“Bite me.”
She shoved her phone into her back pocket and raced into the bathroom. Slamming both hands down on the counter around the sink to stop herself, Jessica leaned toward the mirror with a sneer before turning her head as far as she could to get a good look at that rune.
It still glowed with a faint purple light, which now seemed to pulse softly with her own racing heartbeat.
That sonofabitch had done this on purpose. He’d known exactly what these so-called side-effects would be. He had to have known.
Grimacing, she slowly lifted her fingers toward the circular pattern stamped with fae magic on her neck. When her fingers were no more than an inch away from her own flesh, the rune’s fine, glowing lines she couldn’t decipher started to move.
It was just a small tremor at first, like trying to focus her gaze after opening her eyes first thing in the morning from a deep sleep. Jessica pulled her finger away slightly, and the rune stilled.
“What the hell?”
She leaned closer to the mirror and tried again. With her fingers an inch away from the purple light, the lines picked up their vibrating dance once more. At half an inch away, the rune started to spin. The patterns rearranged themselves and picked up speed the closer she moved her finger toward her own neck.
What was this thing?
It had to be more than just a warded rune tattooed on her neck—on her flesh and beneath it and merging with her magic. Maybe it had saved her life before Leandras had crudely and without explanation helped her stake her claim on the Gateway. Or maybe it was—
‘Jessica!’
The bank’s voice was a blaring siren in her mind—a guttural roar she hadn’t heard before—and it snapped her out of her concentration.
She jerked her hand away from the rune, which immediately settled back into place again, and she stared at her own reflection, blinking quickly. “Something you wanna say?”
‘Yeah. And the fae already said it. Don’t fuck with the rune!’
Only now did she notice she was breathing heavily. Her legs and lower back suddenly felt incredibly tight, throbbing with a strain that hadn’t been there two minutes ago. “You saw what it did, right?”
‘You mean the spinney trick? Yeah. And I saw all the rest of it too.’
Jessica swallowed. “The rest of what?”
‘You know, I could blame you for being stupid and ignorant with your magic box, but this is...’
When she stepped away from the kitchen counter, her thighs flared in protest. Why did everything hurt?
“Just say it,” she hissed, trying to get her stiff body to respond.
‘Okay, don’t freak out...’
“What?”
‘But maybe the best place to start is, you know, taking a look out the window.’
Jessica’s stomach dropped lower than it should have been able to drop. On aching legs, she slowly turned and shuffled out of the bathroom. The second she saw the change in lighting in her bedroom, she knew what had happened. Seeing the black of night through the bay window at the front—broken only by the yellow streetlamp on the other side of 8th Avenue—only confirmed what she already knew.
“No...”
‘Yeah...’ The bank let out an uncertain whine. ‘It happened.’
She glanced at her phone to double-check. It could have been a trick, some illusion cast by a vengeful asshole stripped of the first rights he felt entitled to receive. But seeing 9:54 p.m. flash across her lock screen sealed the deal.
As far as proof went, Jessica was scoring three for three.
“Six hours,” she whispered. Grimacing, she reached for her aching lower back and gave her sore muscles an experimental rub.
‘Almost six hours,’ the bank corrected.
“I’m pretty sure splitting hairs on this one doesn’t change a damn thing.”
‘Well, no. I’m just trying to be helpful.’
“This is bad.”
‘Only if it keeps happening and the time jumps get longer and longer.’
Right. Because it wasn’t bad enough, and now the bank had to put that thought in her head.
Jessica couldn’t go on like this if there wasn’t a way to stop it. In three days—two and a half now—she’d be stepping through that Gateway with Leandras and entering another world. The last thing she needed was to freeze up for hours on end that felt like mere seconds. Not the right tactic for battle or for keeping an eye on the fae she still didn’t completely trust. Especially now that she had this new issue to deal with.
‘Hey, if you won’t say it, I will.’
With a final glare at the darkness beyond the bay window, Jessica staggered to her bed. “What?”
‘I mean, it’s convenient as hell. You just knocked ten hours out of the way, and neither one of us had to complain about you waiting around for your maybe-more-than-friends friend to take his sweet-ass time with the merchandise.’
Her muscles felt like old, petrified wood as she lowered herself to the mattress and blinked at the blank wall beside the bedroom door. “The merchandise.”
‘The spell reagents. Relax, I wasn’t talking about you.’
“Okay, well how about you just stop talking altogether, huh?”
‘Aw... Is all this time travel making you tired?’
She didn’t bother taking off her clothes. Didn’t even consider it. It took all the strength she had left just to pull her nearly dead limbs up onto the bed with the rest of her, and then her head hit the pillow.
If Leandras didn’t know how to turn down the dial on the damn rune screwing with her body and all semblance of time, she’d kill him.
‘No you won’t.’
Fine. She’d torture him until he gave up everything he knew. From the Laen’aroth, even the smallest, most seemingly innocuous bit of information was like holding a stick of dynamite. It was Jessica’s job to decide whether or not to light the fuse. With her magic back, that decision was worlds easier to make.
The bank chuckled softly. ‘You’re on a roll now, witch. Except for when it comes to following his advice. Here’s another piece for you. Don’t waste your time...’
Before the bank could finish its round of amused and highly unsolicited advice, Jessica was out cold.
SHE DIDN’T FEEL PARTICULARLY rested when her alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. With a groan, Jessica slapped at her phone—which had spent all night on the mattress beside her head instead of its usual place either on the nightstand or in the pocket of her pants from the night before.
‘Wakey, wakey!’
“Don’t.” She grunted and finally hit the right place on her phone to turn off the alarm.
Jessica felt like she’d just been hit by a train.
‘Oh, come on. You’ve only ever been hit by a car. We both know a train would’ve killed you.’
After slowly pushing herself up to sit on the mattress, Jessica dragged both hands down her cheeks and tried to focus the three versions of her bedroom into just one.
This was worse than a hangover.
‘Just another side effect. Come on. Get up.’
“Why?” What was the point? No one had shown their face at Winthrop & Dirledge yesterday after the next most important phase of the reckoning had been kicked off in pure Jessica Northwood fashion. The chances of anyone trying to get inside this morning, or today, or the next day seemed incredibly low.
‘Business is business, witch. Come on. The coffee’s almost ready...’
Jessica leapt off the bed so fast, she almost didn’t land on her feet. “Why did you let him in while I was sleeping?”
The bank’s next gale of wild laughter knocked her off balance again. ‘Paranoid witch walking, everybody! Don’t mention coffee, or she’ll rip your intestines out through your throat! Good thing I don’t have either.’
Listening intently for sounds of movement downstairs or even the unignorable creak of footsteps coming up the staircase, Jessica stared at her closed bedroom door. “I�
��m not paranoid.”
‘You think I can’t make a pot of coffee on my own?’
“What?”
‘No one’s here. Relax. And then once you do that, get a move on. We have another long day ahead of us.’
“You made...” She shook her head and stumbled toward the bathroom.
‘Hell of a way to get you out of bed, right?’
No. It was a hell of a way to screw with her first thing in the morning. Coffee was supposed to be an enticing part of the morning ritual, not a red flag to pump her full of adrenaline after eight hours of sleep that felt like less than two.
‘Hey, I can only read your mind as it is now. The only one of us who could see the future was Tabitha.’
“Just...stop talking.” Jessica’s legs felt like Jell-O, and she had to catch herself with both hands on the bathroom counter to keep from dropping to the floor in front of the sink. A quick, blurry-eyed glance at her reflection in the mirror didn’t help things either.
Yes, the warded rune still glowed purple on the right side of her neck. No, it didn’t sting or itch or spin. No, she wasn’t about to start messing with it now.
‘Good choice. Do your business so we can do ours—’
“Give me a goddamn minute!” Her voice came out as a barking croak, and the bank sniggered but fortunately remained blissfully silent after that.
Jessica Northwood didn’t take orders from a bank, no matter how old or sentient or powerful. She didn’t take orders from Leandras Vilafor either, or anyone else for that matter. But yeah. She had to take care of her own personal business this morning before she opened up shop at 7:00 a.m. to take care of the actual business in her possession.
More than anything this morning, she hoped that business didn’t include anyone trying to break in, shake her down, commandeer the bank, force open the Gateway, or otherwise be a general pain in her ass.
Fortunately, all was quiet in the magical world of Golden, Colorado this morning. Jessica managed to get through her morning hygiene routine without any unwanted interruptions. By the time she got downstairs, the smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the bank’s ground floor and put more pep in her step than she’d expected.
The bank laughed at her as she fixed herself a mug and briefly considered eating the second piece of peanut-butter toast she’d fixed herself yesterday as a late breakfast. Its laughter still filled her head even when she chucked the day-old toast in the trash and got to work making more.
“Yeah, I get it. Running this place is the great equalizer, right?”
‘I didn’t say anything.’
“You didn’t have to.” Jessica had already had the thought, which was most likely what had tickled the bank’s nonexistent funny bone in the first place. Because the image of Tabitha’s partially eaten cheese and mayo sandwich left in the fridge was the only reason Jessica had tossed her day-old toast.
‘That can’t be the only reason.’
She sipped at her coffee and closed her eyes to let the caffeine start doing its work. “It’s the only reason that came to mind. And you know what? Tabitha didn’t have a rune branded on her neck that shot her forward through time.”
‘And you think that makes you better than her?’
“No, I think that gives me an excuse. I lost ten hours of my life yesterday.”
‘No you didn’t. They definitely happened. You just weren’t there. And being a scryer wasn’t an excuse for her, either. She just didn’t let herself get caught up in the minutiae of paying attention to every second of every day in the present. Now that I think about it, neither do you.’
Of course not. Because Jessica didn’t have time to get caught up the minutiae of anything. And now she had even less time.
‘Is the big bad vestrohím with her full magic returned actually feeling sorry for herself?’
“Shut up.”
There wasn’t much to feel sorry about in the next three hours as the November sky brightened slowly outside the storefront and Jessica milled around the bank, looking for something to keep her busy. The best way to spend her time while she waited for Leandras—again—was apparently working her way down the long line of shelves along the walls, studying the random objects shoved into place there in an only half-heartedly organized way she still couldn’t figure out. But she dug up plenty more spellbooks and magical histories and a few scrolls that looked like they’d rather crumble to dust in her hand than be unfurled and studied.
Jessica leaned back against the shelf as the latest of such books fell open in her hand with a creak of protest. “Anything about time-jumping in any of these?”
‘Your new warlock friend was right.’
“Who?”
‘Seb. No, wait. Stan.’
“Steve?”
‘Yeah, that guy. They all run together. Point is, there’s not a whole bunch of anything on time-whatever-whatever, because it’s not exactly a controlled substance.’
She slowly turned to the table of contents at the front of the old leather-bound tomb, but that was about as helpful as the bank right now. “You mean subject.”
‘I meant what I said, witch. Time is as substancey as anything else, especially magic.’
“Time isn’t magic.”
‘No, just a side effect.’
After a gentle flip through the sub-chapter on runes—which only produced information on various origins and uses but nothing about time, branding them onto skin with a slap, or how those two blended together with an added benefit of wards in said runes—Jessica closed the book with a muffled thump and set it back down on the shelf. “You’re talking in circles.”
‘Yeah, well, time and magic are cyclical too. Hey, which reminds me...’
“I don’t need another insightful history lesson on Winthrop & Dirledge from Winthrop & Dirledge. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to keep this brand on my neck from acting up at the worst possible time. Or any time.”
‘Not screwing with it would be a good place to start.’
Jessica hadn’t touched the circle of glowing purple light since 4:12 p.m. yesterday—which had become 9:54 p.m. thirty seconds later. And she wasn’t planning on messing with it again until either she found some sort of explanation in Tabitha’s leftover junk or Leandras returned with more serious explaining to do. Again.
‘Maybe it’s a fleeting side effect.’
“Fleeting means going away, bank.” She scanned the shelf and paused when her gaze fell on something that looked like a spinning top—the old-school-toy kind but made of gleaming copper. “I’m pretty sure having multiple time jumps where each one is longer than the next doesn’t fall into that definition.”
‘Or it could’ve just run its course by now. You know, ’cause you fiddled—’
“What’s this?” Jessica grabbed the copper top from the shelf and turned it over in her hands. Symbols she didn’t recognize had been deeply etched in the metal surface, each of them filled with the telltale turquoise-green of rust specific to copper, though the rest of the thing was in perfect condition.
‘Uh...some kinda baby toy?’
“Right. And Tabitha hid a baby in this place too along with everything else.” The more she turned the top over in her hand, the brighter the green symbols became. Only when a buzzing warmth rose from within the metal did she quickly set the thing back down on the shelf.
Was an inventory list really too much to ask for?
‘Yes. Because none of this crap matters. And no, Tabitha didn’t have a baby... Oh. Hold on.’
Jessica turned around slowly before casting a sweeping and highly skeptical glance around the empty lobby. “No. She didn’t.”
‘I know that! But you know what we haven’t covered yet?’
“Literally everything of actual importance at this point?”
‘Blah, blah, blah. You just like to hear yourself talk, don’t you?’
With a snort, she returned her attention to the piles of incomprehensible junk crammed onto the shelve
s.
‘We didn’t cover who’s gonna take up the mantel while you’re gone.’
Chapter 6
“The mantel?” Just the idea of someone else puttering around in her bank while she and Leandras were on the other side of the Gateway, completely unaware of whatever happened here while they searched for secret spell supplies, made her swallow thickly. “No.”
‘Hey, I could take care of myself while you were running around playing vengeful vestrohím and channeling spells with the Laenmúr.’
“You call being covered in green Gateway scum taking care of yourself?”
‘I did what I could with what I had. And that was only a few hours. Which we both know is way less time than you need to do whatever you gotta do on your little otherworld field trip.’
Jessica rolled her eyes. “No one’s taking over for me here. No new Guardian. No new owner. And I thought the contract was binding until I’m dead or can’t keep up my end of the deal anymore. Which I didn’t willingly make, to be clear.”
‘Yeah, yeah. You had no choice and you resent the whole thing. Cry me a river.’
“I didn’t say that.”
‘And I didn’t say anything about a new owner. Jeeze, quit putting words in your head and my mouth.’
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to steady herself. Another screaming match—which she was more than ready to have with the disembodied voice in her mind—wouldn’t do either of them any good.
‘I’m talking about a steward, Jessica. Someone to keep an eye on things while you’re gone. If you haven’t realized by now, which you definitely should have, I’m not exactly built to spend a whole lotta time alone.’
A slow smile lifted the corner of Jessica’s mouth. “You’re scared of being alone.”
‘Well I’m sure as shit not scared of the dark.’
“Hey, snap at me all you want. But I just hit the nail on the head, didn’t I?”
‘Huge difference between scared and realistic.’
“Mm...not in this case.”
The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4) Page 5
