Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) (11 page)

“She was interested in my necklace … and my knife.”

“In your magic,” Warner countered. “To lift a spell that might have better been left in place.”

Pulou sighed. “This is why guardians do not procreate easily … except when they’re enthralled in a fertility ceremony.” He smirked at me.

“My mother had something to do with that.”

“A beautiful witch indeed,” Pulou said, his voice trailing off as he lapsed into deep thought.

The silence stretched so long that I looked over at Warner to find him staring at me … the kind of staring that was probably completely inappropriate in front of a guardian dragon who was also pretty much my boss.

“You blame me.” Pulou spoke so quickly that I flinched, then blushed over being caught staring deeply into my boyfriend’s eyes. “For the child.”

I shifted awkwardly, not sure how to answer without lying.

“The task I’ve set for you is dangerous, alchemist. No one would fault you for stepping away.”

Well, that was insulting. “Then who else would do it if not me?”

“No one,” Warner said quietly. “The warrior and I should track and apprehend the child who claims to be Shailaja, and let the other instruments lie hidden. As they should be.”

Pulou eyed Warner, displeased that he was attempting to rehash their ongoing argument over the collection of the instruments of assassination.

“I’m not shirking,” I said. Stupidly stubborn — that’s me, all day long. “It’s my fault she has the map. We get it back, then we can talk about the other stuff later.”

“How did the child track you?” Pulou asked.

Err, I didn’t actually know.

“Blood,” Warner answered for me. “From when she bit you in the fortress.”

Pulou narrowed his eyes. “The child of the treasure keeper,” he murmured, like he was trying to piece together something.

“She’ll come for Jade,” Warner said.

“But she’ll need another object of power first,” I said. “She wanted my knife, but then decided I wasn’t powerful enough to unlock a true dragon.”

“You have a lead on the location of the second instrument?” Pulou asked. “One that takes you to San Francisco?”

“Yes,” I answered. I didn’t bother to mention that the ‘lead’ involved Kett. The guardians’ prejudice toward vampires was so fervent that it bordered on genocidal.

“Then we will set a trap,” Pulou said. “You and the sentinel will hunt the instrument. Since she believes she needs your assistance, alchemist, the child will most likely hunt you in turn. The warrior and I will follow when most appropriate or most able. Perhaps the far seer has you in his gaze, alchemist. That would be helpful.”

Pulou eyed Warner contemplatively. The sentinel’s countenance was stormy, to say the least, but that didn’t appear to bother the treasure keeper. “It is too bad your mother is no longer with us, Warner Jiaotuson. I’ve never met a slyer hunter. Her successor is still young … and not an advocate of collecting the instruments.”

“I’m not an advocate of Jade being bait,” Warner said, completely ignoring the reference to his mother and being far too pissy for his own good.

Pulou stepped forward to clap a hand on Warner’s shoulder. The sentinel actually stumbled under this friendly assault.

I attempted to hide my glee over Warner’s protectiveness but completely failed.

Pulou smirked at me over Warner’s bowed head. “The alchemist will have her way, sentinel. Which, in this instance, also happens to be my way. You will have to be content with the warrior and me at your backs.” Pulou removed his hand from Warner’s shoulder and looked at me. “I assume your father can track you?”

Err, I wasn’t sure about that.

“You share magic,” Pulou added. “As the children of guardians usually do.”

Yeah, I hadn’t missed the obvious link between my knife and my father’s sword, either. We could both call our weapons forth with a mere thought, though my knife was carved out of jade and my father’s sword was a manifestation of his demigod power. So ‘sharing magic’ with the warrior of the guardians seemed a bit of an extreme statement.

“Jade’s personal magic acts like a natural shield,” Warner said. “Especially when she wears the necklace.”

“I’m not taking the necklace off,” I said.

“Of course not.” Pulou drew a nasty-looking dagger with an emerald-encrusted hilt from within his coat, then flicked the blade toward my face so quickly that all I could do was watch helplessly as it blurred by my cheek.

A two-inch lock of my hair fell into Pulou’s open palm.

“What the hell!” I cried. “That’s my hair. I have to, you know, grow it. Like deliberately.”

Pulou laughed, as if I were simply being amusing. His expression suggested he thought I was oh so cute. And maybe I was, but not in this particularly pissed moment.

I crossed my arms and glared at the treasure keeper, then at Warner when he tried to cover his own laughter by coughing.

Jerks. Shag cuts were so 2014.

“So, San Francisco?” Pulou prompted.

CHAPTER SIX

I was still grumbling about being shorn as Warner and I crossed back through the First Nations-carved door that led to North America via a portal that Pulou held open for us into San Francisco. We arrived in a posh living room filled with modern and uncomfortable-looking steel and glass furniture, but which looked oddly empty nonetheless. Lacking a personal touch, maybe. Not that I was one to judge … all the homey touches in my apartment were courtesy of Scarlett.

“He needs the lock of hair to track you,” Warner said as he systematically scanned the room.

“Well, I guess it’s better than biting me.”

The portal snapped shut behind us.

What appeared to be tall windows covered in light-filtering solar shades ran the entire length of the right-hand side of the main room. Highly polished dark gray concrete flooring spanned the living room into the kitchen and through the hallway beyond.

“Whose place is this?” I asked.

We were standing holding hands like school kids, so I couldn’t taste a lick of any magic other than Warner’s black forest cake, which was currently tickling my palm. All the multitude of possibilities presented by an empty apartment in the middle of a city where no one knew us ran quickly through my head. Maybe the square-edged gray couch didn’t look quite as uncomfortable as I’d previously thought.

“Haoxin’s, I imagine,” Warner said.

“San Francisco is a seat of power for the guardians? Really?”

Warner laughed. “I believe her family is from the area.”

“Sorry?” The idea that guardians had family shouldn’t have been so surprising, but it was. “Her family? I mean I know that not all dragons live in the nexus.”

“Actually, only the nine and Drake reside in the nexus.”

“Branson?”

“He has an apartment in Shanghai … as do many of the dragons. Drake’s family was from there. His mother was apprenticed to Chi Wen before the fire.”

I stared at Warner. Yes, with my mouth hanging open. “Okay, you’ve been awake for like three months and you know about everyone’s family lineage?”

Warner laughed in a slightly stilted way that made me regret the ‘awake’ part of my comment. “Not much has changed,” he said. “I simply figured out the new parts … Haoxin, Qiuniu, Drake, Branson, your father …”

“And Jiaotu.”

“Yes.”

The dragon who currently carried the mantle of Jiaotu the silver tongued had held the position for only three hundred years or so. He’d inherited it from Warner’s mother. He was really kind of a jerk — a friend of Suanmi’s — but I kept my mouth shut about that because I assumed Warner and the guardian of Northern Europe had some otherworldly connection that I didn’t want to mess around with.

“Do you … I mean … This is an odd question to ask my boyfriend. Did you … do you have a home?”

“It still stands, but I’ve been staying in the nexus.” Warner squeezed my hand, then dropped it. I sensed the Q&A was over, as it should be. We had a map to retrieve — a map that was key to more than just a second instrument of assassination. A map that could possibly be used to summon Warner. Maybe even into a deadly situation.

“Where does it stand?” I asked Warner as he crossed to open the window shades. “Your home?”

“Stockholm, Sweden,” Warner answered. “A townhouse in Gamla Stan … Old Town.”

“But your accent … your natural one … sounds German.”

“My father was German.” Warner paced the length of the shades, unable to figure out how to open them.

“He raised you,” I said. “Like Gran raised me.”

“My mother was the guardian of Northern Europe.” His tone was closed off, stiff. Though I thought it might be the shades that were bothering him, not my questions.

I glanced around, spotting a Control4 in-wall touch-screen panel to the right of what I assumed was the front door. I crossed to the panel, rejigging my assessment of the apartment from posh to exceedingly posh. Haoxin certainly knew how to spend money on modern conveniences. I stepped closer to peer at the panel, then started randomly selecting icons.

The first of those controlled the lighting. Flat-mounted pot lights eased on to highlight the modern art hanging over the sandstone fireplace. The painting just looked like a stormy sky to me. But then, I knew nothing about art. In the center of the main room, nine glass pendant lights shaped like teardrops illuminated the glass-and-steel dining table with a blue-tinted glow.

It took a bit more digging to trigger the shades, which rolled up and tucked into the window casings as if they no longer existed.

“Wow,” I said. “I guess we’re in San Francisco all right.”

The apartment was in a high-rise that boasted sweeping views of the bay and what I was fairly certain was the Golden Gate Bridge. The evening below us was awash in bright city lights that faded at the edge of the dark water. If the moon was out, I couldn’t see it.

“The human technology is impressive,” Warner said as he gazed out at the city. “But Vancouver is more beautiful.”

If I were making a pro and con list about dating Warner — not that I was … at least not on paper — loyalty would definitely fall in the top five of the pro column.

The broad shoulders and great ass I was currently ogling while he surveyed the streets below us would be in that top five as well.

I sighed and fished the lead-lined case that held my cellphone out of my satchel. I was pretty sure I’d already figured out what icon on the control panel triggered the fireplace, and no matter how stiff the sofa looked, I knew I wouldn’t mind doing some ‘lounging.’ Unfortunately, duty was dictating this trip, not my hormones.

I booted up my phone and wandered into the kitchen area, which was so pristinely clean it might never have been used. A brand new iPhone and iPad sat in docks to the far right of a white quartz counter that ran the length of the wall, breaking only for the convection cooktop and the gorgeous — and insanely expensive — Sub-Zero fridge at the far corner. No pretty, terribly useful island. Not a single appliance on the counter. Unused and unloved.

Happily my phone had started. I was always anticipating a time when the lead box would lose its effectiveness as a barrier against the magic of the nexus and the portals, which had a tendency to fry technology. “So brownies clean all these places for you guys?” I asked as I applied my thumbs to my phone and texted Kett.

We’re here.

“Usually,” Warner answered. “Though occasionally they will take exception, and it takes years of cajoling to mend the breach.”

“Breach?”

“Don’t ever offer to pay a brownie and you will be fine. You’re respectful and kind. Unprejudiced.”

“Oh, yeah? Would you put those traits in my top five?”

“Top five?”

“On the list of reasons to date me.”

Warner grinned, the smile transforming his serious ‘sentinel’ mode into ‘sexy dragon stalking across the living room toward me’ mode.

I laughed — a low, husky sound I’d started making when I was around Warner — and leaned back against the kitchen counter to take a moment to enjoy watching him.

Normally, I liked this part of a courtship. The getting-to-know-you butterflies, the surreptitious glances, the thumbs rubbing against wrists while holding hands at a movie. But with Warner, I was ready to dive in, to feel his warmth, to truly taste his magic. Still, I had this foreboding shadow at the back of my mind … a ‘what if’ shadow that I had to constantly brush away to stay in the right now, right here.

Warner closed the space between us, then reached over to smooth one of my curls between his forefinger and middle finger. He stopped halfway down.

No, correction. He was holding the curl that Pulou had shorn. Teasing me with it.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

His grinned widened.

“Are you playing with me, sentinel?” I purred as dangerously as I could. Baking cupcakes most of my days didn’t give me much of a hard edge to access.

“Yes.”

Ah. The slumbering butterflies deep in my belly woke up.

My phone beeped.

“Goddamn it to freaking hell,” I grumbled. I was doing way too much grumbling these days.

Warner laughed as I glanced at my phone. The tilt of my head freed the curl from his grasp, and I tried not to mourn that lost connection.

> I’ve been waiting.

I was surrounded by grumpy old men. Kett … Pulou … Hell, I was becoming one of them. I texted back.

It hasn’t even been an hour.

> It’s been twenty-eight hours exactly.

I looked up at Warner, then out the window, where it appeared no later than it had been when we left Vancouver. “Kett says he’s been waiting over a day.”

Warner shrugged.

“That means she has a crazy head start,” I said. “She could have the instrument by now!”

“No.” Warner’s tone and shoulders were tense as he stepped back to the living room windows. “I would know.”

Right. Except …

“Except she got into the fortress of the braids without waking you last time.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“And?”

“Either she can indeed mask her presence from me … from the guardian magic that binds me to my task, which I think is highly unlikely …”