Forgotten Destiny 4

by Odette C. Bell

  We walked over to a table that was already set for four. Considering it looked as if this dining hall had been pre-booked, I imagined it meant that somebody had lost their table to accommodate Max’s last-minute change of plans.

  The socialite waited behind her chair for someone to pull it out, and when Max didn’t, the maître d’ rushed in.

  Josh just sat.

  And Max? Pulled out a chair for me.

  I sat quickly, trying not to blush at all the attention that move was getting me.

  I was here – not to eat an extremely expensive meal and be stared at by Madison City’s glitterati – but to frigging find Olivia.

  Josh obviously remembered that, because rather than grab up his napkin, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at me pointedly. “Beth?” he mouthed.

  Though I was admittedly flustered from all the attention, I knew it was time to focus.

  “Who is she, anyway?” the socialite tried again. “Why has this—”

  “Meeting,” Max pointed out first, “our meeting,” he continued, “has been altered slightly. These two are currently,” Max dodged around saying we were in his employ as he took a hard swallow, “doing me a favor. And it is only fair that I do them one too.”

  “You know everyone’s staring at her because she violates the dress code,” the socialite tried once more.

  “I would say a fair number of them know who she is, and that is why they’re paying her so much attention. Now, if you could just keep your voice down for a few seconds, Beth here is trying to concentrate.”

  It was true, and it was exceedingly hard to concentrate with all this nattering going on in my ears.

  One thing was for sure – Olivia wasn’t in this room. Either the maître d’ had gotten lucky before, or he’d actually done his job when we’d asked him to check to see if she was here.

  Or maybe she’d been here earlier, and he’d forgotten.

  I frowned as I realized my finding magic was becoming increasingly confused. I had that same impression I got so often that told me I was going about this situation the wrong way. I wouldn’t be able to find Olivia until I found the truth behind this case.

  Though Max was right there and I could just up and ask him why Olivia now trusted Internal Affairs – and why she’d run – now was really not the time. Plus, if Max had had any intention of telling me, he would’ve done it back in his office or out in the courtyard.

  So I was on my own.

  I needed a freaking clue, and I needed to find it now. Josh would not let me hear the end of this if it turned out I’d come here in vain.

  I suddenly stood up as frustration welled in me.

  Max looked at me sharply. “What is it?” he asked breathlessly, thinking that my sudden move had been because I’d found something.

  “I’m just going to the bathroom,” I said.

  Josh rolled his eyes and looked disappointed. He also shifted forward, grabbed his menu, and sighed, muttering under his breath, “I guess we’ll be here for a while.”

  Though that kind of made it sound as if he expected me to spend a year in the bathroom, he’d obviously picked up on the fact I was having trouble figuring out how to find the next clue.

  I walked off, and as soon as I was several steps away from the table, the socialite leaned in and continued to complain.

  Walking toward the table with Max by my side was completely different from walking away on my own. You know that 40 percent of people who’d appeared to recognize me from before? Yeah, they now stared at me unabashedly. I felt exactly like a lamb who’d wandered into a pack of wolves.

  I made it out into the corridor, and the maître d’ shot me a nasty look. He didn’t, however, take the opportunity now that I was on my own to kick me out on my ass.

  I found the bathrooms, walked in, and hesitated.

  I’d found the bathrooms.

  They weren’t in an easy to get to place, either. I hadn’t followed any of the other patrons – I’d just walked a little down two sets of corridors, found the right door, and entered.

  “Something’s going on here,” I muttered under my breath. I didn’t have to – the stalls were empty.

  I started to walk down them, one by one, a frown marking my lips even deeper.

  I stopped at the second last stall, a surge of something pushing through my heart.

  I walked in, closed the door, and paled. Someone had written something on the back of the stall door. And no, this was very much not the kind of public bathroom where people would graffiti the walls to wile away the minutes while they were on the loo.

  I shifted forward, placed a hand on the polished door, and ignored the faint charge of magic that spread across my skin. It was a reaction to the sudden surge in finding magic that pushed through me.

  There were two letters etched into the door, and they’d been crossed out with an X. I shifted forward, and even though the letters were small and someone had obviously tried to buff them back in an attempt to clean them, I could just make out what the letters were.

  A P and an M.

  “I found something. Goddammit, I found something,” I said excitedly.

  If Josh were here – not that he would have any business in the ladies lavatories – but if he were here, he would point out that I had nothing. I had some graffiti on an expensive bathroom door. That was it. There was nothing whatsoever to connect it back to Olivia.

  But Josh didn’t have finding magic. I did. And it was currently going crazy. And the crazier it went, the more those charges of blue magic crackled over my nails and down my hand.

  I had to jerk it back and shake it to chase away the last few charges of heat.

  I shoved a hand into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and took a picture of the marks.

  Then I shook my hand again. It was still tingling.

  I frowned as I looked down at it. Charges of blue sparks were dancing this way and that over the tips of my fingers.

  I brought my hand up and stared at it, a growing flicker of alarm pushing through me. Was I losing hold of my magic? Josh had been teaching me nonstop for the past two weeks, and though I was still pretty weak, the first lesson he’d forced me to learn was how to control my magic. And until now, I hadn’t had a problem.

  “This isn’t right,” I muttered. “It’s almost… as if something’s reacting to my magic.”

  Sensing an opportunity, I shoved forward and let my fingers drift across those marks on the door once more, the nails snagging against the carved lines.

  Again more magic tickled across my fingers.

  It was definitely a reaction.

  Though there was still a lot to learn about magic, especially the intricacies of being a warlock, this one was pretty basic. Someone must have cast a spell on these marks – one that could only be activated by a witch’s magic. Unconsciously, as my finder magic had surged, I must’ve accidentally transferred a little into the marks and activated their latent spell.

  The more I patted them, the more they sparked.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  There was no one to answer. Well, at the moment. It was time to find my partner.

  I turned on my foot, opened the door, and walked out of the stalls.

  That’s when I heard something strange.

  The tinkling of glass. It came from the dining hall.

  And a second later?

  Screams.

  I ran forward.

  This case, apparently, was about to catch up with me.

  And it had brought backup.

  Chapter 4

  I pounded into the atrium just as more screams split the air. I saw guests piling out of the door, and they were practically crushing each other in their haste to escape.

  “What the hell is going on?” I demanded as I shoved hard onto my toes to try to see over the frantic guests.

  Nobody answered me. Everybody spilled out onto the street.

  The more people that left, the more thei
r combined noise dissipated until finally I started to pick up angry shouts from the dining hall. One of the voices belonged to Josh.

  I shoved forward, using my small form to navigate around a portly gentleman as he ran for cover.

  I finally made it into the dining hall.

  All Hell had broken loose.

  The tables had been overturned, chairs had been shattered, fine linen table cloths were torn to shreds, and the massive chandelier was hanging loosely. The windows into the street outside were almost all broken.

  Max was pinned behind an upturned table as Josh stood in front of it, as charged as I’d ever seen him. So much magic was leaping across his skin, it looked as if he expected to be attacked by God.

  A few of the other patrons who were warlocks were hiding behind their own upturned tables, and they too were charged with magic.

  But here was the thing – I had no clue who they were fighting. There didn’t appear to be any enemies in sight.

  Josh was half turned from me, and in the chaos, he hadn’t clapped eyes on me yet.

  So there was no chance he could warn me.

  I felt something rush beside me, and there was an unmistakable sizzle of heat.

  My gut figured it out before my brain could, and I flattened myself to the side as I called on my weak warlock powers. It was just enough to ensure my head wasn’t chopped off as a slice of heat sailed into the wall beside me.

  I didn’t even bother to scream as plaster splattered everywhere and covered me as if I’d been caught in a hail storm.

  An elemental.

  Goddammit – we were fighting another elemental. And judging by the heat still sizzling around me, it was the same breed of elemental Josh and I had fought only last night.

  There was only one thing we could do. Fight fire with water.

  I felt something shift toward me, and I used my finding magic to keep a lock on the heat elemental, even if my gaze couldn’t keep up.

  I shoved to the side, rolled, and found an unopened bottle of sparkling water. I threw it behind me in one of the quickest moves I’d ever made. At the same time, I allowed a bolt of magic to spread from my fingers and slam into the glass, causing it to shatter. Water arced out around me, saving me just as I felt heat slice toward my face.

  “Beth!” Josh bellowed, finally seeing me through the chaos. “Get out of here!”

  Even if I’d been the kind to leave my partner alone and run to safety, I didn’t have that option, anyway.

  I felt the heat elemental push in from my side.

  I needed to end this – preferably before this guy could turn me into a flambé. This was an expensive restaurant, but I really doubted glazed witch was on the menu.

  I shoved forward and rolled to the side just as I felt the heat elemental go in for another attack.

  I needed water. And lots of it. And before I could even push my finding magic into seeking it out for me, I used my own intelligence, instead.

  The fire suppression sprinklers. The amount of water they would pump out would be more than enough to help extinguish this guy.

  I just had to get to them. Though technically this elemental was fighting with heat, it was directed at attacking people, and nothing had caught fire yet. Which meant I didn’t have any handy burning tables to waft near the ceiling. What I did have was my own magic.

  “Beth, get out of here,” Josh tried again.

  Just before he could spring toward me and leave his position of protecting Max, Josh had to double back as the heat elemental turned on him.

  It gave me all the distraction I needed.

  I rolled to the side, grabbed up a full bottle of wine that hadn’t been broken yet, covered it in a burst of magic, and threw it at the ceiling.

  Even though I couldn’t produce that much magic yet, Josh had already taught me one extremely important lesson – the ability to keep hold of your magic and to alter it once it had pushed from your body. It would allow somebody to mentally control the force of their spell. Which is precisely what I required now. My pitch was strong, and it sent the wine bottle sailing toward the ceiling. Just before it reached the top of its arc, I concentrated and controlled my magic, allowing it to explode over the bottle.

  It was a gamble – a gamble that I had enough magic and enough strength to ensure the bottle exploded into flames close enough to the sprinklers.

  And the gamble didn’t pay off.

  My magic didn’t break through the glass.

  Just before I could give in to heart-pounding disappointment, Josh obviously figured out what I was trying to do. He jerked his hand forward and sent a blast of seriously powerful force slamming into the bottle. It was more than enough to see it explode. And that produced more than enough heat to finally set the sprinklers off.

  “Atta girl,” Josh bellowed proudly.

  The sprinklers started to hail down, and as their water covered the room, there was that specific, very welcome sound of sizzling once more.

  The outline of the elemental appeared.

  Josh ran forward to presumably capture the guy. But then I felt something. This unmistakable sensation that told me I’d missed something.

  It told me my opportunity to win this was rapidly running out.

  Maybe Max sensed something too, because he suddenly darted his head out from behind cover. “No – something’s wrong,” he managed.

  I threw myself at Josh. I reached him just in time, wrapping my arms around his middle and wrenching him off his feet just as the very floor beneath him cracked open and a frigging hand punch from it. If I hadn’t acted in time, it would’ve wrapped around Josh’s ankle.

  “What the hell?” I screamed as I landed on top of Josh.

  Josh’s eyes bulged wide. “Another elemental – dirt. Move,” he spat. It was his turn to wrap his arms around me, and he rolled over me, protecting me with his back as he charged with magic. Dirt erupted from the hole in the floor, pushing up and spreading toward us. It was like a frigging mudslide, and as it pounded into Josh’s back, despite his magical protections, it forced him hard against me until I felt as if I would be crushed.

  Josh struggled to breathe, planted his hands either side of my shoulders, and fought to stop from crushing me.

  My life flashed before my eyes. But I wasn’t about to let this elemental kill me.

  I might not have that much magic, but it was time to use it. I slammed my hands either side of Josh’s head and started to push my magic into him. That was another of the more complicated lessons he’d taught me. It was one they’d been big on in the Army, apparently. General warlocks could help feed each other magic, ensuring their bodies never ran out of juice.

  I didn’t have that much to give, but what I gave, Josh used.

  Finally it allowed him to push up, more gold and green force spilling over his form as he grunted and forced his body backward against the dirt.

  More and more dirt sprang from that hole in the ground and pushed against Josh, but it didn’t matter anymore.

  Josh thrust forward, a scream echoing from his lips as he pivoted on his foot, rounded his shoulder, and plowed into the dirt.

  Though I could have easily remained on the ground as I tried to catch my breath, that was not where the opportunity lay. The opportunity lay in ending this fight as quickly as we damn well could.

  Though it was pretty obvious that you fought fire with water, this was the first time I’d encountered a dirt elemental.

  Maybe Max could read my mind – or maybe, just like me, he was relying on his opportunity magic, because he suddenly bellowed, “wind. You need wind to blow the dirt away from the elemental’s true form. Use the ceiling fan,” he screamed, desperate to help me.

  Though this place was admittedly posh, Madison City had stinking hot summers. So there were three ceiling fans dotted around the room. They were discrete and elegant, but thankfully, they were also large.

  I didn’t need to be told twice. I pushed toward the closest ceiling fan just as
Josh’s shoes started to skid on the ground. Though he was still utterly charged with magic, it was starting to ebb as he was pushed back on his feet. Though Josh was meant to be one of the strongest damn warlocks in town, apparently that didn’t matter right now. This elemental was almost unstoppable.

  At least Josh was distracting him, though.

  Now I just had to find some way to pump my magic into those ceiling fans, turn them on, and get them to create one hell of a wind.

  Max suddenly pushed out of cover. I felt terrified as he did. A part of me needed to protect Max, and at the sight of him rushing toward me, my fear almost got the better of me.

  But Max didn’t rush over, haul me out of the way, and selflessly use his body to protect me. Instead he skidded to the side, reached the wall, and slammed a hand over a set of controls.

  The ceiling fans started to kick in. Though Max pushed them to their maximum setting, and though they created a fair breeze, it wasn’t enough.

  Josh was still struggling and only barely managing to keep the dirt elemental’s magic under control.

  “Send a bolt of magic into the fan – control it,” Josh somehow managed between grunts. “You can do it, Beth. It’s just like the control techniques I taught you last week. Keep hold of the magic and use it to force the fans to spin faster.”

  I did as I was told. I curled my hands into fists, sent magic springing to my fingers, then jerked my arms up, sending a bolt of force right up into the fan above me.

  That would be when the dirt elemental scrounged enough magic from his fight with Josh to send a slice of dirt right at me.

  Max acted. Despite the fact he was no warlock, he used seemingly impossible speed to reach me. He plowed into my back and knocked me onto the floor. He wrapped his arms around me and protected me as the dirt pounded against him. “Concentrate,” he spat. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Again fear utterly twisted through my heart at the prospect that Max was in danger. Unlike Josh, who could use his magic to protect his body, Max was simple flesh and blood.

  Before I could freak out, I reminded myself that the only way to end this was to give Josh the upper hand. So I concentrated, gritting my teeth, ignoring the dirt that covered the floor and filled my nostrils and mouth. I concentrated on my magic, trying to make it spin faster and faster and faster.