Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4) (9 page)

Jakes uncrossed his arms and placed his thumbs into his pockets. “You have been back in Conlin for three months?”

“Thereabouts.”

“In that time, you’ve seen the challenges Conlin faces. The city has always drawn others of similar skill to it, whether they know it or not. With the Elder’s absence, that draw remains, but there is no one able to guide it.”

I laughed. What else could I do? It all sounded so crazy, but then it wasn’t really any crazier than anything else I’d been through in my life. Hell, I’d spent nearly a decade on the other side of the Threshold, learning my patterns from a man determined to marry his daughter off to a beast of a man I was somehow destined to kill. If that wasn’t some kind of crazy, I didn’t know what was.

“I’m not that person, Jakes. I’m not anything like my father.”

He stared at me for a moment, his dark eyes so unreadable. “You have proven more like your father than I think he ever expected.”

“As if you knew what my father expected of me.”

“I know that he would have wanted you to learn to control your gifts. He wanted you to learn to control your power. He would not have made his home in this place if it were not important to him. By making a home here, it became a home to you, as well. Even if I didn’t know anything else about the Elder, that would tell me how important this city was to him.”

“He took me from here after my mother—”

“Because he knew you needed to learn.”

“And refused to teach,” I said. We had started moving closer, and I realized that I now stood almost to Jakes’s nose, staring up at the huge shifter. I took a step back. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not here to protect the city. I came to learn what I needed to keep my friend safe.”

“Do not think me foolish enough to believe that she is only a friend.”

“No. I’ve been an idiot about that, but not anymore.”

He smiled at me. I wished I was bigger so I could punch him. I’d probably end up hurting my hand if I tried to hit him. “You have. Your feelings have been clear from the moment you stepped into Conlin.”

I must have been the only one unable to see that. “Well then, you know that I will do anything to keep her from the fate her father intends for her. If that involves leaving Conlin again, then I’m sure as shit going to do it. We were here long enough to see if there was anything of my father’s that might help me protect her.”

“You’ve found many things of the Elder’s still in Conlin. We have kept them intact for a reason.”

“And that’s for me? Because you haven’t been exactly forthcoming with them.”

“We kept them for him,” he said. “But if the Elder is gone”—I could tell from his tone that he thought he was, but there was a hint of hope mixed in—“you needed to prove yourself worthy. Had we simply given the items to you, they would not have been earned. The Elder did not simply give you the knowledge you needed to help protect the city, either.”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. “How could my father have been the one to provide balance? He was a painter. Damn skilled, but a painter, nothing like the Trelking.”

“Your father was a painter,” Jakes agreed. “That was how he started. But you must have known that he became more than that, that he became skilled enough to be considered one of the magi.”

I didn’t know much about magi. The Druist Mage sat among them. I suspected that had Nik continued to learn, he might have eventually come to sit with the magi. Now he would do nothing more than sit in the lower level of the shed. They worked in magics different from what the painters controlled, different from what the Trelking managed. It was part of the reason the Trelking feared and respected the Druist Mage. Hell, it was the reason
I
wanted to learn from Nik.

“No, if he was a magus, I would have known. I would have heard about it before now.”

“Haven’t you heard of it, Morris? The Elder manages to create sculptures of power that can trap a doorway. He manages to use patterns of power to contain other beings of power. He was powerful enough to seal this place from magical danger,” he said, motioning toward the Rooster. “Knowing that the Elder was one of the magi doesn’t change anything you knew about him.”

“You’re wrong there, Jakes. It would change everything. I can understand painting. I can learn patterns, even the most challenging of the arcane patterns, but how the
hell
am I to understand him if he was a magus. And how can you expect me to help protect Conlin? That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? You think I can somehow step into my father’s shoes?”

Jakes’s eyes hardened. “You have proven capable of learning what your father knew. You might need help at first, but I have seen how resourceful you are. I don’t doubt that you can learn even more, especially now that you’ve found help.”

That had been the reason I wanted to thaw Nik enough that I could learn from him so that we could keep Devan safe from the Druist Mage. “What happens if there isn’t balance on this side?”

Jakes’s face clouded. “The Protariat will not allow the balance to fail. Another will come to assume power and hold the balance.”

“Another. The Trelking? The Druist?”

“I don’t know.”

The way he said it sent chills up my spine.

“Consider whether you can serve, Morris.”

I already knew what I would say. I didn’t have the strength or the skill needed to provide balance against the Trelking. I’m shocked my father had that much strength. I knew he was powerful, but strong enough to counter the Trelking?

That wasn’t what I wanted. My goals were pretty simple: I wanted to learn enough to keep Devan safe, maybe live out my days with her in quiet peace.

“If I do this, will you help?”

He smiled again. The man
never
smiled. It was beginning to unsettle me. “Have you ever been without help?”

I laughed. “When you put it like that. I’ll think about it. That’s all I can commit to for now.”

Jakes’s eyes went flat for a moment, and the protection he’d erected dropped. The cold wind battered me, the power that Jakes had been holding in place now releasing us back to the elements.

It was the most he and I had spoken since I learned his secret. Were we friends now, not just friendly?

“What are you going to do about the compass?” I asked him.

“Don’t know. What will you do about your task?”

“I don’t know.” I glanced over at my truck. It was time for me to find Devan and start figuring out what the Trelking was really up to. There was only one place to learn, but that meant being a little more aggressive with my magic. “Tell Tom I stopped by. I still want to catch up with him when everything slows down.”

“Do you really think that happens around here, Morris?”

I laughed. “Guess not.” I started toward my truck and stopped, turning back to Jakes. “Hey. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Well, if you show up at your father’s house and find it destroyed, that will be my fault. So I’m sorry.”

Jakes laughed softly. “I think the Elder once told my father the same thing.”

Then he turned and went back into the Rooster.

B
ig Red rumbled
through the streets. I wasn’t paying as much attention to where I was going I should have been, so focused on what Jakes had just told me. Could my father really have been a magus? I knew he had power—hell, half of the things I’d seen since returning to Conlin took a different type of power than I could manage as a painter, but I’d always thought the magi were something different.

I turned the truck down the road toward Jakes’s house. I probably should wait for Devan—she might be pissed that I came here alone—but I needed to learn what I could from Nik as quickly as possible. We had less than two days remaining to find the damn box, and I was no closer to locating it than I was before, and I still wanted to figure out why the compass had been stolen.

I pulled the truck into the driveway and let it roll to a stop in front of the garage. Jakes’s house was an older rambler, probably built in the fifties, and still had some of the stylings from when it was first built. His father had painted it a dark brown, almost chocolate. Normally, I’d not think much of the color, but in the magical world, colors mattered. For all I knew, my father had been the one to paint the house, just as he’d painted my house. Having the Elder working as a simple house painter would add power and protection to the house.

I smiled at the thought of my father out here working with a paintbrush, imagining Jakes’s father standing there, Mr. Miyagi style, and saying “Paint the house!”

At this time of day, I hadn’t expected anyone to be home. Jakes was at the diner, and I didn’t think anyone else lived here, but the front door popped open, and Kacey came out to greet me.

“Oliver? Sam isn’t here.”

She was dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and small shorts that showed her long, slender legs. Kacey was cute, but petite, especially for a shifter. Compared to Jakes, she was tiny. The thought of the two of them together made me fear for her safety. Unless shifters had to get at it while in their wolf form, but even then, Kacey wasn’t much larger.

“Yeah, I just saw him over at the Rooster. He was giving me a little fatherly advice.”

Kacey frowned. She set her hands on her hips, exposing a little of her stomach. “I’m not sure you want to take any advice like that from Sam. He’s been through too much to really give you anything useful.”

“I think he meant it to be helpful.”

Kacey glanced at the truck as if noticing that Devan wasn’t there and then faced me. “Anything I can help with?”

“Oh, you know, I’m here to play in Jakes’s shed. I told him I couldn’t promise that it would still be here when he returned.”

Kacey laughed. “I doubt he’d mind. If it wasn’t for the fact that your father helped build the house, I think he would have stayed where he was. With his father…”

“Yeah,” I said.

Kacey nodded. “Yeah.” She started to turn. “Let me change, and I’ll join you in case you need any help.”

“Change? You don’t just…you know,
shift
…into new clothes?”

Kacey frowned at me. “Honestly, Oliver, sometimes I think Devan is right when she calls you an idiot.”

I laughed. Why was it that all the women around me felt the need to tell me the same thing? “Devan is right about a lot of things.”

She flashed me a smile and disappeared into the house.

I started my way around to the back of Jakes’s lot. His father’s house was a place of power, much like my father’s house. The Elder had a hand in creating both, so that should really be no surprise. The fence around the house had once prevented me from doing anything with much power, diffusing my painter power nearly as much as what was placed around the Rooster. Now that the fence had been damaged, there wasn’t much that really prevented me from using patterns around the house, which was good considering what I needed to do. It did make me wonder why Jakes’s father needed such protections around his house. It couldn’t have been all about what was stored in the shed.

The back yard stretched toward a wooded area separating his house from the one behind it. There was enough distance between the houses on this street that they were kept mostly isolated. It was one of the advantages of living in a house built before the construction boom that led to houses getting crammed closer and closer together. At least back when Jakes’s house was built, neighbors didn’t get squeezed together like they were today, so close that you could watch the guy next-door shaving if you wanted. For what happened in this backyard, such privacy was a good thing.

I made it to the shed about the same time Kacey came bounding out to me. She’d pulled on a long-sleeve navy T-shirt and jeans, form-fitting enough to still see her figure beneath them. She moved with a casual grace, more the shifter in her than anything, and leaned next to the shed as I started to open the lock on the door with the golden key my father had left me.

“What are you planning to do?” Kacey asked.

“The usual. Maybe release a powerful mage who nearly killed everyone while trying to destroy the Trelking.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she deadpanned.

“I’m pretty much certain that it’s a terrible idea, but I need to know what he knows, and Taylor isn’t willing to help me create another orb so that I can do it with a little more control, so I’m going to hope that I can use my father’s orb without making a complete shit storm.” As I pulled open the door to the shed, I glanced over at her. “You might want to give me a little space.”

“Without Devan here? Who’s going to keep you alive?”

I laughed. “You’ve been spending far too much time with her, it seems.”

“She’s been at the diner a few times.”

“By a few, I think you mean daily. She won’t eat at home anymore unless it’s something she’s picked up a the gas station or something she’s brought back from the Rooster.”

“You should be happy about that. She’s a cheap date.”

I smiled as I started into the shed. The air cooled as I entered, the hint of damp earth lingering within it. “I would never call her cheap. Not to her face, at least.”

Kacey followed me down into the lower level of the shed. I didn’t know if she’d ever been down here before, but Jakes trusted her. Of course, he’d trusted Chase, too, and that had turned out all kinds of messed up. I couldn’t judge. I thought Taylor was nothing more than an attractive woman when she first showed up in Conlin. And I’d though Nik was nothing more than a semi-skilled tagger. My track record wasn’t so great.

“What would you call her?” Kacey asked.

“Nothing but nice names. Anything else would likely get me killed.”

Kacey barked out a laugh that died out as we entered the lower level of the shed. She swept her eyes around, her breath sucking in quickly. “Whoa. This all your father’s?”

“Yeah, though I don’t think it was only his.” The fact that it was on Jakes’s lot meant that there was some important reason for Jakes to be a part of whatever was down here, but I didn’t know what that was and
Sam
Jakes didn’t seem to know, either. His father would have known, but we lost him too soon. I considered whether it had something to do with the balance Jakes mentioned, the fact that power needed to be distributed on either side of the Threshold, but without having a better understanding of what my father had used this space for, I don’t know that I’ll ever discover the secret.

I stopped at the shelf where little Nik rested and stared at him. The miniature figures next to him hadn’t moved. In this form, they weren’t anything more than cold stone, trapped until the Elder—or some other idiot like myself—managed to release them.

“This is him?” Kacey asked.

There was a little heat in her voice, and I slid my body slightly to the side to prevent her from doing anything too rash. I could easily imagine her picking up Nik and smashing him to the ground. I don’t know if the statue could be broken or damaged, but I didn’t really want to take that risk.

“This is him.” I turned so that I could make eye contact with Kacey. “Now I need him so that I can learn how to keep Devan alive.”

Kacey had been inching closer to me and then stopped. “What do you mean?”

“She’s still tied to the Druist Mage. We don’t really know what will happen if he were to get her, but her father wants Devan to go to the Druist Mage to seal the bargain with him. You may not know that much about the Druist Mage, but think of what Nik did while in Conlin, only make it one hundred times worse. He’s powerful enough to get the Trelking’s attention.”

Kacey stared at the little Nik figurine and then took a step back. “Fine. But when this is all over, he and I will have a chance to talk.”

The casual, lighthearted girl was gone and left behind was the angry shifter who had nearly died because of what Nik had done. I don’t know if Kacey would ever be strong enough to face down Nik with his new abilities. Jakes hadn’t been strong enough, so what would make Kacey think that she could do it?

“If this goes as I intend, you’ll have your chance to speak to him.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then you’ll have your chance to speak to him.”

Kacey nodded and stepped back to lean against the wall.

I went to the end of the room and took the orb out of the locked part of the wall. That it should be double locked told me how seriously my father had felt about keeping it safe. And here I was, planning on using it to release Nik, however slight that chance would be.

Tucking the orb under my arm, I grabbed little Nik and started back to the upper portion of the shed. Kacey frowned, but followed me without saying anything. When I stepped back out into the gray daylight, I pulled the shed closed and locked it again.

“What’s that about?” she asked.

I held out Nik and shrugged. “If this goes sideways, I don’t want him having access to the shed. My father’s protections should hold it closed against him.”

“And that?” she asked, pointing to the orb.

“If he manages to take me out, then you’ll have to destroy it before you get your revenge.”

A few different emotions flickered over her face before settling on a softer one. “Are you really sure you should be doing this, Oliver? If you’re this concerned about what might happen…”

“We don’t have a whole lot of time. We’ve got to find what the Trelking has demanded or we risk him forcing Devan back across.”

“He can do that?”

I shrugged. “Probably. Don’t really know. I wouldn’t have thought someone could manage to hold a doorway open quite as long as he did. You know how much power that takes to even open one. For him to just hold it like, he did…” I trailed off and shook my head. And the worst part of it was that he hadn’t seemed troubled by the effort of holding it open. There was power and then there was
Power
.

Kacey took a deep breath and nodded at me. “Good luck.”

Then she pulled her shirt over her head and pulled down her pants. I turned away, unable to conceal the flush that washed over me. “Do you have to do that right here?”

“No one can see,” she said.

I glanced over. She was now in wolf form, her clothes stacked near the shed. Kacey had dappled brown fur and a long nose. Her golden eyes blinked, and she sat back on her haunches, waiting for me.

I set Nik on the ground and sat down across from him, holding the orb in my hands. On my previous attempts to make this work, I’d done it in the shed. This time, I intended to push a little more power through it if needed. That ran the risk of freeing Nik completely as I did, so I wanted to minimize the potential for damage to the shed, while also ensuring Nik had no access should things go sideways.

The orb caught the pale light, reflecting it back at me. I held it tightly, running my hands over the smooth surface. It didn’t feel quite right for me to be doing this without Devan present, but then again, the first time I’d ever seen the orb had been when she was missing. At least Kacey was here to keep me from doing anything too stupid.

Before starting, I decided to at least let Devan know where I was. She’d probably feel the magic the moment I started using it, but at least this way, I wouldn’t have her getting upset that I hadn’t told her when I was starting.

I cupped my hand over the medallion. Like so many things, it was a creation of Devan’s, her way of tying us together. With a trickle of focus, I pressed will and intent into the pattern on the medallion. This would send a flare of sorts to Devan, sort of like my bat-signal.

Kacey watched me. Her tail twitched and I smiled. “All right. I’m getting there.”

A soft growl rumbled from her.

“Hey. Nice doggy.”

She flashed her fangs and growled again.

I took a deep breath and pressed my power into the first pattern. This was a perfect circle ringing the entirety of the orb. From what I could tell, this pattern helped contain the others, locking them to the orb. If I managed to do this one right, I should be able to have better control when I activated the others.

The sequence was important. Had I not spent so much time working through the book of patterns my father had left me, I’m not sure I would have known exactly how to trigger them, but he’d left me a lesson plan, a way of seeing which patterns to use next. Each one required dividing my focus, splitting it into increasingly tighter levels of control. Without the practice I’d gained over the last ten years, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Pentagram. Triangle. Tight spiral wound around two interlocking squares set at odd angles. One after the other, I pressed my will into them.

Only a few remained. The last few were the key. When I’d worked with the orb before, this was where I’d started to flake out. I didn’t want to press too much power into the orb and risk releasing it fully onto Nik, but I hadn’t yet managed to figure out the secret to maintaining control. There’s always a first time.

Holding my focus divided like this was the draining part. If only I had power like the Trelking, but I was a painter, not one of the Te’alan. Or a magus like my father.

“You’re missing one.”

I glanced up to see Devan crouched next to me. She reached over and wiped a bead of sweat off my forehead. Her skin glowed softly, almost too distracting given the circumstances. “Took you long enough.”