I pulled off my coat and showed Belinda my tattoo, explaining what Jade had done and how she’d seemed to use so many different types of magic. At some point, Belinda had me sit on her sofa and went to make tea, and I finished my story while sipping a calming green tea with hints of chamomile.
When I finished, Belinda said, “That’s not a skin shifter.”
Relief washed over me, tinged with fear and uncertainty. “How can you be so sure? Isn’t it possible she stole this weird magic of hers? I mean, she’s using witch magic but the paralyzing drought tasted like faerie fruit, and she tried to glamour me, which could be faerie or vampire magic, but it’s not something a witch can do.”
Belinda shook her head. “A skin shifter must wear the skin of the one whose magic they’re trying to co-opt.”
“But maybe she was wearing it,” I argued. I hadn’t seen Jade’s whole body. And much as I wanted Belinda to be right, I had to be sure. I couldn’t defeat Jade and get myself and Krissy un-cursed unless I knew what I was up against. “Maybe that’s what caused her aura to flicker.”
“No. It doesn’t work like that. It sounds like this girl is practicing atramancy. It’s an archaic form of magic that was used mostly in contracts, in order to trick lawmakers or those who tried to legislate away the rights of witches. But there’s no reason one couldn’t adapt the magic to tattoo ink.”
“So you think she’s just a normal witch.” I sounded disappointed, but I wasn’t. More confused at how a normal witch had been able to overtake me so completely, while using what looked like at least two distinct types of magic.
Belinda shrugged. “There’s nothing normal about using a powerful magic to curse people. And it would require a lot of energy. She must be exceptionally powerful or be part something else.”
I frowned, a cold chill running down my spine. Jade was powerful, that much was certain. “Something else? Like what?”
She shrugged again, sipping her tea and not offering any suggestions.
“I don’t understand,” I said. I meant in general, but Belinda thought I was speaking of ink magic.
“Atramancy is more complex than you realize,” she said. “It requires brewing the ink like a potion with intention and magic, and requires lots of energy. Such magic would easily wear a witch out if she did it often. And if she’s able to keep ink on hand…” She made a you see gesture, turning her hand over.
Potions had a short shelf-life. Healing potions and salves could be brewed to last a couple of weeks, but started losing effectiveness after seven days. The more intense the magic, the more quickly it would fade. Potency could only be assured for three days. That made it hard to keep potions on hand if you weren’t planning ahead. And since potions required tons of magical energy and lots of ingredients, it wasn’t wise or helpful to keep a stock of things you had no plans to use.
So brewing magical ink like Belinda described would be unwise if you didn’t already have a plan for it. It would be a waste of power and effort.
Another wave of cold crashed over me. Had Jade known I was coming? It was possible. Krissy and I had asked about her earlier and no doubt her coworker had told her about the interaction, if she hadn’t overheard the whole thing herself. She could have been waiting for me to return.
The alternative was even scarier: she was prepared to put a cursed tattoo on just about anyone who wandered into her shop.
If she was calculating, and Krissy and I were specific targets, she was dangerous.
If she was recklessly cursing people for no reason, she was downright terrifying. Who knew how much damage she could do?
“And then one must infuse the spell into the ink as one writes with it,” Belinda continued, “which is another draining process. It would be difficult for one witch to do this alone. Historically covens of witches worked together to brew the ink,” Belinda continued. “But she could have help. Or she could have something else in her that helps enhance her magic.”
I hadn’t smelled brimstone in her shop. There’d been no demon shadows in her tattoo parlor. I highly doubted she was using demon power in any way. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t using something else. I just had to figure out what. And how.
“So to use atramancy, she has to be a witch?” I clarified.
“I would think so. It is witch magic, if very draining and hard.”
“But you don’t think she’s a skin shifter?” I pressed.
Belinda shook her head vehemently. “You’d know. You’d see the skins. Trust me, she wouldn’t bother hiding them. And if she had the ability to brew a strong paralytic draught, she would have skinned you, not inked you.”
I shivered at that thought. “Thank you for talking to me,” I said, setting the tea cup on a coaster and standing. I grabbed my sword. “I suppose I should be relieved she’s not a skin shifter.”
“Oh yes, that would be very bad news,” Belinda said, standing and gathering the tea cups. “Can I offer some advice?”
I nodded, eager. I’d take any help I could get at the moment.
“Get someone who’s good at potions to brew you an anti-hex drink or two. Might take the edge off whatever’s working in the ink until you can get it solved.”
That was damn good advice. I wanted the curse gone and the ink out of my skin as soon as magically possible, but in the meantime, mitigating the damage was the best I could hope for. And clearly my anti-hex potion skills were in need of a tune-up since my attempt earlier this evening hadn’t worked.
“I don’t suppose you can do that?” I asked hopefully.
“Oh, no, dear, my specialty is divination. I’ll ask the guardians what they see.” She gestured to a crystal ball on her bookshelf. I’d thought it was a decorative glass orb. “I’ll let you know if they show me anything relevant.”
“Thanks,” I said, and meant it sincerely. Divination wasn’t my strong suit. I’d never managed to contact spirits or “guardians” and frankly, I didn’t trust what they might say. But I appreciated the offer. And I wasn’t in a position to snub any intel, no matter the source.
I gave her my business card and then went on my way, off to research atramancy.
Chapter 7
I glided down the freeway in Silas’ sedan as I went over what I’d learned.
Jade was not a skin shifter. She was some kind of witch, one who was willing and able to use a lot of power to curse people with an archaic and mostly forgotten form of magic. To what end, I still didn’t know.
Jade herself had seemed young and frightened, at least until she drugged me and inked up my arm. I honestly didn’t know what to make of her. Then again, plenty of people would say the same about me, a witch who had demon magic. It shouldn’t be possible, and yet…
I just didn’t know what Jade had or how she might use it against me.
But I knew I had to find her and force her to remove or undo my curse, or get the curse removed by other means. And Jade needed to be dealt with in some fashion. I was loathe to turn her over to the Council, but I also needed to make sure she stopped hurting people.
My arm itched and I scratched at it automatically. I hated being cursed but more, I hated having a tattoo burning on my shoulder.
The car’s tires hit something on the road. I swore, hands tightening on the wheel. The car jerked to the left, skidding over into the center lane. I narrowly missed hitting an SUV that swerved out of the lane to avoid me, honking their annoyance the whole time. The car’s tire pressure light blared to life on the dashboard and the car rumbled along, losing speed. I managed to get over to the shoulder of the freeway, heart pounding so hard I thought it might explode.
When I could breathe again, I got out and walked around the vehicle. The front left tire was totally blown out, the rubber deflated around the metal rim.
I’d learned how to change a tire as a teenager back when I’d learned to drive but that was over a decade ago, and I’d never actually had to do it. I opened the trunk to check for a spare. There was a space for o
ne but the tire was missing.
I slammed the trunk shut, irritated, and pulled out my cellphone. Despite the fact that I was pretty sure I was still in the Seattle city limits, my phone wasn’t getting a signal. Apparently I’d pulled over in a dead zone, impossible as that seemed.
I shoved my phone in my pocket, grabbed my sword from the backseat, and headed down the shoulder of the freeway on foot. An ache pulsed in my arm as if the tattoo wanted to make sure it got credit for my crappy luck.
As I marched down the next exit ramp, hoping to get a signal on my phone so I could call for help, a giant pickup truck rounded the curve at twice the speed limit and nearly ran me over. I jumped sideways, to the very edge of the ramp as it blew past.
When I reached the street and cell service returned, I called Silas and left a message letting him know where his car was and then headed for a taco place to wait this out. If Silas didn’t reply, I’d call a tow truck and bill it to him. First, I’d have tacos at a twenty-four fast food place and make the best of this miserable situation. I wasn’t going to let the curse defeat me.
And then I reached the doors for the fast food restaurant only to find them locked. A sign was posted in the glass doors that read “Closed for remodel.”
I swore. I shook the doors, for all the good it did. And then I pulled out my phone and called the first three people I could think of who might be able to give me a ride or a spare tire or let me scream in their ear. None of them answered. I sighed and looked up the nearest transit center.
An hour later, I was back in Everett, getting off a late night bus that was strangely packed full of riders, even at nearly four in the morning. Normally any commuters who were awake at this hour were heading the opposite direction.
Silas had finally called back and told me he’d take care of the car, but the way he said it made me think I’d be getting a bill and maybe losing my borrowing privileges.
So I wasn’t in a good mood when my sneakers hit the sidewalk and I started hoofing it to my apartment building.
A crow landed in front of me on a bike rack. It cawed in my direction but I didn’t think it was Penelope. After all, she’d left town. So I ignored it and kept walking.
The crow flew up and flapped in front of my face, cawing loudly. A drunk couple stumbling to the cab line laughed at the aggressive bird and my irritation. I shot them a glare and they scurried off.
“I thought you ran off,” I told the crow through gritted teeth. She followed me down the sidewalk, flying circles over my head and occasionally cawing.
When we reached a quiet, dark street, Penelope shifted from a crow into a beautiful woman with dark skin and inky black hair. Her piercing eyes bored into me.
“There’s a dead girl in front of your office.”
I blinked and opened my mouth. Closed it. Stared. My brain didn’t want to process what she was saying.
“A dead girl?” I repeated, uselessly.
“You need to hurry before someone calls the mortal cops.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“I do not know.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you went into hiding,” I said.
Penelope’s dark eyes bored into mine. “My sources say there are no skin shifters in the area so I felt safe returning home.”
Heat rose in my chest. “Sources? You have sources who can tell you that?”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I spent half the night trying to chase that down!” My voice was too loud and if anyone was around, I was liable to draw attention. I forced myself to take a deep breath. “You could have saved me a lot of effort.”
“I was going to share what I knew, of course,” she said tersely, transformed back into a crow, taking to the sky with purpose.
I sighed. There was a lot I didn’t know about Penelope but I was quickly learning that I needed to start asking a lot more questions of my neighbor.
But first, there was a body to deal with.
I ran after her, even as my stomach turned to rock.
* * *
The dead woman was propped against the door to my office. If you didn’t look too closely, you might think she was sleeping, at least until you noticed the arrow through her heart. It was an old-fashioned looking arrow, complete with a feather backing, sticking straight out of her chest. It almost looked like a bad costume except the dead look in her glassy eyes and the lifeless slack of her jaw were all too real.
The woman’s jacket was puffy and blue and the arrow had been shot right through it. From the way her legs were splayed in front of her, it looked almost like she’d been standing against my door when she’d been struck and had slid to the ground. She was close to my age, late twenties or so, with dark hair.
The similarities between us ended there: she had sharp features, high cheekbones, and a heart-shaped face, which still bore a stunned expression, her pink lips frozen in what might have been a scream or gasp. Her eyes were wide at the shock of death. Her fists were clenched tightly at her sides.
It was bad enough that she was dead, but the fact that she was literally dead on my doorstep made it exponentially worse.
“How long has she been here?” I asked the crow, as it flitted to a landing on the ground and instantly transformed in to a woman in a black feathered dress.
“Not long,” Penelope said. “A half hour or so. I spotted her when I returned home and sought you out right away.”
“Who shot her?” I asked.
Penelope shook her head. She hadn’t seen that part. Penelope bent her head, her dark hair falling forward into her eyes. “For a moment, I thought she was you.”
My stomach clenched. I stared at the woman. I didn’t recognize her and while I kept late office hours, I usually had things locked up by this time of day. If she’d been here less than an hour, it seemed unlikely she’d come here for me. Except that it was too great a coincidence that a woman who just happened to be passing by was shot to death with an arrow outside my office.
I reached down and dug into her pockets. Penelope watched silently as I tried to find some form of identification on the corpse. I finally found a small billfold in her jacket pocket. It held only a twenty-dollar bill and a photo ID that looked fake, too shiny in the wrong places. It said her name was Leah Smart.
“You know her?” Penelope asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t. “I should call Adam. He can...” I trailed off. Adam was an associate of mine who worked in a funeral home. He was willing to perform autopsies, necropsies, and examinations for a fee. But I wasn’t sure what he could tell me about this poor woman that wasn’t painfully obvious: she’d been shot through the heart with an old-fashioned arrow on a modern day city street in the middle of the night. It was absurd but the cause of death wasn’t a mystery.
Then again, I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t leave the body sitting there. And I really didn’t want her to fall into the hands of the human authorities. The last thing I needed was mortal cops keeping a close eye on me. I already had the Council on my back.
“Whatever you do, I would not leave her here,” Penelope said, echoing my thoughts. She turned back into a crow and flew up, toward her apartment, where she’d no doubt left the window open for herself.
I stood there in the dark having a staring contest with a dead woman, contemplating my next move. I don’t know how long I stood there: ten minutes, an hour. Time seemed to collapse in on itself as my heart pounded and my throat went dry. It wasn’t like me to just stand there but for the first time in a long time, I was at a loss.
“She’s human,” a male voice said in a clipped British accent. “But she carries the mark of fae magic. I smell it.”
I turned, whipping out my sword and pointing it at the man.
It was Lord Barrel Chest. Er, Lord Mason Elmwood. The fae lord who’d tried to stop me from chasing down the goblin just nights ago. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I am seeking someone. I f
ollowed a trail of magic...” He looked down at the body.
I had checked her for demon shadows. Doing so was automatic at this point. But I didn’t sense magic on her. Of course, I wasn’t very attuned to fae magic. “What kind of magic?”
“An acrid poison brewed with the fae plant called dark shade. It reeks of tree rot and clove,” he said, crinkling his nose.
I sniffed the air and caught a whiff of clove, a hint of moss, and a small note of earth. “You smell that on her?”
He nodded, his eyes bright in the darkness. “Indeed. No doubt the arrow’s tip has been treated with it. That will ensure death no matter where one’s arrow strikes.”
My stomach roiled. “Lovely.”
“She smells of the changeling’s magic, too. It’s faint, but I can sense it on her person.”
A thought wiggled through my brain. Hadn’t the red cap been looking for a changeling? “What changeling?” I demanded.
Mace bent closer and sniffed my neck, pulling a face as if I reeked. Frankly, I was a little offended. “You’ve been touched by the changeling’s magic as well.”
My heart hammered. I remembered Jade’s beauty, her attempt to glamour me. But she was a witch. She had to be. Atramancy was witch magic, not fae magic. And Belinda insisted she wasn’t a skin shifter who might have stolen witch magic. I shook my head, vehemently.
“So there’s a changeling going around shooting arrows at people?” I asked.
“No,” Mace said, sternly. “She is not responsible for this.”
“Then who is? What the hell is going on?” My voice was too loud again but I didn’t care. There was a dead woman laying feet in front of me, struck down by a poisoned fae arrow, and this guy was acting like she didn’t matter at all.
“A changeling has run away from the Seelie Court,” he said. “Sentinels have been sent to track her and bring her home, but she is... troublesome.”
“Troublesome how?” I wished I had a photo of Jade to shove in Mace’s face and ask if she was the changeling he sought.
He shrugged, the movement languid. “You know how young people are.”
Demon Rogue (Brimstone Magic Book 3) Page 5