License to Spell_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by Paige Howland

  There they were. The words I’d always wanted to hear. But now, for some reason, I found my gaze shifting to Ryerson.

  Alec’s jaw hardened. “I see.”

  My cheeks flushed. There was nothing for him to see. I’d wanted to be with Alec for as long as I could remember. And Ryerson, well, he didn’t even like me. I didn’t want to be falling for the arrogant, love-cursed, possibly suicidal spy who drove me crazy. So why was my heart suddenly beating faster than it had when we were running for our lives?

  I jerked my gaze from Ryerson. “Alec …”

  He shook his head and stepped away. “We’ll need a car to reach the border. I’ll go find us one.”

  “What about the stitches?”

  “Oh, they’re easy. Just thread and poke.” He turned toward the door, then paused and looked back. “I meant what I said, dove. Be careful.”

  Before I could ask him any more questions, he pushed through the door and was gone. Frustrated and confused, I gathered a needle and what looked like surgical thread but could just as easily have been dental floss and walked back to Ryerson.

  I held up the needle to show him how big it was. “You sure you don’t want that anesthetic?”

  He cracked one eye. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ll be fine.”

  I dropped into the chair in front of him, threaded the needle, knotted one end, and then frowned.

  “In one side, out the other,” Ryerson said. “Shouldn’t take more than three or four stitches. You’ll be fine.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m the one who should be reassuring you.”

  He shrugged, wincing when the movement pulled his shoulder.

  I pulled in a deep, steadying breath and went to work.

  “So what happened at the palace?” I asked, not sure which of us I was trying to distract more.

  “Merrick happened,” he said darkly. “I was being held in one of the palace offices before they transferred me out to their detention facility when Merrick showed up. He killed the guards. I was restrained, and Merrick was about to drug me when Alec showed up.”

  “Drug you? Not kill you?” I tugged on the thread too hard and he sucked in a pained breath. “Sorry.”

  “I think he’d found out I’d been captured and decided it was easier to let you steal the artifact and then trade me for it. If you weren’t successful, he could always kill me and then steal it himself.”

  “So what happened? How did Merrick manage to capture both you and Alec?”

  “Bad timing, if you believe Alec. Merrick had a syringe at my jugular when Alec walked into the room. He threatened to kill me if Alec didn’t surrender to the men he had waiting outside.” He scowled. “It was an empty threat. He needed me alive. But Alec walked out and a few minutes later, Merrick’s men called him with confirmation that Alec was in there custody.”

  “Sounds like he saved your life.”

  Ryerson’s scowl deepened. “For all we know, Alec is still working with Merrick and the whole thing was a setup.”

  A memory rose up, unbidden, of Alec straining against his collar to whisper something to the henchman next to him. I shook the thought away. I didn’t believe Alec was working with Merrick. And Ryerson hadn’t tried to kill Alec once tonight, so I doubted he believed it either.

  “He saved me down by the bridge,” I reminded him.

  “Exactly. How did he escape Merrick’s guys?”

  “I sent Golem to remove the charmed collar from his neck. Then he did his wolf thing and killed them, I guess.”

  “Then why not go after Merrick and the necklace? Why come for us instead?”

  “Maybe because his friends are more important to him than a magic necklace?”

  “We are not friends.”

  “So you keep insisting. Okay, say he’s still working for Merrick. Why save you and help us then?”

  “To get us to trust him? I don’t know, but whatever his angle, it won’t work. I’ll never trust him again.”

  “Yeah, he’s not happy with you either.”

  Ryerson looked surprised, then his eyes narrowed. “What the hell does he have to be mad at me for?”

  I flicked him an exasperated look. “Maybe because you keep trying to kill him? I don’t know. He didn’t say. You should talk to him.”

  “I have nothing to say to him.”

  “Fine.” I pulled the next stitch a little too tight and he winced.

  “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. Tell me why you don’t swear.”

  “When I was little, my mom and my Aunt Belinda always told me never to curse anyone. I thought they meant swear words.” I shrugged. “It was the only thing they ever agreed on, so I never did.”

  I tied off the last stitch and snipped the excess thread.

  “Why are you so nervous on planes?” he asked.

  “We’re done. You don’t have to make small talk anymore.”

  “Humor me.”

  I shrugged. “I’m getting better with them. I had just never been on one before … What?”

  Ryerson was staring at me. “You’ve never flown before?”

  “Well, except on my broomstick under the full moon.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Kidding. No, I’ve never flown before. Never left the East Coast. Until I met you.”

  He watched me a long moment, his expression almost soft, and butterflies tumbled through my stomach.

  “Ryerson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did Sloane look like?”

  Surprise, confusion, and pain all flitted across his face before he settled on anger. “Why the hell would you ask me that?”

  I was wondering the same thing. We were finally making progress—maybe not quite a friendship, but at least he finally didn’t look like he wanted to throttle me—and then I go and open my big mouth.

  “I felt a witch at the party, and I thought—”

  “Thought what? That it must be my dead ex-partner come back to life?”

  My eyes narrowed. “She looked American, and I just thought—”

  His expression hardened. “It wasn’t her.”

  “But what if it was? We need her blood to remove the curse, and if she is alive, Aunt Belinda says you can find her if you just look for—”

  “Sloane is dead!” he said in a tone that brooked no argument, and then winced and rubbed his chest.

  Fine. I knew he was right, but he didn’t have to be a jerk about it.

  He snatched a gauze pad from the exam table and I helped him tape it in place. Then he rebuttoned his shirt with stiff fingers. I didn’t offer to help. He could button his own stupid shirt. Then he looked around with a deepening frown.

  “Where’s Alec?”

  “He went to find us a ride.”

  He swore and pushed through the door. I followed him into the back room. The shepherds were bouncing delightedly around their run, chasing something small, quick, and reddish brown. One of them pounced. Golem pushed the paw off his head, saw us, and grinned.

  “Puppies!”

  “Uh-huh. Did Alec come this way?”

  Golem cocked his head.

  “Blond man. Have you seen him?”

  “Left. Came back. Left again,” Golem said and jumped up, surprising and delighting the shepherds. “Said give you keys.” He pointed to a key fob and a tiny earbud lying just outside the cage, and my heart clenched. Alec was gone.

  “Damn it,” Ryerson said.

  “Damn it,” the golem repeated. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

  Great.

  Ryerson ran a hand through his hair, wincing when it pulled at his stitches. “Alec’s gone, and so is the artifact.”

  “For now,” I said.

  “He’s not coming back, Ains. He’s gone.”

  “Not Alec. The necklace.”

  “I hate to tell you, but unless you know where Merrick is, that’s gone too.”

  “I don’t
know where he is now, but I will in twenty-four hours.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I put a tracking rune on the necklace.”

  Ryerson blinked. “You what?”

  I shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Honestly, I thought Alec would try to steal it from me when we met up, so I put a tracking spell on it so I could find him and the necklace. But then I figured Merrick might try to take it too, so I put a timer on it just in case anyone magical scanned it for spells. Twenty-four hours. That’s when the tracker becomes, well, trackable.”

  Ryerson nodded. “That’s a few hours after we’ll hit DC. Good thinking.”

  I blinked. “I’m sorry, did you just compliment me?”

  Despite himself, his lip quirked. “I must be delirious with pain.”

  Wanker.

  23

  While Ryerson cleaned up and used the ear bud to arrange our way home, I tried to coax golem out of the dog run.

  “It’s time to go,” I said, squatting next to the cage.

  “Puppies” was Golem’s excellent counter-point. He tickled one behind the ear and then darted behind it.

  “Please?”

  “Puppies.”

  “I have cookies,” I lied.

  He looked thoughtful. Then, “Puppies.”

  I eyed Ryerson. Maybe he’d trade me intercontinental transport logistics for Golem negotiations. His seemed way easier.

  “The premier will be looking for you.”

  “Puppies.”

  Hard to argue with that. Out of options, I straightened and sighed. There would be some very surprised veterinary technicians tomorrow morning.

  Ryerson tucked the earbud into his pocket and looked at me. “Time to go.”

  With one last glance at Golem, I followed Ryerson to the back door. I’d only known the tiny guy for a couple of hours, but I was going to miss him. Ryerson flipped the light switch, plunging the room into darkness.

  “Eeep!” The cage rattled, then tiny feet scampered across the floor, climbed up my dress, and stomped indignantly onto my shoulder. I grinned.

  “Guess he’s not a fan of the dark,” Ryerson said.

  Guess not.

  A nondescript blue sedan waited for us in the alley. Ryerson drove, over my protests. The rendezvous point was just across the Chinese border. A few miles from the border I suggested we fill the tank, maybe take the stolen car through a car wash, or at least write a thank you note. To my surprise, Ryerson did fill it with gas. Then he parked it in an open field and set it on fire.

  “This is why you have no friends,” I told him.

  We hiked the last two miles across the Chinese border. A black SUV and two agents waited for us at the rendezvous point, which turned out to be the side of a dark road bordered by thick forest on one side and a field on the other. Neither of the agents were Tiago, and I felt a stab of disappointment.

  The agents gave us each a change of clothes and passports with fake names, then drove us to a private airfield where we boarded another small private plane and flew back to the States.

  This time, I slept the whole flight.

  Ryerson nudged me awake when we reached the airspace above DC.

  “Hey,” he said softly from the seat next to mine.

  I blinked the fuzziness from my eyes and yawned. “Hey.”

  He smiled. From the way he was looking at me, I wondered how long he’d been watching me sleep. A warm tingly feeling swept through me.

  He looked better. Still pale, and the bruises along his jaw had darkened to a mottled purple, but he didn’t look ready to pass out, which was an improvement.

  His smile faded, and I sat up a little straighter.

  “We need to talk about what happens when we reach Langley,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “You’ll be debriefed, which means they’ll ask you what happened on the mission.”

  I nodded. That didn’t sound too bad.

  “They won’t be happy that you gave Merrick the necklace.”

  “He would have killed you.”

  Ryerson nodded and rubbed his chest, his eyes pinched at the corners. I frowned. The curse. It was getting worse. “Even still. There will be consequences.”

  I swallowed. “Like jail?”

  “No,” he said, his voice hard. “I won’t let that happen. Besides, jail means a trial, which means they’d have to admit to enlisting the aid of a civilian in a covert op. That isn’t the sort of thing they like to call attention to, especially when magic is involved.”

  The captain announced our descent, but I barely noticed. If I wasn’t going to jail, then how bad could the consequences be? “What aren’t you telling me? And why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re trying to memorize my face. Oh, is my disguise about to wear off?”

  I felt a pang of disappointment. Despite everything, it had been fun to be pretty for a little while.

  Ryerson frowned. “Your disguise wore off hours ago. Why would you think I’d miss that?”

  “She was pretty.” It sounded lame when I said it out loud.

  He reached out and tugged gently on a frizzy blonde curl. “I like this look better.”

  That warm tingly feeling exploded into a swarm of butterflies, who all promptly keeled over when Ryerson pulled away to rub at his chest with a grimace. I made up my mind to call Aunt Belinda about that counter-curse the moment we hit the tarmac.

  The CIA, it turned out, had other ideas.

  The plane touched down and we were herded into yet another dark sedan that made me wish for my colorful little Jetta, then we were whisked away to CIA headquarters in Langley. Golem was a comforting weight in my jacket pocket, until an agent confiscated him too. Only Ryerson’s assurances that I would get him back kept me from cursing all of them with a whole month of particularly foul hair days. I’m sure I could come up with worse curses, but I was too tired to think of them. Ryerson and I were led to separate rooms. I wondered if his room was cold and windowless and creepy too.

  The debrief lasted for hours. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. They refused to give me my phone or tell me what time it was, so I really had no idea how long it took. They asked the same questions dozens of different ways, until I was wondering myself what really happened.

  Finally satisfied, the interrogators left and another agent, a woman, led me upstairs and into the same conference room where I’d first met Director Abrams. She brought me a cup of coffee. It was stale and lukewarm, but I wrapped my shaking hands around the mug and gave her a grateful look.

  A few minutes later, the door opened again and the room filled with familiar faces, and a few unfamiliar ones. Ryerson, Director Abrams, Dahlia, and Andersen took seats across the conference table from me, and a few agents I didn’t recognize stood against the wall behind them. And just like that, I felt like I was back on the other side of the interrogation table.

  “I hear you handed over the necklace to Merrick,” the director snapped. Yep, he was pissed. I squirmed and flicked Ryerson a glance, but his expression was carefully neutral. “Ms. Winters, I prefer if you look at me when we’re having a conversation.”

  Is that what this was? A conversation? Because it sure didn’t feel like one.

  I pulled in a strengthening breath and looked the director in the eye. I would not apologize for doing what I thought was right. “Yes. But I also put a tracker on it with a twenty-four delay.”

  His narrowed eyes held mine for a long moment, and nobody moved. Nobody even breathed. Finally, he nodded sharply. “Tell me about the delay.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. I’d answered this question a dozen times already today, and the answer rolled off my tongue like I’d memorized it. Which, at this point, I supposed I had. “The moment I can sense the tracker, so can Merrick, but only if he’s looking for it. If I were Merrick, the first thing I’d do, and probably the second and third thing
too, is look for a tracking spell. I chose to delay it twenty-four hours because I can only track the spell once, within an hour of its activation.” I shrugged. “I wanted to make sure he was settled and not still on the move, so we’d have a better chance of finding him.” For that reason, longer than twenty-four hours would have been ideal, but I had to weigh that against the likelihood that he’d want to complete the spell as soon as possible.

  Of course, Merrick could be holed up in some cave in Afghanistan or camping out in the middle of the Amazon rainforest by now, where it would still take days to find him.

  But I was certain the director already knew all of that. He leaned back in his chair and nodded to Andersen, who grabbed a small box from under the table and dumped the contents onto the table. A world map, an amethyst crystal with a thin black cord tied around it, and a small vial filled with a smoky, dark-blue liquid.

  “Twenty-four hours have almost passed,” Director Abrams said. “Andersen has gathered the supplies he says you’ll need to track the necklace.”

  Andersen spread the map over the table and then handed me the vial. “It’s a potion I cooked up during your debrief. It should help narrow down the search.”

  I nodded and dipped the crystal into the potion, then weaved the cord through my fingers and dangled the crystal over the map. I glanced at the director, who was looking at his watch. He waited a moment, then nodded. It was time.

  I pushed magic down the cord and into the crystal, then said the word I’d tied to the spell to invoke it. Like a magical password.

  Ryerson’s brows tipped up. “Cheesecake?”

  I tossed him a glare. “I was hungry. Someone promised me party appetizers and then got himself arrested, and I didn’t have time to eat.”

  Ryerson looked bemused. Andersen hid a laugh behind a cough, which earned him a glare from Director Abrams.

  It wasn’t funny. I was still hungry, darn it.

  I tuned all of them out and focused on scrying for the spelled necklace, swinging the crystal in small circles over the map. Ten tension-filled minutes later, I finally felt a tug, and the crystal smacked the map. Everyone leaned forward.

  I frowned. That couldn’t be right.

  The tip of the crystal touched Washington DC.