Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) (3 page)

Spinning around, I saw a giant ball of flame engulfing the place where Josephina sat propped up against the display case. The child screamed, as loud as a newborn could. I rounded the corner with the antique cash register and my jaw slackened. Josephina's body was an outline, a slightly darker shape within a raging inferno.

Hurriedly connecting with my magic, I threw up a vacuum around the fire, trying to starve it of air, adding a frantic, “
Smorae
” and hoping that I'd used the correct verb.

It did nothing. For an instant, I doubted my Anglo-Saxon. Then I realized the reason the spell didn't work: the fire didn't take in oxygen and exhale carbon monoxide.

It wasn't a normal fire. But for the smell of smoke in my nostrils and the sight of flames, it didn't exist. Within seconds, the outline disappeared and became a white-hot core which seared my retinas and prompted the baby's wail to new pitches.

Soothing her as best I could, I tried the door again—and felt it wriggle from someone else on the other side starting to open it.

I heard the wainscoting door open and after a second, Mordon yelled something and darted around me. He ran to the inferno and put out his hand. I saw him struggle to connect with the fire, to quench it and kill it, but nothing came of his efforts.

“It's not there, Mordon, I've tried. My element does nothing, your element won't work, either.”

He jammed his hand in the flames.

I rushed forward, yelling, “what are you doing” and grabbed his arm. When it came out of the fire, his hand was white and powdered with...“Frost?”

Mordon slumped back, sitting flat on the floor, staring at the white flames which were now diminishing, getting smaller and smaller, until all that was left of the incineration was the faint scent of singed hair and a tiny handful of ashes.

The baby cried afresh. I looked down at the blotchy-faced thing and tried jiggling my arms in a soft bounce, not having a clue what to do with it now that Josephina was gone. Feeling a little shameful, as if I had somehow brought this about. Or that I could have stopped it in some way. Should I have just walked out on her and left her on her own? But I didn't see how that would have in any way been the responsible, good-person thing to do.

Despite this, I couldn't think of a way that this night could have gone worse than it had.

With the white-hot burst of energy gone, a draft tickled my skin and I began to shiver. Slowly I began to catch up with what had happened and accept the reality that my life would never, ever be the same again. Avoiding looking at Mordon, I straightened out the baby's blanket. Red tinted my cheeks and my fingers wouldn't stop shaking. Then I let out a breath.

I wished I could go back in time and have nothing to worry about, to not wonder if I'd somehow caused all of this to happen. But of course I hadn't. She'd come for help, and I'd done my best. She hadn't fought the fire, hadn't been surprised that it had struck, even.

Which begged the question, what now?

Mordon ran a hand through his hair, the jewels of his rings catching on the flashes of lightning, staring at the spot the woman had been. Mordon climbed to his feet in one graceful movement and touched the ragged marks where Josephina's nails had torn into my skin.

“What happened?” he asked.

“She just appeared, after you left. Bam, here. Didn't set off any wards. Didn't seem harmful. I couldn't walk away and leave her. Nothing went wrong. I don't know what happened. But that was a...a...I don't know what to do now. I swear there was no warning.” I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. “She came out of nowhere. Needed help. I made a blood oath.”

“To do what?”

“She said she wanted me to keep her away from Cole. And give her to a man...Julius Septimus.”

“The baby?”

“No,” I said. “She kept referring to herself, not to the baby. Now she's...she's not even ashes. Mordon. What happened?”

Mordon folded me into his arms, gazing at the spot where the fire had been and had left no trace. Not answering, Mordon made crooning noises, and showed me how to hold the newborn. He wouldn't take it for himself, and he wouldn't stop staring at the place where maybe, just maybe, there might have been a bubble in the jewellery counter glass where it hadn't been before.

“Was there anyone else around?” Mordon asked.

“I don't think so.”

“She came here alone, gave birth, and burned?”

I sat stunned. “I didn't see anyone else. She didn't say she was cursed. Was it a curse?”

Mordon stroked his chin. “I do not know.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “What now?”

“Now?”

“Now, you follow through on your promise. If you couldn't keep this Josephina safe, you need to extend that instead to what she has entrusted you with.”

I felt heat rise in my cheeks. The urge to snap at him dominated, so I kept quiet. I clenched a fist. “I meant, should we go to the Magic Constabulary?”

Mordon frowned at the cracks in the floor. “Since we know Barnes, that would help our case. However, another crazy story connected to you might raise some eyebrows. A few members of society believe you are half-mad and unpredictable at best. They may believe you lit her on fire.”

“That's ridiculous. I can't even burn a letter.”

“That tidbit will make the conspiracy theorists very eager indeed. Can you truly not command a lick of flame, or is it a carefully constructed lie? After all, fire elementals are far more common than wind.” Mordon scowled. “Any hint of scandal will make keeping the infant under your care difficult.”

He was right. There were people who inherently distrusted people with fey in their blood, and my half-feral magic compounded matters. I was in the public eye now, and a story like this would stir up questions. Right when I'd hoped to start a 'normal' life, too.

“We have to tell our coven the truth,” I said.

“Yes, but they may agree it is best to not spread the word around.”

A whisper of wind moved the ashes. A glint of light reflecting off a shiny object caught my eye.

Something compelled me to advance on the spot, to reach a bloodied hand into the pile of dust, I felt dizzy and revolted. Mordon said nothing until I drew back from the ashes with a pea-sized gemstone in my fingers.

“What is it?” Mordon asked.

I shook my head and dropped it into his waiting hands. He held it between thumb and forefinger, examining it from the backlight of a green ember.

“It's a teardrop. Amber colored.” His lionlike eyes met mine. “It's very powerful.”

“Powerful enough to kill for?”

“Without doubt.” Mordon frowned. “We need to be rid of it as fast as we can. Sweep away the dust, no good will come of leaving trace of her presence. Hurry, we haven't time to waste if anyone was following Josephina.”

I did as he asked. Mordon knelt on the floor, marking out a circle and symbols, preparing what seemed like nasty wards. I knelt to help him, then decided that my time would be better spent cleaning the baby, as Mordon was not only faster at doing the symbols, he also hadn't told me what he was doing and I knew from the set of his shoulders that he was in no mood for a lengthy lesson. All we'd do was start a snipping, stressed-out fight. Explanations could wait, I reasoned.

As I started to swab down the child with the cloth dampened from a day-old water bottle beneath the counter, there was an explosion from the back room which shook the airplane overhead and made everything leap half an inch on their shelves. A sudden shield popped up in front of Mordon and me, vibrating as bits of wood and porcelain struck it. Belatedly I recognized the shield as one of the shop's automatic defenses—I'd never seen these particular ones in force before.

I clutched the infant to my chest.

The door leading to the back room was in a million little shards embedded in anything soft enough to accept the shrapnel. Dust drifted like fog out of the busted opening.

Our eyes met and Mordon slowly set down his chalk. Then he curled his fists around his rings, the gems one by one starting to radiate a light from within. Even the shop itself tensed, every ward standing at ready.

Waiting to see what had penetrated through the defenses.

The first sign of its movement was the noise. It sounded like rocks sliding one against the other, a groaning roll of rubble which I thought was the tumbling of the brick wall and the means by which it had entered. But the noises got louder and louder, and with it came the cool, damp chill which I normally only ever felt when I was at the site of a particularly bad haunting. The hair on my arms rose and the infant had gone strangely quiet.

Mordon just stayed there, kneeling on the floor, his eyes on mine reading my expression. Waiting.

It approached the door, those grinding noises getting louder and louder until I at last saw the first sign of it—the stubby, gray fingers grasping the remains of the door frame. What they were I didn't know, but they weren't human, nor anything so easily identifiable. Still I waited. A slow simmering ball of white heat crouched in Mordon's palms, needing the signal for when he had a target.

With greater chill its head entered the room, a thing with two horns, huge eyes, blunt nose, and a mouth which seemed to encompass all of its face. There was no color to be found at all, the beast rendered a solid gray, its skin rough, its features deeply set as though chiseled. Under my fingers I felt the infant's breathing increase but I didn't remove my eyes from the new face which was looking slowly, ever so slowly, around the room. It eased its chest out of the door right when its head turned in my direction. It saw me and smiled.

“Now,” I said.

Mordon spun. The firebolt left his hands and streaked through the air. Mordon rolled behind the shelter of a heavy chest right as the firebolt struck the intruder full in the neck and upper chest. Its head slapped back and it tumbled to the floor. Mordon's expression asked his question.

“I think you got it.”

The infant, though, screwed up her face into displeasure. When I next saw the thing, it had its hand to its head, shaking, and it glared at me with a snarl. Mordon looked at it and made a wild dash over the counter, urging me downwards with him.

“It's a grotesque.” This statement he accompanied with a few choice words which would have made Nest scowl at him, given his present company.

“Well, it is ugly,” I said, watching through the glass as it got to its feet and started to crawl on all fours towards us. The wards assailed it, flames soaring higher, higher, higher, up towards the ceiling, hot enough to burn, melt, and even forge metal, yet leaving the shop's contents untroubled. The intruder hissed and withdrew, leaping to the relative safety of the top of a bookshelf.

Mordon gave me a look which said he wasn't pleased with my levity. Except I wasn't trying to be funny, I was making an observation. People often didn't appreciate my observations. Mordon said, “No, it's a guardian.”

“Of what, a crypt?”

The comment, meant seriously, Mordon took as a joke, which resulted in his sigh and glare. Upon seeing my sour expression, he said, “Churches. They guard churches from evil.”

“I thought those were gargoyles,” I said, watching as it leaned over the edge of the bookshelf, its haunches high in the air, its other half steadying itself for a jump to the next place of shelter to get nearer us.

Mordon said, “No, gargoyles are fancy looking water spouts to keep the church walls safe from rain. Grotesques do all the heavy work, keeping the undesireables at bay.”

“What's it doing here?”

I said, “If there's anyone behind that thing, it's Cole, and if there was ever a man to be refused admittance to a church...”

“I know it.” Mordon seized me by the waist and I braced myself.

“What are we going to do?”

“The only thing we can do.”

The grotesque jumped for a shelf up on the wall which would provide easy access to us. When its hands closed on the edge of the shelf, the other end of the shelf shot upward, sending a spray of antique urns everywhere. Some hit the grotesque as he fell, others broke on the way down and a host of particularly angry ghosts burst forth, falling on the grotesque as it floundered on its back.