by K. F. Breene
“Come again?” my mother said, inching forward in her seat to look around me and see Reagan.
“She picked up a new trick on a bounty hunting gig. She can now nullify my magic.” Reagan pushed away from the wall. “Or…she could. We haven’t had the chance to try it in the last twenty-four hours. The second the new trick fails, though, it is on.” She moved her finger through the air. “Anyone want a whiskey?”
Callie raised her hand. “How did she— Did you say goblin?” Callie shook her head. “I might need a couple shots to make sense of this.”
“I’ll have a whiskey as well.” My mother raised her hand.
“I see the double standards are in full effect,” I said as my mother adjusted the shotgun so she had a better hold on it. “Suddenly you’re a whiskey drinker, and I suppose you’ll harass me if I partake…”
“Nothing has changed, I’m just not hiding it from you anymore.” My mother waved me on. “Now, go help Reagan get drinks.”
My mouth dropped open, because I’d started walking without meaning to.
“No, no, Emery. You stay here,” my mother said as I left the room. Her tone was ominous.
I should’ve gone back and saved him, but…well, he was a big boy.
“My mother and Callie in the same house is going to be hell,” I said to Reagan as I entered the kitchen. “They fight as often as they get along. And when they get along, they won’t rest until everyone does what they say.”
Reagan chuckled and looked up from pouring the whiskey. “Nah, they’ll be fine. They can bitch to each other when we ignore their express desire that we stay here and out of trouble.”
I slipped onto a chair at the L-shaped island. “What are you planning?”
She took a deep breath and leaned a hand against the counter as Emery entered the kitchen behind me. With a flat expression, he tapped one of the empty glasses and slipped into the seat beside me.
“There’s beer in there.” Reagan jerked her head toward the fridge. “Or wine.”
“I need something stronger,” he said.
“That’s what’s great about dating a vampire.” Reagan went to the freezer and got out an ice cube tray with giant cubes. “All the in-laws are long since dead. He didn’t get so lucky, of course. You think Ms. Bristol is bad? Just think what it must be like when your girlfriend’s dad runs hell.” Reagan pushed a glass of whiskey at me.
I pushed it away again. Spiting my mother wasn’t worth the foul taste. “I thought the Underworld wasn’t hell?”
“Come on; this will help with the headache.” She pushed the glass back.
Emery’s head whipped around, his eyes now studying my face.
“Big mouth,” I mumbled. “But it’s fine.”
“Yeah, sure. Here. Maybe it’ll go down easier with ice.” She dropped one of the large cubes into my glass. Whiskey splashed. “I know how to tell when you’re hurt. I have to, or I might kick you too hard. Although…” She tilted her head. “No headache right now, huh?”
“No. It’s good.” The whiskey smell wafted toward my nose. I grimaced and pushed the glass to the side for Emery. “I’ll have wine or beer. Or water. Water would be a nice option once in a while. You know, so we don’t turn into alcoholics.”
“Says the sheltered girl with the mother who has secretly been drinking her whole life.” Reagan stilled, clearly thinking over what she’d said. “Yeah, good call. You’re probably right to be worried. Beer it is.”
“That’s not…” I let it go. A beer actually sounded good. Traveling in luxury with Darius was definitely awesome, but it still wore on a girl.
“What’d you find out?” Emery asked, dropping his hand to my thigh.
Reagan finished pouring the drinks and pushed the bottle aside. “I found four tripwires that seem to be more of a watch-and-report situation. That definitely sounds like the Guild to me.”
“They’d have to be within…a certain distance for the spells to alert them.” Emery took a sip of his drink and his face tightened up.
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s not good. I don’t know why you bother.”
He squeezed my thigh softly, his eyes twinkling. “How strong were they?” he asked Reagan.
She lounged against the island as Darius came in, dressed “down” in a button-up shirt and designer jeans. If he owned sweats, I’d never seen them. “Upper-middle tier, I’d say.”
“We’re not talking about vampires.” Emery huffed out a laugh.
“Did you know what I meant?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, then.” She glanced at Darius before turning to the cabinets behind her and pulling out another bottle and a snifter. “We’ve also got vampires patrolling. Not ours. They clearly knew where the tripwires were, and avoided them. Middle to lower tier. Minions. They got close enough to the house to make me nervous, but they didn’t mess with the ward.”
“How do you know they were vampires?” I asked.
She spread her hands, the cap still in one of them. “I’m awesome.”
“Riiight…”
“Any shifters?” Emery asked.
She shrugged. “Not in animal form. I didn’t see any tracks. Just boots, shoes, and feet with vampire claws.”
“Is there a way to track those who come onto the property?” Darius asked, joining Reagan at the island. He took his snifter before switching it to the other hand and wrapping his arm around the top of Reagan’s hips. He looked…almost human. “To find out where they go?”
“Yes…” A line formed between Emery’s eyebrows and he turned to look at me, his gaze hazy. “We can track them, but the problem is distance. If they’re far enough away, the magic trail will fade. And it’ll dissipate with time. Which is why I was asking about their power level. They’d have to stay somewhat close to feel anything from the tripwires. A couple miles, maybe, given the power level of the spells. Maybe a touch more.”
“This house isn’t as secluded as it seems,” Darius said. “There is a town not far away. Houses between here and there.” He swirled his cognac, staring down at it. “Tracking them would be answer enough.”
“Tomorrow night, then,” Reagan said.
Darius met her eyes, and silence fell between them.
I lifted my eyebrows. They usually weren’t so lovey-dovey among other people. When my lifted eyebrows didn’t do the trick, I cleared my throat.
“Patience, Turdswallop,” Emery said with a laugh.
“They can do this later.” I motioned between them, and Darius noticed. He moved his gaze to mine. Reagan looked away. Still no one spoke. “This is getting awkward.”
Reagan laughed and shook her head. She grabbed two of the drinks. “Penny, you are not one for details, I’ll say that.”
“Why?” I frowned at her. “What did I miss?”
“Their conversation,” Emery said.
I rubbed my head. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“Yes, about that,” Darius said. I perked up. “I do not have much time to research your condition. I can’t spare the time, if we hope to have any chance with the Guild.” His gaze settled on Emery. “The research, as it were, needs to come from another source if we hope to know what is going on.”
Emery nodded, but didn’t comment.
“Okay, look, I don’t read subtle. What is going on?” I asked, annoyed. I pushed off the stool to get that beer before glancing over my shoulder to make sure my mother wasn’t walking down the hall toward me. This was why I didn’t want her hanging around. I couldn’t be myself. Or normal.
“Darius and Reagan can communicate silently,” Emery said, “and Darius has been hounding me about something for months. We’re all on the same page.”
“Well, I mean…” I raised my hand. “Not all of us, obviously. They can communicate silently?”
“Emery, since you know this area a little better than Reagan, it might be wise if you took the lead tomorrow,” Darius said, ignoring me. As usual. “She’s been instructed to k
eep a low profile. All you should do is get a feel for what’s going on. Keep your magic up and your heads down. I’ll work out the particulars with Vlad and Roger. We have a map layout of the Guild. We’ll be starting there.”
Emery blew out a breath as he watched me come back to the island. He absently took the bottle and twisted the cap off before handing it back. “Reagan trying to lie low, and Penny being Penny. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
13
“Oh hey, I remember this bar,” Reagan said the next evening as we sat in a rental car in the heart of Seattle. Down the street was our destination, as determined by Emery—the bar owned by his friend Joe, a wolf shifter with a gruff attitude and kind heart. His bar had been a gathering place for Guild mages, or at least wannabe members. “I’m not sure the bartender likes me much.”
“That doesn’t really surprise me, given that you chase the shifters in New Orleans around with bread sticks.” I checked the compartments of my utility belt, feeling the pulse of a few of my power stones. Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, a brown rock with various colors slashed through it, was desperate to get out and get into some danger.
“That was one time,” she said. “They all knew I was joking. I was pretending the bread stick was a sword, for fuck’s sake. Clearly I was joking.”
“They thought you were going to bust their heads in. They did not know you were joking.”
“Well…if I caught them…I would’ve. But all in good fun! They’re shifters. They’re used to fighting for their position. What’s a little scuffle among friends?”
“Definitely a recipe for disaster,” Emery said quietly before flicking up the flaps on his utility belt, which was exactly the same as mine.
“It’ll be fine. So far I don’t see anyone suspicious.” Reagan turned in her seat to look behind. “No one followed us.”
Emery nodded, scanning the street. “Since our new wards didn’t go off at Darius’s, I’d suspect no one wandered by last night or early today. More sentries have been posted, so that makes sense.” He looked over at me. “You have your phone?”
I patted the first compartment of my belt. “Got it. My mom is on standby.”
He glanced in the rearview at Reagan. “You’re positive the dual-mages are staying put?”
Reagan grimaced, a much nicer look now that Callie had regrown her hair. “No. But they probably are. They aren’t used to staying at home, but they seemed to see the sense in keeping the scouting group small. Hopefully that means they’ll stay put. It’s never a given, though.”
“Sorry,” I said softly, offering him a little smile. I felt bad for him. He could’ve had a quiet life in the wilds. Sleeping in the dirt had to be better than dealing with my crazy mother, a couple crazy mages, Reagan, and a bunch of meddling vampires.
His eyes softened and he took my hand. “Worth it.”
“Ew. Get a room—”
“Really?” I shot Reagan a glare. “Did I say anything last night when you were staring into vampire dearest’s lovely brown eyes?”
“They’re hazel. With green specks—”
“No, I did not. So you can just wait.”
“Yes, you did, and I was talking to him with my brain. Why aren’t you this lippy with your mother?”
I huffed and turned to face forward, ignoring Emery’s silent chuckles. “I’m practicing on you. I’m working up to my mother.”
“Joy,” Reagan said dryly, and Emery laughed harder.
“Is this what your bounty hunter gigs are like?” he asked. “The two of you bickering the whole time?”
“Nah.” Reagan adjusted her fanny pack. She didn’t want to get a utility belt, fearing it would be easier for people to realize that she wasn’t really using the casings she carried to do magic. She was a headcase. “Half the time she is running away screaming from the mark. We only bicker the other half of the time. Come on; let’s go. We’re losing the daylight.”
“Why are we doing this during the day, again?” I asked, stepping out of the car as I ballooned a concealment spell around myself. It made me uneasy to think that Darius and his people couldn’t serve as backup.
Emery exited the other side of the car and put up the same spell, but with little embellishments and intricacies that would make it more durable.
“You always seem to show me up,” I grumbled, moving so Reagan could get out of the car and climb right into my spell. “Don’t touch anything, Reagan, remember.”
“I know, I know— Crap.” The spell started to dissolve when a flare of her magic zipped through her fingers as she stepped into it. “My bad. Can you nullify my magic as we go?”
“Doing that takes a lot of concentration and energy. I don’t think I could do that and maintain a spell at the same time.”
“Good to know.” She clasped her hands low and kept her elbows close to her body. I increased the size of the spell.
“Let’s merge these spells and get going,” Emery said, coming around to us.
“You can merge spells?” Reagan put out her hands, her elbows still held in close, so she could feel what we were doing. “I didn’t think that was possible once the spells had been realized.”
“It is,” he said with glimmering eyes, “if you have a clever little turdswallop to accidentally do it when she’s mad that your spell is taking up too much room.”
“That’s a bad word, just so you know.” I tried to hide my threatening smile. “When you call me turdswallop, you’re calling me a bad word.”
“In British,” he said, his smile growing.
I rolled my eyes, letting my smile break free. “We’re venturing out while it’s still sunny…why?”
“Because they have vampires too,” Reagan said. “But they don’t have shifters.”
“Then why didn’t we leave earlier?”
“Because they have a lot more mages than we have shifters, and we might need the vampires to save our asses. I could get us out of a bind, but that might get me into a bigger bind.”
“And me,” I said, grabbing Emery’s bicep like it was a walking stick. “The size of this freaking thing…” I moved my hand down to his forearm so I could actually grab on. “And if your father found out about you, it would get me into a bind, too. Because if I can null your magic, I can probably null his. Right? Didn’t you get your weird from him?”
“Like you can talk.”
“I think I got my weird from both parents, actually. They didn’t hand over any normal to go with it.” I tuned in to the various magical vibes of the area flowing around me like the breeze. “Well, even if I couldn’t null his magic, I could figure out something. We beat a bunch of mages and mercenaries in dumb hats; we can take on your dad.”
“We probably wouldn’t be enough,” she said in a strangely thick voice. “But I’ve noted it for the files.”
“Two naturals and a nut case?” Emery’s voice was a low hum. He was probably worried about sound leaking out of the spell. “We’d dominate.”
Reagan huffed. She didn’t comment, but her magic surged. I grinned, ready to tease her about her squishy heart, when a foreign feeling wound around my leg. Just my leg, and nothing else.
“Slow,” I said quietly. The feeling tingled as it worked up my leg, lightly tapping. “Something is…touching me.” I opened my eyes and looked down. Nothing was there. No magical strands or weaves. “Reagan, do you feel anything?”
“Not magically.” She put her hand on my shoulder and turned, scanning. “Something is here, though, watching us. I feel…danger. You can’t tell what kind of magic it is?”
“No. I’ve never felt it before. It’s…” I tilted my head, then flinched at a sharp pain, like a pinch, on my hip. My magic welled up in response. Emery’s Plain Jane power stone, which I carried around because I was the designated power stone jockey, throbbed in its compartment in my belt. “Ow.”
“What?” Emery asked. He tensed and stopped before turning slowly.
“Something pinched me.” I rubbed the offendin
g spot, feeling a light breath of intent.
Observe.
“It’s watching us,” I said in a hush, my eyes widening as I looked around for something hiding in the shadows.
“I literally just said it was watching us,” Reagan whispered.
A few people ambled along the sidewalk on the other side of the street, by themselves or chatting in groups of two. One person wandered toward us, thankfully stopping at a car up the way. Everyone seemed loose and normal—no one else seemed to have a clue something dangerous, or several dangerous things if you counted us, lurked in their presence.
I shook my head, frowning. My intuition, which usually picked up odd lurkers, didn’t even stir. Without that magical touch, I would’ve had no clue someone was in the area, spying on us.
“Sun is out, so it can’t be a vampire.” Reagan, her hand still on my shoulder, turned so as to better see behind us. “We should be invisible, so it is something that can see through magic, or at least feel it.”
“Druid,” Emery said, sounding as close to afraid as I’d ever heard him. He rolled his shoulders. “It’s a druid.”
Reagan swore quietly and a burst of her magic shook my bones. I barely patched up the spell before it dissipated entirely.
“What’s a druid?” I asked quietly, sweat beading on my brow from Emery and Reagan’s reactions. They wouldn’t react this way to a mage or vampire, so whatever this was, it had to be ten times worse.
“Any druid in the Brink would be of the warrior class. They’re usually used as assassins.” Reagan pushed me to get me moving. “I’ve heard they can hide in plain daylight. Right next to you, and you wouldn’t know it until the druid’s knife was in your neck. I’ve never seen one. I don’t even know what they look like.”
“Like large men or lithe women,” Emery said quietly.
“Are you positive that’s what it is?” Reagan asked. “Do you see it?”
We moved slowly down the sidewalk, my magic rolling and boiling above me, ready to be used in a hastily created spell.
“I didn’t see it, no.” Emery’s hands were in front of him, prepared for battle. “I was hunted by one of them. After I escaped the Guild the first time, they sent one. I know exactly the effect a warrior druid has on my senses. Exactly.”
