“I’ll let you know if he files a complaint.”
I smiled. Jakes actually made a joke. “What if I file one first? I mean, he did attack us.”
“You already said that no one was hurt.”
“Just the house.”
Jakes turned the corner at the far side of the house and stopped, looking at a patch of fresh dirt that had been smoothed out. I had no idea what Devan had been up to, but wasn’t about to tell Jakes that. It looked like she’d buried something here. When Jakes looked back at me, I only shrugged.
Without saying a word, Jakes stood at the corner of the house and placed a hand on either side… and pushed.
We had been inside when the Nizashi had attacked. He’d hit us with attacks powerful enough to move the house even with my father’s protections. In a single move, Jakes managed to push it back into place. By himself. I’m not saying he didn’t look like he strained a bit doing it, but watching him was impressive. Even Devan popped around the corner to watch.
The house came to rest back where it had been before the attack. “Sometimes it’s all about strength,” he said with a straight face. “You should look into sealing that.”
I could only shake my head. “Next time I need furniture moved, I know who I’m calling.”
“I’ll be busy.”
We finished the walk around the outside of the house. There was another patch of flat earth that looked to have been dug up and smoothed over. Jakes paused and sniffed at it like he had with the first one before moving on.
When he stopped at the front of the house, he looked toward the garage. “What’s the plan with the artist?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You were going to get her out of Conlin and return her to Arcanus. You should wait until we’ve finished this business with the Nizashi.”
“Is that a request or an order? I mean, you said I wasn’t getting paid.”
Jakes turned to face me. “Look, Morris. Whatever happened here puts your friend in danger. If one of the Nizashi has come for her, they aren’t going to rest until they’ve completed their mission. Had they wanted to kill Devan, she’d be dead.”
I’d had some of the same thoughts. The Nizashi worked for the Trelking, so their mission wouldn’t be to kill Devan but to take her back to the Trelking. Even that didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me. The Trelking might send someone across the Threshold for Devan, but would he really send his assassins?
“Yeah, I was thinking we’d hang around a little longer. You know, show Taylor some of the sights of Conlin.”
“Careful with this, Morris. The Nizashi are dangerous. From what we know, two of them remain on this side. At least one of them was in town last night.”
From his tone, I could tell there was more to his concern than what he was saying. “You respect them,” I realized.
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “They are powerful. From what I know of them, they are selective in their targets. The Trelking doesn’t send them often.”
“You remember what he wants Devan to do, right?” I said.
“That’s between her and the Trelking.”
“Fine. Then don’t ask me to help if the Nizashi suddenly decide they want to start targeting shifters.”
Jakes fixed me with a hard glare. “You should be more concerned with what killed the Nizashi, I think. There’s someone else out there strong enough to kill one of the most powerful creatures I know.”
I sighed. “I couldn’t tell what it was,” I said. I didn’t hide the frustration about that. I patted my pocket, where I’d kept the cylinder since the kid left it with me. “Say, you sent someone out here with something of my father’s?”
Jakes tensed slightly. “That’s the reason I came out here.”
I grunted. “Then you know what he had?”
He nodded slowly. “He wouldn’t speak of it much, even to Tom.”
“You mean the warden?”
Jakes tipped his head in a nod. “We all have our roles, Morris. Tom oversees the Rooster. He keeps the place safe.”
“A fine job he’s doing.”
Jakes crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t think this is too much of a coincidence? One of the Nizashi here? An item of your father’s. And now the attack here. You’re smarter than this, Morris. Put it together.”
I patted my pocket, wondering what the cylinder was for. “Well, I’m starting to think that maybe I’m not,” I said. “So what did you come here to tell me?”
“Not tell. Come with me.”
He motioned to his cruiser. I glanced over at Devan, but she’d busied herself doing something in the garage and wasn’t interested in whatever Jakes planned with me. Jakes got into his car and waited.
As I climbed in—getting into the front seat—I grinned at Jakes. “First time I’ve ever been in one of these,” I said.
“From what I’ve seen around you, it’s probably not the last,” he said.
Jakes backed out of my driveway and said nothing else as he made his way down the street and out of town. He stopped at an older sedan parked on the outskirts of town, pulled off to the side.
I’d seen that car before. It was the one that kid and his girlfriend had driven to my house the night before. “Hey, that’s—”
“Yeah,” he said.
We got out and the smell hit me right away. It was nothing like the stink that had come from the burned Nizashi at the Rooster. This was worse, in some ways. As I reached the driver-side door, I barely glanced in. The kid lay crumpled against the steering wheel, his face frozen in surprise and a hole burned through his chest. The passenger-side seat was thrown back, and the girl lay sprawled across the back seat. I didn’t need to see an injury to know that she was dead.
Residual power emanated from the car. I made a series of patterns around the entire car and almost dropped the satchel of ink I was holding.
“Shit,” I breathed.
Jakes frowned at me.
“There’s the same pattern here as on the Nizashi we found.”
“That’s not what killed these two,” Jakes said.
“No,” I agreed. “One of them made the pattern.”
I leaned toward the car and pulled open the door, ignoring the stink that was already coming from the kid’s body. With a quick series of patterns, I infused a hint of will and listened. The kid had once had power, more than I would have expected from him, but the power I detected didn’t come from him. It came from the girl.
I looked away from the car and at Jakes. “She took out one of the Nizashi?” I asked.
Jakes’s face remained unreadable.
“I mean, the power is here, and there’s a little residual of the pattern she was making when she died.” Had she been faster, it might have worked. The pattern was powerful, maybe more than I could make, and certainly more complex than I could make. I stood and stepped back and away from the car. “But if it was her—”
“The Nizashi killed them and then came to your house, Morris. Whatever these two gave you is the reason the Nizashi attacked last night.”
6
Jakes dropped me off back at the house. Neither of us spoke. My hand continued to touch the cylinder tucked into my pocket. Whatever it was had been reason the Nizashi attacked. And now, a stranger who had been powerful enough to take on one of them had been killed, leaving two Nizashi on this side of the Threshold and Devan still in danger.
“Stay in Conlin until this is sorted out,” Jakes said before he left.
I sighed as I watched him drive off, then made my way into the garage. It was time for me to get answers.
“Hey, Devan,” I said.
She looked up from the bench where she was reloading the charms I’d spent last night, filling them with ink for me. I smiled at her, so appreciative of the fact that I hadn’t even had to ask. What would I do without her? Not be quite as safe. I could work powerful patterns, but the charms gave me speed and surprise. No painter used any
thing similar. It gave me an advantage, especially when painters like Adazi appeared. Coming to Conlin was supposed to give us time to regroup, maybe learn a few things, but unfortunately, it seemed we weren’t going to achieve either of those, and we were going to need every advantage we could muster just to stay alive.
“Yeah?”
“I think we need to talk.”
She set the charm down and turned to face me. “If you’re going to give me shit about Jakes again, I might just throw this damn charm at you.”
“Not this time.” I stood next to her at the bench. “I need to know what you did last night. How did you manage to stop the Nizashi?”
She held my gaze for a moment and then shook her head, flickering her eyes past me. “Not now, Ollie. Another time.”
I saw Taylor watching us from across the yard. Why would Devan want to hide something from Taylor? “What is it?”
“It’s not the time.”
“When is the right time, Devan? We faced that Nizashi last night, and we know another one is still out there, too. When do you plan on telling me what you can do that can keep us safe.”
Devan kept her gaze on Taylor. “She knows something.”
“She’s an artist. I think she knows all sorts of things.” She threw the charm at me. Red ink splattered all over, staining everything. “Hey!”
“Think about what happened, idiot. The Nizashi here. One of them is dead. Another comes to your garage. Where’s the third? What’s the common element?”
“I thought it might be you, but it turns out it’s not.”
She frowned at me, so I explained what Jakes had shown me.
“If they return, they’ll take that thing and then they’ll take me back to my father,” Devan said. “And she knows something more about them. She might not know about the cylinder, but she knew who murdered the first Nizashi.”
I was sort of getting that sense, too. “What do you want me to do? Force her to sit down and tell us everything that happened before she came here?”
“Yes.”
“Even if she did, what does that change? We don’t even know what this thing is,” I said, pulling the cylinder from my pocket, “and we still have the other two Nizashi to worry about.”
“If it’s something of your father’s, then we need to know why that couple brought it to you rather than to Arcanus,” Devan said. “How did they even know that you’d returned? And how did they know where to find you?”
It all came back to why here? Why Conlin?
“Maybe they weren’t here for me,” I said.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Why does everything have to be about me?” I asked.
“Because it usually is,” she said.
I turned away from her and made my way back into the house. I found Taylor in the kitchen, eating an apple. She glanced up as I entered, almost as if expecting me. I decided not to mince words. Not when it came to figuring out what the hell she might know. We’d almost died facing the Nizashi, and if she knew something about the reason they were here, about the thing this couple had given me, then we needed to know.
“So what’s the real deal? What aren’t you telling me?”
She took another bite of the apple and swallowed it before answering. “I told you about Nik?” I nodded. “About how he got big into modding?”
“Yeah. Modding. Your hair?” I said, pointing toward the blue streaks in her hair. “That’s different from what I’ve seen other modders do. Is that the kind of thing Nik is doing now?”
“That, and some other things,” she said.
“What kind of other things?” I asked.
She sighed and set her hands down on the table. “Nik has become something of a collector of magical items. I don’t know why,” she said quickly when I arched my brow at her. “And not only him, but those with him.”
“Anything in particular he might be after?” Could the dead kid and the girl have been with Nik? It might explain why they’d come here, but not how they knew that I’d returned.
“Oliver, it’s been months since I last saw Nik.”
“Yeah, and in that time, you’ve come to Conlin, found a book that few knew existed, and nearly opened up a dangerous gateway to the other side of the Threshold. Could it be that is the reason you’re here, and not your father?”
Her hands tensed, but nothing else about her moved. “I’ve told you the truth about him. And I didn’t even know about the Threshold before you told me.”
“Nik didn’t say anything?”
“I wasn’t so much a part of his planning committee, you know?” she said.
“That’s the problem,” I told Taylor. “I don’t know. I think I need to, and I think you’re keeping something from me, but I don’t know what that might be.” I pulled a chair out from the table. “Know this: if there’s anything that might put Devan at risk, you’d best get it out now, because I’m not going to have a whole hell of a lot of patience for it.”
She met my eyes for a moment and then turned away. “There’s nothing,” she said.
“No? So you don’t know anything about one of Nik’s buddies who might be powerful enough to kill one of the Nizashi? I mean, you saw what we faced last night.”
She sighed. “Modding changes a painter, Oliver. You haven’t been around them. You haven’t seen what they sacrifice for power, or the lengths they’ll go to get it.”
The girl didn’t seem to have any mods, but then I hadn’t examined her all that thoroughly. When we’d left, another one of the local sheriffs had arrived and planned to move the bodies to the coroner’s office. I didn’t know what I found more worrisome—that the girl hadn’t been modded and had the kind of power needed to stop one of the Nizashi, or if she had.
“What kinds of things was Nik collecting?” I asked. I didn’t want to tell Taylor about the cylinder, but what if she knew something about it, and how it could be used? What if the cylinder had been used to kill the first Nizashi?
“Items of power,” she said. “Anything that might help a painter use more than what he can on his own.”
“Sort of like things the Elder might have made?” I asked. “Did Nik send you?”
Taylor shook her head. “It’s not like that, Oliver. That’s not the reason I came here.”
“Right. Because you seem so eager to go back now that you’ve seen everything that the Elder left in Conlin.”
“I can’t go back,” she said softly. “Don’t you know that the doorway in Arcanus would have been easier to use than trying to find one hidden by the Elder?”
“That’s been my concern,” I admitted.
“It’s the mods. The masters will know, and they won’t accept me back, not like this.” Taylor touched her hair, running her fingers through it. “For me, even this mod has made me faster and stronger. I thought… I thought…”
“You thought you could reach him,” I said. Going after her father had been the reason for the mod, but Hard had disappeared behind a doorway that she had no way of knowing led across the Threshold, and no way of reaching now that the masters of Arcanus had sealed it off.
“Nik said the mods could help, and they do, but there are tradeoffs.”
“I haven’t seen any tradeoffs from you,” I said.
She sniffed. “Because you haven’t looked. Most painters live a long time, but with what I’ve done, I’ve sacrificed some of that.”
“How do you know? It’s not like you’ve lived out your life already. You won’t know until you’re older.”
Taylor shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there won’t be any real side effect. But Nik thought there would be. Given how much he’s worked with different mods, I think I’ll believe him.”
“And his mods? What’s he done to himself?”
“I don’t know what he did exactly. He keeps that to himself. There are others with him, though, others that are surprisingly strong. Not physically so much, but magically.”
The image of th
e girl sprawled across the back seat of the car came to mind. “So that’s what you’re afraid of?”
“I’ve seen what they can do, Oliver. They’re able to pull a hell of a lot more power than I can. It changes something about them, more than just their magic. I’ve changed. I’m different from who I was when I left Arcanus.”
I understood what Taylor struggled with. I’d changed in my years away from Arcanus, too, to the point where I wondered what my father would think of me if he were ever to return. Would he think I’d abandoned too much of what he believed in, that core that Arcanus teaches, or would he understand that I only did what I needed to do to stay alive? My time with the Trelking had turned me into something different from the painters that Arcanus trained, giving me a preference for the arcane patterns that were forbidden in Arcanus.
Taylor turned to stare out the window, putting her back to me. I could tell she did something with her hands. I doubted that she would make any pattern that might harm me, but what did I really know about her? The more I learned, the more I had reason to question. There was a reason Devan was nervous about her, and Devan usually had a good read on people.
“Why would one of Nik’s modding buddies show up in Conlin?” I asked.
She took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
“Taylor?”
She pushed her hair back behind her ears and said nothing.
“Maybe because she told him.”
I turned to see Devan standing in the doorway. She wore an angry expression and had her arms crossed over her chest. Her skin glowed with a soft yellow light.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s in everything that she’s done since she came here, Ollie. I’ve been trying to figure it out, and it took until I attempted detections of my own.”
I thought of all the patches of dirt and wondered if that was what she’d been doing.
“Her mods and her painting have a certain signature. And now it’s painted all over Conlin.”
“That doesn’t mean she told anyone,” I said.
Devan shot me a hard look. “No? We still don’t know why she left Nik. And now that she’s here, she’s practically shouting that she’s here with more painter power than has been seen outside of Arcanus in decades. It’s like a magical beacon, and her modded buddies know she’s here. And they’ve brought the Nizashi after us.”
The Painter Mage: Books 1-3 Page 40
