Stray Magic

by Kelly Meding

  “Indeed. The blood of Ancient World beings is repugnant to us. We prefer to feed from humans.”

  He’d gone in knowing what her favor would entail. It was strangely brave. “So you don’t get anything from feeding off her?”

  “Indigestion.”

  His deadpan was so spot-on I actually laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re developing a sense of humor.”

  “A man cannot survive as long as I have without one.” On that, he walked around and climbed into the front passenger seat of the Element, taking care to tuck the cake carrier between his feet and not kick it. With the sun down, he didn’t have to hide in the rear.

  “Thank you,” I blurted once I was behind the wheel. Where had that come from?

  “For what?”

  I’d dug the hole, might as well jump in. “Thank you for doing the favor for Brighid and keeping me out of it. I don’t even want to ponder what she’d have asked of me.”

  Danger flashed briefly on his face. “Her favor of you would not have come tonight. Your mixed heritage is unique enough to intrigue her. As it is, you’ve brought her ire down upon yourself.”

  “Yeah, I was pretty dumb with the gun.”

  “You were angry.”

  “It was still dumb.”

  “Yes.”

  She’d threatened me, and I couldn’t do anything about it. How do you protect yourself from a friggin’ goddess?

  “Are we done here?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Great.”

  I started the engine and pointed us toward home. Once I was back on the highway heading south, I called Kathleen and left it on speaker.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. “We called hours ago.”

  “Between dimensions,” I replied, and then filled her in on what little we’d learned from Brighid. I left out the specifics of Tennyson’s favor, and she—and he—seemed to appreciate that. I almost wished I had mints to offer him, so he could get rid of the shitty goddess aftertaste. “So we have a tentative radius for the spell’s location, but beyond that we’re stuck on this end.”

  “Not entirely,” Tennyson said.

  “What does that mean?” Kathleen and I asked in tandem.

  “Brighid’s final answer to our queries,” he said, as though the answer was obvious. “I will betray the trust of no more dead men. She knows of another vampire who may possess such knowledge and skill.”

  I nearly rear-ended a slow-moving car in my lane. “She was speaking in code?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she give you any more so-called codes?” Kathleen asked.

  “I believe one more, yes.”

  “And this is just coming up now?” I said.

  He ignored me and continued. “Forgive this rocky ending. Unsubtle, but effective.”

  “It’s subtle to me,” Kathleen said.

  “The Rocky Mountains?” I said. Or was that too obvious?

  “Correct,” Tennyson said.

  Kathleen made a disgusted grunt. “We’re looking for a vampire who lives in the Rockies? Good luck narrowing that down.”

  Tennyson frowned, seeming troubled.

  “You know which vampire it is, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Only a Master with several centuries of experience could possibly perform a necromancy spell. I told you once that eight of us are old enough to attempt it. Only two of those live near or in the Rocky Mountain range.”

  “Have either of them lost vampires?”

  “Only one. He who is the eldest of us all. The other is younger than me by seventy-five years, has had no vampires taken as of last word, and was a well-respected warlock before he was turned.”

  “Sounds like our suspect.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You don’t think he’d do it?”

  “Quite the opposite, I believe Piotr fully capable of it. However, if he is involved, he will not make himself easy to track down. And he will be expecting your team. Perhaps even hoping for it.”

  That was a distressing thought. Yet, I think we had something he might not have planned on. “He won’t be expecting you, though.”

  Even as I said it, my mind raced with information and possibilities. Tennyson had likely suspected Piotr from the start, but that blessed honor code prevented him from narcing on a fellow Master. Getting the info out of Brighid had been a way to circumvent his own rules. Fascinating.

  “She’s right,” Kathleen said, reminding us she was still listening in. “If this Piotr doesn’t think we’re intelligent enough to find him on our own, he may get cocky. And arrogant people make mistakes.”

  “Hasn’t he already made a big mistake?” I asked. “Using Julius as a warning was pretty ineffective, overall. He couldn’t have possibly believed we’d back away from investigating this.”

  “You may be correct in your theory,” Tennyson said. “However, if Piotr has more nefarious goals in mind for those who are missing, he may have used your friend as practice. It is also possible he turned your friend into a revenant as part of a favor or debt owed another, and he has no connection to the disappearances.”

  “I despise theories,” Kathleen said.

  “Ditto,” I said. “Tennyson, do you know where Piotr lives?”

  “Colorado,” he replied.

  “Could you narrow that down to under five hundred square miles?”

  “I could reasonably sense his presence if I was within a few miles.”

  I banged my palm on the steering wheel, then realized I’d gotten up to twenty miles over the speed limit. I slowed down. Wasting the time of getting pulled over—never mind possibly explaining the vampire and severed head riding shotgun—right now would put a serious dent in my already fractured mood. “Kathleen, how did it go with the Dame Alpha?”

  “She didn’t eat Jaxon,” the dhampir replied.

  “Thank Iblis for good news. Got anything else?”

  “K.I.M. has been given the relevant data on each of the mated pairs taken. The only similarity between them was the lack of offspring.”

  “Newly mated then?”

  “No, several had been mated for twenty years or more, but were unable to reproduce. The Dame Alpha wouldn’t let on, but she was worried about that.”

  With good reason. There were two types of werewolves in the world: born and forced. Forced wolves were made on purpose (it wasn’t possible to accidentally create a werewolf) and without Pack permission, and they were almost always outsiders, living on the fringes because they were sterile, unable to reproduce, and so were considered a burden to the Pack resources.

  Born werewolves, like their wildlife counterparts, descended from strong, inter-Pack lines, and they mated for life. If a mated pair was unable to have offspring, their chances of continuing the line was gone. A Pack with multiple infertile pairs threatened its longevity. And it was pretty friggin’ unusual to find an infertile born werewolf. Novak had once made a bunny breeding joke in front of one and lost a pint of blood for it.

  “This supports your theory of experimentation,” Tennyson said.

  “Yeah, it does,” I said, wishing it didn’t. I couldn’t bear the idea of humans testing shampoo on dogs, much less capturing and doing who-knows-what to a bunch of vampires and werewolves, all in the name of science.

  Science and the supernatural—not good friends.

  “We’re staying in a motel here in Florida,” Kathleen continued. “We’ll travel to California tomorrow to speak with the Homme Alpha out there. And you?”

  “As much as I want to fly out to Colorado and start busting some heads, we’re heading toward home. If this Piotr was the one who performed the spell, he may still be on the coast. And I have an idea for finding him.”

  “Do not fall in between worlds again, please. Jaxon was quite overreacting with worry.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure he was the only one.”

  “Novak seemed mildly concerned.”

  “Good-bye, Kathleen.” I hung up and debated liste
ning to my voice mail from Vincent. Hearing his voice would make me want to call him, and no way was I calling my boyfriend with Tennyson right next to me. Instead, I listened to the voice mail from Weller. Basic check-in, pledging any assistance they might need and asking for more frequent updates.

  Kind of weird, but this was my first experience leading a huge case without Julius to back me up, so I figured it was just standard operating procedure.

  “What is this idea?” Tennyson asked.

  “For finding Piotr?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who do you call when you want to sniff out a recently cast spell?”

  He blinked. “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  “Nope.” Headlights were coming up fast on my bumper. I nudged into the right lane to allow the speeding asshat to pass me. “Most magic leaves behind a residue of sorts. The simpler the magic, the lighter the residual energy. Necromancy sounds seriously complex and high-energy, so it’s reasonable to assume that even twenty-four hours later, the location still has some residue.”

  “And you know someone who can detect this residual energy.”

  “Yep.”

  “May I ask who?”

  I hit speed dial on my phone even as I replied, “My mom.”

  “Mom, hey,” I said when her line clicked over.

  “Shiloh, sweetheart, what is going on?” She was awake now, her voice less raspy than when we’d last spoken. At four in the morning.

  “Um, a lot, actually.”

  In the seat next to me, Tennyson sniggered. It was a funny sound coming from him. I glared at him sideways, careful to keep one eye on the road at all times.

  “Is this about why you called me early this morning?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I launched into an abbreviated explanation. I choked up a little telling her about Julius. There’s something about spilling awful news to your mother that opens up the emotional floodgates all over again. She listened without interrupting, making the occasional grunt to let me know I hadn’t lost the connection.

  She didn’t speak after I finished, and I listened to silence for about two miles. “So you want me to endanger my anonymity again and help you track down the place where your friend was murdered?” she asked finally.

  Put like that it sounded dangerous. Put any way, it was dangerous. She knew it. And yet . . .

  “Mom, you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Necromancy is against all of the magical laws, and someone did it to a person I care about. I need you.” It was a low blow, tacking I need you onto a daughter’s plea and appealing to her motherly instincts.

  Her sigh hissed across the phone like air from a tire. “Where do you want me to meet you?”

  “I’ll pick you up.” It was all I could do to suppress a triumphant cheer. “We’re about an hour away, at most.”

  “We? Who’s with you, Shi? That nice young stud you dated?”

  “Stag.” I corrected her out of habit. She knew full well what Jaxon was, and to this day, she doesn’t understand why we broke up. It’s a mother’s prerogative to torment her daughter. And had I conveniently forgotten to mention who I was with? “I’ll see you in an hour, okay? And Mom? Don’t tell Dad about this.”

  “Why would I tell your father? I haven’t spoken to him in a month.”

  I pondered my surprise at that revelation long after I hung up. Even after their separation my parents kept in contact, usually calling once a week. I know it was mostly for my benefit, but they remained friends even after I grew up and moved away. Wise men say we never really stop loving the great loves of our lives, and I suppose that holds doubly true of us magic folk.

  A tremble of fear took root in my heart, and it wouldn’t go away. The last time my father had been out of contact for a long period of time, it was because a magic abuser was holding him captive in a cage, on display for the amusement of rich assholes who’d pay twenty-five grand a head to see magical creatures do tricks. Jaxon had been in a cage next to my father, and rescuing them was the mission where I’d first met Julius.

  The odds of someone else figuring out how to summon, capture, and hold an earth djinn as powerful as Gaius were infinitely small, but not impossible. And I so did not need that problem on my plate.

  Tennyson displayed an amazing amount of restraint. He let twenty minutes pass in silence before he broached the subject. “How exactly can your human mother detect the residual energies of the spellcasting? Is she a witch?”

  “Nope, she’s the daughter of a Romani and a warlock, raised by water djinn after her parents were killed in a Chicago land dispute between some witches and fairies. By living that close to magic most of her life, she developed an echo sense.”

  A startled look passed across his sharp features. “You would think I’d have heard of someone around here with that power. Truth?”

  “Of course.”

  Echo sense is a fancy word for sensing magical residue. And her connection to the water djinn is how she met my dad, Gaius, an earth djinn. He’s over eight hundred years old, still looks thirty-five, and he’d thumbed his nose at a lot of djinn laws by falling in love with my mother and giving her me. I was a unique birth, and we lived somewhat happily until I was thirteen. Then the aggressive side of his nature—the part that gave me the Quarrel—eventually overshadowed their ability to cohabitate, and Dad went back to his life as a djinn.

  “My mother just doesn’t advertise what she can do,” I continued. “She doesn’t like getting involved or taking risks, so she keeps her head down. This is a huge favor she’s doing me, Tennyson.”

  “I understand. You have my word, Ms. Harrison, I will not betray your confidence.”

  It was my turn to be startled. I hadn’t even needed to ask. “Thank you.”

  “Although I must admit mild surprise.”

  “At what?”

  He shifted in his seat, and I swore I saw him smile as he said, “I did not expect to be meeting your mother so soon in our courtship.”

  Chapter 7

  It was easier to let the “courtship” thing slide than try to injure him while driving sixty-five miles an hour. Not that my attempts would produce much in the way of bloody results. He was, after all, a vampire Master. He could snap me in half with two fingers. Besides, he seemed to enjoy saying things that got a reaction out of me. Not reacting was my best course of nonaction for his non-amusement.

  My mom lives on the outskirts of a tiny town called Felton, population thirteen hundred, almost smack in the middle of Delaware. You could see a little of it from the highway. Typical, two-lane Main Street town, with new homes built on the perimeter of the historical ones.

  Hers was a small rancher, hidden behind a tall hedge, a few blocks from the center of town. She enjoyed the privacy of the hedges and multiple flower beds lining her small lot. Nature’s own fencing. She bought the place after I moved out on my own, but I always felt at home there. The guest bedroom was painted in white and lilac, the colors I’d chosen as a child, and I’d stayed there at least a dozen times in the last few years.

  It was after nine when we arrived. The house blazed with light, and Mom was at the door waiting before we were halfway up the stone path. Her smile faltered when Tennyson stepped into the glare of the porch light, his pale skin impossibly white beneath it. He held the cake carrier in both hands, like a gentleman caller bringing dessert.

  “He’s not one of yours, Shiloh,” Mom said. She made no move to open the screen door for us.

  “No, but he’s helping us with this case,” I replied. She arched a slender, black eyebrow, not buying it. She could sense his power, much as I had. “Okay, he’s the Master of the group of vampires that’s holding a trailer park and its residents hostage.”

  She glared at me as one hand lifted to brush an imaginary strand of hair off her forehead. Her long mane of silver-streaked black hair was tied up in its familiar ponytail, not a bit out of place. “That’s not funny, sweetheart.”

  “Mom, I’m se
rious.”

  Her sharp gaze swung back to Tennyson. “She’s told you who I am?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

  “So you know what she is and who her father is?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” More cautious this time.

  “Good.” Mom sniffed. “Because if you hurt her in any way during this investigation, we will bring the might of the earth djinn down on you and your line. Are we understood, Vampire?”

  I couldn’t help it. I turned my head to look at Tennyson. His face was serious, almost stoic, but I saw the hints of humor around his eyes (blue glow—check) and mouth. Still, he managed a very sincere, “Yes, ma’am, we are understood.”

  I don’t know if my parents could actually raise the ire of all earth djinn for me, but I admired her courage in the face of a very old, very powerful Master vampire.

  “Good,” Mom said. “He stays outside.”

  “Mom—”

  “I will not invite him in.”

  “Okay, he can wait in the car. We can’t stay long, anyway.”

  “Come in for a few minutes, Shiloh, please.”

  I took Julius from Tennyson, then did as she asked. The familiar scents of pine and orange greeted me, and above it, the newer, sweeter scent of freshly baked bread. The living room was done in familiar browns and greens, the furniture tasteful without being expensive. She led me down a short hall, into her Country Apples kitchen, complete with matching curtains, rugs, and teapot.

  A fresh loaf of bread sat on her counter cutting board. She headed right for it, picked up a serrated bread knife, and began sawing off thick slices. As soon as the first fell and I saw its green-speckled interior, I smiled. Zucchini bread. My favorite.

  “Mom, did you pack an overnight bag?” I asked.

  “Yes, it’s in the hall, you walked right by it.” With three slices hacked off, she wandered to the fridge and withdrew a tub of margarine spread. “Have a snack before we leave, you look pale.”

  “It’s been a long day, that’s why I look pale.” I put the cake carrier down with a harder thump than I intended.

  Mom produced a butter knife from her utensil drawer and smeared margarine on the thickest slice of bread. Silently, she handed it over. I took it, still warm, the spread already melting. She’d made zucchini bread for me right after our phone call. I stared at the slice until my vision blurred, as much from fatigue and frustration as from grief.