Mages and Masquerades: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Magic Blood: The Warlock Book 2)

by Katerina Martinez

  “And you got it?”

  A smirk spread across my face. “Demon blood is valuable. People pay top dollar for it.”

  “Just how much are we talking about?”

  “Enough. We should be set for a while, at least. I also want to pay the Eyes and help them repair some of the damage to their watching abilities. I still feel shit that I was the person to bring Delilah and her people down on your nerve center.”

  Levi shrugged. “It was going to happen at some point. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “I do, though. I should have been smarter than I was. Anyway, with the money I have, we should be a little better prepared to deal with what’s coming.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Because it is. I’m not sure what’s coming, and we should all be on our guard. You more than me.”

  His eyebrows went up. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, well, nothing, only that in the game of mages and demons, Warlocks are kings, and since I’m the only one here…”

  “Yeah, I’ve already got a Monarch, and I don’t need another one, thanks. So, how about you get off your high horse before you fall off?”

  “I’ll get off my horse when you clean up. I bought dinner tonight.”

  “Counter offer; you clean up, I’ll put your washing in the dryer, sort your clothes out, and I’ll even fold them for you.”

  “What washing?”

  “The clothes you put in the wash this morning and left there, they’re probably stinking of damp by now.”

  “Oh… yeah, sorry. That’s my life all over. You sure you’re ok to do that for me?”

  Levi shrugged. “As long as you’re happy for me to handle your unmentionables, we’ve got a deal.”

  “My unmentionables,” I echoed, smiling and extending my hand. “Normally I’d have a problem with that, but seeing as how we’ve been mixing our clothes up all week, I don’t care much right now, and I really wanna just get to bed, so…”

  Levi took my hand and shook, and as I let my hand slip from his, a current snapped at our fingers causing us both to immediately yank our hands apart. “Jesus,” he called out, shaking the excess energy loose. “Did you feel that?”

  “Yeah,” I said, standing and staring at him for perhaps a moment too long. “I did.”

  Without saying another word, I plucked the phone from the table, slipped it into my pocket, and started clearing up the empty food containers scattered around. The whole thing didn’t take more than a few minutes to do, but by the end of it there was a notable Chinese food smell in the apartment that I didn’t think would go away anytime soon.

  Levi and I said goodnight, and he headed off to the laundry room which was little more than a closet with a drier precariously stacked on top of a washing machine. Though I’d resisted the urge this long, eventually I caved and checked my phone messages. There was still only one burning on my screen, a glaring invitation for dialogue with the past. I swiped the message open and read it.

  “London’s pretty lit.”

  I didn’t have to answer, but I figured my warning maybe hadn’t been quite taken to heart, so I thought I would issue another one. Do what you have to do, and go home, Mason, I wrote.

  The reply was near instant. I intend to, but not without my coffee. I’ve got something I need to say.

  A cold feeling washed through me as I read the words. Great, now I could either blow him off and look like the worst asshole on the planet, or give into the request and… what? I shouldn’t have replied. I’d opened that can of worms all on my own, and they were about to go everywhere if I didn’t do something about it. I went to bed without sending him so much as another byte. It could wait until morning.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Last night I dreamed of ghosts. Shannon. She was there, and while I knew she was dead, that strange logic of dreams reassured me it was totally possible for her to be dead and buried, but also alive and present, and for it to not be weird. The scene was one from our childhood, a weekend at my grandparents’ cabin near Lake Champlain in New York, only we were adults while the rest of our family looked exactly as I remembered them, whenever the memory came knocking.

  Shannon was teaching me how to swim. We were six and eight years old, the sun was beating down hard, the lake glistening, the tips of white sails like punctuation marks dotting the horizon. We seemed to flicker in and out of looking like children and looking like adults, almost as if we couldn’t make up our minds which we wanted to be—kids, or adults.

  Kids, definitely kids.

  I remembered my grandfather’s voice carrying across from the side of the house to the pier where Shannon and I were swimming. It was time to eat. Shannon went to pull me out of the water, a child now, with wavy, bright red hair that seemed to shimmer like fire against the summer sun. She was smiling at me, but then her smile tightened, her eyes widened, she stiffened, and her grip on my hand became almost vicelike.

  I was calling to her, and while she was right in front of me, staring directly at me, so close I could see myself reflected in her eyes, she couldn’t see me. Couldn’t hear me. Blood pooled behind her lips, then spilled out of the sides of her mouth. She toppled, then, falling past me and into the water. I screamed so much my lungs went hoarse, but I never saw her come back up—she didn’t even float.

  I shot bolt-upright, my back straight, my chest, neck, and hair wet with rapidly cooling sweat. I was panting, my heart hammering like a jackhammer hitting the asphalt over and over and over, trying to crack it open to see what was underneath.

  Checking my phone, I saw it was seven minutes past six in the morning and still dark out. From my bed I could hear the rumble of the garbage truck downstairs, eating up the garbage from dumpsters like some fat animal that only came out to pick on what rotting flesh and bone remained from the previous day’s kills. The garbage truck rolled off, taking its rumble with it and allowing the room to fall back into silence once more.

  Across from where I was sitting, stuck against the wall, was Shannon’s Mean Girls poster; one of the few things I had made sure to bring with me from my old place. Levi hadn’t protested when I hung it up in the living room. Sometimes, looking at it was comforting. It reminded me of the good moments, highlights from our childhood, memories of our best hunts, or our proudest achievements.

  Other times, like right now, it was a reminder that she was gone, and not just gone, but taken. Times like these I wanted to race across to it and pull the thing apart with my hands and teeth, but I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, because that was one of the last things I had that linked me to her, besides the blood coursing through my veins.

  I noticed then, the door to Levi’s room was ajar. Hadn’t he shut it last night when he turned in? It didn’t matter. The movie theater in my mind was rolling a clip of me struggling in my bed, constantly repeating the word Shannon loudly enough for Levi to hear. Great. That was exactly what I needed right now.

  I was about to step out of bed when my phone started to buzz. At first, I thought it was one of my old alarms still ringing. This would have been around the time I’d be getting up for work. But there was no sound, only its vibration, and I had turned all of my alarms off almost a week ago. Someone was calling me at quarter past six in the morning.

  Mason? No, the identifier on the screen said Unknown, and didn’t even have a number registered underneath it. I wasn’t exempt from the odd telemarketing call, mind you. Living in London you got plenty of those, but never this early in the morning. Long seconds had passed, and the fact that whoever it was on the other end was still calling told me it was a genuine call, someone trying to get through to me. A shudder ran through me, as I imagined when I picked up, I’d hear Shannon’s voice calling from beyond the grave.

  Don’t be stupid, I told myself, and before it could ring out, I answered the call.

  “Hello?” I asked.

  “You are the librarian, yes?” the voice coming through was being distorted, so it sounde
d almost inhuman, and slightly electronic. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman behind it.

  “Was a librarian, but yes. Who is this?”

  “That’s not important. What is important is that you understand, what I’m about to tell you is intended to help you.”

  “Listen, buddy, I don’t know who you are, but—”

  “—you’re looking for the book.”

  I shut my mouth and swallowed. That had gotten my attention. “Who are you?”

  “I’m not going to tell you my name, but I’m a friend.”

  “A friend, huh? And what do you know about the book?”

  “I know it’s dangerous, I know you don’t have it, and I also know who does.”

  “So, you’ve been keeping tabs on me and my friends?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I would love to sit and go over the how’s, why’s, and when’s, but I don’t have the time for that. If I don’t hang up in the next thirty seconds, I’ll be discovered.”

  “Discovered?”

  “Just listen. I know what you’re looking for, and I want you to find it too. If you want a chance, you need to be at the Pimlico Underground station at five thirty this afternoon. Exactly five thirty, understood?”

  “I understand, but—”

  “I know you’re used to asking questions, but you’re going to have to trust me blindly here.”

  “You aren’t exactly instilling me with the strongest confidence, here.”

  “Maybe not, but if you do what I say, you may have the book back in your possession by tonight.”

  I had to admit that sounded pretty good. “Tell you what,” I said, “How about you give me your name so if this blows up on me, I know who I have to curse out in the middle of the street?”

  “I will not give you my name, but I can tell you I am the person who deposited the book into your library the night of Nathaniel’s death. I am the person who enchanted the book to look like Peter Rabbit.”

  “Holy shit, you’re the Harlequin?”

  “Good luck, librarian.”

  The call cut off with a buzz and a click, and the screen died in my hand. “Fuck me…” I whispered, then a thought entered my mind. The whole thing had been so cloak and dagger, I half expected to see a message flash up warning me my phone was about to explode, but that didn’t happen, thank the God, so I set the phone down on the bed and got up, now, wiping the sleep from my eyes. Levi wasn’t eavesdropping at his bedroom door. He wasn’t even awake, that I could tell, just lying on the bed, on his side, his chest heaving normally with each breath.

  I thought about waking him up, then, and telling him what had just happened; delivering the news to him fresh. But whoever had called me had told me I needed to be at the right Underground station at five thirty in the afternoon, which was eleven hours away. We had time to spare, but I wanted to get an early start on this, so I texted the Eyes and asked them to come over to my place; we had something to discuss.

  I got a text from Tank almost right away; he was always up early for the gym. The others checked in over the next hour, and by eight everyone had received my message and were on their way over. Used to be they wouldn’t communicate like this over text, but I’d been able to convince them to drop the super-secret bullshit because it just didn’t work, and only made life harder for everyone.

  Morpheus arrived with a steaming hot caramel latte from the Starbucks downstairs, as per my request. Seeing as I was being waited on, I had been nice enough to not only let Levi sleep a little more, but I’d also boiled the kettle for him and prepared a mug with two spoons of sugar and a tea-bag inside; a cup of English tea, ready to be assembled.

  “Thanks,” I said to Morpheus as he handed the latte over. “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” he said, stepping into the apartment. It was raining outside, and his short, curly hair seemed a little weighed down by it. “Anyone else here yet?”

  “Just Levi, though we’ve gotta wake his ass up.”

  Morpheus sighed. “Loves his sleep, that one, doesn’t he?” Opening the door to Levi’s room, Morpheus grabbed the edge of Levi’s bedcovers and yanked them down hard, yelling for him to wake up.

  “What?” Levi asked, startled and totally out of it, “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

  “Breakfast,” I called out, pointing at the mug on the kitchen counter.

  It took him a moment to register what I was saying, eyes a wide like he’d just sprung some kind of trap and was reeling from the surprise more than any pain. Then he rubbed his face, blinked about the room, and deeply exhaled. “Don’t wake me up like that,” he said, almost like a warning.

  “Why not?” I asked, now pouring hot water from the kettle into the mug—going that little step further than I had to.

  He shook his head. “I was having a nightmare or something.”

  “Nightmare?” Morpheus asked, “Pretty princess have a bad dream?”

  “Lay off it, mate. I’m serious.”

  I’d had a bad dream too, but thought it best not to speak up about it. Instead, I began stirring the tea like I’d seen Levi do a bunch of times since we’d become roommates. Apparently, there was some kind of art to brewing the perfect cup of English tea, and it started with how long before you should pull the tea bag. Three minutes, he told me. Three minutes, and you had the perfect cup of tea. That didn’t make sense, though, because then he just went and poured milk into the mix. Wouldn’t that kill the flavor?

  Levi came up to the counter, having chosen not to divulge the contents of his dream to either me or Morpheus. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, flashing him a smile which Levi returned. Butterflies kicked about in my stomach, but I ignored them. Killed them, more like. Outright murdered them with a thought. There’s no time for that.

  “What’s Morpheus doing here, then?”

  “Not happy to see me?” Morpheus asked.

  “Not when it’s this early, no. Something up?”

  There was a buzz from the door, someone at the intercom downstairs. Morpheus went to answer. “Yeah, something happened this morning,” I said, “Everyone’s coming over here for a briefing, so you’d better get changed.”

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asked, pulling a carton of milk from the fridge.

  “Oh, I just thought the Eyes ran a more professional operation. You attend many briefings in your jammies before?”

  Levi narrowed his eyes at me. He pulled the tea bag out of the mug, poured a splash of milk into it, and then put the milk back into the fridge. “Well, considering this is my apartment too, and I’ve just been woken up, I don’t really see a reason to change out of my jammies.”

  I squared up to him. “How about, I’m asking you to?” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Jimmy.”

  “Don’t,” he warned.

  My eyebrows pinched in the middle. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t put on that voice in front of me.”

  “Or else what, Jimmy?” I asked, whispering his name and stepping a little closer to him.

  Levi backed up a step. “Alright, fine,” he said, moving back into his bedroom to the small, carry-on suitcase in which his entire life now fit. It was fun to watch him squirm at my invasion of his personal space. He was so polite, so awkward, so British. Ivy arrived while Levi was getting changed, with Tank not far behind. When Levi was ready, I had everyone assemble in the living room and then stood in front of them, watching the anticipation build in their eyes.

  “Well?” Ivy asked, “Why’d you bring us all here at stupid o’clock in the morning?”

  I stared at her, remembering what Levi had told me last night, about how she had ratted about what I’d done after agreeing to take a cut in exchange for her silence. The fact that she would no longer be receiving that cut was enough to keep me from laying into her and instead just proceed with what I had wanted to tell them. After taking a sip of my coffee, I did just that; omitting the n
ightmare about my dead sister. I didn’t think that was the kind of thing they wanted to hear about, and even if they did, it wasn’t exactly relevant to the story.

  They listened to me, though, hanging on my every word as I explained the strange circumstances surrounding the early morning phone call. Already I could see theories building, and I was happy for them. I had one of my own, but having a good group to bounce them off was never a bad thing.

  “I’m going down there,” I said, rounding this impromptu briefing off. “I don’t see that I have much of a choice.”

  “Could be a trap?” Morpheus said, “I don’t want to be that guy, but… I am very much that guy. What if this is a trap you’re walking right into?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first, or the third, or probably even the fifth if you count that time in Detroit.”

  “Time in Detroit?” Levi asked.

  “It’s not important,” I said, “What’s important is, trap or no, I have to go. I’m not saying I trust what the person I was talking to was saying. I don’t trust anyone, don’t take it personally. But if it was one of the bad guys and I am walking into a trap, well, I’m the kind of person who can turn a bad situation into a positive. Either way, we learn more from acting than from ignoring this.”

  “It’s crazy,” Tank said, “But I’m itching for a bit of action, so I’m in.”

  “In?” I asked, “There is no in—there’s just me, and you guys watch.”

  Ivy’s eyebrow arched, and she folded her arms in front of her chest. “You expect us to just watch?”

  “You’re the Eyes, aren’t you? Your cabal watches, you said so yourself.”

  “Yeah, that may be true, but we’re not about to sit around while you go into a potential trap. What happens if you get caught, or if something goes wrong? Or what if something goes right? You’ll be wishing you had us lot around you.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not willing to risk it.”

  “You risked me with the demon last night.”

  “That was different.”