Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (18 page)

Kandy bared her teeth at me.

I laughed. “And what about being half naked with crazy green hair and wet American dollars?”

“They didn’t even blink twice,” Kandy said, “I got this for the sentinel.” She held up a T-shirt that was painted in a swirl of blue and greens.

I was fiddling with threading the ties of the skirt through its holes around my waist. “That’s at least a size too small —”

“Exactly.” Kandy flashed me her predator grin and took off toward the beach.

Damn it. I tugged the orange tank top on over my still-wet bra. Like I needed to see Warner in clothes any tighter than what he was already wearing. And the swirl of green and blue would only emphasize his eyes …

Damn, damn, damn it.

“Are you having some trouble, alchemist?”

I spun around to find Warner watching me as I strapped my knife to my right thigh. “No trouble.” I shook my head, straightened to let my skirt fall back into place, and very deliberately did not check him out. He was wearing the T-shirt Kandy had found, along with a pair of beige shorts. Warner’s gaze lingered on my leg, but I was fairly certain it was the knife that had caught his attention, not my thigh. All dragons could see magic, even through Gran’s invisibility spell.

Warner lifted his gaze to meet mine, and I realized that I’d been staring at him despite vowing not to.

“You are beautiful, warrior’s daughter,” he said.

My mouth literally dropped open at this admission. Then I noticed he looked displeased, so I snapped it shut.

“It’s perturbing that something so beautiful could be so deadly,” he continued as he closed the space between us. “But that’s how nature works, isn’t it?”

“Perturbing?” I mocked, holding my ground at his advancement. “Also, Mr. I-tear-demons-in-half-with-my-bare-hands, who are you calling deadly?”

“It was the combination I was remarking on,” he answered. “All dragons are deadly. You more so, and not just because the far seer referred to you as ‘dragon slayer.’ ”

“He was talking about you,” I said.

“He didn’t even notice I was in the nexus.”

“He sees all.”

“Exactly my point.”

Okay, I’d been lost since the beginning of this conversation, and was only more so now. Bravado didn’t seem to be getting me through this time. “Just what are you accusing me of?”

He looked surprised. “Nothing, warrior’s daughter. I was simply putting the pieces together. You, the map, the knife, the werewolf, the vampire, the witch … and now here we are.”

“Doing our duty, like good dragons.”

He inclined his head. “I’ll need a weapon.”

“You could have mentioned that the three times we’ve been in the nexus in the last twelve hours.”

He shrugged. I ignored the way this gesture tightened the T-shirt across his pecs. I was pissed at him. I didn’t really know why, but I wanted to be pissed at him, so I clung to the feeling.
 

“Why? You already have a blade perfectly suited to me.” He cast his gaze to my ruined satchel, which I’d propped on a tree root in the hopes of keeping it out of the sand. I hadn’t opened it yet, because I was afraid to acknowledge the extent of the ruin.

“That blade is not for you,” I said.

He looked at me, all dark and serious. “The knife scares you, alchemist. I can take it off your hands.”

“I take responsibility for what I make,” I said. “You seem to do fine with just your hands.”

“The knife would do even better.”

“I don’t trust it.”

“You don’t trust me.”

I couldn’t deny that — not with utter truth — so I spun away, grabbed my satchel, and headed toward the beach, following the taste of Kandy’s magic.

∞

The map had led us to the Abaco Islands, a group of small islands within the Bahamas. Apparently, the grid point portal dropped us vaguely near the village of Hope Town, which we reached after much swimming and some walking, of course. While I’d been wrestling with my jeans, Kandy had done some quick but thorough scouting. The green-haired werewolf was currently pouring over a pile of tourist brochures she’d picked up along with the clothing.

I pulled out the map and tried Kandy’s trick of placing the key over the tattooed image of the key, carefully aligning the colors so that the missing green line was accounted for. The magic of the map shifted underneath my fingers again, but with more flash this time, and a mouthful of smoky dragon magic.

“We’re closer,” Kandy said as she peered over my shoulder.

“Yeah, if we’re reading it correctly at all.”

“We are,” Kandy pointed to a small black rectangle that had now appeared on the green portion of the map. “That’s the lighthouse.”

“Once again, if we weren’t just superimposing our guesses on a bunch of pretty green and blue blobs that were once tattooed on the back of a guardian dragon.”

“Not a lighthouse,” Warner corrected Kandy. “A doorway.”

I flinched. That was the second time the sentinel had snuck up on me. He was good at muting his magic, but not that good. It was the natural magic that thrummed sleepily around me that dulled my dowser senses.

“Yeah,” Kandy countered. “A doorway in a lighthouse.”

“A lighthouse?” I asked, just to get in on the conversation like I was an active participant and all.

“On the other side of the island, see?” Kandy unfolded the tourist map she’d picked up along with the brochures. “The island is long and skinny, and we’re currently here on the other side of this low ridge.” She pointed to a specific spot on her paper map. “The lighthouse is in the middle of town here, on the beach opposite and a bit north of us. There’s a path just over there.” She pointed toward the trees farther up the beach.

She placed the tourist map alongside the tattooed map so we could compare them. They weren’t identical, but the tourist map was obviously intended to be easy to read rather than overly detailed.

“That’s how this stuff works, right?” Kandy asked. “Treasure hidden in landmarks or monuments? Like in Indiana Jones.”

“If this were a movie, I wouldn’t be wearing orange.”

“It looks great on you.”

“Funny how you found green Lycra shorts for yourself.”

Kandy shrugged, then grinned at me wolfishly. Great. It seemed that if Kandy had her way, I’d be adorned in pretty skirts every day.

“Show us this lighthouse, wolf,” Warner demanded. Well, it sounded demanding to me. Kandy didn’t seem to mind.

The green-haired werewolf took off across the beach as I rolled the map and tucked it back into my ruined, waterlogged satchel. I’d dumped the contents and most of the water out, then repacked it with what I could fit. Thankfully, I could lace my boots to the strap, but I couldn’t do anything about the sand that now permeated every inch of everything I owned. And the chocolate was gone. Melted away, I guessed, seeing as all I’d found were waterlogged wrappers. I really didn’t want to deal with that reality at all.

Kandy disappeared into the pine forest. I followed with Warner at my heels, still feeling like I was crushing the natural magic underneath my feet as I walked. I remembered Gran saying that magic was dying as the earth was slowly being polluted and destroyed by humanity. Here, that didn’t feel like the case at all.

I wondered how many witches lived near grid points. At least the grid points that connected over or near land. Witches borrowed magic from the earth. Well, when they weren’t ripping it from other Adepts through bloody sacrifices as Sienna had done. Thankfully, black witches were rare. The Convocation made sure of that.
 

Or maybe witches would find it too intense, and the magic difficult to harness, this close to a grid point. For me, this magic didn’t come with a specific taste or color. Just a freshness that made the natural hues of the vegetation surrounding us seem brighter and more intense.

We crossed out of the pine trees and onto a paved path that was too narrow to be an actual road.

“We haven’t seen any animals,” I murmured. “I can’t even hear any nearby.”

Kandy turned back to flash me a grin. The green of her shapeshifter magic rolled over her eyes. “They’re near. Just not stupid enough to move when greater predators tread the earth.”

We rounded a slight curve in the path, and I could see the top of the red-and-white horizontally striped lighthouse through the trees.

Then a golf cart tried to run us over.

Literally.

It zoomed up behind us and cut around as I was gazing up at the lighthouse. The cart actually brushed my skirt as it passed by.

“Hey,” Kandy snarled as she stepped off the path.

“Sorry,” a young woman cried as the cart sped away. “It’s our honeymoon!”

“That’s no excuse!” Kandy yelled after the speeding, swerving cart.

“The cart explains the narrow roads, though,” I said.
 

“Honeymoon,” Warner mused behind me. “The first month of marriage is the sweetest.”

“Yeah?” Kandy asked. “Because of all the mead?” The green-haired werewolf chortled at whatever joke she thought she’d made. Though Warner snorted like he found her amusing, so maybe I was missing something.

“Do Adepts still practice the marriage ritual, then?” he asked me as he stepped up to my left, perfectly matching my stride.

“Yep,” I replied.

“And your parents? The warrior and the witch? They are married? In my … understanding, it is unusual for a guardian to marry.”

He stumbled over the word understanding. I was fairly certain he was going to say ‘time,’ but then didn’t. I felt bad for him. Just for a second. Then I shook it off, reminding myself he was just doing his ‘duty.’ No less and no more.

“No,” I said. “They … ah … the circumstances surrounding my birth were unprecedented.”

“I imagine.”

“They only just reconnected. About ten months ago.”

“Do they plan on marrying?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

Warner shrugged as he glanced around at the tiny village that had practically appeared out of nowhere on either side of the paved path. “It’s good to know the customs of a strange land before walking there.”

Right. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a dragon use the term “walking” when referring to visiting the human world. Haoxin had done so, in fact, speaking from the portal. But Warner seemed to be asking about Adept customs — or, specifically, dragon customs — rather than human. Maybe he was wondering how to ask Haoxin out. Guardian dragons had to date, right? They couldn’t all be nuns and monks. Otherwise, baby dragons like Drake couldn’t go around breaking the necks of baby half-dragons like me.

∞

The single-storey buildings and homes of Hope Town were all painted in bright colors, dominated by seashell pink. Kandy cut up between buildings toward the red-and-white-striped lighthouse that towered easily five storeys higher than any other building in the village. I spotted a few people dressed in bright colors, most of them shopping or hanging around a local coffee hut, but no one gave us a second glance. Kandy had outfitted us perfectly for what was obviously a tourist destination. The sparse population of three hundred — according to Kandy’s brochures — appeared to be a mix of Caucasian and people of African ancestry, but the village didn’t feel desolate. More like everyone was elsewhere — perhaps the cluster of taller buildings on the edge of town that the golf cart was zooming toward. A hotel, maybe.

My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it.

The lighthouse was before us. A pink rope hung across the entrance, which I took to mean it was normally open to the public. Just beyond and down a slight hill, the ocean lapped against a grassy shore. Tiny seaside houses on that shore had boats tied to individual wharves. The low buildings surrounding the lighthouse were painted pink with white-trimmed windows and balconies, which was an odd contrast to the thick red-and-white stripes of the lighthouse tower. We’d left the pine forest behind us. A few palm trees were mixed with the low buildings, but nothing as dense as where we’d come through.

I stopped and stared up at the lighthouse looming before us. Kandy tucked up to the back of my right shoulder, as she always did. Warner stood directly to my left, placed so he occupied too much of my peripheral vision.

“Do you taste that?” I asked. I took another step forward and held out my left arm to block Warner from following. He took my hint.

“Magic?” Kandy asked.

“Sorcerer, I think. Maybe witch.”

Kandy stepped off to the right, her footsteps practically silent as she circled the buildings around the lighthouse. Over the six or so months since Pulou had first tasked us with collecting treasures for him, we’d fallen into a rhythm. Kandy would scout and secure the area while I dealt with the magic — whatever that entailed.

I closed my eyes and focused on the new flavor. It hovered just underneath the natural magic that had been dulling my senses since we’d come through the portal. I brushed my fingers over my invisible jade knife through the fabric of my skirt, and then twined them through the wedding rings of my necklace. I’d been so unfocused — so distracted by wet jeans, hunky, unattainable dragons, and missions far beyond my comfort zone — that I’d been walking all over this new magic without noticing it.

But this was who I was … fundamentally … utterly. There was no use dancing around it. No use trying to be sunshine and light, trying to make up for all the darkness Sienna had left behind in my soul. My deep, deep core. The darkness was there … and it was time to move through it. It was time to embrace the new, to relish the present.

I was a dowser … an alchemist.

I was the warrior’s daughter.

I had a job to do. A job I wanted to do.

“Sorcerer?” Warner prompted from just behind me.

I opened my eyes. The natural colors around me were a blur of green and blue, pink and white. I blinked and the colors settled into trees, lawn, and a dirt path. Kandy was crossing back toward us from around the other side of the lighthouse.

I turned my head toward Warner. He stepped closer. I leaned into him and whispered, “You taste just like black forest cake. I like black forest cake. A lot.”

How was that for embracing the future?