I stared at him seriously and appreciated what he was pointing out. If I became injured – enough that I wouldn’t be able to work – this case would go to hell. And hey, maybe the city would join it.
I dropped my hand and grasped his. As tightly as I could.
“Okay – try to squeeze my fingers off. Do whatever the hell you have to to stop from scratching.”
“Okay,” I said through clenched teeth. “But why am I having a reaction?”
“Something is trying to pull your magic out of you,” he revealed.
My eyes boggled wide. “Sorry?” My voice shot up high and became constricted.
“This symbol,” he pointed to it as it still remained in the air, “has tracer magic imbued in it.”
“What does that mean, Josh? Hurry up, because I feel like I’m on fire.”
“Think of it this way, Beth. It’s a symbol that reacts to the magic of the specific warlock who activated it. Once you activate one of these symbols, you’re drawn to the next as your magic reacts to it. It’s like… it gets its hooks into your power and draws you closer. Even if you weren’t a finder, you would’ve still been drawn to this symbol.”
“But I only decided to come here—”
“Because your finder magic told you to come? It doesn’t just have its hooks in your warlock magic, Beth.”
“What does any of this mean? And why is it trying to draw my magic out of me?” I asked with alarm.
“We just have to find out.” With that, Josh made a reverse set of movements with his hand – the same movements he’d used to pull the spell out of my phone. The spell shot into his palm and became minuscule. He closed his fingers around it and pulled me toward the door. He went to open it, then realized he couldn’t afford to let go of my hand or the spell.
I shoved forward and opened the door for him.
We walked in. And sure enough, I felt it. It was like somebody had grabbed hold of my magic and they were trying to drag it out of me. I felt myself stumbling forward toward the far wall.
This room was some kind of storeroom, and it was filled with all kinds of theatrical junk. There was everything from masks to props to papier-mâché pillars. Judging by the amount of dust and cobwebs covering everything, none of this stuff had been used for years.
But on the far wall, there was nothing. All the junk had been moved to the side, and what’s more, there wasn’t a cobweb in sight.
In fact, there was a clear path through the dust.
My mind managed to note that fact even though it felt like I was still on fire.
Josh still had his hand covering the spell, but I still had mine latched on his other hand. “Just take it slow, Beth – I’m here. If anything happens, I’m here,” he defaulted to saying.
I found my hand shooting up, and before I knew what I was doing, I started to scratch the paint. God, it was like I was possessed.
Josh didn’t stop me. He just stood there stiffly by my side and watched me like a protective sentinel.
I kept scratching at the wall until finally my hand slammed itself against it. Blue charges of magic discharged over my fingers and sank into the wall.
And the next thing I knew?
A symbol started to appear.
I gasped. “What’s going on?”
“I was right – this was a tracer spell,” Josh said excitedly. “It’s using your magic to re-create itself.”
“Why?”
“Whoever set this spell had to be a hell of a warlock,” he said under his breath, his eyes wide as he continued to stare at the symbol. “It ensures that only the right warlock can activate it. Hundreds of other warlocks could try – hell, even a sorcerer could try – and it wouldn’t matter. It requires your magic to appear again.”
“But this spell has been dormant for two-and-a-half years,” I said, my hand still stiff against the wall as more of my magic was pulled from my body.
“… Yeah,” he said. It was clear he’d run out of steam and guesses.
So it was my turn to take over as the finder, right?
I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to ignore the awful sensation of having magic pulled out of me and the hellish itch that went along with it. “What if both spells have been here for two-and-a-half years? What if somebody only found that spell in the restaurant’s bathroom recently?”
“… That could work.”
“But then if someone else activated the spell in the ladies stalls, why did the spell react to me?”
“Because you were the last person to activate it,” Josh said excitedly. “You must’ve gone in and found that symbol soon after somebody activated it. Before it could disappear, you imbued it with your own magic, and the tracer spell shifted to you.”
“… Is that possible?”
“Yes. And damn, it’s not just possible – it’s probable.”
“But who activated the tracer spell in the bathroom in the first place?”
Josh looked right at me. “You said you walked into that restaurant because you thought Olivia was there.”
“I sensed an opportunity—” I tried to correct him.
He shook his head. “To begin with, you thought she was there. What if she had been there, but she’d left before we got there? And what if the opportunity you sensed was this symbol?”
“Why the hell would Olivia activate this tracer spell? And what did she have to do with your sister’s murder?”
Josh paled a little at this, and I felt his hand twitch underneath mine. “That’s what we have to find out.”
More and more magic was rushing out of me, and I was starting to feel woozy. I staggered a little on my feet, but Josh shifted in and shored up my position with his strong shoulder.
“Just keep your hand locked on the wall,” Josh spat.
Fear spiraled through me, but at the same time, I didn’t react to it. Because I trusted my partner. What’s more, I’d made a promise, and I would find his sister’s killer. So I squeezed my eyes closed, compressed my lips over my teeth, and waited until, finally, the spell had pulled out as much magic as it needed.
Josh gasped, and I opened my eyes with a twitching movement in time to see the exact same symbol appear.
“That’s it.” Josh said, his voice shaking. “We were right. It definitely was a tracer symbol.”
“Who was right?” I managed, even though my body was enduring some of the strangest sensations I had ever felt. It wasn’t just that I was tingling all over – it was that I felt as if my cells were on fire.
“Stand your ground,” Josh growled. “Keep your hand on the wall – it’s still feeding off your magic. This is an old spell, and it’s gonna take more to make it activate in full.”
“Activate in full?” Fear pitched through my voice. “We don’t even know what’s going to happen,” I pointed out. As far as pointing things out went, it was probably something I should have mentioned earlier. But it was way too late to back out now. A fact evidenced when I felt something start to rush around me. It was a similar sensation as to what had happened when Josh had pulled that spell out of my phone. The weirdest, deepest, nastiest tingles erupted over my arms, darted down my back, and sank into my jaw.
I almost jerked back, but at the last moment, Josh flattened a hand on my shoulder and pinned me forward. “Almost there,” he said by my ear. Though said was an exaggeration. He breathed the words, obviously incapable of pushing any more force into them. Because whatever Josh was seeing, shocked him to the core.
The tendrils of the spell’s power continued to shift past me, and though I tried to figure out what was going on, I had no clue. Josh clearly didn’t have that limitation.
Still keeping my hand locked against the wall – as I didn’t have any option not to – I caught sight of Josh in my peripheral vision.
He had one of those still, snapshot-in-time expressions. Don’t know what I mean by snapshot-in-time expression? Expand your mind. It’s the kind of frozen expression someone gets when they realiz
e something they’ve been looking for their entire life is finally in front of them. Their eyes become glazed over, and their face stops moving in an effort not to distract themselves from the sight. That was Josh. But with the added bonus of my emotion-sensing magic, I got to appreciate what was going on on the inside, too. And let me tell you, I don’t think I’d ever felt such a wash of everything from fear to guilt to triumph.
“This is important, isn’t it?” I said softly, still staring at him out of my peripheral vision and never daring to pull my hand off the wall.
Josh took the kind of breath that saw his shoulders drop down hard. He also closed his eyes briefly. Then finally he nodded. “Yeah, Beth. This is key.”
“What’s happening here?” I managed.
Josh pointed at the tendrils of the spell as they started to form words in the air. “It’s a message. From the person who cast the spell in the first place.” On the term cast the spell in the first place, Josh’s voice broke. Another wave of emotion struck him.
My eyes widened as I realized one thing. “Your sister? Your sister cast this spell?” My own voice shook with confused fear.
“Yeah, it looks like it.”
“I don’t get it – what kind of spell is this? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on, Beth, is we’ve finally found the one secret to blast apart this mess. It looks,” he jerked his jaw to the side hard, “as if my sister found something and tried to hide her clues with tracer spells around town.”
“What?” My voice shook with frustration at the fact Josh was taking so long to explain the situation. Not just frustration though – the spell was still drawing more magic out of me, and I was getting weak. At the same time, I was still strong enough that my finding magic was doing its thing. And it was telling me we were quickly running out of this opportunity. The police – or some other group – were on their way.
I stared at the spell and the message it had written in mid-air. There was a set of numbers and letters hovering about a meter away, glittering in shades of blue with the magic I’d pushed into the wall.
I had no idea what the numbers and letters meant.
“It’s a case number,” he finally revealed.
“Case number? What are you talking about?”
“Before my sister started to work for Max, she was a reporter. She came across her magical skills later in life, so she wasn’t forced down the same career path as me. That being said, when she came into them, it became quickly apparent that she was powerful.”
“Josh—”
“I get it, we don’t have time for this. But you need to hear this. Back when my sister was a reporter, she would track down the gangs of the city. That was her specialty. It used to drive me crazy,” he said as he clenched his teeth hard and shook his head. “Used to drive my parents even more crazy. But my sister loved to court danger,” he said twisting his head to the side and closing his eyes until his skin looked as squeezed as a slice of lemon.
A rush of something pushed through me, and before I knew what I was doing, I shook my head. “Your sister didn’t love danger – she just… wanted to find the truth,” I said.
The words came from nowhere, and once they were out, I had to justify them. Josh opened his eyes, his expression slack, either with anger or something else. “How do you know that?”
“Because… because my magic just told me. I… I doubt your sister was a thrill seeker, Josh. If she was anything like you, everything she did was for other people, even if that wasn’t always clear.”
Josh stared right at me. He shot me the most complicated look. “Was that you complimenting me, Bethany Samson?”
“I guess it was,” I conceded. “But we really need to hurry up. My opportunity magic is telling me that we’re running out of time here. We have a very narrow window—”
“And it’s closing. Right,” Josh said as he brought his shoulders forward and cracked them. Then he swiped his hand to the side and started to mutter something under his breath.
I felt magic pick up in the room.
“What are you doing?” I asked softly.
“I’m taking a perfect snapshot of this spell. It’s better than using your phone,” he added.
I gave him the time and space he needed to finish the spell. All the while, my back itched more and more as it told me that we were rapidly, rapidly running out of time. Minutes turned into seconds, until I felt a great rush of nerves pushing down my back. I couldn’t do it anymore, and I jerked my hand back. At just the same moment, Josh seemed to end his spell too. He reached in, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward the door.
“I can run on my own,” I tried to protest, though I didn’t pull my hand from his. I half wondered if he was holding it, not for my benefit, but for his. His grip was clammy, and his fingers were shaking.
“Portal spell,” he snapped.
We reached the door, and he opened it.
I heard something back into the theater. Screams.
Alarm pulsed through me.
Then I did a funny thing. Rather than try to run away from those screams, I tried to break Josh’s grip and run toward them.
But Josh wouldn’t let me go.
“No, Beth. We can’t afford to. If that’s who I think it is, we have to get out of here.”
“But people are screaming!” I protested.
He looked at me seriously. “Either the police are already here, or they’re right around the corner.”
I ground my feet into the floor and shook my head. “Josh, we have to do something. That’s why we exist,” I added. It was a grand statement. And it was one that wasn’t lost on him.
Just before he could pull me through the door, he looked at me seriously, and I got another blast of his emotion. “Beth, we’ve set the wheels in motion now. There’s no going back. If I’m right, and those string of numbers you released from that spell is a case number, then… maybe it was a case she was working on before she died.”
“But you said she stopped being an investigative journalist when she became a witch.”
He snorted. “My sister never stopped investigating the truth. It didn’t matter if anyone was paying her for it or not. She had a real sense of justice,” he added. “So if I’m right, we need to get to the Court and search out that case number in their magical files. Now.”
“But Josh—” I began, intending to protest with everything I had that we needed to get into the theater to save people, but that would be when I heard the specific sounds of sirens splitting the air.
Though we were deep within the building, the sirens out on the street must’ve been loud enough to penetrate the walls.
“They’re portalling in,” Josh suddenly spat. “The Warlock Division. That’s what that sound is. They’ll save everyone. We have to get out of here.” Josh looked at me. It was a surprise he didn’t reach forward and cup my face in his hands. He had that much sheer emotion behind his gaze.
I took a breath, and I nodded. I didn’t like to run. But Josh was right. I wasn’t sensing an opportunity here anymore. So I didn’t resist again as he pulled me toward the door. We heard footsteps heading our way, but before they could reach us, Josh started to chant a low and quick spell under his breath. I’d seen people produce portal spells before, and often times, they were complicated and took more than a few muttered words. But then again, Josh McIntosh was one of the most powerful warlocks in Madison City, wasn’t he?
He showed that power right now. It took him less than 20 seconds to produce a portal. It crackled by our feet, and without pause, he pulled me toward it. It was just in time as I twisted my head to the side and swore I picked up the faint outline of a man. There was a problem, though. It wasn’t an ordinary man. He appeared to be made out of water.
He thrust a hand toward us, and water splashed against me just as Josh pulled me into the portal. Magic sprang around us, and we sank through it just in time.
The hunt, apparently, was on. I’d been right when I’
d told Josh we wouldn’t have any downtime. Hell, we’d be lucky to survive this. Because now our lives were very much in someone else’s hands. You see, this conspiracy ran deeper than anyone could’ve ever imagined.
Chapter 8
We arrived right outside the court building.
Though I’d been through my fair share of portal spells, this one was the worst. More than a few charges of the water elemental’s magic had managed to slip in with us, and they’d done havoc as this portal spell had run its course.
By the time I arrived, I felt like I was drowning. Magic was cascading around my throat, spinning as if I was stuck in some kind of vortex.
“Beth,” Josh roared as his feet struck the steps outside the Court. He launched forward, charged his hand, shoved it into the water cascading around my face, and somehow grabbed hold of it as if it was, you know, more than a liquid. With a great growling grunt, he pulled it off me.
He jerked his hand to the side, filled the vortex with his own magic, and watched it dissipate like clouds being pushed away by a violent wind. He took a step toward me before I could overbalance and crack my nut on the steps of the court. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and balanced me. Then he looked straight into my eyes. “Sorry about that. That bastard managed to get a shot of his spell into the portal before I could stop him. You okay?”
I looked up at Josh seriously. I was a bedraggled mess. I still managed a smile. I don’t know why. This night was going to hell. But still, I smiled at Josh’s kindness. “I think I’ve been better. I really need a holiday, though,” I added.
This caused Josh to snort. “You and me both, Beth. Let’s save the world first, shall we?”
He turned and walked toward the court. Fortunately it was late enough at night that it wasn’t in use. Still, there was a security guard out front, and he’d seen everything. He obviously knew who Josh was, because he didn’t reach for the magical gun holstered at his hip. He ran over, boots thumping against the steps. “You two okay? What just happened?”
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