Smoke and Mirrors (2 page)

“Wait, this is… So you’re telling me I should ignore the cardinal rule of Other etiquette? How am I supposed to convince—
what
am I supposed to convince? I’m guessing other magi and elves and vampires are right out—”

The professor held up a hand, nipping off the full-fledged ramble Kimberly was building up in the bud.

“Fae blood, Kimberly. Of course vampires don’t fit that mold. And no elf or mage would ever agree to such a request, or any other humanoid, for that matter. Review your planar studies textbook again. The rule is never to bind
against the will
of the potential familiar. If you can get one to agree to work with you rather than taking it by force, there would be no breech in the Accords and no reason for you to worry about retribution. That aside, you should be on the hunt for a creature that will be powerful enough to deter your fellow students—or any of their parents, for that matter—from attempting to corner you, which also means you would want its full cooperation.”

The professor turned away for a moment, leafing through a stack of papers on her desk. The rustle of shifting papers was extraordinarily loud in the cavernous classroom. Kimberly’s foot twitched nervously in the interim, though she forced herself back to stillness once the professor tugged a single sheet near the bottom free and slid it across the desk.

It took a long moment for Kimberly’s glassy stare to focus on what was on the paper. Her eyebrows slowly crept toward her hairline as she took in the neatly penned list of Others known to live in the area. A few made sense to her. She had seen gargoyles guarding numerous buildings throughout the city, and was very familiar with the names of the local werewolf packs and influential vampires. She had even had drinks in one of the vampire clubs once, on a very ill-advised date that she’d sooner forget.

Frowning, she skimmed down to the less obviously humanistic creatures on the list. Some were as foreign to her as another language, but there were many recognizable types she hadn’t expected to see inhabiting New York City.

“Faeries? We have faeries in Central Park? I didn’t realize… Oh, man. There’s no way a unicorn would give me the time of day. A gryphon, maybe? No, I don’t even know how to talk to one… Wait. A
dragon?
There’s a
dragon
in New York?”

“Several, actually. Your choice is ambitious, but I believe you’ve made the correct one.” The professor tugged the paper out of Kimberly’s grip and returned it to its place in the stack before her student had a chance to spit out the ‘you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me’ on the tip of her tongue, then folded her hands and leaned across the desk. “Now, let’s be honest here. I am aware of your monetary troubles, which means you can’t afford the special tutoring you require, or the bribes it would normally take to seek an audience with the local draconic representatives—”

“But I don’t know any—”

“—
so I’m going to recommend you speak to Cormac Hunter. He can direct you where to find what you need and tell you how to get it.”

Kimberly wasn’t sure herself what she needed. Dazed, she took the thick, cream-colored business card her professor slid across the desk and into her numb hands. Aside from the hours of work she’d miss going on a ridiculous hunt like this, the thought of asking a dragon to be her familiar filled her with dread. Not only did she have little to nothing to offer a creature so powerful and influential, they were cunning, crafty, and had been known to eat magi. Not for a few hundred years, of course, but there were documented cases.

Then it occurred to her that her professor was reminding her in a roundabout way that dragons had hoards. And a dragon as a familiar had to be considered a golden ticket into a coven. No one would want to turn her away with a dragon at her command, even if she could barely summon enough spark to light a campfire.

Even if she wasn’t
really
a mage. Even if they normally killed her kind on sight.

Maybe she wouldn’t even need a coven to support herself if she had a dragon familiar. At the very least, she’d never have to count on stale pastries to tide her over until payday again.

“Cormac is expecting you this evening.”

That pronouncement brought Kimberly crashing back to reality. “But I have to go to work!”

“Yes, yes, I know. I made you an appointment for 10:30PM. His office is only a few blocks from that coffee shop of yours. If you bring him an extra hot latte, heavy on the cream and hazelnut syrup, that should offset any hard feelings he will have about your request.”

Kimberly gave a reluctant nod, staring down at her hands, not really seeing the text on the business card, only briefly registering that the letters were printed in silver foil. She couldn’t help but worry about what the next school day would bring—and why the professor was so intent on helping her survive it.

“Kimberly.”

Dazed, she looked up, meeting the fierce green glow of her professor’s gaze and doing her best not to flinch from the sparks of power that danced in the depths of her teacher’s pupils.

“You can do this. Now get moving. Stay alert. And good luck.”

Grabbing her backpack and stuffing the card into her jeans pocket, she ran out of the classroom, not looking back.

CHAPTER TWO

As Kimberly rushed down the hall, she kept glancing from side to side, and then behind her. The multihued globes of light suspended at intervals between now-empty classrooms allowed no shadows, but the skin between her shoulder blades itched, as though she was being watched.

In the morning and early afternoon, this place would be bustling with activity and she’d be lucky to sprint more than a few steps at a time. This late in the day, the squeak of her sneakers on the marble tiles was the only sound echoing in the hallway, which opened into a cavernous room ringed with columns of pale rose stone. The skeleton of a rearing unicorn faced those of a plunging dragon in the center; a nod to the
Barosaurus
and
Allosaurus
in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda in the Museum of Natural History several stories above.

Aside from the architecture and arrangement of the bones, there was little about the room that bore any resemblance to the museum. Caged juvenile salamanders—summoned planar beings made of fire, not the amphibious sort—hung from decorative golden cages scattered throughout the room and cast enough warmth to dispel the sensation of being underground. Illusory daylight shone through the arched windows high above. Between most of the columns, separated by their own queues of velvet-roped stanchions to form orderly lines, were gigantic mirrors surrounded by stone frames etched with numerous arcane symbols on the sides. Each mirror had a huge imprinted metal label on top advertising one of several convenient locations—Central Park, Grand Central Station, both JFK and La Guardia airports, to name a few—all in multiple languages.

Kimberly looked around one last time, verifying there were no small familiars, such as insects or mice or the like, following her. Then she hitched her backpack higher on her left shoulder and stepped into the “77
^th
and Columbus” mirror.

The tingle of the Gateway’s magic whispered against her skin like unseen cobwebs. The brisk April wind did not.

Shivering and tugging her jacket closed, she rushed away from the gate that was disguised as a conjured deep shadow beneath one of the trees lining the street. She fell into pace beside a man about her height who was headed in the same direction. With a brief extension of her will, she made it appear to any prying eyes as though she continued on at his side, using him as an “anchor” for her illusory self while she stayed where she was, making her true self disappear. She couldn’t manage full invisibility, but by bending the light around herself—she’d seen an alien do that in a movie once—spotting her without the aid of tracking magic would be nigh impossible.

Some of the tension in her shoulders eased as the sense of being watched faded with the growing distance between herself and the man trailed by her illusory doppelganger. Once they turned a corner, she dropped her makeshift camouflage and picked up her pace to beat the blinking red hand at the crosswalk. She had no watch or cell phone to check the time, but judging by the angle of the sun, she was going to be at least twenty minutes late for her shift.

Buildings with chrome and marble facades flew by, soon replaced by brick and glass. She bolted down the street, dodging pedestrians, trees, hot dog carts, and even the occasional cab as she rocketed through crosswalks. The scents of the city drowned out the spring growth, sporadic patches of trees, bushes and flowers barely noticeable under the coffee and pizza and hot pastries and alcohol and urine and smog all vying for dominance.

Breathing hard, she slid to a halt in front of Allegretto’s Café, just a few blocks north of the theater district and a little too far from Times Square to attract many tourists on foot. It was more a bakery than a café. The mouth-watering scent of fresh vanilla custard, chocolate cannoli and anisette biscotti that wafted out as she pulled the glass door open attested to that. Don Allegretto insisted they were a family establishment first, a coffee house second, a bakery third, and anything else dead last.

She thought Don’s priorities were hilarious considering the flyer for the latest Mothers Against Others neighborhood meeting taped to the glass inside, right next to the café’s hours of operation. The agenda for the latest meeting included “how to talk to your kids about saying no to vampires” and “spotting the signs of glamour in your loved ones.” Don or his wife must have posted the flyer that morning, seeing as it hadn’t been there when Kimberly locked up the night before. Most of the time Don was a nice guy, but he didn’t have a clue what Kimberly was and had said a few unkind things about Others in front of her that had set her teeth on edge.

Shaking her head over the flyer, she slipped inside. A couple were browsing the displays of pastries, affably arguing over whether to split a few biscotti or rainbow cookies along with their coffee, and old Mister Grimaldi was checking out the racks of fresh-baked bread. Kimberly nodded and waved to Annabelle, the clerk she should have relieved 18 minutes earlier. The clock behind the register ticked forward another minute, the hands moving like an accusation. A moment’s concentration made Kimberly’s simple T-shirt under her jacket look like her work shirt, and dispelled any signs of sweat or B.O. from her mad dash across town.

Her stomach growled as the warm, mouth-watering scent of pastries and coffee washed over her. Despite the anxiety twisting her stomach into knots, hunger was rearing its ugly head. She had a fleeting wish that she could cast an illusion on herself to make either the scents or the hunger disappear, but while she could fool anyone else’s senses with her magic, she was immune to her own phantasms.

Ignoring her stomach growling, she moved behind the counter. Annabelle turned from the cappuccino she was making, pointed to the clock and mouthed, ‘I gotta go. You got this?’

Kimberly nodded. She tossed her bag under the register counter and shrugged out of her jacket before taking over for Annabelle. The tall, willowy blonde shot her a weary smile and blew a few errant tendrils of hair out of her face as she got out of the way. A few quick hand signals later and Kimberly had all the info she needed about who had ordered what and who still needed to pay, and Annabelle was bolting out the door.

In a few moments, Kimberly handed the couple two cappuccinos, two rainbow cookies, and one fig-walnut biscotti to share, and Mister Grimaldi was settled with two loaves of his favorite sesame bread and a rosette. She breathed a sigh of relief into the quiet once the last customer shuffled out, giving her a moment of peace to sag against the back counter with the espresso machine and coffee maker and relax.

“Kimberly! Get your ass in my office,” rumbled a deep, male voice.

Cringing, she twisted around to meet her boss’s glare, hoping the heat on her cheeks from her guilty blush wasn’t too obvious. “Sure, Don. Just give me a minute to finish cleaning.”

Don stood by the kitchen door, currently propped open by his steel-toed boot. His thinning hair was hidden under a bandana and his long-sleeved Rolling Stones T-shirt was rolled up past his elbows. He watched her rinse off the mixer and finish wiping the counters, his flour-covered hands clasping his thick, hairy forearms. As soon as she was done, he stepped aside, still holding the swinging door open for her.

She headed straight to his office, a tiny closet of a space made even more claustrophobic by the addition of a filing cabinet, chipped Ikea desk, and single rolling chair. There was a security monitor perched on the desk that he used to keep an eye on the front. The camera was angled down to catch anyone entering or leaving, as well as view the contents of the register.

Don waited until she was inside. The office door banged shut behind his bulk and he moved around his desk to place his knuckles on it, leaning forward. The fiberboard creaked alarmingly under his weight. “What time does your shift start?”