The owl sat in the middle of the path with wings tucked up at its side. The stillness around me increased, becoming a soundless void that made my head swim. Unlike the wolves from the night before or the bear in the news footage, this owl seemed entirely benign. It didn’t make any move to attack. It simply sat on the path, observing me with intelligent oval eyes set into a white-feathered face. It tilted its head to one side then the other. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I felt in that moment, but I was struck with the distinct impression the owl was judging my worthiness.
Letting go of the protective shield spell, I activated my mage sight. No fae forms revealed themselves, but the owl did have a brighter than expected aura of energy hovering around it. All living creatures carried energy that was a sort of magic. Some called it a soul. I thought of it more as the spark of life that made us more than unthinking bags of meat. My own magic was rooted in that life energy; I simply had a pool of excess from which I could draw in order to cast spells.
As weird as it was to accept, this owl’s aura reminded me of the few other mages I’d observed with my second sight. It was as though the owl was some kind of animal mage. The image was so startling, I expected the bird to open its beak and start talking to me.
Instead, it lifted one wing and nipped out with its beak to pluck a feather from its plumage. It then extended both wings out to the side, flapping downward in one powerful motion that sent it soaring towards me. Caught off-guard by such a fearsomely intelligent creature flying directly at my head, I stumbled backwards, tripping over my heels to fall flat on my ass. The owl flew past me, the feather dropping from its beak to land in my lap before the snow-white bird disappeared into the trees.
Sound rushed in to fill the void. My ears rang with the sudden loudness of it. Even the crunch of the snow seemed abnormally thunderous when I struggled to my feet. A bitter wind whipped through the small glade, stinging my cheeks. The snow that had a moment ago sparkled so brightly fell flat and gray when clouds engulfed the sun. It seemed as though the temperature dropped ten degrees in a matter of seconds. I tucked the feather into an inside pocket of my jacket, jammed my hands into my pockets, and huddled against the chill which seeped straight through my clothing and into my bones.
Another storm was brewing. Fear gnawed at the pit of my stomach, urging me towards the chalet and the girl I should never have left out of my sight.
Chapter Twelve
Ada greeted me when I entered the chalet. She let me know Nicola still hadn’t come down from her room, and that lunch would be ready in forty-five minutes. I considered letting Nicola sleep a little longer, but after the bizarre encounter with the owl, I felt a growing sense of unease that prompted me to go up to her room to ensure she was indeed sleeping off her hangover. Cracking the door quietly, I peered in and saw the lumpy form of her body beneath the sheets. The blankets had been pulled all the way up to the pillow, making it impossible to see her hair or face. Wanting to be sure I wasn’t looking at a pile of pillows instead of the girl that should have been lying there, I tiptoed into the bedroom and leaned over the bed.
“Little shit,” I said under my breath.
The oddly shaped form under the blanket had looked just like a collection of pillows because that’s exactly what it was. A glance at the nightstand confirmed her phone was gone. I checked the en-suite bathroom just to be sure she wasn’t hiding in the shower or something equally juvenile, but the warmer air and light film of moisture on the tile walls were evidence enough she’d showered and slipped out without Ada noticing.
“You didn’t hear the shower running?” I asked Ada. “I thought I told you to check on her every thirty minutes.”
“I did! I swear I did,” Ada said. The poor woman looked like she was on the verge of tears. “I checked on her just twenty minutes ago. Nicola must have showered while I was vacuuming. It’s not like I can just sit around all day watching the girl. Mr. Bloedermeyer hired me to keep his house clean. Watching Nicola is supposed to be your job.”
She was right of course. I should have been the one keeping an eye on her. It wasn’t like I could have taken Nicola on a field trip to talk to Nathan Rivers, though. He’d never have opened up the way he had, especially if he’d known who the girl was. Nathan quite openly hated the Bloedermeyers. Bringing Nicola with me would have made trying to talk to him an exercise in frustration.
“Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” I asked. “Did you notice the car service pull up?”
Ada’s face blanched. She chewed absently on her pinky fingernail while mumbling something I couldn’t quite make out.
“I might have heard one of the cars leave the garage,” she said more loudly when I pressed her for information. “When I went to check, I noticed the Porsche missing. Now that they’ve cleared the roads, I’d assumed Mr. Bloedermeyer had come home to take it. Nicola doesn’t even have a driver’s license.”
Great. Not only had my charge flown the coop, but she’d stolen her dad’s car to do it. She could be halfway to anywhere by now. Even under the assumption she hadn't left the area, I was still dealing with a region too broad to search on my own. If Chase had been with me from the beginning, he might have hacked Nicola’s phone so we could track her. If I’d had half a brain, it might have occurred to me to ask for Chase’s help to do the same. I supposed I could call the plates in to the police, but that would only lead to Nicola being pulled over and potentially arrested. At the very least, they’d put her in a patrol car to bring her home. I couldn’t trust that having her name broadcast over the police radio wouldn’t paint a target on her back for anyone with a scanner or a cop feeding them information.
“Does the Porsche have on-board navigation?” I asked Ada. “Something we can use to track her down?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “It’s an older model Mr. Bloedermeyer had restored. The car is his pride and joy. He never takes it out in the winter, and even in the summer he only drives it to the city and back. To be honest, I had thought it odd he’d taken it out today. I should have thought to check on Nicola. This is all my fault.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” I said. “Nicola probably would have figured out another way to sneak out even if I’d been sitting outside her bedroom door. Right now we have to concentrate on finding her.”
Ada looked at her hand as if suddenly realizing she'd been chewing her nails, then thrust it downward, smoothing her apron while she worked up the courage to say something.
“Do you know something that can help us?” I asked. “If you do, spit it out.”
“First, I must ask you something that might sound odd,” she said. “Yesterday in the hot tub I smelled something in the water. Were you responsible for that?”
“Look, if this is about the filtration system, I already told Nicola it wouldn’t be a problem—”
Ada shook her head quickly. “No no, it’s not that. It’s just… I thought I detected something unusual in the odor. Something, this is going to sound crazy, but something… magic?”
Oh shit.
“Magic?” I asked as innocently as I could manage. “Like, hocus pocus magic?”
Ada stopped fidgeting with her apron. She reached up to her neck and tugged at a slim silver chain, sliding it out of the front of her uniform to show me the tiny wooden charm attached to it. Now, anyone can buy a pentacle on the internet. This one, looked like it had been made by crudely burning a pattern into the wood with a brand or soldering iron. What’s not so easy to replicate, and what wouldn’t be noticed by anyone without some version of supernatural sight, was the aura of magic encompassing it. The only reason I hadn’t noticed it until now was because I hadn’t even thought to look.
That’s how terrible a bodyguard I was. In attempting to secure the house, I hadn’t even ruled out the one person closer to Nicola than anyone else. While none of the threats had come from within the Chalet, it wasn’t impossible that Ada could have been using her proximity to Nicola to
mark her with a sort of psychic homing beacon for the creatures that had already tried to attack us.
I called power to my hands and gripped Ada by the fabric of her uniform. Pushing her up against the nearest wall, I let the energy flow from my skin into hers, adding a bit of electrical oomph to my grasp. It wouldn’t be enough to hurt her, but the subtle current would serve as a warning of what I was holding back.
Her eyes widened in surprise, but she didn’t cry out or try to fight me. Instead, Ada put her hands up in front of her face, lip trembling while she turned her head away from a potential blow.
“What do you know about what’s going on?” I asked. “Where did you come by that pentacle?”
“It’s mine,” she stammered. “I… I made it.”
I tightened my grip and funneled a little more energy into Ada’s skin. The kickback was like sticking my finger in an electrical socket. It was only a fraction of what Ada would be feeling.
“Why did you make it?” I growled.
“To protect Nicola!” she shouted. The housekeeper wept openly, trembling under the strain of the electric current I was running through her body. “Please believe me. I only meant to protect her from the darkness that follows her. I never intended any harm to befall either her or her father!”
Ada slumped to the ground when I released her. Leaning back against the wall for support, she alternated between sobbing and gasping for air. I knew I hadn’t used enough force to do any serious damage, but it seemed I’d rather overestimated her understanding of how magic could be wielded offensively. There was real power buzzing in that charm of hers, but it hadn’t reacted to my attack in any meaningful way. Either it was a calculated bluff, or the girl was little more than a hedge-witch with just enough talent to funnel her fear and concern into what she thought was a protective ward.
I dropped to a crouch, elbows on my knees.
“I’m sorry I had to do that,” I said.
“I understand.” She wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. “How did you do that to me? What are you?”
“That’s a conversation for another time. Right now I need you to give me some answers. What’s this darkness you’re talking about?”
Ada tried to stand, but she couldn’t seem to get her legs under her without wobbling so much she’d have fallen down had I not caught her first. I helped her over to a chair, then stood over her with arms crossed waiting for an explanation.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” she began. “Since I was a little girl, I’ve been able to sense things about people. I can’t describe it, but I get impressions of emotions and other things too vague to make any sense of. When you arrived, I sensed deep anger and sorrow, but also kindness and determination. There was something more that I didn’t understand at the time, but now I realize it was your ability to work magic.”
As unbelievable as it may seem, learning Ada was magically sensitive wasn’t all that shocking. Everyone had a bit of ability locked within them, it was just that most people couldn’t access it in any tangible way. It might manifest as Déjà Vu or a simple cold shiver when a disguised fae creature passes by. For others like Ada, it resulted in overly lucid dreams, visions, or impressions as she’d called them. Sure, it was a little too coincidental that the housekeeper was at least a little gifted given the supernatural threat against Nicola and her father, but I didn’t get an evil mastermind vibe off her. Besides, it wasn’t like I had many other people to rely on for help just then.
“And Nicola?” I asked. “What impression do you get from her?”
Ada shuddered and clutched her arms as though a chill wind only she could feel had blown through the house. She then fingered the wooden charm before slipping it back beneath the neckline of her uniform.
“Until recently it was just the black pain of losing her mother,” Ada said. “In recent weeks it has become something more. Something not of her, but around her. The only way I can describe it is as an impenetrable dark mist. When I look at her, all I can see is danger. Mr. Bloedermeyer thinks the sole source of the family’s current troubles is a group of environmental protestors attempting to sabotage his development, but this is something so much more. It is pure hatred, and it swarms around her like a cloud of angry wasps.”
Again with the ominous darkness. With so many people telling me the same thing, it was becoming impossible to ignore the seriousness of the situation. I’d wildly underestimated the threat against Nicola and her father, and now she was out there alone.
“What about her father?” I asked. “Do you see the same thing around him?”
Ada nodded.
“What’s Nicola’s number?” I asked.
I punched the numbers into a new contact — yet another thing I should have done on day one — then sent an evenly worded text message asking her to let me know where she was. After a moment’s hesitation, I sent her another, telling her she was in very real danger. I hadn’t yet figured out what to say if she asked what that danger was, but if there was even the slightest chance I could scare her into doing the right thing, it was worth a shot.
“I’m going to need your help,” I told Ada. “You said that charm was made in an attempt to protect Nicola?”
“It doesn’t seem to have worked very well,” she said while she followed me up to Nicola’s room. “I thought if it caused the darkness to abate a little, I could give it to her in order to provide her with a measure of protection. I suppose I’ve been too afraid to show her lest she think me addled or insane.”
“Maybe we can still put it to use.”
I ducked into the bathroom where I retrieved several strands of hair from Nicola’s brush. I then gathered a few items from around her bedroom; a photo of her with a woman I guessed to be her mother, the t-shirt she’d been wearing when I woke her on the first day, a plush polar bear toy with matted and well-loved fur. When I had everything I needed, I sat cross-legged on Nicola’s bed, inviting Ada to do the same. Ada got onto the bed, tucking her legs under her to accommodate her uniform’s skirt.
“I’ll need that necklace,” I informed her.
She handed it over without protest, watching intently while I wrapped the strands of Nicola’s hair around the pentagram emblazoned on the face of the wooden charm. I then arranged Nicola’s personal items on the bed in a loose circle with the pentacle in the middle.
“Give me your hands,” I said. “I want you to hold Nicola in your thoughts with as much intentional focus as possible. Channel that into the pentacle.”
What I was about to attempt was way outside my area of expertise. I had only a passing familiarity with the theory behind creating a locator spell, but that was going to have to be enough. Using the objects in front of me as a sort of lens, I set my own thoughts to Nicola. Drawing on every moment I’d spent in her company over the last couple of days, I held the image of her face in my mind. I recalled the way she’d laughed when she was mocking me, and how she’d cried when I’d reset her dislocated shoulder. When I had as complete a picture of her as I could piece together, I let my energy flow into the circle Ada and I created with our joined hands. Filtering it through Nicola’s possessions, I wove threads of magic into a distillation of the focused energy flowing from us.
Magic is ninety-nine percent intention and one percent power. I had the power, but getting the intention just right was generally a lot more involved than simply wanting something to happen. Like a jeweler refining a diamond beneath a microscope, I had to shape energy into a very specific form. This required far more subtlety than it did brute force. Working with mage fire and kinetic energy was comparatively easy. Those were basically just manifestations of fear and anger. More complex spells like homing enchantments required a deep level of focus and need. Not only did I have to want it badly enough for it to work, I had to count on Ada giving it everything she could as well.
When I’d done all I could, I severed the connection and released Ada’s hands. The hair-wrapped pentacle glowed expone
ntially brighter beneath my sight, but would it work as I’d hoped?
I lifted the chain and let the pentacle hang free. It quivered a moment before shifting slowly to one side. I clambered off the bed and walked around the room, ensuring it wasn’t simply locking on to Nicola’s belongings. When the pentacle didn’t waver in its pull towards the northeast, I left the bedroom and went downstairs to see if it stayed consistent.
“We’re going to need a car,” I said, feeling more than a little proud of myself for pulling off the locator enchantment.
Ada retrieved her cell phone from a pocket in her uniform and began scrolling through her contacts for the number of the car service. Still holding the necklace by the chain, I pulled my own phone out of my pocket to bring up a map of the area. The necklace was pointing away from the village, and not in a direction that lined up with the route the highway traveled north from Whistler. If we were lucky, she was in one of the developments on the other side of the valley from the village.
My phone vibrated in my hands, nearly startling me into dropping it. Caller ID showed a blocked number. No one but a few known contacts should have had my number, so I accepted the call and put the phone to my ear without saying anything.
“Alex?” Eric said on the other end of the line. “Tell me you just activated a locator spell on Nicola. If you didn’t, we’re in serious trouble.”
Black Ice (Black Records Book 3) Page 11
