Magic Fire: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 1)

by Catherine Vale

  On their own, gargoyles were dumb as bricks. Gargoyles, however, were animated by magic-users—and they tended to take on their temporary master’s personality. Whoever was enough of an asshole to sic a gargoyle on you was bound to have a pretty shitty personality, honestly.

  Someone must have shrunk him down, set him on a timer, and placed him in that fucking box.

  What the hell had I done to make someone want to send a gargoyle after me?!

  “Open the door, Kaye!” The gargoyle stood between me and the front door, behind which I could hear Darius pounding on. Not wanting to lose yet another doorway—I was never getting my security deposit back now—I waited until the gargoyle lunged, then dropped and rolled beneath him with enhanced fae speed. Back on my feet, I raced for the door, unlocked it with shaky fingers, and got the hell out of the way as Darius came barreling through.

  Without a word, he went straight for the gargoyle. As I shoved my front door closed and essentially cowered in front of it, Darius slammed a fist into the animated statue’s grotesque square jaw, knocking a chunk of rock off, then managed to get the creature into a headlock. While its wings flapped hard, the force knocking paintings off my wall and glass knick-knacks off my bookshelf, Darius held tight, face red and teeth gritted.

  And his eyes… His eyes were like storm clouds.

  He gave a guttural snarl as he ripped the gargoyle’s head from its shoulders, and within seconds, the body crumbled to the ground, settling at my dragon’s feet as dust. The head’s eyes continued to burn bright yellow for a few seconds more before slowly losing their color, turning back to slate gray before the head disintegrated in Darius’s hands.

  “What…?” He looked between my shards of sliding glass door to the upturned furniture, cracked TV screen—thanks, gargoyle—and general disarray that my living room and kitchen was in. Then, he turned his glare to me, which I thought was totally unnecessary. I was the victim here. Still, that didn’t stop him from growling, “What. the hell. happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I snapped back, in no mood for whatever lecture he had on the tip of his tongue—or to hear an I-told-you-so. “I came home and there was a box encased in magic in front of my door. I brought it onto my balcony, and I think…I think the gargoyle was inside.”

  “Kaye! You should have waited for me—”

  “You were on-route,” I shouted, voice strangled as I stood and wiped at the warmth trickling down my cheek. Blood. When had that happened? “I figured I’d just wait for you to get here and we could tackle it together.”

  He ran a hand through his deliciously rumpled hair, scowling. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah, sounds about right.”

  A wave of pure exhaustion washed over me. Sighing, I rubbed at my face, then puttered into my battered and broken living room, cautiously righting upturned furniture and skirting around the pile of rubble in the middle of it all. If ever there was a time that I wished to know an Angel, it would have been then. Angels could sweep the room with just a hand, and within seconds, everything would be as it once was. But I didn’t know any Angels, so I was left standing in a pile of dust and rubble, that was once my apartment.

  Darius, meanwhile, just stood there, hands on his hips—fuming. He looked from my shattered balcony doors—the superintendent of my building was going to kill me—to the settling chaos all around him.

  “Tell me everything,” he said, voice all hot and growly again. Shaking, like he was trying to keep it even. I hated that I found him attractive after everything that had just happened.

  “Well, I woke up this morning to a text from you—”

  “Skip to the good stuff,” he ordered sharply, which made me look up in surprise. He was really worked up about this. I should probably be more worked up about this. Maybe I just wasn’t processing it yet. Maybe my brain had thrown up a mask of indifferent numbness to shield me from the fact that someone had animated, and sent me a gargoyle with the express purpose of snapping me like a twig.

  My knees gave way suddenly and I collapsed onto the corner of the TV stand, reaching back to steady my cracked TV before I did more damage to it. Darius seemed to want to reach out for me, but he had taken to pacing instead. I understood the feeling.

  “I came home and there was this box in front of my door.” I glanced out to the balcony, noting that the box had disappeared. Perfect. Did the box turn into the gargoyle? “I tried to use my magic to see what was inside because it didn’t have any writing or signage on it, but there was like… a yellow force field blocking me.” I swallowed hard, eyebrows furrowing. “It definitely wasn’t fairy magic. It was different.”

  “Stronger?”

  I shook my head, more than a little offended by the question. “Just different.”

  Supernaturals loved to play the comparison game: see who was stronger, faster, more magically inclined. Nobody understood that everyone’s abilities served a purpose. We were all powerful in our own right. Nobody was superior. That was what snobs like Jasmine didn’t understand. Nobody was better. We were just different.

  Somehow rationalizing that made me feel better.

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged, though my shoulders didn’t feel attached to my body anymore. Everything sagged, limp, as the adrenaline started to fade and I suddenly felt drained. “I couldn’t pierce through the magic. It wasn’t nature-based, that’s for sure. More like…” I inhaled sharply, as an almost unfathomable idea came to mind, and Darius’s features morphed from curious to confused when I glared up at him. “Did you tell anyone you were helping me?”

  He uttered something close to a petulant scoff. “Wouldn’t be a very good bodyguard if I just shouted all my clients’ names from the rooftops—”

  “Because I think,” I pressed, growing stronger as the accusation formulated in my head, “that you let it slip, and somehow your witch ex—”

  “Don’t be fucking ridiculous—”

  “Caught wind that you were helping me—”

  “She’s not that petty as to—”

  “She took away your wings!” I shouted again, catching my back on the corner of the TV as I shot up. Biting back a wince, I squared my shoulders and kept a level, even stare. “Your jealous witch ex-girlfriend just sent a freaking gargoyle to kill me. That’s why I couldn’t see inside the package. I’ve got a lot of abilities as a fairy, but a witch’s spell can be almost impossible to break through. You know that yourself.”

  “Ravena punished me because I wronged her,” Darius argued, not rising to my volume just yet. He seemed to mull it over for a few seconds, and just as he was about to speak, there was a knock at my door. He held up a hand to stop me from investigating right away, then beckoned me over, silently, and had me look through the peephole.

  Josie. Typical. The woman next door had nothing to do all day while her husband was at work, so between soap operas, she liked sticking her nose in my business.

  Pushing Darius out of the way, I hastily unlocked everything and poked my head out. “Hi, Josie.”

  “Is everything okay in there?” She tried to peer around me, but I wasn’t giving her much space to snoop.

  “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”

  “I heard a crash—”

  “I had an accident,” I blurted. “Stumbled into the, uh, balcony door, and…”

  “Accident doing what?” Her lips slipped into a knowing smirk when heat rose to my cheeks. “Oh. Oh, I see. Well. Never mind then.”

  Great. Now she thought I had aggressive enough sex to actually break our stupidly thick, totally weather-proofed sliding doors. I smiled in a sort of aw-shucks-you-caught-me kind of way, then said a quick goodbye, my tone nicer than she deserved. My smile dropped the second she was gone, toddling back to her apartment like she had the grandest secret in all the universe, and I shut the door harder than necessary.

  “Ravena wouldn’t come after you,” Darius told me as I picked my way through the mess back to the living room, re
suming the conversation where we’d left off. “She doesn’t need to punish you. You’re blameless in all this.”

  “Jealous women tend not to see it that way.”

  “Aren’t all witches that… rah-rah girl power thing?” he asked, wiggling out a pathetic excuse for jazz hands as I stared at him, fists planted on my hips. “No?”

  “That’s a rather broad brush to paint with,” I told him dully. “The heart does crazy things to people, no matter how feminist your leanings.”

  “She couldn’t…”

  “There isn’t even the slightest possibility?” I gestured to my destroyed living room, then to the pile of crumbled stone at our feet. “That thing was encased in magic. Mages are more earth-based. Fae can’t cast spells on a whim. It had to be the work of a witch. There’s no other super out there who fits this MO.”

  I noticed the flicker of his jaw as he clenched and unclenched it. Darius then crouched down and sifted through the destroyed gargoyle, expression bleak.

  “I guess there is a…possibility—”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “Thank you.”

  “A very slight possibility,” Darius added as he stood back up, dusting his hands off on his jeans. He looked at me with that cocky grin on his face that told me he wasn’t willing to concede just yet. “I think the best thing to do is to just confront her about it, and find out if you’re right.”

  “Huh? Do you really think that’s the best idea?” This woman just tried to have me squished to goo in my own apartment. Was storming the witch’s castle really such a good idea? Was it our only idea? I cocked my head to the side, studying him from a new perspective, as my brain switched gears from confused fairy to clinical psychologist. “Have you seen her since she took your wings?”

  He scratched at the back of his neck and avoided my gaze.

  “I’ll take that as a no.” Slowly massaging my temples, I headed for my couch and collapsed onto it after pushing some fallen picture frames out of the way. “Are you even ready to confront her now? Is it a healthy time for you?”

  “I don’t give a fuck if it’s healthy for me,” he snapped, though clearly, I’d struck a nerve with the way he started pacing again. “You’re in danger, potentially because of me. My feelings don’t matter.”

  “Of course they do.”

  “No—”

  “They matter to me.” If this Ravena witch was the danger Darius sensed, then this whole situation was a lot more manageable than either of us thought. If I was right, then we were just dealing with a jealous ex. The problem was mundane—though made a little more challenging by throwing magic into the mix. But I could handle mundane. I’d talked clients through more break-ups and their messy aftermaths than I cared to admit. If Ravena was behind all this because she was bitter about Darius showering me with his unwavering—slightly unnerving—attention, then we could dial things back a notch and take a deep breath.

  The danger wasn’t quite as serious as my dragon had made it out to be, but I didn’t want him getting his heart torn to pieces in the process. It hardly seemed fair.

  “I can handle Ravena,” he told me as he stood in front of my balcony, a warm summer afternoon breeze rolling in. “She might have taken my wings, but I’m still a dragon. I’m not afraid of her.”

  “Fear wasn’t exactly what I was referring to, but okay,” I said, sighing. “When do you want to leave?”

  “As soon as possible.” He kicked at a huge chunk of broken door, then glanced over his shoulder at me. “But first… we should probably see about getting your shit in order.”

  I flopped back on the couch with a groan and closed my eyes tight.

  * * *

  Two days later we were on the road. Despite both of us wanting to get this little witch problem sorted out right away, both Darius and I agreed we needed to pump the brakes, but for different reasons. I needed to get my clients sorted out if I planned to be away for a few days, which meant I had to update Karen on all their information and make sure she was ready to take over while I was gone. Those patients who weren’t comfortable seeing Karen—for one reason or another—had to be referred to other psychologists in the city, of which there were only a few that were comfortable taking clients on at the last second. So, while I spent two days calling around and rearranging appointments, Darius used the time to clean up my apartment, and - as he insisted – get my shit in order.

  The door was the first thing to be replaced. He hired a cleaning crew to come in and clear out any woefully unsalvageable furniture, along with the dust of the defeated gargoyle. No one ever asked what the hell had happened, though I knew they wanted to from the looks on their faces whenever they passed by.

  As predicted, my superintendent flipped his lid over all the damage. Given that my unit was a rental, my security deposit was gone, used strictly for the smaller repairs while I offered to shoulder the fees of the larger ones. At one point, my superintendent even asked if I wanted to file a police report. He’d looked from Darius to me and back again. At the time, Darius had been barking orders on the phone about getting the door delivery guys there by the end of the day—I assume he thought there had been a domestic dispute between us.

  “No,” I’d insisted, trying not to laugh. “That really isn’t necessary.”

  I probably didn’t persuade him much, but at least he’d stopped asking.

  Once everything in my life was back in some semblance of an order, I packed a bag and picked Darius up in my iron-free car—custom-made in Alfheim, of course—and we left the city. Once over the bridges, we switched spots, since Darius knew the best route to get to his ex’s, and I got to enjoy a little downtime as a passenger.

  Even though we were on our way to meet the person who had stolen Darius’s greatest joy—and essentially alienated him from his shifter clan—he’d been in a remarkably good mood. Apparently, he really enjoyed driving.

  “It’s like flying,” he’d noted when I commented on his chipper mood, to which I’d snorted and rolled my eyes.

  “Doubt it.”

  We fought over the radio stations, stopped for lunch at a rest-stop burger joint, and took a short walk through the forest at one point, just to stretch our legs and get some fresh air. It was almost like we were on an ordinary road trip, and not, you know, making our way to a witch’s castle to confront her about whether she sent a gargoyle to kill me, or not. For a few hours, here and there, it all seemed very normal— with great conversation, tunes jacked up, and Darius not acting like an over-protective ass.

  That was, until we pulled up to Ravena’s front gates and he rolled down the window so he could reach a keypad that I assumed would give us access.

  “What do you mean I have to stay in the car?” I demanded, arms crossed and lower lip pushed out in a childish pout. He ignored me, punching in the numerical code on the keypad. When something buzzed, he poked his head out the window and waved at a camera. Seconds later, the wrought iron gates started to swing open.

  We had driven north, for the most part, a pretty straight shot from the city, and were now in the wilds of north New York state. Ravena had one of those old manors, the kind you’d see in sweeping period dramas with British royalty, though the unkempt ivy and piles of old, upswept leaves from last fall, kind of took the charm away. While the house was sprawling, and enclosed in a ten-foot wall, it kind of just looked dirty and old, in need of a serious cleansing rain.

  I’d always thought being a witch meant your house would be spotless, but as I peered through the dashboard, lip curled, I quickly decided that wasn’t the case. I mean, couldn’t you just use a spell and keep everything clean? I’d kill for that kind of power. Scrubbing my apartment top to bottom, every weekend, absolutely sucked.

  “I mean,” Darius said when he stopped my car in the middle of the cobblestone courtyard and put it into park, “you have to wait here. I don’t know how she’ll react to me bringing another woman into her home.”

  “Oh, yeah, she totally didn’t
sic a gargoyle after me,” I grumbled, arms crossed as I slumped into my seat. “And here I was, ready to share some power with you. Maybe I’ll just send you in blind.”

  He turned the car off with a sigh, then unbuckled his seatbelt and faced me. “What are you whining about?”

  I scowled, though I sensed a nugget of truth behind his words. He was probably right, after all, about leaving me behind. Was I the kind of person Ravena would invite into her home—the random fairy who showed up with her ex-boyfriend, probably covered in his scent after spending the last few days together?

  Could witches scent that kind of stuff? I’d always wondered…

  I shook my head as my thoughts started to wander. “Sorry. You’re right.”

  “Thank you.” The smirk didn’t help soothe my temper, though. I ignored it pointedly, and instead reached a hand out and touched his forehead. Without a word, I gifted him with a touch of my clairvoyance,

  Gifting others our ability was something we fae were proud of. As far as we knew, we were the only supernatural race who could transfer powers to someone else without using a charm, or spell, or hex bag. It always felt like a rush of adrenaline, your whole body prickling, and pulsing, as the power surged from you to its new recipient. I didn’t lose my ability to gaze into a muddled future by offering some of it to Darius, nor would he be able to see upcoming events for long. The gift would fade in a few hours. For now, I just wanted to give him some peace of mind with what he was about to do.

  “What the…” He trailed off as I slumped back in my seat. Like any sudden boost of adrenaline, my body always lagged, exhausted, for an hour or so after sharing. Those storm cloud eyes darkened somewhat, looking rather zoned out as he stared, mouth hanging open. I chuckled weakly.