Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (14 page)

“Yeah. She and Kett should play poker.”

“That would be insanely boring.”

“Agreed.”

The elevator announced its arrival with a cheerful ping as its doors slid open. We stepped inside in two strides, Wisteria between Kandy and me. The werewolf hit the button for the fourth floor and popped the last half of cheesecake into her mouth — the quadruple chocolate. I was momentarily sorrowful to see the end of its creamy goodness.

As the doors of the elevator slid closed, Warner stepped inside at the last possible second, angling sideways. He brushed between Wisteria and me to fill the spot behind us. He’d clearly gotten over his trouble with confined spaces. That was quick.

“Chameleon,” I muttered to myself, repeating Kett’s word.
 

Warner didn’t speak. I could see his reflection in the polished steel, or chrome, or whatever of the elevator door. Standing sternly behind us — and despite the sexy leather jacket, tight T-shirt, and low-slung jeans — he looked exactly as advertised. A sentinel. A soldier whose job it was to stand watch over something precious, or sacred, or vulnerable.

Wisteria took a step away from Warner and me, closer to Kandy. She was almost the same height as the werewolf, and easily two inches shorter than my five feet nine inches.

And now I was suddenly feeling like the heel I was.

I sighed.

“And what is up with you, alchemist?” Kandy asked.

“Wisteria thinks I’m going to get her killed, and Warner thinks I’m completely incapable … of anything.”

“Killed is a strong … word,” Wisteria said.

“But probably pretty close to the truth,” Kandy said — again, far too gleefully. “But think of how much fun we’ll have first.”

“I doubt that’ll help, Kandy,” I said. “Note how the sentinel here remains silent.”

“I do as tasked, warrior’s daughter. No more, no less.” Warner’s tone was deliberate and flat as he threw my own words back in my face … well, at the back of my head.

The elevator bumped to a stop. I noted Warner gripping the handrail that ran around the interior, and hoped he didn’t dent it. We were already going to have to confess to the broken cabinet door and elevator button.
 

Kandy stepped out into the hall. Wisteria followed her. I looked back at Warner and whispered, “I know you were just trying to take the piss out of me, but you probably didn’t need to mention the warrior’s daughter part in front of the reconstructionist.”

Warner had the decency to look chagrined. Dragons were all about containing deep, dark secrets, but not fantastic about keeping their mouths shut. I didn’t know Wisteria very well — as in, not at all — but she wasn’t a witch in my coven. And my parentage drew too much attention already.

The doors started to close and I stopped them with a thrust of my arm.

Warner stepped out of the elevator and nodded to me formally. “My apologies, alchemist.”

“And mine,” I said. “Why don’t we reboot?” Off Warner’s frown, I added, “You know, like you waking up from the deep sleep.”

“Ah, yes. I understand … reboot. Start again.”

“Yep.”

“I’m … taking longer to adapt than usual,” he said, casting his gaze around the short hall that branched off for the elevator and stairs.

“I imagine the world is a very different place.”

He locked his gaze to mine, his eyes more blue than green in this light. “I will persevere.”

“Yeah, I’m guessing that’s your middle name, sixteenth century.” I turned to follow Kandy and Wisteria back to the suite. “Warner Perseverance Jiaotuson.”

“It doesn’t help that your idiom is all at once playful, esoteric, and, at times, bemusing.”

I’d have to look up two of those words in a dictionary later — just for clarification — but I got the gist. “Yeah, I get that. Like, a lot.”

∞

Back in the suite, Wisteria gestured toward the glass coffee table that sat directly in front of the dark-beige couch. I think the couch folded out into a bed, but was fairly certain we weren’t going to be testing that assumption during this trip.

I gathered that the witch wanted me to place the map on the table, so I did. Kandy retreated to the far side of the room and found the minibar in a niche I hadn’t noticed tucked underneath the stairs.

Warner paced the windows, closing all the curtains but leaving himself a couple of inches to peer out. The air was a bit stale in the room, but I didn’t mention it. I figured Warner would have a heart attack if I tried to open a window, and I really wasn’t a fan of air conditioning.

Wisteria pulled four pillar candles out of her huge bag — white, green, blue, and red — which she placed at north, south, west, and east points around the map.

“I’m still not exactly clear what you want me to do here.” The reconstructionist spoke to me, though she was watching Warner as he paced the edges of the room.

“We think the magic is layered,” I said. “Maybe with a different map on each layer.” Then, exploring the idea out loud, I continued. “Or maybe it’s like a puzzle and the layers just need to be shifted.”

“You can see that?”

“No. It just looks jumbled to me.”

Wisteria peered down at the map and then nodded. “You think I can pull a picture from the residual magic.”

“That’s what you do.”

Wisteria looked doubtful. “I reconstruct magical events.”

“And this is full of magic.”

Wisteria’s gaze flicked to Warner and then to me. “So is the room.”

I nodded toward the coffee table and the witches’ circle she’d started to construct with the candles. “You have your boundary. We won’t cross it.”

“I’m guessing you want to see what I see.”

“Is that possible? Without you storing it in one of your cube things? It shouldn’t be stored anywhere.”

Wisteria nodded, but she didn’t look happy about it.

Something buffeted the windows to the east. I took a couple of steps back from the coffee table to look out. Warner crossed to stand beside me. I could still see the block letters spelling ‘chocolate’ in the sign for the Chocolate Box up the street.

“The wind?” I murmured.

“No,” Warner replied. Then he spoke over his shoulder to Wisteria. “Close your circle, witch.” He lifted the curtain just enough to look south up First Avenue.

Wisteria, who’d been circling the table, didn’t respond. But she did begin lighting the candles as she passed them a second time. Her shoes and lightly tinted stockings were tucked off to one side, next to her massive purse. I hadn’t seen her remove them to walk barefoot on the carpet. Most witches preferred to cast outdoors, closer to the earth magic they summoned and controlled. I liked the dirt floor of my bakery basement.
 

Something crept across the glass of the window next to me, but when I looked out, I couldn’t see anything moving in the dark. The exterior lights of the hotel only illuminated the first storey, and there weren’t any balconies on this side of the building. So the night could be filled with shadow demons and I wouldn’t know it. It was odd to be possibly surrounded by nasty magic and not taste it.

I willed my jade knife into my hand from the invisible sheath at my hip. “Why didn’t they attack on the street? When we were out in the open?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Warner muttered. He sounded epically frustrated.

Wisteria’s sweet nutmeg magic swirled around the candles, and I wondered if the reconstructionist fed the spell with her own power. That seemed like a risky thing to do, and even more draining than a regular casting. But then, Wisteria Fairchild had a lot of magic held in reserve.

Kandy wandered back into the living room, a cola in one hand and a half-eaten milk-chocolate-and-nougat Toblerone bar in the other. She lifted her chin and scented the air. The green of her shapeshifter magic rolled across her eyes.

The windows started rattling … one at a time, then all three at once. Wisteria let out a quickly suppressed hiss of fear, but kept her attention on her candles and the magic she was wielding.

“Close the circle, witch,” Warner repeated. He stepped back from the window as if expecting something to come through it at any minute.

The reconstructionist sank down with her back to Warner and me, sitting on the floor at the edge of the coffee table. As she settled, her magic gathered through her and into the circle as if called back to task. The circle snapped closed abruptly, taking most of the sweet nutmeg taste with it. Wisteria had sealed her magic in with the residual magic that constantly thrummed from the map. At least I thought it was residual. It was kind of like snapping a lid closed on a snug Tupperware container.

The rattling of the windows ceased.

Warner was staring at my chest, and I could feel a blush rise to my cheeks before I realized he was looking at my necklace.

Right.

Silly me.

“How long were you outside the wards of the bakery that night in the alley?” he asked. It was obvious he was piecing something together.

“Hours.”

Wisteria held her hands palm forward toward the map and the circle of magic that now surrounded it. If anything shifted in the circle at this gesture, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see or taste any magic beyond the circle at all.

“The necklace you wear is a shielding artifact? A personal ward?”

“Sure.”

“It must be helping to keep the shadow scouts at bay.”

“One showed up in the alley, right before you did.”

“Perhaps after hours of trying to pinpoint you, and perhaps traveling from a great distance.”

“Pulou carried the map for centuries, without a necklace.”

Warner laughed. “The treasure keeper is as his title implies. He has no need for such devices.”

“When I took it out in the cafe, the shadow appeared.”

“Or simply gained strength. Here as well.” He gestured to the windows.

I lifted my fingers to thread them through the wedding rings of my necklace. Warner started pacing the windows again, systematically checking them.

Kandy climbed up on the back of the couch and perched there, peering down at the map and the witches’ circle. Her eyes still blazed green, but by her expression, she couldn’t see any more than I could within the closed circle.

Wisteria held up her hand, as if expecting it to be taken.

I hesitated. I wasn’t big on touching other Adepts. I tasted their magic much more intensely when I was physically connected.

Wisteria half turned her head to me and widened her fingers impatiently.

I stepped forward and took the witch’s hand as I sunk cross-legged beside her at the coffee table. Her magic instantly tingled through my fingers and up my arm, but it wasn’t overly intense. I assumed she had her magic concentrated on the witches’ circle before her.

Now that I was touching the reconstructionist, I could see what she saw within the circle.

I leaned forward. She had managed to pull a sort of 3D rendering off the map, but the image was still all jumbled.

Warner stopped pacing and stepped up behind me. Wisteria squeezed my hand, involuntarily I think, at his closeness. She made no comment, though, nor did the magic in the circle waver.

Kandy came off the couch to crouch down on the other side of the coffee table. Looking across the circle at her, with the 3D map hovering between us, it appeared as if the map was projected onto her face, and that a ghostly version of the tattoo had been transferred to her skin.

“Can you see anything?” the green-haired werewolf asked.

I shook my head, then clarified. “Same map. Just 3D and hovering about a foot above the actual map.” Then I spoke to Wisteria. “You can’t, like, shift it? Or section off magic?”

“This is what the residual wants to be. There is nothing else here,” Wisteria answered. “I thought I might be able to pick up an image of the tattoo artist, assuming he or she contributed their own magic to the well of magic that exists in the tattoo. But no. Just this.”

“Can you rotate it?”

“Sure, but I did do so before I joined you to the circle.” Wisteria gestured toward the circle with a flick of her fingers, and the image slowly spun as if a camera was circling it. The reconstructionist was careful to not let her fingers touch the edges of the witches’ circle.

I watched the ghostly image as it slowly rotated before me. I was hoping that if I looked closely enough, I might see something from another angle that looked like an actual map.

“Wait,” I murmured. “Go back a couple of inches.”

Wisteria gestured again. The hovering projection paused and then rotated back a couple of inches. I leaned forward, practically pressing my nose to the outer edge of the magic of Wisteria’s circle.

“What’s that?” I asked. I was looking at the side of one of the two circles that were intersected by the five-colored lines. The would-be rainbows, as Kandy had called them. From this angle, the now three-dimensional circle looked thicker — almost as deep as the cuffs that Pulou had given to Kandy.

“Where?” Wisteria asked.

“There.” I pointed. “Can you rotate forward to the other intersected circle?”

Wisteria beckoned the map to turn a hundred and eighty degrees until I was staring at the second circle. This one had no thickness other than the tattooed line.

“Go back?” I asked. Wisteria obliged. I was once again looking at the first circle — the one that would have looked like a cuff or bracelet, except for the five-colored lines crossing and blocking the opening on one side. “Does that look thicker to you?”

Wisteria nodded.

“And more substantial, yes? Not as ghostly as the rest of the image.”

I didn’t wait for Wisteria to confirm my observation. I lifted my hand and reached for the image hovering before me.

“No — !” the reconstructionist cried, but I was already crossing through the barrier of the witches’ circle, coaxing the magic to allow me passage and to seal over my hand as it passed.

I reached for the intersected circle. My fingertips almost brushed its edge.

I wasn’t in the hotel room anymore.

I was crouched in what appeared to be a treasure trove of some sort, peering at the jeweled hilt of a sword that was leaning against a three-foot-tall Buddha carved out of some sort of tusk. Some sort of massive tusk, stolen from a massive tusked animal. PETA would freak out if they ever laid eyes on it, though the Buddha was cheerfully smiling and holding his ample belly.