License to Spell_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by Paige Howland

  I glanced down at Ryerson, but his attention was on Sloane. Then my gaze snagged on the ground at Ryerson’s feet. His boots brushed the edge of the charred pentagram Merrick had chalked into the ground. I frowned and then looked down the catwalk. Sloane and Merrick were standing smack-dab over the center of the pentagram.

  Coincidence? Unlikely.

  I glanced at them. Sloane’s expression was determined, resolute, and a little sad. She glanced down to the pentagram below. Merrick’s eyes flicked to the necklace around her neck, then to the fire escape door behind her.

  And suddenly I knew exactly what each of them meant to do.

  Merrick wanted the necklace, but not to finish the spell. He wanted to escape, and the only way to do that in a warehouse filled with Ryerson’s CIA task force was to become invisible.

  And Sloane? She wanted to complete the spell.

  My eyes locked with hers, and something behind her expression shifted. She knew I knew.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Merrick can’t sell it. Not anymore. If we can finish the spell, the United States will get to keep it.”

  “But more people will die. The Capitol Building—”

  “It’s after hours! There won’t be many people there.”

  “Many is not the same as none! And how do you plan to explain the random missile that was invisible to the US’s defense systems?”

  To my amazement, she simply shrugged. “Maybe it’s time the world knew magic existed. Maybe then our government would take magical threats more seriously.”

  I stared at her. She looked serious. About all of it.

  I was so focused on Sloane that I almost missed the whisper of a spell the moment before Merrick activated it. Almost. It was the wall spell, the same one he’d used in Portugal. It was his version of my bubble spell.

  He was trying to cut himself and Sloane off from the rest of us so he could steal the necklace and escape without interference. But if he succeeded, Sloane might die. And if he failed, the zealous look in Sloane’s eyes said she was willing to sacrifice herself to complete the spell.

  I should have jumped out of the way of Merrick’s wall. That would have been the smart thing to do. When did I stop doing the smart thing?

  Instead, I didn’t think, just threw myself forward as Merrick finished his spell.

  “Ains—” Ryerson shouted, but I didn’t hear the rest. Merrick’s wall slammed down behind me, and all around us, cutting off all sound except what was inside the walls.

  And trapping me inside a tiny magical box with a homicidal dark mage and a psychotic witch. Sometimes, I make poor decisions.

  26

  I pushed to my feet, the walkway and railings clanging and swaying high above the warehouse floor. Yep, definitely a poor decision.

  Somehow, the fact that I was locked inside a magic box made me feel better. I couldn’t fall out of the magic box. Of course, Ryerson and his team couldn’t get inside it either. A fact they discovered rather quickly when bullet after bullet bounced harmlessly off the magic walls.

  Merrick and Sloane stared at me as if I were crazy.

  That seemed fair. And a little hypocritical.

  A faint sheen of sweat appeared on Merrick’s brow. Holding the magic wall in place couldn’t be easy, not after the energy he’d expended tonight. Even so, he raised his arm as if to sling one of his electric bolts, whether at me or Sloane, I wasn’t sure, and I tensed.

  “Do it and that bolt will ricochet around your magic box like a pinball,” I warned.

  He looked like he was considering it.

  Sloane glanced at him, then at me, a maniacal gleam in her eye. She stepped toward me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Letting Merrick tire himself out. But you,” her gaze flicked to Ryerson below, and then back to me. “You’ll try to stop me.”

  I stepped back until the magic of Merrick’s wall pulsed against my shoulders. “Sloane, let’s talk about th—”

  She lunged at me.

  I shrieked and batted at her, but she managed to get her hands around my throat. She squeezed. I tried to pry them off, but she wasn’t budging. There was a crazy gleam to her eyes. She believed in her cause, and that gave her strength.

  I, on the other hand, did not want to kill her. At least, not if I could help it. I needed a distraction. I let go of her hands and sketched a rune into her forehead. She tensed, but she didn’t let go. I shoved magic into the rune and invoked it.

  Tiny fireworks burst to life in front of her face. It startled her into loosening her grip and I wrenched away. She stared at the fireworks as they formed shapes—a lion roaring, a unicorn galloping across the air until it dissolved into nothingness, a dragon breathing red lights that looked like fire.

  I let out a battle cry and lunged across the space separating us, surprising her. We grappled and rolled, banging into the sides of Merrick’s magic wall where we otherwise would have toppled off the edge of the walkway. And then Merrick was there, reaching for me. No, for Sloane. For the invisibility necklace around her neck. I glanced up. Sweat poured down his face. He couldn’t hold the magic wall much longer. The cloaking spell had drained him of too much power.

  She caught his wrist as he snatched the necklace from her neck, snapping the clasp. Then she punched him in the stomach and he keeled over. His concentration broken, the magic wall fell.

  Sloane and I noticed it at the same moment. She met my eyes and smiled. Her smile was determined and sad. And super crazy.

  “No!” I lunged for them as Sloane pitched Merrick, the necklace, and herself over the side of the walkway. I grabbed her wrist as she fell over the side. Merrick and the necklace fell to the ground, and I heard a sickening crunch.

  “No!” screamed Sloane. “Let me go!”

  “So you can die in that pentagram and finish the spell?” I gritted out, straining. She was way heavier than she looked. “Don’t think so.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, almost pleadingly. “The United States needs this cloaking spell. Our enemies grow stronger every day and we need every advantage.”

  “Shut up and let me help you.” I couldn’t hold her much longer.

  “Please, Ainsley. This is the only way. There was no way our government would have permitted the deaths of thirteen people to complete the spell. So I did what needed to be done. Don’t you see? If you don’t let me go, all those witches down there will have died in vain!”

  That was … true. She was super crazy, but she wasn’t wrong. All I had to do was let go, and she’d die and the United States would have a powerful weapon at its disposal.

  And the Capitol Building would be destroyed, along with anyone inside it.

  And Ryerson would be cursed forever.

  But she must have seen the moment of indecision in my eyes before I remembered the consequences, and she clung to it. “When I die and the spell is complete,” she said, “give it to the Wizard. You hear me?”

  I was only half-listening. Her hand was slipping.

  Lying on my stomach, I called the last of my magic and drew a quick rune, and threw it at the warehouse floor beneath her just as her fingers slipped and she fell. I said the invocation and drove my magic into the floor and … the floor caught her and bounced her right back up.

  Relief tumbled through me, and I rolled onto my back as Sloane bounced in the air behind me. I was going to have such a headache tomorrow.

  When my heart finally stopped trying to beat its way out of my chest, I rolled to my stomach and looked over the edge. Someone had dragged Sloane from the bouncing floor and was cuffing her. Tiago. He glanced up at me and winked. I smiled weakly down at him.

  Andersen ran up the walkway and pulled me to my feet. “What was that?”

  “Trampoline rune,” I said, and he raised an eyebrow. “What? I have nephews. What are you doing here?”

  “Ryerson called for reinforcements as soon as he saw what was going on. I’m part of the magi
cal cleanup crew.”

  I was too tired to do anything except nod. Andersen walked me downstairs, where Tiago crushed me against his chest in a tight hug. “I thought you were a goner for a minute there.”

  “Yeah, me too.” I looked around. “Where’s Ryerson?”

  “He left.”

  “Oh.” I tried to hide my disappointment. I must not have done a very good job because Tiago’s expression softened.

  “He had to take Sloane in,” he said gently.

  “Sure.” To distract myself from thoughts of Ryerson and Sloane together, in the same vehicle, I told him everything Sloane had told me.

  Tiago’s expression had darkened by the time I got to the part about the Wizard. “I’ve never heard of him, and there’s no such thing as a wizard. It sounds like a code name. We’ll look into it.”

  I nodded, suddenly too tired to do much of anything else. I wanted to go home, pet Jinx, and sleep. And maybe order wontons. And lo mein. And crab rangoon, obviously.

  “Do you want a ride home?” Tiago said.

  “Goddess, yes.”

  “You got it. Right after we get you debriefed. Again.”

  I groaned.

  27

  The second debrief of the day lasted forever. To make it worse, the CIA confiscated Golem, with a half-hearted promise to return him to me if they decided he wasn’t a threat. I made Andersen promise to look out for him. It was the best I could do.

  When the debrief was over, Tiago drove me home, and I walked into my apartment reeking of sweat and smoke and lavender-scented magic. I needed a shower. Instead, I stumbled into my room and face-planted onto the bed with a groan. I would probably have to throw out the sheets, but I didn’t care. In fact, I didn’t care about anything except sleeping for the next twelve, scratch that, twenty-four hours.

  Ten minutes later, there was a knock at my door.

  “Go away,” I mumbled into my pillow.

  Another sharp rap of knuckles against wood. I whimpered and decided to ignore it. But there was something odd about the knock. I unmashed my face from the pillow long enough to glance toward the door and the living room beyond it, and then screamed and leapt out of bed when my gaze snagged on the man standing in my bedroom doorway.

  “Easy,” Alec said. He was leaning against the doorframe, arms and ankles crossed, a lazy grin lifting his lips.

  I stared at him, heart racing, and tried to process the fact that Alec Marcusi was standing in my bedroom. Eleven-year-old me was beside herself. Twenty-two-year-old me was trying not to have a heart attack and resolving to make friends who knew how to use a doorbell.

  Alec’s eyes shifted to the street outside the window. “This is going to sound strange, but I need you to—”

  I threw myself at him. He caught me and stumbled back with an “oof” and a soft laugh, tightening his arms around me.

  “—hug me,” he finished.

  “You’re okay,” I said. The shock of finding him in my bedroom had worn off and I buried my face in his shirt. He smelled good.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m okay.”

  I breathed him in again, then remembered I was mad at him and pushed away with a scowl. “Doesn’t anyone knock anymore?”

  “I did knock,” he pointed out with a meaningful glance at the bedroom doorframe.

  Sigh. “Next time try doing it before you break in.”

  He shrugged, which wasn’t exactly a promise.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. Alec stayed in the doorway.

  “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but what are you doing here?” I asked. And speaking of which … “How did you get into the country?”

  According to Ryerson, Alec was on the CIA’s most wanted list. Surely they wouldn’t just let him fly right in. Don’t they have a No Fly List to prevent that sort of thing?

  “Dogs don’t need passports.”

  It took me a moment to figure out what he meant. “You flew here in a dog crate?”

  Having seen him as a wolf, it was hard to believe anyone could mistake him for a dog.

  “The crates are small and I’m all balled up in there, so mostly I look like a big ball of fur. And to answer your other question, I’m in the States on business. And to see you.”

  Warmth spread through me at his words. “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” His expression softened. “I heard about what happened at the warehouse. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. If I’d known for a second that you were in danger …” He let that thought hang unfinished in the air between us, but his hands were curled into fists, and his eyes were now rimmed with gold.

  “Alec?” I said softly.

  He shook his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were ice blue once more. “It’s just … it’s good to see you, dove.”

  “You too. When Beth and Josh find out you’re alive—”

  “They can’t find out. At least, not yet. No one can.”

  I stared at him, stunned. “What? But why?”

  “Because they’ll look for me. You know they will. And it’s too dangerous right now. If they start calling attention to themselves, my enemies might use the people I care about against me.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  His expression softened. “Is it? They’ve already done it once.”

  “What are you—wait, me?”

  “Think about it. Didn’t you think it was strange that out of all the witches in the world, the CIA recruited you for this mission?”

  Well yes, but … “The mission was about stopping Merrick, not finding you.” But Alec had been working with Merrick. What if the CIA had known that? My gaze snapped to his. “You think the CIA partnered me with Ryerson to draw you out. They’ve been after you for a while. Maybe they knew you were working with Merrick and decided to kill two birds with one stone.”

  Alec nodded. “Actually, it started before that.”

  Now I was confused again. “What do you mean?”

  “A few weeks after I supposedly died, you got an email from corporate that there was an opening at the Java Hut at CIA headquarters, right?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I told you, not everyone in the CIA believes I’m a traitor.”

  Right. His source. “They send those job postings to everyone at the company …”

  But Alec was shaking his head. “Other job postings, sure. But that one was sent only to you. The company knew how I felt about you, and they wanted to keep an eye on you.”

  Everything fell away. “Wait, what do you mean, how you felt about me?”

  His jaw tightened and he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Like hex it didn’t. I was about to point that out when his gaze shifted out the window again, and he said, “I’m running out of time, and there’s more I need to tell you.”

  I let it go. For now. “Is this about the Grimoire?” I asked instead.

  His eyes widened. “You know about that?”

  I shrugged. “Sloane mentioned it. And Andersen did too, now that I think about it. What’s the big deal?” A grimoire is a witch or mage’s book of spells. Most of us had them. Aunt Belinda had given me one for my thirteenth birthday, much to Mom’s chagrin. It was in my closet somewhere. Clearly, some witches put them to better use than others.

  “This isn’t just any grimoire. This Grimoire belonged to an old and powerful coven. It’s a collection of their most prized spells. It’s been lost for ages, and then it suddenly popped up again last year.”

  “Did Merrick have it? Wait. Is that why you were working with him? You were looking for the Grimoire?”

  He nodded. “I’m not the only one who’s looking for it. That’s why Merrick was holed up in that Portuguese village. He was hiding from them. But my sources tell me he got rid of it sometime between Portugal and North Korea. By then he’d memorized the cloaking spell, and hanging onto it just painted a target on his back. It was only a matter of time before someone found him and tried to take the boo
k by force.”

  “Do you know who has it now?”

  “A witch in Brazil, I think.”

  I looked at him suspiciously. “Why are you so interested in the Grimoire?”

  “Because it contains the spell to create werewolves.”

  I stared at him. “And you want to create more werewolves why, exactly?”

  His expression turned hard. “I don’t. I went to a lot of trouble to destroy all traces of that spell outside the book to make sure no one else is cursed like this. That’s one of the reasons I want that book.”

  “And the other reason?”

  He shrugged, but the look in his eyes told me exactly how important this was to him. “I’m hoping it contains the counter-spell.”

  My eyes widened. I wanted to ask him more about the Grimoire and this counter-spell, but he was talking faster now. Like we were running out of time.

  “Do you remember when I told you there’s something going on inside the CIA and to watch your back?”

  It was kind of hard to forget. “Vaguely.”

  “Well, I think there’s a shadow organization within the CIA. I think seven months ago, I got too close to the truth, and that group set me up. I think Sloane was part of this group and that they’re more powerful than I realized. I think they’re responsible for getting Sloane assigned to this op and for using Merrick to try to complete the cloaking spell. And I think that’s only the tip of what they’re capable of. I think they’re after the Grimoire.”

  I blinked at him. Secret government shadow organizations? Lost spellbooks? It sounded crazy. But then again, Sloane wasn’t working alone. And didn’t Alec say Merrick had a mole feeding him information from inside the CIA after Sloane was supposedly killed? How else would Merrick have known we were after him in Portugal?

  “Merrick said a source told him Sloane was going to turn him into the CIA after he completed the spell.”

  Alec grimaced. “Actually, that was me. I saw Sloane at the palace in Pyongyang and figured they were working together, so I figured I’d sow some doubt.”

  “That’s what you whispered to that guard by the river!”