Magic in the Shadows (15 page)

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Authors: Devon Monk

BOOK: Magic in the Shadows
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“Not until I hear from you, there isn’t.”
I searched his face for a hint of why he had picked me, out of all the Hounds in the city. I’d only worked for him once. Some of the other Hounds had worked for him more than once. Even Sid had, I think.
“Okay, I give up,” I finally said. “Why me?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stared off toward the circle of ash and shifted against the railing, so he was standing more than leaning, his arms still crossed over his chest.
“You aren’t like the other Hounds, Allie. You see and track spells on a level most Hounds don’t even try for. Plus, most Hounds who have more than three years of experience have already burned out on drugs and alcohol. They don’t, or maybe can’t, Hound as precisely as you can.”
“Pike was good,” I said. “Better than me.”
“No,” Stotts said quietly. “No.” He pushed off the railing and stuck his hands in the pockets of his coat. He stopped right in front of me, and then just as quietly asked, “What are those marks on your hands and arms?”
I blinked a couple times. I didn’t know what to tell him. Would he buy it if I said they were just tattoos I’d gotten on a wild drunken weekend?
“They have something to do with magic, don’t they?” he continued. “With channeling it? Using it? Sensing it?”
I could not remember if I’d ever talked to him about the marks. Would it matter if he knew that I carried magic inside me, that I had always carried a small magic in me and after Cody Miller had pulled magic through me, that small flame had ignited into a roaring, barely controlled wildfire of magic in my bones, in my blood, in my soul?
No one else could do that. No one I knew about anyway. Holding magic in your body was a short road to death.
“It is from magic,” I said. My heart was beating too fast. I felt like he’d just caught me, found out the secret I’d been trying to hide. Not that I could really hide metallic whorls of color that spread over my face and arm.
“Magic marked me,” I exhaled. Why was it so hard to tell him this?
Because you know it’s wrong
, my father’s voice whispered in the back of my mind.
He shouldn’t know. He is not one of our kind.
“When?” Stotts asked.
“I don’t remember when it happened,” I said. That was the truth. Nola had told me how I got the marks. The coma had taken that memory from me. Still, deep in the pit of my stomach, I could feel the press and movement of magic, like a sleeping thing curled inside me. I felt the memory of when it had burned through me, pain and pleasure. I felt the memory of when it had first taken root in me.
“After the coma, that’s when I first remember seeing it.”
“And does it enhance magic use? Does it make things more clear?”
I realized I could not look away from his eyes. He wasn’t using Influence on me, but he had a presence, an intensity. As if he were really counting on me to tell him this. To do the right thing. And if I looked away, he would know I was lying.
“It makes using magic more painful.” It came out straight. Even. And I meant every word of it.
He pressed his lips together. “I saw you use magic. When you Hounded for me last time for the kidnapping, I cast Sight, to watch what you did.”
“I thought you were keeping an eye out on the thugs in the neighborhood.”
“I was. When you drew on magic, those colors on your hand, on your face, glowed.”
I nodded. “I don’t know why that happens. I don’t know why this is the way it is. Why I am the way I am.”
He studied me and I did not look away. No deceit. I truly did not understand why magic had marked me, nor why I could hold it in my body while others could not. But that was all I could give him, all I could tell him. I didn’t know how much Stotts knew about nonstandard things about magic. Or how much he knew about the Authority.
Nothing
, my father whispered.
He is not our kind.
Okay, so maybe now I did know how much Stotts knew. But here’s where the trouble started. He was the law. And I was working for him. I was also about to be trained by people who used magic illegally.
Ancient magic use is not illegal. It is only unknown.
“Have you talked to anyone about it?” he asked.
I tipped my head to the side, hoping my dad would just shut up so I could concentrate on one conversation at a time. Because I thought I was missing something here. Stotts was digging for a response from me. But I didn’t know what.
“Not really. I talked to Nola about it before the coma. Or at least she told me I talked to her about it.”
“I mean, since you’ve been back. Back in the city.”
“Is there someone I should talk to?” I asked, shifting the focus of the question so I could gain some ground. “Do you know someone who might be able to tell me more about this?” I held up my right hand, wiggled my fingers.
He didn’t look away from my face.
“The city is full of people. All kinds.” He emphasized the word
kinds
just like my father had, and I worked hard not to show him how that hit me. “Charlatans. Pushers, users, cons. You know the type.”
“Yes. I do.”
“I want you to know you can come to me. Anytime. For any reason. And my . . . resources will be at your disposal.”
“Even if I don’t take the job with you?”
“Even if we never work together again.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s nice to know.”
My father pushed somewhere behind my eyes, and I tasted leather and wintergreen at the back of my throat. I also sensed his displeasure. He didn’t like Detective Stotts. Probably didn’t trust him. And while I wasn’t sure that I trusted Stotts either, I did find myself liking the man.
Not that I was childish enough to make friends just because my dad didn’t approve of someone.
Okay, yeah, I was that childish.
“Just wondering,” I said. “Did Nola put you up to this?”
He smiled. “You don’t take anyone at face value, do you?”
“Not even a newborn baby.”
He chuckled. “That’s too bad. No, Nola didn’t ask me to do anything for you. But if she did, I probably would have done it.”
Was he telling me that he liked her? That he maybe already felt something toward her? I wasn’t sure what I thought about that. Nola lived a small-town life in a place where magic could not touch her. Stotts was in the middle of a city crawling with magical crime. Opposites might attract, but that didn’t mean they didn’t also explode on contact.
“That’s good to know too,” I said.
The sound of a car engine broke off our little heart-to-heart.
We both took a step away from each other. I, at least, was surprised we were still standing that close together.
A Mercedes-Benz drove up and parked on the side of the street, behind where Davy still stood, hunched-shouldered beneath the tree, probably soaked through anywhere his coat didn’t cover. Why didn’t the kid just get in his car and out of the rain, or come on over here and take shelter in the gazebo? That boy made no sense.
The car engine turned off, and Violet’s bodyguard, Kevin, got out of the driver’s side. Kevin had to be my height or so, but carried himself like a man who was used to getting lost in the crowd. Blond hair, brown eyes, and a face that most resembled a puppy dog, eyes too big, jaw too soft, he didn’t look like the killer he was. Nor did he look like a man who was good—very good—at using magic. He was part of the Authority, and Violet knew that because she was my father’s widow, and apparently Dad didn’t mind telling her about the secret society of magic users.
Not that I was bitter about it or anything.
Violet was just a beat behind him, sliding out of the passenger’s side, and wearing a full-length wool peacoat as blue as a stormy ocean, the wide hood pulled up. Her figure was still trim.
They walked over to the gazebo, side-by-side.
Stotts waved to them, and Violet waved back. They strolled up the gazebo steps, Violet in front, Kevin behind her.
“Hello, Detective Stotts,” she said.
“Mrs. Beckstrom, Mr. Cooper.” Stotts shook hands with both of them. “Thank you for coming out.”
Violet pushed her hood back and put on her glasses. “I didn’t know you’d be here, Allie.”
In the gray light, Violet’s hair seemed to have a warmth of its own, the fiery hue of autumn leaves. I found myself unable to look away from her, unable to exhale, as emotions that were not mine poured through me in a river of heat.
Images flashed behind my eyes, memories, of Violet. And with those memories came emotions.
I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her. I wanted to feel her heartbeat against my own. I wanted to touch her. Love her.
Holy shit. I took a step back, away. Away from Violet. Away from the emotions raging in me. Emotions that were not my own, but my father’s.
It was only a second, a hot, vivid second of wanting her . . . as a man, as my father wanted her, but it freaked me out.
I didn’t know if I should be sick or angry. Angry was easier.
Get the hell out of my head and leave me alone
, I said.
The presence of my father did not dim, but he did something to lower the intensity of his emotions. There was some sort of curtain between us, a curtain that dampened his feelings.
My apology
, he said stiffly. And here’s the weird part—I knew he meant it. Really meant it. The primary emotion that filtered through the curtain now was embarrassment. He didn’t like sharing his emotions with me—never had when he was alive, still didn’t now that he was dead.
I wasn’t overjoyed about it either.
“Allie?” Violet asked.
“Hounding,” I said, brushing right over my little melt-down by striding over to the circle of ash. “For Detective Stotts.” The sooner I got this job nailed down, the sooner I could get out to Maeve’s and get rid of my dad.
I just needed to keep my cool.
“This,” I said, “is what’s left of a Conversion spell. No trailing line, no signature, nothing but this circle.”
Violet knelt next to the circle. “Is this what you saw before on the farm?” she asked.
I assumed she was talking to me. “I don’t remember what I saw before, but I’m pretty sure this matches what Nola described to me. It is very familiar. I know I’ve seen something like it before.”
“Huh.” She pulled a small vial and something that looked like a tongue depressor out of her purse. She scooped up some of the material and tapped it into the vial. She dropped that in her purse, then walked around the circle and knelt again.
“There are no other lines in the center?” she asked.
I looked down. There clearly weren’t. But she wasn’t asking me.
“No,” Stotts said.
His gaze was unfocused, his feet spread as if he were holding up a weight. His right hand was held palm forward, in an old-fashioned “stop” motion. And though he held still, I knew, because I could smell it, that he had cast a variation of Sight.
Right. I forgot that even though he called people like me in to Hound cases, it didn’t mean he couldn’t use magic to see things himself. Hounds could just see it, taste it, smell it, and track it better than any other magic user.
“Nothing on any of the standard spectrums,” he said.
Correction. He used magic very well. My opinion of him went up a notch.
He put his hand down, releasing the spell, and shook his wrist out. “It looks like a circle of ash. I wouldn’t think it had anything to do with magic if I hadn’t seen it fall when Allie broke the Conversion spell.”
Kevin, who had walked across the gazebo to stand with his hands harmlessly in his pockets while he stared out at where Davy stood, suddenly stiffened. His puppy dog gaze slid over to me. That was it. No other reaction. But I knew he didn’t believe Stotts.
As well he shouldn’t. It wasn’t a Conversion spell I had broken. I sucked at anything along the lines of spells traditionally meant for medical use, and breaking a spell took just as much skill as casting a spell.
“Do you have any idea who is involved in this?” Violet asked.
Stotts shook his head. “Nothing here. No one. Just the spell, reported by some dog walkers whose dogs wouldn’t get anywhere near the gazebo, and who reported getting sick the closer they came to look at it.”
Even I could tell that didn’t sound like a Conversion spell. Violet pushed on her knees to stand, and Kevin was suddenly beside her, catching her hand and helping her up. “Thank you,” she said with a smile.
He made it look like business as usual, but my dad, behind my eyes, focused on the two of them and would not look away.
Stop it
, I pushed at him.
But he did not stop it. With a force of will a dead man should not have, he stared at Violet’s smile, at the softening of Kevin’s expression, then followed Kevin’s hand to where it lingered just a second too long, too gently, too damn much in love, on Violet’s hand.

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