Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  “You’ve seen this magic before?” Drake asked as we cut through the fog directly west, or maybe it was east, to find the door. I assumed there was a second stairwell at the opposite side from which we’d come, so either direction worked. They’d both lead up. The car bumpers made it a little easier to find our path through the fog quickly.

  “No,” I replied. “I’m just guessing. Three demons, three pentagrams.”

  “All with sorcerers in them.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Your sister is powerful enough to capture or compel three sorcerers?”

  “I hope not.”

  We found the stairs to the fourth floor and headed up. Thankfully, Drake kept his mouth shut — and kept to himself his dragon philosophy about the futility of hoping for something you already knew wasn’t possible.

  ∞

  For a moment, as we approached the center of the fourth floor, I was able to hope I was wrong about my multiple-pentagrams-all-connected-by-a-single-spell theory.

  Then, with my hands set on the low concrete wall as I peered ahead, the fog parted and I saw Clark spread-eagled and trussed up in a roped pentagram suspended across the open air, directly above Edmonds. Not that I could see Edmonds below.

  For some reason, seeing the older man strung up like that — his comb-over fallen to the wrong side of his head — made me even angrier. It was so undignified. So unbelievable that my sister would come into London and treat people like pieces on her own personal chess board.

  “Pawns,” Drake said, stepping out from the fog after walking the perimeter of the concrete wall.

  “What?”

  “Like pawns on a chess board.”

  “Was I talking out loud?”

  “Yeah. You do that a lot.”

  Shit. “Is the pentagram set up the same way?” I shelved the discussion of my sanity for later, but was really hoping I didn’t have entire conversations out loud. Especially not conversations with my sister.

  “Looks like it. Tied to columns at five points. Magic on the rope.”

  “No fog within, though,” I said.

  “So the pentagram is sealed with a spell?”

  “Above and below, I think. And the same column of magic rises out from Clark. See directly above and below his heart?”

  I could see the deep blue line more clearly now. Either I was more in tune with the magic, now that I knew what to look for, or the fog was dissipating.

  Drake shook his head. Not counting the exceptional power of Pulou the treasure keeper, all dragons could see or feel magic, and the fledgling was able to identify specific types of Adept easily. My dowsing abilities seemed to be connected to my witch magic more than my dragon side, though.

  I peered upward but couldn’t see to the next level. “Want to bet on door number three?”

  “Four,” Drake answered. “We’re going to the fifth floor next, right? The doors were numbered from the ground floor up.”

  “I meant … never mind. It was on the edge of sick and twisted anyway. Door number four it is.”

  ∞

  Except it wasn’t Sayers as I thought it would be, strung out in the pentagram within the empty space of the fifth floor.

  It was Mory.

  The fog had parted as it had each time we’d neared the well. Drake stepped up on the ledge to walk the perimeter, just as I laid eyes on the fledgling necromancer.

  Mory wasn’t spread-eagled and tied into the rope pentagram like Edmonds and Clark. Her hands and ankles were trussed with what looked like the same rope, but she was perched with her legs cradled to her chest in the center of the pentagram. She wore the necklace I’d made to protect her from malicious magic. Unfortunately, it didn’t prevent kidnapping.

  “Mory!” I cried.

  The black-swathed, army-boot-wearing, pale-skinned fifteen-year-old scowled at me. “Stealthy, Jade,” she said.

  “Where’s Sienna? What’s going on?”

  “What does it look like, duh?”

  “Hello, necromancer,” Drake said cheerfully as he crouched on the four-foot wall beside me.

  Mory’s hair dye had grown out two inches or so. The lavender tips were washed out and scraggly. She looked like she hadn’t eaten since I’d last fed her. My heart constricted, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak past the pain of it. I thought the feeling might be joy, but I didn’t remember joy hurting so much before. “I thought … I worried …”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I would have been better off dead,” the teenager said.

  “She’s not a happy person,” Drake said.

  “She’s a necromancer,” I answered.

  “I see.” Drake nodded, projecting Chi Wen’s sage quality again.

  “Who the hell are you?” Mory snapped.

  “Drake,” the fledgling guardian replied with a wide grin. “Jade’s friend.”

  Mory’s scowl deepened. “Good luck with that, Drake.” The necromancer managed to make the thirteen-year-old’s name sound like a curse word.

  Yeah, teenaged angst at its worst. Thank God she was okay.

  “We’re going to cut her down,” I said.

  “But you said —”

  “I know, but —”

  “You aren’t going to cut her down.” Kett’s voice came out of the fog to my left. Drake actually flinched. I felt the proximity of the life debt bond Kett owed me a second before the vampire spoke. Even the fog couldn’t dissipate that, it seemed.

  Kett stepped forward to observe Mory like she was a bug caught in his web.

  “Great,” Mory groused. “You brought the vampire.”

  “He’s been hunting for you for three months, Mory.”

  “Actually,” Kett said, “I’ve been looking for the witch.”

  “Whatever,” Mory snapped. “Took you all way too long. And now if you cut these ropes, we all die. And if you don’t cut these ropes, we all die. Or some sorcerer shit like that.”

  “Sayers.”

  “Who knows, some guy. She found him online. They don’t talk in front of me.”

  “So we counter the spell,” I said, turning to Kett.

  He nodded. “It’s anchored on the first floor.”

  “But if we cut the anchor …”

  “This all collapses.”

  “So we still need the source.”

  “Try the roof, morons,” Mory said.

  I took a deep breath. “Where are Kandy and Jorgen?”

  “I sent Jorgen for reinforcements. Kandy is with Edmonds.”

  “Three witches would be nice.”

  “We’ll have to settle for werewolves. If they get here quickly enough.”

  I peered up and saw hints of the starry night sky. The fog was thinning the closer we got to open air.

  Magic thrummed through the ropes of the pentagram.

  Mory gasped and scrambled to her feet. She was now standing in the very center of the pentagram, which as I’d suspected was sealed from below. She looked across at me with wide eyes, all her belligerence washed away by fear. “She … she … can’t drain me because of the necklace.”

  The fledgling necromancer twined her fingers around the necklace resting on her collarbone. I’d made this necklace specifically to protect Mory from Sienna, and from Mory’s brother Rusty. Or his ghost, rather. His spectral energy or whatever he was. The necklace was presumably also the reason the necromancer wasn’t sleep spelled like the two other sorcerers. I imagined that Sienna had deliberately left Mory ungagged. It was just another twisted way of hurting me further. This time with Mory’s own words.

  “But she can siphon off bits of my magic,” Mory continued. “She thinks she has enough now, and that with the anniversary date and the location, she can raise and control those demons with the knife that raised them before.”

  “This isn’t even the correct location,” Kett said.

  “All that matters now is what Sienna thinks is true,” I said. “And w
hat she’s willing to do to make something happen. Drake, stay with Mory.” I turned into the fog.

  “Jade!” Mory cried after me.

  I turned back. “You’re not going to die today, Mory. I’m sorry I left you before. I’m really glad you’re alive, even if you hate me forever. But you’re not going to die today.”

  To Drake, I added: “If the spell comes down before I neutralize Sienna, or Sayers, whoever is casting — you cut the rope.”

  Drake nodded. He pulled his broadsword out in a flash of gold that I could see clearly despite the fog.

  “No,” I said, “with this.” For the first time since I’d crafted it, I willfully handed over my jade knife to another person.

  Drake took the blade with reverence. He nodded solemnly.

  “No, Jade,” Mory said. “If you cut the rope, the spell will backlash and everyone might die.”

  “Not Drake, Mory. Magic can’t kill him. He is magic.” I sounded way more sure of myself than I actually was. “Drake, you cut the rope, you grab Mory, and you head for the nearest portal.”

  Drake frowned and started to protest.

  “Not for you,” I said. “For Mory.”

  He nodded.

  I turned away, not sure whether my knife could even get through the spell on the rope while it was in Drake’s hands. The fog prevented me from fully assessing the magic of the pentagram. The knife had cut through Blackwell’s wards, though, so all I could do was hope.

  Because I couldn’t send anyone else after Sienna. I was the only one who could resist her magic … unless she had new tricks and new magic. Then she was going to kick my ass. Though I also had a shiny new sword, so maybe we’d be even.

  “You take the sorcerer,” I said to the fog, knowing that Kett was somewhere near. “Unless he’s casting. Then I will take him.” I felt naked without my knife, but at least I still had my katana. This was my sword’s destiny after all.

  “As you desire, warrior’s daughter,” the vampire replied from out of the fog. He sounded far too pleased. But then, I was still in denial about that part of me. The part that wanted to kick Sienna’s ass way more than I wanted cupcakes, chocolate, or pretty new trinkets.

  My sister brought out the darkness in me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I stepped out onto the roof of the parking lot. It was completely open to the night air, and the fog was thicker around my knees than my head. Which was good, because I was going to need my eyes.

  Sienna was waiting for me. She and Sayers were standing in a roped pentagram rigged at the top of the parking lot’s central open well.

  It hurt to look at Sienna with her bulging black veins and inky eyes. She wore a fabric bag slung across a tattered cloak. She was going for bag-lady chic now. I was also unhappy to note that she was wearing what looked like three of my trinkets. I hoped she’d had a stash, because I really didn’t like thinking that she’d gone back to Vancouver for them. Sayers was still in the suit, which made it more obvious he’d come directly here from the hotel. I guess the sorcerer had wanted a look at me before he tried to kill me. I couldn’t figure out if that was polite or insanely rude.

  Sayers, as best as I could see, was putting the final touches on the pentagram spell, because unlike the three below us, it wasn’t sealed. Within the thinned fog, I could taste the sorcerer’s sugared Earl Grey essence and Sienna’s old blood-drenched earth magic.

  I tamped down on this nausea-inducing combination, and — just for a moment — wished I hadn’t given my knife to Drake. I had a clear shot at Sienna, but I couldn’t throw the katana slung across my back the way I could throw my jade knife.

  “Hello, sister,” Sienna said. She was holding the sacrificial knife she’d used to kill Jeremy. The anger that had been on a low simmer in my belly now ramped up, until I felt like my heart might be on fire.

  I didn’t have any witty words. I didn’t want to trade quips with my evil best friend. I just wanted this to be over, over, over.

  Kett stepped into my peripheral vision. Sienna’s black-lipped smile widened at the sight of the vampire. This stretched the black veins snaking across her face in such a way that my belly rolled with a different kind of queasiness, but I didn’t look away.

  “Back for more, vampire?” Sienna purred. Then she snapped her teeth at him. Yeah, that was my sister now, cheesy and evil. In a strange reversal of roles, she had drunk Kett’s blood in the basement of my bakery six months ago …

  Wait.

  Blood.

  Sienna’s blood spreading across the altar in the vision Chi Wen shared with me …

  “Don’t drink her blood,” I hissed to Kett.

  He furrowed his brow.

  I could clearly remember Kett slumped off to the side of the cave in Chi Wen’s vision, as if it was my own memory. But what could possibly kill — or at least incapacitate — the vampire in that version of the future?

  “I saw … I was shown something,” I said, sorting quickly through my thoughts. Sienna had cocked her head to one side as if trying to hear our conversation.

  “In the nexus?” Kett asked with an involuntary shiver. Yeah, vampire and dragon magic really didn’t mix.

  “Yes, by the far seer.”

  Kett nodded as he slipped off into the fog to my left. It hardly even swirled in his wake. I reached for my sword, pushing Chi Wen’s vision — and the way Sienna’s black blood had spilled from her body and mixed into the blood of my loved ones — out of my mind. I focused on the tip of the sword as I brought it forward to point at Sienna.

  Three leaps — now that I could vaguely see where I was going — was all it took to cross the space between my sister and me. I pulled the sword back over my head, ready to strike. And for a moment, right before I tried to lop her head off, I held Sienna’s surprised gaze.

  Yeah, I could come up with new tricks in three and a half months as well. Like speed and strength and a shiny new sword.

  Sienna threw up her hands. Black magic sparked between them, but she was too late.

  Still midair, I swung the sword, twisting it slightly right over my shoulder and across.

  I hit a magical barrier.

  Sayers had sealed off the pentagram.

  My katana crashed against the ward in a multicolored flare of magic, which threw me — still twisted in strike pose — back the way I’d come.

  I slammed into a parked car fifteen feet away, blowing out its windshield and caving in its roof with my landing.

  Ouch.

  Sienna was laughing, though I couldn’t see her as I was once again swallowed in fog.

  “Pretty sword, Jadey!” she cried as she clapped her hands.

  I peeled myself off the crushed car, glass tinkling to the concrete all around me. I felt badly for the owner. Hopefully his insurance covered acts of God, because I wasn’t sure how else he’d explain it.

  I crouched low beside the passenger-side front tire — noting it had exploded — and placed the flat edge of my blade across my left wrist. I held the sword close to my eyes in an attempt to examine it in the fog. It seemed unscathed.

  “You okay, sis?” Sienna called, which confirmed she couldn’t see me in the fog either.

  I sheathed the sword over my shoulder and ran through a quick series of downward dogs and planks to make sure I hadn’t broken any bones. Any aches sustained from the magical backlash and my trashing the car eased.

  “We need her to trigger the spell,” Sayers hissed. I could hear him clearly through the fog.

  I eased forward, staying in my crouch, and made my way back to the pentagram.

  “I know, sorcerer,” Sienna spat. “It’s my idea, isn’t it?”

  “But I had to seal the pentagram prematurely. We have to drop and then reinitialize the spell.”

  I started laughing. Then I laughed some more. I’d seen fewer cars on the roof than below, but my laughter hit and bounced off all of them to reverberate through the fog.
<
br />   “I warned you, Sayers,” I said. Then I laughed again.

  Somewhere on the other side of the pentagram, hidden within the fog, Kett started laughing. Dear God, I hoped I didn’t sound quite as creepy as he did. I was seriously glad he was on my side tonight, because that laugh was going to haunt my dreams.

  “Shut up!” Sienna screamed. She always did have a low breaking point. Once sealed in the pentagram, I assumed that she and Sayers wouldn’t be able to cast outward, so screaming was all she could do to Kett and me.

  “She played, you Sayers,” I called out as I stepped around another car. I could feel Kett doing the same on the other side of the pentagram, through the life debt bond and through his magic. The fog wasn’t diffusing that magic as much up here on the roof. “She had no intention of triggering the spell with my blood.”

  “What is she —” Sayers began.

  “Shut your stupid hole, Jade,” Sienna said. “You’re just embarrassing yourself, again. Don’t listen to her.”

  For some reason, Kett found this doubly amusing. His laughter ramped up accordingly.

  I rose out of the fog facing Sayers, who’d moved to the final point of the pentagram when he’d sealed the spell. If there hadn’t been a ward between us, I could have reached out and smacked him.

  He flinched at my appearance. I raised a finger to my lips and smiled at him. This confused him, as it should have.

  Sienna was standing with her back to us. Her lips were moving as she bowed her head over the original copy of Blackwell’s book.

  She was already starting the ritual.

  I tried a bit of sign language with Sayers. I tapped my ear and then my chest — ‘Listen to me.’

  I brought my hands up in the universal shrug meaning ‘Why?’ Then I showed him four fingers. Why four? Why four pentagrams, I meant, for three demons?

  Sayers’ confusion deepened.

  Stupid freaking sorcerers.