Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  “And the children? How might you have found them in the factory?”

  “No idea. The Lady of the Tree said they weren’t in this realm. But the factory wasn’t linked to Faerie. That sad old monster was never going to get back.” And good riddance.

  “Could he have opened a way into Faerie?”

  “No. If just any faerie could do it, there’d be a second invasion. It hasn’t happened in twenty years.” Not strictly true, but what I’d done didn’t count. I’d broken through the realms by using the lord’s power in sheer desperation. I didn’t know how.

  He watched me, eyes unblinking, and my heart sank. That’s what I got for not rehearsing a cover story.

  “You don’t look like a faerie.”

  Huh? “I didn’t think I’d be glad to hear you say that.” Oops. There went my filter. “Never mind. I’ve lost a shit-ton of blood and don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “You sound pretty coherent to me.” His eyes lingered on the bare skin at my waist, possibly on the pretext of examining the now healed wound. But the spark igniting in his eyes was the opposite of concern. The word predatory came to mind, along with a rush of warmth I couldn’t entirely put down to weird aftereffects of blood loss and nearly dying.

  His gaze stripped the rest of my clothes from me as surely as though I’d read his thoughts. Oh. Heat crept up my neck and I forgot how to speak, even to tell him to look the hell away. The scent of him grew stronger, and I inhaled almost against my will. You don’t get on with predators.

  Tell that to my thumping heart.

  All Vance said was, “Will you be able to get home? I can ask someone to give you a lift.”

  I licked my lips, suddenly overcome with a fresh wave of tiredness. At least, I assumed that’s why my legs wanted to fold at the knees.

  “Uh. That’d be great. Thanks. By the way, what did you mean by ‘shout at some necromancers’?”

  “Somebody,” he said, his voice dropping on the word, “is going to pay.”

  I had no doubt about that.

  “And Ivy?” His eyes caught mine, captured my gaze like a moth in a sunbeam.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t ever take a hit on my account again.”

  I gaped at him. So that was why he hadn’t arrested me. Because I’d saved his neck. Mage code, maybe.

  Right. Time to go home and lick my wounds, and take on tomorrow when it came. With our leads a bust, we’d have to start again. I was up against the worst of Faerie. No denying it now. But could I drag anyone else into this again?

  No, was the obvious answer. I’d go it alone. Never mind Vance. Never mind that he’d believed me, helped me, even. There won’t be a next time. Wanda said he had a protective streak. I hadn’t believed her, but now I saw it. Oh, boy. This was heading down a dangerous road. I wasn’t the type to salivate over a guy who acted like a total shit most of the time. Hell, I normally avoided his type. Just as I did mages.

  For my own sake, I needed to get uninvolved with this mage, asap. He was a million kinds of trouble, and had come too close to finding the truth.

  He watched me leave, arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t smiling, but neither did he look like he wanted to see me dead. I’d put his expression at curiosity, but not in a look at the freak show human with faerie magic kind of way. More like he wanted to get to know me. And for the first time, I was okay with that in a way I shouldn’t be, considering how close I’d come to exposing my secrets.

  We’re from different worlds, I told myself. Besides, he’s not the type to stick around. He’d as good as said he only needed my skills for this investigation. All the mages I’d met until now had been ruthless and self-centred with little regard for anyone below their own social status. And I’d always been more than happy to remain at the bottom of the heap. Invisible. Safe.

  Vance Colton was already too involved with my professional life. I didn’t need him to shove his way into my personal life as well.

  So I turned my back on the Mage Lord, and closed the door behind me.

  Chapter 14

  By the time I got home, I wasn’t tired any more. I was pissed off. I slammed the door open, making Isabel jump out of the armchair she sat in.

  “What happened this time?” Her eyes widened at the sight of my tattered, bloodstained clothes.

  “Fucking faeries.” I stormed past into my bedroom, tossed my jacket onto a chair and stripped off the ruins of my T-shirt. Grabbing a fresh outfit, I made for the shower. The warm water somewhat calmed me, but the amount of blood streaming from my side reminded me just how close I’d come to dying. Because of the faeries, and because my self-preservation had run for the hills and made me jump between the Mage Lord and a knife. I shuddered, switching off the shower and watching the pinkish water disappear. I needed to get a grip, both on my own life and on the case. Next time a faerie gave me an address, I’d set the place on fire first.

  Not that we’d have been able to track that faerie anyway, considering life-form detecting spells didn’t work on it.

  Not immortal, huh. Usually, the only way to kill a pure faerie was to take away its power source. But to that creature, its power had come from Faerie. Trapped here, it’d wither and die like the Lady of the Tree. Really, I’d put it out of its misery.

  I wished I’d done the same to the evil old bitch in the forest. Worse, I owed her a favour now. Or maybe not. I’d promised her the favour in exchange for useful information, and what she’d told me had been a total lie. That’s what I got for trusting faeries to keep their word.

  Isabel raised an eyebrow when I stomped back into the living room. “I haven’t seen you this mad since Erwin ate the last cookie.”

  On cue, the piskie zoomed overhead, shrieking about bad faeries.

  “Bad faeries is right,” I said. “This is an epic clusterfuck like you won’t believe.” I lay down on the sofa and gave her a rundown of the last twenty-four hours. It sounded even worse admitting aloud that I’d failed twice over and almost got killed. And I hadn’t told Swanson the latest, either.

  “So in summary, the whole universe is crashing around my ears.” The microwave dinged, reminding me I’d shoved a pasta meal in there. I pushed myself up off the sofa and went in search of sustenance.

  “I can brew something to help with the blood loss,” said Isabel.

  “That’d be awesome.” I rubbed my forehead. “Erwin didn’t steal the last cookie, did he?”

  “Luckily, no.”

  “First piece of good news I’ve had all day.” Nothing, not even all the denizens of Faerie, would stand between me and Isabel’s heavenly cookies.

  “Well, this is definitely worse than the hydra case,” Isabel said.

  “Tell me about it.” I returned to the sofa with my meal. “At least then I had a clear target. None of our tracking spells worked, and faeries are all lying bastards.”

  I dug into the pasta, shoving cheese-coated goodness into my mouth. Damn, I was starving.

  Isabel moved some of the bits of discarded spell from the coffee table and took out her go-to handbook for herbs and potions.

  “Maybe the Lady of the Tree didn’t mean it literally when she said you could find the children at the factory.” Isabel’s brows pinched together the way they did when she was thinking hard. “Maybe she meant it was possible for you to find them from there, somehow.”

  “She as good as said they were in Faerie.” I clenched my fists, wanting to scream. I’d failed in the worst way possible. I’d doomed two teenagers to the hellishness I’d suffered myself. I poked moodily at the meal, no longer hungry. Small mercy that the Lady of the Tree didn’t know my address, so I wouldn’t be dragged from bed in the middle of the night and forced to march through a swamp in search of a missing artifact. Some faeries didn’t get the memo that this was real life, not a storybook.

  “Need a healing charm?” asked Isabel. “Looks like you took a real hit back there.”

  I’d been through worse, but never from
throwing myself between a mage and a knife before. I didn’t even know how to explain why I’d done it. Instinct. Stupidity. Whatever.

  “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of some of these bruises.” Now the pain from my side had gone, my body decided to remind me I’d been used as a punching bag by a bunch of tree roots.

  Rather than applying a healing salve to each individual bruise, I opted for the spell circle. Once I’d set up the circle—this one a purple band-shape—I stepped inside and a cool sensation washed over me like I’d jumped into wonderfully cold water at the end of a scorching day.

  At once I felt fully re-energised, like I’d plugged myself into the witch equivalent of an electrical outlet. The circle flared along the edges, then went out. I stepped out, too, and helped Isabel clear the spell’s burned remains away.

  “Much better,” I said. “About those cookies…”

  “In the fridge. What now?”

  “I’m supposed to recover, then tell Swanson I failed to find his kid.” But could I really tell him what the Lady of the Tree said—that it was too late, and Faerie already had him in its clutches? With the return of my energy came anger, helpless rage at the monsters who ruined human lives for kicks. There might be no motive. This might not be part of a bigger plan.

  Vance seemed to think it was.

  Isabel’s arms folded around me. “Hey—you’ll be fine. You’ve got out of worse scrapes. Don’t count this as a lost cause yet.”

  My throat closed up with unsaid words. I’d been a lost cause, yet I’d escaped. Most humans couldn’t survive it. Luck alone had saved me.

  “I’ll try,” I said. “The kids are in Faerie, though. No getting around that.”

  “Summer or Winter?”

  “No clue.” Neither.

  I didn’t deserve her relentless efforts to help. And my excuses for keeping quiet about Faerie had shrunk to almost nothing. It was selfish and cowardly of me to carry on lying to my best friend.

  Especially when I knew for certain the exiles were involved.

  More to the point, what the hell was I supposed to do about Vance Colton? He knew too much. More even than Isabel did. If he found out any more, I’d no longer be able to lie. And then what? No good could come of it. Quite apart from the fact that I’d happily live out my life without anyone ever knowing my experiences with the faeries.

  Isabel released me, and I walked into the kitchen to retrieve the cookies. “Remind me of the difference between Summer and Winter again? Seems like they’re equally evil.”

  “Pretty much,” I said, sitting back on the sofa and taking a bite of cinnamon-flavoured awesomeness. “Summer feeds on life and involves making things grow, while Winter feeds on death and involves freezing everything in sight. But exiles like that one in the factory aren’t bound by the usual rules.”

  “And it’s one of the exiles who took the kids, right?” She propped her feet up on the coffee table.

  “Has to be, but if I’m to believe the Lady of the Tree, they’re already lost.” I sank back onto the sofa again. “I can’t do this on my own.”

  “You’re not alone,” said Isabel. “You’re working with the best witches in the district, remember? I’ve got the whole coven involved. They managed to get something from the crime scene at the necromancer family’s house. Where the changeling went missing. One of the other witches is friends with the Climes family. She found traces of the changeling at the scene.”

  I sat bolt upright. “What? DNA for a tracking spell?”

  “Told you we were awesome.” She grinned.

  Yes. I laughed shakily. “You might have just saved the day, Isabel.”

  “I do my best. Actually, I can’t take credit for this one, but I do have DNA from the changeling right here.”

  “God. Thank you.” I leaned back in relief, closing my eyes. We weren’t out of the game yet. “Does your friend have any ideas why that family was targeted?”

  “No clue,” she said. “I thought there might be a connection between the two, but they picked a human living in mage territory and a necromancer’s kid. Doesn’t really form a pattern, unless they were trying to make all the local supernaturals blame one another.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe they’re banking on the necromancers taking offence at being blamed.”

  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the link, either. Unless faeries were just totally batshit. Which was enough of an explanation in itself.

  My phone buzzed. “Oh crap.” I grabbed it and saw a new message.

  “If you’ve recovered, I’m coming over to your house now.”

  “He’s coming over now. Shit. This place looks like a tornado hit it.”

  Damn. I wasn’t mentally prepared to have the Mage Lord in my house. So much for giving me time to recover.

  “Wait, who’s coming over?”

  “Vance Colton.”

  “Holy shit.” Her eyes bugged out.

  “I know, right?” I groaned.

  “Wow.” She didn’t look as concerned about the mess as I was. “I never got to talk to him last time.”

  “You don’t want to.” Kinda harsh, but he might have given me a break. Then again, maybe he had more information. Or a new lead.

  “Is he that bad?”

  “Stuck-up. Snobbish. Standard mage.” I paced around the sofa with my phone in hand. “He thinks only of himself and can’t speak a word without ordering people around.”

  “You’re fidgeting,” said Isabel. “You always do that when you’re nervous.”

  “Hell, yes, I’m nervous. The Mage Lord’s used to swimming in luxury. This place is practically a troll’s nest to him.”

  “Since when did you care?” She snorted. “Is he attractive? They say he is.”

  Yes. Very. I shrugged.

  “Aha.” Her eyes gleamed. “So that’s why you’ve been spending so much time at his house.”

  “Are you forgetting he coerced me into working for him?” I shot her a warning look. “He’s rude, overbearing and terrifying.”

  “And smoking hot, from what I’ve heard.” She flashed me a grin. “I said you needed to get out more. You haven’t dated in months.”

  “Because the last time worked out so well.” I’d made the mistake of inviting the guy over here, and Erwin the piskie decided to make a nest in his hair. My romantic life was even unluckier than my professional one.

  Well. Right now, maybe not. ‘Nonexistent’ was a better word.

  “I warned you,” said Isabel. “Regular humans don’t get what we do. You need someone who’s in the know about this.” She indicated the general spell-strewn mess of the seating area.

  “I need a drink, not a date.” My phone buzzed again and I swore. “He’s on the way.”

  “Excellent.”

  I flicked a piece of discarded spell at her. “We almost died. Twice. That’s probably what he wants to talk about.”

  That sobered her up. “Do you really think we should clean the flat?”

  I looked around. “Never mind. It’s not worth it. If this place is good enough for clients, it’s good enough for His Pretentiousness."

  She snorted. I, however, felt an inexplicable twinge of guilt. He’d helped me. More than once. He could be a dick sometimes, but then, so could I.

  Before I could gather my thoughts together, the doorbell rang. Of course he’d have used his space-bending power to come here in five seconds flat.

  I walked to the door and opened it to find Vance standing there in full Mage Lord gear, cloak and all.

  “You must be Isabel,” he said to her over my shoulder.

  I tensed, but she smiled and accepted his handshake. “Hi. You’re… Lord Colton? Sir?”

  “Either.”

  So much for leaving his pretentious attitude behind.

  “Vance,” I said pointedly, but he reacted like I hadn’t spoken. “We were discussing how you volunteered to help me deal with this particularly difficult case.”

  “I see.”
For a moment, I thought I’d pushed too far. Then he smirked. “Did you include the part where I saved you from bleeding to death?”

  Oh, he had to go there. “And the part where you got buried in a spider web?”

  Isabel’s face said, I didn’t know you were on such familiar terms.

  “I asked the necromancers about the factory, since we encountered undead there,” he said, snapping back into professional mode. “He said nobody’s raised anything recently. But undead can’t survive in the state we found them in for long. Days at most.”

  “Then he’s lying,” I said. With the whole nearly bleeding to death thing, I’d forgotten about the zombies.

  “I agree, and that’s why I’ve sent people to follow him,” said Vance, surprising me.

  “But why would a necromancer be involved with the faeries?”

  That made zero sense. It was as unlikely as a troll joining a community project.

  “I intend to find out,” said Vance. “As for the necromancers, we will be meeting with them after their monthly summit tomorrow. That should give me the opportunity to find out if anyone has been dealing in forbidden magic.”

  “The necromancers are supposed to stop that from happening,” said Isabel. “They protect the veil. If they’ve gone rogue, they’re supposed to be expelled from the Guild. It’s in their sacred oath.”

  “Clearly not sacred, then,” I said.

  “No, it’s true,” said Vance. “After the war, the necromancers had to do more than the Mage Lords to clear up the aftermath. I believe it’s the only time they’ve taken on any responsibility.”

  Sounded about right.

  “By sealing all the spirits who died in the invasion, according to someone I asked,” said Isabel. “I’ll give you two some peace, okay? I need to tidy away this spell.” She moved to start clearing the floor.

  “Every necromancer in the region is a member of the Guild, right?” I asked Vance. “What about half-necromancers? Do they always have the gift?”

  “Sometimes,” said Vance. “It doesn’t tend to be dominant in family lines, unlike the blood of a mage.”