Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  Dawn shook her head.

  “No, that’s a patent emerald. It’s going to be really sensitive. If the field were that strong, it would be sitting on top of the truant ruby, over there.”

  Bella nodded.

  “I see.”

  Becca shook her head. Billy was going to have a field day with this. She had no idea what they were talking about, and memorizing her lists was only the first step toward getting there.

  She thought she’d spent her life studying crystals, and yet…

  A car stopped behind them and Becca watched as Robbie, Quinn, and Grant got out. She didn’t really want to talk to Grant again, but she pushed it away. This was what they did. It had nothing to do with how awkward Grant could make their personal relationship.

  “Come take a look,” Jackson called to Quinn. “We have a solid lead, if you can help Dawn figure out what it means.”

  The emerald kept hopping. It was strange to watch, and it made Becca want to go touch it.

  “What is the powder?” she asked, knowing full well she wasn’t going to understand anything Dawn might have said in response. Dawn looked at her. Raised an eyebrow.

  “You aren’t serious.”

  Becca shrugged.

  “Whatever.”

  “Anything else showing signs?” Quinn asked as she stopped next to them.

  “Nope,” Dawn said. “Not even the ruby.”

  “Strange,” Quinn said, squatting. “You know that if there’s a body in the floor, the whole thing is corrupted, right?”

  “What?” Grant asked. “Why would there be a body in the floor?”

  “There isn’t,” Dawn said dryly.

  “Is it even true?” Grant asked. Quinn waggled her eyebrows at him and Dawn sighed.

  “Nothing,” Dawn said.

  “Old magic,” Jackson said softly, scratching his chin.

  “What was that?” Bella asked. Jackson shook his head.

  “Just something I remember someone telling me, once. Old magic. It gets stuck in patterns. Ruts. There aren’t many magic users out there who end up being really old and good at lots of different things, because somewhere along the way, they pick something that’s easy or that comes naturally, and they go with it.”

  “And we’re going with a theory that the witch who put them there is the witch that’s keeping them there,” Robbie said.

  “You have a better one?” Jackson asked. Robbie gave an exaggerated shrug.

  “Just pointing it out,” he said. Jackson nodded.

  “That’s what I’m going with.”

  “Strong in one magic,” Bella said. “I can believe that.”

  “But it’s a field,” Dawn said. “One with an awful lot of variation in it.”

  “Means something’s fighting with it,” Quinn muttered, getting something out of her bag. She set the big, white crystal from that morning on the floor, and it throbbed white.

  “Well, that’s telling,” Bella said. “Put it away. Shield it. I don’t want to deal with another soul crossing on us unexpectedly.”

  “You got it,” Quinn said.

  “They’re fighting her,” Dawn said.

  “So if we assume a simple, powerful magic, what class does this imply?” Jackson asked.

  “Earth magic,” Dawn said. “Strong earth magic mixed with life magic, suspending the natural order.” Dawn shook her head. “That much power, I’d almost believe that she could defy gravity.”

  “Can anyone actually do that?” Becca asked.

  “No,” Dawn said.

  “I saw it once,” Quinn said.

  “You did not,” Dawn said.

  “You’ve got no sense of humor today,” Quinn said.

  “We’re talking about human souls, trapped and unable to pass on,” Dawn said. “No sign they ever did anything wrong but fail to meet the expectations of a needy, evil witch.”

  “And we’re here, and we’re going to fix it,” Quinn said. “Lighten up.”

  “You’re forgetting that she’s a healer, Quinn,” Bella said. Quinn grunted but didn’t pick at Dawn any more.

  “Did you try white jade?” Quinn asked.

  “No,” Dawn said. “Just a minute.”

  She went through her bag again.

  “Didn’t bring it,” she said after a second.

  “I’ve got it,” Quinn said, going into her own bag and bringing out the stone and setting it with the others. “Go ahead and use the peridot on the rest of them.”

  “Yup,” Dawn said, standing back up and holding her hand out, closed, over the stones and crystals, letting white powder sift out between her fingers. The rest looked on as she worked.

  For several seconds, there was nothing, then a brilliant red crystal rolled over and glimmered.

  “Gotcha,” Quinn said. “I bet she doesn’t even know it.”

  Dawn nodded, drawing breath and sighing with some relief.

  “I expect she doesn’t even know it, but she’s got something in her that’s gold, and it’s acting as a conduit for her magic. We can hook it.”

  “Gold teeth,” Jackson said. “We never stop doing trade in them.”

  Bella nodded.

  “Set it up.”

  “Do you want me to keep working?” Dawn asked.

  “You can, but I’m only looking for things that are going to get in the way of this working. I like working in gold,” Bella said. “It never betrays us.”

  Dawn nodded and returned to her work. Quinn stood and poked Becca in the shoulder.

  “You’re helping me,” she said, and Becca nodded.

  “Just tell me what to do.”

  “Can you handle kelly magic without breaking it?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes,” Becca said. At least she knew what kelly magic was. Quinn handed her a set of pillar crystals.

  “No more than fifteen feet apart. You should feel them snap into place when you put them down.”

  Becca nodded, starting from the barn doorway and working her way around the edge of the barn, placing the pillars one by one. She saw that Dawn was still working and that Grant was openly watching as she and Quinn worked. Bella, Jackson, and Robbie appeared to have gone somewhere else to talk.

  She made it about two thirds of the way around the barn and stood, out of pillars. Quinn was mixing a red potion over top of a butane flame, leaning against a tractor tire.

  “You have more?” Becca called.

  “I’ll do them when I’m done,” Quinn said. “You feel all of them?”

  “Yeah,” Becca said. Quinn nodded.

  “Then get out of here. Don’t mess with my cast.”

  Becca nodded, waving Grant out of the barn behind her. Dawn was focused so hard she didn’t see the two of them leave.

  “I’m sorry,” Grant started, but Becca flipped a hand at him, cutting him off.

  “Talking about it more doesn’t make it any better,” Becca said. “I don’t care what anyone says.”

  Grant laughed.

  “You would think that.”

  She shrugged, then motioned at the barn.

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “I think we’ve got her,” he said. “Robbie told me it was your idea to trap her, that you thought she would be coming back here.”

  “Missed out on my lunch because of that idea,” Becca complained good-naturedly. He laughed.

  “It was really good, today.”

  She glowered and he laughed again.

  “Do you think Bella will take on any more younger apprentices?”

  “Probably,” she said. “I think I’ve heard her talk about it. She likes to run at twenty-one, and I think that some of the older people might be thinking about retiring.”

  “Would they ride with you?” Grant asked. “You have the empty bunk.”

  “Doubt it,” Becca said. “I think she’d reorganize everyone and put someone with more experience in with Billy and me. She wouldn’t want two apprentices in the same trailer.”

&nb
sp; “That makes sense,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said, leaning against a truck and folding her arms.

  “The thing that was happening, when Bella sent everyone away,” Grant said. “Did it get fixed?”

  “I can’t talk about it,” Becca said. Grant frowned.

  “It was so… rushed,” he said. “And then we got back and we were just on the road and…”

  “And here, doing your first hunt,” Becca said. “What do you think?”

  “It’s really interesting,” he said. “Not quite what I imagined, but a lot closer to what I wanted to be doing than staying with Robbie and doing memorization work.”

  “I bet,” Becca said. “They aren’t all like this one, with the tracking everything down and lots of testing magic, but some of them are. We have to be careful, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Grant said. “Don’t want her to get away, just because we rushed in where we should have been careful.”

  Becca nodded, shifting against the truck.

  “So what would you have been doing, right now, if you were still at home?” she asked.

  “School,” Grant said. “I think. Is it a school day? I can’t keep track.”

  “Days of the week really don’t mean much, any more,” Becca agreed. “Do you miss it?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I had friends, you know, but I was always waiting for one of the tribes to pick me. Every day I’d get home and I’d check.”

  Becca nodded, remembering the anxiety of it, thinking that maybe you’d get to be too old before any of the queens chose you. Every day, hoping to hear that you were going to be a part of a tribe, finding out which one it was and then finding out everything you could about it.

  “Are you glad Bella picked you?” Becca asked. “You could have ended up anywhere.”

  Grant nodded.

  “This tribe was important to my dad,” he said. “For a long, long time. I’m glad I’m here.”

  She scratched her face and looked away.

  “How good are you at knives?” she asked.

  “That’s the one thing my dad trained me with every time he came home,” Grant said. “I’m really good.”

  She laughed.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yup.”

  She nodded at a wooden fencepost just off of the road.

  “You think you can stick a knife in that?” she asked.

  “Pick your distance,” he said. “I can beat you.”

  “Ha,” she said. “Like to see that.”

  She fished her roll of knives out of a pocket and slid one out of its sheath, jerking her chin at him. He was already ready. They went to go stand in the field and threw knives.

  Bella came to find them about thirty minutes later.

  “Who’s winning?” she asked.

  “He’s good, but I’m better,” Becca said.

  “Are not,” Grant retorted. Bella smiled.

  “The trap is set,” Bella told them. “Dawn has the remote detect configured, so we’re ready to go.”

  Becca looked back at the barn and felt a chill.

  “She’ll come,” she said. Bella nodded.

  “I think you’re right.”

  Three days of waiting. Jordan came back the second night, this time without his parents, and he and Becca danced all night, talked, laughed, passed a wineskin back and forth sitting against one of the trailers.

  Dawn joined them for a brief period of time. Becca might have called her a mystic.

  “Will you do magic for me?” Jordan asked.

  “We don’t do magic for outsiders,” Becca had said. He laughed.

  “You lie,” he said easily. “It’s all just a show.”

  “Maybe it is,” Becca said with a dramatic shrug, tipping her chin in toward her shoulder. “Maybe it isn’t. You aren’t ever going to know. Just have to guess.”

  He picked at one of her curls.

  “You are magic,” he said. “You won’t be here, but I’ll come back, some time, and sit here. Right here.”

  “And I’ll be some place far away,” she said. He grinned.

  “Maybe I’ll be magic, just for a second, while I sit here.”

  “How do you know you aren’t now?” she asked.

  He laughed and so did she.

  “How would I tell?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “Gypsy secret. You can’t tell. Just me,” she said.

  “Really?” he asked. “How do you tell?”

  She grinned at him.

  “Biggest Gypsy secret of all,” she said.

  He kissed her.

  There was nothing to it, just fun, enjoying who they were and what they were and where they were.

  His hands were in her hair and his mouth against hers, but without any pressure or urgency. Like summer fruit.

  She broke away with a laugh.

  “Come dance,” she said, pulling him to his feet.

  He’d left at dawn again, long, lean body getting into his silver sports car with a wave. She’d leaned against her trailer for a minute, watching the dust his tires had kicked up drifting on the still air before she went in to sleep.

  The next day, she was sitting and eating breakfast with Dawn.

  “You have fun last night?” Dawn asked. Becca grinned.

  “Of course.”

  Dawn nodded.

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Is it?” Becca asked. Dawn nodded. After sixteen, Makkai stopped celebrating birthdays, because once you hit majority, how old you were didn’t matter very much.

  “Thanks,” Becca said. Dawn laughed to herself, shaking her head. Becca shrugged, not needing to ask.

  “You don’t get all this time off,” Billy called from across the embers of last night’s bonfire. “You’re studying today.”

  Becca wrinkled her nose.

  “Happy birthday indeed,” she said, hoping they caught a witch, instead.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, the third night, Becca woke up to the sound of Billy cursing. The trailer was cold.

  “The generator went out,” he complained, getting up and going to work on it. She closed her eyes and then someone was banging on the door of the trailer.

  “You lock yourself out, old man?” she called.

  “Who do you think is out there?” Billy asked, sitting up in his bed.

  “Oh,” Becca said, getting up. She opened the door. Jackson was looking up at the stars.

  “New moon,” he said.

  “It is,” Becca answered with a yawn.

  “Good time for hunting a witch,” he said.

  “Is it time?” she asked.

  “It is,” he said, going on. She tipped her head out to see how many others were up, but the only people she saw were Dawn and Bella.

  “We going?” Billy called.

  “Yeah,” Becca answered, going back to get her gear. Five minutes later, she was out by the truck, waiting for Billy. The rest of the Makkai were gathering and Bella was watching them in the predawn light.

  “She’ll be trapped,” Bella said. “Doesn’t mean it’s impenetrable, but we can take our time. She’s likely old and very powerful with some dark earth magics. Death magics. Make sure you’re warded all the way up, and if you take a hit - from anything - you see Dawn. Remove yourself and get help. There are plenty of us. We can take this carefully and have everyone come home healthy.”

  There were murmurs of agreement as everyone figured they wouldn’t be the one to get hurt. Becca knew any of them would have a hard time going along with it, but obviously she wasn’t going to need Dawn.

  They loaded up into the trucks, Dawn toting a much larger knapsack than on other days, and they were off, a train of headlights in the dark going down this narrow road and that, trees and empty fields to either side.

  The barn came into view eventually, the sliding doors showing a gap of only a few inches. The Makkai stopped, getting out and setting a perimeter.

  “All right, Becca,” Billy s
aid quietly. “I’ve given you your head for the lead up, but you know how this goes, now. Stay close and keep your ears open.”

  She nodded. They took out a pair of crystals and buried them in the loose dirt and waited. After a minute, there was a soft noise that Becca recognized on the cool air, and they edged forward. There was a hissing noise from the barn, like the sound of air seeping out of a tire, and then red flame flashed out through the gap in the door.

  Makkai voices called to each other as they checked in. No one had been close. Becca sniffed the air, finding her focus stone in her pocket.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Ozone,” Billy said.

  “What does that mean?” Becca asked.

  “Electricity,” he said. “Some of Dawn’s spells that generate a lot of light and sparks smell like that.”

  Becca shook her head.

  “They need to be careful,” she said.

  “Stay low,” Billy told her. “We’re going to have to find a way to get close, and if you stand up, it’s a lot easier to zap you.”

  She nodded, crouching lower and creeping in. Around the yard, she could see the forms of Makkai in the starlight as they did the same.

  There was another flash of light out of the barn, this a rolling red that accompanied a roar of flame.

  “What is she doing?” Becca asked. “There’s no one even close.”

  “I bet she’s trying to break down the trap,” Billy whispered. They paused to bury another set of crystals. Somewhere, Dawn would know they had checked in and were okay.

  “With what?” Becca asked. “You think she carries that much stuff with her?”

  “The powerful ones don’t need tools like we use,” Billy said. “The power is coming from inside of them.”

  Becca shuddered. To have that much flame just come out of her. It was unpleasant at best.

  Someone got to the front edge of the barn and was standing at the end of the barn door. There was a loud whisper, and he pulled on the door. It didn’t budge. He pulled harder, and the door still didn’t move.

  “Needs help,” Billy grunted. “She’s got the doors locked against us.”

  “Why?” Becca asked. Billy’s head turned toward her, and she was guessing that he was giving her a gruff look, but she couldn’t tell in the darkness, and it didn’t much bother her anyway.

  “Because she’s going to try to fight us, and she wants to do it one at a time,” he said.