Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (10 page)

I smirked. Yeah, the vampire didn’t know what a decoder ring was, but he wasn’t about to clarify and lose face. My phone pinged again.

> There appears to be too many layers. You must look at it a different way.

Helpful.

The vampire didn’t get sarcasm when it was directly in his face. I was fairly certain he’d miss it in text form as well.

>
You’re welcome.

Yep. I was brilliant at being right about all the little things.

Layers, Kett had texted. Maybe that was why the green and blue and black marks didn’t actually look like a map? Maybe they were all jumbled up and on top of each other? I touched the edge of the map. I’d avoided doing so before, not because it thrummed with dragon magic but because it was just plain icky to touch dried skin.

I could tap into and pull out this magic. I could transfer it or meld it with other residual magic. Or with another magical object. But I couldn’t pull off layers and look at them like … a picture.

Layers of pictures.

“Wisteria,” I murmured.

“The reconstructionist? From London?” Kandy asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. “That’s what she does, isn’t it? Pulls images out of residual magic?”

Kandy shrugged. I wasn’t clear about how Wisteria Fairchild’s magic worked either, though I’d seen the results of it two times now. She worked as a reconstructionist for the witches Convocation — or, specifically, for the Convocation’s investigative teams. Yeah, the witches had formed and employed supernatural investigative teams. Who knew? Not me.
 

The reconstructionist’s job was to go to scenes of magical crimes or mysteries and collect the residual magic into something that resembled a video playback without a computer or TV, which she then stored in a cube thingy. I’d seen her recording of my sister — along with her boyfriend Rusty — murdering Hudson, a werewolf who’d been the beta of Kandy’s pack and someone I’d seriously considered seriously dating for far too brief of a moment. Then I’d seen a similar reconstruction of Sienna murdering Rusty.

I’d avoided viewing Wisteria’s reconstruction of the triple demon summoning Sienna had engineered in London. My sister had murdered three sorcerers and tried to murder Mory — a teenaged necromancer friend of mine, and Rusty’s sister. Then she had kicked Kett’s, Kandy’s, and my asses to get away unscathed … with the sacrificial knife that I’d thought was carefully hidden until Warner busted into my safe.

“Reconstructionist?” Warner asked. “Witch magic?”

“Yep,” I said. “You got a better idea, leather pants?”

Warner screwed up one side of his face at this terrible attempt at a nickname. Unfortunately, this quizzical look made him adorable. No one needed an adorable, dangerous dragon grumping around the bakery. Least of all me.

“We aren’t allowed in London,” Kandy said.

It was kind of Kandy to say ‘we,’ though it was really only me who was banned from London. Maybe even all of England. Yes, I wasn’t allowed to enter an entire country, based on the say-so of one uber-powerful super-old vampire. A vampire I hadn’t even met. I had, however, seen his magic running through the veins of his blood grandson Kett, who had returned from true death a second time through the intervention of his grandsire.
 

When vampires shared blood, they literally gave away part of their magic to make fledglings — or, as in Kett’s case, to resurrect other vampires. The big bad of London was seriously pissed that he’d had to divide his power because I got Kett killed … yeah, with that same knife I was trying to keep locked away.

“Wisteria doesn’t live in London,” I answered. “Gran might know where to find her.”
 

I’d only spent about two hours in Wisteria Fairchild’s presence, and I was concerned that she wouldn’t be receptive to repeating the experience. I scared her, like the guardian dragons scared me. I also had a habit of dragging mayhem and chaos in my wake, and Wisteria had intimate knowledge of the end results.
 

Though I was seriously hoping that had just been one bad year that was way behind me now.

Kandy pushed her second-to-last
Flirt in a Cup
across the table in Warner’s direction with a wolfish grin. He regarded her with narrow-eyed suspicion, but didn’t even blink before consuming the cupcake in three big bites. Kandy, still grinning, wagged her eyebrows at me.

I couldn’t help but laugh as I peeled the paper off a
Rapture in a Cup
myself. Werewolf games were always more fun when paired with a swirl of yellow and chocolate cake with cream cheese chocolate icing.

∞

Gran entered the bakery kitchen, her fresh-cut-grass-and-lilac-scented magic sparking behind her eyes in a way I’d never seen. Warner immediately slid from his stool, but he didn’t move out from behind the stainless steel workstation. I’d texted Gran right before ordering Chinese food from Connie’s Cookhouse. We had spread just about every dish of takeout we could order on the workstation, because I wasn’t interested in bringing Warner through the wards up to my apartment. Not yet, anyway. I was especially a fan of Connie’s cod in black bean sauce, and Kandy had a bit of an obsession going with their ginger beef. Warner wielded his chopsticks as if he’d grown up using them, even with the gai-lan in garlic that I had to be taught how to eat — thick end up — by a friend.

“Gran,” I said. I stood for a hug as she set her purse on the steel counter between the fridge and the ovens. “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” Gran replied. Her eyes flicked over my shoulder to Warner. I had the same color eyes — indigo blue — as Gran and my mother, Scarlett, but that was where the resemblance stopped. As it was today, Gran’s silver hair was usually pulled back in a long braid, but like Scarlett’s, it had been strawberry blond. Neither my mother nor grandmother had my height or … other assets. No matter how many yoga classes or how much dragon training I did, ‘petite’ would never be a word used to describe me.

I stepped to the side to introduce Gran to Warner. “Pearl Godfrey, Convocation chair —”

“Grandmother of Jade, alchemist and slayer of demons,” Gran said. She raised her chin with pride.
 

Emotion momentarily stopped my words. I’d never heard Gran title herself that way. It was a prideful acknowledgment of my accomplishments, and also a thinly veiled warning to Warner. Kandy must have given Gran a blow-by-blow account of the sentinel’s appearance in the alley while he and I were in the nexus. Normally, the werewolf wasn’t so verbose.

I nodded, then continued. “Meet Warner, sentinel, son of Jiaotu-who-was.” I deliberately didn’t mention the ‘instruments of assassination’ part of Warner’s sentinel title. After London and Tofino, I figured Gran was looking for any hint of a reason to lock me away in a protection circle and never let me out.

“Tasked by the treasure keeper to aid, not hinder, the warrior’s daughter,” Warner added. Then he inclined his head toward Gran.
 

She nodded in return but didn’t smile.

Well, that was tense.

Gran finally turned to me. “Wisteria Fairchild is in Seattle …” — her eyes flicked to Warner and then back to me again — “… on Convocation business.”

“Ah. There isn’t a portal into Seattle,” I said as I turned to look at Warner as well. Still swathed head to toe in black leather, he looked completely out of place in my bakery kitchen. He hadn’t returned to eating.

“Then you will have to wait a few days until she can come here,” Gran said.

“We could drive if we borrow Gran’s car. It’s spell protected,” I said, though I wasn’t jazzed about it. “There’s no way we can fly, not with a dragon.” Not with a dragon powerful enough to rip through the reinforced door of my safe and my wards like they were made of marshmallows, at any rate. Warner’s magic would disable the security scanners way before he got anywhere near enough to mess with an airplane’s electronics.

“Yeah, I’m not getting on a plane with him,” Kandy said as she slathered a package of plum sauce on a spring roll. “Hell, I’m not going into Seattle with him dressed like that.”

“We will make a request of the treasure keeper,” Warner said. “And how should I be clothed?”

“I can’t just ask Pulou to open doors on a whim,” I said.

Kandy sucked plum sauce off her fingers, then reached for her iPad.

“You indicated that this witch in Seattle …” — the city name was unfamiliar to Warner — “… could read the map.”

“I said I thought she might be able to.”

“We’ll buy you something like this,” Kandy said. She was holding her iPad up for Warner to look at.

“The treasure keeper will oblige,” Warner said as he reached for the tablet.

“Don’t touch …” Too late.

Warner frowned at the iPad for a moment, then handed it back to Kandy, who was grinning rather manically. Oddly, the iPad seemed unscathed, though it had flicked to sleep mode before I could see what Kandy had shown the sentinel.
 

I sighed. “Kandy …”

The green-haired werewolf turned the smile on me. “Captain America on his day off.”

What? Oh, no.

Dragon magic — spicy, dark chocolate with a smooth, creamy, sweet cherry finish — rose to tickle me along my left cheek, shoulder, and ribcage. Oh. My. God. Chocolate cake, whipped cream, and cherries … Warner’s magic tasted exactly like the black-forest-cake ice cream they served at Mario’s Gelati, which I had yet to replicate to my satisfaction in a cupcake. I hadn’t realized how much he’d been dampening his power until now.

My stomach fluttered in anticipation and my heart rate picked up a few beats. I slowly turned to look at Warner as his dragon magic settled around him.

He was wearing a dark gray T-shirt, cut low enough at the neck that I could see a patch of chest hair and the edge of a tattoo across his collarbone that had been hidden by the leather vest. My mouth ran dry, and I inhaled deeply instead of giving into the appreciative moan I could feel aching at the back of my throat. The tight T-shirt stretched over a muscled physique that I would have sworn had been Photoshopped had I seen it on Facebook, then tapered down into low-slung dark blue jeans. A distressed leather jacket hung off Warner’s broad shoulders like it was tailored to him … and I guess it was.

Oh. My. God. Times two.

Kandy whistled. “That’s a useful talent.”

Warner shrugged, perfectly mimicking the green-haired werewolf. Then he flashed me a movie-star grin that turned my knees to goo. Thankfully, I was leaning back against the counter.

I checked my chin for drool, then crossed my arms and tried to look unimpressed. “Fancy, but what else can you do?”

Warner’s grin widened into a smile. He didn’t answer. Instead, he took off the jacket, flexing biceps the size of my freaking thighs as he did so. Oh, God, really? How the hell was I going to be at all effective with that around? Then he reapplied himself to the Chinese food with a renewed vigor.

Ever since seeing the latest Marvel Comics box office hit, I’d had this ongoing fantasy that involved a certain muscle-bound superhero, a motorcycle chase, then an alien brawl that ended in a steaming shower for two.

“That was not helpful,” I hissed at Kandy.

“Really?” She eyed Warner appreciatively. “I think it was very helpful.”

“Wisteria Fairchild?” Gran called my attention off the suddenly too-accessible sexy dragon scarfing Chinese food in my bakery kitchen. She was genuinely unimpressed. She had eyes only for beautiful Brazilian guardian dragons. Qiuniu was an impossibly high bar for any man … you know, if you were into that sort of thing.

“Right. Seattle. Treasure keeper,” I said.

“The reconstructionist is prepared to meet you,” Gran said.

“Prepared? Had to twist her arm, did you?”

Gran offered a tight smile but no reply. Yeah, Wisteria Fairchild was probably as reluctant as I thought she would be. “Tell her I’ll double her fee.”

“She agreed to triple, plus expenses, and a healer on call.”

Jesus. The witch really didn’t like me. And I really, really couldn’t blame her. Though the healer provision smarted.

“Tell her we’ll meet her at the Bacco Cafe in two hours, depending on how long we need to wait for the treasure keeper to open a direct portal. Though without mentioning the portal or treasure keeper part of that. So … just two hours, Bacco Cafe.”

“For triple, she’ll wait all night.” The blue of her witch magic rolled over Gran’s eyes. I wouldn’t have risked pissing off the head of the Convocation if I were Wisteria Fairchild. But then, I’d seen Gran in action.

“You ready for your first trip to the nexus?” I directed this question to Kandy, who answered with her patented nonsmile.

Nothing daunted the werewolf.

I wished I could say the same.

Warner wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. Then he carefully started replacing the lids on the containers that still had food in them. I turned away to retrieve the sacrificial knife and some American cash from the broken safe, pushing away thoughts of strong fingers doing delicate tasks. With the safe broken, I couldn’t leave the knife here if I wasn’t going to be back soon, even if the bakery was closed tomorrow. Maybe I’d finally convince Pulou to keep it.

I rolled the knife in a red-and-white-striped tea towel, then tucked it into my satchel while I paused in the office doorway to look back into the kitchen. Gran was picking at some Szechuan green beans and texting. Kandy was looking up maps on her iPad.

Warner looked up from wiping the workstation and snagged my attention with his green-blue eyes. The knife made my bag feel epically heavy hanging off my shoulder. It felt filled with all the guilt I carried over the blood magic I’d practiced to save Mory’s life. It reminded me of the darkness that had swallowed my sister … that had entered the perfect life I thought I’d been building. Now, arrayed before me — only steps away in my bakery kitchen — was another glimpse of that unattainable, perfect life. A life that the darkness that had taken up residence within me would never let me have.

I dropped Warner’s gaze and tugged at my necklace, willing it to buffer me from the power of the knife. The shielding magic of the wedding rings responded instantly, but the weight of the bag didn’t change.