Sorcerer's Spin

Home > Other > Sorcerer's Spin > Page 27
Sorcerer's Spin Page 27

by Anise Rae


  “Do it.” She stuck a pointy finger in his gut.

  He took the poke valiantly. “I vow to protect Mara Rand with my life.”

  The High Councilor disappeared in a flash of white smoke. Mara waved the air away and eyed Lincoln.

  For all that he was her majesty’s personal guard, he looked more like a tough bouncer in a bar. His eyes were hooded and hard. His chest was thick and broad, and his legs were in perfect proportion to it. Before he’d become one of her clients, he’d had a hard time finding shirts and pants that fit properly.

  He had a sculpted beard, and the sides and back of his hair were trimmed very short. The top was long, and he pulled it into a ponytail at the back of his crown.

  Evidently the High Councilor didn’t mind an unpolished look in her House.

  “Captain Whitman filled me in on the situation,” he said.

  “And what is the situation, Lincoln?” The whiskey was already going to her head, loosening her thoughts and letting Gregor nest in their nooks and crannies.

  She’d thought they’d be in this together. Or at least that’s what she assumed before she’d found the tracker, which she could admit had saved her once. Maybe twice. She wasn’t sure how she was going to let the deception go, but now she sat here alone and her hands were shaking and her throat was tight.

  She didn’t want to be without him.

  Power United didn’t bother playing games with its enemies. If Gregor was right and they had the wheel and if they found out what he was up to, she’d never see him again.

  Plus, Cecilia would be all over him.

  A tightness coiled inside her. Power United couldn’t keep its hands out of her life. They couldn’t stop grabbing at everything she had. Now they had Gregor. And she had to trust that he wouldn’t become one of them.

  “Call me Linc,” he said. “And the situation is—”

  She held up her hand. “I know actually. I don’t need a recap.” The heat of the Bare Witches Whiskey churning in her stomach did nothing to melt the icy fear or quell the sour bitterness that she would always have a situation, that she would never have average or regular or normal. That was how life would be for a Glow Eyes. But she’d settle for simply having Gregor back at her side.

  Just us.

  “He’s going to get himself in trouble if he’s not careful,” she said.

  “Nah. He’s smart and capable.” He studied her. “And he cares for you a lot. I’ve had an earful about how bold and brave you are. That I’m not to give you a chance to sneak off by yourself. And that I’m to keep my hands off your vibes.” He squinted. “That particular command came with a harsh expletive.”

  They left the house, and Linc drove her to her mill. She gave him directions. He put up with her guidance.

  Outside the mill’s fence, a dozen protestors lined the road.

  Their signs bobbed up and down above their heads, spelled into place with vibes.

  No fairy power.

  Spiders are evil.

  Republic for Mages Only.

  This was the result of that newspaper article.

  Linc’s vibes shot out. “Sergeant, get ‘em out of here.” He cast the message away, and two guards stationed at the front doors jogged out.

  Linc pulled his vehicle around the back where her sorceresses had gathered for a break.

  They occupied the large picnic tables, their lunches spread out. Faded umbrellas shaded the space.

  Esther stood as Mara approached. “Hey, lady boss, you travel safe?” She brushed her hands free of crumbs. Her hair was shorter now, almost buzzed, and it stuck up in spikes all over her scalp. It was a striking blend of silver and gold. A swirl of a new tuning circle tattoo played on her right bicep.

  “I survived in one piece, and so did the denim, which is the important part.” She handed it over to the forewoman. Thank the stars above she’d gotten it this far.

  “I like your shine there.” Esther tapped a finger next to her eye.

  Mara took a breath. There was going to be a lot more of that, and not everyone would be accepting.

  “Did you find yourself a new gentleman?” Esther nodded at Linc.

  “This is Lincoln Sinclair. He and his men are overseeing security here now.”

  “Security. Huh. Don’t know if it’s good that we have protection or bad that we need it.” She eyed his government uniform. “That is, if it’s actually protection he’s providing. I hope you don’t mind me saying so, lady boss, but he’s dressed like he’s ready to arrest you or confiscate some more of our stuff.”

  Mara silently agreed with that. She eyed her workers. Considering the events around here, if they’d had other job opportunities available, they’d probably all quit. “Time will tell.”

  Esther shrugged off the unpredictability. “I’m ready to go.” She nodded at her lunch. “We took one last food break. I scoured the sewing room vibe-free myself. And we got a new order while you were gone. A nice big one.”

  “Interesting.” Mara kept her tone flat and crossed her arms over her chest. She’d known her sorceresses wouldn’t let their confiscated wheels stop them while she was away. “How are you spinning it? On drop spindles?” She felt like the mother of naughty children. She knew what was coming.

  Esther shook her finger. “Yeah, about that, there’s something you should know.” She pointed at the building. “We got some wheels spinning in there. They ain’t all that hard to fashion out of a little bit of this and that.”

  A fact Mara knew well. She’d made a few of her own.

  “We went to the Drainpipe,” Esther said.

  Mara raised her eyebrows. “You went to the junkyard?” It was called the Drainpipe because the trash vibes from the city drained into the trash towers there. It was also a repository for metal junk. And guarded by tough guys with dark mage powers.

  “They’ve got a nice supply of old bicycle wheels, and after the first few, we got pretty good at constructing spinning wheel frames out of pipe.” Her forewoman lifted her chin. “Spinning production is at sixty percent and has been for the past two days. Not good but not bad considering. The powers-that-be can’t possibly want to steal these. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even recognize what they are. They sure don’t look like anything Sleeping Beauty would use.”

  “Perfect.”

  25

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Gregor spun around in the dank hallway, deep beneath the main offices of Power United, to find Daegan standing behind him.

  “Goddess, I fucking hate fairies…glister…whatever.” His heart pounded. He hadn’t sensed him at all. “I work here.” He tightened his grip on his scroll as if he might use it as a weapon. Officially, he was inspecting security functions. He’d been working on it for a day and a half. The scroll listed the current processes and procedures in place. It was short. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  The fairy stood in a shallow puddle. Not even a puddle really, more of a smear on the concrete floor. This glister had an affinity with water.

  Gregor lifted a quick eyebrow at the realization that his mind was calm enough in a glister’s presence to think. Panic hadn’t appeared. Maybe the third time was the charm. Or maybe Mara’s tough-as-shit attitude toward the man had rubbed off.

  He kept his eyes on the fairy’s chin as Daegan frowned at their surroundings.

  This level of the building was three stories below ground, and it smelled every inch of a damp basement. They were too close to the river to have so many basements, and there was an additional one lower yet that he still had to inspect.

  Power United had offices all over town, but not one of them sported a white spinning wheel. In the guise of security inspections, Gregor had done an initial overview of the facilities that produced wire. He’d seen sorceresses spinning at their wheels, guards pacing among them. The women’s small piles of copper wire had grown slowly as the straw disappeared from their hands and morphed into metal with their vibes.


  As a group, the sorceresses looked tired, but they still had hair, teeth, and enough energy to move back and forth to the cafeteria and then to their dormitories at the day’s end. But he’d seen the copper quotas posted in the hallways, and these women weren’t producing near enough copper to meet them.

  “You’re supposed to be Mara’s guard. And unless she’s here, you’re falling down on the job. You fall. She falls,” Daegan said.

  “Mara has at least six guards now. Better than I could offer. Someone needs to focus on finding the wheel.” He contained his words with a spell, but he kept his voice to a whisper anyway.

  “No, asshole.” Daegan’s voice blasted right past his spell and echoed around the halls. “The wheel will find her. You should be practicing the weapon. Can you do it yet?”

  He’d hoped the fairy would give up on this. Gregor had no problem with the idea that a song could be a weapon. He knew plenty of songs and chants that qualified and was skilled enough to use them even if he couldn’t hear them anymore. But he had no idea what Daegan meant by the unsung song—and probably never would.

  “Fuck. You haven’t done anything on it. What the hell is wrong with you?” The fairy’s eyes flashed.

  “Watch it.” Panic drenched his mind.

  Daegan threw his hands up. “Luck’s balls! Relax. Look, I thought cadence mages were supposed to meditate and look deep into themselves. If you don’t look, we’re all doomed.”

  “So I’m going to look into my soul—”

  “Heart,” Daegan corrected.

  “And find a song that I’ve never noticed before.”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t you think that if a love song is all it takes to stop a fairy’s power, someone would have figured it out?” He couldn’t even believe he was saying such vibe shite. Thank the Goddess no one was around to hear him.

  “Who? Who’s going to open their heart to a fairy in order to kill one?”

  Gregor shifted his stance. “That’s a fair point.”

  “Monk mages are the only ones who have the ability to do it, and how many of them are in battle? How many of them fight to defend their people?”

  His decision to go into the army had baffled every teacher and apprentice chanter mage he’d known. Only one other was in the army.

  “How many of them have been pricked by the needle?” Daegan asked.

  “Fuck you.” Gregor glared. The fairy knew the answer to that question.

  “Come on. I’m going to show you something.” Daegan put his hand on Gregor’s shoulder, and the basement zapped away, replaced by sunshine and the heat of summer.

  “Goddess damn it! How the hell did you do that? The High Councilor did that shit to me yesterday.”

  Daegan frowned. “No mage has a spell like that. It’s glister power.”

  “Then she borrowed it from one of your people. A friend of Mara’s. That’s what the old crone said. You’re Mara’s glister friend.”

  Daegan squared off to him. “Let’s get something straight, witch. I hate that crone. She has nothing of mine and she never will. Now, do you know where we are?”

  He looked around. They were behind Mara’s mill. A food truck was parked nearby and the sorceresses had gathered outside. He would have scanned the crowd for Mara, but he knew she wasn’t there. Her energy was absent. He could recognize it in a flash.

  “This happens every week. She’ll come out eventually,” Daegan explained. “They can’t see us.”

  “You spy on her. You dirty shit.” But he didn’t step away.

  “That normal boy over there...he’s Mara’s gardener.”

  An older teen stood at the distant corner of the fence pulling weeds. The required N, the designation for Non-mage, was pinned to the right side of his shirt. He ignored the sorceresses and the food truck.

  “I pay him twenty bucks a week to keep this puddle here. Open to him. Focus your heart on him. Harness the unsung song within him.”

  Gregor laughed, incredulous. “Do you have any idea how idiotic that sounds?”

  “If you don’t figure this out, it’s over. Everything the West stands for and everything the East is will be gone.” His eyes flashed between silver and brown like he was struggling to control his power. “I don’t know what the song sounds like, so I can’t describe it. But I know it exists. And I know that you, wayward monk, have what is necessary to hear it. You can’t save her without it.

  “Harness the song and you can stop a glister, a mage, a Normal. Anyone. And anything. It’s that simple. Now, grab that boy with the song of hearts. Grab his power.”

  Gregor stared at the fairy for the length of a long, slow breath. Daegan was sincere in this. That much was clear, so Gregor tried to offer the same, keeping the disbelief from his face and his eyes from rolling. “That’s a Non-mage. They don’t have power. There’s nothing to grab.”

  Daegan looked up at the sky. “I can’t believe it’s come to this. The king is gone. And our only hope is a monk mage who drained not only his chants and songs down the eye of the needle, but also his gumption and his courage.”

  Gregor squinted. “What king?” He was secure enough in his gumption and courage that he didn’t bother to argue about that part.

  “The glister king. We have a leader, you know.” Daegan’s voice picked up an accent that had been missing before. Something old and far away.

  “I thought the fairies—the glister—were into anarchy.”

  “Don’t confuse the Wild West with the glister.”

  In the distance, Linc exited the mill and held the door for Mara. Gregor stared at her, soaking her in as she strode across the lot. Goddess, he missed her, and it had only been a day since he’d left her standing shocked in her living room, no time to explain, leaving her safety in another man’s hands. He’d been searching for the wheel almost every hour since.

  She gave a closed-lip smile to a pair of her workers who lingered near the door, but there wasn’t real happiness in her expression. He needed to find the damn wheel so this could all end.

  “She can’t see us. And I can’t afford to stay long, so listen up,” Daegan said. “That normal kid has energy. It exists. That’s the first thing you have to change—your fucked up little mind.” He spoke fast. “Every living being has power. Mages and the glister have harnessed it. The normals dwell in oblivion by stubborn choice. Don’t be as stubborn as they are.

  “Listen to your heart and listen to his. Merge with his power and take control. Be one.”

  One with all. Gregor had grown up with that slogan. It was the motto of the monastery. They hadn’t really meant it. Not when it came to the glister or the Nons. Or waywards.

  He quit looking at Mara and shifted to the kid. He opened his mage power and prodded at him. A shiver ran along the boy’s shoulders.

  “Not your mage power, fool. Your heart.”

  He tried again, but to the same effect. The kid looked around with wide eyes, his forehead tight, his mouth in a circle. He was scared to death. Gregor gave up before the kid had a heart attack.

  Daegan crossed his arms and glared. “Do you enjoy being helpless against glister? I have to ask because you haven’t made a shit’s worth of progress. Sought any truth recently? Has healing begun in your needle-pricked soul? Hurry up. Try harder.”

  He disappeared in a blink.

  What the hell?

  The glister had left him here, miles from work on a Wednesday afternoon. Nothing ever went as planned with Daegan around.

  Gregor knew he should cast a don’t look, jump the fence, and cast a spell for a taxi. He should get back to work and find the damn wheel before someone else did. Mara had a death threat over her head and those fucked up senators were going to demand her execution the moment the wheel fell into government control. Instead, he watched her, opening his mage sense, seeking her essence.

  He would have given anything to know what Mara’s power sounded like. Instead, he had to settle for his other senses. It tasted sweet. It
flowed with a lyrical softness that had no end and could soar to the heavens, and it sparkled and swirled like a nebula of stars. He was pretty sure she surpassed him in strength. He was certain she was his better in courage and kindness.

  He’d had to be broken before he could recognize her. He’d been listening for the one ever since he knew how. He didn’t care what his friends said. Every man he knew was looking for the right woman whether he admitted it or not. Without the needle’s effects, he never would have looked at Mara, and that would have been the biggest tragedy of his life.

  She stood in line at the tea truck. Her eyes sparkled softly, a dark bronze, more glitter than shine. Her mage power puffed around her in a soft, full cloud. It was relaxed, vibing with just enough energy for her eyes to focus without her specs, he supposed. Her hair was tucked behind one ear. She wore a black, sleeveless dress that covered her from her neck to above her knees, gently gracing her long curves.

  Screw the damn taxi.

  He paced toward her.

  “It’s him! He’s back.” The shout came from the bald girl with the scarf.

  A dismayed clamor rumbled through the tea party. The sorceresses stood, a few pulling out their drop spindles. Lady Harry smiled, quickly hiding her expression behind her hand. Mara strode right for him.

  Linc jogged past her. “How the hell did you get in here?” His tone was hard and unfriendly. “I’ve got the whole place locked down.”

  “Did you find it?” Mara asked.

  He held up his hands, palms in, before anyone could decide to cast a spell he could only grunt and bear. “I haven’t found it yet.” He turned to Linc. “And it’s an odd story as to how I got here.”

  “A glister escorted him in,” Mara offered. She studied him, her lush lips parted, her eyes focused. He couldn’t read forgiveness in her expression. He couldn’t read anything.

  “You saw that?” Gregor asked. Daegan wasn’t as sneaky as he thought…or he was underestimating Mara. Everyone underestimated the wayward.

  “No. But I’ve seen Daegan do it before.”

  “A fairy,” Linc ground out and turned to Gregor. “Hell. There’s nothing I can spell against one of them. I tried to shoot one once. It didn’t work. I can’t keep them out of the Council House either.”

 

‹ Prev