Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series) (21 page)

“Sienna,” I murmured, picturing my sister as I’d last seen her — straight, dark hair falling over her darkly lined brown eyes, mouth turned up in a smirk. I’d half-hoped to find her in my apartment, her cell phone simply forgotten at Rusty’s, but my place had felt hours empty …

“Where are you, Sienna?” I whispered, as I opened my eyes to gaze on the center of the circle.
 

The magic called forth by us swirled as a light breeze would, over and around the four items placed in the circle. It flitted to the edge in front of Kett, Kandy, Desmond, and me, almost as if trying to return the bit of breath we’d offered it, but it could not cross out of the closed circle.

“We seek Sienna, who we believe to be in some sort of trouble. Sienna let us see you.”

The magic swirled through the items again, but this time it felt odd. It was less focused than before, as if I’d confused it somehow. As if I’d not spoken the truth as I knew it. I must have said something wrong, given it some sort of conflicting direction.

Self-doubt rose in my chest. The magic dimmed further.

“Damn,” I muttered. I shut my eyes to try to gather the magic up again.

“Is something wrong?” Kandy asked, but no one answered her.

I tried again. I felt the residual magic unconsciously woven into the handwritten spell beneath my hands, and I thought about how it would be so much easier to simply transfer this bit of magic through the circle, using the baby blanket as a conduit. Then my Gran’s words and thoughts could anchor the spell. Magic didn’t work like that, though … at least it shouldn’t … but if I really focused my intention, then maybe …
 

I lifted the spellbook to my face by instinct. I said “Sienna,” so that my breath blew across the pages toward the circle.
 

The magic responded by coalescing into the center of the circle, hovering about two inches above the dirt floor. I saw it as multi-colored — shades of green, red, gold, and blue. I wondered if this was an actual manifestation of our magic.

“Sienna … show me my sister,” I asked the magic, which collected into a small sphere at my coaxing. The colors in the sphere whirled and resolved, and I swore, just for a moment, that I saw Sienna’s face within the sphere. Kett stiffened across the circle from me, so I was sure he’d seen it as well.

“Please, where is she? Show us a location.” The magic whirled and clouded again. I could see the edges of some sort of building. “What is that? A warehouse?” I asked. Then I pushed the magic a bit, pushed my energy and focus toward it. “Please, she’s in trouble. We need to help her.”

The magic collapsed with an audible pop that felt like a pinch in my mind. I gasped.

“But … I … it was working!” I reached out to grab Kandy and Desmond’s bare forearms, to grab their magic, to focus the spell.

It was a bad idea. All my senses were wide open, and there was a reason I was very careful not to touch on the dance floor, or to bring magical people home to my bed for skin-to-skin contact. Magic, almost like electricity, ran through each of my palms and up my arms. The hand touching Kandy felt warm and tingly, but the hand touching Desmond practically seared me.

I stifled a scream and yanked my hands away. The rest of the magic in the room dissipated. Desmond, looking rather amused, inspected the pink burn mark on his forearm.

“I’m sorry. I thought I might be able to bolster the spell. I just … I suck.”

“This isn’t your sort of magic,” Kett said, his gaze on me steady. “Maybe with other practitioners here, you could anchor the magic and manifest the spell, but you’re working against your strengths. You shouldn’t be pushing the magic away. That isn’t what you do when you make trinkets, is it?”

I didn’t want to hear his stupid theories about my magic. I’d trained under my Gran for years. If I was capable of more, certainly she would have known, certainly she would have directed me … But what about the trinkets? And the knife? Why would the vampire lie? What would he have to gain?

I realized that I’d woven my fingers through the rings of my necklace. No one else had moved. They sat patiently holding their candles and watching me.

I looked down at the ring charms now on my fingers. I looked at the items laid around the circle. I thought about how I made the trinkets, how I let my fingers surf the tiny drops of residual or natural magic in the items I collected. How I brought that magic together, unified it.

I pulled my fingers from the rings. I felt calm, centered. I ran my fingers along the necklace until I hit a large man’s gold ring. I’d found it in a pawnshop last year, on its own, not as a pair like I’d found the ones in the antique shops. There was something inherently sad in a man pawning his wedding ring. It raised so many questions, but now the drop of magic within this ring felt right … somehow.

“Can you break the solder?” I asked Desmond. “Not the chain, just this connection point?”

Desmond leaned into me. I noticed his forearm was now unmarked, the magical burn completely healed. He delicately grasped the ring I held out to him between his thumb and forefinger, and gave it a slight twist. The ring came off in his fingers. He dropped it into my open palm.

“I’ll need the hair brush as well,” I murmured, trying to surf the calm from before and to not panic about my necklace being ruined. I could solder the ring back on in minutes, no worries.

Desmond passed me the hairbrush and I pulled off a clump of hair. Sienna’s straight, dark hair. I smoothed it and twisted it into a string. Then I sank further down into my soft focus, my meditative state. I shut everything else out — every worry, every fear —
 
as I wound the twisted hair around the ring. I smoothed the residual magic of hair and ring with my own. I could actually see how I did this now … like my magic was mortar or solder. When I added bits to the trinkets or rings to my necklace, I must have instinctively done the same thing — mortaring the residual magic with my own, and therefore making a new object altogether. I pushed these revelations aside as I focused on knotting the ends of the twisted hair together. There was just enough to manage this. Then I slipped the ring onto my left index finger.

It just fit.

I looked up to find the vampire smirking at me, but I ignored him. I closed the spellbook, unaware that I’d held it open on my lap this entire time. Clutching it to my chest, I stood. Then, awkwardly, I stuffed the sweater and other things in my bag. It wasn’t a good idea to leave personal items lying around in a witches’ circle.

I crossed to the stairs, looking back to the others who’d risen but not yet followed. “What are you waiting for?” I asked. “We have a killer to catch, don’t we?”

“Oh, now you get cocky, dowser?” Desmond said. “Wait until you find her, then we’ll bow to your magic prowess.” He snorted, and then twisted his lips into a begrudging smile. Somehow, with this look of approval on his face, he was suddenly damn sexy. No, I chided myself — scary monster men are not sexy. I tore my eyes away from him, running my thumb over the ring and thinking of Sienna instead.

The ring grew warm on my finger, then cooled just as suddenly. It was up for a game of hotter/colder. I’d always been a stellar player.

After all the terrifying buildup of fear and anticipation, it was a painfully short ride.

Hazarding a guess based on the warehouse-looking buildings I’d seen in the circle, I had Kandy turn east on West Fourth Avenue. The ring agreed with this direction, and I didn’t feel the need to turn off Fourth until we’d passed Cambie Street about seven minutes later.

Desmond and Kett had climbed into the backseat of Kandy’s car. I was surprised McGrowly fit back there, despite the overall size of the SUV. But then, it was a giant SUV. I imagined the others followed in the second vehicle, but I didn’t pay much attention. I tried to just focus on the tiny pulse of magic I wore on my finger. It felt fragile, as if the wrong thought or emotion would unbalance it. I kept my mind as clear as possible. It was a struggle. I just tried to imagine myself baking or making a trinket, and the peace those activities usually brought … except I wasn’t actually doing either of those things.

“You think the trinkets, the baking, are simply my way of … distracting my magic?” I directing the murmured thought to Kett, but didn’t bother to turn around.

“Manifestations, maybe,” he answered.

“It was my Gran who always directed me toward those sorts of things … sewing … knitting …”

“Ah.” The vampire got it without me elaborating. My Gran had been distracting me, focusing me on mundane tasks so that I worked my magic on a tiny scale — so tiny I didn’t even know I was doing it. The question now was why?

We passed Quebec Street on our way to Main and the ring suddenly cooled … though perhaps it had been cooling before but I’d only just felt it. “Stop, stop! We’ve gone too far.”

Kandy turned right at the next street and then right again to head back west for a couple of blocks. I refocused, pushing thoughts of Gran’s possible duplicity out of my head and thinking only of finding my sister.

I hoped that the fact the ring worked meant Sienna was still alive.

This area of Vancouver was undergoing a construction boom, and not many warehouse-type buildings existed anymore. They’d all been replaced by glass and steel towers that occupied the bulk of the city’s skyline on the other side of the inlet. This tower development, triggered by the 2010 Winter Olympics, had spread across False Creek. It now almost completely filled the north edge of the area between lower Main and Cambie Street.

There had been some holdouts to this development, though, and I was grateful we hadn’t needed to go further east or into Richmond. That was assuming the ring was actually leading us somewhere, however, and that I wasn’t just making everything up in my magic-addled mind.

“Slow down … please,” I said. The ring was the warmest it had been since I put it on, but began to cool slightly. “Loop back a block, please.”

Kandy took a left and then another left, but when she turned left the second time the ring cooled further.

“Stop. We’re near, but I think I need to walk.” Kandy pulled the SUV to the curb and we piled out.

The street was dark, though a block north, the new towers were ablaze with light. A block uphill and south, the few homes left in the area promised a warm meal and a soft pillow, but we weren’t looking for either. I walked west on the south side of the street. The others trailed behind me. Lara and Jeremy had parked right behind Kandy and were following us up the sidewalk.

A low row of warehouses — as best as I could see between the streetlights — occupied both sides of the block. Most of the buildings had signs declaring their occupants — tile, carpet and marble dealers; some sort of woodworkers’ co-op; and a small deli/caterer that didn’t bother opening evenings.

One two-storey building, its blue paint in need of a refresher coat, ran half the south side of the block but didn’t have any immediately obvious business signs. I paused at the edge of the small, two-lane parking lot that fronted the building. There were no lights on, either inside or out. The warehouse had a flat roof and lots of dark windows, some covered.

“For lease,” Kett said, pointing to a sign I hadn’t seen in the dark. “It was on my list to check, but then I found you at the bakery.” The lease was being offered by Godfrey Properties.

“Gran,” I whispered. “Gran owns this.”

Desmond suddenly reached down into my satchel and pulled out Sienna’s sweater. I quashed the impulse to slap his hand, though I doubt I could have reacted quickly enough to hit him.

He held the sweater out to Lara and Jeremy. They, as if on cue, began stripping off their clothes. I looked back at the warehouse, twisting the ring on my finger and hoping no one was working late in any of the nearby buildings.

“It’s a big building. Do you have a plan?” I said.

“We’ll split up,” Desmond answered. “You and Kett with the ring and me with my wolves.” That didn’t sound like a great idea to me — or for Rusty and Sienna. However, I was pretty sure any argument would be ignored, if not punished. Yeah, I still didn’t trust a single one of the people I was with.

A pulse of magic hit me from the side. The wolves had transformed. Not into the half-beast creature Desmond had become to fight Kett, but into actual, though rather large, wolves … big, gray, green-eyed wolves. One was slightly smaller than the other — I guessed it was Lara. Jeremy was a little leggy, like he hadn’t reached his full size yet. I made sure to not meet their gaze as Desmond held the sweater out for them to smell.

With a yip, the wolves sprang forward into the parking lot, noses to the ground. They sniffed around in a zigzag sort of pattern, dividing the asphalt between them.

We followed, crossing the bit of grass between the sidewalk and the parking lot. Desmond and Kett were practically glued to my sides, Kandy behind us. As we approached the building, I felt a tinge of that sickly magic from the morgue.

“Wait,” I called to the wolves … too late. They caught some scent at the same moment, springing forward toward the east side door only to run smack into an invisible ward. The wolves collapsed like they’d hit a brick wall. One of them didn’t get up … the leggy one, Jeremy. Lara stumbled to her feet and staggered a few steps back.

I sprinted past her, the ring burning on my finger. I held my hand up to the ward, not touching — just trying to sense it. Kandy knelt before Lara as Desmond reached down to haul Jeremy away. At the touch of his alpha’s hand, Jeremy twitched, then struggled to his feet. Both wolves seemed dazed. That was some nasty magic.

Kett stood beside me and mimicked my movement, holding his hand palm forward to the magic shield barring us from approaching the building. “Can you break it?” I asked the vampire, hoping that was within his power. I didn’t want to wait for Gran, who was the only person I knew who was powerful enough to break wards.

“It’s nowhere near as strong as the wards on your apartment,” he replied.

“Of course not,” I scoffed. “Those are Gran’s wards. These are thinner, and different magic. They’re rooted away from the building, unlike personal wards, the ones you find on residences like my apartment and Gran’s house. This isn’t a home. It doesn’t have the strength inherent in that concept.” I shut up, realizing the vampire looked far too interested in what I was saying … was I blabbing witch secrets? Was any of this a secret?