Familiar Magic (Druid Enforcer Academy Book 1)

by C. S. Churton

She shrugged. “I follow the spirit of the law, not the letter. And I’m not the only one round here who’s in training to be an enforcer.”

  I leaned back against the wall and allowed myself to take a proper breath for the first time in days.

  “You mean it – you’ll help me?”

  “Sure. I’ve got nothing else going on right now. I take it you have a plan?”

  “Uh… that was pretty much it.”

  “Then I think we’re going to need help.”

  She tossed her pen on top of her notepad and hopped down from her bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Somewhere it wouldn’t hurt you to go once in a while.” She snagged her bag and raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Library?” I hazarded.

  “Library.”

  I stifled a groan, because she was probably right. If I – we – were going to pull this off, then we needed to hit the books. Maybe there’d be some clue about how we could do it, and, preferably, live to tell the tale.

  Although maybe there was another place I could get a head start on that.

  “You know what? I’ll catch you up.”

  I grabbed my cloak, because I figured I might as well look the part if I was going to suck up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “There’s only ever been one successful breakout from Daoradh – and Raphael orchestrated it. I’m going to see if he’s got any tips. If I can convince Cauldwell to let me see him again.” Which, admittedly, was a long shot.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Nope. Got a better one?”

  She shook her head.

  “Be careful.”

  I turned and shot her a grin.

  “Of Raphael? Or Cauldwell?”

  “Both. I’m not sure which one creeps me out most.” She shuddered.

  “Now, now. That’s no way for a future enforcer to speak about the Head Councilman.”

  “Says the woman whose father is the most powerful dark druid in a generation.”

  “Ew. Can we please stop calling him that, please?”

  “Oh, sorry. Says the woman whose father is the most powerful criminal druid in a generation.”

  I grabbed the pillow off my bed and launched it at her head. She ducked with a grin.

  “That is not what I meant, and you know it.”

  “Girl, you have some serious daddy issues.”

  “Don’t I know it?” I grumbled, pulling open the door. “I’ll catch up to you.”

  I had no clue how I was going to convince Cauldwell to let me go back to Daoradh, but I hoped Elias would at least arrange a meeting with the councilman so I could give it my best shot. He seemed to be on my side. Most of the time, anyway. I pondered it as I hurried through the corridors, passing only a couple of trainees on the way. It was getting late and it was Friday, which meant most of them were out in the real world having a good time. Except for us lowly first years – and the instructors, I hoped.

  I headed straight for Elias’s office. The academy’s head instructor was a workaholic if ever I’d met one, and I figured I had a better chance of finding him there than wherever the instructors got to in their spare time.

  When I reached it, I saw someone leaving and pulled up short. It took me a moment to realise it was Kyle. He had his head down and his hands thrust into his pockets, and he almost walked straight into me. He jerked his head up at the last moment, and seemed almost as shocked to see me as I was to see him. This was the last place I’d expected to find him at this hour.

  “Hi, Kyle,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

  He started to shrug, then forced a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Hey, Lyssa. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  I squinted at him a moment. His eyes looked shrunken and his face pale, and he clearly wasn’t fine. But he was a private kind of guy, most of the time. If he didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering him, then he probably wouldn’t appreciate me prying. Still, I was his friend. Someone had to look out for him.

  “Problem?” I raised an eyebrow and nodded at the closed door behind him.

  “Huh?” He glanced back over his shoulder like he’d forgotten it was there. “Oh. No, nothing. What, uh, what brings you here?”

  Kyle was not skilled in the art of deflection. But he was right – I had my own problems. Ones I could really use his help with. I glanced at the door again, but it stayed closed, and we were alone in the corridor. For now. It’d be just my luck that I’d say something incriminating at the exact moment Elias decided to pop out for a tea break. I beckoned to Kyle and ducked into a nearby lecture room. As I’d have expected for this time of day, it was deserted. Kyle stepped in behind me, eyes wide and looking faintly alarmed at my behaviour. But at least he wasn’t pale anymore.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked at once.

  Yeah, where to begin with that one? I hopped up onto an empty desk and let my legs swing for a moment. Kyle was my closest friend here, other than Zara. I decided, despite what Iain had said, to tell him everything. By the time I’d finished explaining about my dying magic, Raphael, and my mis-bonded familiar, he was right back to looking pale again.

  “Lyssa, I’m so sorry. What can I do to help?”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ve got a plan.” I hesitated. ‘Plan’ was a rather generous appraisal. “Well, a kinda plan,” I amended. He said nothing, so I continued, “I’m going to bust Raphael out. Don’t panic, though – just for long enough to trick him into lifting the curse.”

  “You’re…” He clamped his jaw shut so tight I thought he was going to break something, and his shoulders locked up. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Zara already read me the riot act about double-crossing the most powerful druid in the country. But I think it’s worth the risk, and besides, he already wants me dead.” Most of the time, at least.

  “Zara knows, and she’s happy for you to go ahead with this… this idiocy?”

  I frowned and stopped swinging my legs.

  “Idiocy? That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

  “Don’t I think?” He snorted and glared at me, his eyes hard. “Don’t you think – ever? That man is locked up for a damned good reason, and you want to set him free?”

  “Uh, weren’t you listening?” I tried to keep my voice even and failed. Why was he being so unreasonable about this? He was supposed to be my friend. “I’m only going to free him long enough to save my magic. But don’t worry, if you’re too scared, you don’t have to be involved. I wouldn’t want to put you at risk. I’m the only one who’ll be in danger, so I don’t see why you care.”

  I jumped to my feet and glared right back at him.

  “You think this is just about you?” he snapped. “Why don’t you try pulling your head out of your own arse for a minute and take a look around? When – not if, when – he gives you the slip, he’ll be free to kill again. And everyone who died stopping him, it will have been for nothing. Jesus, how arrogant can you be? Nothing is worth that. Nothing!”

  “Well, I’m sorry you don’t think my life counts for a damned thing,” I snapped, my voice shaking. My eyes started to burn. Dammit! I was not going to cry in front of this idiot. I balled my hands into fists. “Just forget I said anything. I don’t need your help.”

  I made to shove past him, and he caught my arm.

  “You know that’s not what I meant. And you know I can’t let you go through with this.”

  I whirled on him.

  “You can’t stop me. Unless you’re planning to report me to Elias and get me thrown out.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Yeah? Maybe you should. Because without my magic, I don’t have anything to stay for, anyway.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Going to Kyle had been a mistake, that much was clear. But a bigger one would have been giving him the chance to get to Elias before I did. I stopped only long enou
gh to compose myself, because I couldn’t afford to blow this. Then I marched straight to his office and rapped on the door.

  “Come in.”

  I opened the door and Elias looked up from behind his desk. As ever, it was buried under a mound of paperwork. There were bags under the instructor’s eyes, and a smattering of stubble shadowing his lower jaw. He gave me a tired smile.

  “Lyssa. Please, take a seat.”

  I settled into one of the seats, wondering how best to broach the subject.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked. I gave him the mirror of his tired smile.

  “It’s been a long few months, huh?” he said, and I nodded. “You have my word, we’re doing everything we can to help. Head Councilman Cauldwell assures me he has his best hex breakers on the case, and I’m receiving weekly reports from them.”

  “Uh, thanks.” I looked down at my hands twisting in my lap. Elias was a good man, genuinely trying to help. What I was about to do was a betrayal of his trust. But I had to do it, anyway. “There’s something else you could do.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ask Cauldwell to let me see Raphael again.”

  “I’m… not sure that’s a good idea.”

  I looked up in time to see him lean back in his seat, concern etched into his face. Concern for me, not for what I was about to do. Guilt knifed through my gut. I squashed it down.

  “I just need one more chance to convince him. There’s no risk to me now – he’s already done the worst he can do. I know it, and so does he. There’s no point in attacking me again.”

  Elias mulled over my words.

  “That may be true,” he nodded after a long moment. “But I’m not sure there’s anything to be gained from your visiting him again.”

  Other than finding out how he orchestrated a breakout of the prison the first time around. Not, of course, that I could admit to that. I leaned on Elias’s compassion instead, hating myself for it the whole while.

  “Please, Elias. I’ve got to at least try. I need to know I did everything I could to fight this.”

  It wasn’t a lie. I had to fight this with everything I had – even if that meant letting Raphael out of his cage. Temporarily.

  Elias exhaled heavily, steepling his fingers and regarding me over the top of them. After what seemed like an eternity, he inclined his head.

  “Okay. I’ll put your request to Cauldwell. But Lyssa, that’s not a guarantee you’ll be allowed to go, you know that, right? I don’t have as much power with the circle as you seem to think. I don’t want you getting your hopes up.”

  “I know you’ll do your best. That’s enough. Thank you, Elias.”

  *

  Elias’s best was, in fact, good enough. I got word less than a week later that I would be allowed to visit Raphael one final time, under the same conditions as before: no enforcer would step inside his cell, and I would be doing so at my own risk and against the advisement of the circle – all of which suited me perfectly. No-one in the room meant no-one to overhear what I was talking to Raphael about. And at my own risk meant no interruptions. It was the closest thing to good news I’d had in a very long time. Of course, the whole ‘one final time’ put a bit of a dampener on my plans to pump him for information in advance, but then, the enforcers were no slouches: odds were they’d have patched up whatever weakness Raphael exploited by now, anyway. We’d have to rely on what me and Zara had found in the library, and some good old-fashioned winging it.

  Kyle had spent the entire week avoiding me, and, by extension, Zara. He kept on avoiding us, even going so far as to skip out on a couple of lectures, and keeping to himself on the rare occasions he showed up. He didn’t go to Elias, at least. Or if he did, Elias hadn’t believed him. Zara tried to convince me to make it up with him, but seriously, how could I? He was willing to stand back and let my magic die – what sort of friend did that? Besides, he’d made it plenty clear he didn’t want anything to do with us, and honestly, right now it was the least of my problems. We could talk when all this was done. There was someone else I had to talk to first.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again quite so soon.”

  “Don’t gloat, Raphael,” I said. “It’s unbecoming.”

  He folded his arms across his stomach, and a slight smile played across his lips.

  “As you wish. We are above such games, are we not, you and I?”

  “I’m nothing like you,” I told him. “I’m here because I don’t have a choice.”

  “As am I.”

  “No,” I said, folding my arms across my chest, “You’re here because you’re a criminal.”

  “And unless I am very much mistaken, the actions you’re planning will earn you that title, also.”

  “I might be about to break the law, but I’ll never be evil, like you.”

  He rose to his feet, and I took a half step back before I caught myself. I wasn’t afraid of him. I had nothing left to lose.

  “Such vulgar words are beneath us,” he said. “What are good and evil but the constructs of less evolved minds than ours – minds not capable of grasping the bigger picture? Leave such frivolities for the children. We are above such things.”

  “You tried to kill me.”

  “A father must discipline his child. But you are a child no more. Join me. Take your rightful place at my side.”

  “Didn’t we have this conversion already? That’s not going to happen.”

  “You must understand you will have no future with the enforcers once you have freed me?”

  Well, he had me there. I could hardly tell him I was planning to throw him back in his cage as soon as I had what I wanted. I deflected.

  “You want to say that any louder, Raphael? You do realise there’s a guard outside this door?”

  “Quite. I trust you have a plan?”

  He didn’t know the half of it. Unfortunately, neither did I, because part of this was going to come down to how Cody reacted to what happened next.

  “Yeah, I do.” I stepped closer and lowered my voice. The walls were thick, but that didn’t mean I wanted to take chances. I was taking enough of those as it was. “That guard outside, you’re going to switch places with him. You’ll glamour him to look like you, and glamour yourself to look like him. I assume you can handle that?”

  A flicker of amusement passed over his face.

  “It would be faster just to kill him,” he said.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Raphael. If you hurt even one person, this deal is off. I will gladly die cramming you back in this cell to rot. Now, can you do it, or can’t you?”

  “You have my stubborn streak.”

  “Whatever. Is that a yes?”

  “Once I leave this cell, my full powers should start to return. It will take some time, but I believe I should have sufficient power to achieve the task.”

  “You know, you could just say ‘yes’.” I shook my head. Raphael’s vernacular was the least of my concerns right now. “With the guard locked in here, we can walk right out onto the surface.”

  “You’re assuming that no-one will look close enough to see through the glamours?”

  Being in this cell hadn’t dulled his mind, that was for sure. I’d have to be careful.

  “If we don’t give them reason to look, it’ll be fine. Me and Cody came in, me and Cody are leaving.”

  “And I presume you know all of the anti-wards and passwords?” He sounded cynical, and I took more than a small amount of pleasure in answering.

  “Yes.”

  At least, I knew all the ones to where we were going, which wasn’t exactly the place he thought we were going. Assuming I could pull this off. If not, I might as well walk myself into the cell next to his. If I lived that long. The thought sobered me, and the smug smile fell from my face.

  “Very well.” Raphael nodded his approval. “Then I believe, as they say, it is your party.”

  “No-one says it quite like that,” I muttered under my breath, tur
ning to the door. I shot a look back over my shoulder at him. “Be ready. Knock him out.”

  “Physical violence? How crass.” He folded his arms. “It seems rather contrary to your ‘harming none’ stipulation.”

  “Or you can stay here and rot. Your choice.”

  “Don’t be facetious. It doesn’t become you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Just be ready. We’re only going to get one shot at this.”

  I heard him move into position as I raised my hand and rapped loudly on the door.

  “Cody, I’m ready!”

  A key scrapped in the lock and Cody’s face appeared in the gap as he pulled it open. A stab of guilt lanced through me. He’d done nothing but help me, and I was about to repay him in the worst way possible. But I couldn’t afford to think about that right now. There was no room for anything less than complete concentration if I was going to pull this off.

  The door opened wider, and Raphael’s arm shot out. He grabbed Cody and yanked him into the room, slamming his head into the wall with brutal efficacy, and the enforcer crumpled to the ground. I winced and paused for a moment, watching the rise and fall of his chest. He was unconscious, and he’d have a sore head when he came round, but he’d be fine. Any serious damage could be fixed up by a healer. I’d just have to make sure one got to him in time.

  “Help me get him onto the bed,” I said, stooping to slide my hands under his shoulders. Raphael raised an eyebrow, and I glared at him. I was breaking like a dozen laws right now. I didn’t need him arguing with every decision I made like some petulant teenager – that was my job. “He’s going to attract a bit of unwanted attention lying in the middle of the floor, don’t you think?”

  Raphael scooped up his legs, and between us we carried him to the bench that doubled as a bed. I was glad I’d taken his head and shoulders – Raphael was none too gentle with his feet, tossing them down on the bench while I laid his head carefully on the pillow.

  A flash of grey fur whirled in the air, then a blur of yellow-brown spotted fur smashed into it. The forms writhed in a soundless ballet of violence, and then vanished.

  I snapped my head round to Raphael and caught him frowning at the spot where they’d been. That wasn’t good.