The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Think it’s about your father?”

  “It’s always about my father, isn’t it?” I said.

  Devan sniffed and glanced at the house. The house, the garage, the truck were all my father’s. Jakes’s house and shed were protected by my father. Hell, even the diner in town had protections over it placed there by my father.

  “Good point,” she said.

  “She said he was a collector,” I said. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? First the couple, then the Nizashi, and now Nik.”

  “Isn’t that what I told you?” she asked. “What if he sent her here?”

  I continued to look toward the park for a moment more, trying to decide if I should be surprised by the fact that the first place she took Nik was the park. I decided I shouldn’t be. As long as she didn’t show him what she’d learned about the statues, we wouldn’t have a problem. But if she did—or if Nik got it into his head that he wanted to understand the Elder’s statues—then we might. Those statues protected a gateway at the heart of the park, a crossing over the Threshold that had opened, letting hunters into Conlin, and killing a shifter.

  I sighed, turning back to the truck and wishing I had another beer.

  “Jakes ought to know he’s here,” Devan said. “Especially with the dead Nizashi and that couple. He might have questions for Nik.”

  “Nik couldn’t do that. You know the kind of magic he’s capable of.”

  “Just call it a hunch. First a body, and then that kid shows up with the cylinder? Something tells me that there’s more to his visit than looking up an ex-girlfriend. And if it has anything to do with your father, Jakes is actually a little more knowledgeable than you.”

  I hated that she was right. About both things, actually.

  I leaned out of the garage and saw Taylor at the edge of the lawn, standing with Nik. Her hands were planted on her hips, and the sunlight lit her face in such a way that I could see the tension pulling at her eyes. Stranger still, it looked like she was yelling at him.

  Yeah, there was more to him coming than simply looking for Taylor.

  8

  I sat in Big Red, my fingers running around the steering wheel and the patterns that Devan had placed there, when I began to feel a sense of déjà vu. We’d been here before, first when Taylor appeared, then when Adazi attacked. This time, it was the Nizashi, but the attack was no less deadly. More so, probably. With Adazi, I at least had some hope of countering his power. With the Nizashi, I wasn’t sure what they were really after.

  They would take Devan—that much was certain—but if Devan was all they were after, then they would have grabbed her when she was stuck in the time bubble, and there wouldn’t have been a whole hell of a lot I could do about it. The fact that they hadn’t, that the Nizashi had taken the time to continue to attack, meant that they wanted the cylinder, as well. What was it that it was important enough for the Nizashi to attack? Was there any way to keep it safe, to prevent even the Trelking from reaching it?

  I realized there might be.

  “Well, shit,” I said to myself.

  Devan glanced over at me. The truck was still in the garage, and the air stunk of the torch Devan had been using. The gods only know what she was doing with it. She stood next to the truck, running one hand along the fender. I couldn’t see what patterns she placed there, but I didn’t doubt that was why she spent so much time running her hands along the side of the truck. That, and the fact that she had a long, slender blade cupped in her palm. With it, she could make very delicate changes to the metal. I’d seen her do it with her figurines and with my charms.

  “What shit?”

  I looked over to the house. “Maybe I’ve been thinking about this wrong.”

  “Probably,” she agreed.

  I stepped out of the truck and looked at the charms lined up on the bench in various states of completion. They were between a pair of figurines on either end of the bench. One of these days, Devan would explain to me her fascination with them.

  “Why would the kid bring this to me?” I wondered.

  “It’s your father’s and he wanted to keep it safe.”

  “Yeah. Safe. Away from the Nizashi.”

  “Or away from Nik,” she said.

  I hadn’t considered that.

  “Taylor recognized the pattern that killed the Nizashi, Ollie. Whatever else, someone Nik knows was powerful enough to do that.”

  “Yeah, and if Nik learns that they failed, then we have another reason to get the cylinder someplace safe. Someplace Taylor can’t reach it.”

  “What are you thinking, Ollie?”

  I turned to face her. “What is this thing? Why would your father care about it?”

  “I don’t know. You haven’t been able to trigger the patterns?”

  “Not safely, and not without knowing the intent. Makes things like that dangerous.”

  “So what, you want to take them on? The Nizashi?”

  “You make it sound like it’s a bad idea.”

  “Well, it’s a terrible idea. And likely as not could get us both killed.”

  “Probably.”

  Devan laughed. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh in a few days, really since we’d learned of the Nizashi. Not that I blamed her for being a little more somber, but it was nice to hear her more like herself.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Seems to me that if there’s something that painters are willing to kill for, and that your father is enough afraid of to send the Nizashi, we ought to understand why.”

  “Sure, if we don’t get killed.”

  “There’s that,” I agreed. “But we need to keep it safe.”

  “The house isn’t safe. We’ve seen that, Ollie.”

  I smiled. “The house isn’t safe, but there might be a place that is, but Taylor will need to be a part of it,” I said, nodding toward the house. “We’ll need an artist.”

  “I get the feeling that she’s not always been completely honest with us, Ollie. She shows up, looking for your father’s stuff, claiming she needs it to find her father, and now Nik? What else isn’t she sharing?”

  “A feeling or a Feeling?”

  “Does it matter? You’re smart enough to see that there’s a reason she’s not pushing too hard anymore to return to Arcanus.”

  “It’s the mods,” I said.

  “It’s more than that,” Devan said as she made her way around the front of the truck to stand next to me. She was nearly a foot shorter and thin, but power radiated from her. Maybe I was the only one able to feel it. I’d been around Devan using her power often enough to know what it felt like when she did, just as much as I could tell when she held it in reserve as she did now. Since the attack the night before, she’d been holding herself ready and on edge. I don’t think she wanted to be surprised by the Nizashi again.

  “You think she’s after something else?”

  Devan looked up at me and shrugged. “Why would that surprise you? The first thing she did when she came to Conlin was sneak into the basement and steal that book of your father’s. She tells us she wanted to open the gateway to find your friend—”

  “Hey. Not my friend.”

  “Whatever. But how do we know that was really her purpose?”

  “She helped us stop the hunters after she realized what she’d done. Then she helped me get to you. Without her, I don’t think I could have saved you from Adazi.”

  “Fine. Then what do you plan?” Devan asked.

  “First, we need to get this thing to safety,” I said, tapping the cylinder. “Then, I think it’s time to see if we can draw one of them out, don’t you?”

  “Them?”

  “The way I see it, we’ve got two Nizashi and a magical prison created by the Elder and the leader of the shifters. What better place?”

  “You don’t even know what half that stuff does there,” Devan said.

  “No, but it kept Adazi out. With all the protections on the shed, they won’t b
e able to reach it.”

  Devan rested her hands on the side of the truck. “You still need to draw them out. And stop them.”

  “Jakes would be there.”

  “I don’t like it. You’re going to put Jakes in the middle of us and the Nizashi?”

  “You don’t think he can handle it?”

  “Are you going to tell him what you intend, or are you just going to show up and crash at his house?”

  “I’ll tell him. I might wait until he’s there before I do,” I said.

  Devan only shook her head.

  * * *

  We rolled up to Jakes’s as the evening began to darken. The house was set back from the road and ringed by a wooden fence. Power that separated painters from their power worked through the fence, but in the times that I’d visited, I’d learned that it didn’t stop my power. All I needed was for it to slow the Nizashi.

  I had left a message for Jakes before we left the garage, giving him the heads up that we were on our way to his place. I didn’t know if he would do anything to stop me. Since he first learned I had my father’s key, he’d never done anything other than give me a hard time when I tried using it. I think he still had that residual respect for my father that drove him. Or maybe it was something else. Hell, I didn’t know if my father had left instructions for him to help me. I wouldn’t put it past him.

  The three of us jumped the fence into the yard and started toward the shed in the back. At night, the shed looked pretty ordinary. Even in the daylight, it looked pretty ordinary. But on the inside, the shed was something else completely. My father had used his magical abilities to create a massive warehouse almost completely underground. Stored within it were items that he felt the need to lock up. One of the items was the orb that Adazi had wanted. In addition to the magically enhanced padlock my father had used on the door, I’d had Devan place additional protections around the shed. Without her by my side, even I wouldn’t be able to access certain areas inside.

  I slipped the over-sized gold key out of my pocket, and just like the first time I used it, I pressed it against the padlock and it shrunk to a normal size, fitting perfectly. I slipped the padlock off the latch, and slowly opened the door. Once inside, the air changed. It had a musty, stale odor. Though the shed looked rickety and worn, it was stout and airtight on the inside and sealed by the Elder. A long hall sloped down beneath the ground. From the outside, you’d never be able to tell this was all here.

  I entered first, waved them both inside, then closed and locked the door behind us. It was Taylor’s first time in the shed. When we came the first time, only Jakes and I had entered the shed. Every other time after that, only Devan had come in with me.

  The door began to thud loudly the moment I locked it.

  Devan cursed and turned quickly, already starting to glow. Taylor pulled her paintbrush from her pocket and held it up. Blue ink tipped the end of the brush, but somehow didn’t drip from it. Even I had grabbed one of my charms. “Hold it there, Hermione,” I said to Taylor as she began to work on a pattern.

  She glanced at me. “What?”

  I gave Devan my best annoyed look. “Doesn’t anyone watch movies anymore?” I asked.

  “Not the crap you watch,” Devan said.

  “Crap? The last few were really well done. I particularly liked how they developed—”

  “Are you really going to argue the merits of a movie right now?” Taylor asked. Her voice had gone up nearly an octave, and her eyes were wide.

  I noticed that she managed to set her feet apart, sliding them into a particular stance designed to draw more power. I still hadn’t asked where she’d learned that. I only learned from my time with the Te’alan. Maybe from Nik, I realized. He would have—or at least, he could have known about it, too.

  The door thudded again. There wasn’t the sense of power building, nothing that set my teeth and skin on edge. I looked at Devan and she shook her head.

  “I got nothing,” she said.

  “Good. Let’s say hi, then.”

  I pulled the door open. Jakes stood on the other side. He wore a plain white T-shirt and jeans and nothing more than simple tennis shoes. I wondered if he shaped them off as he changed or if they were shaped on.

  “Why are you looking at me like that, Morris?” he asked.

  “Only because I’m glad to see you,” I said. “Anything out there that’s not supposed to be?”

  “You’re here.”

  “I’m supposed to be here.”

  Jakes stared past me and made a point of looking at Taylor. “You brought it here?” I nodded. “And now you think it will slow the Nizashi?”

  “I hope so.”

  “And once they show up here searching for it?”

  Jakes might be big and strong, but he’s definitely not dumb. It only took him moments to figure out what we were up to. I resisted the urge to glance at Taylor, but I could feel her eyes burning on my back. I half expected her to fling her ink at me. Maybe knock me down with a quick blast. Normally, I’d think Devan would have my back, but she’d been kind of punky lately, so she might actually enjoy watching it.

  “Do you really think that’s the best strategy?” Jakes asked.

  I pulled Jakes to the side, moving him away from Taylor and Devan. “Listen. We need to draw them out somehow. That’s why I called you here. Between the four of us, don’t you think we can manage to stop the Nizashi?”

  Jakes paused and looked toward the door to the shed. “You were planning on my help with the Nizashi?”

  “I kind of figured you would be able to help. Why?”

  He shook his head. “We can’t get involved. Not with that. Doing so violates one of the dictums that we must abide by.”

  “Dictums? Like shifter laws?”

  “Something like that. Know that I cannot actively work against those working for the Trelking, if they are here for valid reasons.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Maybe in time, you’ll understand, Morris.”

  Jakes started away from the shed, leaving me standing there staring after him. With Jakes, there wasn’t really anything I could say that could convince him to stay. He didn’t so much as look over at Devan or Taylor as he left. The silence hanging over the emptiness of the shed was deafening.

  “What did you say to him?” Devan asked, breaking the silence.

  “Apparently, not what he needed to hear.”

  “So he’s not helping?” Taylor asked. “The shifter isn’t going to help with the Nizashi?” Her voice started to rise again.

  “Nope. We’re on our own. Time for you to start getting yourself ready.”

  “For what? We’ve seen what happens when just one of the Nizashi attacks. There are two remaining! When we thought the shifter might help, we had a chance, but without him…”

  Devan glared at Taylor and stepped away from her, leaving her standing by herself in the part of the shed leading down to the lower level, then turned to me. “He really won’t help?”

  “Said he can’t. That helping violates some shifter dictum.”

  She faced the door. Her skin glowed with a soft, yellow light. The medallion around my neck pressed against me with a surge of cold as she drew power through it. “Not shifter dictum. My father’s,” she spat.

  “Probably. Either way, there’s not a whole hell of a lot we can do about it.”

  Devan’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Ollie, I don’t want to go back.”

  “I’m not letting you.”

  She set her hand on my arm and squeezed. “You’re not? You really think you can keep the Nizashi from getting that thing? From taking me?”

  “I think I’m going to try,” I said.

  Devan shook her head and sighed. “Well…we’re fucked.”

  9

  The air changed suddenly, growing warmer and darker. We all knew what it meant even as it happened. I had hoped we’d get a little more time than this. Hell, I’d expected that we’d
have time to place the cylinder down below and then have a chance to get out, but the Nizashi had another idea.

  Devan raced toward the front of the shed, and her skin began glowing brightly. I couldn’t see what she did, but felt the effect through the medallion.

  Taylor moved to the back of the shed, as if to go down below.

  “That’s probably not a great idea,” I said to her. “If they’re here, going below is only going to get us trapped down there.”

  “Or keep us safe.” Devan shrugged when I looked over at her. “It’s a place of the Elder. I’m not sure even the Nizashi can penetrate it.”

  “But it’s not some sort of bunker. How long will they attack? This place might keep them out, but it’ll keep us in, too,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m not saying I like it,” Devan said, “only that there’s not much else we can do. Are you really willing to go out, guns blazing?”

  “You know I’m no good with guns,” I said.

  Devan smiled. “You got pretty good with an arrow, though.”

  “Only because I had to. Your father demanded that I learn how to defend myself if the magic failed.”

  “Can you blame him? How often did the magic fail?” Devan shot back at me.

  The shed door rattled with more force than it had when Jakes showed up. It didn’t look like much, but the shed had just as many enchantments around it as my house did. When you added in the lower level of the shed, it was probably more secure than the house in some ways, just not as comfortable. Considering it served as something like a prison, I think that was the point.

  “It wasn’t that the magic failed. There are limits to what I can do, you know.”

  Devan smiled. “I know.”

  I pushed past her and pulled a pinch of red ink from my satchel, quickly painting a pattern around the edge of the door. A half-moon, angled away from the door, and tipped with a star. The pattern had some complexity to it, but not much. It would draw quite a bit of raw power from me. The more I drew, the more quickly I would become useless. Like I said, I’d gotten flabby and needed to get buff.