Trimarked

  “Can I keep him?” Keegan asked.

  “Bouncers don’t make good pets,” Chase admonished. “Can’t house train them and all.”

  Aaron’s easy going manner stiffened, though Keegan snorted a laugh.

  “No joke, boss, but no problem. Can Ember bring him by again?”

  Chase shrugged. “That’s her deal. Now leave him with his owner and give me your soda.”

  Keegan handed over his glass and swung a chair around against the back wall. He said bye with a friendly shove. Aaron dropped his clothes and took his seat, jaw clenched, hands loose.

  “Relax, I’m just playing with Keegs.” Chase claimed his fresh drink. “What brings you to the dungeons? It wasn’t to box, though you surprised us with a good effort.”

  “Natural athlete, I guess.” Aaron downed his whole soda in a few loud gulps. Ember wrapped her fingers around her water, took a larger swallow this time for a reason not to speak.

  “Didn’t answer my question,” Chase reminded with a slow, challenging smile.

  “I didn’t realize I’d be interrogated.”

  Their host’s eyes narrowed. He angled his body over the table and in front of Ember to illustrate Aaron held his full attention.

  “No, you expected to be the only one demanding answers. Fading bouncer.”

  Ember trembled where she sat, caught between the two teenage alphas, and wondered why she thought this would be a good idea.

  Aaron played the game. He returned the stare, slow blinks, but no other movement. Acknowledgement of who was in charge, of whose house he was in. Satisfied, Chase eased back from the table.

  “Ember, at least, knows how to answer questions. She said you’re looking for your friend, Brandt.”

  “Last I saw him, he had a run in with Nicu,” Aaron said.

  “Yeah, I was there.”

  “What?”

  “I was bugging the car in front you.”

  Aaron’s lips twitched, then he laughed. He rested against his chair back and drew a hand through his drying hair.

  “Did you stick around for the fallout?” Aaron asked.

  “I caught the end.” Chase raised his glass and Aaron grabbed his own to toast a prank executed at his expense.

  Ember slumped into the booth, scrutinized the pair as if they’d grown new personalities. She crossed her arms, happy to let them hash out their relationship without her, but the movement drew Chase’s attention. He drained whatever drink he’d appropriated from Keegan, then slammed the glass to the table.

  “So Brandt is your buddy?” Chase asked. Aaron nodded. “Well, I’ll be honest, Aaron. The last time you saw him is not the last time I did. See, I caught up with him later. He was piss drunk, spitting mad and had a forearm choke on one of my crew.”

  Aaron shook his head, gaze downcast. “Keegan?”

  “You wish.” Chase growled. “Show him.”

  Ember studied his flush, wondered if this was part of what she owed him. What did it matter if Aaron knew what Brandt had done? He’d stick with his friend against her, so there was no point.

  Chase slashed his eyes at her, the demand in them clear. She sat up and lifted her chin.

  “Fucking fades.” Aaron gulped, his wide stare unable to look away. Not comfortable with the scrutiny, Ember realigned and shifted so her hair fell forward.

  “You’ve been with her all day, yet this is the first time you notice that sucker? Or maybe you didn’t consider it important to ask the Trimarked girl where she got hurt? Let me say this, Harwell. I can’t help you find your friend, but I can sure as hell tell you Nicu isn’t the only one who has reason to toss him off the edge.”

  Silence for the sake of emphasis.

  “Now it’s time for you to get out. Ember, you okay taking him home or should I get Keegan?”

  Ember peeked beyond the veil of her hair. Aaron sat with his elbows on his knees, his stare wide and apologetic. Ember’s stomach churned with his unexpected reaction. Why did she feel like she owed him a favor for caring about her?

  “I’ll go with Keegan,” he offered and turned to grab his shirt. Ember shifted uncomfortably. She understood what Chase’s offer meant. He would think if she asked for Keegan’s help that Aaron was just like Brandt.

  She shook her head, couldn’t throw him off the edge when he’d shown her remorse. She spoke quietly around the lump in her throat. “I’ll take him. I need to get back to Mom, anyway.”

  Chase shoved the water into her hands. “Finish that first,” he commanded. He was far too aware of her limited resources. Before she could refuse, he rose from the booth and stormed out one of the many doors spaced along the chamber’s walls.

  12

  Devi

  Devi Garenne cupped the two-inch quartz in one hand, the other sketched lines and nodes of the spell she’d skimmed from Ember’s tattoo. Where Fae focused on the particles of magic and Witches worked with the flow of it, Devi saw the structure of the atoms as if through a microscope. Her eyes fixed on a long run that twisted in the crystal. She drew the line, hash marks to show where it intersected.

  “Verge!” She threw her pencil, and it clattered against the concrete floor of the warehouse.

  She lost track. Again. Devi gripped the quartz and studied her sketch. The capture had worked. As she brushed the stone against the Ink, the crystals had reshaped and aligned in a copy that was map more than magic. The challenge wasn’t her Work, but the tattoo. This spell was so much more complicated than she’d expected.

  There was more than Binding Ink within the tattoo’s energy. Devi pursed her lips at her drawing, then grabbed a new pencil from the crowded cup on her right and scratched the dark graphite across the ruined sketch in frustration. The crystal was too small. She had trouble following each line past every vertex and through each knot without getting lost in the magnitude.

  “I’m glad we found something to stump you.” Leona’s words drifted into the warehouse before her body. The High Priestess looked around as if not sure how she ended up there. Devi was not fooled for a second. She schooled her face into a calm smile.

  “Mother.”

  Leona’s full lips curved up, her fingertips caressed the grain of the table.

  “All joking aside, do you think you can do this?” Leona flicked her eyes toward the barrels lined against the wall. Devi flipped a few pages backward in her notebook to the section focused on waste oil, though the project had lost its interest for her with a chance to study Ink.

  “In theory, yes. It’s separating molecules. The challenge is, they were burned, so returning them to their previous form will not work. I need an idea of what they’re likely to turn into, and of what I must manipulate along the way to make sure they won’t snap back into their current configuration.”

  “I’m not sure about the possibility of success here. You are not changing glass to sand.”

  Devi curled a lip with her mother’s dry tone. “I just said as much.”

  Leona breathed in with careful consideration. Her shoulders shrugged in a graceful curve and she drifted around the table to stand across from Devi.

  “Complexity has always been your specialty, I suppose.”

  “I like puzzles.”

  Leona chuckled at the understatement.

  “Well, if anyone can do it, it is you. It’s a shame your unique vision isn’t something you can teach.”

  It wasn’t that Devi’s methods weren’t teachable, but that the other mages were not capable. Ask a dog to view an entire rainbow of colors, or humans to see all the angles a fly experiences and it cannot be done. The other Witches saw flows of energy, rivers and pools, blocks that shifted and stretched. Devi saw strings, the way the energies were tied together to create unique patterns at the caster’s command. She could trace them, recreate them, or unravel them by pulling at just the right thread. She had the ability to undo something in a moment, where another Witch might take minutes or hours.

  Over time, her success had convinced the cov
en she could do what she said despite not being able to share it. They had given her intricate spells at an age where other Witches and Wizards were just learning to Work fire. She had charted her own path, chose her own experiments, such as with this project to turn the burnt, dirty oil into something clean and useful.

  Yet, with her morning visitor, that task had been brushed aside by magic far more complicated and interesting. Devi rolled the tubular quartz in her palm, then held it to the light in a casual motion, as if her next question wasn’t important.

  “Can I borrow the scrying stone?”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To study the intricate components of a spell.”

  “Are you that close to figuring out this mess?”

  Devi dropped the small crystal into her hand. Let her mom think they were still talking about oil. If she knew about the Ink, she might do something horrible, like order Devi to stop studying Fae magic under the belief it was too dangerous for a Witch. “I won’t know until I try a few things.”

  “What will that do to my stone? Will I get it back?”

  “Of course you’ll get it back.”

  “Working as it has been?”

  “In theory.” Devi’s smile curved deeper and she widened her eyes as if she could project innocence.

  Leona shook her head, not fooled. “Your theories. I grant you your successes, my daughter, but I cannot forget the failures. The scrying stone is important. I need it as is. However, that is not all. You plan to experiment with these spells and I find myself very concerned. You are working with such volatile components.”

  “Most of the energy has been removed,” she countered with a dismissive wave.

  Her mother frowned and continued to be unconvinced. Devi considered sharing the truth of why she wanted the crystal ball. She could expand the spell held in her hand within the crystalline structure for more space to dig in and find the weave and weft of Ember’s complicated tattoo.

  Her hesitation rose from the fact that Witches shouldn’t study Fae magic, the threat of mixing powers apparently dangerous. But Devi was sure those rules didn’t apply to her. Another point of worry was that even though Fae magic had created the Ink, the Binding used Witch power to help shape the tattoo, not by blending as Leona would worry about, but in collaboration.

  To compound the reasons, as Priestess, Leona’s involvement with the Trimark was likely. Though she gave her daughter a lot of leeway, Devi wasn’t certain how her mother would like having her daughter examine one of her secret projects.

  Even if Leona hadn’t helped make the Trimark, this magic was used on Ember. That fact more than any other might result in many of Devi’s own freedoms trimmed. Acting as High Priestess, Leona could take greater interest in her activities to ensure safety of the coven and distance from the Child.

  With twenty years of secrets built up, Devi was not prepared to make such a challenge.

  “Is there a reason you came to visit me, then?”

  Leona flipped through pages of a text without marking Devi’s place. “Do you know why the Trimarked brought a human here?”

  “I didn’t meet a human.”

  “No. I did, while you met with her.”

  “It did not come up in our conversation.” Devi rescued her book, placed a flower petal where she needed it.

  Leona hummed. “He was looking for someone, thought I would scry for him with the very stone you’re requesting to borrow.”

  Devi’s dark red brow rose in response. “I assume he got the same answer I did.”

  “Of course not.” Leona’s smile indicated he had not gotten his way, either. “Granted, I never answered. Instead, we took a walk through the greenhouse and mixed a basic friendship charm.”

  “That is not like you.” In fact, her mother was very adamant magic should not be Worked on humans. The only spells she wanted humans to see were the kind that kept the coven useful, such as earth and water magic for growing things. By showing the humans the Witches’ ability to care for household yards, they were more likely to barter for the fruits and vegetables grown along the banks of the river.

  “I’m not inclined to cast spells for all humans as our ancestors had, no. I’m in no hurry to start another round of Witch hunts, especially when we have nowhere to run. He only got my consideration because he came with the Child.”

  Leona’s lips thinned. She jerked away from the table, movements stiff and sharp. “Well, it can’t be helped. At least it was a simple charm and a show for just one boy. What is of interest, why did the Trimarked need you? Something that led you to request the scrying stone right after her human friend asked about it seems a bit more than coincidence.”

  “Ember doesn’t care about the oil,” Devi deflected.

  “No, but you turned three or four pages back from where you were when I arrived. It makes me think you may have multiple projects.”

  High Priestess for a reason, Leona’s flighty persona often misled people into thinking she was simple. Even though she might not understand what Devi wrote into her books, she clearly paid attention to other details.

  Before Devi could devise another misdirect, a small runner around eight years old burst into the warehouse, the lines on his face smoothing with the sight of the High Priestess.

  “Nicu Coccia is requesting an escort while he inspects the barrier.”

  “Interesting and unexpected.” Leona hummed, her posture aligned. “What is his location now?”

  “He’s waiting at the human corner.”

  “I wonder if he’ll be forthcoming in why he really wants to enter our territory, or if he’ll be as irritating as usual,” Leona mused. “I need to send someone who can deal with their evasions.”

  Devi stared at the quartz in her hand, peered deep at the perplexing ties inside. She didn’t have a bigger crystal, but if she had something similar to compare the patterns to, something simpler, she might be able to sort it out. The idea grew, urged her to stand and search her table for another palm-length stone.

  “I’ll go,” she offered as soon as she had hands on the quartz, this one octagonal rather than tubular, but the effect within would be the same.

  “To babysit a Fae?” Leona asked.

  And to get away from her mom’s prying eyes.

  “Yes. I need a break. Might as well have fun irritating Nicu.”

  Devi broke into the sunshine. She cut across the Circle with powerful legs used to chewing up distance and dodged whatever she found in her path, much to the startled cries of a few coven members. Her heartbeat quickened, her face flushed, and she worked to calm herself down.

  It wouldn’t do any good to let Nicu see her excitement, not when she intended to leverage what she needed to learn about Ember’s Binding Ink to get something else she’d always wanted — a chance to study the Living Ink, too.

  13

  Nicu

  Nicu checked the barrier along Fae lands, first. The energy within Trifecta shifted with each territory. The power of his people lined up as if drawn by magnetic forces, curved and straightened with each form of Nature, or as the Fae molded and structured it.

  From there, he moved to the human neighborhood. The power here dug deep into every aspect of the landscape as if in hiding, so it was difficult to grasp.

  Witch land had energy that swirled and bent as fickle as the breeze, and eager to be harnessed. As he neared their border, that power reached out to him in the form of a wind-arrow that struck his shoulder in warning and greeting. Had he continued or declared himself an enemy, that same air could be narrowed into a much thinner and deadlier stream. As it was, he planted his feet, stated his cause, and settled in to wait.

  The Law of Convergence ensured all races had access to the whole of Trifecta. The agreement to allow humans to wander had been an acknowledgement of this being their realm first, and just because the Fade forced new residents in did not mean they lost land rights within it. In the end, the humans chose segregation for themselves, anyway.<
br />
  Between the mages of Fae and Witch, however, this agreement was not valid. They reverted to the rules of true realm travel. No entry without invitation. No ambassadors had free passage. Visitors always under guard, the reason Nicu waited for an escort. With her arrival, the threatening magic around him eased, but the tension in Nicu’s shoulders did not.

  “Devi.” The word was not a greeting.

  “I came to see for myself. What have you done, Nicu Coccia, for your council of Elders to give you such a pointless task?”

  “Perhaps you don’t understand the importance.”

  Devi’s eyes flashed, but her lips curled.

  “Is this about the Ternate? Are you hoping for chaos to knock down the wall?” she asked.

  “May I proceed?”

  Devi looked between him, the patrol Witches, and the invisible barricade. “Well, come along then. I don’t have all day.”

  Nicu broke the boundary with his foot, now on Witch land, surrounded by Witch magic. He kept his fingertips against the solid surface of the Veil’s bubble, tested the bond and flow of power in search for chinks or pockets. He never used, never manipulated, simply read.

  Devi snorted. “Fae, treating magic like a cookbook you never intend to use.”

  “Witches, treating magic as if it were a plaything.”

  “An element,” she challenged.

  “Forgetting consequences.”

  “You force others to pay the price when you need an excuse to bend it to your will.”

  “Old covenants best left in the past.”

  The Fae had once encouraged humans, had since learned even with someone else paying, the use of High Magic proved too costly. Witches were not able to grasp time or space manipulation, did not understand the consequences of the power commanded by Fate. Gifted as Devi appeared to be, those magics would be beyond her, so this pointless conversation was intended as a deflection. Nicu stiffened his guard.

  They came across a stretch of jutted cliff face and the elevation broke Nicu’s contact. He studied the craggy surface for a minute, then reached.