Charlie pouted “Oh, sweets. But that’s all you have left of your mom.”
“I know.” Dajia blinked away tears before they could take up residence. “That’s not what’s important right now. Right now, the sector is in trouble. We need all available hands on deck, and that means equipping every witch with the means to protect themselves.”
Clark nodded approvingly. “You’ve thought this through.”
Dajia leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Something is wrong, and I’m afraid for the sector. We need to be ready for the dome to fail completely.”
“Oh God,” Charlie murmured. “You don’t really think that, do you?”
Dajia nodded. “I wish I didn’t. I need to talk to the heir regent again.”
Outside, the sound of a brass band pitched down the street. The Palace Green, starting point of the parade, was only three streets away.
“Sounds like it’s about to begin.” Charlie smiled as the waitress set her bacon and eggs before her. She popped a crispy strip in her mouth and asked Dajia, “How are you going to get to the heir regent?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” Dajia admitted.
“You’ll never get into the palace,” Clark said. “Only the regent’s inner circle gets that privilege. And the regulators would help themselves to your head if you tried to sneak past them.”
“Only if they could see me.”
Charlie shook her head. “The palace is equipped with monitors that read magickal signatures.”
Dajia stared at her. Charlie was as human as a girl could get. “How do you know that?”
Charlie flushed. “I, um, slept with a regulator once. He was pretty talkative.”
“You slut!”
“You could get the regent himself to share all his secrets,” Clark added, reaching across the table to ruffle her honey hair.
She swatted his hand away but flushed, pleased at the compliment and his attention. Dajia rolled her eyes at the flirtation, wishing they’d get on with it already and sleep together.
THE THREE FRIENDS HURRIED THROUGH their meal and spilled onto the sidewalk outside as the parade drew near. The crowd had swelled, filling up all available space, making it nearly impossible to move. Dajia slid between anxiously awaiting humans to find a spot near the brick wall of a closed tax agency, dragging Charlie and Clark with her.
“This is a madhouse,” Charlie said as a tall woman jostled her from behind. She growled like an angry poodle and knocked her back with a hip.
“You say that like it isn’t a madhouse every year,” Clark replied, blocking someone’s flailing elbow from connecting with Dajia’s head.
The marching band from the Academy of Magickal Sciences led the parade, students using their wands to play their instruments as they stepped in time down the street. Dajia tiptoed and craned her neck to see them, an ache in her chest. She could have learned to play a violin. Her mother had once played for her.
Charlie put her head close to Dajia’s. “Do you have any kind of plan at all?”
Dajia laughed. “Well, no. You ruined the ‘sneak into the palace cloaked by magick’ idea.”
Clark leaned to angle his head between them. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Poor Clark, eight feet tall, missing out on the short girl conversation.” Charlie patted his cheek in mock sympathy.
Dajia missed his snarky reply as the regent’s familiar black carriage trundled into sight. She breathed a sigh of relief—if the regent could sit the parade, then surely his life wasn’t in danger. Maybe he simply had a cold; when Dajia was a child, her father had contracted the flu. It had made his magick act nutty, too.
But then the carriage rolled closer, and Dajia saw the occupant smiling and waving enigmatically through the window.
“It’s Eli,” Dajia murmured, taking a step forward.
Charlie’s brow crinkled. “What are you talking about? That’s the regent.” She exchanged concerned glances with Clark.
“Guys, I’m not crazy. That person in the carriage is Elliott Pierce. He’s glamoured to look like the regent.” She gasped. “Oh my stars. The regent is dead. He has to be.”
Dajia fell into a quick jog down the sidewalk, following the horseless carriage as it trundled down the cobblestone street. She kept her eyes on Eli through the open window as he smiled and waved.
Dajia slipped down an alley when the carriage turned left onto Main Street. She palmed her wand inside her pocket and closed her eyes, not slowing her pace on the cracked concrete.
“Nihilus,” she whispered.
The vanishing spell cloaked her before the word had left her tongue. She felt it wrap around her like a cool breeze, hiding her from others even though she could still see herself. Nihilus was another word Dajia had never learned but seemed ingrained in her muscle memory. In high school, she’d learned about the idea of genetic memory, and she thought maybe that had something to do with the spells she knew. A better witch—a trained witch—could have cloaked her substance and form to move like smoke through the crowd.
She charged back onto Main Street, searching for the carriage. It bustled steadily forward, Eli hamming it up for the crowd—a lot like his father would have done, she realized. He was acting the part with finesse.
Dajia let out an oof as she slammed into a cheering man who staggered drunkenly on the walk, spilling mead on his shoes. She ricocheted off his hard shoulder and rushed past him as he glanced around, confused.
He can’t see me, Dajia reminded herself, though she still felt entirely too exposed. She followed the carriage down Main where it crossed into the human beats.
At a break in the crowd, Dajia sprinted into the street. She darted through the fire-eaters following behind the regent’s carriage, and kept a wide berth on the guard of five masked regulators surrounding the carriage. She hardly dared breathe lest they catch wind of her. In the back of her mind, she thought of the monitors Charlie had mentioned, the ones that could sense magickal signatures around the palace, and she hoped none of the men carried one.
If they did, she was toast.
Dajia trotted alongside the carriage until she’d matched the speed. She glanced at the regulators—all five scanned the crowds for imagined threats, squaring their shoulders and puffing their chests. None gave a shout of warning or any inclination they knew anything was amiss.
Dajia leapt onto the sidebar of the carriage and clutched the window. With an awkward forward flip and a squeak of surprise, she landed on her back inside the carriage at the heir regent’s feet.
Eli looked wildly around the carriage, opening his mouth as he reached inside his robe. Before he could yell for his guards and whip out his wand and zap her, Dajia dropped the vanishing cloak.
The heir regent stared at her, his black boots inches from her head. He extracted his hand from his robe, wand forgotten. “Dajia?”
She grinned sheepishly. “Hey. Just thought I’d drop in.”
Eli’s lips quirked into a smile. He turned his gaze back to the window and resumed his waving and grinning. “You’re something else, princess. Do you have a death wish?”
“I somehow think my sneaking into your carriage isn’t any more dangerous than what’s happening at the palace.”
Eli’s wave faltered, and he spared her a startled glance. “What do you mean?”
Dajia stayed on her back, staring up at him from an awkward angle but hesitant to move lest someone get close enough to the carriage to see in the window. “Eli, we may not be members of the witch elite, but we’re not stupid. Even my human neighbor knows something is up. The power has been out since ten this morning. And your little disguise?” She gestured to his ridiculous black and purple satin robe, shiny silver vest, and tie, stumbling over her words for a moment as she realized how nice the vest looked on his long, lean torso. “It may fool the crowd, but I could see right through it.”
“Fuck.” The word didn’t fit correctly on his smiling lips. “If it isn’t fool
ing you, there are probably others it isn’t fooling. Cloak yourself again.”
Dajia did it without question.
Eli rapped on the front of the carriage. A small window near the top slid open and the driver looked in. He was nothing but eyes behind the thick scarf and hat protecting his face. “Yes, High Regent?”
Dajia wasn’t looking at the driver as he spoke; she was looking at Eli. She saw the tightening around his crystal eyes as the man addressed him as Regent. She stared at him, unsure what it meant.
“Lawrence, I’m feeling unwell,” Eli said in an affected tone. “Please return to the palace.”
“And your speech in the human beats, sir?”
“Postpone, if you please.”
“Yes, High Regent.”
The window slid shut. Eli returned to his smiling and waving.
“Is the regent dead?” Dajia asked quietly.
“Not yet.”
“But he’s close.”
Eli nodded, playing it off as an acknowledgment of the crowd.
She admired him from beneath her vanishing spell. His dark hair looked better wild around his face rather than slicked back with pomade. Dark circles—not connected to the bruise around his right eye—sunk beneath both eyes.
“You’re not sleeping,” Dajia murmured. Her fingertips tingled.
Eli’s grin turned lascivious. “Princess, no one could sleep after what happened last night with you.”
Dajia blushed, glad he couldn’t see her.
“I’m sorry about that, by the way.”
“Sorry about what?”
“Stopping your deadly assault with my tongue.”
Dajia snorted. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“It sounds better than saying I forced you to make out with me like a horny teenager.”
“You didn’t force me to do anything.” Dajia’s entire body grew hot at the reminder. “I was a willing participant.”
Eli turned away from his crowd-pleasing to grin at the space where Dajia lay. “Good to know.”
16
Eli
The carriage bumped over uneven cobbles and left the noise of the crowd behind. Eli’s smile fell away with the last of the onlookers, and he leaned against the seat, closing his eyes. He hadn’t realized how exhausting it could be to cater to the masses with reassuring smiles and pompous waves. His father always made it look effortless.
Dajia’s voice interrupted his musing. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere we can talk unimpeded. I have questions for you, just as you do for me.”
“Are you going to answer my questions?”
“I promise you honesty if you can promise the same.”
“I’ll tell you the truth as I know it,” she vowed. “That’s not much, unfortunately.”
They bumped along another moment without speaking.
“I’m sorry for that, too,” Eli said softly, his chest uncomfortably constricted. He wished the black behind his eyelids held more comfort than they did. He just felt lonely. Unhinged from reality.
Dajia shifted audibly on the floor of the carriage. “What?”
“Your parents. The purge. That you were robbed of your future while I grew up in a palace made of gold.” Bitterness laced his every word; he couldn’t have hidden it if he wanted to. “If anyone should have been neutered of their power, it should have been me. Not you.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I felt your magick, Dajia.” He opened his eyes and looked down at her. Even though she was still cloaked, he felt her at his feet—a calm, gentle presence. “I’ve never felt anything like it. Even my dad…” He trailed off and shook his head with a chuckle. “Funny. He killed a hundred witches he felt were a threat to him, but you… You could be more of a threat to him than any witch he murdered.”
Dajia didn’t have a chance to reply. The carriage stopped, and Eli glanced out the window at the cold façade of the regency palace. “We’re here. Stay cloaked, and stay close.”
The door swiveled open. A black-masked regulator filled the doorway as he bowed. “Your Grace.”
“Thank you.” Eli swiveled, one long leg stretching out the door. He spared the briefest of glances for Dajia, but schooled his expression to emotionless plaster and hoped she got the hint.
There was little space left between Eli’s body and the stoic regulator holding the door. Her small hands rested against his chest as she slipped unseen past him. Her scent was intoxicating, almost erotic. Eli held his breath, strongly aware of her heat and his longing to touch her.
If the regulator noticed Eli’s abnormal pause in exiting the carriage, he didn’t comment.
“That will be all,” Eli said in his haughty, faux-regent voice.
The regulator bowed low again, and turned to address the driver.
The carriage had deposited them in a small alley behind the palace covered by a pedestrian bridge above. The stone façade of the palace soared above them so high it looked as if it reached the clouds. When he’d been younger, more subject to wonder, he’d loved this secret back door, hidden from the rest of the sector like an entrance to Narnia, the palace like a piece of the sky.
He wondered if Dajia had found the wonder he had lost. Maybe she could guide him back there and restore the boy in him who had looked forward to magick and the future.
Double wooden doors opened automatically, and Eli plowed inside. He remained silent as he led Dajia up a small service staircase and down an empty, narrow hall that spilled into a lavish main hallway lined by floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Large, ornate chandeliers hung from visible, dark wooden rafters, the brass shining gold in the daylight above marble floors. Eli rarely noticed his surroundings anymore, but the same could not be said of his companion.
“Holy shit.” Dajia breathed the words, close enough to his ear to draw goose flesh across his skin. “You live here?”
“Would you believe me if I denied it?” Eli murmured with a tight smile.
“Is it so terrible?”
Eli kept his answer to himself as Turner came into view at the end of the hall. He waved as Eli came closer, and then executed a wobbly bow, a mocking smile on his lips.
“High Regent. Such a pleasure to see you out.” His auburn hair jutted messily from his head. He smelled of mead, and the red lacing the whites of his eyes indicated a certain level of inebriation.
Eli didn’t falter in his steps as he reached out and punched Turner in the gut. He checked the punch, barely making contact with his friend’s white t-shirt. He was just messing around, but he realized his mistake when Dajia’s gasp echoed off the walls.
Turner straightened, his good-natured laugh cutting short as he leapt in front of Eli. He studied the hallway with narrowed eyes, knees bent and weight balanced on the balls of his feet.
“Stay behind me, Eli.”
“Turner, it’s fine.” Eli shoved him away. “Shut up and come with me.”
Turner looked around one more time with squinty, distrusting eyes, but dutifully followed Eli.
Eli opened his bedroom door and stepped aside as Turner—and presumably Dajia—passed through into his sitting room. He felt suddenly self-conscious exposing her to his private space, but a deeper part of him felt her presence fit in his world.
Eli motioned to the chairs resting before the fireplace. A roaring fire bathed the gold-threaded scrollwork on the upholstery, and they gleamed like stars. “Dajia, please, make yourself comfortable.”
“Dajia Bray?” Turner whipped around, searching the room with interest.
“He knows who I am?” Dajia’s disembodied voice inquired.
Eli grinned as he unbuttoned the sleeves of his satin shirt. “I might have mentioned you.”
“I don’t know whether I should consider that a good thing… or a bad thing.”
Eli shrugged off his vest. “Trust me, princess. It’s a very good thing.”
Dajia blinked into sight, her cheeks flushed red. She t
ook a chair and waved self-consciously at Turner. “Hello.”
For the first time since she fell at his feet in the carriage, Eli had a good look at her. Her dark hair hung loose and wild around her shoulders, impossibly thick and buoyant, as if it were a living creature. She wore a heavy wool coat in gray over black jeans and clunky brown boots. The cold had painted her nose red.
She peeled off thick gloves and added, “It’s very nice to meet you.”
Turner inclined his head, a secret smile on his face. “We’ve met.”
“We have?”
His smiled widened. “Pretty pink magick you have.”
Dajia snapped her fingers. “I knew I recognized your eyes!” She returned his smile. “It isn’t properly ‘meeting’ if one party is masked at the time.”
He winked and stood, offering a hand. “You might have a point. Toby Turner. You already know me as a regulator, but you may not know I’m Eli’s oldest friend.”
“Speaking of Eli,” Eli interrupted irritably. “Anyone want to help me out of this glamour so I can be myself again?”
He wasn’t as uncomfortable in his father’s skin as he was with the flirtation between Dajia and Turner. A crazed make-out session on her front porch didn’t mean he owned her—yet. But the angry male inside him grunted and howled, ready to challenge Turner for his disrespect.
Turner seemed blissfully unaware of his slight. He took the chair beside Dajia, his proximity making Eli stifle a growl. “No way, man. I’m no match for your mom.”
“You’ve been conditioned to think that.” Eli stamped down the angry caveman and smiled at Dajia, who was shrugging out of her coat. “What about you, princess? Wanna give it a try?”
She looked baffled, her dark gaze steady on his own. “Why can’t you do it yourself?”
Eli cleared his throat. “I gave my mother a hard time about doing this parade, so she, um, booby-trapped the glamour.”
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 48
