Soaring in Air: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Magic of Nasci Book 5)

by DM Fike

  I arrived back home to find the garage empty, both of my parents already gone to work. They apparently hadn’t noticed my absence because they hadn’t bothered leaving me a note. The smell of coffee lingered as I poured myself a glass of water. I stared at the job application attached to the fridge, the catalyst for last night’s walk.

  I’d been right. No retail job for me, not with my magic returning.

  But then what? I couldn’t just rejoin the Talol Wilds shepherds either. They’d want me bound for my previous transgressions. I wasn’t about to go waltzing back to the homestead only to have Guntram seal my pithways for good.

  That left only one option: Vincent.

  I powered up Dad’s computer, nestled on a built-in shelf in the dining room. Vincent had mentioned something about Mt. Hood and seismic activity. I wished now that I’d let him give his spiel, but at least I could do a little Internet sleuthing. Typing on the browser’s search bar, I entered “Mt. Hood” and clicked on news.

  I did not expect a deluge of recent news articles.

  My jaw dropped as I scrolled all the headlines on the first page. “Mt. Hood Rocked by Earthquakes.” “Sudden Uptick in Tremors Scares Locals.” “Oregon State Officials Reassure Public after Seismic Flurry.”

  I tried to reconcile it all. Everything that had gone wrong in the past few months had climaxed on Mt. Hood. The shepherds had been guarding a dome of lava, the blood of Nasci herself. Rafe, a bound shepherd with a murderous edge, had tricked me into helping him access it. He made me believe I was helping my fellow shepherds by amassing a bunch of vaettur pith, while in reality, it only fueled his own power. He used that awful pith I’d cleansed to attack the shepherds and reach the lava dome. If not for an augur named Tabitha, he might have absorbed it all, killed the shepherds protecting it, then gone on a murder spree across Oregon. Tabitha threw herself in the lava to stop him, though, cutting short both of their lives.

  That should have ended all the drama on Mt. Hood. The lava dome had vanished. There was nothing left on that mountain but horrible memories.

  I clicked to the second page of news links and flinched at the top headline. It read, “Earthquakes Collapse Site of Wonderland Resort,” dated several days after Rafe’s demise.

  My palms went dry. Rafe had hated Wonderland because of the environmental damage the company’s new resort would cause the mountain. Filled with dread, I clicked for the whole article.

  An in-depth read confirmed the worst. There had indeed been an earthquake after our fight on Mt. Hood, triggering a landslide that buried most of the original construction site. I gasped at a photograph of a backhoe stuck twenty feet in crumbling earth, a dead insect with metal legs sticking up in the air.

  “It makes no sense,” CEO of Wonderland Resorts Lee Foster quoted for the reporter. “Our geologists conducted extensive studies in the area. The area should have withstood the earthquake’s relatively moderate magnitude.”

  When pressed whether construction of the resort would go on, Foster insisted he planned on seeing the project through to the end. He refused to comment on the ongoing protests against the resort.

  I leaned back in the creaky office chair. Earthquakes rarely occurred around a lava dome because shepherds guarded it, but Rafe’s attacks could have caused something we could not predict. Were the quakes a natural consequence of our battle? Or worse, did Tabitha’s sacrifice into the lava have something to do with it?

  I had no immediate answers, but I wasn’t at a complete dead end. Vincent had mentioned other seismic activity across Oregon. The Internet didn’t have much info on that, but then again, Vincent had access to governmental databases I couldn’t view online. I had no idea where Vincent went after our little chat, but with my pithways open, I could travel through wisp channels again. They connected locations all around the Pacific Northwest. I could catch up with him in Florence, Oregon and take it from there.

  I rummaged through my bedroom for my standard shepherd gear, a hoodie and shorts. I felt naked without a charm necklace, which I normally wore for extra pith and defense, but I hadn’t thought to bring one with me when I left the homestead. At least I found a pair of double A batteries in the junk drawer, just in case I needed to whip out some lightning. I wrapped them in a plastic bag along with a newly issued credit card and shoved them into my kangaroo pouch. Lacing my hiking boots by the door, I twisted the front doorknob to leave.

  I realized belatedly that I couldn’t run off without letting my parents know. I ambled back to the kitchen, unsure of how to tell them. I tried writing a note on printer paper, but I threw three attempts away in rapid succession. Regardless of how pushy or judgmental my parents were, they cared about me. I couldn’t wait around until they came home, but I could at least call one of them.

  My father is notoriously bad about answering his phone so, cringing, I picked up the house line (who still has these?) and called my mom’s cell. She answered on the second ring.

  “Gene!” she exclaimed. “Why are you calling me at work? Is something wrong?”

  I took a deep breath, mentally prepping myself for the inevitable. “Mom, I’m leaving again for Oregon. You might not see me for a while.”

  I rubbed my temples against the litany of outrage that followed. “What do you mean ‘leaving?’ You just got back! What about getting a job? You better not be going back to those hippie friends of yours.”

  I began to regret my noble decision. “I’ll be fine, Mom, I promise.”

  “Fine? Do you think you were ‘fine’ when you showed up on our doorstep a few weeks ago, morose and depressed? You’ve been holed up watching TV since you came home. I swear, Gene, whatever they did to you won’t get any better. Once someone shows their true colors, they never…”

  This would never end. My fingers twitched to hang up, but then an idea popped in my head. It was either a great idea or the worst idea, but it was the only card I had left to play.

  Biting my lip, I interrupted, “I’m actually going with Vincent, Mom.”

  Her monologue immediately halted. Five whole seconds passed without a peep from her, then ten. I listened for the sound of a loud thud, indicating she had fainted.

  “Mom?” I asked.

  “Well.” She cleared her throat. “I guess… well. Okay. Okay, then, Gene. Maybe… maybe you should go then.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “I mean…” I could hear the hesitation in her voice. “I mean maybe.” I imagined her in business casual attire, an angel on one shoulder, a demon on the other. One argued that Vincent seemed like a nice guy who might take care of me in the long run. The other hated me out of her sight and rallied for me to stay. I had no idea which position represented the angel and which the demon.

  I decided to play to her warring conscience. “Vincent’s a police officer, Mom. He asked for my advice again. It’s like a job.”

  I’d said the magic word. “A job?” she repeated. But then her voice lowered suspiciously. “But I thought you said you didn’t help out much with those other cases.”

  Oops. I had said that. “I couldn’t emasculate him in front of you. Cops have their pride and all.”

  “Oh.” She took the bait. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. A job.”

  Time to reel her in. “But I gotta go now, Mom. Sorry I can’t wait until you guys get home. You’ll tell dad for me?”

  “Sure, honey, I will. And Gene, know we’ll always be here for you, even if you’ve got no one else.”

  She always said those lines when I left home. They usually irritated me. Who wants to admit defeat and live with their folks? But after everything I’d been through the last few months, those words really gave me the warm fuzzies.

  “Thanks, Mom.” Then, awkwardly because I’m bad at open affection like my dad, I added, “Love you.”

  “And I love you, honey.” Unlike my words, her declaration came out naturally. I guess I never give my mom enough credit for that. She may be a nag and a bit pushy, but s
he loves without condition. She hated my lifestyle and still looked out for me. I really was lucky to be born into that.

  CHAPTER 5

  SIMPLE WORDS CANNOT express the pure joy that coursed through me as I cut across the wilderness. Sure, my pithways hadn’t fully opened, which dulled my senses like listening to a conversation underwater, but the ability to absorb and release pith gave me a contact high. I conjured light breezes and drank water directly out of the air simply because I could. I waved at a passing parade of mama skunk and her kits. I swore I could feel Nasci’s heartbeat pounding beneath me in the earth. I didn’t realize how much I missed that part of me until it returned.

  I took a long route back, adding hours to my trip. It allowed me to savor the experience, true, but it also minimized chance encounters with other shepherds. Guntram and the others wanted me bound, so I took only the most remote wisp channels, their soft blue twinkling lights teleporting me vaguely southward. My path even took me near the Bitai Wilds border, a neighboring desert region not monitored by the Talol shepherds. But whether sagebrush and sand, or sun and seaside, my pithways sang.

  I arrived at the outskirts of Florence by late afternoon, a decent walk away from Vincent’s apartment. Shepherds don’t have a lot of mobility in cities, where concrete and power lines cut off a lot of natural pith. It’s one of many reasons why most shepherds avoid civilization. Me, though, I love me some modern living. I enjoyed the flat walk along the backstreets, the sidewalks mostly to myself as everyone else used cars.

  I couldn’t quiet my burgeoning excitement at seeing Vincent again. If you’d asked me straight up about him, I’d probably babble about how we met under less than ideal circumstances (he shot his firearm at me, I almost left him for dead in the forest, you know, the usual). In reality, though, our chance relationship had blossomed into something far more complicated. He obviously liked me on some level. No man who tracked me down after all the shenanigans I’d pulled could feel nothing for me. And I definitely cared about him, despite my attempts at burying it. The groggy kiss we’d shared before I left for Mt. Hood made me blush just thinking about it.

  But what were we exactly? I’m not sure I could label it. He was a game warden who lived in the “real world.” He did not dabble in magic. I am (or was?) a shepherd with feared lightning capabilities who definitely should not mingle with the magicless throng. Between that and our largely incompatible lifestyles, it left a lot to be desired, romantically speaking.

  I cut through one last quiet neighborhood and through a swatch of trees before I emerged into Vincent’s apartment parking lot. He lived in a modest two-story complex with external door access only. The new building was utilitarian, the kind you only lived in for a year or two at most, unless you were a bachelor too lazy to move.

  When I didn’t spot Vincent’s silver car, I groaned. Maybe he’d stayed in the Seattle area on vacation or something. Despite not having a clue when he’d get back, I had nothing better to do. I nestled in some nearby foliage to spy on his unit for the remaining daylight hours.

  I didn’t have to wait for long. Vincent came rolling in from the busy roadway only twenty minutes later. My heartrate quickened as he parked. I stood to greet him when out popped not only Vincent but a second person from the Subaru’s passenger side. A brunette in a low-cut tank top and booty shorts giggled at something he said. Her gorgeous locks fell in perfect waves to mid-shoulder, a light summer breeze completing that runway model vibe. She grabbed a petite designer piece of luggage from his trunk.

  I’d caught a glimpse of her only once before, and that time had not been pleasant. Vincent’s ex-wife.

  My pulse pounded now for all the wrong reasons. Vincent’s relationship with his ex had been a huge point of contention between us. Right when we were getting serious, I discovered them having dinner together completely by accident. Vincent swore up, down, and sideways that they were just friends, but the way she batted her eyelashes at him, you could tell she didn’t share that opinion.

  And with Vincent’s easy smile back at her, he sure didn’t look like he minded the attention.

  Heat rising up my neck, I couldn’t decide who I wanted to strangle first. So, he came to visit me yesterday in Seattle, but it took him all of one day to hook up with his ex? If Vincent was truly over his ex-wife, as he desperately claimed, he wouldn’t have rebounded to her so fast. Blood boiling, I swirled on my heels to leave without being seen.

  If she hadn’t let out a dismayed gasp, I might not have eavesdropped on the rest of their conversation. “But I thought I’d come upstairs with you.”

  Vincent frowned. “We’ve been over this, Christy. I’m not interested in you that way anymore.”

  She glared at him, scrutinizing his face even as he turned away. “You’ve been acting strange the entire drive back. Mopey. Distracted.” A scowl spread on her lips. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”

  He set his jaw but said nothing.

  She took a few steps forward. “Did she reject you or something, Vinny?”

  I stifled the urge to gag. Vinny? Ugh.

  His grimace indicated he wasn’t too pleased with the name either. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Sounds like she dumped you. Who cares?” She hooked a hand through his arm. “That means you’re available. C’mon, Vinny. I’m free. You’re free. It’s not like we haven’t done it before. Let’s have a little fun, just for tonight. No strings attached, I promise.”

  For an eternity, the world stilled around me. I couldn’t feel a smidge of humidity, not the slightest breeze. Everything hung motionless as I waited for Vincent to answer.

  He did not even hesitate. He pushed Christy off him. “You know I’m not that kind of guy.”

  Christy’s tone shifted from seductive to angry. “Am I not good enough for you unless you’re madly in love me with?”

  Vincent sighed as she stalked away from him toward a green sedan parked nearby. “Christy,” he began.

  “You can keep your stupid knight-in-shining-armor routine!” she yelled back at him. “Life’s not video games and comic books, Vincent. There’s no such thing as true love. One day, you’re going to have accept that or be lonely forever.”

  He made two fists at his side. “So what, Christy? Should I have let you cheat on me forever? Just shrug my shoulders and say, ‘Oh well, that’s life?’”

  She flung her car door open and tossed the luggage inside. “I made one mistake! I was young, dumb, and insecure. And now you won’t ever let me live it down.”

  Vincent unclenched all his muscles in surrender. “Christy, we don’t have to keep dragging up the past. We were awful together. We’re better off this way, as friends.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, Vinny, but one day you’ll regret it. And then it’ll be too late.” She shoved herself into the car. The engine roared to life, as angry as her mood. She rolled down the window to get in one last word as she drove off. “Enjoy your holier-than-thou life.”

  Her tires squealed as she sped out of the parking lot.

  Vincent walked away from the argument with only a slight hunch in his shoulders. He unlocked his apartment and disappeared inside in anticlimactic fashion.

  It took me a lot longer to recover. My emotions went to war with one another. On the one hand, what caused Vincent to drive around with his ex the day after he visited me in Seattle? But on the other, dear lord, he’d really laid the smackdown on that scheming chick. In the end, the latter sentiment won the battle in my brain.

  Vincent hadn’t been lying to me. He wasn’t dating his ex.

  Honestly, Vincent could have slept with her, and it wouldn’t have meant a thing. I had told Vincent in Lynnwood to go fly. He didn’t realize I would show up on his doorstep to reverse that decision the next day. Most guys I’d ever known would have jumped at the chance for unattached sex.

  With a lightness in my step that had nothing to do with air pith, I jogged up the stairs to Vincent’s apartment. I gave a brisk knock, t
hen tapped my toes waiting for him to answer.

  He’d only been inside minutes but took his sweet time answering. I considered rapping again when the door finally inched open. He didn’t have a peephole to identify me, so he charged ahead with, “Look, Christy, I meant what I said. I—” Then he noticed me instead of his ex, and he nearly tripped over the weathering strip. “Ina?”

  “Hi!” I waved, grinning from ear to ear.

  Vincent glanced around wide-eyed. “I’m sorry, I thought you were…” he trailed off as he realized what he might let slip.

  “Your ex-wife?” I finished helpfully.

  He smacked his hand against his face, groaning. “I swear, it’s not what it looks like.”

  I stopped him with an upturned palm. “You’re right. It’s not.”

  He glanced at me through splayed fingers. “What?”

  I leaned toward him. “I watched your whole argument with her in the parking lot.”

  He went back a half-step. “You did?”

  I nodded. “You’re not sleeping with her.”

  He took it as a question and not a statement. “Of course not! I may be an idiot sometimes, but I learn from my mistakes. I gave her a ride to Seattle so she could visit some friends, but nothing else happened. My goal was to find you, I swear.”

  I placed a hand on his wrist, interrupting his tirade. “I believe you.”

  He let his hands fall back to his sides, his defenses shriveling. “Oh.”

  For a long moment, we stared at each other, two awkward people having no idea what to do next. I wanted to say so much, but for once, couldn’t find any words.

  He finally broke the silence. “How did you get here, Ina?”

  “Wisp channels. It took me all day.”

  His eyebrows came together. “You said you didn’t have magic.”