by Linsey Hall
“I need your help.”
“Sure. I’m still dressed for business.”
Which meant leather instead of pj’s, if I knew Del. She had two modes: full throttle and couch.
“Can you meet me at my place?”
“Sure”—the sound of a scuffle interrupted—“stay down, you bastard!”
“You busy?”
“Just finishing an impromptu job.” A pained grunt echoed though the comms charm. Sounded masculine, so likely not Del’s. When she said she was still dressed for business, I guess she meant she was still doing business.
“Be safe,” I said.
“Almost done. Meet you at your place in thirty.”
“Thanks. Good luck.”
I pressed the charm again to turn it off. A few minutes later, we pulled back onto Factory Row. P & P was hopping, more of the late-night crowd having shown up for Connor’s fancy cocktails. Laughter echoed across the street as the door opened and someone ducked inside the party.
Aidan parked, and I jumped out and crossed the street to the green door beside Ancient Magic. I ran my hands along the edges to unlock the protection spells, then pushed the door open as Aidan joined me. He followed me up the three flights of stairs, past Nix’s place on the first floor and Del’s on the second, until we reached my landing. In addition to the shop on the bottom floor, we rented the whole top three floors of the building, over twelve thousand square feet combined. One floor for each of us.
I pushed open the door to my tiny apartment. About fifteen percent of my floor was living space, and what there was was crappy. But it was home. The good part, my trove, was hidden behind a secret door in my bedroom. That was where my priorities lay and my paycheck went.
The quiet of my apartment crashed around me. It’d been so go-go-go since this afternoon that nothing had had a chance to hit me. And the familiarity of this place—the battered furniture, the faded wallpaper, the empty PBR can on the coffee table—made me think how much about myself was no longer familiar.
Suddenly, I was exhausted. I sat on the couch and tried to keep the sigh from heaving out of me. “We’ll wait for Del here.”
Aidan joined me. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just worried about Dr. Garriso.” Wearily, I scrubbed a hand over my face. “And it’s getting late.”
Aidan tugged me against his side, and I melted into him. “I believe both of those statements, but there’s a hell of a lot more you’re not telling me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’ve got to trust me, Cass. I want more than just a date with you—which it looks like we’ll never get a chance to have—so we’re going to have to start sharing our dark secrets without it.”
“Didn’t we already do that?” We’d had a pretty good heart-to-heart last week.
“No, we told each other about our tragic Lifetime-TV-movie-childhoods. I’m talking about whatever it is that made you not call me back while I was away and whatever this guilt is that you’re feeling over Dr. Garriso.”
“Shouldn’t I feel guilty? I got cocky with my magic and was reckless. I should’ve gone for something different. Fire. Lightning.”
“There’s no way to know what would have worked better. And I think you’re reaching with the guilt.”
“I just feel so out of control now. My magic is getting better, and I love it. Like, really love it. But I’ve been changing.” I reached for the dagger strapped to my thigh and fiddled with it, a nervous habit. “It’s like using my magic ignited the FireSoul part of me that I’ve been ignoring. And now that it’s awake, I don’t like what I’m finding.”
“What do you mean?”
My mind flashed back to a week ago, when I’d last killed and stolen another supernatural’s magic. Sickness twisted my insides. “I didn’t tell you what happened when I stole the Shifter’s power back in Turkey.”
“Then tell me now.”
“It’s like something came over me. This enormous hunger to take her power. Like an addiction. It’s not that I have a problem stealing powers from bad people—I can use it to fight the Monster that hunts me—but it’s the fact that I was compelled to do it. And that I liked doing it. Shouldn’t that be wrong? Shouldn’t I be more in control?”
“I don’t know.” He squeezed my shoulder. “But I do know that power can be addictive. It’s basic. It’s survival. It’s hard to fight that kind of pull when you have access to it.”
I glanced up at him. His jaw was set, and he stared toward the door.
“Sounds like you know something about it,” I said.
“Yeah, a bit.” He reached up and rubbed a hand over his face. “The Origin has a lot of power. But it can twist a person. I told you about my father.”
I nodded. Madness ran in his family, spurred on by the immense amount of power that the Origins possessed. Aidan’s dad had ended up killing two other Alpha Council members. Aidan had had a rough childhood with a murderer for a father.
“But it’s not just that. There’s something more basic to the pursuit of power. At least, the kind I think you’re dealing with. When I first started shifting into a griffin, it was this enormous surge of power. I was the strongest mythical creature—besides dragons, which no one can shift into—and could terrify or kill whatever I wanted. The griffin knew this. When I shifted, I wasn’t entirely myself. The griffin held the reins too. Like your FireSoul. The magic part and the human part trying to live in harmony. It took me a long time to get it under control.”
I shivered, the image of Aidan in his griffin form sharp in my mind. He was terrifying in that form, though beautiful. “So I was right to be afraid of you in your griffin form.”
“Not anymore. The griffin urges are still there, but I’ve banked them so far down that I’m in control now. You will be too.”
“How?”
“Practice.”
“Always practice.”
“Always. But it means the urge to take other supernaturals’ magic isn’t really your fault. It’s the FireSoul in you. Part of you, but not all you.”
“But what if it takes over? Makes me try to steal good people’s powers?” I didn’t say the worst part. That to steal them, I’d have to kill. That was my biggest fear. Killing when I didn’t have to, just to take the power.
He reached an arm around me and squeezed me to his side. “You won’t. You’ll fight it. The power is seductive, but you’ll find your way to the other side.”
I hugged him, breathing in his forest scent. “How’d you get to be so smart?”
“I’ve got a few years on you.”
“Not that many.”
“Then I’m just a genius.”
I grinned up at him, then raised my head to kiss him.
A knock sounded at the door.
“We really need to find a few minutes when we’re not running for our lives or someone else’s,” I muttered. “Because we cannot catch a break.”
“Agreed.” The heat in his gaze burned me.
Reluctantly, I pulled out of Aidan’s arms and stood. “Come on in, Del!”
The door opened, and Del stepped through. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her blue eyes stood out starkly in her pale face. More blood splattered her black leather jacket, visible only by its gleam and my keen eye.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” I said. “Finish beating up whatever demon you caught?”
“Yeah. That’s what I get for thinking I was on a break. Claire needed help with a particularly iffy job, so I volunteered.”
“Ready to volunteer again?”
“Born ready.” She waggled her eyebrows.
I laughed at the awful joke, punch-drunk from exhaustion. I’d been in how many fights or run-for-my-life situations today? I was going to need to sleep for a week when this was over.
“So what do you need?” Del asked as she sat in the chair by the window.
The memory of our task sent Dr. Garriso’s face into my mind’s eye. Worry fol
lowed. I paced in tight little lines as I told her about the investigators and the portal. “So I need you to take me through. Tonight. The Magica are too slow. We can’t leave Dr. Garriso there for another day.”
“Agreed. Shall we get Nix?”
“Yes. More help, the better.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Del stood. “Lead the way.”
“Thanks.” I’d never doubted she would do it. “Now we need a plan to get past the Magica.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Getting past the Magica turned out to be easier than I’d expected. Connor had just enough ingredients left to make invisibility potion for the four of us, and Del transported us straight to the portal entrance. It was a short distance from Factory Row, so it wasn’t a big drain on her transportation magic. She’d still be able to get us through the portal and back out, thank magic. I really hadn’t wanted to sneak through the museum again.
Once had been enough for me, thanks.
When we appeared in front of the portal, all of my muscles tensed. The two guards leaned against the wall, their gazes on the portal, and one of the Magica investigators stood by the entrance, a phone pressed to his ear.
The air felt strange, as if it were thicker. I shook it off. Probably getting paranoid. Being invisible wasn’t as fun as I’d expected.
None of them looked our way. My shoulders relaxed slightly. Thank magic for Connor’s skill with a cauldron. I turned back to Del. The portal glowed purple on her face as she reached out to touch it. Her hand stopped just before passing through.
Still closed.
She nodded and reached out for our hands. I clasped hers and Nix gripped her other. Aidan’s hand folded around mine. A second later, I felt the familiar pull of the ether.
Within the space of a breath, we appeared on the other side. The air was hot and humid, then dry and cold, flashing back and forth. We stood in a desert, golden sand stretching out around us. Then the vision wavered.
Suddenly, we were standing in a jungle, green foliage spread out around us and animals screeched in the distance. Enormous leaves rustled overhead and the jungle air felt like hot soup. The ground was spongy beneath my feet. But none of it looked quite solid or real. At times I thought I heard laughter or voices, as if there were people nearby. Then it was gone.
A second later, we were standing in an abandoned city. Cold wind whipped through the empty streets. Skyscrapers soared toward a sunless sky, and eerie quiet descended. Paper blew across the street in front of us, and an old brown sedan sat forsaken. It looked like a movie about the apocalypse.
But worse, the feel of dark magic washed over me, a horrible prickly sensation. My stomach turned.
“The Monster,” I whispered.
Del’s hand tightened in mine. “I feel it.”
“This is his place,” Nix said as the scenery around us wavered, turning back to desert and then to an icy hellscape. The snow glittered white under the light of a non-existent sun.
Where the hell was the light even coming from?
“What is it?” Aidan asked.
“I have no idea.” I shuddered, the cold streaking through me. “It’s not real and it’s not anywhere on Earth. This magic is too strange. Too strong.”
“I think it’s a waypoint between Earth and the heavens and hells,” Del said. “I’ve read about these places. Nothing is stable or solid.”
“Oh, great. So we’re not on Earth.” That had never been on my travel itinerary before. For good reason. “Let’s find Dr. Garriso and get the hell out of here.”
My skin still prickled with unease, an undeniable sense that the Monster was near. Whispers teased at my ears, snippets of conversation I couldn’t quite grasp. As if there were people in a room just next door.
I tried to force my heartbeat to calm and closed my eyes, focusing on Dr. Garriso. I called forth my dragon sense to find him, filling my mind with images of his face and everything I held dear about him.
His support, his conversation, his knowledge.
The familiar sense of direction tugged at my middle, pulling me left. Relief filled me, a balm that drove away some of the horrible prickly feeling of this place. I wouldn’t be able to find him if he weren’t alive.
I pointed. “That way.”
My boots crunched in the ice as we set off. My leather jacket did me no good. My skin was so cold it almost burned.
“Fake Antarctica was not where I expected to end up,” Nix said.
We’d dragged Nix away from a Netflix marathon, but as always, she’d come willingly.
“That’s the truth.” Our surroundings wavered. I squinted, trying to make out what world we’d be walking into next.
Noise and heat crashed around me. Blazing sun beat down, nearly blinding. I blinked, desperately trying to regain my vision. We were in an enormous stadium.
No, a coliseum. People dressed in Roman togas screamed and waved their fists at the gladiators below. Dust billowed beneath the fighters’ feet as they danced around each other, swords clashing.
Did this waypoint take us between times as well as worlds?
Toga-clad people turned to point and shout at us.
“We need to get out of here,” Aidan said.
“Agreed,” Del said. “I don’t want to be burned as a witch for appearing out of the blue.”
I nodded vehemently, though I wasn’t sure if the Romans burned people as witches. It didn’t really matter, though. Anyone capable of appearing out of thin air probably looked dangerous and in need of serious questioning.
“Come on!” Aidan said, then turned and pushed his way through the crowd toward the nearby stairs. We followed him, single file, taking advantage of the path he’d created and sprinting down the stone steps.
More and more people turned to look at us instead of the battle below. Our clothes were so strange. Pants in ancient Rome? Talk about weird. I couldn’t sense any magic, which meant we were likely among mortals. A few mortals were no problem. But this many mortals?
A big problem. I didn’t want us getting caught in some sticky situation that necessitated Del transporting us out of here. She needed to save her power for the return journey to Magic’s Bend.
Heavily armed men blocked our exit at the bottom of the stairs, their swords raised and glinting in the light.
“No magic!” I hissed at my companions. “They’re human!”
I reached for my daggers, hesitating when the scene began to waver. The gladiators and sunlight disappeared, replaced by darkness, strobe lights, and pulsing music.
“What the hell!” Nix shouted from beside me.
All around us, hundreds of bodies danced to the techno music that blared from enormous speakers set upon a raised stage. Rainbow-colored strobe lights lit the scene. Magic flowed from the inhabitants, a cacophonous blend of scents, tastes, feelings.
We were in some kind of supernatural dance club, likely in an all-magic city somewhere in Europe.
“I take it back!” Nix said. “I think I prefer fake Antarctica!”
So did I. It was damned hard to follow my dragon sense with so much going on around me. I had to close my eyes to focus on it. But it was elusive, the feel of Dr. Garriso’s location only a weak tug about my middle. Left? Forward?
Finally, I picked up the thread of it and followed the tug, turning around and pointing toward the main part of the club. The dance floor was huge, an endless sea of supernaturals of all shapes and sizes. Even demons danced, their weird shapes and colors standing out amongst the more human-looking supernaturals.
“There!” I pointed. “The exit past the dance floor.”
I stepped aside to let Aidan lead, figuring his bulk was better to part the crowd. It worked, and we followed him through the writhing bodies. I slapped a hand that reached for my ass, but by the second one, I was pissed. That guy got a punch straight to the nose.
“Bitch!” he cried, then grunted.
I turned to see him doubled over and Nix shaking her fist.
/> “Moron!” she yelled, then turned and winked at me.
We pushed our way through the crowd to catch up to Aidan, who’d stopped in the middle of the crowd to wait for us. A trio of Barbie dolls had turned to stare appreciatively at him. They were approaching when I reached him. I hissed—honest to god, hissed—which was really embarrassing, but they backed off.
Apparently I was territorial around Aidan. That was new for me, but now was hardly the time to examine it.
Actually, never was the time to examine it.
We set off through the crowd again, following in Aidan’s wake. The exit light beckoned. What city would we step out into?
The ground fell out from under me. A scream strangled in my throat as I clawed at the air. I crashed into icy cold saltwater. It blinded me, filling my mouth and cutting off my scream. I kicked for the surface, praying it was near.
When my head broke through, I searched for Aidan and my deirfiúr. Nix broke the surface first, followed by Aidan, and finally Del.
“What the hell!” Del sputtered.
I choked on salt water as I spun in a circle, searching for land. Great cliffs soared in the distance, red stone dully reflecting the light of a sun I couldn’t see.
“Hang on,” Nix said. She raised her hands above the water. Blue light glowed around them, and her brow scrunched in concentration. A moment later, a small rowboat appeared.
Thank magic for her ability to conjure.
We swam for the boat, scrambling in and collapsing against the sides. I panted, exhausted, my eyes burning from the seawater. Everyone looked like drowned rats, their hair plastered to their heads. I looked no better, I was sure.
“Damn, this sucks,” I said.
“I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting the ocean,” Aidan said.
“Does this mean there could be lava?” Nix asked.
“For magic’s sake, I hope not.” I focused on my dragon sense again, grateful to find that it pulled us towards land. “Dr. Garriso is on that piece of land.”
“Thank God he’s not in the water,” Nix said. “I can’t imagine he’s a strong swimmer.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Dr. Garriso looks fragile, but he’s tough.”
