Old Dog, New Tricks (6 page)

The truck rolled to a stop, and Shaw killed the engine. We sat there in the silent cab, gazing up at the heavy moon as tension built between us. Every step we took tonight held an unsettling finality to it, whether real or imagined. The thought of never seeing this place again, never sitting here again...

But the thought of the Morrigan enslaving Faerie was worse. The possibility she might bring her war to this realm, to humans who had no hope of surviving a magical attack, was the absolute worst. Regardless of how unresolved I left things with Mom, everything I sacrificed was to keep her safe.

That was enough. It had to be.

“Do you want to go inside?” Shaw’s voice sliced through the quiet.

“Sure.” I unfastened my seat belt and hefted our messenger bags from the floorboard, passing his to him and opening my door. “We can wait on Mac in my office.” I eased out, feet crunching on loose gravel. “That should buy us a few minutes before the powers that be get twitchy and come looking.”

Not to mention a breather before we had to face the roomful of scheming magistrates.

Careful to watch my step crossing the rotting porch, I grasped the front doorknob and spoke the Word keyed to the lock. All around me, the glamour concealing the farmhouse slid down the walls to pool on the ground. The flaking wrought-iron doorknob became smooth brushed steel in my hand. A ripple of magic revealed the modern brick building protected from human sight. Other buildings that were a part of the compound appeared to flicker into existence where before dried acreage sprawled.

“Thierry, dearest, there you are.” Wearing magenta glasses, a persimmon blouse and white hobo skirt, Mable greeted us at the door. Her white hair hung in a single braid down her back, her red cheeks glowing flush with excitement. “I thought I heard someone. Get inside. Come on.”

“Hey, Mable.” I hustled inside. “What’s with the rush?”

“So much has happened.” She gestured Shaw to hurry. “The magistrates have made a decision.”

“We heard.” I lowered my voice. “They can’t make it official until Mac gets here.”

“Macsen has been upstairs for half an hour.” She linked her fingers. “I thought you knew.”

“He’s slippery,” I told her. “Like an eel. Wonder if he has one of those skins.”

Things with Mom must not have ended well if he beat us here on foot. Two legs or four. Demanding she fess up and admit she loved him? Huh. Who would have thought that could ever possibly go wrong?

Parents
.

Shaking my head, I pushed those worries aside. “Where do you want us?”

Mable twirled a finger. “Why don’t you two wait in your office?”

“All right.” I dug in my messenger bag. “That we can do.”

Her eyes followed the motion. “I’ll fetch you as soon as they’re ready.”

From the depths of my bag I pulled a jar of pine honey I’d had imported from Turkey for a special occasion. Tonight was shaping up to be one, so I felt it required a commemorative token. That and if I didn’t make it back, I wanted her last gift from me to be the very best I had squirreled away for her.

With a flourish, I presented the delicate brown glass jar to her. “This is for you.”

She clapped with delight. “What is it?”

“Pine honey.” I winked at her. “The only jar in Wink.”

Maybe even the state of Texas. I had pulled strings to get a conclave outpost in Turkey to ship it here.

“Pine honey,” she repeated. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

I shooed Mable toward her desk where she kept her dainty tasting spoons. She walked in a daze with the jar held up to the light, studying its contents, and I laughed. “Let me know what you think of it, all right?”

“I’ll do that.” She sat in her task chair and placed the jar on her desk. “You didn’t have to—”

“I know.” I smiled. “We’ll see you in a bit.”

I reached behind me and grabbed Shaw by the wrist, hauling him up a short flight of stairs to my office where I shut the door and locked it behind us.

“This is moving too fast.” I pressed a hand into my gut. “How did Mac beat us here? And where the heck is Mom?”

“Breathe.” Shaw gripped my upper arms. “She’s probably blowing off steam. Don’t get yourself worked up. We knew this day was coming.”

I puffed out my cheeks. “They’re upstairs deciding our fate right now.”

His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “They’ve been doing that for days.”

“But now Mac is up there with them. They could flap their gums all they wanted, but the motion couldn’t pass without him being present and giving his formal vote, and he’s been with us, so I knew they were just blowing hot air. Politics, right? But if he’s up there, then it’s real. This is happening.”

Shaw led me across the office toward the task chair where I seated visitors, and shoved down on my shoulder until I sat. Then he kept shoving until I bent forward and my head was between my knees.

“Just breathe.” His wide palm stroked down my back. “Everything is going to be okay.”

Tears gathered in my eyes. “I wanted to see Mom before we left.”

“There’s still time,” he soothed.

I turned my head and caught him playing with his cell. A few days ago I would have snapped a nasty comment about booking hookers, but we were past that. Or trying hard to get that way. I didn’t want to be the girlfriend who kept dredging up the past to poison the present, but it was hard. The old pain was sharp, and fear made it so much worse. Times like these I wanted to still be a little girl. I wanted Mom to pull me onto her lap and rock me and tell me everything was going to be okay, but I was an adult now. I was a marshal. I used to be a princess, and here I was about to reclaim my throne. A freaking crown I never wanted. A title I couldn’t care less about. But it was what it was.

The doorknob wiggling made me jerk vertical, and blood rushed in my ears. I clutched at Shaw’s arm and stared at the door as though the frame was an archaic gateway into a future that terrified me.

“Hel-to the-lo,” Mai sang. “I brought coffee and donuts.”

I was on my feet with the door open and Mai in my arms in a heartbeat. “You got my message.”

She lifted a finger. “Daddy only thinks he knows all the places a girl can hide her cellphone.”

I burst out laughing, which almost covered the pained noise Shaw was making.

“Um.” Her fair skin flushed red hot as she escaped me. “That didn’t come out how I meant it.”

On her way past I plucked a cup of coffee from the paper tray she carried. “You’re the best.”

“No argument here.” She passed Shaw a cup before setting the tray and donut box on my desk.

While perusing the assorted pastries, I asked, “So the Hayashis are going on lockdown?”

“No,” she grumbled. “The Hayashis
are
on lockdown. I was the last holdout.”

I picked up a chocolate-covered candidate. “It sucks, but it will be the safest place for you.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.” She pointed a finger between Shaw and me. “If this doesn’t work out, let me know. With that mentality, you and Dad could be a match made in heaven.”

I snorted. “Heaven is exactly where we would end up too, if your mom caught wind of our torrid love affair.”

“Good point.” She made a grouchy face. “Though I have to admit I’m a little disturbed you took it that far.”

I shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

Her gaze slid to a point behind me, and her eyes narrowed. “Why is your closet glowing like that?”

“Glowing?” I turned around and froze. “Oh crap. It’s not supposed to do that.”

Sultry red light pulsated in the crack between the door and the floor, flashed between the hinges and snaked through the wood grain to make eerie patterns that throbbed with an unsettling intensity.

“I have some herbs in my bag.” Shaw eased forward, placing himself between the closet and me like it was a bomb waiting to explode. “I can cast a divining spell. See if someone tampered with the closet.”

I stepped up beside him. “As in divine who caused the whatever-is-in-there to start glowing?”

“Or divine what it does.” He grabbed my arm. “We don’t want to open the door and have it go boom.”

“See, that’s the thing.” I laced my fingers. “I know what the closet does—
did
—and the door doesn’t open.”

“What it does?” He turned me to face him. “Since when does your closet do anything?”

“The Morrigan gave me a present, and I didn’t know what it was until she had done it.” I stuck a hand down the front of my T-shirt and pulled out the battered silver pendant marked with a triskele.

Each marshal since the start of the program was gifted a medallion that would summon the Morrigan to accept tithes. Though I wasn’t sure what it entailed for other marshals, for me it meant when a case went bad and I exercised my right to use lethal force, the Morrigan collected the body once I had consumed the soul. Meat and bones were paid as a tithe to her in thanks for erasing our messes.

After Balamohan, I was second-guessing what she gained from helping the conclave conceal the existence of fae from humanity. A free meal, yeah, but there had to be more to it. Obviously, she had no issues revealing fae to the human race seeing as how she planned to come out of the closet—no pun intended—in a genocidal way.

Death magics were complex. Far more complex than I had realized, which was worrisome given that was the root of my power. The more I learned and the more Mac taught me, the more worried I got.

When a fae or half-blood died, where did their magic go? Did it vanish in a puff of smoke? Was it absorbed into the ground or air and made clean by the earth? Or was it, as I was coming to believe, locked in the tissues of the fae themselves? Meaning each meal was a power snack in a literal sense.

The worst scenario imaginable was the magics stayed in the body and the Morrigan gained strength each time she ate fae flesh. Given its world-ending consequences, I was betting that was the case.

“You know how these handy-dandy pendants used to summon the Morrigan? For tithe collection and all that?” I rolled my hand. “You know, before she went totally bonkers and took over Faerie?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “I think I can remember as far back as three days ago.”

“Okay, well, mine also acts as an anchor for a portal.” I pointed toward the closet. “To there.”

Muscle leapt in his jaw. “Portals are illegal.”

Shame wormed through my gut. “I know.”

He drew us back several steps from the door. “Do the magistrates know about it?”

“No.” My shoulders slumped. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

Admitting moral weakness to Shaw hurt. It meant offering proof of my corruption by not giving up the pendant in the first place. I’d intended to collect the contents and turn the whole mess over to the magistrates. But I hadn’t. Something kept me holding on to the pendant, the secret, even after I was rescued and sent home to recover. For the first time in my life, I had Mac’s wealth of knowledge at my fingertips, and I hadn’t said a word to him or to Shaw or to Mai or to Mable. Not a single peep.

Studying the pulsating glow, Shaw advanced. “What are you keeping in there?”

“My skins.” I closed my hand over the pendant, my thumb sliding through the familiar groove in its center. “I needed a safe place to keep them after Faerie, and she knew that. I guess Rook mentioned it. Then I called her for pickup, and she did something to my necklace. She had already been here, anchored the portal in the closet and I just... I’m an idiot.”

“This is serious.” A snarl entered his voice. “This is an anchor of power for the Morrigan in the heart of the marshal’s building, right below the magistrates’ office. This is dangerous for us—and for them. Did you consider you might not be the only one with access to it? To what you store inside of it? Or that the portal might not end here?”

The blood rushed from my face, and I swayed on my feet. “We have to tell them.”

Red light strobed under the door and exploded through the wood in an electric blast.

Thrown against the wall, I collided head first with the baseboards, and the room went dark.

Chapter Six

––––––––

S
lashing pain woke me as fire burned my palm. Steel fingers clamped my wrist, and my left arm popped, yanked out of its socket. I gasped through the hurt, forcing my heavy eyes open on chaos.

The closet door was gone. Inside what used to be a three-foot-square area, magic churned in red waves like a choppy sea after a storm. Shadows moved through the smoky light. Sharp teeth. Claws.

My knee slammed into a bookshelf, and I yelped. The constant pressure on my arm lessened.

A slim line of blood trickled down my right arm. Mine?

“It is alive.” A grunt sounded unhappy about that. “The Morrigan wants a word with it.”

I tilted my head back. A bulky troll was dragging me across the floor toward the closet—toward a freaking portal straight into Hell for all I knew. Movement to my right made me squint. Wide gold eyes blinked at me from between two filing cabinets.
Mai
. Thank God. Oh no. Shaw. Where was...?

Two more trolls hunched over a mass in the corner. Boots. It wore black boots.
No, no, no
.

“It will break,” one murmured.

“It might,” the other agreed. “It’s tough. Not good eats.”

A sour taste rose up the back of my throat. I swallowed it down and forced myself to soak in the damage caused by a portal mouth opening inside the closet and transporting a troll mini strike force.

All my fault. This is all me. I can’t blame my magic this time. This is all my doing.

“The other thing,” the one holding my arm said. “Find it. Furry thing. Might make good eats.”

The other two grunted agreement.

Mai
. They were discussing her as a menu item. She must have been scared furry after the blast.

How long had I been out? Not that long if they hadn’t caught her yet. Hadn’t dragged me through the portal. Long enough for Shaw to get hurt. He must have fought them. Stupid, stupid, brave incubus protecting his idiot mate from herself. If he was... I would kill them. All of them.

My magic, always balanced on the sharp edge of hunger, driven to the brink of starvation by my exercises in control, shot from my left palm, through my glove, a powerful blast that bowed my spine.