “So. When are we going?”

  “A few days. I need a little more time to make preparations. I was hoping you could make a few different charms.” I fished a piece of paper out of my pocket and slid it across the counter. I’d spent a good two hours sketching them.

  Devan flipped open the paper and glanced at it. “Yeah, I think I can make these. What are you hoping they’ll do?”

  “Maybe a little more boom than pop?”

  Devan laughed softly. “I’m not really supposed to be doing things like that.”

  “Right. That’s stopped you before.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s easy to do.” She stuffed the paper into the pocket of her jeans. “I’ll see what I can come up with. No promises, though.”

  “Just need time, Devan. And if we get the time we need, we should be pretty well prepared before any of your father’s guys come after us.” I touched my belt, checking the satchels of ink attached to it. I always kept some with me, but since Adazi had attacked, I’ve been keeping even more than before. I’ve been forcing myself to draw more magic, too. Working patterns and magic is sort of like exercising and lifting weights; I’d let myself get a little flabby, and it was time to get buff.

  “They’re not all his guys, Ollie.”

  “Yeah. Not all his guys.” I watched Kacey as she stepped back into the kitchen. I hadn’t seen Tom since we sat down for lunch, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t back there. I still needed to ask him some questions about my father. There weren’t many in Conlin who knew him. I missed my chance with Jakes’s father, and I didn’t want to miss the chance with Tom. Hell, considering the fact that the diner was this sort of magical place, I couldn’t guarantee Tom would be around much longer, either. In the time I’d been back in Conlin, there had already been two life-threatening events. “Besides, before we go, I thought I’d see what else Jakes is hiding on his father’s lot. What else might my father have left there?”

  Devan smacked my arm and I faced her. “That’s a terrible idea if you ask me. Any time we’ve dug into anything dealing with the Elder, we’ve ended up regretting it.”

  “You’ve gone with me to check it out.” Since rescuing her from Adazi, Devan and I had gone a few times, but I made a point of keeping Taylor in the dark about what was down there.

  “And I don’t know that there’s anything there other than what we know. There’s a dark energy around that shed, Ollie. Useful for what the Elder stores there, and I think he was wise to keep it buried like that, but I don’t think we should be messing around with what he left there.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still trying to figure out why he left things for me. I mean, think about that book—”

  “That Taylor tried to steal.”

  “Without it, we’d never have known what the statues in the park do. And then there’s the key—”

  “That Adazi wanted you to use.”

  “—that helped me learn what my father stored in Conlin. What else will we find?”

  Devan stared at me like I was stupid. It was a pretty common expression from her. “What else? You mean, the nightmare hell creatures weren’t enough? Or having Adazi cross the Threshold and try to save something that your father feared enough to shrink down into a little statue with power that I can’t even fully fathom? Maybe we can see who else might die. The first time was nearly you and the last time was me!”

  Kacey made her way down the counter and grabbed our plates. She smiled as she looked from Devan to me. “Maybe you two want to keep it down?” she suggested. Her eyes flickered to a booth along the front of the diner.

  I followed the direction of her gaze. A younger couple sat staring down at the table. The man had a plain face and a piercing above his eyebrow that, from where I sat, looked like a lightning bolt. Short brown hair stuck out everywhere and was dyed various shades of black. He wore a leather biker’s jacket but didn’t seem comfortable in it, as if he knew he wasn’t cool enough to pull it off. The girl with him was thin and tiny, sort of like Devan, but taller. She stared out the window, nothing but the back of her bright red hair visible. She had on a shirt that was so loose she practically swam in it. She was older, maybe five years older than the young man, still making her younger than I am.

  “Not locals?” I asked, turning back to Kacey. Locals might be magical, but they might not. It wasn’t like the Rooster couldn’t be a regular diner, just that its clientele tended to be a bit different from that of the average restaurant.

  Kacey’s mouth tightened into a thin line, and she shook her head, then made her way around the end of the counter, wiping a damp cloth along the way as she did, before rounding the bar and heading toward the couple. The girl jumped when Kacey approached. The guy continued to stare at his hands.

  The door to the diner opened, and a wall of a man entered. He was dressed in his sheriff’s uniform and had on the same aviator shades I always saw him wearing. Jakes peeled the glasses off his face and stuffed them into his breast pocket. Now that I knew Jakes was a shifter, I wondered if the glasses hid something. Not that he’d ever tell me. He saw Devan and me, and he tipped his head to us before turning to the booth where Kacey stood, notepad in hand, tapping a pencil while she waited for them to order.

  “That’s strange,” I said.

  Devan shot me a look. “If you’re going to make some joke about him not coming over to me or about him being ten minutes too late to see me eating the burger, I’m not going to listen.”

  I swiveled in the stool and faced her, keeping the couple just at the corner of my eye. Jakes spoke in hushed tones to them, and I couldn’t make out what they said. I considered making a focusing pattern—now that Kacey had cleared the plate, I could smear the ketchup on the counter in the necessary spiral—but that would be too much work. Besides, I had the feeling that if Jakes knew I was trying to listen, he might shut me down. Shifter power almost always trumps painter magic.

  “Don’t need to.” I smiled. “You’re making all the jokes for me. Anyway, that wasn’t what I was going to say. Now who thinks everything is about them?” I arched my back slightly, moving enough on my stool so I could better see what Jakes was doing, but the big shifter had positioned himself in such a way that I couldn’t see anything. Almost as if he knew what I was trying to do.

  Devan stuffed her hand into her pocket and pulled out one of the figurines she liked to carve and set it on the counter. This one looked something like a gargoyle. It had a long snout and pointy ears. Long fangs jutted down over its lower lip, and curved slightly out. There seemed to be a smile on its face. She patted it on the top of its head. I swear she whispered something, but I couldn’t hear it.

  “What I was going to say was that it’s strange that Jakes showed up right as they got here. Almost like he was waiting for them.”

  Devan pulled her eyes from the figurine and glared at me. “He’s the sheriff, Ollie. Not everything has to be some magical mystery. Conlin has, what, ten, maybe fifteen thousand people? Not all of them are magical.”

  Maybe not, but since Taylor arrived, all I’d been dealing with was one strange magical nightmare after another. And here I’d come back to Conlin wanting a little bit of peace. Instead, I was working harder—and in nearly as much danger—as I had been while working, albeit unwillingly, for the Trelking. The only consolation I had was that I’d learned a bit more about my father. When I finally saw him again would he be pleased or annoyed?

  The bells over the door to the diner tinkled again and I turned. Jakes stood talking quietly to Kacey, but the couple had disappeared. I leaned my head to the side but couldn
’t see where they’d gone.

  Jakes glanced over at me and nodded again. He whispered something more to Kacey and made his way over to the counter, leaning on it casually. “Morris. How are you feeling?”

  “Well, you know, about as well as you can feel after a barn nearly falls on you.”

  “That barn wasn’t going to fall on you,” Devan shot.

  “Whatever,” I said. “It might have been better if it had. I doubt it would have hurt as much. How are you?”

  “We’re fine.”

  “Are you?” I asked. I was worried about him and the other shifters. One of their own had worked with Adazi. Jakes was the strong, silent type, but I think he needed to share more than he let on.

  “Don’t worry about me, Morris.”

  “Listen, I know what you’ve been through over the last few weeks. First your father, and now with Chase—”

  Devan squeezed my arm, and I glanced over to her. She shook her head slightly, warning me to silence.

  “Fine. Then what was that about?” I nodded toward the door.

  Jakes’s face remained unreadable. “Sheriff business. You know, I have another job around Conlin.”

  “Not all about guarding doors and gateways?” I asked.

  He shook his head but didn’t smile. Jakes and the other shifters took their responsibility to guard the gates pretty seriously. From what I’d gathered, my father had asked Jakes’s father to serve as some sort of watcher. Had he not, Taylor would have released hunters into our world again when she opened the gate that night.

  “They’re not from around here, though, are they?” I asked. I shouldn’t press, but I had a strange feeling about the couple.

  “Not from here.”

  “And they came to the Rooster.”

  Jakes’s eyes twitched. “What’s your point, Morris?”

  “Only that one of these days, I’m going to get you to share with me. You know, considering my father and yours were buddies and all.”

  “You don’t know enough to share,” he answered.

  Well, that was true. Conlin had a whole set of secrets, and I had no idea what they were. “Doesn’t change the fact that I can be helpful if you’ll give me the chance.”

  “Chance? You intend to stick around here? I thought you planned to return to Arcanus,” Jakes said.

  I think he knows about the doors there, too. I wondered if he’d ever thought about trying to place shifter protection over them, as well, but my guess is even shifter power couldn’t overcome the protections worked into Arcanus. Hell, I doubt Taylor knew much more than the fact that the doors existed. Hard, the one person other than my father who might know anything about the doors, was missing.

  “Well, you know how I can’t resist a pretty girl.” I slipped my arm around Devan’s shoulder, and she slapped it away. I feigned a hurt expression.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not the only thing you can’t resist,” Devan said. She poked me in the side. That evoked a smile from Jakes. His mouth cracked just a bit.

  “Sort of like you and your burger? You practically wolfed it down,” I said.

  She shook her head and gave me a look telling me exactly what she thought of my stupid joke. Jakes didn’t seem to get it, but Jakes was always pretty stoic, even more since the last attack. I didn’t know him all that well, but even in the last few days, he seemed different.

  “Don’t worry. We’re not going to try to take one of the gateways this time,” I told Jakes.

  “Trying would be a mistake,” Jakes said.

  There was no threat in the way he said it. With Jakes, there didn’t need to be. There wasn’t much I could do if the shifters really opposed me.

  Kacey stopped beside Jakes at the counter and leaned on it, giving Jakes an appraising look. “Would you stop bothering the customers, Sam?”

  I grabbed one of the laminated menus from where it was stuffed between a large canister of sugar and the salt and pepper and made a show of setting it down in front of me. “Especially since we’re going to need dessert.” I turned to Kacey. “What pies does Tom have today?”

  “Pie? Do you really think you need dessert, Morris?” Jakes asked.

  Devan barked out a laugh.

  I looked down at myself and poked a finger into my stomach, making a more exaggerated motion than what Devan had done. “This? It’s just a buffer. Like magical padding. Some of us need it.”

  “Hmm.”

  I thought about poking Jakes, but I doubted there was anything soft about him. “I’ll have the banana cream,” I said to Kacey, making a point of ignoring Jakes.

  She made a gesture toward Devan who only shook her head. “All right. Pie it is.”

  Kacey rolled around the counter and disappeared into the kitchen. I was thinking of what other witty thing I could say when a piercing howl came from past the doors through which Kacey had just stepped.

  Jakes darted toward the back. He’s a big man, but when he moves, he draws on magical power that most—even painters like myself—can’t even fathom. I wonder if he partially shifted as he went.

  I reached into my pocket for one of the charms Devan made and hurried after.

  The kitchen of the Rooster was no different from what I imagined in any other diner. There was a bank of gas burners. A row of pots hung over it from hooks. The butcher-block counter was stacked with boxes I suspected Tom had been sorting. A burning sort of stink drifted into the kitchen, like Tom had left something cooking too long and Kacey had taken it outside. There was no smoke that would explain that, though. Hopefully not the meatloaf. Tom’s meatloaf was famous. An angry sense buzzed against me, but I couldn’t quite place where it came from.

  A door was open to the outside, letting a hint of the early autumn breeze blow in. Jakes filled the doorway, his broad back blocking it. I started toward him when Devan touched my hand.

  “Careful, Ollie, there’s something here that I can’t sense.”

  I squeezed the charm, preparing to trigger it if needed. It would generate a wide circle of green ink, enough for a protective pattern.

  Jakes stepped out the door, and I followed, Devan still holding my arm. I finally saw what it was that I smelled. A body lay sprawled across the ground near the big, blue dumpster, almost as if someone had tried to throw it inside but failed. It was heavily burned. That was the smell, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. It was the way the body had been charred. There was a series of patterns burned into the flesh. No one other than a painter makes patterns like that.

  “Is it Tom?” Devan asked, staying behind me.

  Jakes craned his neck and flicked his gaze from me to Devan. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Really, Jakes? From the look of the patterns on the body, it seems to me you’ve got a magical murder here. I know you’re pretty well equipped to handle things like that, but this one might actually be in my wheelhouse. Let me help. If it bothers you, consider me a hired consultant.”

  “You’re not getting paid,” he said, then stepped aside and let me approach.

  “Can you tell who it is?” I asked. It wasn’t a question of his magical ability; it was a question of his nose. Shifters—especially those like Jakes who changed into the shape of a wolf—had an incredible sense of smell.

  “No.”

  “Not Tom?” I asked.

  “Not Tom.”

  I dipped my hand into the satchel of ink hooked to my belt. I went for red, but really any color would work for what I needed. Colors were important for painters, but there were some patterns where color was of secondary importance, like the type I would need. Had I carried any blue ink, that would really have been better, but blue was a little too cerebral for me to keep on me most of the time.

  I made a series of patterns around the body. A simple equilateral triangle near his feet. An inverted spiral wrapped in a circle near one of the arms. And then an arcane mark near the other side. Arcane patterns were different from traditional patterns. Traditional patterns
used basic geometric shapes like triangle and circles in ever-increasing complexity. They were intended to augment the power of the painter, drawing and focusing it in ways that the painter couldn’t do on his or her own. Arcane patterns augmented a painter’s magic, as well, but the power created by these patterns was different from traditional ones.

  With arcane patterns, a painter can work some seriously dangerous magic. Or they can just as easily destroy themselves. It was why places like Arcanus wouldn’t teach them. I’d had to go across the Threshold to learn what I’d learned about them. Now I was the closest thing on this side of the Threshold to a master in using them.

  When I infused the pattern, energy shimmered around me and then faded.

  “Damn,” I hissed.

  There was residual power here, enough to counter what I tried to do. Nothing dangerous to me at least, not that I could tell, but it would take more of a draw than I expected. The painter who’d done this had known what he was doing.

  “What is it?” Jakes asked.

  “Just a minute,” I said, waving a hand at him as I refocused.

  I made another quick pattern, this one alongside the arcane mark. It would add to the arcane pattern, allowing me to pull even more power without taxing myself too much. Had I more skill, it wouldn’t be as much of an issue, but I was a tagger, not an artist like my father.

  When I pressed my will into the patterns this time, I split my focus. It had taken practice to learn how to do so. There weren’t many painters—taggers or artists—who could split their focus into more than two or three patterns. With the additional pattern, I split it into four.

  This time, the patterns surged into place, fortified by the additional one. Power swirled around the body, almost visibly so. The energy that had killed this guy pressed against my magic, like some sort of magical arm-wrestling match. It was strong, but the painter wasn’t there to keep pushing power into it. Had he been, I might not have been strong enough.