Final Prophecy 04: Demonkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  She grinned, glad he was thawing a little. Wait a minute . . . thawing. “Be my lookout, will you? I’ve got an idea that’ll do less damage.” I hope.

  The ice magic came quickly, without even a blood sacrifice. Keeping her inner rheostat turned low, she pushed a small quantity of the magic into the dead bolt and regular door lock, where the forming crystals would expand and create pressure inside the mechanisms. She hoped.

  Heat poured through her, lighting her up and bringing a prickle of sweat to her forehead and behind her shoulder blades. The locks clicked in one-two sequence, like she’d planned it that way. Holy crap, I did it! She wasted a couple of precious seconds staring at the door as excitement skimmed through her, warming her skin and making her want to dance. She’d actually—finally!—used magic for something practical and tangible, something more than just finding a reference that another mage could use instead of her.

  Then, aware they were probably still being watched, she called, “It’s me. Can I come in?” Pretending she’d gotten an answer from within, she opened up and stepped through. Lucius followed, shaking his hand at the sting from the ice-cold metal doorknob.

  “Nice job,” he breathed in her ear, sending shimmers through her. For half a second, the world seemed to shift a few degrees on its axis and the air sparked red-gold.

  Steeling herself against the tug of lust—or rather, filing it for a “maybe later”—she lifted a shoulder. “I’m not sure I should be proud of my B-and-E skills when we’re talking about a teammate.” Still, though, personal space was something of a fluid concept among the magi, who lived a lifestyle that landed somewhere between communal and private, with blurred lines separating the two. Shandi came and went freely from Jade’s suite, and the magi above her in the power structure could, theoretically, invade her space with impunity. The surviving Nightkeepers had tended to stick closer to the human theory of privacy, but there were exceptions. And this was one of them, she assured herself, even though there was a kernel of fear that Rabbit would come home, realize he had company, and fireball first, ask questions later.

  On the theory of better safe than sorry, she reached into her pocket for one of the small, portable motion detectors they had used to secure their hotel room the night before, and set it up on the kitchen counter facing the door.

  “We’re supposed to make sure he’s not in trouble,” Lucius said, paraphrasing Strike’s order as he scanned the room. “Okay. Where do we start? Or rather, what are the odds that Rabbit and Myrinne, who are both of above-average intelligence and deviousness, would leave something important just lying around?”

  “Slim to none,” she agreed. “So let’s think devious.”

  The door opened into a kitchen nook that was separated from the main area by a half wall. Doors on the far side of the main room opened into a bedroom on one side, a bathroom on the other. The furniture was upscale box store, the built-in shelves were filled with anatomy and physics texts, and the wall art leaned toward Things I Like to Stare at While I’m Stoned. The few photographs racked on the shelves showed a doughy-looking guy posing with carbon-copy parents and what appeared to be his sister. Or maybe a brother with low testosterone levels? It didn’t take a psych expert to guess the place had come furnished, and little—if any—of what they were looking at belonged to Rabbit or Myrinne.

  Leaving the main room to Lucius, Jade moved into the bedroom, feeling seriously uncomfortable to be invading the space of two people she might not consider friends, but who were certainly allies. She found a few fat red candles and some pretty crystals she could easily peg as Myrinne’s. She thought she recognized some of the clothes tossed over a chair in the corner as belonging to Rabbit, and the pair of Dark Tower books on the nightstand could’ve been his. But other than that, there was little for her to go on. It was like the mage and his human girlfriend hadn’t left any mark on the space, even though they’d been living there a few weeks already.

  Unless . . . “What about magic?” she murmured to herself. Granted, the mental blocks meant that Rabbit theoretically couldn’t use his powers outside of Skywatch, but he’d already circumvented those strictures at least once, when Myrinne had talked him into using a pseudo-Wiccan ritual in an effort to call a new three-question nahwal. It was possible he’d done something like that again. Or, if she wanted to be cynical about it—which was a good bet when trying to outthink Rabbit—he could’ve left himself a loophole or two when he’d installed his mental filters. Just in case.

  Moving to the edge of the sitting room, which put her in the approximate middle of the apartment’s footprint, she turned toward Lucius and crooked a finger. “Come here a minute.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Humor me. It’s an experiment.” Under other circumstances she might not have tried it, but she was all too aware that Strike was going to be furious over Anna’s decision. Fortunately for them, he wasn’t the sort to shoot the messenger. But the news they were bringing home was going to seriously taint the king’s perception of the trip . . . and potentially of her. More, she thought she and Lucius needed the same thing just then, albeit for different reasons.

  He moved into her, going toe-to-toe, the spark in his eyes suggesting that he’d guessed her plan. “This close enough?”

  “Almost.” She closed the last little gap between them and, when his lips curved, moved in for the kiss. But whereas the taste and feel of him might have become familiar, what she put into the kiss now wasn’t. She leaned into him, offered herself to him, invited and then demanded a response that he gave readily, sliding his arms around her and crushing her up and into him. She felt deliciously feminine, almost overpowered, yet strong at the same time.

  Then, deliberately, she sent her mind back to the previous spring, when he’d disappeared into the desert and they didn’t know where he’d gone, whether he was alive or dead. She remembered praying for him at the chac-mool altar back at Skywatch, remembered trying to bargain with the gods for his life. When those memories made her feel sad and small, she brought herself forward in time, to when he’d come back to Skywatch, hurt and angry. She thought of how she’d hoped their reunion would be. And in doing so, she fell into the fantasy.

  You’re back, her kiss said now. I missed you. I didn’t realize how much our time together meant to me until you were gone. And now you’re back. Did you miss me? Did you think of me? He made a noise at the back of his throat, surprise and desire mingled into a low growl that shot straight to her core and left her wet and wanting. His hands stilled on her body; he gripped her hips, holding her against him as he focused on the kiss. The feel of him against her shifted the memory to that of their first night together with him in his new body. Although she had told herself it was just sex, that they were together because of the library, she’d gone to him because of the reunion they had missed out on, and the heat they’d made together before. She’d been nervous and determined not to show it. And he’d been . . . himself. The outer shell might be different, but the man within was largely the same, with impulsivity offset by intelligence, a checkered history but a fierce focus on the future.

  It was that man she kissed now.

  “Jade.” He whispered her name against her mouth as she took him deep again, fisting her hands in his hair and giving herself over to the moment and the sensations. And within her, around her, red- gold sparkled in the air. The world shifted on its axis and stayed shifted.

  Easing back, she let her eyes open. And she saw the magic. It was gathered around her, formless red-gold power waiting to be harnessed. She didn’t see glyphs now; she saw the raw shape and flow of the energy that could be bound into a spell, just as she’d seen the barrier energy before, the code beneath the chatter.

  Lucius said her name again, this time as a question.

  “I’ve got the scribe’s magic,” she said, keeping her voice low, almost a whisper, as though she might somehow scare it away. “I’m going to check for spell structures.”

 
“You—Oh.”

  She couldn’t read his expression, but couldn’t worry about that right now. She didn’t know how long the magic would stay with her, and needed to do her duty. They could deal with the rest of it later. Opening herself to the magic, she started moving around the apartment.

  “What are you looking for, exactly?” Lucius followed, watching her scan the room.

  “I’ll know it when I . . . Ah! Gotcha.” She ducked into the bedroom. “There’s a bright glow here, a place where the power flow is concentrated.”

  “Power flow?”

  “You know how Sasha senses life force? I think I’m doing something similar, only with the energy that can be shaped into a spell. Logically, sensing the magic and its structure is probably a requirement of creating a new spell that works structurally. At least, that’s my guess as to why this looks and feels different from the magic I used to tweak the existing fireball spell.”

  He took a moment to digest that. “And you think there’s a spell at work in here? I thought Rabbit wasn’t supposed to be able to do magic outside of Skywatch.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m seeing, exactly. There are two brighter spots under the bed, or maybe one bright spot and an echo? Let’s see what we’ve got.” She skirted the bed, got down on her hands and knees, and followed the magic sparks to a long cut slit into the underside of the box spring. Gingerly, she reached inside. Her fingers found a reinforced envelope. She drew it out and stared down at it for a moment, wondering whether she was about to do something she would regret.

  “Maybe we should take it straight back to Strike,” Lucius suggested.

  She was tempted, but shook her head. “I don’t want to bring him something that turns out to be nothing.” Taking a deep breath, she flipped open the envelope and dumped its contents. And stared at the pictures that landed in her palm, quelling an urge to let them fall to the floor. “Okay. Ew.”

  She didn’t have anything fundamental against porn. But these photographs were . . . unattractive. It wasn’t just that the guy in them was pudgy and unfit, and had too much hair in some places and not enough in others, either. Her squick factor came more from the sheer lack of artistry as he posed his way through a variety of odd contortions, all of which managed to aim his startlingly erect member at a camera she thought—hoped?—was on autopilot. Even worse was the scanned printout of a paragraph that came off as so demented, it took her a moment to realize she was looking at a very unfortunate personal ad starring the apartment’s primary tenant. The face matched the pics out in the other room.

  “He’s trying to get a date? With that?” Lucius sounded like he was caught between horror and laughter.

  “Either that or he’s been asked to participate in a psych thesis on why women are staying single longer and longer as the Internet age progresses,” she said dryly. “Okay, that was disturbing.” Stuffing the pictures back in the envelope, she filed the whole mess back in the box spring. “Why in the hell did he hide the photos if he intended to put them online? And why is there a power hot spot?”

  “Maybe Rabbit found them and had a good laugh?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “More likely, the magic was attracted to the highly sexualized resonance of the pictures.” He paused, frowning. “Except that the pictures themselves aren’t sexual, unless the guy actually looked at them while he—” He held up a hand. “Okay. Not going there.”

  Jade thought it was more likely that the magic was pulled to things and places that carried a significant emotional charge for the user, but it wasn’t the right time for her and Lucius to go there, either. She might be buzzed from the magic and excited by the breakthrough, but she was achingly aware of what she’d given up to get there. She was raw and needy, all too conscious of his every move and breath, and the way his raspy-edged voice brought a long, liquid pull of desire regardless of what he was saying.

  Even as nerves sparked at the realization that her defenses against him were far too low, the magic dimmed around her.

  “What about the second place you saw? The one you said looked like an echo?”

  She shook her head. “It’s gone now.” And so was the magic, which had disappeared when her inner barriers came back up. That was going to be the trade-off, she suspected, and hoped she could find a way to strike a balance between vulnerability and magic.

  “Okay, so we do it the old-fashioned way.” They spent the next half hour searching the apartment, focusing on places where her training suggested addicts—and deviants—would hide things they didn’t want their friends, parents, and other authority figures to find. They came up with a big fat nothing, which gave them two positive results to report back to Strike. Although they hadn’t physically put eyes on Rabbit and Myrinne, the landlady said they were around, and the apartment didn’t show any evidence of magic or other misbehavior. And Jade had managed to tap into the scribe’s magic and make it useful.

  On the theory that the landlady was guaranteed to say something to Rabbit, Jade pulled a blank sheet of paper out of the printer in the main room—which wasn’t mated to a computer, suggesting that Rabbit and Myrinne were both schlepping their machines—and scrawled a quick note: Strike sent me and Lucius to find out WTF is going on with you two. I’d suggest you phone home soonest. She signed her name, left the note on the kitchen counter, and pocketed the motion detector.

  Lucius held the door for her on the way out. As she passed him, he leaned in and whispered, “That was a hell of a kiss. What do you say we get on the road so we can stop sooner than later?”

  The heat in his eyes twisted something deep inside her, making her want so much more than he was offering. Self-protection said she should find an excuse, but she was weak enough, wanting enough, that she smiled and hit him with a quick kiss that landed a little off center. “It’s a date.” Or, more technically, a booty call.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Skywatch

  In her twenty-six years on the earth plane, Patience had been a good girl and she’d been bad. She’d been a student and a teacher, a child and a mother, a sweetheart and a bitch. But she’d never considered herself a sneak, a liar, and a thief. Until now. Her pulse thrummed as she paused in the hallway leading to the royal suite. It was empty; had been for the past five minutes. Strike and Leah were out at the firing range, Jox was in the greenhouse, and, given that the magi were largely scattered to their tasks, the coast was as clear as it was going to get. It was now or never. Yet still she hesitated.

  “What are you waiting for?” she murmured to herself. “If you’re looking for an invitation, it’s not coming.” Nor was negotiation or any sort of compromise—she’d been waiting for both of those things for nearly a year now, and was finally ready to admit that it wasn’t going to happen. She’d begged; she’d bargained; she’d worked her ass off in an effort to earn Strike’s confidence, only to learn that it didn’t get her as far as she needed to go.

  “Be patient,” Brandt said every time she brought it up. “Their safety has to be our first priority.” Which would’ve been fine if she’d truly believed that the boys’ safety was his first priority. Over time, though, she’d come to realize that as much as he loved her and their boys, he was bound to the writs first, with his family coming in a distant second at best.

  “Fuck that. I need to see my boys.” Having exhausted all her bright ideas for getting what she wanted within the writs, or even within the quasi- human ethics Hannah had raised her with, she was going to have to take it the other way. Sneak. Lie. Steal. Shit.

  Taking a deep breath and manning up, she crossed the last distance along the hall and let herself into Strike and Leah’s quarters. Nausea was a low- grade companion as she shut the door and slipped across the entryway, ninja-style. For all that she’d imagined herself a warrior as she’d trained endless hours in the dojos Hannah had brought her to, she hadn’t truly understood what it meant to be a warrior until that first fight against the Banol Kax. And now, she real
ized, she truly understood the other half of her training: stealth. She strongly doubted Hannah had meant for her to use it against her own king, but once she was inside her doubts sloughed away, leaving her determined to achieve the single goal she’d set herself: Find her kids. Strike knew where they were, or at least how to contact them; he was the only one, though. He hadn’t even told Jox, because the royal winikin had a history with Hannah. Leah might know, but she made Patience more nervous than even the king did. The queen had a look that went right through her. Patience wasn’t sure if that came from cop work, magic, or something else, but she gave the queen a wide berth. And now, as she crossed the royal couple’s sitting room and beelined it for the dining room, where papers were strewn on a dining table turned to office space, she knew she was running a hell of a risk. If she were discovered . . . You won’t be, she told herself firmly. Just do it.

  Working fast, she rifled through the papers on the dining table, looking for an address she didn’t recognize, a note in Hannah’s handwriting. Something. Anything. But no. She pawed through Jade’s reports on Kinich Ahau and a bunch of satellite photos of the Ecuadorian cloud forests, but didn’t see anything she could connect with Hannah, Woody, or the twins.

  “Did you really expect that he was going to leave it lying around?” she murmured. “Maybe with a big arrow highlighting the phone number?”

  She’d thought it through often enough, trying to figure out how to find what she sought. She’d never come up with much of a plan beyond a flat-out physical search, though. The Nightkeepers didn’t put anything important on the Internet-connected computers. Iago’s people had already shown themselves plenty capable of hacking, and a well- made makol could command the thoughts and memories of its human host, meaning that the Banol Kax could usurp their own hackers. Ergo, the sensitive stuff was kept on non-networked machines. Patience was assuming Strike and Leah had at least one of them in the suite. But where was it?