Heart of the Thief

by Katerina Martinez

  My dagger had been taken away and my hands were tied, but that wasn’t what prevented me from using magic. There’s a point in the instant after I form a spell in my mind, where the Tempest—the realm from where magic comes—opens up just enough for me to draw magic out of it. It’s an instinct as easy as breathing, or thinking, but without that connection I can’t work magic into the world.

  That connection was being actively blocked by another mage. That was why I hadn’t been stunned. As long as I was sitting in the backseat of this car, with my hands all tied up and my eyes blindfolded, I was completely powerless.

  I could hear the rain slapping against the roof, the sounds of other cars rolling along beside us, horns occasionally honking. Whoever was sitting in the front seat wasn’t talking, but I could still smell his cologne. Now that we were inside a car, the aroma was a lot more intoxicating.

  “So, is anyone gonna tell me where I’m going?” I asked.

  My question was met with silence.

  “Silent types, huh,” I said, “I get it. I guess you have to be if you’re into kidnapping. Don’t want me to recognize your voice when you’re standing in a line up, right?”

  More silence. I sighed. At least, if they wanted to kill me, they’d have done it by now. I realized, of course, that whoever these people were, the only reason why they weren’t going to kill me was because they needed me.

  The car rolled to a stop, which was noteworthy because it felt like we hadn’t hit a single red light this entire time. I heard a gate clatter open somewhere ahead of the car, and then we were moving again, but slowly.

  For a second time, the car came to a halt. This time, I heard the ignition cut off, and doors start to open. A moment later, someone opened the backseat door.

  “Out,” said a man whose voice I didn’t recognize. “Slowly.”

  I did as I was told, wriggling out of the seat and placing my feet on solid ground. Someone grabbed me, yanked me out of the car, and then shoved me hard enough to make me almost lose my balance and fall, but I didn’t fall. Instead, I spun around on the spot and delivered a roundhouse kick to where I thought the guy’s head would be.

  My foot made delicious contact, sending a resounding crack echoing into the night. The guy groaned, toppled, and I heard his gun skitter to the floor. I would’ve gone to grab it, but I had no hands to grab it with. Instead of running anywhere, I stood exactly where I was, ready to attack anyone who got too close.

  “Stay back!” I yelled, though I had no idea if there was anyone around me besides the guy I’d knocked down.

  “I think you’ll want to calm down,” came that soft, almost disinterested voice again. “Before you get hurt.”

  “You’re deluded If you think I’m gonna let you walk me into the Gods know where.”

  “And you’re naive if you think you’re going to get anywhere blindfolded and tied-up. Stun her.”

  “No, wait!” I yelled, but the words had barely left my lips when a bolt of magic struck me in the side. My entire body suddenly went ice cold, like I’d just been plunged into a frigid lake. I fell to the floor, but I didn’t feel the impact as I hit the gravel driveway. The light had gone out of my eyes well before then.

  When I opened my eyes again, my vision was so blurred, I could barely see a thing around me. I took a deep breath in through my nose, rubbed my eyes, and sat up. My stomach sank as, slowly, the room around me came into focus. With stark horror, I realized, I knew exactly where I was… because I’d broken into the place once before.

  A huge chandelier filled most of the vaulted ceiling, sending glittering shards of light in all directions. Gorgeous, gold-framed pictures hung from the walls, each one of them a landscape of roiling storms, furious oceans, and frothing waves.

  The more I stared at them, the more the pictures inside of the frames moved and danced. Lightning flashed, currents pushed and pulled, and clouds churned. They were paintings of the Tempest, the realm from which all magic comes. A place all mages go to every time they use magic. A place they all must visit, and survive, at least once in their lifetimes.

  “Good morning,” came a voice powerful enough to snap me out of the daze. It was like the paintings had a hold on me.

  I tried to shake the daze off. “It can’t be morning…” I said, “Is it?”

  “It’s not. You’ve been stunned, and you’re disoriented. It will pass.”

  A flash of red light captured my attention, and I let my eyes focus behind the blurry figure of the man in front of me. A mezzanine ran all along the sides and far end of the room. Lining that balcony were more armed men in tactical gear than I’d ever seen in my life. Every one of them had an assault rifle aimed at my chest. My hands were free, but even I’d struggle against all that heat.

  My eyes now moved back to the man in front of me, and I saw him fully. Looming tall in the center of the room, was the owner of this fine property, and the king of magical organized crime. A man known to the world only as Asmodius.

  The lighting in the room gave his face a more sinister tones, hardening the lines around his clear blue eyes and mouth. He had close-cropped black hair, graying at the sides, and a thick black and grey beard that craved attention. It was impossible to look at him see a crime-lord, that was until you looked past him and saw all the men holding guns.

  “Well…” I said, “It looks like you’ve definitely beefed security around here.”

  “We had something of an incident a couple of weeks ago,” he said, “I didn’t want to take any chances.”

  “You know, I think I heard about that. You lost something, right?”

  “It was stolen, but you know all about that, don’t you?”

  “I remember retrieving something you had stolen in the first place, so I don’t know if I’d call what I did theft, exactly.”

  “Call it what you want. You broke into my mansion, into this very room, and took something important.”

  “Oh, is that why I’m here? I thought you’d mistaken me for somebody else—somebody you could actually get a ransom for. Sorry, chuck; I don’t keep enough friends who care enough for that.”

  Asmodius cocked his head to the side and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He was wearing a suit that was probably worth more than a year’s worth of my rent. Hell, the shiny tie-clip he had on probably cost a small fortune. All this wealth was clearly meant to intimidate me, and it probably worked on most other people… but I wasn’t most people.

  “You’re not being held for ransom,” he said. “Kidnapping isn’t kind of business, anyway.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “It’s not?” I asked. “Because I’m pretty sure I was just kidnapped by your people.”

  “I want you to tell me how you did it.”

  “How I did… what, exactly? My mind’s a little fuzzy from the stunning.”

  Asmodius’ jaw visibly tightened. He inhaled deeply through the nose, then exhaled. “How you stole from me.”

  I put a finger up… and watched every single gun aimed at me shift a little bit. My eyes darted around the room. “I’m gonna need a towel… and maybe a shot of tequila.”

  Asmodius clicked his fingers, and after a couple of seconds someone walked over to me carrying exactly what I’d asked for. I washed my face off with the towel, then stared at the shot glass. “What, no salt?” I asked. When I didn’t get a reply from the servant, I downed the shot and handed the glass and the towel over.

  The servant rushed off, never showing his back to Asmodius. “Well?” he said, gritting his teeth.

  I decided not to push my luck. “You wanna know how I slipped past your magic wards?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I feel like you’re gonna have to keep those tequilas flowing if you want me to talk.”

  “Or I could have you killed, right now? I think telling me what I want to know is in your best interests, don’t you agree?”

  Considering he was the one with all the guns trailed on me, he was probably in a better p
osition to know what really was in my best interests. He also clearly wasn’t going to let me just walk out of here without telling him exactly how I’d managed to trick his cleverly designed magical wards. Wards that were meant to be impenetrable.

  Magicians aren’t supposed to reveal their secrets, but I really wanted to see the look on his face when I told him how I’d beaten the notorious Asmodius.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “It was easy, really,” I said.

  “Easy?” Asmodius didn’t look impressed. His entire body had stiffened like he’d just been called an asshole to his face; something that probably didn’t happen often. Or ever. “How about you explain exactly what you mean?”

  “Well, magic wards are like safes, right? Mages put them up when they want to protect themselves or protect something valuable. But all safes can be cracked, so long as you have the right tools or the right talent.”

  “Which did you have, the talent or the tools?”

  “Lucky for me, my talent and my tools are exactly the same thing.” I pointed at my head. “They’re all in here.”

  His jaw tightened again. “I’m going to need you to be a lot more specific than that.”

  I watched him from where I sat, pausing before speaking again. “So, you know those really old safes? The ones with the dials? If you put your ear to them as you’re turning the dial, you can almost hear the sliders give the combination away. I can do the same thing with magic wards. I just… listen, and they tell me what I have to do to get past them.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t buy it. You’re lying.”

  “You can believe that if you want, and you can kill me if you want, too, but trust me. One night you’ll be lying in your bed, wrapped up in your five billion thread counts of Egyptian cotton, and the thought will creep into your mind. Were my wards really speaking to her? Can magic wards even speak? They didn’t teach that at the academy.”

  “What you’re suggesting isn’t only impossible, it’s unheard of. When a mage designs a ward with a vulnerability that would disable it, they do so to exponentially increase its power. Adding that weakness is what makes the wards far more powerful than whatever the mage could conjure without them. You’re suggesting you can listen out for these backdoors and exploit them. I’d be intrigued, if I didn’t think you were lying.”

  “Why do you think I’m lying?”

  “Because it can’t be that easy. There has to be some other explanation as to how a little Guardian-less gutter mage can break my wards.”

  Keep your cool, Izzy. Keep your cool.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, but you can’t argue with the facts. A couple of weeks ago there was a pedestal where you’re standing. Inside that pedestal sat a little amulet that belonged to the grieving husband of a dead woman; an amulet you stole to settle a debt. Protecting the pedestal was a bubble of protective magic that, if I’d touched it, would’ve made me suffer a fatal stroke—because you’re a Psionic, and fucking with people’s brains is your thing. Am I on the money so far?”

  Asmodius cocked an eyebrow. He then gave me a reluctant “Yes.”

  “Continuing, then. You encoded a secret combination, a series of hand gestures, into the magic ward to make it more powerful, to make it so not just any mage could blast it apart. I’m not just any mage, but even if I’d had the power to bulldoze it with my magic, doing so would’ve sent an alarm directly into your head. The only way I could’ve plucked that amulet from that podium without dying or destroying the spell was if I knew what hand gestures to draw into the air.”

  I brought my hands up and started tracing invisible lines with my fingertips as I spoke. Half circles, S-shapes, right angles, all crisscrossing over each other and overlapping. As far as secret combinations went, Asmodius had made his pretty complicated. I’d only had one chance to get it right once I learned it, otherwise the ward’s power would’ve struck out at me like a poisonous snake.

  A pause lingered after I’d finished showing Asmodius that, yes, I did know the secret combination to his magic safe. No, I hadn’t been lying about how good I was. And yes, he should totally be in awe of me right now. Fat chance of the third one happening, but a girl could dream.

  He dragged his hand down his face and across his beard, and I was surprised to find him smiling. “That’s… very impressive,” he said. “Truly. And you say all you had to do was… listen to the ward and it told you what the combination was?”

  “Feel free to call me the ward whisperer. On second thought, no, don’t call me that. I hate that.”

  “Well then… I would ask for you to give me a demonstration, but I’m not sure that’s necessary if what you’re telling me is true. You have a gift, one I’ve never seen before in a mage…”

  I scanned his dark eyes. “That’s not the only reason why I’m here, is it?” I asked. “I mean, if all you wanted to do was find out how I’d done it, and now you’re about to let me go, that’d be great.”

  I went to stand, but again the riflemen shuffled uncomfortably. Asmodius lifted one of his hands, and the guns seemed to calm down a little. “Come now, Isabella. You can’t expect me to believe you don’t know what’s going to happen next?”

  I sat back down, but I kept my back straight and put my game face on. I knew exactly what was going to happen next.

  “I’m not on the market,” I said.

  Asmodius produced a key from inside his jacket pocket. The key I’d battled the Mystic Trio and a possessed doll to retrieve. “This suggests otherwise. Who hired you to steal this?”

  “I don’t steal, I find. There’s a difference.”

  “Call it what you want, you’re still little more than a common thief. Your uncommon ability, however, is something I would like to use.”

  “You can try if you want, but I should warn you; the last time I let someone use me, it didn’t end well for him in the long run.”

  “Is that before or after you stopped dancing at the Glittered Goddess, Kandi?”

  My body froze and heated all at the same time. If it wasn’t a shock that he knew I didn’t have a guardian, it definitely came as no surprise that he also knew who I was in a past life. The way he’d said it, though, he’d meant it as a jab, and this time I wasn’t going to let him have it.

  “Don’t you call me that,” I warned.

  “Struck a nerve?”

  “If you want to be serious here, let’s be serious. Don’t try and flaunt your power by showing me you’ve done your homework about me. That’s not impressive.”

  “But it’s true. You used to be a stripper, weren’t you? Offering your body up to anyone with a wad full of singles?”

  “If you’re trying to get me to be ashamed of what I used to do for a living, it won’t work. I’m pretty comfortable with my life choices, even the ones that get me into a little trouble.”

  He stuffed the key into his breast pocket again. “Very well,” he said, “And perhaps use was a crude word. I would like you to come and work for me, however. You have an exceptional skill. I think we could make each other very rich indeed.”

  I watched him, carefully. Was Asmodius, this big-time crime lord with an army of guys and untold amounts of money at his disposal, seriously offering me a job? Me. The person who’d stolen from him a few weeks ago. No, let me rephrase that—the only person to have ever been able to steal from him in living memory?

  You don’t offer a job to the person who steals from you and makes you look like an idiot. This had to be some kind of trap.

  “I’m flattered,” I said, “But I would literally rather do anything besides work for you.”

  “Why? Because I’m a criminal? That’s only because you perceive me as such.”

  “You run a crime syndicate. How much more criminal can you get than that?”

  “You see what I do as a crime, but the way I see it, I provide a service. I maintain order in places where chaos rules. I bring justice to people the police, and the magistrate, can’t tou
ch. I am a vital part of our delicate ecosystem of mages and humans. A peacekeeper. And I’m offering you a role in my organization.”

  “Yeah, I think I’m gonna pass on that.”

  Asmodius nodded. “That’s a shame. I’m sure your father would be disappointed to hear you’d turned me down.”

  An angry heat rose into my chest, anger that was coming from a place inside of me that I didn’t often visit anymore. “Shut up about my father.”

  “Struck a nerve?”

  “Look, if you wanna kill me, kill me. Otherwise, I’m leaving.”

  He put one finger up. “One job,” he said. “Do one job for me, and not only will I give back this key; I’ll forgive our debt, and pay you handsomely.”

  “Debt?”

  “You stole from me. That has created an imbalance between us that needs to be settled, one way or another.”

  “Again, I’m not working for you. You’re about as shady as they come, and I stopped jumping into bed with shady guys long ago.”

  He took another deep breath, rolled his neck around, and shut his eyes. He clicked his fingers again, and from out of nowhere, two guys came up behind me and grabbed my arms. I hadn’t heard them, I hadn’t sensed them coming, it was like they’d been hiding in a blind-spot. I struggled against them, but they were stronger than me.

  “Let me the fuck go!” I growled.

  “I’m afraid the time for that has passed,” Asmodius said. He’d started advancing on me, like a panther in his approach; decisive, but patient. He had all the time in the world. I was the one who had a decision to make, not him.

  Join him, or suffer the consequences of what I’d done.

  “Is this really how you’re gonna kill me?” I snarled, “Some big-time mage you are, don’t even have the balls to fight a girl in a duel—you’ve gotta get your lackeys to hold me down while you kill me. Is that it?”

  “Have you reconsidered?” he asked.

  “Fuck you and your crime family,” I spat.

  With a flick of his wrist, a short sword made entirely of blood-red light appeared in his hand. He gripped the phantom handle tightly, the light from the sword snaking up his arm and reflecting off the marble floor as he walked.