by Linsey Hall
“I’ll take you home,” Aidan said. “I don’t like the idea of you being on your own.”
“I’m not on my own. I’ve got Lefty and Righty.” I patted the thigh holsters holding my obsidian knives. I’d insisted he return them as soon as we got back on the plane. “And I’ll be with my deirfiúr as soon as I get back to Factory Row.”
“You need to stop leaning on your fighting skills and practice your magic,” Aidan said as we made our way across the tarmac to his car.
“I hear you, but there’s no way in hell I’m practicing in a city full of supernaturals.” It was one thing to use my magic in an abandoned pyramid that only held demons. But in a city? “If one person gets a whiff of what I am, they’d be scared shitless. They could turn me over to the Alpha Council or the Order of the Magica and probably get themselves a nice bounty.”
Working hard to access your magic was a lot like sweating. You gave off more of your magical signature for other supernaturals to sense. Until I was well practiced, I needed to try not to access my power around others.
“You’ll become better,” Aidan said as we climbed into his car. “With more practice, you’ll be able to keep others from sensing what you are. You can pass your gifts off as Mirror Mage powers.”
“Yeah, as long as they don’t catch me before I’m good enough to hide the truth.” That’d take time. I’d used so much magic over these last two weeks that I was completely on edge. It was super unlikely anyone had seen me—I’d stuck to Aidan’s private property and other remote areas—but it was hard to shake the paranoia and fear that had followed me for ten years.
“You’ll get good enough.”
The faith in his voice hit me hard. I shouldn’t care what he thought of me. He was just a guy, after all. I didn’t have space in my life for guys. Especially not handsome, powerful, kind ones who seemed to be nothing but good. Contrary to what it sounded like, those kinds of guys were actually nothing but trouble. You could fall for one of those guys.
For a girl who could trust no one but her deirfiúr, that was dangerous. Neither my deirfiúr nor I remembered the first fifteen years of our life. We’d woken in a field at fifteen with a single memory each: that we were FireSouls, we were running from someone, and that person wanted to hurt us. That person had been hurting us, because we were FireSouls.
As a result, Nix, Del, and I had moved around so much prior to settling in Magic’s Bend five years ago that I’d learned not to grow attached to anyone else. You would eventually have to leave them behind. If the Monster caught up to us, we’d have to run again.
But I was an adult now. If I wanted to make this work, I might be able to. Though I’d be lying if I said the idea didn’t scare the crap out of me. What if Aidan actually was as great as he seemed? That’d sure as hell be hard to ignore.
“Here we are.”
Aidan’s deep voice startled me out of my thoughts. The tall brick faces of the buildings on Factory Row loomed outside the car, their large windows like great black eyes in the night. Apparently I’d zoned out hard during the drive.
I grabbed the small box containing the diadem and climbed out of the car. I pulled my small bag off the floor and said, “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you tomorrow. Eight, right?”
We were planning to head back to Ireland to practice my magic. As much as I told myself I didn’t want to go, I was lying. Not only was he right that I needed the practice, but I wanted to be around him. No matter how dumb it was.
“I’ll walk you in.” He climbed out of the car.
“You don’t have to.”
“Call me cautious. Last time we were here, the shop was in the middle of a break-in.”
The thief—Aaron, the FireSoul who’d eventually given me his power—had still been inside. Only that time, he’d been working on behalf of the Monster. He’d caused a hell of a lot of damage.
“Thanks.” I turned to face my building.
The windows of Ancient Magic were dark. It was long past closing time. While I was out hunting artifacts, my sister Nix ran the shop. She was the Protector. When Del, my other sister, wasn’t off hunting demons for bounty, she used archives to identify the magic we wanted to sell that was stored in artifacts. Del was the Seeker. I then hunted the magic artifacts, which made me the Huntress. We made a good team.
We crossed the street to Ancient Magic. The night was quiet save for the chirp of crickets in the park across from the converted factories. Factory Row was the recently gentrified part of Magic’s Bend and was the perfect location for our shop and the apartments we occupied above because it was both spacious and cheap.
I reached the glass door and ran my hands over the exterior edges. The fizz of magic tingled on my palms as the enchantment faded. Only my deirfiúr or myself could disarm it. Though the door looked like nothing more than glass, if you weren’t one of us, there was no way to get through. During opening hours, that wasn’t the case. Anyone could walk in. It’d be a pretty crap shop if customers couldn’t enter.
I stepped through the door and flicked on the light. The sight of the half-empty shelves dragged at my heart.
“Place looks better,” Aidan said.
“I guess. A lot less broken glass, at least. But inventory is down by more than half.” I walked to the front counter and put the artifact on the processing shelf behind it. We’d have trouble with rent because of the diminished inventory.
We didn’t actually sell the artifacts I found. That was illegal. What we sold was the magic the enchanted artifacts contained. We removed it from the artifact, put it into a replica, and returned the original to the site where I’d found it. Without magic to sell…
Well, we needed money to make rent. And fast. This might be the cheap part of town, but we’d rented out the whole building, most of it for our personal, dragon-inspired troves of treasure that we kept secret. FireSouls were said to share part of a dragon’s soul, though no one had seen a dragon in millennia. I possessed the dragon’s covetousness and was compelled to keep a trove of my own treasure. For me, it was leather jackets, weapons, and boots. Weird, yeah, but I couldn’t help myself.
“You hungry?” Aidan asked.
My stomach growled in response, as if it knew English too.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Let’s head to Potions & Pastilles. I’ll get you a pasty.”
“I’d think you’d be sick of me by now.”
“It’ll be a long while before I’m sick of you.” His dark gray gaze met mine. The heat in it made me shiver and wonder when he’d get sick of waiting for me.
The dumb part of me hoped he’d snap and drag me into his arms and kiss me. I shoved that part down deep and said, “Sure. I agreed to meet Nix and Del there anyway.”
“Good.” He grinned.
Damn it, why did he have to be so handsome? And smart and kind?
We headed out, and Aidan waited while I reengaged the enchantments by running my hands around the edges of the door. Light rain began to fall as we walked down the street to the coffee shop run by two of my friends, Claire and Connor.
Fortunately, it was only twenty yards down the way, and we weren’t too wet by the time we arrived. Yellow light gleamed from the windows as we approached, the sight filling me with warmth. This place was probably more my home than my own apartment, which I used just for sleeping and hiding my trove.
Aidan pushed open the door, and I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me when the scent of Cornish Pasties enveloped me. The kitchen was small at P & P’s, but Connor made a mean Cornish Pasty in the small space. They’d moved here from Cornwall a year before we’d arrived and hadn’t been able to leave that part of their home behind.
And I was grateful. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to continue my half-decade-long love affair with the savory treat. It was the most exciting action I’d gotten in a while, actually, besides Aidan’s kiss.
“Hey! Took you long enough.” Del waved from her comfy leather seat in the corner. Her black hair was
pulled back, and her blue eyes gleamed with welcome. Nix smiled at me, then jerked her head toward Aidan and made a face that said, “How’s it going with your guy?”
I glowered.
They sat in our usual spot. P & P was a coffee shop/whiskey bar, depending on the hour of the day. There were about half a dozen small wooden tables in the middle and comfy chairs scattered around the perimeter.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said to Del. “Let me order, and I’ll be right over.”
I followed Aidan to the small counter bar at the back. My friend Connor stood behind it, dressed in his usual band t-shirt and jeans with his dark hair flopped over his brow. He was busy putting the finishing touches on a whiskey cocktail. Besides enchanted coffees, P & P’s sold a variety of whiskeys at night. Connor’s idea, but it’d been a good one, as it drew in a whole different crowd in the evenings. There were at least half a dozen couples or small groups in the space.
“Hey, guys.” Connor grinned as he glanced up. “Be right with you.”
He handed off the cocktail to the pretty Shifter who stood at the far end of the bar, then turned to us.
“Long time no see,” Connor said. “Where you been hiding?”
“Just working on a tricky job,” I said.
Even though he and Claire were my closest friends besides my deirfiúr, they didn’t know I was a FireSoul. There was no point telling Connor I’d been at Aidan’s, practicing my magic. I should feel guilty about the secrets, but I honestly couldn’t feel too bad about it. It might make me a bad person, but keeping my deirfiúr and myself safe always came first. And the secret actually protected Connor. This way, he wasn’t knowingly harboring a FireSoul.
“What’ll it be, then?” Connor asked. “Whiskey for you, Aidan? I’ve got a new one in from Oban.”
“Perfect.” Aidan grinned. “And the pasty of the day.”
“PBR for me,” I said. “And two pasties.”
Connor scrunched his brow. “You still drink that stuff?”
“Oh, come on. You know I do. I’m not betraying my one true beer love for any of that fancy craft stuff.”
He laughed. “All right, all right. Hang on.”
He poured Aidan’s whiskey, pulled a can of PBR out of the little fridge, then handed them over. “Your hipster beer, madam. I’ll bring the pasties out after I’ve warmed them up.”
“Hillbilly beer,” I corrected as I pulled a few crumpled bills out of my pocket.
Aidan beat me to it, handing over a crisp fifty. “I’ve got it.”
I frowned at him, then remembered the catastrophe at Ancient Magic. Del, Nix, and I were going to have a hard time paying the bills until we found enough magic in enchanted artifacts to refill our stock. Even Del had started hunting artifacts when she didn’t have a demon to track down. We could sell off the treasures in our respective troves, but parting with any of our preciouses would be damned hard.
So, I said, “Thanks. I’ll get you next time.”
“Hardly necessary.”
“Just because you’re loaded doesn’t mean I’m going to let you pay the bills. This isn’t a date.”
“But it could be, if you agreed to one.”
I shivered. Dates usually involved kissing. At least at the end. His dark eyes promised at least kissing. As much as I wanted to sign up for that…
“Bad idea,” I said as I turned and walked toward my deirfiúr.
Though Aidan always walked on silent feet, I could feel him behind me. His gaze heated my back. I took a seat in front of my deirfiúr.
Nix’s green gaze met mine. Today, she wore the usual ripped jeans and motorcycle boots, but her T-shirt of the day proclaimed her a ball-collecting feminist. I grinned.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Got the diadem,” I said. “I put it behind the counter. It’s ready for you whenever.”
“I’ll do it as soon as I leave here. The buyer wants it pronto. She needs to be beautiful for some TV thing. You can take the original back to the pyramid any time after that.”
In addition to protecting the shop, Nix was in charge of transferring the magic in each artifact. She used her skills as a Conjurer to create the replicas of the artifacts, then transferred the original artifact’s magic to the replica, which we sold.
“Great.” I glanced at Del. “You get the sword?”
She nodded. “The magic in it was almost decayed, but Nix managed to stabilize it when she transferred it to the replica.”
With time, magic decayed and destabilized. By taking the magic out of the old artifacts, we were saving the artifacts from destruction.
“It’ll make some wimp a great fighter when he wields it,” Nix said.
“Perfect.”
Each artifact housed a different type of spell. Ones that improved fighting skills were often hot items. We’d sell it for a pretty penny soon.
“But I’ve got a lead on a demon who has a big bounty on his head,” Del said. “I’m going after him later. Shouldn’t take long to bag him. I’ve got a contact who says he knows where the demon hunts at dawn.”
“What kind of demon?” Aidan asked.
“Rylon. A baby eater.” Del’s face twisted with menace.
My stomach pitched. There were all kinds of demons from all kinds of hells. They shouldn’t be roaming the earth because they weren’t good at keeping a low profile around humans, but they were often in places they shouldn’t be. The Order of the Magica offered a bounty to those who caught them. Fortunately, Del was good at catching them.
“Good luck,” I said.
“Best pasties you’ll ever taste!”
My friend Claire’s cheerful voice sounded from behind me. I turned. Claire approached with a tray of pasties. She was wearing her fighting leathers, which meant she’d just come from one of her mercenary jobs, but she wasn’t covered in blood, so her brother had clearly roped her into helping with P & P.
“Thanks.” I almost moaned at the delicious smell wafting from the pasties—savory beef and potatoes wrapped in buttery pastry. I bit into one, not caring that it was too hot, and glanced up at Claire. “You kill whatever you were after?”
“You know it. A rogue Shifter who was going after Magica in his wolf form.”
“Weird.”
Though they don’t really trust each other, Shifters and Magica got along all right. Despite our different magical skill sets—Magica did magic, whereas Shifters were magic—we were about equal in a fight because Shifters were partially immune to magic when in their animal form. It would take a hell of a lot of my lightning to bring down a Shifter, and in the meantime, they could get to me and chew my head right off. But the lightning would still hurt like hell, and I might get off enough bolts to kill a Shifter before they got to me, so Shifters usually didn’t want to fight us any more than we wanted to fight them.
“At least you got him,” Del said.
“Yep. And now all I want to do is shower, but little brother is a slave driver.” She scowled back toward the kitchen.
I laughed and damn, it felt good. It might have been the first time I’d laughed since I’d realized the man from my nightmares—the Monster—was coming for us. It reminded me that life was good. No matter what our current problems, we could get back on track. Whatever hunted us, we’d face it.
The door opened behind me, and a gust of cool wind blew into the shop. The smell of rain followed it. I turned to see if it was still coming down, but a big man loomed in the doorway. I stiffened.
Mathias. His wild golden hair and hulking size betrayed his Shifter species—lion. I’d met him a week ago when I’d needed help finding the Scroll of Truths. He’d been the lover of the woman I’d gone to for help, a blood sorceress named Mordaca.
His yellow gaze landed on me, and recognition flared in his eyes. He strode toward our group, bringing with him the scent of his magic. Dry, like the desert or the plains of Africa.
He stopped in front of our cluster of chairs and turned to Aidan. He bowed low,
a gesture of respect to the strongest of all Shifters. “Origin.”
The deep regard in his voice hit me. I’d forgotten how the Shifters felt about the Origin. He was almost a god to them.
Aidan nodded. “Mathias.”
Mathias rose and turned to me. “Cassiopeia Clereaux. The Alpha Council is looking for you.”
My stomach felt like it had dropped right out of my body and all the breath left my lungs. The Alpha Council was looking for me? That made no sense, unless they knew what I was.
I tried to keep my face impassive as my mind raced. Had Mathias figured out what I was when I’d gone to Mordaca for help? Had he told his government I was a FireSoul? They didn’t govern Magica—my kind—but they hunted FireSouls, just like the Order of the Magica, because we could steal their shifting ability if we killed them. We were a danger to everyone, Shifter, Magica, or any supernatural in between.
Sharp metal bit into my fingers. I glanced down. My hand was fisted around my now dented beer can, and a ridge of metal cut into my finger. Slowly, I drew in a breath and lowered the can to my side so no one could see it.
“Yeah?” I asked, trying to appear calm.
A glance at my deirfiúr showed that Nix was white as snow, her brown hair standing out starkly against her skin, and Del was turning the faintest shade of blue. She was so freaked out she was starting to turn into her phantom form.
Not good.
When I’d started practicing my magic, this was what I’d been afraid of. One of the two governing bodies catching wind of what I was and coming after me.
“Why is the Alpha Council looking for me?”
Mathias glanced at Aidan. “Aidan told us about your skills.”
Fear and rage clashed within me as my gaze jerked to Aidan. He’d told them what I was?
2
“We need your help,” Mathias continued.
Confused, I dragged my gaze back to him. “My help?”
If they knew I was a FireSoul, wouldn’t they just arrest me?
“Yes. When we came to him with our problem, Aidan said that you’re the best Seeker in Magic’s Bend and that you could help us. The Alpha Council has lost something of great value. Mordaca attempted to help find it, but she failed. We hope that you will try.”
