Magic Thief (The New York Shade Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  He raised a brow, looking down at my hands again. “I thought you were a Level Two.”

  “Nobody, Lucas.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said with a nod, putting his sword away behind his back. “We won’t say a word about this to anyone. We gave you our word.”

  I looked at the Kyle and Merlin behind him. They looked even worse than Lucas, but they nodded.

  “Until next time, Sin,” Lucas said, and he and his friends turned toward Mane Street.

  “He’s full of shit,” Jamie said as we watched them go. There, next to the first building on the street, I could barely make out a silhouette. Sonny.

  “No, he knows I’ll know if word gets out. He won’t say anything.” And if he did, I’d be long gone from here.

  “Are you sure you want that power gone from you, Sin?” Malin asked, pulling my hand up so she could analyze my glowing skin. I didn’t look away from Sonny as he hurried toward us.

  “Yes. Now, preferably.” The magic of that amulet had nearly torn me apart just minutes ago. I wanted nothing to do with it.

  Finally, I saw Sonny’s face. He ran to me and grabbed me in his arms.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I assured him, patting his back. “You?”

  He nodded. “Not a scratch on me. He hid me.” He pointed at Kit on my shoulder, looking like the little hellbeast he was. A thin scream-like sound left his tiny mouth. He was proud of himself, and I was proud of him, too.

  “Sin, Mal might be onto something here. I’ve never seen anything like what you did. Your magic spread to the edges of the Square,” Jamie said. “I think you might want to hold onto it for a little longer.”

  But I shook my head. “I want it out of me. It’s too much. It will kill me if I keep it.” Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to control it, and it would take over my essence, suffocating me from the inside. I wasn’t going to risk it.

  “Well, we can’t do it here. It was impossible to hold the ward. That spell was too strong. It broke it,” Malin said, waving her hands at the sky. The ward was gone. “Unless you want the entire Shade to feel that magic, we’re going to have to get to my apartment for the ritual.”

  A sigh left my lips. “Thanks, guys. I wish you’d just stayed back the way we planned, but I’m glad you decided to join the fight.” If they hadn’t, I was pretty sure I’d be dead now at the hands of Amina. I turned my head toward Kit and kissed him on his round, furry head. He held onto my neck tightly. “Thanks, little guy.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Jamie said with a grin. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

  I let go of Sonny and hugged them both. “Seriously. Thank you,” I whispered in their ears.

  “You’re very welcome,” Malin said as we leaned away from one another. “I think I needed this. My magic was getting a little rusty.”

  We turned toward Mane Street. I put my arm around Sonny’s shoulders and pulled him to me. From now on, I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight.

  “Mine, too. Working people at the bar has its moments, but it gets old,” Jamie said.

  “You should have never left Nova Terra,” I reminded her with a grin. Her parents had paid for the program, and she ended up dropping out because she claimed it was full of stuck up kids with massive daddy issues.

  “Eh, whatever. Maybe I’ll go back one day.” She shrugged.

  “You know what we need? We need a drink,” Malin said. “And some cookies.”

  “Yes, please.” My mouth watered at the thought of food. After all the energy I’d spent, I was in need of some pampering. Unfortunately, it would have to wait. The night wasn’t over yet. There were still things I needed to do.

  “I’ll make us the best Martinis you’ve ever tasted in your lives,” Jamie said.

  We left Virgin Square, and the green lights of the glamoured crystals gave me a sense of normalcy again. I’d felt so detached from the rest of the world in that Square.

  “And I know just the potion to mix in it,” Malin said with a laugh. “I think I wanna get drunk tonight, guys.”

  “Tonight of all nights,” Jamie said, shaking her head. We turned the corner and were already on Malin’s street. The Shade was really a marvelous creature. I was surrounded by my family and my friends, and for a moment, everything felt right with the world again.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The elevator was a bit suffocating. I was sweating, or maybe it was just the knowledge that I was about see Damian that had me panting for air.

  “Who are we going to see again?” Sonny asked.

  I’d thought about leaving him back at Malin’s apartment, but I couldn’t. After I did the ritual that transferred the magic back into the stupid amulet, I’d been too weak to move. If it weren’t for Malin’s healing potion that had boosted my energy, I wouldn’t have been able to even remain awake.

  “You’ll see,” I whispered because I didn’t know how to tell him. I pushed Kit’s tail away from my neck. It was too hot in here.

  I closed my eyes to try and calm my racing heart. It was done. It was over. I’d done what I had to do, but it hadn’t been easy. The ritual Malin had found in her mother’s grimoires involved necromantic magic. It was a forbidden ritual able to separate any magic from its host and relocate it, and Malin couldn’t do it. She was Nulled and necromantic magic was out of her reach. So I’d had to use my Talent on her—something I thought I’d never do. She knew about it. She gave me her permission. But it still felt like I’d stolen from her, and the feeling of guilt didn’t go away no matter how many times I reminded myself that it was over. I’d returned the magic to the amulet with Malin’s instructions. Even though I didn’t feel like me a hundred percent still, it would come. I was going to need some time to heal, both externally and internally.

  The wounds from the fight were starting to throb, but I was positive I could make it. Just a little longer. I needed to do this.

  The doors of the elevator slid open and I looked into the penthouse. To the left was the hallway that led to the rooms, and next to its wall was the kitchen. To the right was the living room, surrounded by the floor to ceiling windows, and in there were the five people I was hoping to see.

  And they were all bleeding.

  My eyes found Damian’s face right away. He had his head turned to me, like he hadn’t heard the car coming up until the doors opened. For a second, I wondered if he’d attack me.

  Taking in a deep breath, I stepped into the penthouse. The five of them looked at me like they weren’t sure if I was real. And yes, they were all bleeding, but they were all standing, too. I wanted to ask them what the hell happened, if they were okay, but words failed me. I couldn’t ask because it wasn’t any of my damn business.

  Damian wore a pair of jeans and a white tank top, torn in several places, caked with dry blood. My heart skipped a beat as I searched his face. Was he hurt? He seemed okay. His face was clean. Fuck, he looked so good, even covered in blood.

  And he was looking at me like I had two heads on my shoulders.

  Right.

  “Don’t let the doors close,” I whispered to Sonny. With Kit on my shoulder and the black box in my hand, I strode to Damian. It was now or never.

  Slowly, he turned to face me and the rest of his team moved uncomfortably, as if they expected me to attack them. I made it to the living room and in front of Damian in a heartbeat. It had only been a day since I last saw him, but I already missed him—the asshole. Every line of his face was perfect, and my brain committed it to memory, as if it believed that this was the last time I would see him.

  I raised my shaking hand and pushed the box in his chest. His hand flew up and grabbed it. I jerked mine away from his like he was on fire.

  “Here’s your stupid amulet,” I said, my voice coming off angrier than I intended. It was my fault that we were in this situation. I understood that.

  But…how could he throw me out like that? Wasn’t he at least a bit curious about what
I had to say? How could he not give me a chance to explain myself?

  Because he didn’t care. It sucked, but it was the truth, and I had to get over it.

  I watched him open the box and take out the amulet hanging on the leather cord, the blue crystal glowing blue once again.

  “You’ll find the ritual to transfer its magic in there,” I said and stepped back.

  An overwhelming urge to tell him that I was sorry came over me suddenly. I bit my tongue because I didn’t know how to say it, not with everybody else watching us like that. He just stared at me, completely confused.

  “The next time you ask someone to trust you, you better make sure you trust them first,” I said and started walking backward to the elevator. There was nothing here for me anymore. “And by the way, I met your ex. Charming woman. Guess you do live up to your reputation for driving women crazy.”

  Amina’s half torn face filled my vision for a second, but I ignored it. Through the corner of my eye, I saw Moira, standing behind Damian, still as a statue, and anger gathered in me again. “And you!” I pointed my finger at her face, and Kit squeaked, too, suddenly angry as he moved from one shoulder to the other. “The next time you want to sneak up behind me and hit me in the head, I’m going to hurt you. Bad.”

  I hadn’t even seen her coming behind me the night before, only felt the pain before unconsciousness took me. I knew it was her. She had never liked me, since the very beginning. She was very protective of Damian. And worse of all, she’d been right to warn him against me.

  But that didn’t mean it was okay for her to attack me behind my back when I wasn’t looking.

  Neither of them said anything, just continued to stare at me.

  I turned around, grabbed Sonny by the arm, and pulled him in the car. Done.

  The doors took forever to close, and no matter how much I wanted to look away from Damian, I couldn’t. My body had a nasty habit of disobeying me whenever we were in the same room. He stared at me, a look of complete shock on his face, and he refused to move, refused to say anything. He refused to stop me from leaving.

  Was that what I had hoped would happen?

  Eventually, the elevator closed and took us down. I should have felt better, lighter, but instead, I felt worse. I felt…empty.

  “That was a vampire,” Sonny whispered when we walked out of the building. “Was that…was that Typhon Reed?”

  “Yep.” The night air was colder than I expected, and my wounds were already stinging. I needed to shower and dress the deepest cuts as soon as we got to our apartment.

  “Holy shit, so you really know him?”

  I put my arm around his shoulders as we walked down the street. Our apartment was just a few blocks away. “Just a little, but it’s a long story. Let’s get back to the apartment and pack some things. We need to leave by morning.” My own words sounded strange to me, and I had yet to understand their meaning completely. I had yet to understand that Manhattan was no longer our home.

  “I’m so sorry, Sin. I messed up bad,” Sonny said, holding my hand tightly.

  “Don’t be sorry. You’re okay. I’m okay. We’ve got everything we need right here. We’ll be fine, Sonny. I promise you, we’ll be fine,” I said to my baby brother.

  Who knows? Maybe eventually, I’d believe it, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Damian Reed

  I sat on the sofa, the amulet in my hand. I could see the folded piece of paper in the metal box, too. The ritual to transfer the magic. I pulled out the paper, looked at the drawing for the ritual, and read the first paragraph. Necromantic magic.

  “What the hell was that?” Zane asked from behind me.

  “An apology,” I said as a strange smile took over my face. The little thief brought me the amulet to apologize.

  But the amulet didn’t exactly look the same. I could feel it—it wasn’t the way it used to be when I first took it from the wizard’s neck. Its power had overwhelmed me then. Now, it didn’t feel so great. Was it possible that Sinea hadn’t returned all of it?

  “How did she get her hands on that thing?” Moira whispered, coming closer to see the glowing crystal better.

  “No idea.” She’d been in a fight—I could tell from the smell alone. I’d heard the car coming up, but I thought it was the food Moira had ordered just a few minutes ago for her and Emanuel. But as soon as the doors opened, I smelled her. I smelled every drop of blood in her body, inside and out, saw the bruises around her neck and face, and the cuts on her arms. I also heard her heart, the way it picked up the beating when she saw me. She was okay. Tired, but okay.

  “And who was the kid? Was that the brother?” John asked.

  “It was.” I’d recognized the boy from Sinea’s memories. She’d gotten him back.

  My smile grew bigger. I thought the night had gone well when we found the second sorcerer who’d ambushed us in the Shade, one of the three masked men. I’d taken great pleasure in killing him, and I hadn’t even tried to get him to tell me about the amulet. I’d already decided that killing the people who hurt mine was more important than cutting ties with the Guild, but now, I felt…more. The look on Sinea’s face was everything. She was so determined to sound angry, but in her eyes I saw the guilt. She’d handed me that amulet like it was nothing, like she didn’t know that it was the key to our freedom.

  And I realized there was so much she didn’t know about me. So much I didn’t know about her. I wanted to change that.

  “Do you think she really met Amina?” Moira asked.

  That name. It had haunted me for such a long time that I expected to feel something at the sound of it. A chill, a shiver, a bad memory.

  Nothing. For the first time in over a century, I felt nothing. My little thief had robbed me of that memory, too.

  “Probably. She’s with the Uprising.” Yutain had told me as much. Amina was a powerful vampire. She was persistent and focused, strong, even for our kind. She was almost as strong as me, but neither of us were a match for an Alpha Prime. The fact that Sinea had met her and survived with nothing but a few scratches on her skin proved it.

  I wondered if she had killed Amina. That would certainly be an interesting turn of events.

  “So what happens now?” John asked.

  “Get Flinn to meet me in an hour at Supernatural Affairs. Tell him we have the amulet,” I said and stood up. “Looks like we’re going to be free from the Guild tonight, after all.”

  My team cheered. They looked happy. I liked seeing them happy.

  I liked seeing Sinea happy, too.

  She’d made a mistake. She thought she could get her brother back if she killed me, but she hadn’t really tried, if I was honest. Disappointment aside, she hadn’t let me drink the wine. She hadn’t attacked me once we lay in bed, and I was practically defenseless against her.

  Maybe she’d changed her mind. The amulet in my hand said so. She’d tried to apologize, and who was to say that with a little persuasion, she wouldn’t say the words out loud, surrender to me once more?

  “I’m going to take a shower, and then we can go meet Flinn,” I told the team and headed for the bathroom.

  “Hey, wait! Have a drink with us first,” Emanuel said and brought me a glass of wine. It no longer looked rotten, like it had the night before. I took the glass and clanked it to theirs.

  “To freedom!” Moira called, and we drank to that.

  To freedom and to much more exciting times ahead of us.

  Gerald Flinn was not happy that I’d made him wake up and come meet me at four in the morning. I smiled at the angry look on his face.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Flinn,” I said, just to spite him.

  “I had no choice,” he said under his breath and walked around me to sit behind his desk. I had been in his office for a few minutes now, waiting for him to arrive, looking at the white walls, the single window on the right barred from the outside, the lifeless textbooks he kept in a small shelf next to his desk. The only
thing that gave life to the room were the golden frames and pictures of Flinn’s wife and five children. He looked like a happy man in them. Maybe he was a happy man in general, when I wasn’t in the room.

  “Bring it to me the second you have it,” I said and reached for the metal box in the inside pocket of my jacket. “Those were your words, Mr. Flinn. I’m merely obeying you,” I teased. “For the last time.”

  His eyes widened as he looked at the box on the desk and slowly reached out for it. He wore a shirt today, a dark green one, and grey sweatpants. It was the first time I was seeing him out of a suit, and it made him look a bit younger.

  “How did you get this? I thought you said you no longer had a location the last time we spoke,” he said and opened the box. The glow of the amulet cast a blue hue on his face. His heartbeat rose instantly.

  “Things change all the time in my line of work,” I said, as the image of Sinea came before me. Here’s your stupid amulet, she’d said. I couldn’t keep the smile from my face, and it unnerved Flinn. He closed the box again.

  “And this.” I handed him the piece of paper Sinea had given me. In it was a detailed necromantic ritual that would enable the Guild to transfer the amulet’s magic to safety. They had plenty of darkling at their call—just like me. The Guild wouldn’t have been able to survive if it wasn’t for the hidden laws that allowed them to make deals with criminals in exchange for their freedom.

  His eyes read the handwritten letter for a few seconds, and he nodded, folding the piece of paper again.

  “You’ve done well, Mr. Reed. Like always.” His tone of voice amused me. He thought I cared about his praise.

  “I did what I said I would do, and now it’s time for you to do your part.” He had my contract, and once he signed it, I, Zane, John, and Emanuel would be free men.

  Flinn wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. It smelled foul, acidic, but when you’ve lived as long as I have, scents didn’t overwhelm you—unless you let them. It helped that I didn’t need air. I just didn’t breathe in at all.