by Jayne Faith
I had no way to move the furniture, and it wasn’t valuable anyway, so I left it. The two boxes got bungeed to the top of Vincenzo’s cargo box.
Just as I was about to swing my leg over the seat and start up my scooter, there was a discontented yowl behind me. I turned to see Emerald sitting a couple of feet away, the end of her tail twitching and her green eyes flashing at me. I put the kickstand down and went over to her.
Squatting within arm’s reach, but not too close, I reached out a hand. “Hey Emmy. I’m all out of treats, girl. Sorry about that.” She moved close enough to poke her head under my outstretched hand, and I scratched her ears. “I’ve got to take off, but I hope I’ll be back.”
I straightened, and she scampered off around the corner of the building. That was the thing about cats—they didn’t truly need you, so your comings and goings didn’t really concern them much.
I’d only gone about two blocks when my cell phone rang. It was Gus, so I answered.
“It wasn’t him.” My boss made a noisy, nasally sigh.
“What wasn’t who?”
“The ashes in the box,” my boss said. “They aren’t Van Zant’s remains.”
My jaw tightened. Bryna had somehow played me. How in the hell had she gotten around the promise? You couldn’t lie your way through a Faerie oath. It wasn’t possible.
“It’s your lucky day, kid,” Gus said. “You lost your other assignment, the object-find. But I pulled some strings. If you can bring the vamp in alive before midnight, you’ll get the full bounty.”
My pulse jumped at the challenge.
“Thanks, boss. I’m on it,” I said. I hung up and stuffed my phone back in its pocket.
My mind kicked into gear and I sped up, heading to the doorway in the parking garage downtown. I knew where to look for the vamp, and I thought I even knew how Bryna had slithered her way out of our agreement. Van Zant had most likely tricked her, faking his death. Bryna had believed the remains she gave me were his.
I took Vincenzo through the doorway and emerged in the MonsterFit lobby near the Las Vegas Strip. Van Zant was likely hiding out, from Bryna and maybe from others, too. Plus, it was mid-afternoon and still broad daylight. Even daywalking vamps usually preferred to stay out of the peak sunlight hours. My mark was most likely holing up in a place where he felt comfortable and safe.
I parked near the Millennium Hotel, but instead of going through the main lobby, I went through one of the casino entrances. The place had a high-stakes poker game, and knowing Van Zant’s reputation as a player, he wouldn’t be able to resist. I glamoured myself into my Penelope persona and found a human bartender to chat with, a young guy who was all too happy to show off what he knew about the high-money tables in the back rooms. I nursed watered-down cocktails and spent the next hour learning where the game was held, where the players came in, and what time they usually started rolling in. Then I spent another hour scoping the place and confirming what the bartender had told me. It took some sweet-talking and maneuvering on my part, but I managed to gain access to one of the back hallways where I suspected Van Zant would go from his penthouse elevator to the high-stakes room.
In the end, Van Zant practically walked right into my arms.
The vamp and his entourage were in great spirits as they strolled toward the game. I’d been leaning against the wall, the credit-card-sized bounty certificate hidden in my hand. I pushed away from the wall, putting on a lazy smile, and strolled toward Van Zant and his crew. Several of them took notice of me, looking me up and down.
Van Zant looked scrawnier than I remembered him from the attack on the dark street in the Duergar realm, when I’d cut off his hand. In fact, he didn’t look like much at all. I suddenly realized this was not the creature of my childhood nightmares. He was just some playboy poker player who thought he could make it big gambling and selling vamp blood.
“Are you professional poker players?” I asked in a sultry voice. “Because I think that’s sooo hot.”
“Yeah, beautiful,” one of them said. “You wanna be my good luck charm?”
My eyes flicked over to Van Zant. He still sported a bandaged stump on one arm, where I’d removed his hand. “I’ve got my eye on that one,” I crooned.
I felt the shiver of his glamour in the air as he tried to turn his charms on me, obviously not realizing I was Fae.
The group parted so I could move closer to my mark, and I pretended to be drawn in by Van Zant’s mesmerization glamour. My smile widened as our eyes met. I got close to him, looking deeply into his dark eyes. Then I lifted my hand, flashing the bounty card in his face.
He looked down in confusion as the certificate lit up with yellow-orange magic that expanded toward him. It rapidly surrounded him in a cloud, and by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late. His identity was confirmed.
The magical mist blurred, shrank, and coalesced around his wrists, securing him in cuffs.
I gave him a flirtatious wink. “Gotcha.”
Van Zant’s entourage backed away and then split, some of them hurrying back the way they’d come, and others sidling around me and then zipping toward the poker room.
I pulled out my phone, which I’d hidden in my bra, to contact the Guild and arrange transport of the apprehended mark. I let my Penelope glamour dissolve away.
“How’s that hand regenerating, Van Zant?” I asked as I raised my phone to my ear.
He sneered, his dark eyes flashing with fury.
Back in Boise, I completed the paperwork while Van Zant was processed and then stood outside the Guild in the dark with my phone, refreshing my bank balance every few seconds.
The bounty money showed up at ten minutes to midnight. I stared at the number for a few seconds, reveling in the satisfaction of it, before stuffing my phone back into its pouch.
They money had come too late to keep the apartment, and it wouldn’t have been enough to sustain me and Lochlyn for more than a couple of weeks, anyway, with what I already owed on Vincenzo’s repairs and back payments on rent and utilities. In spite of the exception Gus had swung allowing me another shot at Van Zant, I was still on probation with the Guild for failing to complete the object-find assignment. That meant no real cash flow for at least a few weeks.
I saw the writing on the wall, and it said in big block letters that I was going to have to spend some time at the fortress.
It was okay. I already had the start of my nest egg that would fund my move back out of Faerie. In the meantime, there was work to be done on behalf of the New Gargs, and in my new role as the Order’s champion, I had some clout. It was an important time for my people, and for the near future, I’d focus on doing some good for them—for us.
I revved Vincenzo and sped toward the doorway that would take me to San Francisco and my home-for-now in the stone fortress.
Next in the Blood of Stone Series:
STONE BLOOD LEGACY
Before Petra Maguire and the New Gargoyles, there was Ella Grey.
Don’t miss the Ella Grey Series, the urban fantasy story set in the Earthly realm that brings us to the Cataclysm and begins a new era of magic!
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~ ~ ~
BOOKS BY JAYNE FAITH
Ella Grey Series (complete)
urban fantasy
Stone Cold Magic
Dark Harvest Magic
Demon Born Magic
Blood Storm Magic
Shattered Magic Novels<
br />
urban fantasy
Blood of Stone
Stone Blood Legacy
Rise of the Stone Court
Sapient Salvation Series (complete)
dystopian romance
The Selection
The Awakening
The Divining
The Claiming
Love Across Stars Novels
science fiction romance
The Seas of Time
The Laws of Attraction
Magic Currents (dystopian fairy tale)
~ ~ ~
Preview of Stone Cold Magic
Chapter 1
IT WAS A pleasant summer night, but I walked with my fists stuffed deep in the pockets of my lightweight jacket and my head bent as if leaning into a stiff, chilly wind. I paused at the end of 12th Street where the mid-century bungalow houses stopped and the little shops began. Murky shapes feathered the edges of my peripheral vision, moving in a slow, curling dance like wisps of campfire smoke. There were moments, even long stretches, when the phantom shapes faded into the background of my awareness. But every time I noticed them anew, my insides chilled and gave a little lurch.
I tried to convince myself that the shadows framing my sight were meaningless. More than once, I’d sternly told myself they were just misfires of my optic nerves, artifacts of having been clinically dead for eighteen minutes. My brain had been deprived of oxygen, and there were bound to be some lingering effects. Hell, what were a few blurry dark shapes when I could have suffered serious brain damage—or not come back at all? But none of my internal cajoling had worked particularly well. Ever since I’d opened my eyes on a gurney with a sheet pulled up over my head, the shadows had been there. And as much as I wished it were otherwise, I couldn’t help feeling that the smoky shapes were alive. They lurked, an ever-present reminder that sure, I may have cheated death. But I’d brought something back with me.
It was odd, knowing I’d been dead, queued up for the morgue, and yet somehow escaped the cold clutch of the grave to walk away from the hospital and return to my little apartment and the usual rhythms of life. I was like one of those drowning victims you sometimes hear about on the news, a still body with no pulse pulled from icy water and then miraculously revived. I knew I was lucky. I was beyond fortunate to be alive. Except something wasn’t right.
I shivered and tucked my chin to my chest. Nope, not right at all.
With the dancing shadows framing my sight came horrific nightmares, jerky, unfocused visions of death that plagued my dreams when I slept and my thoughts when I woke. In the two weeks since the accident that had temporarily killed me, I’d become so sleep deprived—and, frankly, creeped out by the dreams—I’d finally decided I had to do something. I’d waited to see if my head would clear, hoping that during my forced medical leave I’d get back to normal. But it hadn’t happened, and I couldn’t wait any longer. Tomorrow was my first day back at my job as a Demon Patrol officer, and I needed to be fresh and clear-headed.
That was what brought me to where I stood—the hope of finding relief. The particular segment of 12th Street before me was known locally as Crystal Ball Lane. It was lined with small shops offering magical cures, a place normals came furtively seeking love potions, healing charms, and money spells. Ordinarily, most normals shunned the use of such things. They believed magic was responsible for tearing the world open twenty-nine years ago and letting in the hellish chaos of demons, the vampire virus, and the zombie virus. And, well, I couldn’t blame normals for their prejudice because they weren’t entirely wrong.
Those with magical ability like me—witches, or crafters as I preferred to call us—tended to see stores such as the ones on Crystal Ball Lane with disdain. They were the equivalent of magical tourist traps for the desperate and beneath the notice of crafters. But I needed something to eradicate the nightmares, to expel whatever grave-thing was clinging to me, and I didn’t have enough magic ability to stir up a spell or a charm to help myself.
I pulled out my phone and pressed one of the side buttons, and it awoke with a cool white glow. It had vibrated against my hand three times since I’d left my parked truck a few blocks away, and each time the guilty little knot in my stomach tightened a touch more.
The device buzzed again as I held it, and a new text from Deb flashed.
Ella!! I’m an empath. You can’t trick me. Spill it, lady. What’s wrong?
There were two little frowny faces at the end.
I ruefully shoved the phone back in my pocket.
It was almost uncanny how Deb’s texts had started coming through as soon as I’d hopped in my truck to seek help on Crystal Ball Lane. I’d talked to her earlier—she’d called to see how I was feeling about heading back to work—and of course Deb being Deb she’d picked up on the fact that I was having trouble with something. I didn’t possess her intuition or empathic talent, but I could tell she had her own worries. It wasn’t any magical sixth sense on my part, just an instinct borne of many years of friendship. Her voice took on a particular tightness when she was having trouble with her husband Keith, and I’d be damned if I was going to add to her burden. So I’d insisted that I was fine, knowing she didn’t fully believe me.
I entered the first block of the shops, eyeing the neon signs that advertised Tarot readings, herbal remedies, healing crystals, and all manner of magical cures and spells. The store I was looking for, Nature’s Light, was a few blocks down. I’d checked out the website and saw the owner offered a variety of services, aura cleansing among them. I’d tried the phone number but never got an answer. Most of the businesses on the Lane kept late hours, and I hoped Nature’s Light would be no different.
My phone vibrated again. I felt bad about ignoring Deb, but she didn’t know the full extent of my problems, and I was hoping to eliminate them so that I could avoid telling her altogether.
She knew I’d been off since my accident. When she pressed me, I made a vague mention of insomnia. But I left out the smoky forms around the edges of my vision, the weird throbbing in my forehead. I hadn’t mentioned the dreams, either, and it was partly due to my difficulty trying to describe them, even to myself, because I couldn’t shake the sense that they weren’t mine. They were like films shot by a camera that was held by an unknown hand, images that seemed to come through the eyes of someone—or something—else. The other, as I’d begun to call it. And they weren’t just visual—they were often laden with a heavy smell, a stomach-turning mix of wet leather, sulfur, and the metallic tang of blood.
Deb had given me the name of a hedge witch and made me promise I’d make an appointment. I suspected I needed a remedy stronger than a hedge witch’s herbs, but Deb’s suggestion had prompted the idea to look up other types of services. I wasn’t convinced an aura cleansing would do the trick, either, but I had to start somewhere.
The soft sound of movement to my left brought my low-top leather boots to a scuffing halt. I sucked in a breath, and my heart thumped hard at the side of my throat. With a familiar, automatic motion, my hand instantly shifted from my pocket to my service stun gun at my hip. Some part of my mind knew that this was mostly likely perfectly normal street noise, but since my accident I’d gotten jumpy, startling so easily it was sometimes embarrassing.
As my pulse quickened, I squinted into the deeper darkness between two buildings. The center of my forehead thumped faintly, another odd post-mortem symptom that had been plaguing me on and off.
Something dark and bulky moved.
I flipped the strap on the holster with my thumb so I could draw out the gun if I needed it, and as an afterthought, I sent my senses through the bottoms of my feet and into the ground to pull up a thread of earth magic. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have even bothered. My weak-ass abilities barely even registered on the Magic Aptitude Scale and certainly didn’t give me much in the way of protection. Crystal Ball Lane was situated along a stretch of ley line, an underground vein where magic concentrated and flowed, that enhanced my abilit
ies by a smidgeon, but not enough to properly shield myself against attack.
Movement again.
Just as I was on the verge of calling out and demanding that the lurker show himself, a large dog crept partway into the weak pallor cast by an orange neon sign across the street. We watched each other for a beat or two. The dog’s tail waved back and forth, and he panted, his mouth stretching into a doggy smile. His eyes glowed like embers, reflecting the light of the signs nearby.
Assured that he wasn’t going to attack me, I released the magic thread. My hand relaxed on the gun.
I nodded at the dog. “Careful of the cars, big guy. Drivers can’t see you too well in the dark,” I said, as if he’d understand.
Voices ahead sent him scuttling back away from the street and my attention whipping toward the new noise. Damn, but I was jittery these days. I shook out my hands, as if trying to fling away some of my tension, and peered ahead.
A group of boys, jostling each other and laughing, had spilled out onto the sidewalk. By their heights and builds, I guessed they were around fourteen. I grimaced. A pack of kids out this late, and right around the age when their magical aptitude, if they possessed any, would be emerging? I’d bet my paycheck they were up to no good.
The jeering voice of the biggest one confirmed my suspicion and quickened my pace toward them.
The boys had circled around, trapping one of their own. The thin, small one in the middle had the hood of his sweatshirt up and was getting shoved around like a pinball.
My hand back on my stun gun, I sped up to a jog. “Hey . . . hey!”
I got closer and saw the kid they were picking on was actually a girl. Anger spiked through my chest and I yelled again, but the ring of boys was too caught up in its bullying to hear me.
