Magic In My Soul

by Kellie Sheridan

  Well, there was a pleasant mental image.

  Ethan rushed to continue. "I won't let that happen, and I know you're more than capable of protecting yourself. But you need to be aware of what's going on, not just in Galway, not just in Ireland, but everywhere. You need to start weighing how your actions will affect those who are already loyal to you, and those are trying to get to you."

  I didn't argue. I knew he was right. The next time one of the faction leaders in Ireland decided they had a problem with me, it needed to be immediately dealt with.

  I needed to learn everything that I spent my life trying to avoid. And I needed to learn now. I'd been in a weak position to begin with, and it sounded like things were only getting worse, especially since I'd been relying on the support of the other Irish faction leaders to have the voices of those with lesser magicks heard at the upcoming summit.

  But I hadn’t managed to screw it all up, not yet. I still had Ethan, and Taya, Tom and Nina. And, as far as I knew, neither the Irish fae or witches had decided to pull their support—though, yes, support was probably too enthusiastic of a word there.

  "You still there?" Ethan asked after a minute of my silence.

  "Yup, just thinking. It's been a weird night, and I should probably get some sleep."

  "Agreed."

  "Would it be alright if I called you in the morning?" I asked, new ideas already circulating through my mind. "I might be in need of some backup a little sooner than planned."

  "Now who sounds ominous?" Ethan teased, but I was grateful he had managed to drop the edge from his voice.

  Despite the fact that we both needed to sleep, it was nearly an hour before we finally managed to hang up the phone. We didn't talk about factions, or vampires, or even Simon's predicament. There would be time for all of that in the morning. Instead, Ethan told me all about his daughter’s latest teenage hijinks and about the goings-on of his pack. I told him all about my new flat and all the progress I wasn't making with unpacking. We laughed over the latest job I had to turn down because of everything else going on, which led to a confession about how I'd managed to fix his wifi the night we met.

  Talking to him did more to relax and clear my mind than any board game night would have been able to manage. I didn't solve any problems. But it helped.

  When I finally did make it to bed, I drifted off almost right away, exhausted but determined. A new day was coming. If I wanted to ensure it would be a day I could be proud of, I needed to be better prepared. I needed to stop letting things just happen to me and start shaping my own fates.

  I needed to do better.

  Chapter 5

  I managed a few hours of rest, enough to keep me going, but once I woke up I'd known there was no chance I'd be able to get back to sleep. To both my relief and chagrin, there were no signs of any surprise guests in my kitchen. I nodded a quick hello to Taya before starting my coffee pot, intending to drink the entire thing myself.

  Time to jumpstart my body for what I was sure would be another long day.

  I offered a cup to my houseguest along with thanks for company the night before. The silence between us was still a little awkward, but it was easy to convince myself it was a little subtler than it had been the day before. Maybe.

  Only a week ago, I’d considered Taya my best friend. Things were moving much too quickly, and there was no way I’d ever get caught up again.

  By the time the sun started to rise, I was already halfway to the hospital. I had texted Simon before I left, asked him if he needed anything, but had run out of patience waiting for a response after only ten minutes.

  Hopefully he’d managed to get some sleep.

  The University Hospital wasn't a big one, but it was the best option the city had for emergency cases, so even though I didn't actually know which room Simon was in, my search was a quick one.

  I found him in a small waiting room, asleep in a faded green chair with his phone in his lap. I hope he had been out for a while already, and would manage a better night's sleep than I’d had. At least the waiting room had been equipped with a television and a coffee machine, so by the time Simon woke nearly an hour later, he found me sitting beside him, ready to get him coffee, food, or whatever else he might have needed in a moment's notice.

  What I hadn't been prepared for was the look of hope that jumped onto his features the moment that he managed to clear his eyes and find me sitting next to him. "Melanie. You're here. It sounded more like a question than anything else. “Is it Leda? Have you heard from her?"

  Sadly, I was forced to shake my head. "Nothing yet. But I've left a friend at my apartment in case she shows up. She's got my number as well as yours. If anything changes, you'll be the first to know. How's your sister-in-law?"

  "She'd just gotten out of surgery before I fell asleep. The doctor couldn't explain her injuries, but he did say that she's stable now. They were waiting to see if she'd wake up on her own after the anesthesia wore off and said they'd wake me if she did."

  A look of worry crossed Simon's expression. Without thinking, I reached out to lay my hand on his forearm. "I'm sure no news is good news here. Her body needed rest, and so did yours. We'll know more soon." I sounded a bit more confident than I felt, but my words had the desired effect on Simon. His body eased back into the chair.

  "Can I get you anything? The coffee here isn't great, but it'll get the job done. There's a cafeteria too," I added, remembering when I had been in the same building to see Taya only a few days before. "I can go get us something, so you'll be here in case there's any news." I nodded, like the plan was already decided.

  Simon didn't argue, which was agreement enough for me. After a night of feeling helpless and then hopeless, even just getting up and moving with a real job to do made the day seem a little more possible to survive.

  A bag of bagels in hand, I made it back to the waiting room as quickly as possible. The plan had been to get coffee at the nearby machine for the best possible chance of having a drink that didn’t taste like poison. But before I had could, I found Simon already standing, talking to someone whose back was facing me. At first, I thought it might be a doctor, come to update Simon on Ieza’s condition, but after only a moment, I recognized the dark, floppy hair.

  "Colin," I said with a smile, approaching the duo. The emissary to the vampires wasn't exactly someone I knew well, but all friendly faces were welcome.

  After a few beats of silence, I realized that my mistake had been assuming that Colin's expression was one of friendliness, or even concern. I turned toward Simon, who looked dumbstruck.

  "What's going on?"

  I immediately feared the worst, imagining a doctor approaching Simon the moment after I left to tell him his loved one had been lost.

  When Simon didn't answer, Colin gestured for he and I to move to the side. I assumed that for whatever reason, Simon needed some space and begrudgingly followed along.

  "When did you get here?" I asked when Colin didn't immediately volunteer information.

  "About five minutes ago. I was told that both you and Simon would be here."

  "Well, that's a little creepy, but okay. What’s going on? Did something happen to Ieza?" I really needed to find more people in my life who would lead with the important information instead of always making me press them for answers.

  "Thanks to a donation from my mistress, we have every reason to believe that her recovery will be swift and thorough."

  Vampire blood. I thought of it briefly the night before, but since there weren't any vampires in the city, it hadn't seemed like a valid option. Apparently, Colin and the people he worked for had found a way. For some reason, he still didn't look happy about the development, but I couldn't stop myself before throwing my arms around his shoulders and squeezing him in a tight hug.

  "Thank you." My voice came out a little too much on the giggly side for my liking, but with everything that had happened, it was hard to rein in my emotions. "I'm sure Simon will want to thank you too
, he’s just a little overwhelmed right now." I glanced toward Simon; he was watching us, an unreadable expression on his face. I'd expected him to have been jumping up and down with joy.

  "That's not all," Colin started up again, not meeting my eyes. "As soon as she is able to walk, I'm to escort both her and Simon to Dublin. The Mistress has promised to arrange for their transfer back to Greece as early as tomorrow."

  I studied Colin’s delicate features as I pieced together what he’d just said.

  "Oh, I don't fucking think so," I said as soon as the truth I’d been avoiding became apparent. "You're not taking anyone anywhere."

  "I'm sorry about all this, Melanie. Really. But there are things here that you don't understand and this is the best way, the fastest way to make it all right. Otherwise..." He trailed off, not finishing whatever threat he'd been about to vocalize.

  "No. There is no otherwise here. These people came to me for help, to my city. Your Mistress has no sway here. When that didn’t work, I tried to reason with the person I hoped Colin still was underneath the would-be blood sucking monster. “You saw that woman last night. She’d been through hell and back. And it’s not going to get better for her. If they go back they'll be killed, and you know it."

  Colin blanched, his increasingly pale skin making him look more like the vampires he worshipped than ever before.

  "And if I don't take them back, I'll be killed." Colin lowered his voice. "I've never seen her like that before. You embarrassed her and put her in a contentious position with her peers, right before she’s expected to host all the masters and mistresses of Europe in her own territory... a territory that they now feel she can’t hold. Forget about me, we can all be killed as a result of taking in this family. It's not even a family, it's two people. And if we return them now, Simon will probably be fine. He’s valuable. He'll be okay."

  I wanted to point out that I hadn’t done anything, but that seemed besides the point.

  "Do you honestly think he could ever be okay if his surrender leads to the death of someone he cares about? Nadir, or whoever, they wanted to turn Ieza into a lesson, a way to keep their people in line. There will be a price to pay for their escape." I didn't know how much Colin already knew about what happened, and I didn't really care. If he wanted to try to please the puppet master that he worked for, he needed to know all the details of what was truly at stake.

  Not that it mattered. The longer we talked, the more time I had to make up my mind that there was absolutely no way Simon and Ieza were leaving this hospital before they were ready, or before they had somewhere they could go, where they had a chance of being safe.

  No part of me thought I had any chance of fighting off the vampires in order to protect these people, especially since, even with my eclectic mix of powers, there was little I could do that would be useful in a fight. But Colin, yeah, I was pretty sure I could take him. After life on the run, I was half-decent at protecting myself. And since everything that happened recently had left me somewhat rattled, I'd sewn two large pockets into my purse, one on either side. In the front was my favorite dagger, and the most powerful weapon I had—it had the ability to steal magic. The back held something more mundane, but in most cases even more useful. I never felt all that comfortable carrying a gun, but if push came to shove, I knew how to use it.

  Not that I had any plans to put a bullet between Colin's eyes right here in the hospital lobby—I was praying it wouldn't come to that. As scrawny as the guy looked, he had powerful friends, and I wasn’t looking to do anything else today that might upset the balance of power in Ireland.

  I stood a little straighter, squaring my shoulders as I moved. "Look, you don't want to do this, and I won’t let you do it. So I think it's in both of our interests to find a better plan."

  "I don't make plans. I'm centuries away from being the guy who gets to make plans. And the only way I’ll ever get there is if I'm useful enough that someone in the capital decides to turn me. I'm not about to betray the people who have protected me my whole life." Colin's bushy eyebrows inched downward in a scowl. He didn't look like he was itching for a fight, but he wasn't looking to budge either. Which I supposed could be fine... the two of us could stand in place for as long as we wanted, so long as the people we were fighting over were able to leave of their own free will.

  Still, I didn't want to get Colin killed, or even hurt his standing with the vampires. I'd never heard his story, or how that particular faction had gained his loyalty, although I had to figure that the offer of immortality probably factored in. If that was what he wanted, I wasn't about to try to talk him out of it. I just wasn't about to let him put his life plans over that of someone else's.

  "Fine," I said at last. "Don't make plans. We'll call that my job. If your Mistress has a problem with me that is between me and her. I'm happy to leave you out of it altogether. All you need to do is set up a meeting for me. Here, there, or somewhere in between. I don't care. You set it up, then stay out of it. I'll even talk you up if you want, make it sound like you orchestrated... something. We can figure it out. We don’t have to be enemies here, and I certainly don't want to become hers. So we talk."

  As the words left my mouth, they sounded like a good idea, but I realized there was a very good chance I was digging myself into an even bigger hole than the one I'd started in.

  Chapter 6

  No one on the planet would argue that hospital waiting room chairs were comfortable. As if anyone who had to spend time in a place like that didn't have enough on their plates, add in barely padded chairs whose metal frames felt like they were slowly merging with your body. Yeah, then you could really up someone's stress levels.

  Okay, I'd probably have been feeling a wee bit on the stressed side, regardless. Really, my stress levels had been sitting at pretty damn high ever since I'd first received a phone call from a werewolf who needed someone to fix his wifi. At the time that had been enough to leave me feeling like my entire world was crumbling down around me. And now I needed to find a plan for how to get Simon through something exponentially worse. There was no way I could agree to hand him back to any of the Greeks, or any vampires period, but it looked like he would have to contend with yet another hurdle to reunite his family. And we still hadn't figured out where the rest of his family even was.

  It didn't take long to work out the details and send Colin running back to his mistress, leaving me to guess at what exactly he'd be reporting. I would have to brush up on Ireland's vampires at some point. As if there was any real resource for a research project like that.

  Maybe it was something I could undertake as a faction leader once things called down. If that ever happened.

  At that point, most of what I knew about the vampires had come in bits and pieces. My mother's memories had shown me a little. Not much, but enough to be afraid. I'd learned of Ireland's undead through Taya and her weak connection to Ireland's witches. They weren't as strong here on the Emerald Isle as they were in most of Europe, but that didn't stop them from killing tourists whenever they had a good opportunity, or from subjugating the lesser magick peoples that shared their lands.

  One of them had also killed Ethan's wife six years ago, ending a life and depriving Katie of her mother. No one had told me much about the attack, and I hadn't asked. I still wasn't sure I wanted to know.

  I didn't need to know much about vampires to know I didn't like them.

  A quick buzz in my pocket alerted me to a new text message. My first thought was that something else had gone wrong. Dread had already begun to build in my chest by the time I woke up my screen to check my notifications.

  1 New Message: Dad

  I exhaled.

  Dad: Good morning, sweetheart! Have a great day.

  That was it. No disasters. No crisis. Just a quick hello. It was just real life, reminding me it was still there.

  As the world around the hospital began to wake up, the waiting room and halls around me started to fill with people. Patients up a
nd stretching their legs, looking equal parts warn down and determined. Families and friends with encouraging smiles plastered on their faces, or secret worried expressions directed at their phones. Doctors and hospital staff all looking decidedly too upbeat and too tired.

  In the corner near a pay phone the form of a shorter woman with dark red hair shocked my memory. Panic briefly threatened to take hold. Aoife. She was here! What did she…

  No. It was just another anonymous person, trying to find a quiet corner. She had the same frame as the woman who had orchestrated so many of my recent nightmares, and her hair was about the same length, but that was where the similarities ended.

  For all I knew, there had been no sign of the former would-be leader of our not-quite-a-faction since she'd fled the city after selling me out to the witches. But since Galway had long been her home, I very much doubted we'd seen the last of her, especially as tensions between different segments of the supernatural community continued to rise.

  "Melanie!" A voice interrupted my train of thought. I'd been so busy thinking I'd seen Aoife that I'd completely missed spotting someone I actually knew. Cooper was halfway across the room, coming toward me quickly with another man right behind him. "I'd hoped you'd be here." The upbeat tone in Coop's voice held a startling different message than the concerned look in his eyes as he tried to gesture toward the other man without being too obvious. Between the jerking hand motions and subtle face twitches… well, I had no idea what it was Cooper was trying to tell me.

  Even if I hadn't seen him once before, I would have recognized the police officer who was reaching forward to shake my hand as Cooper's brother immediately. Both men held themselves with the same sturdy confidence and also sported nearly identical wide, crooked noses.

  I managed to avoid swearing as I recognized the crucial step I hadn't thought of the night before. Dealing with the Garda. A woman had been found near dead in my home the night before. Of course the hospital had called the police. Which meant they would probably want some sort of explanations, and probably for someone to pay for what had happened to Ieza.