Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (3 page)

The heel clicks stopped.

I inhaled and held my breath.

Suanmi pivoted back to me. “Half-blood,” she snapped. Then, softening her tone until her French-accented English was almost lyrical, she continued. “The treasure keeper requires your skills.” The fire breather didn’t quite pull off the word ‘skills’ without some deep derision attached.

I nodded but didn’t look up. “Thank you, guardian. I await him.”

Suanmi laughed, the sound of which tinkled over me like broken crystal. I tamped down on the impulse to brush it away from me, knowing that would look utterly crazy.

“Do you not know how to call him?” Suanmi asked, her voice deadly soft but sharp. “I suppose it is beyond you to do so.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how to answer.

She waited. And waited.

I slowly lifted my head. I locked eyes with the guardian I most feared. She lifted her chin a little.

“You’re shorter than I am,” I blurted without thinking.

She took a step toward me and a flush of fear ran down my spine. I spread the fingers of my right hand as wide as I could, in order to force myself to not call my knife forth.

Then Suanmi smiled. A tight, dark-edged smile. “Pulou, treasure keeper,” she called out. Her commanding voice reverberated through the round room. “The alchemist attends you.”

A portal to my right opened in a blinding flash of light, seeming to swallow the echo of Suanmi’s words as it snapped shut again.

The fire breather turned her back to me.

“Thank you,” I whispered, and instantly wished I hadn’t spoken. Being polite was just too ingrained in my upbringing.

“Just do your job, half-blood.” Suanmi spoke without looking at me.

“I … I also regret …” I was stumbling over the words I knew I should keep to myself, but that my guilt forced me to speak. “I regret not bringing Drake immediately back when he followed me through the portal into Scotland … and then London. I would never hurt him —”

“No. You aren’t powerful enough to do so.” Suanmi was looking at me again with a perfectly refined sneer. Her dark hair was smoothed back from her pale, unlined brow. She was poised and collected.

I was a grubby child.

“True,” I said. “It’s too bad I’m useful to the treasure keeper.”

“Indeed.”

I lifted my chin, allowing myself a tiny bit of defiance. And with that choice, that gesture, the dragon magic settled around me to a bearable level.

Suanmi frowned as if she’d seen what I felt.

I straightened my spine further, then settled my shoulder blades down my back. No more cringing for me.

Then I smiled.

Suanmi spun away without another word.

I didn’t collapse with relief, but only because I was afraid she’d come back.

I took two steps to the left — so I was once again in the very center of the room — and settled down into a cross-legged position. I pulled my all-time favorite Amedei 70 percent single-origin Madagascar chocolate bar out of my Matt & Nat satchel. The bar was mangled. Even I couldn’t get hit by a small mountain and not get crushed. Thankfully, I had no problem licking the shards of goodness off the inner foil wrapper.

It was one thing to stand up to Suanmi — the fire breather, and one of the nine guardians of the world. But it was completely another thing to waste chocolate out of some silly sense of perceived dignity.

CHAPTER TWO

I wasn’t sure how much longer I waited for Pulou. Time moved oddly in the dragon nexus — if it actually moved at all, which some days it didn’t. It could have been minutes but I really hoped it wasn’t days. I’d arrived — via the portal in the bakery basement — a little after 8 o’clock, knowing I might have to camp out all day to have a chance of seeing the treasure keeper.
 

Kandy, Kett, and I had been going on collection runs for Pulou for the last six months or so. These missions couldn’t really be classified as treasure hunting. They were barely even training exercises. I hadn’t pulled my knife during any of these so-called assignments, not once.

Kandy, my werewolf BFF — who managed to maintain her bright green hair no matter where in the world we were — was disappointed that there had been no call for breaking and entering, spelunking, or skydiving on any of the missions yet.

Kett had faded away about three months ago. And who could blame the vampire? He was the executioner for the Conclave. He had way better things to be doing. Not that I was at all sure what those ‘things’ were exactly.

So, yeah. I was bored out of my mind. Which was why I was completely determined that I was about to hand over my last benign artifact.

A pen.

Yes, a sorcerer-charmed pen that wrote by voice command. It had stopped responding to its owner’s requests a few months ago, and now wrote whatever and wherever it wanted to. The sorcerer from whom I’d collected it practically threw it at me in relief when Kandy and I went to pick it up. The only amusing part of the so-called mission was his harried look and the cursive ink markings all over his face and neck. Hebrew script, I imagined, since we were in Tel Aviv. Not that I’d taken the time to explore the ancient city.

Today, Pulou would authorize a real mission — something with some importance — or I was taking matters into my own hands. No one could accuse me of being rash. I’d taken the time to heal. I’d trained. I’d explored my magic until I bored myself utterly. Hell, I was so bloody boring that I couldn’t manage to be in the same room with myself for more than a few minutes without wishing someone else was around. Someone interesting. Someone with a life beyond the bakery, and plucking trinkets out of the hands of witches and sorcerers without a single protest from them.

Was a lick of resistance too much to ask for? A simple offensive spell? Or even a protection ward that I had to exert actual effort to thwart?

I’d jumped through all of Pulou’s hoops since Tofino. Since Sienna’s death. And because the treasure keeper had me running around with training wheels for the last six months, it meant that Blackwell could have been running all around Europe with that damn circlet of his. I’d wanted to rip it from his bony hands the first moment I laid eyes on it. No sorcerer, least of all one as evil as Blackwell, should have access to a magical object that dampened or impeded the powers of any Adept who wore it. No one would wear such a thing voluntarily. And the circlet wasn’t made to be used benevolently. That, I was sure of.

I’d had the opportunity to face off against Blackwell last January when Desmond, the Lord and Alpha of the West Coast North American Pack, had asked me to come to Portland to identify the magic of a teen that was supposedly being stalked by Blackwell. Instead of blindly joining the pack hunt, I chose to do the right thing by the teen — namely, distract Desmond and the pack, then get Chi Wen involved. Last I heard, the far seer had taken Rochelle, who turned out to be a fledgling oracle, under his wing, and Blackwell was in the wind.

Now it was time to figure out my own guidelines and make my own choices. I knew good from evil. Hell, I could taste it.

Today, I would finally get Pulou’s permission to go after Blackwell. I knew exactly how to word the request, to present the evidence, and outline my plan. I’d been working on the wording for over three months, once I’d figured out that there was a proper way to ask. Dragons had a lot of rules and regulations. Extreme power came with extreme guidelines, it seemed.

I would have gone without permission months ago, because Blackwell pissed me off so much, except I was kind of banned from Europe. London, specifically. And just taking the circlet from Blackwell might get me into a whole lot of trouble from the Convocation, who strictly governed the behavior of witches and considered me subject to their will, though I was only half-witch. The sorcerer’s League wouldn’t be too happy about the theft either, despite how I got the sense there was no love lost between them and Blackwell.

Then there was the sticky bit about the elder vampire of London being seriously pissed with me. Not because I almost got Kett — his grandson by blood — killed, but because he’d had to divide his power to save him.

However, if the theft was dragon certified, then it became a ‘reclamation’ of a magical object deemed too powerful to be loose in the world. Even though that would still piss off the sorcerers — and probably the vampire — no one could stand against me without standing against the guardians.

Yeah, I had it all worked out. I just hoped Blackwell was home when I knocked on the door of his freaking castle. I wanted to see his face when I ‘officially’ waltzed in and took the circlet from him.

Hell, I wanted him to try to stop me.

I was almost dozing by the time the portal behind me — the door that my father and the healer had exited through — opened in a wash of golden magic. I pivoted, standing in the buoyant power and facing the door just as Pulou the treasure keeper stepped through into the nexus. As I once again awkwardly curtsied, I noted that my necklace thrummed softly against my collarbone and that my neck felt normal once again.

“There you are, alchemist,” Pulou said, his deep voice booming through the quiet of the room. “I’ve been waiting.”

I opened my mouth to be all bitchy about the fact that I had been waiting freaking eons for him, but then he threw back his head and laughed.

Ah, dragons loved to laugh.

The portal closed behind Pulou. The treasure keeper was a dark-haired bear of a man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, when in reality he was more than five hundred years old. He wore his typical full-length fur coat despite the fact it was late summer … though I guess it wasn’t summer where he’d just come from.

Anyway.

The fur coat was actually some sort of manifestation of the treasure keepers’ magic, just as the sword was a manifestation of my father’s warrior power. Pulou had taken a magical object I’d made ten months ago on the beach in Tofino, somehow shrunk it, and then stored it in an inner pocket of his coat. The magic that accompanied this feat had scrambled my brain, and left me with the impression that something extradimensional had occurred while I dumbly watched and didn’t even remotely comprehend.

I was epically happy to never have to lay eyes on that object again, so I wasn’t terribly desperate to wrap my head around the process. I’d twisted my katana — a gift from my father — into a circle around my sister’s neck and filled it with all the magic Sienna had stolen from all the Adepts she’d killed and drained. Then I’d taken every last drop of her magic. Such a thing shouldn’t have been possible. But I had done it, half dead and under great duress. It was a secret known only to the treasure keeper and me. An ability he thought too dangerous for anyone else to know of, and I agreed.

I was already unique enough, when it came to power and heritage. I didn’t need to be feared or even hunted by the Adept world. I just wanted to bake my cupcakes and steal Blackwell’s circlet.

“Treasure keeper, I have a request,” I said.

“Do you?” he asked, rather amused.

I nodded, and then launched into the speech I’d prepared. “Mot Blackwell, who’s a sorcerer, houses an extensive collection of magical artifacts …” — Pulou was frowning, just slightly, at me, but in a way that made me think I might be speaking gibberish — “… in his castle … Blackness Castle … in Scotland.”

“That is the territory of the guardian Suanmi.”

“Yes, but … he has this platinum and raw diamond circlet that’s some sort of dampener, an inhibitor —”

“Dragons do not steal.”

“Such an object should not be in the hands of such a sorcerer.” I tried to retreat back to my prepared argument, but Pulou immediately derailed me again.

“Would this dampener work against you … or me … or any of the dragons?”

“Well … I … I’m not sure.”

“The task I have for you is of much greater and immediate importance.”

Ten months, I almost screamed. I’ve been waiting for permission for ten months. I could have cracked Blackwell’s wards — again — and waltzed in to lift the offending inhibitor months ago.

Pulou lifted one bushy eyebrow at me. I swallowed my inner brat, and when I could speak politely again I did so.

“It would be an honor, guardian, to hunt for treasure you deem of great importance.”

“All sorcerers are tinged darkly,” Pulou said. “That is just their way. Be sure that Suanmi has an eye on this Blackwell, if he is even worthy of such attention. I’m sure Drake has filled his guardian in on his escapade.”

I nodded. “I was going to bring peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes, but I was worried I would be … incapable of getting them to you without interference.”

“To bribe me with?”

“Yes.”

“I will come to the bakery.”

“Oh … I …” Visions of Pulou eating every last cupcake in the bakery flooded my mind. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Nothing to it. I should check on the portal as well. Perhaps tomorrow?”

I nodded. Last time Pulou had used the word “tomorrow,” the actual time lapse had been three months.

“Speaking of the portal —”

“We weren’t.”

“No, I … it’s an expression.”

“I know.”

Right. No talking about the sword filled with Sienna’s stolen magic — check. No talking about the portal in the bakery basement — double check. No going after Blackwell or his circlet without incurring Suanmi’s wrath — triple check.

I fished around in my satchel and found the charmed gold Cartier pen by the taste of its sorcerer magic. I held the pen out to the treasure keeper, presenting it on my open palm. Dragons preferred to be formal about such things.
 

“As tasked, treasure keeper,” I said. I neglected to mention that I hadn’t fixed its little writing-on-everything-at-a-whim glitch, because I found it entertaining. Plus, I wanted to see if dragons were prankable.

“I propose a trade,” Pulou said.

He pulled a folded piece of parchment — crumpled along with some candy wrappers — from his outer pocket and held it out to me. The candy wrappers fell to the floor and disappeared. Impressive cleaning spell. No wonder the nexus was always so pristine and practically ageless. Though how did it decide what was garbage?