Magic Slays kd-5

by Ilona Andrews

  Aunt B hurried over, Ascanio in tow. “I have to go to the city. So I thought, why don’t I just catch a lift with you? We can catch up and chat.”

  I’d rather give a lift to a rabid tiger. “Of course.”

  “Wonderful.” Aunt B hopped into my passenger seat.

  Derek hesitated for a long moment. He plainly didn’t want to leave me alone with Aunt B, but the Jeep could only seat two. He made a follow motion to Ascanio, and without waiting he turned slowly and went to his own vehicle.

  We drove out of the Keep’s yard and headed toward the city.

  “I heard about your run-in with the wolves,” Aunt B said.

  Thank you, George. “It wasn’t much of a run-in.”

  “Not the way I heard it. Well handled, dear. Well handled. Jennifer isn’t a bad sort, but she is young. She has been an alpha for barely two years. She’s still establishing her place, and of course losing a loved one, especially so young, it can mess with your head. She’ll come around.”

  That would be the day. “You have a lot of faith in her common sense.”

  Aunt B smiled. “Oh no, dear. I have a lot of faith in Daniel. He fought hard for his spot at the top. He won’t let anything jeopardize that, not even her. Speaking of sweet young things, how is my boy fitting in?”

  Like a square peg into a round hole. “We’re working on it.”

  “It’s so rare, you know, for the boudas to make it through puberty without loupism. That was the problem with my first two boys. They were just like Ascanio: handsome, funny, charming . . .”

  Undisciplined, spoiled, cocky . . .

  “He has so much potential. I haven’t seen such good half-form at such a young age in years. Almost as good as my Raphael.”

  Oh wow. She really liked him, if she was comparing him to her son. “So why give him to me?”

  Aunt B sighed. “He hasn’t grown up in the Pack. His mouth gets away from him. He pushes things too far, sometimes in public. I’d hate to kill him. I’d do it, of course, but it would break my heart.”

  There you go, that was Aunt B for you. Please hold the wheel, while I jump out of this moving vehicle and run for my life.

  “And his mother is such a nice girl, too. It would devastate her. Of all the places he could be, he’s safest with you. You’re much too softhearted to murder children.”

  I stared at her.

  “Mind the road, dear.”

  I swerved to avoid a fallen tree. “What’s his story? If I have to take care of him, I might as well know the whole thing.”

  “It’s all very, very sad. Martina, his mother, met his father while she lived in the Midwest. Not a lot of boudas out that way, so when she found him, she didn’t look too closely at the quality of his character. And he seemed like a good enough sort, a proper bouda, on the passive side, but our men sometimes go that way. They had their fun, she conceived. She was thrilled. He was not.”

  “Didn’t want to be a father?”

  Aunt B rocked her head from side to side. “Not exactly. Turns out to be that he was on his ‘pilgrimage.’ He grew up in a religious community out in the boonies led by some prophet, and they sent him out to see how the ‘heathens’ live. He wasn’t supposed to be getting his jollies on and seek carnal pleasures.” She raised her eyebrows at “carnal.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He stayed with her. Martina thought they were a family. She gave birth. It was a hard birth. The hospital had sedated her—they were afraid she might snap from the pain. When she woke up in the hospital bed, the baby and the father were gone. He’d left her a note. He was going to raise the baby in the ‘proper’ way. The baby was an innocent, but she was unclean, because they’d sinned and had intercourse without the blessing of the prophet, so she couldn’t come. Martina barely got to hold the boy. A dim memory, that’s all he left her. She can’t tell the story without breaking into tears.”

  I would’ve found him. I would’ve found him and killed him and took my baby back. “Did she chase him?”

  Aunt B nodded. “She did. But she was weak and he was very good at covering his tracks. She floated about for a few years like a broken ship without a rudder until she came here and we took her in. She is a good person. Just had to get her head on straight. She swore off having children, and we can’t afford to do that, not with our numbers.”

  “What happened to Ascanio?”

  “His father brought him back to his sect.” Aunt B grimaced. “The way the boy tells it, it was one of those sects where the prophet starts receiving messages from some celestial flimflam god, who tells him to sleep with all the women. Especially the younger prettier ones. This prophet wasn’t that keen on Ascanio’s father returning.”

  “Eliminating the competition,” I guessed.

  “That’s right. Most young men didn’t come back after the pilgrimage—why would you? You’d have to take a wife eventually, and how can you do that knowing she leaves every night to go sleep with this prophet? But Ascanio’s father was too stupid to think for himself. When Ascanio was about seven or eight, he died. A hunting accident.”

  “Aha. I’ll buy that for a dollar.” What kind of a hunting accident would it have to be to kill a damn bouda? Were they hunting an elephant and it fell on him?

  “The boy was sort of collectively raised,” Aunt B continued. “The sect mostly consisted of women, the only men being the prophet, a few old-timers too creaky to leave, and the prophet’s progeny. They spoiled him rotten, but eventually he grew up. You’ve seen the way he looks. He got to sowing some wild oats. The prophet started getting messages that Ascanio was unclean real quick. Except by that point, Ascanio was strong enough that the prophet was worried about confronting him directly. Ascanio’s daddy had written the whole sordid account of his sin in a confession, so the prophet found the mother’s name, looked her up, and called us. ‘Come and get him before something bad happens.’ So we came and got him. He is ours now. He has a good heart. He just doesn’t know the rules and doesn’t have an awful lot of sense in that pretty head of his.”

  So the only male role model Ascanio had ever had was a lecherous, murdering con man. Great. That explained a few things.

  Aunt B stared into my eyes. “You will take care of my boy, won’t you, Kate? I’d consider it a personal favor.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I told her. “But I can’t pull him out of the fire if he jumps into it after being warned.”

  “I don’t ask for miracles,” Aunt B said. “Just things within reason.”

  It would take a miracle to keep Ascanio in line. But now didn’t seem like a good time to mention it.

  AUNT B WANTED TO BE LET OUT HALF A MILE FROM my office, at some bakery. When we got in, Andrea was already there, sitting at her desk. The loyal hound took a running start and hit me in the chest. I could’ve used Grendel’s company last night. But Andrea still needed him more than I did.

  “Did you sleep here?” I asked.

  She raised her chin. “Of course not.”

  Yep, she slept in the office. Sometimes being by yourself in an empty apartment, with nothing but your own craziness for company, was far worse than weathering a night in the office in an uncomfortable bed. At least in the office you could pretend you were still at work and keep busy. I’d been there.

  Derek stuck his head into the fridge. “There is nothing to eat.”

  “Did you not eat before we left?”

  Derek gave me a long-suffering look. “Yes, I did. But by lunch we’ll need food, and we can’t afford to keep running out of the building for munchies.”

  He was right. We had three shapeshifters to feed, and every time one of us left the office, we became a target. “Fine.” I opened the safe and handed him three hundred dollars. “There is a grocery down the street. Get something that will keep well.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Andrea said. “I need to walk the fur-face anyway.”

  They left, and I watched Ascanio bar the door behind them.


  The box containing the evidence from Adam’s house wasn’t at my desk. If Andrea spent the night, she probably took it upstairs. I ran up the steps. There it was, spread out all over the floor into neat little piles: Polaroids on one side, Andrea’s and my notes on the other, little baggie with dead ants in the middle. I sat on the floor. There had to be something here we could use. Something we were missing. So far all I had to work with were theories and suppositions. The volhvs had probably kidnapped Adam; Roman pretty much confirmed it. But unless he was lying, the device was still out there, somewhere. The Red Guard didn’t have the device either, otherwise the Guardsmen wouldn’t have hired us to look for it. Adam couldn’t have moved the device by himself. It weighed a ton. That left the Lighthouse Keepers. They must’ve wanted both Adam and the device, but the volhvs snatched Adam from under their noses, so they took the device instead. And used some sort of vehicle to move it out of Sibley, leaving the trail of screwed-up magic. And I would know what that vehicle looked like if only Ghastek condescended to let me in on it. Ugh.

  If the Keepers had Adam’s gadget, nothing good would come from it. Of all the opponents I had to face, fanatics were the worst. Most people could be bribed, threatened, intimidated. None of the usual methods of persuasion applied to fanatics. They did things that defied logic.

  And we still didn’t know what the hell the device actually did. I sifted through the evidence. Adam had kept a journal, but it was missing, along with all his other notes.

  Twenty minutes later I was no closer to solving anything. I picked up pieces of paper at random, marked in Andrea’s neat, precise hand. LIST OF CLOTHES. LIST OF COOKING UTENSILS. LIST OF GROCERIES. She cataloged the entire house. I scanned the grocery list. Not like I had anything better to do. Cheese, milk, bananas, chocolate, protein shakes . . .

  Wait a bloody minute.

  Sugar, dried apricots . . .

  I stared at the list. I’d seen this list of ingredients before. I’d watched them being put into a blender one by one: bananas, sugar, protein shake, chocolate, milk. It was a nauseating mix Saiman used to drink when he was about to change shape and expected to burn through a lot of calories in a hurry.

  I double-checked the list. Saiman was Atlanta’s premier expert on all things magic. He dealt in sensitive information, owned a part of an illegal martial arts tournament, and had fewer morals than the Norse gods he had descended from. He was a complete and utter egoist, focused solely on gratifying his own wants, and any dealings with him came with a giant price tag. A few months ago his egoism had finally gotten him into trouble. He maneuvered me into playing his escort for the evening and then displayed me for Curran’s benefit to avenge a blow to his pride. Curran didn’t take it well. In fact, I was amazed Saiman was still among the living.

  Saiman also changed shape. Any human body type, any gender. Once he’d turned into a woman, seduced a pagan priest, stolen his magic acorn, and then hired the Mercenary Guild to keep him safe while the priest’s friends and relations turned themselves inside out trying to kill him. The priest he’d seduced happened to be a volhv. And I was the idiot merc sent to guard him. He was the reason why I had to go to Evdokia instead of the volhvs and got my childhood smashed to pieces.

  If Saiman was involved, he could’ve impersonated anyone. He could’ve been one of the guards or he could’ve pretended to be Adam Kamen himself. But why? What the hell did he want? Saiman was loaded. Maybe he was one of the investors ...

  A faint metal clang announced the bar being removed from the door. That was some fast grocery shopping.

  “Hi there!” Ascanio’s voice had the unmistakable overtone of a young guy trying to be smooth.

  “Who are you and where is Kate?” Julie’s voice asked.

  CHAPTER 14

  I GOT UP, PADDED TO THE RAIL, AND LEANED against the wall, hidden in the shadow. From here I had an excellent view of the main room. Ascanio barred the stairs. Julie stood in the middle of the room, with a determined look on her face. Her light hair was pulled into a ponytail. Good balance, light on her toes. Her hand was on one of my throwing knives. No matter how many times I took them away from her, she always managed to steal them.

  “I’m Ascanio Ferara of Clan Bouda. The question is, who are you?”

  “Move aside.”

  “I can’t do that,” Ascanio purred. “I’m under strict orders not to let anyone I don’t know upstairs. And I don’t know you.”

  At least in one respect the school had been good for Julie—they’d made sure she had frequent meals. She’d come a long way from the waif I found in the Honeycomb. Still slender and pale, she looked stronger now, and her legs and arms no longer resembled toothpicks. She was also pretty, a fact Ascanio noticed, judging by his killer smile and the light flexing of his arms.

  One cute face and all my orders of not admitting strangers flew right out the window. The kid was hopeless.

  “Move,” Julie repeated.

  “No. You see, I have a problem. Kate didn’t tell me she was expecting an angel.”

  Bwahahaha.

  Julie blinked, obviously stunned.

  “I’d like to help you.” Ascanio spread his arms. “I just can’t. Kate is a very stern alpha.”

  Stern?

  “She might put me in a hole. Or whip me.”

  No, but she might twist your head off for this.

  Julie arranged her face into a shocked expression. “Whip you? Really?”

  Ascanio nodded. “It’s brutal. But if I had something, some small favor, I might take a chance on being punished.”

  “A small favor?” Julie nodded. “Like what?”

  “A kiss.”

  Julie’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe I’ll come back later.”

  “She’ll be leaving later and my memory is terrible. I might forget you were here and let her leave for the Keep. It’s very difficult to reach her in the Keep. There are many guards.”

  Who would all fall over themselves to deliver her to me.

  Julie stepped back. Ascanio stepped forward. She took another step. He followed, with a fluid shapeshifter grace. He thought he was stalking her. She was pulling him away from the stairs, giving herself room to work.

  “Are you going to be nice if I kiss you?” Julie took another step back.

  “Very nice.”

  “And no tongue.”

  “No tongue.”

  Kill me, somebody.

  Julie motioned to him. “Okay.”

  Ascanio took a step forward. Julie stood on her toes and gently kissed him. Her right hand slid into a leather pouch on her belt. Ascanio leaned forward, gliding his hands over her shoulders. Julie jerked back and smothered a handful of yellowish paste on his face. Wolfsbane. Deep color too, almost orange—potent as hell.

  Ascanio made a strangled noise and clawed at his face, trying to exhale the fire that suddenly exploded in his mouth and nose. Julie hooked his right leg with hers and shoved him back. He crashed like a log. His back slapped the floor, forcing all of the air out of his lungs in a hoarse breath. Julie grabbed his arm, twisted it, flipping him over on his stomach, landed on Ascanio’s back, pulled a plastic tie from her pocket, and locked his wrists.

  I wanted to jump up and down, clapping. We’d practiced this takedown over the Christmas break and she had done it perfectly.

  Julie grabbed Ascanio by his hair, raising his face off the floor, and slid her knife against his throat.

  An eerie hyena noise broke from Ascanio’s lips, a ululating half groan, half laugh, laced with a hoarse snarl, like a creaky barn door swinging open inch by inch. Every hair rose on the back of my neck.

  “I’ll rip you apart!”

  “Oh no.” Julie clicked her tongue. “Did the mean human girl pick on you? Does the little bouda boy want his mommy?”

  “Untie me!”

  “Awww, the little baby is crying. Boohoo. Does the baby need his bottle and his teddy?”

  That plastic tie looked too thin to hold a shapeshifter.r />
  “When I get free, I’ll—”

  “Don’t worry. Your teddy has to be here somewhere. I bet he is upstairs. You lie here like a slug while I go look for him.”

  Ascanio twisted. Hard muscles bulged on his arms. Julie took a step back.

  The boy jerked. A ragged snarl tore out of his throat, his skin ruptured, and a monster spilled forth. The plastic tie snapped apart and a six-and-a-half-foot-tall bouda in a warrior form rolled to his feet. Dark stripes marked his massive limbs, dashing up to his shoulders, where the brown fur flared into a long thick mane. A brown hyena. Interesting. I had only seen one of those before.

  Red eyes stared at Julie from a shockingly inhuman face.

  She raised her knife.

  Ascanio lunged. His clawed fingers caught her wrist. He plucked the knife out of her hand and dropped it to the floor.

  That was just about enough of that. I opened my mouth.

  The front door swung open and Derek walked into the office. Ascanio and Julie froze, her arm still caught in his grip.

  Derek’s eyes sparked with a lethal yellow glow.

  I moved to the stairs. Julie jerked her arm away from Ascanio.

  Derek’s voice was iced over. “Julie, go upstairs.”

  Julie sidestepped Ascanio and swiped her knife off the floor.

  The bouda’s mouth gaped open. Mangled words came out, shredded by his fangs. “Gorna dooo what he said, huh?”

  Surprise, surprise. He could speak in a half-form. That took real talent.

  Julie stuck her tongue out, went to the stairs, and saw me. Her face fell. That’s right. You’re so busted.

  Derek shut the door and looked at Ascanio.

  Ascanio spread his arms, his voice dripping with derision. “What? What? What arrrre you gorna dooo?”

  “I’m going to teach you a lesson.” Derek shrugged off his sweatshirt and draped it over the chair.

  Ascanio snapped his huge teeth. “You won’t teach me anything, but I give you a few morr scarrrs. You’rrrre tooo prretty.”

  Derek took a few steps forward and motioned to Ascanio with his hand. “That’s a nice half-form. Let’s see what you can do with it.”