Magic Shifts

by Ilona Andrews

  “If it was given to him, I’m wondering about the thinking behind giving a shapeshifter something decorated with silver,” Curran said. “Either the dagger was made for someone else originally or the gift giver is clueless.”

  “Or he might have thought that Eduardo may have to attack something that doesn’t like silver.” I sighed.

  In any investigation there comes a time when you run out of things to do. We had just hit that point. Nothing else could be done until the morning.

  “Let’s go home,” Curran said.

  CHAPTER

  8

  I DROVE THROUGH the city, guiding the vehicle around odd obstacles Atlanta threw in our way. Curran relaxed in the passenger seat, his eyes distant.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked.

  “Their house,” he said. “When I get my hands on his kidnapper, I’ll break his neck.”

  “I keep thinking about Eduardo’s stalker,” I said. “George said Eduardo had rented the house six weeks ago, about a week after her talk with Mahon. You said the stalker didn’t smell like a shapeshifter. Eduardo was racing to make as much money as possible. He spent all his time at the Guild or doing jobs. There wasn’t much interaction with the outside world, just the Guild and George.”

  “The stalker must be connected to the Guild,” Curran said. “Someone he worked with or someone he met during a gig.”

  “Yes. We need to get a complete record of his jobs. Chances are, the stalker guy is somewhere in there.”

  “How can we get a record?”

  “We can’t.” I leaned back in the seat. “The log only goes back a few days. Knowing the Clerk, he closed the books before he left and filed everything. To get at the complete record, we would have to get Mark to unseal the old logs. He won’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because technically it would be illegal without a warrant, because the Guild could be sued if Eduardo’s kidnapping is connected to it, and because he is a Grade A asshole who enjoys using what little power he has. If there is no profit in it for him, he won’t even twitch his pinkie. If we had the Clerk, I could talk him into letting me look at the logs, because the Clerk had the ultimate responsibility for them and because the safety of a Guild member is at risk, but the Clerk is gone. Mark won’t do us any favors, and Bob and his crew won’t either.”

  I had briefly contemplated breaking into the Guild and stealing the logs, but I wasn’t sure where Mark had moved them to, since they weren’t in the Clerk’s counter safe. And the Guild was never empty. Unless I could turn myself invisible, pulling off this heist while a dozen mercs watched would be very difficult.

  “Then I’ll get the Clerk back,” Curran said.

  “You would have to get them to rehire him, and they won’t do it. They didn’t have enough money to keep him on in the first place and I’m not sure the Guild committee would even want him back. They are all set to raid the pension fund and call it quits.”

  Curran’s eyes grew distant again. “I’ll take care of it.”

  The sun had set by the time I turned onto our street and I saw our house, its windows lit up by the bluish glow of feylanterns inside. The silver in the bars shielding its windows glowed slightly, reacting with magic and moonlight, as if coated in fluorescent paint, matching the glow of the security door.

  I had spent the first month after we’d moved in putting up wards all around our five-acre plot, and as I turned into our driveway, the reassuring mild pressure of passing through the defensive spell slid over me, as if the house patted my hair.

  My stomach hurt from the lack of food. My shoulder ached with a low gnawing pain. My sides hurt, too. I was tired, starving, and filthy, and I smelled like three-day-old roadkill. The spider ichor had dried to a cementlike substance in my hair. I would’ve killed for a shower.

  Across the street, Heather Savell finished speaking with Mrs. Walton and started toward us. Curran locked his teeth. I had no doubt that, in her head, Heather was preparing a speech on behalf of our neighborhood’s nonexistent HOA. She had already kindly pointed out to us that most people hide their trash cans in the garage instead of putting them on the side of the house and that we had a two-foot-wide bald patch in our lawn, where the workers had dug up the ground to get to a burst pipe.

  I had very low tolerance for people who tried to tell me what to do. Curran had even less. He’d lived in a cabin in the woods until he was twelve. Then loups killed his family, and he lived on his own for almost a year, starving in the forest, until Mahon found him. Two years later Curran became the Beast Lord. When he spoke, everyone in the Keep went silent. When he entered a room, all eyes were on him. If he wanted something, it was brought to him with apologies that it took longer than thirty seconds. Living among regular people wasn’t in his frame of reference, and today had done nothing to put him into a charitable frame of mind. The fact that Heather had sprinkled cayenne pepper on her lawn didn’t endear her to him either. Not that he would bite Heather’s head off, but I could see him putting it in his mouth and holding it in there for a bit.

  “My turn,” I told him. “You did the last one.”

  “Call for backup if you need me.” He got out and went inside. I stepped out and lingered by the car. I could do this. I just had to be cordial and not punch her. Piece of cake.

  “Hi,” Heather said, stretching the word. She walked carefully, as if worried I’d bite her.

  “Hi!” Kate Daniels, a good neighbor. Would you like some cookies?

  “I’m sorry to bother you . . . What is that smell?”

  Spider guts. “How can I help you?”

  “Umm, the neighbors asked me to bring some issues to your attention.”

  I bet they did and she bravely soldiered under that burden. “Shoot.”

  “It’s about the mailbox.”

  I could see the communal mailbox out of the corner of my eye. It seemed intact.

  “You see, the mailman saw your husband during one of his walks.”

  “He’s my fiancé,” I told her. “We are living in sin.”

  Heather blinked, momentarily knocked off her stride, but recovered. “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “It’s very nice. I highly recommend it.”

  “As I was saying, he saw your fiancé when he was in his animal shape. How to put it . . . He became alarmed.”

  That was generally a normal reaction when encountering Curran for the first time.

  “We are not sure if they will deliver mail again.”

  “Did you receive any official notices from the post office?”

  “No, but . . .” Heather tried a smile. “We were thinking maybe your fiancé could not do that anymore.”

  “Do what?” I had a sudden urge to strangle Heather. I was so tired of people acting like Curran was an inhuman spree killer who would murder babies in their sleep.

  “Walk around in his animal shape.”

  No strangling. Strangling would not be neighborly.

  “It would also be nice if he limited the range of his walks.”

  I had had a really long day. My nerves were stretched thin and she was jumping up and down on the last of them.

  I inhaled slowly. Two years of sorting shapeshifter politics and their run-ins with humans had to count for something. “According to the Guzman Act, a shapeshifter in the United States is free to wear whatever shape he or she chooses. It’s a federal crime to discriminate against shapeshifters based on the form of their body. It’s also illegal to make regulations interfering with their ability to freely change shape. I sincerely hope the neighborhood hasn’t considered signing such a petition.” Because if they did, I would make them eat it. Slowly.

  “No, no, of course not.”

  “I’m sure you weren’t suggesting that my fiancé should be limited in which shape he wears on a street in his own neighborhood?�
��

  “No, of course not,” she said, backpedaling. “It just that it upsets the dogs . . .”

  “Also, he isn’t taking a walk. He is patrolling. We live next to a wooded area. I’m sure you’ve heard coyotes howling. Judging from the ‘lost pet’ posters taped on lampposts and fences, a number of dogs and cats have disappeared from this neighborhood, but none after January fifteenth. Do you know why that is?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “It’s because on January fifteenth we moved into this house. My fiancé is a top-level predator. He has claimed this territory, and all of the other lesser predators know better than to challenge him.”

  The magic vanished, like a veil jerked aside. The feylanterns went out and the electric porch light came on, illuminating me in all of my bloody nasty glory. Heather sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Will there be anything else?” I asked.

  “No.” Her face turned pale.

  “Thank you so much for stopping by. If you get anything from the post office about interrupted delivery, bring it to me. I’ll take care of it.”

  She nodded and took off across the street to her house at a near run.

  I walked into our house, locked the security door and the front door behind me, and exhaled. A delicious scent of stew floated to me. My mouth actually watered. So hungry.

  I made my way into the kitchen just in time to see Curran, already showered, pull a pot of stew Julie must’ve made from the coal oven. Grendel, our freakishly large black attack poodle, sprawled on the rug, cleaning a big bone. He wagged his tail at me and went back to stripping shreds of meat. Julie set out the bowls for dinner.

  “Did you see the mailman while doing your rounds yesterday?” I asked.

  Curran’s face turned carefully blank. “Yes, I did.”

  “Did you do anything to scare him?”

  “I was perfectly friendly.”

  “Mhm.” Please continue with your nice story. Nonjudgmental.

  “He was putting things into the mailbox. I was passing by and I said, ‘Hello, nice night.’ And then I smiled. He jumped into his truck and slammed the door.”

  “Rude!” Julie volunteered.

  “I let it pass,” Curran said. “We’re new to the neighborhood.”

  The former Beast Lord, a kind and magnanimous neighbor. “So you sneaked up behind him, startled him by speaking, and when he turned around and saw a six-hundred-pound talking lion, you showed him your teeth?”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened,” Curran said.

  “That’s exactly what happened, Your Furriness.” I laughed, pulling off my boots.

  “George called,” Julie said. “Twice.”

  “Did she say she found out anything?” I asked.

  “No, she just wanted to know what was happening. Also, some person called Sienna called and left her number. I put it on the board.”

  Sienna was the Maiden of the Witch Oracle. Officially the Atlanta witch covens were independent of each other. Unofficially, they all listened to the Witch Oracle, consisting of three members: the Crone, the Mother, and the Maiden. Each of the three had unique powers. Sienna saw into the future. My stomach sank. She never called me. The last few times I spoke to the Oracle, I had been summoned to their lair in what once was Centennial Park.

  I went to the phone, checked the number written on the small chalkboard above it, and dialed.

  “Hello?” a young woman said on the other end.

  “Sienna, this is Kate.”

  “I am glad you called.”

  “Does this mean the Oracle decided not to curse me into oblivion?” The witches and I had made a deal: they would help me and I would keep my father from claiming Atlanta. When I claimed the city instead, they didn’t take it well.

  “I’m not talking to you as a member of the Oracle,” Sienna said. “I’m talking to you as a woman whose life you saved. I look into your future, Kate. For obvious reasons.”

  The witches were worried that I would move against the covens. Me and all of my great power that I had no idea how to access or use.

  “In the past I saw your futures. They were many and varied. Lately I’ve been having the same vision over and over. I see a man standing on a hill. The day is full of sunshine. The sky is bright and blue and the grass under his feet is emerald-green. His face is a smudge and every time I try to concentrate on it, I meet a wall of resistance. He is holding something—I can’t see what it is, but I know it’s vital—and then he turns and walks away. I think the man is your father. I can’t think of anyone else connected to you with enough power to deliberately obscure my vision.”

  On that we agreed. “Any hint at all at what he might be holding? How big is it?”

  “It’s . . . a blur. It feels like a weapon, Kate. It frightens me.”

  Great. “Thank you. Will you tell me if you see anything else?”

  “I will consider it.”

  “Thanks again.”

  I hung up. Curran glanced at me. Shapeshifter hearing surpassed human, and he would’ve heard the entire conversation. Whatever my father was cooking up, it would be bad for us. Catastrophically bad. I so didn’t need this right now.

  The downstairs bathroom door opened and a thin man stepped out. His hair was pure white and his eyes, bright blue, were like the clear sky—not a single thought in sight. Oh no.

  Christopher saw me. His eyes sparkled. He smiled as if given a precious gift and uttered one happy, quiet word. “Mistress!”

  • • •

  I SLUMPED AGAINST the wall. Christopher used to be brilliant. He also used to work for my father. We never got the whole story out of him, but something he had done displeased Roland, who punished him and then gave him to Hugh d’Ambray, who put him into a metal cage and was slowly starving him to death when I got him out. Christopher referred to himself as shattered, and that’s exactly what he was. His mind floated about, broken into a thousand shards, and you never knew which particular shard was in control. Sometimes he was so smart, it hurt; at others, he was childlike; and then occasionally he did things like climbing to the top of one of the Keep’s towers and trying to take flight. He was convinced he used to know how to fly and that he still could, if only he remembered. Usually it took me or Barabas to talk him down.

  We had left Christopher behind at the Keep. It was the safest place for him. He knew how to make panacea, a vital medicine the shapeshifters desperately needed to keep from going loup, and the Pack would guard him and see to his every need. He couldn’t really be left unsupervised.

  I turned to Julie. She shrugged. “He was sitting on our doorstep when Derek dropped me off.”

  “Mistress,” Christopher said happily.

  Oh boy. “Hi, Christopher.” I made my voice as gentle as I could. “How did you get here?”

  “I walked.”

  Walked. The Keep was almost two hours away by vehicle. How in the world did he even find us?

  Christopher kept smiling, his alpine lake eyes blissfully empty.

  “Why don’t you stay for dinner?” I told him.

  • • •

  IT TOOK ME fifteen minutes and two handfuls of shampoo to get the spider gunk out of my hair. It also gave me time to think. Tomorrow I needed to take the glass to an expert. Unfortunately any private lab analyzing magically amazing sand would have a waiting list, and taking it to the cops would accomplish nothing. Eduardo was a grown man, a shapeshifter, and he had issues with his alpha. From an outsider’s perspective, it was entirely possible that he’d simply put some time and distance between him and his problems. They would look for him, but he wouldn’t exactly make it on the priority list.

  There was one person in the city who might be able to analyze the glass on short notice. Going to see him would make Curran’s hair stand on end and it would cost me an arm and a leg. Bu
t it had to be done. Time was short.

  The kindjal offered another place I could dig. The silver work on the scabbard was elaborate but not exactly unique, but the blade was a dead giveaway. The inscription had been written via the koftgari method, where the smith scratched the blade, hammered fine flat silver wire into it, and then heated it to help the silver stick. Koftgari didn’t stand up well to prolonged use and the kindjal didn’t look like a refinished antique, so it had to be a recent purchase. There were two smiths in the city who could produce a weapon of that quality, and only one of them used koftgari. The other favored inlay, cutting deep grooves into the blade and filling them with wire. I would go and knock on Nitish’s door tomorrow. I had bought weapons from him in the past. He wouldn’t like it, but he would talk to me.

  I wished I could’ve spoken to Mitchell tonight, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Mitchell survived because Biohazard hid him from the general public. I could only see him at their convenience. Pissing off Biohazard wasn’t in my best interests, no matter how much I wanted to know about the ghouls.

  Aside from that, there weren’t a lot of paths we could take. A few years ago I would’ve tried a locating spell, but they’ve been thoroughly discredited now. The magic behind them misfired most of the time, sending you on a wild-goose chase and wasting time.

  I dried off, patting the towel gently over my scrapes, and looked at myself in the mirror. My back had developed a lovely plumlike color. Twisting to look at it in the mirror hurt. Another day, another wound.

  I dressed and went downstairs to have dinner.

  An hour later dinner was over and I was putting away the dishes Curran had washed. Since Julie had cooked, she was off kitchen duty. She spread her homework out on the table and Christopher sat next to her, leafing through her textbooks.

  I dried a plate with a towel. “I’m going to see Saiman tomorrow. I need him to analyze the glass we found. It’s going to be expensive.”

  Curran’s eyes turned dark. “Take Derek with you.”

  “No. I’m going to see Saiman without a babysitter.”