House of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 2)

by Emma L. Adams

  “It’s a waste of time if there’s still cantrips being passed around behind the scenes,” said Cal. “And Bria knows where they’re being made.”

  “I really don’t.” But there was one place we hadn’t checked. Somewhere I hadn’t considered as an option… yet I was all out of better ideas.

  Cal scoffed, grabbing one of the fallen mages by the scruff of his neck. “Right. I’m going to fetch the vampires and get them to deal with these scumbags.”

  As he dragged the mage’s limp body up the narrow staircase to the surface, Miles shuffled closer to my side. “Want me to punch him?”

  I shook my head. “He’s right… there is one place I know of where the cantrips might be coming from. It’s a long shot, but I can’t think of anywhere else.”

  “Where?” Miles asked.

  Cold slid through to my bones. I swallowed hard. “I think it’s time to pay a visit to my family’s old house.”

  12

  Within the hour, the vampires had sent their human assistants to haul the captured mages away, while Ryan and Cal dropped the cantrips off with Devon in the Death King’s castle. I, meanwhile, joined the spirit mages and headed back to Elysium. If I was really going to risk going back to the place where I’d grown up, I’d better get it over with before I lost my nerve altogether.

  Miles offered to come with me. I was glad to have company, at least at first, but the second thoughts rushed in when we left the Spirit Agents’ base on foot. More than fear of the earth mages lurking beneath the city stalked my steps. I didn’t want him seeing the place where I’d grown up, even if it’d lain in ruins the last time I’d set eyes on it. But I was all out of better ideas.

  “Whereabouts is your family’s home?” Miles asked.

  “The middle of nowhere—literally,” I said. “Way north of Elysium. There’s also not many nodes nearby, so we’ll have to walk it from Elysium’s north side and hope we don’t run into anything nasty on the way.”

  “Well, shit,” he said. “You can walk really fast, right? I saw you.”

  “I can,” I admitted. “But it’ll take a regular person a lot longer, and I’m not sure we have all day.”

  “I can astral project,” he said. “I can still use magic that way, but I can move faster.”

  Maybe that’s the best option. “Just don’t vanish on me.”

  “Of course I won’t,” he said. “I’ll catch you up.”

  If Miles astral projected, it’d be a buffer of safety if we did run into the Family out there. Not that I was less of a walking target myself, but at least there was no danger of them hurting him. I didn’t like to think how Lex and Roth would react if they learned of my growing attachment to the leader of the Spirit Agents. In their eyes, it’d be just another weakness for them to use against me.

  I used the nodes to travel to the northernmost point of the city and found Miles waiting on the other side, transparent and hovering above the ground.

  “No trouble?” I said.

  “Shelley is going to drag me back to my body if I stay out there too long,” he said. “Fair warning.”

  “Better than both of us getting stuck.” I bloody well hoped we wouldn’t end up falling into one of the Family’s traps, but it was impossible to be certain what we’d run into. I wouldn’t have thought they’d go back to the house after their escape, given the state I’d left it in, but I was through waiting for them to come to me. Time to hunt them down myself instead.

  We headed north. I walked at super speed while Miles floated alongside me, ghostlike and insubstantial enough for me to wonder if his abilities were in any way dampened while he was in that form. Part of me wanted to ask if he was sure what he was getting into, while another part of me was reluctant to rock the boat. Not until we reached the house, anyway.

  When we passed by the Houses’ facility in the north of the city, I found my steps faltering. The grey stone construction looked grim and imposing, but I could only imagine what it looked like on the inside.

  “I never found out how they escaped,” I murmured. “I imagine Adair used his mind-control when the guards got careless and tricked his way out, but nobody in the House of Fire will give me the details. Even their files say nothing.”

  He shot me a sideways look. “Would it make you feel any better if you knew?”

  “Probably not, no,” I admitted. “Your family…”

  “Yeah, they’re still in there,” he said, his voice soft. “Best place for them, really. Lot of people who piss off the Houses don’t get that lucky.”

  “Which House did it?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Despite his casual air, his tone was laced with a pain I recognised all too well.

  “Guess not,” I said. “I was going to offer to give the person responsible a kick for you on the way back.”

  His brows rose. “Already tried that. Didn’t really work out. Reckon I’d be in a cell of my own if I hadn’t been a minor at the time.”

  “No wonder they aren’t your biggest fans.” He was lucky he’d walked away with his limbs still attached, but even the Houses had some old superstitions around spirit mages. With good reason. While he might play the fool on a not-infrequent basis, I couldn’t forget that he’d brought Harper back to the dead and fought off an army. Yet would that be enough to keep him alive if we ran into the Family?

  “Are you sure you want to come?” I said, as we reached the next stretch of the city’s outskirts. “Last chance to back out.”

  “Us outcast mages have to stick together,” he said.

  His words caught me off guard, especially after what had happened between him and Shawn. I supposed he’d spent years giving his fellow spirit mages a fair shot, even if it backfired on him sometimes. This was also the guy who’d recaptured a bunch of vampire chickens after their escape had landed me in hot water with my ex-boss, for reasons I still hadn’t entirely worked out.

  While it was undoubtedly dangerous that he might breach the boundary of mistrust surrounding my past, I had to admit it was kind of nice to have company while I walked up north. We didn’t exactly have an attacking force at the ready, but maybe it was best not to run in with all guns blazing. Not until we knew what we were up against, anyway.

  “Do you really think the Family is back in their old house?” he said.

  “No idea,” I said. “I destroyed the entire estate, but maybe they got their earth mage allies to build a new house.”

  “Why do they never show up in person?” he asked. “Aside from your brother, I mean?”

  “They have this thing about maintaining secrecy,” I said. “The Houses didn’t actually know their identities until they caught me.”

  He shot me a sideways look. “They caught you? I thought you turned them in.”

  “I did,” I said, “but I also let the House’s guards catch me first. It was the only way I could think of to ensure the consequences didn’t come back to bite me if they failed to get the Family behind bars. I left them unconscious and tied up when I destroyed their estate, but I couldn’t bring all three of them with me single-handedly.”

  “So you let the Houses catch you first.” A note of sympathy came into his voice, which might have bothered me if it’d come from anyone else.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was easier than I anticipated, but the Family never saw it coming. They didn’t expect anyone to best them.”

  Especially one of their own creations.

  “I bet,” he said. “But how did they recruit people to join them if they never came into the city in person?”

  “They used to send recruiters on their behalf, mostly,” I said. “They hired humans, practitioners usually, equipped with some of their experimental cantrips. Might be doing the same again, for all I know. We saw some of those assassins in the attack the other week, so they’re definitely still up to their old tricks.”

  Which made them more likely to be at the old base, but I would have thought the Houses would have at least sent someone to c
heck up on their old address after their escape.

  “And your brother?” he said. “Adair? He showed his face in public.”

  “He wanted revenge on me,” I replied. “That’s why he got openly involved with Shawn and the other spirit mages. The others don’t like getting their hands dirty. Not directly.”

  “You’d think someone would have searched their house, though.”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “You would think so.”

  We walked on through the outskirts of the city, until the buildings gave way to wasteland broken by the occasional crumbled ruin of an old house. The wasteland had once been fields, the buildings comprising towns or villages or farms. Most of the Parallel looked the same these days. The Death King controlled only one small portion of the wasteland compared to how far it actually stretched, though there were large areas which were inaccessible thanks to the aftereffects of the war. This one wasn’t, but I still watched my step, in case I trod on the magical equivalent of a landmine. Even with my speed, it took half an hour before I started to see familiar sights. A forest of twisted trees. Ruined buildings. Broken pieces of metal fence. And then…

  I halted in front of a gate which had been ripped up from its roots, around a burned stretch of earth. “Here we are.”

  “Nice decor.” Miles floated up to my side.

  The house itself lay in a heap of charred ruins, but the ground around it was turbulent, as though churned up by giant hands. Or earth mages. This place is still in operation, all right. Worse, they seemed to have brought in new staff.

  Miles caught sight of the piles of upturned soil, too. “Is that what I think it is? Are there earth mages down there?”

  “There were always tunnels under the estate,” I whispered. “I thought they collapsed. But I guess they started recruiting from the House of Earth for a reason.”

  I’d been too wrapped up in looking for their new hideout to even consider that they might not have abandoned the old one, regardless of the fact that the Houses knew where it was now. But then, why wouldn’t they, if they planned to take over the Houses from within? I should’ve known better.

  Miles sucked in a breath. “What… what is that?”

  I followed his gaze to the side of a cliff which formed the far boundary of the grounds. Without the house blocking the way, the golden sheen of the metal forming the cliffside was starkly obvious now.

  “That,” I said, “is why they built the tunnels. I guess they reopened the mine.”

  Truth be told, I’d expected someone else to swoop in and claim it first, but the few who’d known the Family lived here might have been too frightened of their potential return to risk breaking onto their property.

  “The mine,” he echoed. “So—they’re making cantrips out of that stuff?”

  “Nah, they don’t have the finesse,” I said. “If I had to guess, they’re having someone else dig it up and then handing it over to practitioners. That’s what they did before.”

  Question was, where were the practitioners? I wouldn’t have thought the Family would let them live on the property, but no other buildings or landmarks were within sight. The Family had picked this place to build their estate for a reason other than its remoteness: the metal, infused with magic, was the material used to make cantrips, and I hadn’t been able to make a dent in it even after I’d razed the place to the ground.

  “I suppose we could close off the tunnels and slow them down,” I said to Miles. “That ought to put a dent in their smuggling operation.”

  “Where are the rest of the Family, though?” he asked. “Are they underground, do you think?”

  “I honestly have no idea.” I scanned the ground for a tunnel opening and felt the distant rumble of movement below the earth as I walked a little further until I came to a tunnel which was large enough for a person to walk into. While part of me wanted to check for any potential stragglers before I caved it in, a bigger part of me whispered that it was their own damn fault if the place collapsed on them.

  Movement stirred within the tunnel opening, revealing something coiled, and… shaped like a snake. A giant house-sized snake. Oh, fuck the Elements.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Miles drifted behind me. “I wish I’d brought one of those mind-control cantrips with me, but I left them at home. With my body.”

  “Shit.”

  To my horror, the wyrm stirred, its eyes opening to slits. Its head moved sinuously, half asleep, before its gaze fixed on me.

  “Uh.” I raised my hands. “Hey, there. Don’t mind us. We’re just leaving.”

  Miles was transparent, less of a target, but me? I was a tasty snack. The wyrm’s eyes opened fully and then it reared up, its head towering over the ruins. Wings sprouted from its back, while I broke into a sprint, putting on enough speed that the world turned into a dark blur. The beast snarled, its head waving around as though confused as to where I’d disappeared to. Then its huge body shifted, triggering a tremor below my feet. Even my speed couldn’t get me out of the way in time as its tail flicked up, sending me flying into the air. I landed on my feet by sheer instinct, skidding to a halt in the mud.

  Miles’s hands glowed, blasting spirit magic at the wyrm before it could hit me again. The air flickered in front of me as I caught my balance, and I glimpsed the golden sheen of a cantrip at my feet. Uh-oh.

  The air flickered and then resolved into an image of a smaller house standing among the ruins. An illusion spell. A good one, too. So they had rebuilt part of the house, and then hidden it behind an illusion. Yet I hadn’t seen any living people around. So who was here?

  As though conjured up by my thoughts, the smell of flowery perfume caught in my nostrils, and my heart leapt into my throat.

  “Miles,” I said. “Go back.”

  “What?” he said. “I won’t leave you here alone.”

  “Believe me, you’re better off running,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. “I can catch you up. Go back to Elysium. Please.”

  “No way,” said Miles. “You’re the one who’s vulnerable here.”

  “I’m not.” He didn’t know what these people were capable of. “I just need to check something out, then I’ll be right behind you. Promise.”

  His features twisted in indecision, but something in my expression must have convinced him, because he vanished without arguing further.

  I took one more step, and the ground exploded. The beast’s tail flung me into the air, and I landed hard, breathless, on my back. The perfumed smell intensified, and I opened my eyes and looked up into a nightmare with a stunning face, a waterfall of dark hair, and pale elven features. Lex still didn’t look a day over twenty-five, though she’d been around since long before the war.

  The woman who’d raised me bared her teeth in a crooked smile. “How nice of you to drop in, Bria.”

  I groaned. “Why booby-trap your own house?”

  “Couldn’t have anyone sniffing around, could we?” Lex’s smile widened. “Don’t worry, the beast is quite tame. For me, that is.”

  “Why come back here?” I said. “Everyone knows where your estate is now. It’s not a secret any longer.”

  “Everyone?” she said. “No, only the Houses of the Elements knows our location, and they aren’t long for this world.”

  My blood chilled. “What did you do?”

  “Why, nothing,” she said. “Yet.”

  My hopes of the Houses somehow thwarting them had already been low, but not only did the Family walk free, they’d ensnared at least one House in their grip already. Maybe more.

  I shifted into an upright position, silently calculating my escape route. “Is Roth around?”

  At least Adair was out of the picture for now, but Lex was far worse. She hadn’t changed an inch in the five years she’d been imprisoned. Even her clothes were flawless, as though she’d raided a vampire’s wardrobe. Her lacy red dress was positively indecent for a woman who was old enough to be my grandmother, while her deceptively
delicate hands belied the terrifying power at her disposal. Yet Roth put both her and Adair to shame. If both of them were here, I was doomed.

  “Not at the moment,” she replied.

  “What about Adair, then?” I said. “Why’d you leave him in jail? You could have rescued him at any time, right?”

  “For one thing, it was his own fault for getting caught,” she said. “I thought it would be more fun if you were the one who set him free.”

  “No chance.” I’d about had it with the mind games. “Where are the people you have carving cantrips for you? I know you aren’t doing it yourselves.”

  I was stalling, I knew it, but if she used her magic on me, it was game over. I needed to get the hell out of here before Miles came after me in person and ended up ensnared, too.

  “The cantrips?” she said. “I wouldn’t bother your mind about them. There’s nothing you can do.”

  A likely story. The cantrips might be powerful, but they had to be carved by hand. By practitioners. Which meant this operation covered far more than just the three of them.

  “I beg to differ,” I said. “There’s plenty I can do, if you haven’t forgotten how I stopped your schemes five years ago.”

  “You put our plans on hold,” she corrected. “You never stamped them out for good. With the Parallel in chaos, it’ll be our time to shine, and the second war will be even more bounteous than the first.”

  The war. I hadn’t been born back then, but after the war thirty years ago, the Family had first risen to power. Before then, the Council of the Elements had been the ruling force in the Parallel, but when they’d been all but wiped out during the fall of the spirit mages, the Houses had sprung up in their place. The Houses had done their utmost best to stamp out any trace of illegal magic in the Parallel, but some mages slipped their notice. People who didn’t fit into the usual categories.

  People like the Family.

  I didn’t want to think what they might achieve if another war broke out, without the Houses or even the Order to keep them in check.

  “How do you know the war won’t end with people like you being prosecuted?” I said.