SPELL TO UNBIND, A

by Laurie, Victoria

  Finn stomped on the brakes and we skidded to a stop. For a moment he stared ahead, blinking several times before he simply asked, “What’d this trinket look like?”

  “It was a little green-glass cruet about yay high,” I said, using my hands to show him. “It had a golden stopper and a swirl on the side of the glass. It didn’t look like much more than a cheap knickknack until I pulled out the stopper and looked inside.”

  Finn closed his eyes and allowed his head to fall the steering wheel. “That son of a bitch,” he said softly.

  “So he was working on a replacement,” I said, a little surprised by his reaction. It was logical that Rasputin had tried to replace the succubaen. As long as he had the egg, that should’ve been seen as a likely possibility, but with only one or two uses left of the egg, it wouldn’t have been strong enough to point toward the phoenix. But it would have been strong enough to point toward the book in the rare bookstore, which would be a significant clue.

  Finn lifted his head and hit the gas again. “It’s not a replacement,” he said, surprising me. “It’s the same trinket, Esmé. Different time. Different place. But the same trinket our thief took from him in London.”

  “What do you mean the same trink—” And that’s as far as I got before I understood. “Gideon,” I whispered.

  “Yep.”

  “He gave Grigori, his future mentor, a gift that would best benefit him.”

  “Yep.”

  “But how could your brother get past the cruellion?” Not even Finn had come out the winner in that head-to-head.

  “The succubaen wasn’t kept in the junkyard,” he said.

  “Then where was it kept?”

  “My place, which, once upon a time, I told Gideon was his place, which gave him full run of the penthouse, and all of its hidden stores.”

  “Why the fuck would you hide a succubaen in your own home?!” I shouted. His recklessness was astonishing and particularly frightening given the personal stakes for me and Ember.

  Finn ignored my tone, answering calmly. “Cruellions are powerfully magical beasts with intelligence that rivals humans, and a life force that far exceeds it.” Thumbing over his shoulder toward the junkyard behind us he added, “That brute—who, mind you, is only an adolescent—has been looking for a way out of the junkyard for half a century. If it’d discovered the succubaen, it could’ve given enough of its essence to have the trinket show it a way out without leaving the creature dead.”

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked as Finn raced down the road, barely swerving in time to avoid hitting a tree.

  “My place.”

  “Why?”

  “To either find the succubaen still in its place in my storeroom or murder my brother if it’s not.”

  “I like that plan,” I said. I’d murder Gideon myself if he’d allowed a trinket powerful enough to reveal Ember’s location to fall back into the hands of one of the only mystics in the world with the skills and the tools to find her.

  But then I had another thought. “Wait, how can we go back there when Petra’s goons are probably scoping it out for any sign of you. And me.”

  “I know a back way in,” Finn said, adding, “I have to talk to Gideon and ask him if he took the trinket from Grigori’s house after discovering you out cold.”

  “He didn’t.”

  Finn cut me a look. “How do you know?”

  “I came to before your brother discovered me.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Finn grumbled again. But then he seemed to brighten. “Wait, when you woke up it was gone?”

  “Yeah. And when your brother and I went back to search Grigori’s house for clues, it was still gone, and I know because I looked.” When Finn narrowed his eyes suspiciously I added, “Dude, I swear.”

  Finn shook his head but focused on the road again. “The part of the story I didn’t yet tell you, Esmé, was that before our thief could make it back here with the succubaen, he was intercepted by another mystic from a rival house who took it from him. Do you know what happened to that guy?”

  “Let me guess … you and he became besties, and you spend each Friday night braiding each other’s hair?”

  “I tracked him down and challenged him to a duel for it,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “Winner take all.”

  “I’m assuming you took all.”

  “Yep. Including his head.”

  “Who was this unfortunate opponent?”

  “The guy you replaced,” Finn said, eyeing me meaningfully.

  My eyes widened. “Ah. Not sure if I should thank you or jump out of the car.”

  He chuckled, the hardness of his expression melting away. “In here with me or out there with Petra’s forces in pursuit? Hard to say which one’s safer.”

  I glanced toward the window as my heart raced and the charm at my neck started to heat up. Out there, I thought. For sure, out there.

  We arrived about a half-hour later several streets away from Finn’s condo and very close to my warehouse, in fact.

  After parking in an alley behind a noisy bar and a three-story apartment building, he turned to me. “Stay put. I’ll be back soon.”

  I clamped my hand on his arm as he was about to get out of the car. “You think I’m not coming with you?”

  Finn slid his gaze to my hand, still grabbing firmly to his arm. I held steady. “I’ll move faster alone,” he said.

  I let go of him because the charm was starting to burn my skin. “Doubtful.”

  “I’d prefer to speak to my brother in private.”

  “And I’d prefer to question him with you. Besides, Flayer, we agreed to cooperate with each other, remember? We’re bound by that.”

  The lieutenant frowned. He knew I had a point. “Fine. If you can keep up, you’re welcome to join me.”

  I unbuckled my seatbelt, grabbed Lunatrabem, opened the car door, and hopped out. When I turned toward Finn again, he’d vanished.

  With an irritated sigh, I slung the scabbard across my back, then pulled out a small coin envelope from the secret pocket in my jacket. Opening the lid carefully, I tipped out what to most would look like a dried butterfly of blue and gold. Cupping the creature carefully between my fingers I lowered my lips to it, breathed out a warm breath, and whispered, “Seek out Finn the Flayer.”

  The butterfly’s wings opened, and it crawled to the edge of my index finger. Taking flight, it fluttered far faster than any mortal butterfly would, and I had to run to keep up.

  Before long I was working up a good sweat, which felt awesome. I hadn’t worked out in days, and my body was itching for a good run.

  Finally the butterfly stopped at a metal door, fluttering just outside it. I tried the handle, but it was locked. “Of course,” I said, extracting my lockpick. It took me only thirty seconds to pick it, which meant that Finn was in fact cooperating by not enchanting it more heavily.

  After holding the door open for my fluttery little friend, I followed it into a pitch-black tunnel. Reaching behind me, I pulled out Lunatrabem, which gave off a glow that mirrored the glow of the moon. Using its light, I moved forward cautiously.

  The tunnel was interesting; it seemed to follow an old track of some kind that was too small to be railroad tracks but just the right size for a cart—perhaps one constructed a century or two ago that allowed builders to send construction materials to the center of the city without clogging up heavily congested streets.

  It was hard to tell how long the tracks went on, or where they led, and I didn’t follow them to the end because after about a quarter-mile, my butterfly made a hard right at a steel ladder that led upward. I had to partly sheath Lunatrabem, but the exposed blade was just enough to give off the light I needed to make it to the top of the ladder and step off onto a platform that formed an enclosed space with another door.

  Moving to the door, I opened it a crack and peeked out, amazed to find myself in what appeared to be the
lobby of Finn’s condo. Pulling the door a tiny bit wider showed Finn, standing confidently in front of the bay doors of the elevator.

  Quickly I sheathed Lunatrabem the rest of the way, coaxed my butterfly back into her envelope, and stepped out of the door into the lobby just as the elevators binged open.

  Finn stepped in, and I was right behind him.

  “Hey,” I said as we both turned to face the closing doors. “Come here often?”

  If Finn was surprised to see me, he didn’t reveal it. “Took you long enough,” he muttered, but there was also a noticeable quirk to the edges of his lips.

  “Yeah,” I said, inspecting my nails. “I stopped for coffee.”

  We rode up to the floor just below the penthouse, and Finn stepped in front of me to lay a hand on the elevator panel, mumble something, and the boxcar stopped. He then reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, black coin purse with elaborate embroidering on the sides. Bending down, he held the purse close to the doors before opening it up. A puff of smoke drifted out of the purse and appeared to be sucked through the cracks of the door.

  Finn stood and we waited in silence, and while we waited, I’ll admit that I was damned curious about his trinket. About three minutes ticked by before the puff of smoked wafted back through the cracks, where it floated up to Finn’s face and began to mold itself into a three-dimensional replica of his front hallway, then his living room, then the kitchen, bath, and both bedrooms. Every detail was present, like a ghostly hologram unfolding a tiny gray dollhouse.

  When the puff of smoke displayed the master bedroom, Finn swore and shook his head. It was obvious to see why; there was no sign of Gideon on the rumpled bed in the master bedroom or in the guest room or in either bathroom.

  Grabbing the smoke with his hand, Finn shoved it like a solid form back into the coin purse, and then he waved his hand at the elevator panel again. The boxcar moved, and one floor later, the doors parted and we stepped out into his condo.

  The place was eerily quiet, and neither of us said a word as we sent our own mystic senses out into the space looking for any sign of trouble.

  While I’m sure both of us trusted his little trinket to warn us of intruders possibly lurking about, neither one of us wanted to take any chances that it’d missed something.

  After many cautious moments of waiting, watching, and feeling out the space, I began to relax the set of my shoulders, and noticed Finn did too.

  At that moment my cellphone rang. I jumped, which was embarrassing, and Finn looked annoyed. “Why isn’t that thing on silent?” he barked.

  “It was,” I said. Only one person could override the silent feature with an incoming call. “Dex,” I said, holding the phone to my ear. “It’s not a good time.”

  “We’re in trouble, Ezzy,” Dex replied urgently.

  I stiffened. Glancing over at Finn, I was relieved to see that he was too preoccupied with investigating his condo to pay any attention to my phone call. “Tell me,” I said very, very softly.

  “Ursula translated the book,” he said. “It’s a history of the phoenix, and it’s the only text I’ve ever heard of that describes her as a living, breathing shapeshifter. She’s been a dragon, a bird, a lioness, and, as you know, a red hunting dog.”

  “What else did it say?”

  “It said that the phoenix is able to grant her immortal powers to any mystic she either chooses or is forced to choose; proximity is the only requirement. It also says that she will bond with only one mystic at a time, and it is always up to the phoenix which mystic she chooses to bond with. For that mystic, the phoenix will gladly give up her own life, so if she is captured by an enemy combatant, it’s best to kill the mystic she’s bonded to, then cage and enslave the phoenix for the rest of eternity in order to gain immortality.”

  Much of this information about Ember, I already knew, but to hear it spelled out so succinctly in a book turned my blood to ice. I thought about the scene in Grigori’s dining room. What if he’d revealed the contents of the book to the mystic slowly torturing him and his guests to death? What if whomever murdered the Russian now knew that the phoenix wasn’t a bird, or a trinket of some kind, but a living breathing creature bonded by love to me.

  “Fuck,” I whispered. “He tortured Grigori. He could know what the phoenix is.”

  “Right. That’s what I’m worried about too.”

  I glanced in the direction where Finn had gone and heard rustling that sounded like he was rummaging through a closet. “Hold on a sec,” I said to Dex, then fished inside my jacket again and came up with my one magical die. Holding it close to the microphone, I mentally wished upon it and waited to feel its warmth spread out to envelope my lips before I said, “Can you get home?”

  “I can,” Dex replied. “It’ll take me a little bit, but I can.”

  “Find a way to destroy that book and take Ember away, someplace far from here. And don’t stop running until you hear from me.”

  “I will,” he assured me. “But Ezzy …”

  “What, Dex?”

  “Promise me I’ll hear from you.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the nearby wall. “I promise I’ll try,” I said.

  That was all I could give him, which wasn’t nearly enough, but at the moment, it honestly was all I had.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Day 4

  I found Finn in his bedroom staring angrily at the bed, which was empty but rumpled and showing the imprint of someone having lain on top of the cover for a bit.

  “Where do you think he went?” I asked.

  “Home. He thinks it’s the one place I won’t go.”

  I eyed him curiously. “Why would he think that?”

  Finn didn’t answer. Instead, he held up a small, dark blue box with a lid. Opening the lid, he revealed a velvet pillow with its own imprint pushing down on the material. The outline of a small vase exactly the size and shape of the cruet that had been on Grigori’s mantel revealed itself.

  “I put a comeback spell on it when I first took possession and just tried to recall it. It’s not coming back, so whoever has it has it tied to something able to resist the spell.”

  I smirked at him. Was he really that naive? “Hate to break it to you, Flayer, but any thief worth her weight could’ve countered your comeback spell. In fact, I would’ve done that before leaving Grigori’s place.”

  Finn cocked an eyebrow at me. Damn him, he was so striking that even when he was looking crossly at me, he was still sexy as hell. “Is that so?” he said in a way that said I might be the one who was naive.

  “It’s so,” I said, crossing my arms. I was confident in my ability to hold onto the objects that I stole.

  Finn walked over to his chest of drawers and rooted around in the topdrawer, pulling out a pair of gold cufflinks emblazoned with Petra’s insignia. Bringing them over to me, he said, “Do your best.”

  I laughed. He had to be kidding.

  His expression said otherwise.

  “Okay,” I said, snatching the cufflinks out of his hand. Turning away from him, I closed my hands around them, feeling them out for magical energy which felt fairly powerful and sent my thieving mind racing with envy. Inserting my own essence onto their surface, I felt along their every groove and commanded them to remain with me. I then tucked them into the magical pocket of my jacket, which would give the illusion to Finn that they were no longer in the bedroom.

  Turning back to him, I smiled and held out my hands to display that they were gone. “See?” I said. “Easy peasy.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, swirling his index finger in a circle. “Why don’t you have a look in the drawer?”

  The small weight of the cufflinks in my jacket suddenly vanished. It was so sudden and so surprising that I actually reached into my coat to be sure they were gone.

  Finn crossed his heavily muscled arms, nodding over his shoulder toward the chest of drawers.

  Curious and a little put off, I walked o
ver to his dresser and pulled open the topdrawer. There were the cufflinks, neatly resting in a velvet lined box.

  To make sure it wasn’t simply a duplicate set, I took them out and felt their energy. There was my essence, still clinging to the gold surface, but now I could sense an even stronger essence curling over my own to retake possession.

  Sensing that energy did two things: one, it made me realize that Finn the Flayer was far, far more powerful than I’d given him credit for; and two, his energy mixing with mine, even on an innocuous pair of cufflinks, was causing the charm at my neck to burn almost as hot as my sudden desire for him.

  I dropped the cufflinks back into the drawer and shut it quickly. “Neat trick,” I said.

  “And that was just a pair of decorative cufflinks,” he said. “Imagine how strong a claim I could put on an object I really treasured.”

  As if for emphasis, Finn walked right up to me and reached with one finger to trace the outline of the charm under my T-shirt.

  I couldn’t help but suck in a small breath of surprise and desire.

  Finn’s touch was light, sensual, and full of promise. “This gift my brother gave to you was also part of my personal collection.”

  I put my own hand up to block his and cover the charm. It was the only thing standing between me and certain death, that much I knew. Without the charm, I’d be unable to withstand the attraction I felt for Finn. Hell, even with it I might be circling the drain.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped back, glaring hard at Finn. He’d have to fight me for the charm. It didn’t matter if it’d once belonged to him; by right and by mystic law it was now magically bound to me.

  “It’s mine, Flayer.”

  Finn sighed. “So it is, Esmé. So it is.”

  We stood like that, staring at each other for a long moment, and I couldn’t tell if we were about to rip each other’s clothes off or haul out weapons and begin to duel.

  Both options actually turned me on.

  Finn took a step closer to me, and I still didn’t know which way this would go, but I stood my ground. He lifted his hand slowly toward my neck, his gaze boring into mine, and I tilted my head back, exposing my throat, my breath coming quick. I wanted him so much, I didn’t think I could stand it. His hand closed around the back of my head, and he gently pulled me the last foot between us, all the while stroking the base of my throat with his thumb. The charm burned and burned against my chest, and I knew I was so close to ripping it off and giving in to the unceasing yearning of the moment.