Burned by Magic (19 page)

Third Street was all the way on the other side of Shiftertown, near the bay where the more affluent shifters lived. Lakin parked in front of my aunt’s residence, a three-story house with grey siding, dark purple roof tiling, and matching purple shutters. A horse-drawn carriage was already parked at the curb in front of the steps. The front door was wide open, and the sound of a woman wailing was clearly audible from the street.

“Stay out here,” Lakin snapped as he ripped off his helmet. He raced up the steps and into the house. I followed after him, knowing he didn’t have the time to stand around and argue with me.

We found the source of the wailing in the parlor, where a veritable party of shifters were gathered, dressed in dinner finery. I recognized them all – this was the shifter Council and their respective families, likely all here at my aunt’s house for some kind of social event. They were gathered in a circle around a low couch, where a man lay with marble skin that looked like death. He had rich, dark brown hair and was wearing a gold waistcoat, white linen shirt and white slacks. I recognized him instantly as Corin Finehorn – the head of the Deer Clan, and one of the five council members.

“No!” Larana, Finehorn’s wife wailed, clutching her mate’s hand. She wore a dark green dress, gold jewelry dripping from her ears and throat. “It can’t be. He can’t be gone!”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. He placed a gentle hand on the woman’s slim shoulder. “There’s nothing more I can do for him.”

“By Magorah.” My aunt Mafiela spoke in a clipped voice. She wore a white dress that highlighted her slim figure, and her wealth of golden hair was piled atop her head in a matronly up-do. Pearls gleamed softly at her ears, throat and wrists, and if not for her yellow shifter eyes, I would have thought her a human socialite. “This is outrageous. Corin was perfectly healthy when he arrived at dinner tonight. How could this happen?”

“He was poisoned, wasn’t he?”

Lakin winced as every single person in the room turned to look at me. Mafiela’s eyes widened in outrage. “What are you doing in my home!” she demanded, her cheeks coloring.

“My apologies, Chieftain Baine.” Lakin took a step forward to deflect attention onto him. “I was questioning your niece when I got the alert, and she followed me here.”

“Well it’s about time,” Mafiela snapped. “We’ve been waiting for ten minutes.”

“Is… is it true that poison is what killed my mate?” Larana rose to her feet from her position beside the couch. Her doe eyes were filled with tears.

“The reaction does seem alarmingly similar to that of someone afflicted with silver poisoning,” the doctor hedged.

Larana’s eyes flashed. “You!” she pointed a trembling finger at my aunt. “You killed my mate!”

“That’s absurd!” Mafiela snapped. “Why would I do such a thing? Corin and I were good friends, fellow council members!”

“He was eating your food.” Larana’s voice wobbled. “Drinking from your glasses.” Her face crumpled as she dissolved into tears again. “He’s gone, and it’s all your fault!”

The woman lunged at my aunt, her eyes wild with grief and rage. Mafiela sidestepped, her own face mottled with fury. She raised her hand to strike Larana, and I darted forward, catching the blow before it could land.

“Don’t you think this poor woman’s gone through enough?” I snarled. “You couldn’t even take a moment to offer her some consolation, and now you’re going to beat her up too?”

Silence froze the room. Mafiela’s yellow eyes glittered at me with pure malice, and for a moment I wondered whether or not she would try to strike me too. I had no illusions about her – she might be dressed up like a lady, but beneath the façade she was all beast, one of the most ruthless people I knew. Part of me wished that she would lash out – I longed for provocation of any kind to take my years of pent-up anger out on her. But my more rational side knew that I could never get away with such behavior in front of the Council, even if I was the Chief Mage’s apprentice.

“Mafiela.” The deep voice of Toras, the Tiger Clan Chieftain, rumbled through the air. “The half-breed is right.”

“Fine.” Sneering, Mafiela wrenched her hand from mine. “I apologize for my behavior. Now get out of my house.”

Trembling with anger, I took a step toward her, intending to give her a piece of my mind.

“Don’t.” Lakin’s hand clamped around my wrist. I whirled on him, a fiery retort on my lips, but the silent plea in his yellow-orange eyes gave me pause. “This isn’t the time.”

Larana’s sobs started up again, and I glanced to where she sat on the floor, her shoulders shaking, her face buried in her hands. The weighty gazes of the crowd standing behind me settled onto my back, and I knew that I was only holding things up.

“Alright.” I pulled my wrist from Lakin’s grasp. “Ask for Comenius over at Witches End,” I muttered as I brushed past him. “He has what you’re looking for.”

Lakin started, but I didn’t wait around – my four hours were up and it was time I got back to the palace before the Chief Mage decided to fry my ass.

I
threw open the doors
to the Chief Mage’s study and stormed over to his desk, where he sat reading a thick, leather-bound book.

He barely looked up as I slapped down a newspaper on his desk, simply flicking his eyes up from the tome he was studying before returning to it. “You’re late.”

I balled my hands into fists, then unclenched them before I did something I would regret. “Sorry. I was a little busy dealing with the aftermath of another murder.”

The Chief Mage lowered the book onto his desk.

Taking that as an invitation to speak, I plowed on. “I was visiting Roanas’s grave when I got the news. Councilman Finehorn was murdered.”

Iannis listened as I recounted the story, his expression unreadable. When I was done, he simply gave me a look. “While alarming, there is no proof of interracial involvement here, or that silver was involved either. In fact, from what I’m hearing, Chieftain Baine sounds like the prime suspect.”

“She didn’t do this.” I ground my teeth. “Believe me, if I thought she did I would be the first to step aside and let the authorities nail her. But I heard the doctor – he said it looked a lot like silver poisoning. You
can’t
tell me it doesn’t sound like there’s a connection. And if that’s not enough, there’s also this.” I slapped my hand on the desk, drawing his attention back to the newspaper.

A frown creased the Chief Mage’s alabaster face as his eyes flicked down toward the paper, and then back up again. “I saw this headline this morning. Why are you bringing it to me now?”

I grabbed the paper – a copy of the latest issue from the Herald – and shook it in front of his face. “‘Strung-Out Shifters – The Newest Danger in Solantha,’” I recited, the headline burned into my retinas. I’d seen a copy of it fluttering from a newsstand on my way back, and had grabbed it. “Are you seriously saying that this piece of bullshit propaganda means nothing to you?”

Sighing, the Chief Mage picked up the paper, his violet eyes scanning the article. They narrowed as the seconds ticked by. “The Herald is reporting high incidence of drug use among shifters.”

I folded my arms. “Yeah, and you don’t see a problem with that?” I decided not to mention that the Herald had basically painted shifters as irresponsible druggies who were a danger to society and practically outright demanded that the mages annihilate them. The Chief Mage probably wouldn’t care.

“Of course there’s a problem.” The Chief Mage slowly set the paper down. “Shifters aren’t affected by narcotics. We bred you that way specifically so that as soldiers you wouldn’t be susceptible to the drugs and poisons normal humans would die from.”

I decided to pretend he didn’t say that last part – the last thing I needed was to get into another argument with him over the cruelty mages had inflicted upon shifters through the centuries. “Right. And all the shifter deaths in the papers that appear to be poison-related… those shouldn’t be possible either, right?”

The Chief Mage scowled. “This is not the appropriate time for this conversation, Miss Baine. My time is limited, and has been set aside so that we can work on your magical education, not on solving murders.”

“Oh yeah?” I scowled, wanting very much to plow my fist into that superior expression.

And that’s when an idea came to me.

“Why can’t we combine both?” I asked, dropping my scowl in favor of a sly grin.

Iannis looked taken aback. “What exactly are you proposing?”

I propped my hands on my hips. “I’m proposing that you teach me some kind of spell that I can use to drag your stiff ass around the city and show you what’s really going on in this town.”

I expected him to snap at me for the comment about his ass, but instead he simply pressed his lips together in thought, saying nothing as a calculating gleam shone in his violet eyes.

“You’re proposing some kind of... reconnaissance?” he finally asked. “Where we can observe without being observed ourselves?”

I arched a brow. Did he have to make everything sound so academic?

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Very well.” His lips curved into a small smile. Electricity skipped through my veins. “I will play your game. This spell is a bit beyond your current skill level, but if you master it, I will do as you ask.”

We spent the next two hours struggling through an illusion spell - or rather, I struggled while Iannis stood in front of me and showed off. He made it look easy, the way he flickered from the form of a young girl to a hulking dog to a hunched old man, while I had trouble maintaining the singular form I was trying to recreate. By the time I’d mastered it, I was sweaty, hungry, and had a hell of a headache.

“Well done,” the Chief Mage said as I stood there in my new form. I wasn’t sure if the admiration in his eyes was due to my magical prowess or because I looked like a curvy redhead. Either way, though, it was gratifying. If I could distract someone as rigid and logical as Iannis with an illusion, then I could do it to lesser-willed people too, which would come in handy as an Enforcer.

“Am I ever going to get my Enforcer’s bracelet back?” I asked grumpily, now that I’d been reminded of it.

The Chief Mage arched a brow. “In due time.” He flickered from his own form to that of a muscular human with shaggy blond hair, tight red pants and an electric blue shirt that stretched across his broad chest. “For now, I suggest we go and embark upon this adventure of yours... and perhaps get some sustenance for you as well.”

I snorted, trying not to stare. For a stuffy old mage he seemed to have a good grip on human fashion sense. “You’re going to have to lose the ‘holier than thou’ dialect if you want to blend in,” I told him. “No human looking like you is going to talk like that.”

“Alright,” he said easily. “Let’s go have some fun on the town, huh?”

I blinked. That was a lot easier for him than I’d thought it would be. “Let’s,” I agreed uncertainly, no longer sure this ‘adventure’ was going to go quite the way I thought it would.

My steambike would only make us stand out, so we took a cab to the Sycamore, a popular gastro pub in Maintown that served as the local watering hole for humans. The cab let us off on Argent Street, across from the restaurant, and I took a moment to eye the place nervously as Iannis paid the fare. The black-and-red corner building had a line snaking out the door, and every single one of those trendy men and women were one hundred percent human, not a single shifter in sight.

“Alright,” Iannis said as the cab drove off. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.”

He paused, his foot already halfway off the curb.

“What names are we going by? We can’t exactly go in there using our own.” My name was unusual enough as it was, and now it was being printed all over the papers. And I doubted there was a human named after the Chief Mage.

Iannis shrugged. “You can call me Ian for the occasion,” he decided. “And you’ll be Nadia.”

“Nadia?” I grumbled, but then he hooked his arm through mine and I forgot all about complaining about the name, which wouldn’t have been my first choice. A warm current flowed through me as he tucked my body against his and escorted me across the street.

“Umm, what are you doing?” I muttered as we headed for the back of the line.

Iannis didn’t even look down at me. “We’re getting in line. It would be suspicious if I used my rank or my magic to try and bypass all these people to gain entrance.”

I would have rolled my eyes if I hadn’t been so damned uncomfortable. “No, I meant what are you doing
here
?” I hissed, tugging a little on my arm through his to draw attention to it.

He arched his brow as he looked down at me with pale blue eyes like Comenius’s, and suddenly I wished they were their normal violet hue. I tugged at the collar of my jacket nervously, uncomfortably warm beneath his gaze.

“We’re undercover, aren’t we?” he murmured, knowing that my sensitive ears would catch his words despite the buzz of conversation from the line. “If we’re coming here as a couple we should look the part.”

I gritted my teeth as heat continued to spread throughout my body, and glanced up at the moon as we settled in at the back of the line. It hung bright and round in the inky, star-splattered sky, perilously close to being full, and my hormones surged in response to its magical pull. Shifters were always strongest at the height of the lunar cycle – for some reason it gave us a boost, allowing us to shift more frequently and faster than usual.

“Are you alright?”

I glanced up to see Iannis watching me, once again disconcerted by the fact that I was looking up at a tanned blond rather than a pale redhead. His illusion was so good that even I couldn’t see through it – which boded well for us, as it meant none of the humans in the bar would be able to either.

Unfortunately that thought didn’t do anything to calm my nerves.

“I’m fine,” I told him, giving him a sweet smile I didn’t feel, in case anyone was looking. “Why do you ask?”

He dropped my hand and slipped his arm around my waist, drawing me in against his body. “I sense a lot of tension coming from you,” he murmured into my hair as his big hand rubbed up and down the curve where my hip met my torso. “I’ve seen males do this with their females to offer them comfort in social situations. Is it helping?”

“No,” I hissed, keeping my voice down so the other humans in line wouldn’t hear. I shivered as white-hot sparks skipped up and down my nerve endings. “Probably because you’re not my male and I’m not your female.”

“You are for the purposes of this outing,” he pointed out, but he stopped rubbing his hand up and down my side. “Though perhaps your overly emotional mind can’t make that distinction.”

“That. Is. Not. The. Point.” I sucked in a deep breath through my nostrils to keep from decking him, annoyed by his jab at my race. Shifters
were
more emotional than the average human as a general rule, but he didn’t have to keep rubbing it in. Unfortunately, taking a breath didn’t help calm my nerves as it only caused me to inhale his musky sandalwood scent. The sparks raced through my body double-time, and I bit my lip.

“You’re right, of course.” He had the grace to look apologetic. “I suppose I’m going off topic.”

Ya think?
I turned my attention to the conversations around us and did my best to ignore my unlikely date.

To my annoyance, no one was talking about anything interesting, and we spent the next twenty minutes crawling at a snail’s pace toward the entrance, Iannis’s hard body pressed against mine. My traitorous mind wondered if the muscles moving beneath his t-shirt were his, or if they were just part of the illusion. After all, he’d changed his coloring, outfit and facial features, but his weight-height proportions seemed to be the same…

This is
so
not helping.

I was saved from my raging hormones by the doorman, who gave us a cursory inspection before allowing us into the bar. The color scheme on the inside was exactly the same as the outside, with burgundy drapes covering the walls and black, glossy countertops and tables everywhere. Light music blended with the buzz of chatter as patrons sat and talked, and the aroma of fried foods made my stomach growl.

Iannis led me to the crowded bar, and we somehow managed to find two burgundy and black barstools near the middle. We ordered drinks from the bartender, who served them up along with two menus for us to look at.

I arched a brow as Iannis raised a beer bottle to his lips, tickled by the incongruity of the sight. “Know what you want?” I asked, noticing that he hadn’t touched the menu.

He nodded. “I’m partial to the pork belly donuts and the beer-battered tilapia.”

My jaw dropped. “You’ve
been
here before?”

He grinned at me, and my stomach flip-flopped. “You don’t really think I’ve never ventured out into the city, do you?” he asked, leaning in so he could murmur in my ear. I shivered as his warm, beer-scented breath tickled my earlobe. “Perhaps it’s been a while since I’ve been out, but I’m not as stuffy as you might think,
Miss Baine
.”

He sat back to enjoy his beer, and I snatched up the menu and began perusing the selection to cover my amazement. Sure enough, both the donuts and the tilapia were listed on the menu, along with a slew of other things. I decided on the lamb burger and an order of donuts for myself, and set the menu down so I could focus on the conversations going on around the bar.