Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (26 page)

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Even with Pulou’s hand at my back, I landed on Desmond’s square glass coffee table on my knees, shattering it. You’d think Desmond would have replaced it with something sturdier after it had gotten smashed in January, during Kandy and Audrey’s dominance fight.

Pulou dragged me to my feet by the back of my still-soaking-wet tank top. It hurt like hell, mostly because my right leg was still acting like it was shattered beyond repair. I kept hold of Kandy and tried desperately to ignore the fact that she wasn’t breathing.

Pulou drew a nasty looking blade with a gigantic emerald embedded in the center of its guard — the magic of which momentarily warped my eyesight. He slid one leg through the shattered glass in front of me as a seven-foot-tall monster with double fangs burst into the room from the west wing of the house.

McGrowly had arrived.

He chucked the couch out of his way as he barreled toward us. It crashed through two of the huge living room windows.

A just-as-tall werewolf in half-beast form appeared behind him. Her pelt was dark gray, her eyes blazing green. Her canines were almost as long as McGrowly’s, and just as sharp.

Hello, Audrey.

McGrowly — stupidly — attacked Pulou, who backhanded him almost nonchalantly across the face. He flew past where the couch had been and slammed into the wooden trestle table in the open dining room. As massive as the table was, it cracked in half underneath McGrowly’s weight.

Audrey snarled fiercely, but stopped a few feet back to assess the situation. She always was a quick learner.

Warner and Qiuniu stepped out of the portal behind us and it snapped shut.

Only seconds had passed.

A snarl from McGrowly rippled through the room as he pulled himself off the ruins of his dining room table.

Heedless of his aggression, I stepped forward with Kandy in my arms. Audrey moved to intercept me.

“Open your eyes, wolf,” I snapped.

She backed off. McGrowly stepped forward, his magic rolling up and around him as he transformed into his human visage. His T-shirt was seriously stretched to hell, but nothing mattered now except Kandy.

“Please,” I said. I begged. “Please.” Faced with the fierce scowl etched across Desmond’s granite-like features, I couldn’t manage to articulate anything else.

He took Kandy from me without a word, turning to lay her on the granite kitchen island in a fluid motion. Without her weight to hold me — to give me purpose — I fell to my knees.

Audrey stepped around me, transforming into her human self as she joined Desmond.

“Call the pack,” he barked at her. He ran his hand over Kandy’s forehead, down the sides of her face, and to her shoulders. He rested his hand against her chest above her heart … her agonizingly still heart.

Audrey threw her head back and howled inhumanly. The undulating noise entered my ears and rattled my brain.

The front door burst open, and two people I didn’t recognize barreled through. Three more joined the group in the kitchen from deeper inside the house, including Lara of the bee-stung lips. I assumed the shifters were already in position, waiting in reserve against the attack Desmond and Audrey thought they’d been facing. I barely saw or felt them, though. I could only see Kandy’s profile. Her wet green hair was slicked to her forehead. Her eyes were closed, perhaps forever.

Qiuniu stepped up behind me and brushed his fingers through my curls. His healing magic — accompanied by the sweet music that always followed him — flooded through me.

My anger returned in a savage rush to shock me out of my premature mourning. “Not me,” I snapped as I slapped the healer’s hand away.

Warner moaned as if I might have just signed my own death warrant. And maybe I had. But for Kandy, I’d walk through hell with no way back. She’d done the same for me, more than once.

I swallowed my anger, nearly choking on it, as I felt the pack magic that Desmond commanded rise in a swirl around Kandy. I spun, still partially kneeling in the shattered glass of Desmond’s coffee table, and took Qiuniu’s hand — the one I’d just slapped.

“Healer.” I pressed my lips to the back of that hand. “Anything. Anything you can do to aid the pack. Please.”

“Life is a gift,” he said. “And I’m no god.”

“She is strong, so strong,” I whispered into his warm skin. “She was injured in service to the guardian nine.”

“A service of utmost consequence,” Pulou said behind me. His tone was even, as if he was simply verifying information and not trying to influence the outcome.

“She … I can still taste her magic,” I continued. “She’s still here. Please. I would do anything. I would trade my life for hers if I could. Please.”

“Thankfully that isn’t an option, Jade Godfrey.” Qiuniu sounded angry, but he shook off my hold and stepped around me to approach the gathering of shapeshifters at the kitchen island.

Soft melodic music rose to dance among the pack magic whirling around Kandy. Qiuniu’s toasted-coffee-and-Brazilian-chocolate magic joined the healing magic I’d seen Desmond call from the pack to heal Lara more than a year ago.

Warner stepped up beside me. I hadn’t risen from my knees, though Qiuniu had healed my leg with his brief touch. “You make deals with guardians that you can only hope to uphold,” he said. He didn’t sound accusatory. Just matter-of-fact.

“Thankfully, all we ask in return is her very best,” Pulou said.

I didn’t take my eyes off Kandy on the kitchen island. More shapeshifters had arrived, filtering one at a time in through the front door without a single glance at the strangers in the living room. They’d linked hands and formed a circle around the island, encircling Kandy between Desmond and Qiuniu. The healer stood with his eyes closed and one of his hands on the crown of Kandy’s head. He’d placed his second hand over Desmond’s, both of them touching Kandy’s chest over her heart.

“How long …” I murmured. “How long can the brain be oxygen deprived?”

Magic undulated around Kandy in a whirl of gold and green. It settled down over her like a gossamer blanket.

She opened her eyes and screamed. “Jade!”
 

Then she began to convulse.
 

Desmond snarled and rolled her over onto her side.

I started crying, not realizing that I hadn’t been before. Loud, ragged sobs tore through me and out of my throat.

Qiuniu lifted his gaze to meet mine. He still looked angry, but then he smiled tightly. With a nod, he stepped away from the shapeshifters. The circle closed behind him.

Desmond was crooning to Kandy, whispering. “Come, little wolf. Change for me. Come, wolf.”

Kandy continued to convulse.

I rose. Brushing shoulders with Qiuniu as I passed, I stepped up to the island and reached through the swaying shapeshifters to place my hand on Kandy’s back. She was still in the midst of some sort of seizure. Her muscles were taut with what felt like unbearable tension.

“Kandy,” I said. My voice cracked, and I was suddenly afraid I wouldn’t get the words out through the sobs that still lurked in my throat. Words that I needed to say. “Kandy,” I repeated. “You saved me. Me and Warner. Mission accomplished. We got the treasure. Come back, my friend. Come back to me.”

Kandy stilled. Then her blazing green, berry-infused dark-chocolate shapeshifter magic rolled over her. She transformed into a gray wolf.

I backed away.

Her metamorphosis looked painful. Even Desmond lifted his hands away from her as she transformed.

Desmond looked at me, then. The first time he’d acknowledged my presence at all. Green flecks of his magic still whirled in his topaz-brown eyes. “Go now, Jade,” he whispered. “I can’t look at you.”

Then he gathered Kandy into his arms and walked out of the kitchen, surrounded by his pack.

“Stay,” Audrey murmured as she passed by me to follow him. “Kandy will want to see you. She’ll need to see you in order to concentrate on her own healing. Desmond will sleep soon enough.”

She walked away without another glance. Behind her, Lara wrapped her arms around me in a crushing hug before jogging off to join the rest of her pack.

Then I was alone in Desmond’s thoroughly trashed living room with the dragons.

“Was it worth it, then?” Qiuniu asked quietly, but he wasn’t speaking to me. He sounded weary. I’m not sure I’d ever heard a guardian sound even slightly diminished before.

Pulou nodded. “The warrior’s daughter has completed her first task.”

“First?” I asked. “What the hell were all the other retrievals?” I felt lightheaded — epically empty. So much so that my voice sounded disembodied to my own ears.

“First of three. If the myths hold true,” Pulou answered. He looked at Warner. The sentinel shook his head wearily, as if he didn’t know anything anymore. “The other retrievals were training.”

“I’m not sure anything qualifies as training for what we just did. Without Kandy, I’d be trapped underneath thousands of pounds of rock. Then I would have drowned. Without Warner, Kandy would be dead.”

Pulou inclined his head without answering. Then he held a golden diamond-encrusted box toward me. Its lid was hinged open and ready.

I stepped forward, loosening the knot of the ribbons I’d tied around my wrist as I did so. I lifted the five-colored silk braids before me, the three of them still twisted together into one. With them held aloft, I could taste their sorcerer-alchemist magic much more intensely. That magic thrummed contentedly with its joyful, deadly power, despite almost being lost at sea.

Qiuniu hissed and recoiled. “I didn’t feel that before.”

Pulou and Warner gritted their teeth.

“The alchemist’s magic acts like a shield. A buffer,” Pulou said, as if this talent was common knowledge and not something I’d just figured out with the map and the shadow demons myself.

I dropped the tangled braids into the golden box and Pulou snapped its lid shut with a shudder.

“Then the warrior’s daughter is the only one who could wield such a weapon without our knowledge,” Qiuniu said.

“If that were so, then the guardians would be at no risk,” Pulou responded.

Qiuniu nodded. He hadn’t stopped staring at me since I’d turned to face them in the living room. Though I couldn’t read his exact expression, it held no hint of his usual flirty admiration.

“Thank you, healer,” I said. “I’m indebted to you.”

“It is the wolf who holds that burden now,” he said mildly.

I lifted my chin defiantly. “Then I accept the debt, two-fold.” Some kind of dragon-scented magic shifted between us as if held at the ready, but it didn’t settle.

Warner sighed.

Pulou laughed. “The warrior’s daughter is not an easy protection duty, sentinel. Are you still on task?”

“Always,” Warner answered.

Portal magic bloomed and grew behind Pulou. Qiuniu turned without another word and walked into its golden wash. The magic that had risen between us stretched as he did so, thinning to almost nothing as the portal magic swallowed the healer. He hadn’t accepted the debt I’d claimed, but I wondered if he could call upon it at whim now.

Pulou reached into his pockets and pulled out Kandy’s cuffs. “These belong to the wolf. She’s more than earned them today.”

“She’s done her duty.”

“These were a gift from the far seer,” Pulou said. “And not for you to return.”

I took the cuffs from him.

Pulou turned and walked into the golden magic of the portal. “Let that be the wolf’s choice, Jade.” His voice once again sounded in my head, not my ears. The magic of the portal obviously facilitated a level of telepathy among the dragons … and me, I guessed.
 

The portal swallowed the treasure keeper from my sight.

“I’ll let you see to your friend,” Warner said. His tone was formal, as was his slight bow.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Okay.”

He touched my cheek so lightly that I probably wouldn’t have felt it, except for the taste of black forest cake that came with it. The tense knot in my chest eased a bit. I looked up to meet his green eyes and he smiled at me. “Kandy is blessed to have you as a friend.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve almost gotten her killed.”

“And she chooses to remain by your side. She wouldn’t do so unless she wanted to be there. Dangerous beauty, tasty magic, and all. As the wolf would say.”

Then he turned and walked into the portal.

The magic snapped closed behind him. I felt bereft without its warm glow to comfort me.

I felt alone.

And, no matter how childish it probably was, I felt like I deserved to be alone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I straightened the couch and swept up the broken glass of the coffee table as best I could. I didn’t cut myself. But then, I didn’t expect to. I was tougher, harder than that now, as if I was coated in my inherited dragon magic. But that didn’t explain why my heart still felt so mangled. Magic only healed wounds, not souls.

I didn’t bake, though I seriously wanted to soothe my aching heart. It wasn’t my kitchen. It was never going to be my kitchen, and I was okay with that. I had my own home.

Plus, some part of me knew I really didn’t deserve to be soothed. I had dragged Kandy treasure hunting numerous times in the last ten months, and we had come out relatively unscathed. She relished the hunt almost as much as I did. Almost.

I should have known this one would be different. The first freaking clue was tattooed on the skin of a former guardian, after all.

I went out and sat on the front stoop. I had no idea what time it was in Portland. The sun had been in the west when Pulou pulled us out of the ocean, so even though time hadn’t seemed to exist in the magic pocket of the fortress it had continued in the actual world.

That would make it midafternoon here, I thought. Portland was still warm in September, with a lovely, light breeze playing across the laurel hedges that blocked the views of the house from the street.

I was exhausted.

I could taste the individual magic of all the shapeshifters in the house behind me. Including Kandy’s, which was stronger than before but still so much weaker than I’d ever tasted.