“Use a cleansing spell immediately afterwards,” Vance said, indicating the bloodstained ground. “The other guests are already talking. The attacker picked a public location for a reason.”
“So you don’t think the shifter was acting alone either?” I asked.
“I think the evidence speaks for itself,” he said, an irritable undertone to his voice. “As for tracking spells, send word to me if you find out anything new. I’m heading to the guild.”
“Can you—” I broke off, resisting the impulse to shrink away from the wrathful look in his light grey eyes. “Can you check if he was carrying any witch spells?”
“Everything he carries will be confiscated and destroyed,” he said, as though I was an idiot for asking. Mages. You wouldn’t think a lone shifter would have the nerve to attack one of them, let alone several.
“Yeah, we know,” Ivy put in. “But Jas is right—there’s no way a council ambassador would turn on the mages on a whim. Either someone put him up to it, or he wasn’t in his right mind.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said. “I’m intending to find out if the two shifters knew one another. Will you be coming to the guild, Ivy? I’d prefer it if you waited before going hunting for hellhounds again.”
Ah. He probably wasn’t happy that Ivy had wandered into our mission last night.
“More hellhounds?” I asked.
She raised her sword. “I was going to snoop around the spirit line, but I should stick around here as long as there are still mages in the building. Jas, you said you set the wards?”
Ah, shit. Vance looked in my direction, and I gave an entirely unconvincing shrug. “I did, but it was a while ago. Besides, it sounds like the shifter waited for the mages to leave the building before pouncing.”
Now I thought about it, that was unusual. A shifter on a rampage had a one-track mind and would run headlong into a warded gate if their enemy was on the other side.
Vance’s phone appeared in his hand. “I’m off. Ivy, are you coming?”
“You think they’d let me sit in on the questioning?” Ivy made a sceptical noise. “Nah, I’m best staying here and making sure nobody else is planning an ambush.”
“Call me if you find anything,” Vance said, and disappeared in a whirl of air.
The hotel doors opened and Isabel came out, her hands full of tracking spells. “Hey, Jas. Ivy, the mages didn’t let you into the questioning?”
“I don’t need to see it,” Ivy said. “They won’t get anything more than a confession out of him before they kill him.”
I frowned. “Did you see him after the attack?”
“I saw him shift back into a human when they caught him,” Ivy said. “He didn’t even struggle. It’s like he wanted them to catch him.”
“Or someone else wanted it.” I felt I had to come here, the last shifter had said. “He was a council ambassador? What exactly does that mean?”
“He carried messages between the mages and the shifter community.” Isabel adjusted her spells on her wrists and selected one. “You know the shifters, you can rarely get them to commit to sitting in meetings, so they use intermediaries.”
“Or they did,” Ivy said, crouching on the bloody pavement. “Try here, Isabel. I think this is the shifter’s blood.”
“If he’s dead, the tracker won’t work,” I reminded her. Tracking spells didn’t work effectively on the dead most of the time. “But I could summon his ghost if they did kill him.”
“Why would you want to?” Ivy’s brow puckered.
Ah. I hadn’t told anyone else about the shifter ghost’s appearance the other night. Partly because it felt like I’d imagined it, and partly because of the lingering guilt that I hadn’t reported it to the guild. But Lady Montgomery would have been irked to say the least if I’d led her on a wild shifter-ghost chase that turned out to be an alcohol-induced hallucination. Wouldn’t be the first time a drunken necromancer had raised a false alarm, but still.
“Just a thought.” I joined Isabel as she crouched on the pavement, activating a tracking spell.
Green light flashed. The hotel doors reappeared in black and white, and I jumped when a tall, rangy figure appeared right next to me. His gaze was blank, looking into the distance as though in a trance.
That’s our shifter.
The hotel doors opened, three mages walked out, and a flash of light engulfed the shifter. Claws flashed out, blood spurted, and the mages moved into a defensive formation. One of them conjured what looked like a ball of water, striking the shifter down, but he was on his feet again a second later.
Not fast enough. Lightning sizzled, knocking the shifter flat onto his back. The mages closed in, and the spell cut out, leaving me reeling on the pavement. A residual white glare made spots dance before my eyes.
Isabel swore under her breath. “The spell didn’t show where he came from.”
“Or who sent him.” I rubbed my chilled hands together. “He… he kinda looked like he was in a trance.” I hadn’t thought to look for witch spells, but surely he’d have dropped everything when he shifted anyway.
“Who knows?” Ivy threw a cleansing spell over the pavement and the blood and fur disappeared. “It’s not like it’s a big secret that the mages are staying at this hotel. They have enough enemies to survive daily assassination attempts.”
“Generally not from shifters, though, right?” I blinked repeatedly to clear the glare from my eyes. That violent flash of light I’d seen in the vision… it looked like the flash I’d seen when I’d watched the replay of the first shifter’s attack at the mages’ guild. But where had it come from?
“I can try another spell somewhere else,” Isabel said, holding up another green band.
“Worth a shot.” I brushed spell residue from my palms, which tingled lightly, reminding me of the powerful wards wrapped around the building. Wards I’d created with my Hemlock magic.
Isabel activated the tracking spell, and I leaned in, tapping into my Hemlock power. She let out a quiet noise of surprise as my hands touched the circle, causing it to vibrate with static. “Jas, what are you doing?”
“Testing a theory.”
Magic hummed in my palms, mingling with the circle’s green light. Tracking spells had limitations no matter the power of the person who made them… but maybe the Hemlocks would say otherwise.
One way to find out.
The scene expanded, filling my vision with a vivid image of the street surrounding us. The shifter appeared before me, so suddenly that my heart jumped into my throat.
Holy shit. Not only was the scene in colour, the shifter’s footsteps on the pavement echoed as though he walked right next to me. He padded forwards, his gaze fixed on the hotel. His eyes were pale grey, and his hands were clenched into fists. A faint gleam surrounded both his hands. That hadn’t been visible through the regular tracking spell.
He’s wearing witch spells. But even my Hemlock magic couldn’t pluck a witch spell from a vision and identify it.
The hotel doors opened, and a blinding white glow flashed. I swore, blinking rapidly to clear my vision, and when I next looked, the man had shifted, colliding with the mages in a blur of claws and blood.
The spell cut out and I fell backwards from the circle, my hands trembling. It worked.
Isabel and Ivy gaped at me in open astonishment.
“What did you do?” Ivy said.
“I enhanced the spell,” I said. “Sorry, Isabel, I should have warned you first.”
“Don’t apologise.” Her face lit up in fascination. “I’ve never seen a tracking spell so clear.”
“What did you see?” Ivy asked.
“He was definitely wearing spells on his wrists.” I nodded to Isabel. “But I didn’t see what type. That white flash, though… no idea what it was.” Damn. I’d hoped that if we saw it up close, we might be able to figure it out.
“Nor me,” Isabel said. “I didn’t see him actually activate the spell in the vision, did
you?”
“It happened too fast,” I admitted. “Guess even enhanced witch spells have their limits.”
“Guess so.” Ivy pursed her lips, and I saw her mind ticking with questions.
Before I landed myself in hot water, I said, “The mages must have taken his props, if there was anything left of them. Are you sure you don’t know what the flash was, Isabel?” In the time I’d known her, I’d never witnessed her encounter a spell she couldn’t identify.
“Unfortunately.” She fixed her gaze on the spot where the tracking spell had dissolved. “It flashed right before he shifted, but I’ve never seen a spell with a clear white flash before.”
“You and Ivy are Council of Twelve members, right?” I said. “The mages know you have expertise. Maybe they’ll let you help.”
“They’re a little tetchy at the moment,” Ivy said. “But I’ll talk to the mages on your behalf if you promise to tell me what in the bloody hell you with that spell, Jas.”
Oh, boy. Ivy wasn’t the rule-following type, so I was at least confident she wouldn’t turn me in to Edinburgh’s mage council, but unlike Isabel, she didn’t know about Evelyn.
Then again, Evelyn hadn’t done a thing out there. I’d enhanced the spell all on my own.
Without the ability to teleport like Vance, Isabel, Ivy and I had to walk to the mages’ guild on foot. I ended up leading the way because the others hadn’t spent long enough in the city to know all the routes.
When we came to the gates, Ivy strode ahead, for all the world like we were about to storm a fortress down. Her sword was strapped to her waist, her hair tied out of her face, and faint streaks of blood remained on her clothes, maybe from last night’s encounter with the hellhounds.
The apprentice mage guarding the gates shrank away from her blade. “State your names,” he growled.
“Jas, uh, Lyons.” Crap, I’d almost said Hemlock then. “I’m with Edinburgh’s necromancer guild.”
“Ivy Lane,” Ivy said to the mage, not bothering to sheathe her weapon. “You know, I’ve passed here a dozen times since they stuck you on duty. Asking my name every time doesn’t make you look tough, it makes you look slow.”
The straw-haired apprentice scowled. He was the same guy who’d told me to get lost when Isabel and I had tried to check out the wards after the first attack.
Isabel stepped forwards. “I’m Isabel, also from the council. Did they bring the shifter here?”
“None of your business.”
“We’re both members of the Council of Twelve,” Ivy said. “Which is more than I can say for you.”
“She isn’t,” he said, eyeing me.
“We have important information for the council,” I told him. Being snarled at by a kid barely out of his teens was the last thing I needed when the mages had potentially thrown away all the evidence. “About the shifter attack.”
“He confessed to attempted murder already,” said the mage.
“Are they going to execute him?” I asked.
“They should,” said the apprentice smugly. “Riffraff like him should never have been allowed on the council to begin with.”
“He was an ambassador,” Isabel said. “Appointed by your superiors.”
The apprentice’s face turned bright red all the way to his hairline. “He’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and he deserves it.”
“Did they confiscate anything from him?” I asked.
“I’m not in charge of the questioning, so I wouldn’t know,” he said haughtily.
“Then I’ll ask,” Ivy said. The mage moved to block her path, and her hand slipped down the hilt of her sword. “I wouldn’t. I’m one of the Council of Twelve’s founders.”
“I’m not supposed to let anyone—”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“I’ll head back with Jas,” Isabel called to Ivy, before shit hit the fan.
Ivy nodded over her shoulder. “All right, I’ll catch you up later.”
Defeated, we turned our backs on the mages’ guild and retraced our steps to the hotel.
“Sorry,” Isabel said. “That guy is a twat. He’s been giving Ivy trouble ever since we showed up.”
“I figured,” I said. “I’ve dealt with a few mage apprentices before, trust me. They’re that cocky until they get out in the field.” Not that different from necromancers, really, though it was a pain in the arse that I’d had no chance to see if the mages had retrieved any unknown spells from the shifter. Sure, they had their own team of witches, but I had my doubts that any of them could amplify a tracking spell.
The hotel doors were closed, the ground scrubbed down with cleansing spells. No traces of the attack remained. I halted by the door, recalling the way the shifter had just moved, transforming in a literal flash. Was it a coincidence that he’d shifted at the exact same moment that flash had gone off? Shifters didn’t need spells to help them shift. Even at their least controlled, it was always a voluntary response to an attack, unless the full moon was involved.
I pushed open the door, and a glint caught my eye in the shadows beneath the hotel’s front.
Letting the door close, I moved closer. Crushed into the ground was a faintly gleaming band. The remnants of a witch spell… but not one that’d activated. The shifter must have dropped it in the struggle.
“Hey, there.” I picked it up. “Now we’re talking. Isabel, want to take this thing to pieces?”
She grinned. “Challenge accepted.”
Not five minutes after Isabel and I had set down the collapsed spell on the chalk-stained carpet of her hotel room, my phone began buzzing. I ignored it at first, helping Isabel sketch out a fresh chalk circle. The faint swirl of glyphs on the walls was a constant reminder of the time I’d inadvertently amplified a simple warding spell to cover the entire building and nearly blown my cover. At least the shifter hadn’t been able to bypass the wards this time around.
Evelyn hissed in my ear, “Answer the damn phone, Jas.”
“You don’t have to listen to it,” I told her. “Er, that was Evelyn,” I added to Isabel.
“Thought so.” Isabel brushed chalk from her knees. “Who’s calling?”
“It’ll be the guild,” I dug in my pocket for my phone. “I owe them a report from last night’s mission.”
“You can head back if you like. I’ll take care of this.” She waved a hand over the circle. “I can identify the ingredients and text them to you.”
“And then you can work out what type of spell it is?”
“Half of it’s crushed, so probably not,” she admitted. “I mean, I can guess, but identifying the owner’s signature should at least be do-able.”
“If you’re sure,” I said. “I mean, it’s safe to say it’s a custom job, for sure. Not a market one.”
Like the spell that’d conjured the weird white flash. A shifting spell? Was there such a thing? I didn’t know. Not only was there no ‘official’ textbook of witchcraft like there was for necromancy, the Hemlocks didn’t exactly do things by the book. They’d probably known it was possible to enhance a tracking spell beyond its limits all along. Hell, that memory-reading forest was almost a living example of the same type of spell.
“Sure, but once I’ve identified the base ingredients, I’ll be in a better position to track down the owner,” Isabel said. “Then I can find their coven.”
“What if they’re not part of a coven?” I said, thinking of the Briar Coven—who’d left the city without a trace. “I mean, when we were trying to find who was working with Leila Hemlock, they targeted witches off the street or just vulnerable people. Maybe the same is happening now.”
“Maybe, but it’s impossible to make a handmade custom spell like this without leaving some trace of the caster. Every witch has a signature.”
My phone was still buzzing. Resigned, I answered. “Hey, Lloyd.”
“Jas! The doorman won’t let me in.”
“Oh, you’re here at the hotel? I’m n
ot surprised, there was an attempted murder this morning.”
“Yes, and I thought you were next. Answer the bloody phone next time.”
“Sorry, I was with Isabel. Got distracted. I’ll be down in a second.” I hung up. “Sorry, gotta run.”
Isabel looked up, already elbows-deep in the spell circle. “No worries. You go and tell the guild you’re not dead.”
“Will do.”
I checked the time on the way out the door. The guild’s shifts started in less than an hour—no wonder Lloyd had panicked.
I found him waiting outside the doors to the lobby, hovering anxiously on the balls of his feet. “Let me guess—you had urgent witchy business?”
“Kind of. Isabel and I were taking a spell apart and lost track of time.”
“I figured,” he said. “So—another shifter attack? The novices are all talking about it.”
That’s not good. Who’d been blabbing at the guild? “An ambassador this time.”
I gave him a quick rundown of the morning’s events as we walked back to the guild. “Let me guess, Lady Montgomery’s gonna tear me a new one.”
“Actually, she’s concerned about you, Jas. Someone attacked your family?”
“Well, not directly,” I said. “I don’t know if they were sent after one person in particular or just the mages in general. Isabel’s trying to track the culprit by taking apart a spell we found at the crime scene, but the mages aren’t being very cooperative.”
“I’m not surprised, considering someone’s trying to bump them off. When’s the next council meeting?”
“Ah—tomorrow.” Oh, damn. I’d forgotten it was that soon. “Assuming the boss doesn’t stick me on toilet-cleaning duty.”
***
Lady Montgomery gave me a stern look across her desk. “Well?”
“Well what?” I said warily.
“What exactly do you mean by hassling the mages?”
Oh, damn. That straw-haired little shit had tattled on me to the guild. “My family was attacked. Isabel and I wanted to speak to the mages about what they found at the crime scene, that’s all.”
“I understand that you were concerned about your family, but the mage council has strict rules about who’s allowed into their headquarters in times of crisis,” she said. “The last thing we need is to create tension between them and the guild.”
Witch's Spirit (The Hemlock Chronicles Book 3) Page 8