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

by Katerina Martinez

“What’s he talking about, Hailey?” Levi asked.

  “Now isn’t the time. How did this happen, Mason?”

  “Hmmm, let me see,” Mason said, turning his eyes up and squinting in mock recollection, “You called me to say you had product you wanted to move, I used my expertly crafted connections to find a buyer for what you had just offered me, and as it happens the buyer is standing right over there. It’s pretty simple, really.”

  “So, you’re telling me you just so happen to be here selling demon blood to the woman we’re interrogating?”

  “Interrogating her? Why?”

  I snapped a look at Delilah. “What do you need demon blood for?” I asked.

  Tank let go of her mouth so she could speak. “I thought you knew blood magic,” she said, an eyebrow arched. Even with Tank pinning her to the wall, she just had to get her snipes in.

  “I do, but I want to know what you know, or what you think you can do with demonic blood.”

  She looked like she was unsure of what she was about to say next, as if saying this thing, this secret, forbidden thing, in front of so many people was an uncomfortable thought. “I can unbind a demon I helped summon in the first place...”

  “Shit,” Ivy chuckled, “He’s gotten clingy, so you wanna get rid of him.”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “Have you ever performed the ritual?” I asked. Delilah offered me an empty stare inside of which I found my answer. “That’s a no, then.”

  “I read it in the book,” she said, “I also made a copy of the spell. I know how to do it.”

  “You needed the actual book to use the magic inside, idiot,” Ivy said.

  “That isn’t the only way to use magic from a Grimoire,” Delilah shot back.

  I lowered my head, sighing. “No, but it’s the safe way.”

  “Psst,” Mason said, “Seems like you’re pretty stressed; maybe I should, you know, come back?”

  I turned my eyes up at him and scowled. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to punch him, slice him, or kiss him—okay, not kiss, definitely not kiss—but my body was screaming for me to do something to him, anything. I chose in the end to let him go, but kept my knife pointed at the soft flesh of his throat, my eyes trailed on his.

  “This is too much of a coincidence,” I said, “But in this line of work that’s not exactly out of the ordinary, so I’m just gonna take this for what it is.”

  “And what’s that?” Mason asked.

  “Bad timing.”

  “I don’t know, I’d say it’s pretty good timing on our part,” Ivy said, “Because now we have the location of the book, and we know what this bitch wants—we also have the thing she needs to get what she wants.”

  “You don’t understand,” Delilah said, her voice almost pleading, “I need to break whatever connection we have or he won’t leave me alone.”

  “Maybe that’s just karma?” I said, “You should have known better than to get mixed up with demons.”

  “Oh, because mages are so much more honorable than demons? Let me tell you something, mages are worse than demons up here. At least demons are honest about the fact that they’ll sell their own parents out to get what they want.”

  “That line would work if demons had parents,” Mason put in.

  “You be quiet,” I snapped. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  “Trouble? For what, doing my job?”

  Levi rolled his eyes. “Great job, selling demon blood to dodgy mages.”

  Mason eyed Levi up, then me, then Levi again. I could see the cogs turning in his brain, could see him making the connection. Not that there was one for him to make, of course, Levi and I were just friends, but Mason had a knack for reading people, he always had, it’s how he’d managed to get me into bed with him the first time, possibly the second, too. That had been the first time I had ever felt truly inadequate as a Warlock, that someone had been able to read me even without magic.

  The sex was good, though.

  Blood flushed to my cheeks, carried there by anger and embarrassment. “Stop it,” I warned.

  “Stop what?” Mason asked, “I didn’t say anything. I was gonna ask prince charming over here a question, but I’m assuming he doesn’t really know much of what’s going on here, so I think I’ll leave the pleasure to you.”

  Ivy moved through the room, sliding past Mason and I and heading for the hotel-room door. She opened it, peered into the hall, and then slipped back inside. “Look, I know this is all really tense right now, but we have to get on with this, and we have to do it fast.”

  “Agreed,” I said. Then, to Mason, “Sell her the backpack.”

  Mason stared at me, slowly tilting his head to the side. “What?” he asked.

  “Do what you came here to do.”

  “Wait… what?”

  “Yeah, what?” Ivy asked. If she had fur, it would have been bristling all over. “You’re gonna give her the blood?”

  “I’m not going to give it to her,” I said, “I’m gonna let her pay for it, fair and square. Then I’m gonna let her get out of her own mess.”

  “We’re in her mess too, you know.”

  I turned around to look at Ivy, glaring at her from across my shoulder. “Ivy, I swear to the Gods, I need you to shut the fuck up right now because I’m getting a little sick of your shit.”

  Ivy’s mouth opened, then shut. Opened, then shut. She was looking at me with her eyes wide, her jaw trembling like a kettle about to boil over, but she didn’t speak. In fact, the entire room fell eerily silent, then, as if a shadow had passed over it. It was so quiet you could even hear the hum of the air-conditioning unit, usually silent things.

  “Hailey?” Levi said.

  “What?” I asked, snapping around.

  He pointed at Mason’s neck. The knife was pressing against his skin hard enough to turn the skin white, but only a hair’s worth of pressure less than required to split the skin. Mason didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare move his esophagus even a little bit for fear of relinquishing his life there and then, and dying a slow, gurgling death.

  I pulled the knife away from Mason’s neck, having not even realized I’d pressed it against him again in the first place, then I shoved the knife back into its sheath around my ankle. “That’s better,” I said.

  “I’ll say,” Mason said, rubbing his throat, “Closest shave I ever got. You should consider a career as a barber.”

  Tank chuckled. He still hadn’t let Delilah go.

  “Alright,” I said, pointing at Delilah with the tip of my knife, “Let’s get this over with, but on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but seeing as how you offered up tomorrow night’s prized auction, I’m willing to bet all eight pints of demon blood over there that you were given an invite to this party.”

  Delilah scowled. “I have one.”

  “Give it to me, and then you can trade for the blood.”

  “That invitation is worthless to you—it was given to me.”

  “Maybe, but since you’re no longer going to the event, you may as well give me the invite, right?”

  Her entire face tightened, but she huffed, walked over to her purse, and pulled out two small, rectangular cards, then she handed them over to me. The cards were black, almost velvety to the touch, and on them were pentagrams; silver in color, but their color shifted as I tilted the card back and forth under the light.

  “Well, fuck me sideways,” I said under my breath, smiling.

  “What’s up?” Mason said, the entirety of his attention scooped up by the words fuck and me.

  “Nothing… don’t worry about it. Go ahead.” Not only had I seen this exact same card before, I had one in my possession, which meant now I had three of them. I didn’t want to advertise that, though; not yet.

  Mason nodded, shrugged out of the backpack and set it to rest on the bed. “Here’s the product,” he said.

  Tank moved
aside, letting Delilah slip from his grip. “No funny business, love,” he warned.

  Delilah straightened herself out, walked around Tank to her desk, picked her briefcase up and, with a key taken from a necklace she was wearing, unlocked it before setting it on the bed. Inside, there were stacks of notes, all British Pounds, several thousands of pounds worth. If I knew how much he had paid me for the blood, and it had been a lot, then there was more in that briefcase right now.

  Mason scanned over the contents of the briefcase, pulling up some of the wads of cash and flipping through them. The whole thing looked like a drug-deal. “Looks good to me,” Mason said, emptying the contents of his backpack onto the bed. “We’ve got a deal.”

  “Great,” Delilah said, shaking on it.

  Mason then unceremoniously scooped up and dumped the cash from the briefcase into his backpack, shut it, and slipped it onto his back again.

  “Then that’s it,” I said, “Time for us to go.”

  “Go?” Delilah asked, “No, you can’t just go.”

  I tilted my head. “And why not?”

  “Aren’t you… going to help me?”

  A strange thing had just happened. I hadn’t noticed while I was in the thick of it, but before we had come here tonight, Delilah had been the clever mastermind, the one who had cornered me, the one who had gotten in the way of how things should be. In my mind she’d been the boogeyman, the reason why I hadn’t been able to go home, and by extension, the reason why I was no longer working at the university library. Right now, however, she was none of those things.

  Her eyes were large, and pleading, like a puppy’s. Her confidence had been sucked out of her body, leaving her looking several sizes smaller than she had been the first time we’d crossed swords, when she was holding Levi’s life in her fingertip. This big, bad Scion had been reduced to something… less than; something human, and flawed, and vulnerable.

  I could see it clearly now; Delilah didn’t want to rule the world, she didn’t want hordes of demons at her command, she just wanted to add a bunch of extra zeroes to her bank account and live a life that was well above her means, but without the responsibility that came with being a mage. In that moment, I found a connection to her. It was a fleeting one, but I also wanted to just live a normal life. I would never have sold other people out to get what I wanted, or put the lives of others in jeopardy, but we all lived by our own moral codes, didn’t we?

  “No,” I said, “We’re not going to help you. This is your mess, you deal with it. Good luck.”

  Tank was the first to file out of the hotel room. Ivy followed, then Mason. I kept my eyes on Delilah a moment longer, drinking in the way she was begging me to stay without actually asking a second time—she was too prideful for that. Levi hadn’t left the room yet, either. He was looking at her, his eyes burning into her.

  “Did you really do it?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, pleading. “Don’t make me answer that,” she said, her voice a whimper.

  Levi shut his eyes and pressed his lips shut. “He was a good man, and he loved you more than anything; all he did was talk about you. He may have had his faults, but he didn’t deserve what you did to him, didn’t deserve to be betrayed by someone he loved so dearly.” He opened his eyes again. “You’re a fucking monster.”

  “And what does that make you? What does that make any of us?”

  “I’d never have done something like that.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “Fuck you,” he said, his voice cracking, “I swear to all the Gods, I never want to see you again. You hear me?”

  “Why are you letting me go?” she asked.

  I let a hand rest on Levi’s shoulder. “We’re not letting you go,” I said, “Your father’s blood is on your hands—he’s gonna haunt you for the rest of your life, whether you’re able to give the demon the slip or not.”

  I turned around and stared to leave, but something caused me to stop at the door; a flicker of a question that had just shuffled out of the back of my mind like the mad hatter, always late for the party. “I have one more question…” I said. “Do you know where it is?”

  “Where what is?” Delilah said.

  “The Hell Hole… the one your friend crawled out of. Do you know where it is?”

  “I… no. I don’t.”

  I craned my neck across my shoulder. “How is that possible if you’re the one who summoned him? You must have been near it when you said the words.”

  Delilah shrugged. “I just… said the words, and he showed up.”

  “Where were you?”

  “At home… why are you asking me this?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “No reason. Anyway, good luck getting rid of him now. Those things stick to people like flies on shit, especially if they sense weakness they can feed off and… you’re smelling pretty ripe right now.”

  Leaving before Delilah could say another word, I joined with the rest of the group at the stairwell. I was sure the demon had gone back to his room by now, the desk clerk couldn’t have kept him busy that long, but I didn’t want to take any chances with the elevator just in case. As it turned out, downstairs was empty, the desk clerk moved away from reception, the entire lobby quiet save for the soft, barely audible hum of music floating speakers mounted invisibly into the walls.

  “Morpheus, all clear outside?” Ivy asked over the comms.

  “Roger,” Morpheus said, “The entire street is quiet.”

  “Morpheus?” Mason asked under his breath, “That’s an epic mage name.”

  “Could you just can it?” I asked as we left the hotel and started walking down the street, Ivy masking our passage with her magic. “I’m seriously fucked off that you’re here in the first place, and now you show up in the middle of an operation? Someone else might think you’re involved.”

  “I was, in a way, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, you were, and now that you’ve been paid I think you should make tracks and head back to the US, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” he stretched, yawned, “This is the first time I’ve been to foggy London town. Maybe I’ll stick around for a while, catch a show, see the sights.”

  “If you aren’t careful the only sight you’re gonna see is the inside of a hospital room.”

  “I’m shaking in my boots,” he said, mocking me again.

  “Are you guys gonna do this all the way back to Nerve?” Ivy asked. “Because I’m not up for that.”

  “He’s not coming with us to Nerve.”

  “What’s Nerve?” Mason asked.

  “He has to come with us,” Tank said, ignoring Mason’s question. “He knows everything, now. How do we know he’s gonna keep quiet about what he’s seen?”

  A car drove silently past, a black cab, its wheels hissing along the wet tarmac. I watched from a distance as it stopped in front of the hotel we’d just exited, and wondered if Delilah would be running into the cab, holding her briefcase in one hand and her small suitcase in the other, but I didn’t wait to watch. It didn’t matter to me whether she stayed or she left, she had become insignificant now, inconsequential. Funny how that had happened in an instant.

  “Hailey?” Levi asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. I turned to look at him, my eyes focusing on the angular features of his face, then settling on his eyes.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “What are we doing with Mason.”

  “You guys are talking about me like I’m not here,” Mason said, “I just want you to know, I’m not okay with that.”

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger, shutting my eyes to think. Mason had seen everything, and heard everything. Did I think he would tell anyone else about what he’d seen? No. Did I think someone could pay him to tell them what he’d seen? Also, no. Mason was a shady character, but we had a bond, and there was loyalty between us; enough that I was sure, or at least ninety percent sure, he wouldn’t sell me out.

  B
ut did I really want to bring him back to Nerve? That meant involving him, and that meant he would be sticking around for a while. On the one hand, Mason was someone I didn’t want to spend a lot of time around. He reminded me of the past, of Shannon, and it was difficult to deal with. I also suspected, maybe, Levi wasn’t entirely happy with Mason’s presence, possibly because of my past with Mason. That was gonna cause friction, and after the way Ivy was behaving, the less friction between all of us, the better.

  Having said, Mason was an asset. He had connections, he had the power of magic, and he had money. Sure, I had money, too, but Mason had money with a capital M; Delilah must have paid a small fortune to acquire what she’d just purchased. Having him with us would probably prove to be more of a boon than a hindrance, but maybe the hindrance part was too much, too big a Con in the list of Pros and Cons.

  “Well?” Ivy said, “We’re burning minutes, here.”

  “Fuck it,” I said, “We’ll take him with us.”

  “Uh, don’t I get a say?” Mason asked.

  “Not if you want to still have teeth in a few hours.”

  “Yeesh, when did you get so violent?”

  I didn’t answer the question. Instead, I pulled my phone from my pocket and summoned an Uber large enough to take us all back to Nerve. Tonight had been long, and I was looking forward to getting some rest, but after everything that had happened tonight, I wasn’t sure if my brain would turn itself off long enough for me to get any meaningful sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I was alone with him again. Levi, the man I had spent a week living with, but whose real name I had only just learned. James, the stranger with whom I was hiding from the nefarious, clandestine forces whose agenda involved the tearing of a hole between our dimension and the home of demons and nightmares. Only now I wasn’t hiding anymore, now I was searching again. Back when I was a hunter, the thought of being mixed up in something like this with people like Levi, Ivy, Morpheus, and Tank, strangers all, would have sent up way too many red flags. I would have dumped them all and gone the distance by myself.

  After all, if you want something done right, you’ve gotta do it yourself.