Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (28 page)

I should move. I should shower. I should strip off my ruined clothing. I should find some shoes. I should fix the safe and get the map and knife locked away. If I was going to continue forward, I should be asking questions, demanding answers.

I did none of those things.

I watched Warner adjust the heat of the element and spoon more batter into the frying pan. He had one of my old cookbooks open on the kitchen counter between the stove and the fridge. The one I always went to first, so much so that its binding was broken and its pages of recipes were really just a pile of loose printed paper.

I wondered why he’d chosen that cookbook over all the fancy hardcovers I had shoved away in the cupboard above the overhead fan. Yeah, people bought me cookbooks, which I guess made sense. But I always preferred fine chocolate as a go-to gift.

“Your mother and grandmother are at a coven meeting,” Warner said without looking up from his cooking.

“Did Scarlett let you in?” I thought I’d adjusted the wards enough that I was the only one who could invite — or uninvite — Adepts into the apartment.

Warner looked up at that, surprised. “No,” he said. “You did.” Then he laid a blazing, sexy-as-hell grin on me. Like he could smile like that every day … at me. Warmth curled in my belly.

“The kiss,” I murmured, as I clicked together the pieces of the puzzle that his chameleon magic presented. He borrowed. He adapted, like the ability to change his accent or clothing.
 
That was a bit of alchemy in itself — though he transformed himself, not magical objects as I did.

Here, he’d obviously absorbed the bit of my magic that he’d gotten while kissing me, and had used it to pass through my wards. I certainly had invited him.

Warner’s grin widened, turning intimate and smoldering before he laughed and returned his attention to the pancakes.

For some reason, I felt like moving again. I sauntered over to the kitchen island and climbed up on a stool to prop my chin on my hands.

This third batch of pancakes looked perfectly edible. His ability to absorb new situations, learn languages, and adapt in general was impressive. He was my complete opposite. I had to be beaten over the head before I absorbed any important information.

Warner deemed these pancakes acceptable and put them in the oven to keep them warm. Someone had obviously read more of the cookbook than just the pancake recipe.

“The shadow demons,” I said, even though I would have sworn I wasn’t remotely interested in talking about anything of substance. “I think they stripped the magic from the fortress. Like magical leeches. Maybe even weakening it so much that the pocket that hid the fortress collapsed when we tried to remove the instrument.”

“Or the earthquake was the final trap laid by the sorcerers who built the fortress.”

“It could have been. Except then, how would we have wound up in the ocean without walking back through the doorway, or deliberately cutting another exit through the barrier?”

Warner nodded thoughtfully while flipping another round of pancakes.

“But the leeches couldn’t touch the braids,” I said, continuing to voice my thoughts out loud. “Or wouldn’t.”

“I think you’re right.”

“So they weren’t trying to take the map.”

“Just attracted to its magic.”

“Or to the key it held?”

“Yes.”

“For who? You said they were demon scouts. In the service of what sorcerer? If they’re a form of demon, then they’ve been called to this dimension, but by who?”

Warner frowned. “Dimension?”

“That’s how my father explained demons to me. Not of this world.”

Warner nodded. “The corpses,” he said.

I didn’t immediately follow what seemed like a change of subject. Then I remembered London, and Sienna calling demons forth through the sorcerers. While they were still alive.

“The skeletons of the sorcerers in the fortress,” I said thoughtfully. “Willingly sacrificed before each magical trap. Did you show Pulou the runes?”

“Not yet.”

“Because I still have them.” I’d tucked them in my satchel for safekeeping after Warner had given them to me in the fortress. I laughed at myself, then smiled. Kett would have frozen me out for making such a blunder. For opening my mouth to question what I should already know.
 

Warner simply answered the question. “Yes.”

“You think someone used the sorcerers to gain entry to the fortress. Performed some sort of black magic, blood magic, to call the leech demons through them.”

“To bind them to her.”

“But she had to try to take the braids herself, because the leeches are only capable of draining magic. Maybe even sustained by it.”

“Eternal life, as they wished,” Warner said grimly.

I shuddered. I couldn’t imagine that was the existence — the shadow leech form — that the sorcerers would have devoted their lives to achieving. “The child dragon,” I said.

“She wears the form of a child now.”

“Now? You think she survived the earthquake? The flood?”

“Dragons are difficult to kill.”

“Do dragons always revert to a younger form like that when their magic has been drained or compromised?”

Warner shook his head. “I’ve never seen or heard of the like.”

“Maybe it’s a lingering effect of the stone spell,” I said, shuddering at the memory of slowly being encased myself.

Warner nodded, but didn’t answer. I could tell he was still peeved I hadn’t countered the spell on the altar more quickly. But the fact he didn’t bring it up pleased me. He might be pissed, but he wasn’t going to fight about it. Like maybe he trusted my judgement.

“How many leeches did you kill?” I asked, changing the subject slightly. “They disappeared at the same time as the kid.”

“If I was truly vanquishing them. If they don’t just regenerate. Not enough.”

I nodded. I was too exhausted to think about it anymore. I felt — utterly selfishly — bereft without Kandy.

Warner stepped over to the fridge and pulled out two plastic containers and an aerosol can of whipped cream. He placed these before me on the island, then grabbed two plates out of the cupboard and two sets of forks and knives.

I watched him as he moved around the kitchen with utter confidence, like he’d lived and cooked here for months. I’d been invaded, and I didn’t seem to mind one bit.

I blamed the exhaustion.

Warner pulled the pancakes out of the oven and set two onto plates. He opened one of the containers — which appeared to hold some sort of stewed sweet cherry — and spooned the fruit onto the center of the pancake. The second container held chocolate shavings.

My heart started to beat erratically as I watched him spray whipped cream from the can on top of the cherries, then sprinkle chocolate over his concoction.

He put the plate before me.

Oh, God. He’d made me black forest pancakes. I looked up to watch him as he put together a second plate.

“You cooked for me.”

“I was going to try cupcakes, but didn’t think I had the time to figure them out. Or your magic to pull them off. Gran thought pancakes would do.”

Gran. He was calling my grandmother by the nickname I used.

He was in cahoots with Gran. She’d probably found the cherries, then dragged my mother away for an impromptu coven meeting. And here I thought she had plans for Qiuniu and me, but Warner was clearly an acceptable alternative for one of the guardian nine.

That said a lot, actually, about what Gran thought of the sentinel.

Warner caught my eye. His smile was softer, more tentative now. “That’s what you do, Jade Godfrey. To express your feelings. You bake for the people you care about.”

“You’re learning my language.”

“So I can communicate effectively.”

“Communicate your feelings.”

His grin widened, smoldering on the edges again. “Yes, but I gather that’s obvious.”

“I usually need things spelled out for me.”

“I’ll remember that.”

I answered his smile. Then I laughed. I threw back my head and laughed.

I picked up the can of whipped cream and sprayed it directly in my mouth. It tasted like chemical-infused milk. Yeah, absolutely terrible.

Warner laughed at me. The apartment wards rippled at the power that rolled off him. I breathed in his black-forest-cake magic, savoring the deep-cocoa-and-sweet-cherry taste of it.

Then I ate my pancakes.

I was really in trouble now.

For Michael

The yin to my yang. Or maybe it’s the other way around?

Acknowledgements

With thanks to:

My story & line editor

Scott Fitzgerald Gray

My proofreader

Indie Solutions by Murphy Rae

My beta readers

Leiah Cooper, Terry Daigle, Angela Flannery, Gael Fleming, Desi Hartzel, Heather Lewis, Mandy Reed, and Karen Turkal.

For their continual encouragement, feedback, & general advice

Luch Balao - for the Martial Arts training

The Retreat

For her Art

Elizabeth Mackey

Meghan Ciana Doidge
is an award-winning writer based out of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada. She has a penchant for bloody love stories, superheroes, and the supernatural. She also has a thing for chocolate, potatoes, and sock yarn.

Novels

After The Virus

Spirit Binder

Time Walker

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1)

Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser 2)

Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (Dowser 3)

I See Me (Oracle 1)

Shadow, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser 4)

Novellas/Shorts

Love Lies Bleeding

The Graveyard Kiss

For giveaways, news, and glimpses of upcoming stories, please connect with Meghan on her:

NEW RELEASE MAILING LIST

Personal blog,
www.madebymeghan.ca

Twitter,
@mcdoidge

And/or Facebook,
Meghan Ciana Doidge

Please also consider leaving an honest review at your point of sale outlet

Dowser Series — Book Five

EXPECTED SPRING 2015

Oracle Series — Book Two

EXPECTED SUMMER 2015

Join the author’s
NEW RELEASE MAILING LIST
to be the first to know.

SHADOWS, MAPS, AND OTHER ANCIENT MAGIC (DOWSER 4)

Copyright © 2015 Meghan Ciana Doidge

Published by Old Man in the CrossWalk Productions 2015

Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada

www.oldmaninthecrosswalk.com

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be produced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, objects, and incidents herein are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual things, events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada

Doidge, Meghan Ciana, 1973 —

Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic/Meghan Ciana Doidge — KINDLE EDITION

Cover design by Elizabeth Mackey

ISBN 978-1-927850-20-6