Mystic Realms: A Limited Edition Collection

by Nicole Morgan

  Chapter Eleven

  Riley’s heart pounded, and snaps of the remaining wild magic in her system burst under her skin. She couldn’t believe she’d risked her life channeling wild magic to save a shadow fae, but Warren had been screaming in agony, and she couldn’t have just left him.

  Couper took her hand and relocated them back to the human realm. The world materialized around them and the sour reek of fae pheromones hit her, making her gag. He’d returned them to the empty living room of the thief’s apartment.

  “Here? Really?” She yanked her hand from his. They were going into a trap set by a wild mage. She needed to be on guard and thinking straight — and she couldn’t do that holding his hand.

  “This is closer to the club than the closest fairy ring, and unless I’ve been there before, I can’t cast a relocation spell to it.”

  “I know, but—” She scrunched her nose. God, the smell. It made her want to draw close to Couper again, and that was a bad idea. Freedom first. Fling second… except a part of her didn’t just want a fling, and she had no idea why. “Let’s get moving. Please.”

  “Sure.” He motioned for her to leave first then followed her into the hall.

  Riley took the main staircase and exited the rundown building out the front door. A part of her wanted to check out the alley where they’d lost the thief, but if someone had enough control over the wild magic to set a trap on the thief’s time threads, it wouldn’t take them much to set a trap in the alley.

  Of course, then they wouldn’t make it to the Gray Gargoyle.

  Just like Warren not being able to find information on the thief ensured their only lead was to the club.

  “So.” There were so many things she wanted to talk to Couper about. And none of them had to do with the case.

  Jeez. Focus.

  “Do you think we can even come up with a plan?” she forced out.

  “Well, we can, but there’s no way we can account for everything a wild mage might throw at us.”

  She headed down the street in the direction of the Gray Gargoyle — six blocks away and marked by two white strobe lights lazily sliding across the nighttime clouds.

  Couper fell into step beside her. There was something comfortably right about his presence, which confused her even more. It also didn’t make any sense that he seemed to be concerned for her, that he didn’t try to get her to pay for information on the thief, or that he’d even agreed to her desperate plan to save Warren. She really just wanted to ask why. Why… everything? Why the portrait of a human? Why the honesty? Why no games? And while she supposed he could still be playing a game with her, she felt, core deep, that he wasn’t.

  “So, have you ever faced a wild mage?” His gaze dipped to hers filled with a hint of heat and a whole lot of concern.

  “No, I’ve only ever heard stories about them. The Warlord preferred to send bounty hunters with stronger magic after the few the Golden Court had.” The memory of channeling a fraction of the magic surging through Warren made her shudder, and a remaining hint of it snapped under her skin. “When does the feeling go away?”

  “You channeled more than you probably should have. It could take a few hours.”

  “Just great.” The time on the Gargoyle’s business card wasn’t even an hour away now, which meant she was going to have to deal with the aftereffects of channeling the wild magic while facing a fae willing to kill strangers to play out this crazy game. And it had to be a game or why go to the trouble of relocating a card to the thief’s apartment… unless the card really was meant for the thief.

  No. She had to stop going around in mental circles and assume this was a trap. If it wasn’t, great.

  “Any advice for dealing with a wild mage?

  “Honestly, with what little magic we have, our best bet is to provoke him into channeling too much magic and have him lose control.”

  “Get him to burn himself up?” After seeing and hearing Warren, that thought left a bad taste in her mouth. But she didn’t carry a gun — and was unable to fight past the fae compulsion in order to hold one let alone fire one — which meant she couldn’t hurt anyone without getting close.

  “It’s not pleasant.” Couper’s expression turned grim. “And it isn’t the safest option, but if you can’t get close enough to tag him with your relocation sticker and send him to the Warlord’s dungeon, it’s the only one we’ve got.”

  “So I guess that’s the plan. I tag the wild mage with a relocation sticker before he can draw on the wild magic.”

  “I didn’t say that was the plan.”

  “It’s better than risking him burning up and taking out an innocent bystander.” It also meant she wouldn’t be responsible for killing anyone and it might be enough for Queen Orlaith to convince King Rian to release her from his service.

  “And it won’t risk you losing your opportunity to get free.”

  She glanced at him but had to look away. He stared at her with an intensity that stole her breath and made her insides squirm with desire and yearning and something else she couldn’t quite place.

  “I don’t understand why you care.”

  “Because you’re—” He jerked his attention down the street and his gaze didn’t return to hers. “I know you’re in a difficult place. The Golden King’s protection,” he said making protection sound like a bad word, “isn’t free and the price was too high for me. I can’t imagine what it is for you.”

  “You said that before.”

  “Must mean I mean it.” He shrugged and flashed a wicked smile, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Yeah. Right.” There was more to his explanation but now wasn’t the time to push. There might never be a time to push. And what did it matter? If they survived this job, she was propositioning him, and then getting as far away from fae politics as possible… it was just a shame her freedom meant leaving the one job she actually felt good doing.

  But there was a price to pay for everything. If she had to give up being a bounty hunter to be free of the Golden King, she would.

  They rounded a corner guarded by two rundown apartment buildings and entered a wide street with cracked asphalt. Two parking lots sat on either side, and beyond them lay a stretch of old industrial buildings. The Gargoyle’s blue neon sign hung above the entrance of the closest building and people milled about in the parking lot and at the front door.

  “I hate to ask,” he said as they crossed the street, “but do you have any ability to charm humans?”

  “Don’t want to get swarmed?” She was kind of surprised no one in the parking lot had noticed him. That had to mean he was suppressing his pheromones, except she could still smell him… which meant she was remembering him. God, he smelled good. She wanted—

  No. After you survive the wild mage. “I don’t have much, but it should be enough to get us through the door.”

  “Thank you.”

  They crossed the parking lot without drawing much attention. The muscles in Couper’s jaw were tight, and she couldn’t imagine how difficult it was going to be for him in the club.

  The bouncer at the door, a heavyset man in leather with a black handlebar mustache, glared at them, but she used what little fae pheromones she had to convince him to let them in, and they stepped onto the wide first level five steps above a nighttime wonderland.

  Flashing lights, hard music, and a fake fog mixed with writhing, half-dressed bodies. The assault on her senses made her wince. She’d been in human clubs before while on assignment, but never an establishment so big. The place could easily house fifteen hundred people — and it looked like it was close to capacity. There were seven different bars as well as nooks and partially hidden tables. A big red neon light at the back indicated the washrooms, while another indicated yet another dance room.

  Couper eased up behind her and drew her to a stand-up table just inside the front door. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her against him, the strong planes of his hard-muscled chest fle
xed against her back, sending snaps of electric attraction through her that were strangely similar to the crackle of wild magic still simmering under her skin.

  “This place is huge,” he said, his breath washing hot over the side of her face and neck. “What are the odds you can smell him?”

  The memory of Couper’s scent washed over her and she fought a shiver of desire. “If he’s even here—” And with Couper standing so close— “I don’t know.”

  “If the wild mage is smart, he’ll make the thief handoff the Seal in the middle of all these people.”

  “But if it’s a trap, then the handoff might happen someplace discreet where the wild mage can use magic to dispose of us.”

  “That’s assuming the wild mage cares about hiding magic from the humans.”

  Shit. She hadn’t thought of that. If a fae revealed magic to the humans, all hell could break loose. It was the reason the Golden King and the Shadow King had agreed to the treaty and created the Seal all those years ago. Too many humans had made deals with less scrupulous fae — golden and shadow — and too many humans were determined to kill all of them. It had happened before Riley was born and before Rian had become king, but some fae were long-lived and remembered those times, and others had heard the stories. Very few fae wanted to go back to those dark times.

  “Okay.” She eased out of Couper’s embrace, not far enough to not smell his glorious scent — it was in her memory, there wasn’t a place far enough away to forget that — but hopefully enough that she’d be able to concentrate. “You look. I’ll smell.”

  “Deal,” he said, his gaze sliding over the crowd.

  Riley forced her attention away from him and tried to calm her racing heart and the sense of desire and magic crackling under her skin. This was her job, and she was damned good at it. The Warlord would have found an excuse to get rid of her if she wasn’t good, and as much as he and most of the Golden Court looked down on her because she was human, it was her human half that gave her the edge.

  She inhaled deeply. Smoke. Perfume — many different clashing fragrances. Sweat. Alcohol. Must from the old building.

  No thief.

  A hint of wild magic snapped under her skin, and the smoke in the room changed color. Except no one reacted, not even Couper.

  A hint of sweet watermelon, carried on a pink thread of smoke, drifted past her, followed by a golden brown curl of whiskey.

  Another snap under her skin, and the wild magic surged in the empty part of her soul. The colored smoke glowed, a barrage of different shades, white, red, green, yellow, the whole rainbow. They swirled and mixed with each other, morphing into different colors, their scents combining and changing. Clouds, whirls, threads of smoke, a thousand different shapes and sizes.

  “I don’t see him,” Couper said. “We should try at the back. Maybe he’s in an employees’ area or out back by the river.”

  She glanced at him. Swirls of deep green smoke curled around him, were sucked back under his skin, and escaped again, a visual representation of him trying to hold his aura and pheromones back. A scent swirl curled over his cheek, warm and vibrant like all those plants in his house. The darkness of being a shadow fae that she originally sensed throbbed in the center of the smoke. Except it wasn’t a darkness. It was tiny threads of white lightning, pure wild magic, crackling in each green tendril. It made the magic within her snap in sympathetic resonance as if something within her recognized something within him.

  “Riley?” He shifted closer, his hand reaching for her arm.

  She pulled away before he could touch her and she drew his smoke around her.

  His eyes narrowed but he didn’t try to get closer.

  “You might not be able to charm me, but your still one hell of a distraction.”

  “I’m suppressing my aura.”

  “Not all of it, and I think because you’ve tried to charm me I’m hyper-aware of it. That’s why I can smell you and you’re not getting mobbed right now.”

  “Pretty sure that’s not it.”

  “So what is?”

  “Not sure.”

  His gaze jumped away from her and she got the sense he did know what made her hyperaware of him and didn’t want to say.

  “Once we’re done with this assignment,” she said, “we need to have a long conversation.”

  “If a conversation is what you want,” he said, his tone sensual and green swirls of pheromones curled toward her.

  It was what she wanted… and yet, she wanted something else more. Maybe getting him out of her system would clear her head.

  Lord and Lady! She could resist his charm. Why did she keep thinking about him? Why did he keep distracting her from what she knew she had to do?

  Because they could never be. She ached for something she knew was impossible and couldn’t bring herself to let it go no matter how much common sense demanded she had to.

  Chapter Twelve

  Riley wrenched her attention away from Couper to the whirls of scents and colors dancing in the air. The golden brown thread was whiskey. She could ignore it. The wild magic within her flickered and the golden brown smoke vanished. The pale pinks, the light blues, and yellows didn’t match the smell of the thief, either, and with another flicker of magic they, too, vanished.

  Couper stepped past her without touching her — although tendrils of his pheromones billowed toward her — and he headed down the stairs. “Let me know if you smell him.”

  “I will.” She drew in another breath and eliminated the fake smoke and the must from the old warehouse. There was still a cloud, heaviest around the dance floor, of sweat, and other hints of smells verging on sour, but they still weren’t the thief. He must have fully masked his pheromones or passed by long enough ago that the other scents had overwhelmed his… or not passed by yet. Maybe they were too early.

  The wild magic surged, and something foul caught at the back of her throat. An acrid, sour reek that made her gag.

  Another flare and a thin, barely there, thread of yellowish-green smoke curled around her and trailed toward the back of the club.

  There.

  And she wasn’t going to think too hard about the wild magic crackling in the empty part of her soul. Yeah, she hadn’t wanted to feel the inferno of the magic she’d channeled to save Warren, but when the remains of that was gone, would she want to channel more to enhance her abilities to better hunt rogue fae?

  Couper’s hand brushed her shoulder, but he didn’t maintain contact like she craved. “You all right?”

  “I think I smell our thief.”

  “Which way?”

  “Toward the back.” She shoved away all the colored smoke except for the thief’s and traced it to the back of the club where the thief stood, partially hidden by a group of people, his attention jumping over the crowd with twitchy movements. “Near the EXIT sign.”

  “I see him.”

  Riley pushed through the crowd with Couper close behind and past a bar surrounded by people.

  The thief’s twitching increased. He glanced at his watch, at the crowd, at the EXIT sign behind him. Another thread of sour yellowish-green smoke spewed from him. Two men and a woman nearby looked his way. He shrunk back, and the smoke sucked under his skin.

  “I think he’s going to bolt,” Couper said, slipping past her and picking up speed.

  Another jerky glance around the room and another leak of pheromones that made the men and woman glare at the thief. He jumped and scrambled the remaining feet to the back door and rushed out.

  “Shit,” Couper growled. He twisted and slipped between two groups of people.

  Riley followed, hurrying to keep up with Couper’s longer legs.

  The back door closed before they could reach it. Couper rested a hand against the crash bar but met Riley’s gaze first before throwing it open. They didn’t know what lay on the other side and this could very well be the trap they knew they were walking into. He was being cautious in this situation, and she couldn’t agre
e more.

  She gave him a quick nod, unsheathed the long dagger at her hip — careful not to let those around her see it — and pressed her shoulder against the wall to glance through the doorway in the direction Couper couldn’t. He fisted his free hand and opened the door. No spark of magic and no one standing just on the other side.

  “Clear,” he whispered and eased the door wide enough for them to go through.

  Beyond lay a dark, quiet loading dock with no one in sight. Stretching left and right were the backs of the other old warehouses and before her, across a road that was more gravel than asphalt, lay a ten-foot drop and the dark shimmering river. It reflected the sporadic lights illuminating the backs of the buildings like will-o’-the-wisps, its undulating movement making them dance and flicker.

  Voices nearby caught her attention, and Couper pointed to a group of pines near the river’s edge and twenty feet to their right. A thread of yellow-green smoke curled in that direction, vanished, then reappeared again. The magic under her skin snapped, making her twitch. She clenched her jaw. One wrong twitch like that, and she could lose a fight.

  Couper glanced at her, his expression hard, but she had no idea what that meant. Then he headed across the road toward the voices, forcing her to follow.

  They reached the trees, found a narrow break between the branches, and crept forward. Beyond lay a narrow lawn with the thief, pacing and twitching, and another man, hidden by a heavy cowl and cloak, leaning against a hip-high safety railing beside a sign warning of the rocks in the water below. Neither gave off any smoke — which might mean her ability to see fae pheromones was over — but she couldn’t smell them, either. She could only assume the man in the cloak was the wild mage who’d hired the thief to steal the Seal since cloaks weren’t a popular clothing choice in the human realm.

  Couper leaned close, and her traitorous heart skipped a beat.

  “You go after the thief. I’ll distract the wild mage. We can get at least one of them in the Warlord’s dungeon for you.”