Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  He spread the deck in an arc across the table, facing down. Except the black-inked white cards weren’t actually on the table. Rather, they hovered about an inch from the worn wood. That was new. A further manifestation of Christopher’s clairvoyant power when connected to the oracle cards.

  With a flick of his fingers, three cards separated, spun to face upward, then settled on the table.

  The first revealed a black-ink botanical drawing of verbena, with the Upheaval intention printed below the plant.

  The second card was a dandelion. Revelation.

  Third, foxglove. Caution.

  My heart rate picked up slightly. I ignored it, already trying to interpret the revealed cards. I had worked with the witch from whom I’d commissioned the deck, tying specific plants known for their magical properties to a basic Tarot card setup. Though in Christopher’s hands, the deck took on new layers of meaning — a conduit for his magic, communicating things he might not be seeing as fully articulated visions yet.

  Christopher collected the remaining nineteen cards, stacking them and setting them to the side. The magic shimmering from the three face-up cards on the table slowly condensed into a soft glow around their edges.

  “Same three?” I finally asked. “As you pulled earlier today?”

  “Yes. Surprising.” He touched the verbena card with a gentle caress. “Inspiration, abundance, and positivity …” He tapped the intention printed on the bottom of the edge thoughtfully. “Upheaval. Sudden change, surprise …”

  “And …”

  He laughed quietly but his tone was remote, as if he were listening to something far away. “There is something almost … dual natured about this draw.”

  “Both positive and negative, you mean?”

  “Perhaps not as black and white as that.”

  “Because magic wouldn’t want to be too clear,” I said wryly.

  “You forget about free will, Socks. And specifically, your own ability to flip the future as you will in any given moment. All three of these cards are two sided.”

  I gestured toward the middle card, its placement possibly suggesting or acting as a bridge between the two others. “And the dandelion? Revelation. That’s divination, yes? Could be you?”

  Christopher grunted, noncommittal. “Also wishes and a release. Acceptance … but paired with the foxglove …” He trailed off.

  I eyed the foxglove card with the Caution intention emblazoned across it. The flower traditionally represented protection. But the intention was as clear as any of the cards got — fear, misunderstanding, bewilderment.

  “Perhaps that’s self evident.” Christopher tucked the three cards back into the deck. He shuffled, then offered the deck to me.

  I had no idea what conclusion he’d already made based on the first draw. But I took the top card, flipping it over in my hand. Verbena. Again. I placed it on the table.

  Christopher shuffled and offered the deck to me a second time. I drew. Dandelion.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

  Christopher laughed quietly, offering me a third draw.

  I pulled the foxglove. As I’d known I would. I shook my head, then unwillingly asked in a hushed whisper, “What do you see, oh clairvoyant?”

  Christopher’s magic rose at my request, splashing over the cards, lapping up against my hands and bare arms. He spoke and his voice was no longer quite his own. “A dream. An … unvoiced request. Death … calling to darkness, unfettered. You, Emma, at the center, swallowed within.”

  A shiver ran up my spine, but I tamped down the irrational reaction. Skipping over the references to a dream — I didn’t put much stock in such nebulous magic, nor did I usually remember my dreams — I sought clarification instead. “Death calling … meaning a necromancer?”

  Christopher shook his head, shoving away his magic at the same time. He tucked his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and crossed back into the kitchen with his shoulders slumped, fighting through whatever glimpses of the future the magic had shown him. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible,” he murmured. “For any magic to overwhelm you.”

  “You already know it’s possible. You’ve seen it happen.”

  He shook his head. “We were all unconscious at that point, Socks.” He looked at me, pinning me with white-rimmed eyes. “And you don’t talk about it.”

  I stiffened defensively. I’d been making an effort to communicate more effectively, but I still didn’t like being reminded that I often didn’t react in ways others might deem appropriate. “What would you like to discuss?”

  Christopher sighed, shaking his head. “Nothing. I’m just saying that if implementing the Amplifier Protocol and saving all of our asses was overwhelming, I didn’t experience it. Didn’t see it, neither ahead of time nor during.”

  “It didn’t. Overwhelm me, I mean. I … gave myself to it gladly. I allowed the magic to consume me.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “Obviously.”

  He snorted, returning his attention to making pasta. I glanced down at the three cards I’d set on the table, hovering my fingers over the foxglove card. Caution. “Is it connected to the Collective, then?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  That was a very specific answer. I eyed the clairvoyant.

  He shrugged. “Another Azar sorcerer. Two of them.”

  “Yes.”

  “The connection could be as it seems. Isa could be telling the truth.”

  “Is it ever as it seems?”

  “I don’t know, Fox in Socks.” Christopher stared at the far wall, magic flooding his eyes again. “I can see the future, yet you’re always ahead of me.” He reached a flour-and-egg-crusted hand forward. The sentiment was an echo of a belief, a feeling, he’d carried since we were children. The reason he’d adopted the name Knox and named me Fox in Socks. The clever one.

  Except I never felt like the clever one. I just always put my head down and did my job, completed my mission. And my life mission, since he and Paisley had chosen to come with me almost eight years ago, was to protect Christopher.

  “That’s only because you can’t see yourself next to me,” I said. “So it just seems like you’re always trailing behind.”

  He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Perhaps.”

  “And if it’s my death you see —”

  “It isn’t.” He cut me off sharply. Then he softened his tone. “Not a death as I currently understand it. A glimpse of something. That’s all. It will resolve into whatever it’s going to be soon enough.”

  “The cards lengthen your sight.”

  “They do. But with the sorcerers on our doorstep, I’d assume we’re dealing with a tighter timeline.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Now tell me where Paisley is.”

  He grimaced.

  Yes. I’d noticed the demon dog’s prolonged absence. “Did she try to steal another egg?”

  “Of course. Daily. I got it back in the incubator pretty quickly. And she sulked, again. But that was this morning.”

  “And then the sorcerers showed up.”

  “Yes.”

  I sighed. Paisley was stalking Isa and Ruwa.

  “I tried to stop her,” Christopher said defensively.

  I eyed him doubtfully. “Really?”

  “I told her that the chicks might hatch in the next couple of hours.”

  “She can smell it when you lie. Especially halfheartedly. You’d be out there with her if you thought you could have gotten off the property without me noticing.”

  “Nah. It’s going to seriously snow tonight.” He grinned.

  I didn’t really feel like smiling back, not with Paisley off stalking two sorcerers of power. Sorcerers who might find a demon dog far too interesting — as a creature worth kidnapping, perhaps, to study or experiment on.

  Christopher shook his head, turning to rinse his hands in the sink. “I’ll text Jenni.”

  “I don’t need to be rescuing the shifte
r either.” I stepped toward the laundry room. “That better be mushroom ravioli with the mushroom cream sauce.”

  “It is.”

  “Fine. I’ll collect Paisley.” I stepped through the doorway.

  “You should take cookies for her,” Christopher called after me.

  I paused, then spun to cross back into the kitchen with a glower. I pulled the Tupperware container of frozen cookies from the fridge freezer, opened the lid, and pulled out two.

  “You’re going to need more,” Christopher said, magic gently laced through his words.

  “You’re having visions about baked goods now?” I asked mockingly, taking three more ginger snaps.

  The clairvoyant stole a cookie for himself before I could snap the lid back on the container. “I always see ginger snaps in your future, amplifier.”

  “Hilarious.” I pulled a cloth napkin out of the drawer and wrapped the cookies in it.

  “And the pink umbrella.”

  “What about the umbrella?”

  “You’re going to need it.” He cracked a grin. “And you’re going to look damn cute wandering around in the snow. Gumboots and umbrella.”

  “Am I going to need my blades?”

  Christopher sobered. “Not yet. You could just let Paisley come home on her own.”

  “And if the sorcerers sense her?”

  “She’s not stupid.”

  “I’m not saying she is. I’m saying the sorcerers are an unknown quantity. Paisley doesn’t have the experience to get out of a scenario involving two magic users of their power. Also, it’s an exposure risk, even if the sorcerers League doesn’t have jurisdiction in this area.”

  “There is no way that Isa Azar is a member of the League.”

  I gave him a look.

  Christopher sighed. “Go, then.”

  I turned, wrapped cookies in hand.

  “Say hi to Lani for me.”

  I didn’t bother asking for clarification about how or where I’d be seeing the ex-air-force-tech-turned-local-mechanic. Lani Zachary had a habit of showing up where she was needed — a habit that was undoubtedly tied to her dormant witch magic. “I will.”

  The snow was coming down in earnest, sticking to the road by the time I made it into town on foot. I hadn’t even considered pulling the Mustang out of the barn in the current weather. I had no experience driving in snow, and I wasn’t interested in ruining my pretty car on the heavily salted roads.

  Though it was still a couple of hours away from sunset, the gray day provided plenty of shadowy recesses between storefronts and restaurants. The blue-gray coat of the demon dog in her regular pit bull aspect would stand out against the snow that was slowly coating every available surface, but she could cross through the shadows undetected. I found no evidence of her passing, though. Neither footprints nor any hint of her magic.

  I skirted the edge of the swollen river, walking as quickly as possible while still appearing to be a regular human, with regular human abilities. I didn’t need to draw any more attention to myself as I made my way toward the Cowichan Lake Lodge. Carrying a bright pink umbrella was already bad enough, though it did keep the snow out of my face. Ice had formed on the smooth rocks all along the edges of the river, despite how swiftly the deep water flowed through the center of town.

  I picked up the faint tenor of Jenni Raymond’s magic as I neared the RCMP station and considered popping in, just in case she’d seen Paisley. Except I knew that the demon dog wasn’t the shifter’s biggest fan, and it was highly doubtful that Paisley would have revealed herself to Jenni even if their paths had crossed.

  A dark-blue pickup truck pulled up alongside me. I spun toward it, suddenly expecting to be attacked. Inside, Lani Zachary held up her hands. Her expression surprised, then concerned.

  In that moment, I thought that Peter Grant had finally consumed just enough alcohol to build up the courage to confront me, though not so much to render him incapable of doing so. Not that Tyler Grant’s father had any hope of hurting me in the way he seemed so desperate to do. He was mundane through and through. He might have jumped the curb in the pickup and winged me, and I still could have snapped his neck and blamed it on the icy sidewalk.

  It was the presence of the sorcerers, and Paisley’s disappearing act, that had me on edge.

  Lani rolled down the passenger window, calling across to me. “All right, Emma?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She grinned. “Pretty umbrella.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was joking. “Thank you.”

  “I was just headed home, and thought …” She glanced out the windshield and didn’t finish her sentence. Lani Zachary was witch-born, but untrained. Her untapped magic appeared to simmer just on the periphery of her awareness, manifesting itself as some sort of intuition. Specifically, an intuition of things that needed to be fixed. As far as I’d been able to figure out without prying too hard and revealing too much about myself, Lani had no idea that magic even existed.

  I did know, however, that she lived in the opposite direction she was presently driving. In a trailer on a piece of land she’d purchased about six months previously. She was planning to build a cabin.

  So apparently, according to Lani’s magic, something about me being out in the snow required fixing, whether she’d known she was looking for me or not.

  Lani shook off her contemplation, returning her attention to me. “What has you out in the snow?”

  “Paisley.”

  The mechanic frowned. “She’s wandered off?”

  I nodded, not wanting to lie out loud — though I had a sense that Lani would pick up a half-truth just as easily.

  “And you think she’d come into town?”

  Right. That was presumably odd behavior for a regular dog, especially when the properties around ours were filled with domesticated animals. “I think she’s following someone,” I said awkwardly. “Someone who came to the property this afternoon. She’s … um … bored.”

  Lani laughed, shaking her head. “Climb in.”

  I shook my umbrella, which had accumulated a solid layer of snow. Then I hopped into the passenger seat, carefully knocking off my boots before climbing all the way in and shutting the door. Lani had the heat blasting. The interior of her pickup truck was pristinely clean.

  “So …” Lani eyed me for a moment. “Did your visitors head out of town?”

  “Cowichan Lake Lodge.”

  She nodded. Without further prompting, she pulled away from the curb. “I’m glad you didn’t take the Mustang out, but maybe you should think about getting another vehicle. I could find Christopher a cheap, reliable pickup.”

  I nodded, gazing out the window. “I really didn’t expect it to snow so much. It didn’t last year. And it’s really late in the season, isn’t it?”

  “It is. But I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on, Emma.”

  I glanced at Lani, confused.

  She laughed. “Sorry. You just sounded really concerned. Snow usually melts by the next afternoon around here. Though that’s not what the current forecast is calling for.”

  Lani took a right turn onto the long curve of Cowichan Lake Road, heading out of town.

  “No. I’m not concerned. About the weather. We have a generator. Christopher is hatching chicks. You could stop by and talk to him about the pickup truck idea, if you like.”

  “I will. So. Why is Paisley following visitors from out of town? And why are they staying in a hotel rather than at your place?”

  I glanced at her. “That’s unusual?”

  She shrugged. “Not if you just don’t want them under your roof.”

  “I don’t.”

  Lani turned left and pulled into the front parking lot of the lodge. The lot was mostly empty, except for the hulking SUV that Isa Azar had been driving and a minivan parked right by the front entrance. Both vehicles were slowly accumulating snow. Cowichan Lake Lodge looked like a large house from the front, two levels, with white-
painted siding occasionally interrupted by small side-by-side balconies with white metal railings. The signage declared it to be ‘A Suite Place to Stay.’

  Lani slowly backed into a parking spot across from the hotel, leaving the truck running while she eyed the SUV. “Nice car,” she murmured. “Not a rental.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “No branding on the frame around the plate. No sticker in the windows or bumper. A new or nearly new Mercedes G550. No one rents those, not around here. One hundred and twenty grand, even without all the bells and whistles.” She looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “Trouble?”

  I quashed my sudden need to jump out of the truck and walk away without exchanging another word with Lani. We were friends. Or at least the mechanic was trying to be a friend. And I was trying to not be what the Collective had raised me to be — a sociopath without any concept of positive relationships or the ability to connect with another human being.

  “Aiden’s brother,” I said, knowing that Lani would pick up the connection the instant she laid eyes on Isa Azar. Based on his choice of vehicle alone, the sorcerer was sure to have drawn her attention. That was one of the drawbacks of living in a tiny town.

  Lani laughed, deep in her throat but not at all amused. “I see. I take it he just dropped in, demanding … what? An accounting of Aiden’s whereabouts? Or …” She trailed off, pausing to carefully piece together her next thought. “Unless Aiden’s in trouble? Did he relapse?”

  Lani thought Aiden was an addict. She wasn’t wrong, except it was magic he was addicted to, not drugs. “Not that I know of. I heard from him yesterday.”

  “Okay.” She turned off the truck. “Let’s get the brother’s room number from reception and knock on his door.”

  “Just a second.” I opened my door, letting in a gust of chilled air and snow. I reached out, seeking the hum of Paisley’s magic and instantly picking up the power that resided almost dormant in Lani’s blood. Embedded in her DNA, whether or not she knew how to use it — or knew it was even there.

  I stepped out into the snow, pausing when I felt Paisley nearby. I glanced around, not picking up any visual hint of the demon dog, not even tracks in the snow.