I mentally intoned a mantra, calming, centering, set a Disbursement, then pulled on the magic from my bones. A flare of heat winged from my right hand up my arm to my eye. The magic followed the path of the marks on my arm—but it wasn’t a painful sensation. It was a comfortable heat, like thrusting that limb into a warm bath. My left hand felt cool, and that was nice too. Magic, no longer small inside me, sprang from my body quicker than it ever had before, and I had to do some fast maneuvers to keep hold of it, keep focused, and draw it into my senses, especially my sense of smell.
The world exploded into smells. The greasy tang of ashes hit my sinuses and made me choke, coupled as it was with the dusty stone scent of pavement, the thick smell of mosses and rot and fungus from the field, decaying leaves, and decomposing organics from the distant chicken coop. Grass was green, bitter, oily, textured with the cold scent of dew. I could smell the river, tart and rushing with a silty mix of minerals, and I could smell Zayvion, the heavy pine of his cologne warmed and complicated by the stinging potency of his sweat, his fear, his anger.
And his shock.
I glanced at him. He was watching me with as close a look to awe as I’d ever seen on someone.
Oh, right. Magic. This was a dead zone. A magic-free zone. The only way to tap into magic here was to access the network that didn’t reach this far—that didn’t cross the river.
No one could do that. Unless they carried magic in their body. And no one I’d met could do that, except me.
‘‘Allie?’’ he breathed.
‘‘Later,’’ I said.
I Hounded the traceries of the spell Bonnie had cast and smelled the copper-burn stink of spent magic coming from the circle of ashes.
The glyph of Bonnie’s spell lingered in the air, and it was like nothing I had ever seen before. Not just a cabled line of intricate linked spells, this glyph was jagged, knotting back into itself to form a circle, like an incredibly intricate spider’s web, with a black, black hole into which all the threads fell and stopped completely.
This spell wrapped in on itself. There were no trailing lines leading back to the caster. If I hadn’t seen with my own eyes that Bonnie had been the one to cast this spell, I would have absolutely no clue who had cast it, where it had come from, or what it had done.
And knowing those things was my job.
‘‘Holy crap,’’ I said again, quieter.
The one thing I did know was that Bonnie and Cody were not still standing in the yard.
‘‘What do you see?’’ Zayvion asked.
‘‘It’s a spell, feeding into itself, and leaving no trailing lines. They aren’t here, Zayvion. I don’t know where they are, but they are not here.’’
Zay took a deep breath and rubbed at the back of his neck.
‘‘What?’’ The scent of him had changed, and with my
über
sharp Hounding senses, I knew his level of fear and anger had just spiked. ‘‘Good love, Zay. If you know anything about this, will you just come clean with me? That kid knows who killed my father.’’
His scent changed again, back to the sugary wash of surprise. He looked up at me from across the black ash circle. I don’t know what it was, instinct maybe, but neither of us wanted to touch the ashes.
‘‘He knows who killed your father?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Did he tell you who?’’
Served me right. If I was demanding he had to level with me, it was only turnabout-fair that I tell him what I knew. Lovely.
‘‘He wasn’t very clear, but he mentioned a snake man, and that it was done with magic, and that I did it, or he did it as me.’’ If I hadn’t still been hyped up on magic, I was pretty sure I’d feel naked-at-the-table vulnerable for placing my last chip in Zayvion’s palm. As it was, I just wanted him to give back as good as he got.
‘‘So he was involved in the hit.’’
‘‘Sounded like it to me, but before I could get anything more specific, he ran out here.’’
Zay went back to rubbing his neck. He muttered something and stared at the horizon for a second, long enough for me to consider kicking him in the shins until he talked.
‘‘Allie, I’m breaking a lot of rules talking to you about this, but it seems stupid at this point not to.’’
‘‘Good. Tell me.’’ I was getting a little tired from holding the level of concentration needed to keep my Hound senses open, but what surprised me was that I did not feel a decrease or lack of magic pouring from within me. The small magic in my bones was a limited quantity, a small flame, and was usually depleted pretty quickly. Not this time.
‘‘I don’t know what she did—I don’t even know who that woman was,’’ Zayvion said.
‘‘Bonnie.’’
‘‘Really? Okay. So I don’t know what Bonnie did, but I do have an idea what she used to do it.’’
Anyone could tell she used magic. ‘‘Spill it.’’
‘‘It’s a technology your father was developing. A way to make magic portable.’’
Holy shit. Portable magic would change the world. If magic could be carried in some easy little package, instead of gathered and stored in lead and glass networks running beneath and throughout an entire city, anyone could access it. Anywhere. Even in the dead zones.
‘‘I have never seen anyone use magic to shift mass like that,’’ Zayvion said. ‘‘Much less open up a portal or door or whatever that was. I mean, there are stories....’’
‘‘How could anyone Proxy the Offload of that powerful of a spell?’’ I asked.
Zay’s mouth became a thin, straight line. ‘‘There are ways. They are not legal.’’
Said like that, flat and unaffected, it gave me the chills.
‘‘Fine. This is technology I could see someone wanting to steal. But who would kill for it?’’ I asked.
Zay gave one short laugh. ‘‘Who wouldn’t? This is going to revolutionize everything we know about and do with magic, Allie. This will put someone in a position of worldwide power and influence. It is why we were being so careful not to let the technology get out before laws and enforcement were in place.’’
‘‘Dear loves, Zayvion, did you just say ‘we’?’’
‘‘No.’’
We stared at each other for a moment, but it didn’t matter what he denied. I knew what I heard. ‘‘You want to tell me how you’re involved in this?’’
‘‘No, but I know who we should go talk to next.’’
‘‘Ooh, let me guess. The police? The FBI?’’
‘‘Violet.’’
‘‘Who?’’
‘‘Your stepmother.’’
I groaned. ‘‘Run back into the city to the one place the cops, the Hounds, Bonnie, who may or may not still be working for whoever may or may not want me dead, probably have trip-wired and staked out to try to catch me? Great idea.’’
‘‘It is a good idea,’’ he said. ‘‘You just don’t know it because you don’t know Violet very well.’’
‘‘At all. Never met her.’’
He gave me a funny look.
‘‘Listen, I gave up caring after replacement mother number two.’’
‘‘Abigail?’’ he asked.
‘‘Yeah, I think so. You know an awful lot about my life, Jones.’’
‘‘I’m a big fan of the Beckstrom legacy.’’
I tried to parse out what he really meant behind that and gave up on it. ‘‘Well, whatever. If you screw me over, I’ll hunt you down and tear you apart. Got that?’’
His eyebrows arched up, but instead of looking worried, like he ought to, he was smiling. ‘‘I wouldn’t expect any less of you, Allie.’’
I stepped to the edge of the ash circle and knelt. My senses were still sharpened by magic. I leaned over the circle’s edge and inhaled with my mouth open. Magic, burned, coppery, and thickened with other metals and oils. Something more too, something I could only describe as slick-tasting hit the back of my throat.
‘‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’’ Zay said. ‘‘This is untested.’’
‘‘Where’s your intellectual curiosity? Your sense of adventure?’’
I glanced up at the circular spell glyph that hovered in the center of the circle just above the level of my head. I reached into the circle and ran my fingers through the black ash.
Not ash. More like feathers. But feathers so delicate that they crumbled, or melted, at the slightest of contact. And also unlike feathers, the ashes felt warm against my fingertips, like menthol soaking in. I had a wild desire to stick my finger in my mouth and taste it.
I opened my mouth, but before my finger could even get close to my tongue, Zayvion’s hand clamped down around my wrist.
‘‘Bad idea. We don’t know what that is.’’
‘‘If you let go of my arm, maybe we can find out.’’
‘‘Or maybe it will kill you. I’m the guy who doesn’t want to see you dead, remember? Don’t be stubborn and stupid.’’ His hand was hot and felt good.
‘‘You so aren’t winning any points in my book, Jones.’’
‘‘You’ll get used to it.’’
We had a little glaring match that made me want to throw him down and bed him again. What was it about him that was so irresistible? He was bossy, secretive, maybe even condescending. But he was also thoughtful, kind, and heaven help me, he was looking out for my well-being whether I wanted him to or not. I liked that about him. His tenacity to stick with me, no matter what I got into.
‘‘Fine,’’ I said. ‘‘Let go.’’
He did and I brushed my fingers on my jeans to cover the fact that I already missed him touching me.
I stood and released the draw of magic, pulling the power away from my senses of smell, hearing, and sight. The world snapped down into more tolerable olfactory levels, and I couldn’t help but sigh at the relief of normal perceptions.
The strange thing was, I didn’t feel as tired as I usually did when I worked magic. And I did not have the feeling of emptiness I always got when I drew upon the magic I stored in my bones.
Zay and I started walking back to the house, and I glanced down at my hands. The left one tingled like it had been asleep. The marks on my right hand looked different somehow, darker, with a gold cast that flowed into greens and opal blues. Working magic had affected the burn. It looked like an amazing tattoo, a spider gone wild, but painted in opalescent tones instead of flat ink. I always wanted to get a tat, but had never taken the time. I was fast growing fond of this scar.
It was probably only a temporary thing, but I might as well enjoy it while it lasted.
‘‘You two okay?’’ Nola called out. She jogged down the steps of the porch, a shotgun carried, muzzle down, at her side.
She was so my best friend.