Magic's Crown

by Sela Carsen

  “No more cupcakes. I’ll hit Delaney’s Delectables tomorrow when I go shopping.”

  The disappointment on the wizard’s face made Medina chuckle aloud. He wasn’t the only one addicted to the gorgeous little confections made by Hugh Ellingham’s talented wife, Delaney.

  “Danil, as long as you’re here, you might be able to help us out.” Katya and Medina laid out the issue, then waited for his response.

  “Pavel Krovatik?”

  “He said his name was Paul.”

  Danil nodded at her words. “Same thing. Pavel is the Slavic version of Paul. But yes, I know who he is. Shyster lawyer who preys on the unknowing. He’s an ambulance chaser. I don’t think I know the Simyonov… no, wait.” He paused with a pensive frown. “Dorotea Simyonova. Wow. I haven’t thought of her in years. Of course, she was old when God was a boy.”

  “Who is she?”

  “My dedushka said that when he was young, Dorotea Simyonova was already a grandmother, but she was still the most beautiful woman in Volshev. He thought she was a vila—a spirit of the forest who often controls the winds.” Danil frowned. “Something happened, though. I don’t know what, but by the time I knew her, she was old, stooped, and bitter. She’d yell at all the children who went past her house. I remember my brother and I ringing her doorbell one Halloween on a dare.”

  He shook his head. “That was mean of us. She was feeble, and she used a cane. I do remember that she had this little dog she adored. It had to be nearly as old as she was, but they were never apart.”

  Katya stroked his hand, and Medina felt a little pinch of jealousy go through her. She wanted what they had.

  “I can ask Gavril and see what he knows. I’ll send you what I discover.” With another kiss for Katya, he left them.

  Javi knocked at the edge of the screen door and walked in, followed by Lando, Shura, and a large orange cat.

  “Ladies.”

  Katya offered him a glass of tea and he accepted. “Training’s going well. I think our latest couple are almost ready to graduate.”

  They’d paired a gorgeous lab/pit mix with a medically retired former firefighter who suffered from PTSD, and as Javi described the process of getting both human and dog to bond and work together, Medina felt a wave of satisfaction.

  This was a good place, and they were doing good work—no matter what some shady Texas lawyer said. She wasn’t going to let him change that.

  Chapter Five

  The light was fading early this late in autumn, but he liked the way the sunset colors made Medina’s dark hair glimmer with red and gold.

  Before they left Cherry House, they’d worked out the repair process for her truck. They’d driven it to the shop and he’d arranged to pick up Medina and Shura at their place every morning and bring them home until she had her wheels back.

  Now he and Lando were walking Medina and Shura to her door at the Excelsior building—a rather exclusive set of condos that, at five stories, was the closest thing Nocturne Falls had to a skyscraper—and all he could think about was her hair.

  They rode up to the fourth floor in silence, and when the elevator opened, she said, “You really don’t have to walk me all the way to my apartment, Javi.”

  He knew that. He just didn’t want this day with her to end. After all those weeks and months of glancing at each other, they’d finally connected, and he didn’t want to let go.

  “Can’t leave the job half-done, Boris.”

  As they approached her door he realized it stood slightly open.

  He held up a fist at shoulder height, warning her to freeze. Lando’s ears perked, and he quivered at Javi’s knee.

  “Medina, I need you to stay here. We’ll check this out.”

  Javi fed the dog’s lead out slowly. No light came through the opening, and he couldn’t hear anything, even with his wolf senses on alert.

  “Go seek.”

  Lando shot through the door, his body tight as he swept the floor, nose down, canvassing wide for the threat. Within a second, he found it. A shadow moved at the glass door leading to the balcony.

  Javi shouted out a warning. “Sir, stand down!”

  The figure began to slide the door open, and, as if they still drilled every day, Javi got ready for the attack. He called out one last caution. “I am releasing the dog!” When the shadow didn’t stop, he let go of the leash. “Get him!”

  Eighty pounds of trained, intelligent canine with strong teeth and jaws went flying forward as though shot from a rifle. Lando knocked the intruder off balance, then clamped down on one of the flailing arms, biting ferociously. He was no bulldog, but snapped and tore and snarled, never giving the criminal a chance to regain his feet and inflicting as much damage as possible.

  The shadow in his jaws proved it had substance when it shrieked, “Get off! Call him off!”

  Javi had been on the receiving end of those attacks when he was training to become a K9 handler, and they were vicious and painful. He had zero sympathy for the man on the floor, suffering under Lando’s bite, though. This was the natural consequence of an enemy infiltration.

  He put a knee in the guy’s spine and wrenched his hands backward before securing them with a spare lead he had in one pocket. Another pocket held Lando’s favorite reward—a super-tough, red rubber toy shaped like a snowman. “Leave off, Lando. Good boy.”

  The dog, surprisingly, didn’t go bounding after the toy. Instead, he retreated but remained nearby, growling. As soon as Javi yanked off the balaclava that hid the man’s face, he understood why.

  “Krovatik.”

  When he’d first seen the lawyer that morning in Medina’s office, he’d seemed so frail and scrawny that a strong breeze would knock him over. But he must have been stronger than he looked, because he continued to struggle. Javi shoved Krovatik into a corner, Lando keeping up his steady snarl.

  When Medina poked her head around the door and gasped, Javi glanced up and finally saw what she did.

  Her place was a wreck. Two men and a large dog could inflict a lot of damage on furnishings. Her delicately carved coffee table lay on its side, and there were paw and boot prints all over the pristine, light gray wing chair they’d overturned. As they watched, a tall vase—a brilliant pop of bright red in the otherwise pale room—teetered for a long moment, seemed to steady, then took the plunge.

  All of them watched in silence as it hung in the air, falling in slow motion toward the silver colored rug before it cracked into a hundred glittering shards.

  Every eye in the room cut to Medina.

  The doc wasn’t the most outgoing and friendly person he’d ever met—a trait that had never bothered him because he wasn’t the kind of guy who needed everyone to like him, either. Javi was perfectly aware that she could be short-tempered. After all, she’d yelled back at him earlier, and it probably shouldn’t have turned him on as much as it did. But even then, he’d never seen her Completely. Lose. Her. Mind.

  The breeze that swirled at her feet made the fibers of the rug stand straight. It strengthened as it hit her knees and he began to feel the wind on his skin—a light, electrical crackle that had the hairs on his body stiffen. The dog’s fur ruffled, and Lando backed down, his ears and tail dropping.

  Krovatik had gone completely still under Javi’s hands, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Medina to check on the man.

  By the time the wind reached her waist, it was a visible thing. Currents twisted the air in waves that spun around her, ruffling her clothing, touching the ends of her hair. Swaths of color painted her cheeks, giving her perfect skin a rosy glow that was entirely different from the sweet blush he’d pulled from her earlier. Her dual-colored eyes glowed with an unearthly light.

  Medina raised her hands and the wind rose with them until she stood at the heart of a small tornado that was all the more terrifying for the control she wielded over it.

  She was glorious. And he was not afraid.

  Neither was Shura, who stood by her mistress, her
silver fur rippling in the gale. The dog pointed her sharp noise up and joined her voice to the roar of the wind, the wild song adding a maddening beauty to the storm.

  Shards of the vase were swept up into the vortex, broken again and again until the color was nothing but a swirl of passion in the current of air, then reformed, remolded, reshaped until it became a solid figure again, grasped in the hands of the powerful wind witch at the center of the tempest.

  It was perfect, but for a new symbol now embedded in the red. It was subtle, only a shade darker than the rest of the vase.

  A double-headed eagle. The symbol of Rus nobility.

  “Knyaginya,” Krovatik whispered. “Printsessa.”

  There was no denying it. One-legged Sgt Javier Acosta-Campos, from a scrubby, little town in the Nevada desert, had fallen for an honest-to-goodness princess who controlled the winds. Just his luck.

  Before he got too comfortable on the pity pot, two more heads popped in through the open door.

  “Wow. Did you guys have a party and not invite us?” Julian Ellingham grinned, his elongated canines sparkling on his movie-star perfect face.

  “And we weren’t even here for the furniture breaking. Sounds like a wild time. Good thing I called the sheriff for you.” His wife, the vibrant and charismatic vampire, Desdemona, waggled her blinged-out phone. She’d been a headlining illusionist in Las Vegas, but had moved her act to Nocturne Falls to be with Julian.

  Javi nodded at them. “Thanks.”

  Julian shoved his hands in his pockets and walked in, Desi behind him, picking their way over the broken bits of Medina’s home.

  She had placed the newly reformed vase back on its stand, and Javi saw her take a deep, slightly shaky breath before she turned to greet her visitors.

  “I’m really sorry about the mess. And the noise. And… Everything.”

  “Oh honey,” said Desi. “I’ve seen Girls’ Nights Out that got way messier than this. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Javi was able to catch the intruder.”

  “So I see.” Julian ambled over to where Javi’s knee was still wedged into Krovatik’s spine. He touched a long finger to Krovatik’s forehead and hissed a little. “Well, well, well. Aren’t you an interesting one?”

  “What?” Medina stepped forward, but Javi waved a hand at her.

  “Don’t, Boris. I don’t trust this guy.”

  The two vampires exchanged a look. “Boris?”

  “Long story,” said Javi. “That started with this guy trying to put the whammy on Medina in her office earlier today. We came home to find him here, and kind of broke a few things taking him down.”

  His leg was starting to throb. His prosthetic was a little twisted, putting pressure on his knee, as well as the end of his residual limb. As much as he didn’t want to get up and chance Krovatik smoking out of the apartment the way he’d escaped from the vet’s office, he couldn’t stay where he was.

  “Lando, watch.” The dog stalked forward, his lips twitching over dripping fangs as he stared down into Krovatik’s face.

  Getting up was pretty bad. He felt like everyone was staring as he struggled to find something to lean on until Julian held out an arm for him to use as a support. He’d been living with this injury for long enough that he usually didn’t care what people thought, but sometimes it wasn’t easy.

  He stood there, sweating from exertion and a little embarrassment until Medina appeared next to him, a glass of ice water in her trembling hand. He took it gratefully and pulled her into his side. She buried her face in his chest and they both stopped shaking.

  Javi surveyed the apartment with narrowed eyes. Now that the threat was largely neutralized, he found that he and Lando hadn’t caused nearly as much damage as he’d thought. The place had been tossed. It wasn’t just random destruction, either. Pillows were slashed, books tumbled off their shelves, and drawers pulled out in the living room and the kitchen, at least. He wasn’t sure if the guy had made it into the bath and bedroom down the hall.

  The sound of boots hitting the floor drew his attention as Hank Merrow, the sheriff of Nocturne Falls, and his deputy, a panther shifter named Alex Cruz, entered the apartment. Krovatik raised a hand and a little pulse of something filled the air for a split second. He looked at the others, but no one else seemed to have noticed it.

  The officers staggered a little as they passed the doorway, and Hank shook his head and pulled at his ear as if it bothered him, but then they focused on Krovatik, still on the floor with Julian and Lando perched over him.

  To everyone’s surprise, the thin man raised his chin at Javi and said, “That’s the man who attacked me. Arrest him!”

  So they did.

  While he and Medina, Julian, and Desi watched in utter shock, Hank and Alex walked right over to Javi and put him in cuffs. They didn’t bother reading him his rights, and they ignored everyone else in the apartment as if they weren’t even there.

  Even Lando backed off his task in confusion when he saw his master being handled so roughly.

  Javi could have put up a fight, but it wasn’t worth the risk when the two officers were so obviously under a spell. It was over in moments, and before they marched him out of the apartment, he looked back at Medina. She watched, pale and openmouthed.

  “Follow me, Boris. We’ll get this straightened out.”

  A last glance showed him Krovatik with a nasty sneer on his face. “I’ll be back to get what I want.” He disappeared in a cloud of foul-smelling smoke just before the police dragged Javi away.

  Chapter Six

  This was not how this evening was supposed to go.

  Since her truck was at the shop, Julian and Desi gave her and both dogs a lift to the station where all three tried to convince the officers to let Javi go. Nothing worked. Hank and Alex ignored them as if they weren’t there. Even Birdie Carruthers, Hank’s aunt and general busybody of the station, couldn’t get through to them.

  The spell they were under was incredibly strong. The two officers hadn’t spoken at all. After they cuffed Javi, they walked him out to the elevator and everyone crowded into the tiny space along with them.

  “The Girl From Ipanema” tinkled along musically in the heavy silence leaving a thirty-second sample to play over and over in her head.

  When they arrived at the sheriff’s office, Hank and Alex walked Javi down to the holding cell without a word, then came back upstairs and sat stiffly in their chairs. It was as if they’d been wrapped in a web of magic that only allowed them to do a single task, and when it was done there was nothing else for them to accomplish.

  Birdie had harangued them relentlessly, to no avail. Finally, the old woman held out her arms in helpless frustration. “I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re definitely bespelled, because obviously Hank would never act like this on his own. I’d better take him and Alex home for the night in case they do any other damage. Until I can get Alice Bishop over here, there’s nothing more I can do to help. I’m afraid your young man is going to spend his night in lockup.”

  “Can I at least go talk to him?” Medina twisted her fingers around her necklace, rubbing her thumb against the chain until it burned.

  “Sure, honey. Only for a little while, but I’ll take you down there.”

  Medina turned to the vampires, who had tried to help. “Thank you so much for bringing us.” She gestured to the dogs, who hadn’t left her side even though she’d been too flustered to put leads on them. “I’m going to go talk to Javi and try to figure things out from there. You don’t have to stay.”

  “How are you going to get home?” Desi put a hand on her arm, and Medina nodded a little stiffly at her. She couldn’t afford to soften now. Not yet.

  “I’ll call a Ryde. Don’t worry about me. Really. We’ll be fine.”

  Reluctantly, and after ensuring they all had each other’s cell numbers, Julian and Desi took their leave.

  Medina and the dogs followed Birdie down to the cells where Javi, one of tw
o occupants of the barred rooms, was leaning up against the wall, his eyes closed and his legs stretched out in front of him. The other guy was snoring, alcohol fumes wafting off him in nearly visible waves and the chainsaw racket stuttering occasionally as he slept off his overindulgence.

  Javi’s eyes opened the moment Birdie left them alone, and Medina saw the golden glow of his wolf peering back at her.

  “This is not okay. Nothing about this is okay.” She tightened her lips, but nothing could keep her eyes from filling with tears that she refused to let fall.

  Despite the heightened emotion that had turned his gaze lupine, his mouth quirked up on one side. “It’s not so bad. I’ve slept in worse places. At least it’s not sand and rocks.” He patted the hard bench he sat on, as if that made it better.

  Medina’s chin quivered, and his brave face fell a little. “Come on, Boris. Keep it together. If you cry, I’m gonna cry, and then I’ll lose all the street cred I’m getting from being in lockup.”

  The sound that left her mouth wasn’t a wail, but more of a watery chuckle. “Fine. I can be a ride-or-die chick. At least for tonight.” But she couldn’t hold her smile for long. “Oh Javi. What are we going to do?”

  “You are going to go back to my place with the dogs and get some sleep.”

  “Your place? Why not back to the Excelsior?” She wiped away the strands of hair that clung to suspiciously damp cheeks.

  “Nope. First, your place is a wreck and you won’t get any rest. But second, if even the high level security at the Excelsior can’t keep him out, you need something a lot more heavy-duty.” He rose and limped over to her, then wrapped his fingers over hers where they clung to the bars. “Go to my place. He can’t get in there, I know.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My abuela’s been a bruja for a lot longer than that guy’s been practicing his little smoke and mirrors act. There’s no way he’s getting past my grandma’s hechizos.”

  “Her what?”