“Why attack Gran’s house?”
That question made her pause.
I clarified. “The powerful witch responsible for your wounds.”
“Why do you attack anything in a foreign territory?”
I frowned. “I don’t.”
She tilted her head, but didn’t elaborate.
“Are you the distraction?” I said. “Another sacrifice?”
“A sacrifice?” she asked in a whisper.
“Like the warrior in the park.”
“Is he dead?”
Now it was my turn to pause. “What did you think happened to him?”
“I was … I thought you might have captured him.”
“He tried to kill people under my protection.”
She shook her head. A gesture of sadness, if I was reading her correctly. “Did the guardian come? With the golden sword?”
She meant my father, Yazi. I wondered when and where she’d seen him — or, given the timeline of her incarceration, his predecessor. “No.”
She regarded me steadily. “You three were not possibly powerful enough. Four, if I bother counting the lame witch who had already fainted.”
I stepped forward, slowly closing the space between us. “It didn’t take three.”
The elf raked her gaze over me, her expression souring. “You? Impossible.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
Anger flashed across her face. The center of her burn was already healed to a dark pink, but blackened tissue still radiated out across her pale, finely scaled skin.
“So …” I said, almost within striking range. “Are you another sacrifice, then? A distraction so the telepath can flee?”
“A strategic retreat.”
“Sure. Or she’s just a coward.”
The elf’s expression turned stony. “What you should be asking, witchling, is where the wolf is wandering?”
Something large splashed to my right. But other than the soft, rolling purple surf of the illusion, I couldn’t see anything move.
Water.
Deep water.
Kits Pool.
And Kandy couldn’t swim. By some weird quirk of their magic, shapeshifters’ body mass and strength worked against them in deep water.
“What would you be willing to sacrifice, dowser?” the elf asked tauntingly.
I turned, already diving toward the pool that should have been on my right. Though all I could see was a black-sand beach.
The elf ran past me.
I sliced through the illusion hands first, sliding through it into the deep, bone-chilling water of Kits Pool. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t taste anything.
I touched down. I’d hit bottom. Spinning around in the dark water, I caught a glimpse of a wash of gold.
The magic of the cuffs.
I reached for their power, calling it to me. The artifacts responded to my call, dragging Kandy with them. She was thrashing madly, struggling to breathe.
I grabbed the drowning werewolf by the shoulders, slamming my feet down onto the concrete and forcefully propelling us upward.
I broke the surface, gasping for air. Then I dragged Kandy to the edge of the pool.
She grasped the concrete, coughing up a lungful of water. “What the hell sort of chemicals are in this? It’s going to completely ruin my hair!”
I tried to laugh, but a shudder overtook it. “Your hair? What about my boots?”
Kandy slung her arm around my shoulders, allowing me to drag her to the concrete stairs at the corner of the pool. Clinging to each other, we climbed out of the freezing water.
Shivering violently, my BFF murmured, “I’m sorry. I could smell the magic, but all I could see was purple water and black sand. Then I was in the pool.”
I shook my head. “More games.”
“I’m good to pick up the trail.”
“It’s six degrees Celsius. And we’re soaking wet. What’s that in American? Minus fifteen?”
“Fahrenheit.” Kandy curled her lip, completely affronted. “And more like forty-three degrees.”
I laughed.
Kandy shook her head, spraying me with icy droplets of chemical-laced pool water. But at least she was smiling instead of blaming herself for getting caught in the elf’s trap.
Shivering myself, I took my hoodie off and tried to wring some of the water out of it. I didn’t even glance down at my soaked boots. It wasn’t the time for tears. “We’ll head back to Gran’s. See if the grid lit up at all. If it did, maybe we can track the elves that way. At least it will give us a baseline. Right?”
Kandy looked grim. “Let’s hope. I hate to think they can sling that much magic around and have us still be blind to it. It’s annoying enough that they can hide from sight and sound. How’d you track the elf here?”
“The dogs on the seawall. The illusionist was badly burned, like you thought. I figured the dogs were picking up her scent.”
“Yeah, just that weird smell … no footprints, no magic residual. Not even broken blades of grass. If I could have transformed, I might have scented more.” She shivered again, then pushed her damp hair back from her face. “I’m glad I bought those waterproof cases for our phones.”
I laughed. “Priorities.”
“Exactly.”
Kandy slung her arm through mine and we crossed out of the pool enclosure. Skirting the cashier booth, we jumped over the gate at the entrance — and completely startled a couple jogging side by side along the adjacent path.
“Bachelorette party,” Kandy crowed merrily.
The couple laughed, easily shaking off their momentary alarm as they kept up the pace of their jog. “Have fun!”
“We plan to!”
Sure. Great.
Right after we dried off, then figured out what the hell the elves were doing.
It wasn’t as though we hadn’t expected an assault. But it wasn’t Warner, Kandy, or me that the elves had attacked. It was Gran. Gran’s house.
The anchor point of the witches’ grid.
I had thought previously about how the grid might have been their target. Its magic had seemed to piss off the warrior elf in the park — and even though Warner, Kandy, and I were all far more of a threat than Burgundy, he’d attacked her first. Though it still wasn’t clear that doing so hadn’t just been some sort of feint.
So if the grid was the elves’ focus, then why? So far, it hadn’t even helped us track their movements. And seeing as how they could almost completely cloak themselves from my dowser senses, what could they be worried about the witches picking up on?
If they were playing us, if they were testing us, then what was the endgame?
8
Sodden and shivering, Kandy and I were intercepted by Gran two feet inside her granite-tiled entranceway.
“Basement bathroom.” Gran pointed sternly back through the still-open door behind us.
“Gran,” I whined.
“I’ll bring you extra towels. Did you find the elves?”
“One. And she pretty much found us. Then got away.”
“That last part was my fault,” Kandy said.
Gran harrumphed, then actually tapped her foot while eyeing the puddles forming beneath us. “Go. I’ll bring you something to wear. You can put everything through the wash.”
Grumbling, I hightailed it back out of the house. Crossing along the path toward the garage entrance, I jogged past Gran’s car, then through the basement door. Kandy chortled quietly behind me the entire way.
“Yeah, hilarious, wolf,” I said peevishly. “This skirt is dry-clean only.”
Kandy snorted. “You haven’t used a dry cleaner in years.”
Gran flicked on the lights in the hallway that bisected the lowest level of the house. She was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs, her arms full of the most beautiful, puffy, and hopefully absorbent towels in the world.
Kandy picked up her pace, grabbing the top two towels from the stack in Gran’s arms. “
Dibs on the shower!” She pressed a kiss to my grandmother’s cheek, then took off down the hall toward the bathroom just off the laundry room.
I sighed, taking a towel from Gran and halfheartedly drying my hair.
Gran smiled at me, briefly touching my cheek. “We’ll figure out how to deal with the elves. Jasmine and I have already discussed a few options with the grid.”
My stomach sank slightly. I seriously hoped that those ‘options’ didn’t include trying to tie me to the witches’ grid again. That wasn’t an argument I wanted to rekindle. “Oh?”
Gran laughed quietly. “Come. I’ll get you those clothes.”
I expected her to head back up the stairs. But instead, she headed down the hall. Halfway along, I paused at the door to the map room, glancing in to see Jasmine sitting in the center of the floor, meditating. I could understand her urge to do so. The power literally etched into the walls in black paint was awe-inspiring.
“Jade?”
I glanced down the hall. Gran was standing in the door to her storage room, holding a large box.
“You should be able to find something in here.”
I closed the space between us, and Gran pressed the box into my arms. Then she immediately began hustling back down the hall toward the stairs. “I’ll put on the kettle.”
I glanced down at the box. It was unlabeled. I set it down at my feet, then tore off the strip of tape that held the flaps closed.
Various items of clothing — jeans, T-shirts, socks, underwear — were neatly folded within. I picked up a hand-knit sweater, catching the scent of the lavender laundry soap that Gran favored. She had knitted the black cardigan years before, adding a touch of red in a geometric motif reminiscent of runes around each wrist, just above the ribbed cuff.
It had been a Christmas gift.
For Sienna.
Hot tears spiked at the edges of my eyes.
Gran had kept Sienna’s clothes. Or at least some of them. It was an uncharacteristic display of sentimentality, especially given that she never discussed her former foster daughter. Not a word about the twelve years she’d spent raising her. Or her descent into darkness.
I had long wondered whether Sienna might have been another item on the list of things that Scarlett held against Gran. Because if Pearl hadn’t always insisted on underestimating people, my foster sister might have practiced and grown into her magic safely. In fact, Gran having decided to mentor Burgundy seemed to indicate that that difficult lesson might have actually had an impact on my grandmother. Burgundy was only a quarter-witch by blood, with a talent for healing spells and charms. The sort of Adept that Pearl would once have disdainfully all but ignored.
Kandy padded around the corner, wearing only a towel. Of course, a bath towel pretty much covered the slim werewolf from armpits to knees, and even wrapped around her twice. “Your turn, dowser. Clothing?”
I cleared my throat, straightening. “Yeah.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Gran’s making tea.”
Kandy hunkered down and started digging through the box. “I’ll debrief Pearl and baby girl while you shower. I tossed my wet clothes in the washer already.”
I nodded as I turned away. Then I stepped back and gently tugged the black cardigan out of Kandy’s hands.
The werewolf frowned playfully. “Not your color, dowser.”
“I know … it was Sienna’s …”
Kandy went stock-still. Then she stood up swiftly, pulling me in for a fierce hug. Only for a moment. And just as quickly, she let me go, digging through the box of clothing again.
And I went and took a hot shower, knowing that everything happened for a reason, no matter how much those reasons hurt my heart. Without Sienna going dark, I wouldn’t have Kandy or Kett. I likely wouldn’t have had Warner in my life.
I had swapped a sister for a family of magical misfits. And while most of us didn’t completely fit in with the specific Adept sects we were born into, together we had made Vancouver our home.
But it just … just …
It still hurt losing someone who’d held so much of my heart for such a long time.
Since Sienna’s clothes were often originally my clothes, I found a pair of light-blue jeans in the box that I could actually do up. Though I did have to lay back on Gran’s basement guest bed to get them zipped. But muscle weighed more than fat, right? And yeah, I’d just go on blithely ignoring what that logic had to do with getting jeans on.
The sweater didn’t fit, though. I couldn’t get the buttons done up over my chest, though I stupidly tried for way too long. So I tucked it back into the box when I put it away again on Gran’s tidily organized storage shelves.
Kandy opted for a blue hoodie and dark-gray leggings that were easily three times too large for her trim figure. Naturally, she totally pulled off the oversized look. She even managed to salvage her sneakers with a hairdryer.
I grabbed an old pair of well-worn, lace-up ankle boots that were a trifle tight even with thin socks. Leaving my pretty boots in the laundry sink, I offered up a whispered appeal. I didn’t like to make requests of Blossom, but maybe the brownie would take pity on me and condescend to work some magic on my boots. Otherwise, I was pretty certain they’d been completely ruined by my impromptu swim.
Kandy was waiting for me, hovering in the doorway to the map room. The former recreation room occupied over half of the house’s basement footprint. All four walls and the edges of the ceiling had been painted with a detailed map of Vancouver — drawn by Rochelle, then carefully painted over in black strokes.
Jasmine had pushed the only piece of furniture, a black swivel chair, over against one wall, choosing instead to sit on the light-gray-carpeted floor in a lotus position. Her computer was in her lap, and she’d set her iPad and iPhone by either knee. With her golden hair cascading from her reverently bowed head, she looked like she was actually communing with her technology, rather than meditating.
“Did the illusion at Kits Pool spike on the map?” I put the question to Kandy, knowing she would have already had this discussion with Jasmine and Gran.
“Yep,” she said. “But nothing since.”
“So when they actively use magic, it does show?”
Kandy shook her head. “Not necessarily. Volume appears to matter. Pearl wasn’t alerted to anything by whatever spell the telepathic elf laid on Jasmine.”
“And the tussle with Audrey?”
Kandy pointed toward the southeast wall. “Yep. But the bakery always glows.”
I scanned the map, pointing to a couple of other spots that were lit up. “That’s Scarlett’s house on West Fifth?”
Jasmine spoke without lifting her head from her computer. “The witches all raised their wards after the attack on Pearl. We didn’t know if there would be more attempts.”
I nodded. “And Rochelle and Beau in Southlands? Geez, those are some heavy-duty wards.”
“They’re permanent, like at the bakery and Pearl’s.” Kandy folded her arms, leaning back into the door frame. “Part of how the witches thought they could effectively tie Rochelle into the grid. And it obviously worked. Except not for picking up elf magic.”
“The spell on Jasmine might just have been subtle. Even intermittent. And hidden under her own magic.”
Kandy grunted an acknowledgement. Jasmine’s fingers continued to fly across her keyboard.
I really, really didn’t want to ask my next question. But I was wearing my dead sister’s jeans, and it was time to be a big girl. “Speaking of the oracle, any new sketches I should know about?”
Kandy shook her head. “Not yet. Not for us, at least.”
“But we know that she at least sees the elves,” I said.
Rochelle had presented me with a sketch three months before, hand delivered by Blossom. It depicted me holding what appeared to be a large gemstone in the palm of my hand. And though the illusionist elf had a similarly cut stone embedded in her forehead, the gem I had torn fro
m the elf in the park after I killed him had been cracked and its magic destroyed by the death blow dealt by my knife. Conversely, the gemstone in the oracle sketch appeared to be pristine, with what I still assumed were tendrils of active magic attached to it, all rendered in charcoal.
I was fairly certain those differences indicated that I hadn’t fulfilled that particular prediction. Not yet. And I was under no illusion that I was actually capable of thwarting any future Rochelle saw for me. Down that road of thought lay madness. For me, at least.
Kandy was watching me. Assessing me. “Well … we know the oracle sees you.”
“You spike on the map,” Jasmine said.
“When? Just now at the pool?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You didn’t pull your knife?” Kandy asked.
Yeah. I had pulled my knife.
Jasmine looked up from her computer, all her attention on the map. “The witch magic is blue tinted. See all of the witches’ wards? Different degrees of blue, maybe indicating individual power level? Darkest at Rochelle and Beau’s place. But yours is more golden. See the bakery? I’ve heard that some Adepts see colors that correspond to magic, though I’ve never been able to. But I guess that’s how the map interprets different magic … or … this was drawn by the oracle, yes? Maybe she sees magic in color, and that translated to the map when she drew it?”
I didn’t answer — because I actually didn’t know. The oracle sketched in black charcoal on white paper, so I had no idea if Rochelle did see magic in color, as I did. Instead, I eyed the bakery depicted on the wall before me. If it was glowing more golden than the other witch magic, it was a subtle difference — to me, at least. But then, I had never been able to see or taste my own magic terribly well, if at all.
Scanning the rest of the map, I pointed to a spot of magic a few blocks northeast of the bakery. “And that? The Talbots?”
Kandy uncrossed her arms, fishing her phone out of her pocket. “Those are the protections the witches put on the entrance to the treasure keeper’s prison. The Talbots are still in Whistler, and their house wards aren’t active. We’ve got two hours until dinner. We both need to change.”
Misfits, Gemstones, and Other Shattered Magic Page 13
