Magic Edge (10 page)

“Temper, temper. There’s no need to assassinate the poor ice scraper,” she said, sliding into the only available parking spot in front of Daisy’s building. Thank goodness for Sundays. There was never any parking during the week.

Alex opened the car door, stepping out into the city’s Industrial District. The name was something of a misnomer, a fallback to an earlier era. Most of the
industrial work had been ejected from the city years ago—and the pixies, the workers of metal and magic, went with it. The industrial-style buildings, however, had remained.

She mashed the button beside the front entrance a few times. A few seconds later, the door creaked open, and a black-haired pixie in a powder-blue cardigan stepped outside. She was short; the top of her tight bun only reached Alex’s bellybutton.

Like all fairies, pixies had the look of youth about them. Her face was that of a teenager, but her eyes said she’d been around a lot longer. Decades? Centuries? Her magic tasted like metal and hummed like a well-tuned engine.

“No need to rush, dear,” Daisy said, her voice as old as her eyes.

“I have a bleeding assassin in the car,” Alex told her.

The pixie blinked once. “And now you want me to hide the body? Alex, you really must be more careful with that sword of yours.”

“He’s not dead. He’s been shot, and I need you to heal him.”

Daisy looked into the car. “That’s not just any assassin you’ve got there, dear. That’s Slayer.”

Logan stared back at her, his eyes cool. The perfect assassin.

“Can you heal him?” Alex asked.

“I’ll try. But first we need to move this car. Bloody Bob will burst a vein if he sees you parked in his spot.”

“Bloody Bob?”

“The vampire next door.” Daisy flicked her hand at the garage door. The vines covering it slithered back, and the door rolled up. “Bob’s a stickler for rules—most especially the ones he made up himself. And he’s decided that this spot is his.” With her other hand, she waved the car toward the open door. It obeyed her commands, sliding smoothly into the garage. Pixies had a way with all things made of metal.

“Your neighbor sounds like a real treat,” Alex told her.

Tiny Daisy lifted Logan out of the car, as though his solid body of muscle weighed no more than a rag doll. She set him on the sofa in her garage. Yes, she had a sofa in her garage. She had all kinds of other furniture here too. Like a kitchen bar with a bowl full of fruit on top. And a flat panel television.

“You should see how livid he gets when I vacuum on a Sunday,” Daisy said, looking down at Logan’s leg.

“His building isn’t touching yours. How can he even hear the vacuum cleaner?”

“Damn vampires and their super senses.” Daisy began to unravel Logan’s bandages. “Alex, dear, generally one puts the bandage
under
the patient’s clothing, not over.”

“I’m not a doctor. I hack things apart with my sword,” she replied. “Besides, I didn’t have time for that. He was bleeding too much, and there was no one there to heal him. They all ran away when that hooded guy unleashed a dragon on the Glass Dome.”

“A dragon?”

“An illusion of a dragon. He used some sort of…magic artifact? I’ll show it to you later.”

“Goody.” The bloody bandages removed, Daisy pulled out a pair of scissors and began to cut the fabric away from Logan’s wound. “There’s no exit hole. The bone’s been hit.” She looked at Logan. “How are you still conscious?”

“A crazy mercenary kept poking me with an ice scraper.”

Daisy snorted. “Good for her.” She set her hand over the wound. “I can heal you. There will be a price, though.”

“How much do you want?”

“Not that kind of price. I owe Alex on account of the zombies, so I’ll fix you up for free. I mean, to heal something as bad as this, I’ll need to draw on some of your energy. After I’m done, you might doze off.”

“I understand.”

A silvery glow spread across Daisy’s hands, pouring into the bloody hole in Logan’s thigh. The blood around the wound dried up, then dissolved.

“What were you doing at Supernatural Steel?” the pixie asked.

“Investigating,” said Alex.

“Investigating, huh?” She plucked out the bullet that had risen to the wound’s surface. Glowing stitches of crisscrossing magic spread across the hole, merging the skin together.

“Does that usually involve getting shot at?”

“My whole lifestyle involves getting shot at,” Alex replied. “And sword fighting. And dodging destructive magic. And monsters spitting weird goo at me.”

“Have you ever considered switching careers?”

“Besides killing monsters, I don’t have any marketable skills. I doubt they’d appreciate my knack for killing misbehaving supernaturals at places like Wizard House Pizza or Madam Meringue’s. Hell, most of their customers probably are misbehaving supernaturals.”

“Probably,” agreed Daisy. “Ok, I’m done.” She lifted her hands, shaking the last remaining glowing glitter from her fingertips.

Alex looked Logan’s leg. “Amazing. You can’t even tell he was shot.”

“Do you want me to take a look at your arm?” Daisy pointed at the hole in Alex’s jacket.

“Sure,” she said, slipping out of her jacket.

Daisy took a long, hard look at the cuts on her arm. “Were you attacked by a swarm of glass hornets?”

“No. I was standing too close to a mage when he blew up a glass candle cover.”

“This happened today?”

“Yes. Before the tournament.”

“Alex, how many fights have you been in today?”

“Well…”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not really.”

“Three,” Logan said.

“One of those fights was with you, you crazy assassin.”

“You initiated the fight.”

“No, you initiated it by locking me up in chains.”

His sigh was ripe with exasperation. “We’ve been over this already. I did that so you couldn’t attack me as soon as you woke up.”

“Ha! Well, the joke was on you, wasn’t it? Because I did just that!”

“Not immediately. We had a fine chat before that.”

Daisy tapped her finger to Alex’s arm. A wave of comforting warmth filled her, its embrace like a nice, fuzzy blanket.

“That should do it,” the pixie said. “The magic is still repairing your cells. Do try to stay out of trouble for the rest of the day. No more fights, at least until tomorrow.”

Alex planted her hands on her hips. “Hey, it’s not like I asked all those people to attack me.”

“Just yesterday, you flung rocks at a gang of vampire elves,” Logan said.

“So? They’d looted a fairy building and were getting away. I had to get their attention somehow.”

“That was asking them to attack you.”

“You need to put the brakes on that recklessness of yours,” Daisy said.

Logan winked at Alex.

“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” she told him.

“I feel just fine.”

Daisy looked into his eyes. “No exhaustion?” She felt his forehead. “Dizziness?”

“No.”

“Remarkable. I’ve never seen a human take to healing magic this well. There’s always some rejection. But not with you. Your body just sucked it up like a sponge. This didn’t happen last time.”

“Last time?” Alex asked.

He cupped his hands behind his head and leaned back into the armrest. “I’m hungry.”

“Of course you are. And I have just the thing.” Daisy walked off toward the kitchen bar, returning with a plate full of brownies. “I just made these this morning.”

Logan began to eat the brownies. He didn’t shovel them into his mouth, but he was efficient. Only an assassin could eat something that fast without looking like he was rushing it. Alex watched him with strange fascination.

“You said you had something for me to look at,” Daisy reminded her.

“Right.” She removed the pouch of metal shards from her belt. “We found these right where the illusionist who summoned the dragon was standing.”

Daisy spilled out the contents of the bag onto the coffee table beside the sofa. She waved her hand, and the pieces floated up, bobbing up and down like debris on the ocean’s surface.

“What are they?” Alex asked her, reaching for a brownie on Logan’s plate.

He caught her by the wrist before she could touch it. “Mine.”

“You could share just one.”

“Fine.” He released her hand.

Alex snatched the brownie before he had a chance to change his mind. “Daisy?”

The pixie leaned in to get a closer look at the floating pieces. “It’s enchanted metal.”

“Someone spelled it?”

“No. Mages can spell objects, but the magic only lasts for a short time before it evaporates from the metal. Pixies enchant things, forging magic into the metal itself. The effect is permanent.”

“Could an object be enchanted to create the illusion of a dragon?”

“It depends on how big the illusion is and how complete.”

“Big,” Alex said.

She took a bite of the brownie, and magic exploded in her mouth. There was enough kick in that one bite to send a first tier mage sky-high on magic. She set it back down on the plate, and Logan tossed it into his mouth.

“How can you eat that?” she asked him.
 

“Delicious.” He grabbed another.

She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re like a black hole for magic.”

“Intriguing,” Daisy said, watching him eat the brownies. “No one’s ever finished more than one.” She turned her scientific eye on Alex. “You’re acting strangely normal.”

“I’m a magic dud.”

“Hmm.” She picked up the nearest brownie and gave it a sniff. “Smells normal. Tell me more about your dragon illusion, Alex.”

“Right. So it was big. And it was a pretty complex illusion, covering all five senses. It had everyone fooled.”

“Except Alex,” Logan said between bites. “The fire didn’t just look real. It felt hot too. And I could smell things burning.”

“Sounds like a really good illusion.” Daisy waved her hand above the metal pieces, and they began to spin. A soft, silver hum buzzed from them. “Yes, the enchantment in this metal is strong.
First tier alone wouldn’t cut it to see through an illusion like that.
Only the most powerful first tier mages—I’d guess a fraction of a percent—
could do it.”

Alex could feel Logan watching her. She silenced the panicking voices in her head and tried to keep her mind on the metal pieces.

“Could you
put the pieces together to make the object it once was?” she asked Daisy.

“Of course I can.” She swirled her finger around, and the pieces spun faster. There was a flash of light, then a metal ball the size of an orange was floating where the pieces had just been. “Here it is.”

“What is it?” Alex asked her.

“I don’t recognize this object.”

That was saying a lot. Daisy was the city’s expert on magical objects. It took something really bizarre to stump her.

“Oh, no.”

Alex turned to look at Logan. He was staring at the object. His face was even more unreadable than usual, which meant whatever emotions he was trying to hide must have been pretty strong.

“You recognize this?” she asked him.

“The object, no. But the symbol…” He brushed his finger across the subtle engraving on the side of the ball. “That
is the symbol of the
Convictionites. They’re the ones behind this. They’re the ones who are after the Orbs.”

“Convictionites?”

“They’re like…well, a cult, I suppose you could call it. Though they like to refer to themselves as a secret society. Or a kingdom. The organization is made up exclusively of humans. It’s an old cult. They’ve known about the existence of supernaturals for centuries, long before the rest of the world found out.”

“I take it they aren’t friendly to the idea of living in a world with magic?” Alex asked.

“No, they distrust it. And since they knew about magic long before the rest of the human population, they’ve had some time to find ways to fight it.”

“Why do they want the orbs?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gaelyn says the Orbs are made with powerful magic,” Alex said. “So why would the Convictionites want them? That doesn’t sound like the behavior of people who hate magic.”

“Their logo is printed on this magical object,” Daisy pointed out.

“I can’t explain that,” said Logan.

“It’s been too long of a day for me to try to explain anything.” Alex stood up from the sofa, stretching out her arms. “It’s getting late. I’m going home now. Thanks, Daisy.” She snatched up the object and slid it into the largest of her pouches. “I’ll chat with Gaelyn about this, then we can start again tomorrow.”

“You’re going to have to drive him home,” Daisy called out to her.

Alex turned around. “He looks fine.”

“I healed him, yes, but his body has undergone a severe trauma. That bullet took a chip out of his femur. Not only am I surprised he didn’t pass out, I’m shocked he wasn’t screaming in agony.”

“He’s an assassin. They’re all a bit mental.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Logan said, grabbing another brownie.

Alex wasn’t even sure which of them he was responding to.

“I think that’s enough for you.” Daisy snatched the brownie out of his hand. She ignored the cold look he gave her. “Even if he hadn’t just been shot, he’s eaten far too many of those to drive.”

“Fine.” Alex opened the car door. “Let’s go, Logan.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Assassin's Place

“I THINK THE brownies are wearing off,” Logan said. “My leg is waking up.”

Alex turned the car into his driveway. “Just in time. Where’s the remote for this garage door?”

“Next to the Witch Slayers.”

She nudged the bundle of throwing knives aside and fished the remote out of the cup holder. “Do you typically keep a lot of weapons in your car?”

“Sure. Just not as many as I keep on me.”

The garage door slid open, and Alex drove down into the underground garage. It had enough parking spots for twenty cars. Even though half of them were empty, she didn’t need to ask which one was his. The enormous sign stapled to the fence of the neighboring storage cage left no doubt. It read, ‘I generally won’t kill someone for under seven figures, but if you touch my things, I’ll do the job for free. You have been warned.’