by Devon Monk
“What if I hadn’t been available?” I asked.
“I would have asked someone else to Hound it.”
“Do you keep a list?”
“Usually Pike—” He stopped, probably aware that Pike had been my friend and he was very recently dead.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “What about him?” It came out relaxed and easy. Not at all how I was feeling inside. Every time I heard Pike’s name, it felt like there was a fist behind it. I wondered if that would ever fade.
“Pike used to keep me up-to-date on which Hounds were available for jobs. Even though he took most of the jobs himself.”
I figured that’s what Pike had been doing all those years. Hounds had always worked for the police, the nonmagical police, but I’d just heard about Stotts’ particular branch of magic law enforcement this month.
It was true that magic cannot be used in high-stress emotions, so people generally believed it wasn’t that common to find magic at crime scenes. But I had seen enough with my own eyes and heard enough from other Hounds, and Zayvion, to know there was more dirty magic being used in this city than any sane person would feel comfortable knowing about.
And it was Stotts’ job to make sure any sane person didn’t have to worry about it.
Maybe it was my job to do that now too.
My only problem suggesting other Hounds work with Stotts was that he was cursed.
And the last thing I needed right now was a curse. On me or on the Hounds I had sworn to look after.
I pulled my coat off the back of the door. There was a half wall separating the kitchen from the entry hall. Nola, true to her word, was at the sink, washing dishes.
“Nola?”
She glanced over, caught sight of me shrugging into my heavy coat. She turned off the water and dried her soapy hands on the kitchen towel she’d wrapped around her waist in a double V. She even made a dish towel look cute.
“I’m going to Hound a job. I’ll try to be back in a few hours. Before one o’clock, for sure. If you need me . . .” I was going to tell her to call my cell, but it had died over a week ago and I hadn’t gotten a new one to replace it yet.
Stotts picked up where I left off. “You can call me. Here’s my number.” He walked around the edge of the half wall and stood a little closer to her than I thought absolutely necessary. He handed her his card.
Smooth.
Nola took it, looked it over, and tucked it in her back pocket. “Thank you. I will.”
I made some noise opening the door.
I held the door open for Stotts so he could walk through, which he did.
“Bye, Nola,” I said. “Lock the door behind me, okay?”
“I will. Allie?”
“Yes?”
“Be safe.”
I gave her my best invincible smile. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Chapter Five
The fun in being safe was that it didn’t hurt.
Driving over to the job Stotts wanted me to Hound had been a mostly comfortable-silence sort of thing. He didn’t dare ask me anything about Nola—he probably knew I was not about to give up my best friend’s secrets. And I couldn’t ask him anything about the job without getting more than a noncommittal grunt out of him.
So I pulled my journal out of my coat pocket and caught up on the last day or so of things that had happened. Even with my quick note-taking ability, I filled three pages, covering my dad’s funeral, Pike’s wake with the Hounds, my dad in my head, Nola showing up, and eventually the date with Zayvion. I noted the Necromorph in the alley and my nightmare with Dad too.
Stotts didn’t ask me what I was doing. He just drove and kept his mouth shut. Maybe he thought I was taking notes for the Hounding job.
The rhythmic sway of the rosary on his rearview mirror seemed less ominous in the daylight, although the chatter and static from the police radio set in the dash reminded me of just how serious working with Stotts could be.
He turned a corner, stopped at a light. “I heard your father’s body was buried yesterday,” he said.
Wow. Now that was a conversation starter.
“He . . . it . . . yeah,” I said, giving up on how to classify the dead-undead body of the man still very much alive in my head and dreams.
“Private ceremony?” he asked.
“The news channels weren’t invited.”
“Were there a lot of people there? His friends, business acquaintances? Wives?”
It sounded like a fairly innocent question. I hadn’t been there to see my dad buried the first time. From what Nola had told me, it was a pretty big event. Flowers, lots of people, the media, all his ex-wives except for my mother, in attendance.
The second, final burial had been quite a different thing. No flowers, no weeping widows except for Mrs. Beckstrom the Last—Violet. Everyone else seemed to be a part of his other, hidden life. Members of the Authority, including people who were a part of his public life and Beckstrom Enterprises. And all of them seemed to exhibit something between grim satisfaction and outright pleasure to see him thrown in a hole and covered with dirt.
And now that I thought about it, it was a little strange that the media had not picked up on the funeral. At all. Nothing on the news about the body being stolen in the first place, nothing about him being reburied. The only people in the city who seemed to be aware of it happening were the people who were there, graveside.
And, apparently, Detective Stotts.
Wasn’t that interesting?
“How did you know there was a burial? I didn’t see you or any of the police there.”
“It wasn’t a secret,” he said. “I was at the warehouse. I saw your father’s body there, watched the coroners take it away. I wasn’t invited to the burial, but it’s not a big stretch to think his body would be laid to rest.”
Oh, right, he’d been at the warehouse. I’d forgotten most of what had happened there—thanks to magic eating through my memories.
“I just wondered if you were alone,” he said.
“I didn’t know most of the people at the burial,” I said, which was true. “Violet was there. I think some of the people who worked for him—for Beckstrom Enterprises—were there.”
“People who work for you, now, right?”
And that was one of the questions I’d been trying not to think about for days. I was the heir to the Beckstrom fortune, which meant I had the final say about who was going to run the business and what was going to be done with the money. I was under no illusion that my father had run a clean operation. As far as I was concerned, that money had blood all over it.
“I guess,” I said.
I’d been thinking about setting up a charity. And maybe setting up a medical fund for the Hounds. It bugged me that I wanted to use my father’s money after pushing it away all of these years.
The flutter at the back of my eyes started up again, sparking little pricks of pain.
I so did not want to know his opinion on this. If I wanted to use his dirty money for a good cause, I would. Even though I’d been telling my father to stick that money up his assets for my entire adult life.
The flutter grew stronger, and I pressed at one temple.
I took a moment to envision disbanding his company. Lobbing a financial bomb at it and watching it sink for good.
The flutter quieted. So maybe he was paying attention to what I was thinking. Good.
And bad. My thoughts quickly turned to Violet, to her being pregnant with my dad’s child, my one and only sibling. I pushed that thought away and la-la-la’d like crazy. I didn’t want to tear Violet’s world apart. And destroying Beckstrom Enterprises would do just that. I’d never make a good day-to-day sort of manager of my father’s empire, not because I couldn’t do the work, but because I hated the company.
Almost as much as I hated him.
Okay, and yeah, I hated the paperwork and boardroom bullshit too. There was a reason I chose Hounding for a career.
S
totts stopped next to the curb, a park behind hedges and trees to my right.
“Is this it?” I asked.
“This is it.”
It looked innocent enough. Winter in Oregon meant the sky was stacked in layers of gray, sunlight filtered to a dim bluish cast that wouldn’t change much until May. It also meant the park next to us was soggy, the grass still green even in the grip of winter, Douglas fir and cedar trees dark needled and heavy with rain.
I got out of the car, inhaled the clean scent of rain and growing things. And the boiled-vinegar stink of used magic.
I turned my face into the wind, inhaled again. I took a few steps across the sidewalk and into the park itself, following the scent of magic. Stotts paced me, his hands in his pockets. He didn’t tell me what he wanted me to Hound. He didn’t have to.
I set a Disbursement, deciding sore muscles for a day should do the trick, then drew a glyph for Sight, pulled magic up through my body and out into the spell. The world sharpened under the cast of Sight, colors brightened, shadows deepened, as if the sun had broken through the clouds.
Sight showed me a trail of magic like ashes in the air, gray and green, snaking toward a gazebo, where the spell hung like a bloody handprint.
I made my way along a trail to the gazebo. At the corners of my vision, ghostly people swayed. I glanced over at one of them, a woman made of pastel watercolors, eyes black, hollow, hungry, as she shuffled my way.
Great. Ever since my dad’s ghost had smacked me in the head, every time I used magic I could see the Veiled—the ghostly remainders of dead magic users who wandered the world. Worse, they could see me.
Well, except for in the alley. The Veiled hadn’t shown up then. But maybe that had something to do with the spells Zayvion was throwing around, or the fact that I had used magic for only a second or two.
I picked up my pace. I needed to get to the spell, Hound it, and release the magic I was using before the Veiled swarmed me and added to my collection of fingertip burn marks.
The flutter behind my eyes started up again, my dad pushing at me. Exactly what I didn’t need right now.
Shut up, I thought. And to myself: Focus. I recited my favorite jingle under my breath: Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black . . .
I was almost up to the buttons, buttons, buttons part when I finally reached the gazebo and spell.
Sure, I knew the watercolor people, a half dozen of them, were headed my way. Sure, I felt the flutter of my father’s awareness like a second pulse behind my eyes. Sure, I felt Stotts stop behind me, far enough to be out of my way; close enough I could smell his anger and his fear.
But it was the spell, hovering in the air inside the gazebo, that held me fixed, like a hot palm against my throat.
It wasn’t a spell I knew the name of; didn’t look quite like anything I’d Hounded before. Blood magic was involved; the sweet cherry stink of that particular magic was undeniable. But this spell seemed to be more of a sealing off or a trading off of something.
Transmutation. My father’s voice was so clear in my mind, I jerked back as if he had been standing next to me. Along with that word came his knowledge of what the spell was.
A complex knot work that links the caster and the victim through dark magic. A bastardization of death magic, wherein the soul and spirit are bled from the living to the dying, or the dying to the living. A spell that can be molded to the will of the caster to break the rules of life and death. A dangerous way to make magic break its natural laws.
Deadly to the caster. Forbidden.
Holy crap. I didn’t want to touch it. If it had been created by magic jumping its tracks, dark magic messing with life and death, I was not about to poke it with a stick. And I was doubly freaked out because all of a sudden my father was working hard to make sure I got the information behind this spell. I didn’t know if that meant he was trying to help me or screw me up.
The Veiled were coming, still walking slowly. I knew any minute they’d rush supernaturally fast. If I didn’t do this quickly, they’d be on me, pulling magic out of me, and shoving it in their mouths like taffy. Then I wouldn’t be good for any kind of magic use.
I decided to take my father’s information as a freak accident of helpfulness. It was good to know what the spell was, but what I was really here for was to find out who had cast it and why. And why the police would want to know about it.
I leaned in, the fingertips of my right hand spread out toward the green and gray scaled center of the spell.
Magic still burned in the spell. It licked against my fingertips with a disturbing sentience, tasting me.
It’s not alive, my father’s voice answered my unspoken question. It is . . . aware of the power you carry within you. Much like the Veiled.
“Who did this?” Oops. I said that out loud.
“What?” Stotts asked.
I shook my head and inhaled, my mouth open, trying to taste the signature on the spell. Only the faintest taste of something sweet and burnt, like berries scorched on the vine. I had smelled that before. Outside my apartment with Zayvion. Last night.
But other than that, the signature was not familiar to me. I did not know who cast this spell or what it was really for.
Transmutation, my father said again, frustrated at me being so dense. It changes one thing, one energy, into another, suspends the state of one thing into another.
That was the spell Zayvion said the man-dog thing in the alley was using.
Do you know who was using it? I asked my dad. Do you know why?
Nothing.
I blinked, realized my fist was stuck straight in the middle of the spell. I did not remember putting it there. I was not only tampering with evidence, I was also pretty much destroying it.
Dad? I asked.
He did not respond. Or if he did, I did not hear him. Because the Veiled chose that moment to snap out of their slow motion and race at me faster than any living thing.
I threw my hands up to protect my face from their clawing fingers. My hand in the spell tore up through it and magic within me sparked, like steel to flint. My magic caught the spell, ashes and all, on fire, and burned hot, clean, fast.
Just as Veiled fingers should have hit me, stabbed into me, dug under my skin, a spell rose around me, pouring like cool oil from my head to the soles of my feet, covering my skin, cloaking me. I could no longer see the Veiled. Could not feel them, smell them, or sense them in any way.
And I was pretty damn sure they could not see me.
Holy shit.
Dad? I thought again. Did you do that?
Yes. You cast too loudly when you Hound, Allison. Learn some control and maybe the Veiled won’t be able to track you so easily.
Yeah, that, or maybe if I got the dead guy out of my head, they wouldn’t notice me so much.
“That was impressive,” Stotts said, walking up beside me. “Destructive. But impressive.”
I turned to look at the spell that only moments ago had hovered in the air. Even though I still carried Sight, the spell, ashes and all, was gone.
“You have some answers for me?” he asked.
“What was the question?”
“How about we start with what kind of spell that was.” Huh. He didn’t know. Just like I hadn’t known. So this had to be either a secret thing or a very secret thing.
I wasn’t sure what I should tell him. If I suddenly started spouting off the properties of a spell neither of us had ever seen before, I was pretty sure he would question where I’d gotten that information.
“That’s odd,” Stotts said. He walked away from me, making a wide circle around the center of the gazebo.
I looked down at what held his attention.
A perfect circle of black ash, glossy as crow feathers, lay against the floor. And yes, that’s weird, because magic doesn’t usually leave something quite so physical behind. Especially when the spell is gone.
I’d seen that kind of circle before. I k
new I had. I dug around in my head, searching for the memory.
Stotts knelt on the other side of the circle and stuck his fingers out toward the ash.
“Wait!” I warned at the same time my father’s voice echoed in my mind, Don’t touch it.
Stotts’ eyebrows lifted. He pulled his hand back and rested both elbows across his knees. “What is it?”
“I’ve seen it. I know I have. Give me a sec.” I took a deep breath and stared off into the mist and the green, clearing my mind before I pulled out my journal. It was starting to rain, just an intermittent tapping like distant drumming.
I’d been taking notes of my life for long enough I had a pretty good coding system worked out. Anything dealing with spells was marked in the upper right corner of the page and underlined in text. I flipped through the pages. Even though I’d had this notebook for almost a year, and had noted several Hounding jobs and other spells, I didn’t see anything in it about circles of burned-out magic.
So what is it? I asked my dad. Just because I didn’t have the memory didn’t mean I couldn’t get the information out of him.
I sensed his hesitance. I could tell he was weighing something. Probably his options and whether or not telling me would work to his advantage. For just a second I wished I were dreaming because at least then I could tell exactly what he was thinking. Of course, he could tell what I was thinking too, so it wasn’t all good.
The disks, he said, his voice stronger and clearer, just as if I were wearing an earbud and he was a tune. Yes, it worried me that I could already hear him clearer than I could just a day ago, and that he was interacting with me easier too. I tried not to think about how if he kept getting stronger, more comfortable, more active, maybe he would just keep going until he took me over completely.
Heck, why panic about that when I could panic about this illegal, possibly unknown, certainly forbidden spell that I had completely destroyed?
What about the disks? Oh. That was it. I remembered, or, hell, maybe Dad gave that info a nudge toward my consciousness. There was no trail left behind from magic used through the disks. When the disks were used, all that was left behind of the spell was a burned black circle of ash.
