Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) (13 page)

Would have, should have, could have. That was my life. Right?

“Why have us meet him at the restaurant in the first place?” Warner grumbled at my side as we neared the almost-hidden set of stairs.

“Maybe he was enjoying a glass of wine and the view,” I said.

Warner snorted, then momentarily lagged behind as I cut right down the concrete stairs. I’d forgotten — again — that he couldn’t track Kett like I could. No wonder being around the vampire bothered him so much.

I paused halfway down the stairs to let my eyes adjust to the darkness, and to assess the well of magic I could feel beneath and before me now.

“What does his magic taste like to you?” Warner asked from behind me, his tone hushed.

“That’s a rather intimate question.”

“I thought you wanted to be intimate,” Warner teased.

“I do. Just not in the dark on a grubby set of concrete stairs.”

Kett laughed from within the deep shadow that cloaked a nondescript steel door at the base of the stairs. Warner grumbled underneath his breath. Vampires had great hearing.

The door was either dark blue or black, but I couldn’t distinguish the color in the low light emanating from the street behind me. Nor could I see a handle. But the aboveground parking garage obviously had a sublevel.

“Peppermint,” I murmured, answering Warner’s question. “And something else I haven’t figured out yet.”

Kett stepped out of the shadows and triggered a motion-sensitive light above the door.

“Blood?” Warner asked mockingly.

“No.” I stepped down into the concrete vestibule at the base of the stairs. Kett was watching me with that slight head tilt he often seemed to get stuck in, but he hadn’t fallen into one of his fugues. “I know the taste of blood.”

Warner moved to occupy the space one step up behind me. He didn’t comment further. Kett slowly turned his head to regard the sentinel with a look he usually reserved for interesting magical artifacts.

And, technically, that’s what Warner was. A magical artifact. I stifled a smile. Kett noticed, lifting the corners of his mouth in response.

“Sixteenth century here is accustomed to working alone,” I said.

Kett inclined his head half an inch. “As am I. Though only for the last few centuries. I had two companions throughout the sixteenth century.”

This intimate detail was dropped before us as if we were simply friends and it wasn’t actually a thinly veiled assertion of Kett’s elder status.

“Yeah, we get that you’re older and wiser, vampire,” I groused.

“Older, maybe.” Warner’s tone was almost teasing, almost banter. But then he ruined it by gruffly adding, “The door and immediate area are warded.”

“Only for sound … outside,” Kett replied, even more coolly.

“There’s no handle on the door,” I said, stating the obvious to insert myself into the conversation.

“Not yet.” Kett backed into the shadows so deeply that the motion-sensor light flicked out. The vampire wrapped himself so completely in darkness that he disappeared from sight, though I could still taste a tingle of his peppermint magic.

Warner grunted, impressed despite his ingrained prejudices.

“Yeah, Kett has mad hunting skills,” I muttered. “I’m hoping it’s a learned trait and not particular to every vampire, because there are a couple I already wouldn’t want to meet in broad daylight.” I still hadn’t gotten over the encounter with Kett’s maker in London, who dressed like Audrey Hepburn but could probably rend me limb from limb. And, as terrifying as she was, I shuddered every time I thought about coming face to face with his grandsire, the big bad who’d banned me from reentering the United Kingdom.

“I doubt they would enjoy such a rendezvous either, dowser,” Kett said dryly. “But back to the matter at hand. I believe your magic will gain you entry.”

“Because yours won’t?” Warner asked, more interested than snarky.

Kett didn’t answer as I stepped up to the door. “The vampire is magic,” I said as I pressed my hand to the middle of the steel-plated entrance. “So he doesn’t exude a residual signature or trace.”

“Plus,” Kett said, his tone still dry and lightly mocking. “My kind isn’t welcomed here.”

The door opened a crack. I could now feel, more than hear, a faint beat of music.

I laughed. “You did bring me dancing!”

I pressed the door open farther, feeling the sound-barrier spell tingle along my hand and arm as I did so, but seeing only deep darkness. By its taste, the spell was sorcerer magic. “An underground club for Adepts?” I was completely impressed — and completely ready to dive into the crowd I could feel just beyond the door but not yet see.

“Indeed.” Kett touched my back lightly as he slipped alongside me, entering the curtain of black just inside the door. Riding my magical signature through the door in some way until we both stood in a sort of limbo of darkness.

“There’s a bodyguard,” he whispered against the skin of my neck. His breath was cool, and all about the peppermint.

“Of course there is.”

“She and I aren’t well matched.”

Then the vampire was gone, peppermint magic and all. It was as if he’d been absorbed and diluted into the pulse of magic I could feel before me.

Delightful. I had no idea what he meant.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Warner’s black-forest-cake magic rose and fell behind me. The sentinel’s clothing was just a manifestation of his dragon magic. Something inherited from Jiaotu, according to my best guess — similar to my knife and my father’s sword — but I didn’t know much about the guardian of Northern Europe. I glanced over my shoulder, completely prepared to ogle my new boyfriend in whatever he’d decided was more appropriate clothing for a night of dancing in an underground club.

Groan.

He was still standing in the door. The motion-sensor light an inch or so above his head created a halo effect around his golden-brown hair. He’d swapped out his T-shirt and leather jacket — an ensemble he favored due to Kandy’s influence — for a jade-green silk shirt that fit tightly across his broad shoulders but slightly loose around his waist, tucked into low-rise dark blue jeans. He was even wearing a pair of freaking gorgeous Fluevog boots — brown, zippered 760 Turbo Svenskas with a manly square toe.

An utterly insuppressible grin spread across my face. Warner grinned back at me.

“It’s difficult to look as good as you, Jade,” he said. “But I figured I should try.”

Oh, God. I had nothing to say to that. No witty comeback. In fact, I was rather parched all of a sudden. I continued to grin like an idiot as he stepped forward to place his hand on my lower back and escort me farther into the building.

“Do you know how to dance?” The curtain of black between us and the magic I could feel ahead swallowed my eyesight.

“I’m a quick learner.” Warner’s words were a whispered promise in the dark.

God, yes. He was a quick learner. And I relished watching him learn … every single minute of it.

We stepped fully through the barrier blocking sound and sight — the sorcerer magic letting us bypass it effortlessly — and were immediately assaulted with pounding music and glaring lights.

All the magic contained in the cavernous room crashed over me. I gasped, completely buzzed within seconds of stepping into the club — instantly high on the wild magic whirling in the air around us. Sorcerer magic. Witches and shapeshifters, and more I couldn’t identify. Every single person before me was an Adept.

A year ago, this would have been too much for me to bear. Now, I reached out with my dowser senses and gathered it tightly around me. My limbs loosened and my spine limbered. I hadn’t realized I was so tense.

“It’s a buffet,” I murmured. Warner didn’t answer me, making me pretty sure he couldn’t hear me over the din.

A guy — big and ugly enough that at first I thought he was a shapeshifter in his half-form — stepped up to greet me with a wide, lopsided smile.

“Payment?” he yelled. He held a flat steel disk out toward me, with a short, sharp spike protruding from its center.

I stared at it, blinking. “Am I supposed to slap my hand over that? You demand a … blood sacrifice to enter?”

The guy laughed. “Nah,” he said. “Just Adepts only, you know?” He was wearing some sort of earpiece. I couldn’t get a taste of his magic, so I was guessing it wasn’t terribly powerful or he was some sort of Adept I hadn’t met before.

“I got through the door, didn’t I?”

The guy lost the smile as he pushed the spiked disk toward me.

Warner flicked something that flashed gold as it landed onto the spike — a coin with a hole in its center. The guy flinched, as if he hadn’t noticed Warner behind me.

“That’s enough, I’m sure,” Warner said, completely intimidating in a totally nonconfrontational way.

The guy nodded to Warner and swallowed nervously. The sentinel brushed his fingers against my hand, then stepped to the right, obviously heading to case the room. I let him go without following. With him and Kett prowling around, there was no reason I shouldn’t make a beeline for the dance floor.

“Drink?” the guy asked as he lifted the gold coin off the spike and pocketed it. “We’ve got Bellini charms on special. They’re potent but fun. The euphoria wears off in an hour or when you exit.”

“Nah,” I answered. “I’m just here to dance.”

I stepped around him, heading straight toward the crowd.

The underground space was easily three thousand square feet. Its ten-foot-high walls were constructed from thick, undecorated concrete. Stage lights hung from steel girders overhead, all colored by different gels. A lighting sequence flashed as I crossed through the apparently random clusters of black-lacquered tables and red vinyl-topped stools between me and the floor. The seating areas were obviously moved about according to the whims of the club’s patrons.

A bar ran the entire length of the wall to my left. Adepts were lined up three deep for drinks and what appeared to be — by their unnatural, vibrant color and the various flavors that tickled my senses as I passed — some sort of magical potions. Not everyone got as easily buzzed on magic as I did, except for maybe Kett. The vampire was as much a magical magpie as I was — just more reserved about it. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a single nonmagical person in the vicinity.

Last time I’d been in a club like this, it hadn’t even been an eighth as full, and Sienna had been by my side. Now instead of hunting me, Kett was hunting someone else in the crowd. But I was still ‘the trap.’ Then, unbeknownst to me, I’d been set by Sienna, and now I was being put into play by the vampire.

Ha. Some things never changed. Except, of course, I was now one of the most powerful people in the club — some of the others there knew it, judging by how they stepped away as I passed. I knew I should learn to dampen my magic as Kett, Warner, and the guardian dragons did, but it wasn’t at the top of my most-urgently-needed-skills list right now.

Questions shouted in friends’ ears became whispers behind my back. “Who is that?” they asked in various phrasings and accents.

Give me a second. I’m going to show you.

It wasn’t just frivolous, this urge to dance and show off. I had a necklace that needed topping up, and a willing crowd casting off magic as they simply breathed around me. It wasn’t stealing if it was offered so freely — even if unknowingly. It would take me years to collect what I could grab in five minutes in this single location.

The music was techno, which wasn’t my thing. I didn’t care.

I stepped into the center of the crowd, as best as I could judge. Then I slowly pivoted, looking over the heads of the bouncing and gyrating crowd until I laid eyes on the heavily tattooed DJ. He was a sorcerer, his blue-tinted magic dancing underneath his hands as he pawed his boards and records.

I laughed. I was quite possibly in heaven, though there wasn’t enough chocolate nearby to make this a true paradise.

The crowd around me was large enough that I couldn’t quite see the edges in the flashing multicolored light. “Every Adept in San Francisco must be here!” I yelled at a dark-haired guy with a thin beard next to me — a spellcaster, judging by his taste.

“At least half of us are out-of-towners,” he answered. Then with an appreciative leer, he added, “But why do I get the feeling that the party just started?”

I laughed, turned my shoulder to him — politely shutting down the conversation — and began to dance.

I threw myself into the beat. This wasn’t a slow build sort of music. This was all day, every day, hard, fast, and forever sort of music.

The crowd pressed against me, shoulders, fingers, and arms brushing. Magic crashed over me from all directions, so many tastes and scents and colors. I had no guidance, and no need for any. It was just me, the music, and the magic.

Peppermint tickled the back of my tongue. I opened my eyes, not realizing I’d closed them. The crowd was all around me, twisting and moving as the magic moved, but I couldn’t see Kett or Warner.

I lifted my hands, stretching my arms back through the jumping and twirling crowd to gather all its wild magic to me. I pulled it … drop by drip, strand by thread … pulled it to me, through me, and into my necklace. I gathered the wild cast-off until the chain and wedding rings were heavy against my heart. A comforting barrier to all the aches that had resided there for so long, and all the worries that threatened to live there forever. A magical shield of golden links. Heart armor.

I threw my head back and laughed.

If I was an egotist, I would have referred to this as an offering, but it was a freely given gift. A gift the crowd didn’t even know it had to give.

All this gathered, multicolored magic roiled around in my necklace. I coaxed it to settle, molding it with my alchemist power. Then, shielded from the crowd, I found some clarity on the dance floor. Some reminder of my duty, my hunt.

I wasn’t sure who we were hunting. Who I was supposed to seek within the crowd.

An amplifier, Kett had said … who wasn’t a witch or a sorcerer, but who could have sought allegiance among either. And a bodyguard who wasn’t ‘well-matched’ to a vampire. What did that mean?