Forgotten Magic (Stolen Magic Book 1)

by Jayne Hawke

  “The note said, ‘She’ll be impressed’. They knew that I would return it to Ms. Briggs. It’s like they’re trying to help me. Why would they do that? Why hide who they are like that?”

  Castor rolled his jaw.

  “I believe you may have a stalker.”

  “Oh fantastic. Just what I needed.”

  “They’ll trip up and you can eradicate them,” Castor said with a warm smile.

  “Speaking of eradicated, James said someone has been digging into my old coven. Apparently, they’ve been very determined.”

  “Why did James tell you that?” Castor’s eyes narrowed.

  Castor had always hated James, not that I could blame him. The sidhe was a slimeball.

  “He thought the information was weird and thus important,” I said with a sigh.

  “He just came into your office to tell you that?”

  “No, I contacted him to see if he had anything of use on this case with Ms. Briggs.”

  We made our way into the kitchen. I looked in the fridge to see if anything caught my eye. The box and potential stalker had killed my appetite, though.

  “I think it would be best if you didn’t go out for a while,” Castor said.

  “I have to work.”

  “I understand that, but clubbing and such perhaps isn’t a great idea.”

  Turning to face him, I raised an eyebrow.

  “Are you serious? You know that I can look after myself.”

  He frowned and gave me a concerned look.

  “I’m allowed to worry about my witch, my friend,” he said softly.

  “Sorry, the whole situation puts me on edge. The idea of someone watching me is incredibly creepy.”

  I put the box with the shadow stone on the table in the middle of the kitchen.

  “What am I going to do about that?”

  “Return it to Ms. Briggs.”

  “What about Elijah? He’s going to have a lot of questions.”

  Castor shrugged.

  “Tell him a lead or contact came through.”

  Elijah was going to hate it. What else could I do, though? Tell him I had a stalker who was leaving me gifts relating to the cases I got.

  “Go for a bath, I’ll cook those duck breasts. We have some pecan pie for dessert,” Castor said with a warm smile.

  The affection spread through the bond between us, and I relaxed. I wasn’t in this alone. It would probably turn out to be one of Elijah’s pack trying to mess with my head. Castor was right; I needed a hot bath and to let it go.

  Thirteen

  The next morning, I’d wrapped the stone in a simple white cloth and taken it over to Ms. Briggs without telling Elijah anything. A knot of guilt had formed in my stomach, but what other choice did I have? If he knew that the stone had appeared on my doorstep, he’d ask a lot of questions. Questions that I couldn’t answer.

  The same young woman that had answered the door last time I was there greeted me with a mild smile and asked me to wait in what I assumed was a drawing room. It was a simple, inoffensive room done in golden browns and deep forest greens. The couch was just uncomfortable enough to remind people they weren’t meant to be remaining too long.

  “Miss Harper, I hadn’t expected you this morning.”

  I pulled the stone from my bag and handed it to her without ceremony.

  “We’re still working on the unicorn blood,” I said.

  He eyes widened slightly when I said, “we.” I resisted the urge to smirk. I was still pissed that she’d hired both of us as if I wasn’t good enough alone.

  “Thank you. Who took it?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Details have been passed to the relevant people,” I said.

  It was complete bullshit. If a thief was prolific enough, some people with a strong conscience would pass the name over to the fae guards or even a bounty hunter, but usually names were kept under wraps unless someone died. At the end of the day, thieves kept people like me in business, and I was a thief myself at times. It turns out there is honour amongst thieves after all.

  Jess was polishing off a bag of jam doughnuts when I walked into Elijah’s office. She wiped some stray sugar from the corner of her mouth before she scrunched the bag up.

  “Any news?” I asked.

  “Not yet. Ms. Briggs rang, though,” she said with a cold glint in her eye.

  Packs were very loyal to each other and their alpha. I’d pissed off her alpha.

  Elijah flung open his office door and glared at me.

  “You didn’t tell me you’d found the shadow stone. We’re supposed to be partners.”

  “A lead came through, and I assumed you needed your beauty sleep,” I said.

  “Any more leads in the works you didn’t bother to tell me about yesterday?”

  “No, I’m all out,” I said as I settled myself onto the couch.

  “Who was this lead?”

  “None of your business.”

  “And the stone was that easy to find? None of the fences I’ve had contact with have seen it.”

  “What can I say? When you’re this good...”

  He growled.

  “It’s almost as though you had the stone all along. Rumour has it that you’re a very talented witch. No one has been able to figure out how you got in and out of the Copus place without leaving so much as a faint scent,” Elijah said as he stalked over to me.

  “Like I said. I’m just that good,” I said as I put my boots up on the coffee table and grinned at him.

  “No witch has been able to tell me how someone would do that,” he pushed.

  “How sweet, you’ve been my fan for a while.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “I don’t like not knowing how something works.”

  “You mean you don’t like losing.”

  He snorted.

  “I don’t lose.”

  “My acquisitions and bounty record say otherwise.”

  He towered over me, all muscle and brooding sexiness.

  “You managed to get one item before me. One.”

  “That’s all it takes to win, darling.”

  Jess tried to muffle her laugh behind her hand. She failed.

  “You are an infuriating woman, Lily Harper.”

  “Aw, you say the sweetest things.”

  He sighed and walked over to the coffee machine.

  “I’ll take a cappuccino, no sugar. I’m sweet enough as it is,” I called over.

  Elijah ignored me, or at least pretended to.

  “Did your genius hacker fox make any progress on where the unicorn blood might be? Or who the thief was?” I asked.

  “He’s still in bed,” Jess said.

  “Wow, the boss must be a real push over,” I said.

  Elijah glowered at me as he handed me a black coffee.

  As much as I was tempted to needle at him about it, I decided it was better not to push my luck any further. We were supposed to be working together, after all. That being said, his pissy scowl was ridiculously sexy. I gripped the coffee cup and inhaled the rich scent, using it to try and get my mind to less ridiculous places. Elijah was not someone I could afford to jump into bed with. He’d apparently already done some digging, and I wasn’t stupid enough to encourage that.

  I did wonder what those calloused hands would feel like wrapped around my hips though.

  Fourteen

  “Come on, princess, we have a meeting with one of my people. We’ll see if he is as magical as your contact was last night. That is, if you can survive without your cappuccino...” Elijah said.

  “Well, your coffee is certainly inferior to what I’m used to, but I think I’ll live.”

  I stood and followed him out towards the elevator. I tried to ignore the way his jeans hugged his powerful thighs and perfectly toned ass, but it was a struggle that I failed. Given the smirk on Elijah’s face when I got into the elevator, he assumed that he knew where my gaze had been. I didn’t know how he fit his ego into
the space.

  “We’re going to the Narrows. You might break a nail,” Elijah said with a teasing tone.

  “However will I survive? Don’t worry, sweetness, I’ll walk in front of you so you don’t have to worry about any mean criminals trying to hurt you,” I teased back.

  He looked me up and down slowly.

  “What are you going to do, startle them with your wit?”

  I poked him in the chest. It was even harder than I’d expected.

  “I could kick your ass with one arm tied behind my back.”

  He leaned forward.

  “I’d rather see you with your hands tied above your head,” he said huskily.

  Goosebumps formed and a warmth spread through my abdomen. I shouldn’t have encouraged him or that line of thought. He was just too damn good to resist, though. No one had managed to get under my skin the way he had.

  “We’ll take my car. I don’t want to lose time while you try and park,” he said as he strolled towards his car.

  “Sinking to the sexist clichés already?”

  He flashed a grin at me.

  “I’m just calling it how I see it.”

  I admit that I avoided parallel parking like my life depended on it, but I did just fine with normal bay parking.

  He pulled out of his car park and took us through the winding streets of the city. The Narrows were a maze-like set of narrow cobblestoned streets lined with less-than-legal shops and contacts. Normal people avoided it if they knew what was good for them.

  That particular section of the city was said to have been made by the fae when they stepped out of the shadows. They altered the Fae Isles quite a bit, from what I’d managed to grasp. Sometimes I wondered what they were like before the Fall. They certainly sounded more exciting as they stood.

  Elijah parked with flair and a grin on his face as he reversed far more quickly than was necessary into the tight space. I rolled my eyes and got out. We were a block away from the Narrows. The area was still rougher than normal people liked to frequent. The graffiti marking the buildings was less beautiful art and more magical warnings to stay away or workings to protect the criminals hiding within.

  We walked with our shoulders back and blades on show. Elijah had strapped a long sword to his back after we’d parked. It was unusual for a shifter to fight in their human form, but I was glad to know that he could wield a blade if he needed to. Shifters were very resilient to magic, but teeth and claws could only go so far.

  The buildings around us had seen better days. The facades were well worn with blown bricks, boarded up windows, and large cracks in the sidewalk. The people didn’t look much better. A pixie with greasy hair tipped with faded green leered at us from a doorway where she smoked something that produced a thick curl of purple smoke. I formed a small invisible bubble around myself, not wanting to be affected by whatever drugs were within her cigarette. I was far too much of a control freak to indulge in drugs, or drinking past tipsiness.

  There was a slight haziness demarking the border between the main city and the Narrows. Some people said the Narrows were actually a pocket dimension with a thin veil. I wasn’t convinced. Pocket dimensions required a lot of energy to maintain, and I saw no reason for someone to put that much effort into a section of the city devoted to criminals and their ilk.

  “Don’t worry, princess, I’ll keep you safe,” Elijah whispered in my ear.

  I stepped in front of him and walked with my chin high. They knew me in the Narrows. I was, after all, one of them.

  We walked past a grimy-looking shop with a grey wall covered in what looked to be a couple of centuries of dirt. The windows were too murky to see through. I knew that if you went inside you would find yourself in a beautiful modern parlour where a sharp-minded puka would try and con you into selling some part of your memories to him. He didn’t only trade in memories, but they were a good starting point. People figured they could live without a few memories. If you weren’t careful, he’d have you trading away your very life essence.

  The shop two doors up on our right had a string of pink lights dancing around the small windows, which contained displays of innocent-looking herbs and tinctures. Mel looked like the sweetest woman you could ever meet, but she was the finest poison maker in the Isles. Should the wrong type of person come knocking, she’d send them away with a bland tea and the feeling of being over-charged. They never returned.

  “You didn’t tell me who we were here to meet,” I said as we turned the first corner and entered the maze proper.

  “Erik.”

  I bit back a groan. Erik was a Norse wolf. He wasn’t a Fenrir wolf; they were wild and, thankfully, never left Fenrir’s lands in Scandinavia. Still, he was a surly old bastard, and I hated dealing with him.

  “We’re good friends,” Elijah said brightly.

  “Of course you are.”

  Fifteen

  Erik resided in a wide building near the centre of the Narrows. His pack was full of hard-edged wolves that liked me about as much as I liked them. Shifters didn’t usually like being in the middle of the city, which on reflection probably explained some of their bitchiness, but somehow they remained.

  Elijah brushed past me as we approached the open door of Erik’s residence. He was whatever people needed him to be. He had thieves in his pack, assassins, and he himself acted as a fence and forger. Rumours were that he had a nice drug operation running, too, but I hadn’t looked into it. Drugs weren’t my thing.

  “Good to see you, old wolf,” Elijah greeted Erik.

  Erik was taller and leaner than Elijah. Where Elijah was polished, young, and ready to take on the world, Erik was grizzled like he’d taken on the world and it had kicked his ass. Stubble clung to the older wolf’s jaw. His blond hair framed his angular face and brought out the silver in his silvery blue eyes. I didn’t look away when he stared me down. I wasn’t going to show submission to the wolves. It was weakness, and I was anything but.

  “You didn’t tell me you were bringing the dark witch,” Erik grumbled.

  “She’ll behave herself.”

  “We’re looking into a theft. Someone took a vial of unicorn blood; know anyone selling some?” I asked.

  Erik turned away from me and made a show of making himself a cup of coffee on the small fire he had burning on the kitchen counter. It had been formed by a flat red stone, a fire disk. Not many people used those anymore. They weren’t exactly safe within the confines of a house.

  “Do you happen to have seen some unicorn blood?” Elijah asked.

  “Not a drop. I’d be happy to buy some if you’re selling, though.”

  “Not this time. We heard there was a new thief in town, a good one.”

  Erik grunted.

  Elijah turned to me and nodded towards the door. I rolled my jaw. He wasn’t wrong. The old wolf wasn’t going to talk with me around. The dislike was mutual.

  I walked back out into the street and leaned against a wall, watching the world go by. A woman with stringy dark hair, sunken cheeks, and ruby-red eyes paused and stared at me. Her clothes were verging on threadbare and her hands had been stained a bright violet where she’d spent far too much time enjoying the magical drugs.

  “You’re tainted,” she hissed at me.

  I raised an eyebrow and watched her.

  “I can feel it bubbling up within you. You don’t even know what you are, what it did to you.”

  Well, this wasn’t quite the usual drug-addled rant I was expecting.

  “The darkness is right there, running through your veins.” She pointed at me. “It will consume all around you.”

  They called me the dark witch because I tended to work at night and could hide in the shadows. Of course, there was real shadow hiding within me, courtesy of my old coven. No one else had been able to feel or comment on that, though.

  She began stalking towards me.

  “The world dictates that you must be sent back to the darkness from which you came.”


  I drew my sword.

  “I’m quite attached to staying right here. Thanks.”

  She gave me a look somewhere between outrage and disgust. I think she legitimately expected me to surrender peacefully to be sent back to the darkness from which I came. You had to admire her optimism, I guess, but hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

  I felt her try and tug at my life force and fail, but she was definitely powerful. There was next to no one that would be able to just tear me apart like that with full warning and rested defences, but it was easy to tell the difference between a golf ball and a ping-pong ball even if neither clocked you in the skull.

  I continued to eye her, sword extended in a fencer’s guard, and felt the magic around me for power I could use and changes that would show what she was planning. She started by trying to melt the ground beneath my feet, a classic early gambit among her sort of witch. The Knights were taught to carry around vials and trinkets like dangerously powerful magpies, and many assassins and the like relied on boosting their own physical abilities with long-term workings, but in the Narrows you saw witches whose guiding motto was ‘Use what you have.’

  And of course, you almost always had earth underfoot. Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t a Fantasia model spellcaster. Long before the spell could begin to take any meaningful effect, I was across the sidewalk and in her face.

  “What do you know about me, and why do you have a problem?” I asked, my voice pitched for ‘quiet menace’ but not quite nailing it in the face of the first person to recognize what I was since... ever.

  She didn’t answer, rolling her eyes like I was trying to pull an inept con, and tried to headbutt me before backing away more quickly than her desiccated frame seemed likely to allow. Looked like the drugs were doing her a lot of good. She began to circle me, walking half-bent like a water hag, and I continued to feel the magic around me. I wasn’t going to kill her until I knew as much about her as I could, at least not if I could help it.

  She tried to pull at the ice magic of the wards Erik surrounded his place with, but it didn’t budge. No surprise, given the capital he had to invest in things like that, but I was still grateful not to be taking the rap for their getting disturbed. It was one thing to share a mutual dislike with the guy, another to make a full-fledged enemy.