Thicker Than Blood (11 page)

The third book had a stitched binding and carved wood panels for its case, painted with blue and red knot work. It was in this book I found a seeing-invisible-things spell that wasn’t too complex. I started writing down a wish list of ingredients and components. The spell wouldn’t last long; it would go for the length of time a candle burned or be broken at full sunset, whichever came first. The candle part was super unspecific. What candle? There wasn’t one involved in the spell. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I opened the ivory scroll case just because. I was pretty sure I was going to use the Celtic invisibility-seeing spell, but come on. Scroll case. Had to be opened just to satisfy my curiosity.

The scroll inside was made of white leather, scraped thin but still soft and flexible. It was beautifully illuminated with bright patterns in red, purple, and gold around the edges. The incantation was simple enough, and in more or less modern English. I murmured the words aloud, not quite saying all of them. There was a rhythm in the phrases, a cadence that I could feel forming an arcane pattern. Definitely real magic here.

I wrote down the ingredients listed on the scroll in the short paragraph of instruction before the spell proper. This one also would be broken at sunset and had to be cast in daylight under an open sky, and would apparently only work under said sky. I was pretty sure open sky meant just not indoors, but the scroll wasn’t exactly super specific.

“Noah,” I said aloud. “I have a shopping list for you.”

He opened the door less than a minute later.

“What time is it?” I asked him.

“Just past ten,” he said, taking the list I handed him.

“Can you get this stuff for me? And I need somewhere to try out the practice spell.” I put on my best “don’t kill me” smile.

Noah’s silver eyes narrowed as he glanced over my list and he sighed, the hush of air leaving his mouth totally incongruous with the whole not-breathing thing.

“Come with me,” he said.

I ended up in the large loading dock and garage area, with an audience. Noah brought me the things I needed to try the simple light spell. He was followed by Kira, the twins, Jaq, and Salazar.

The ingredients, I wanted. The others I could have lived without. I was too stubborn to order them to leave, so I took my things and the spell book and set up away from the RV.

“What is she doing?” Cora asked as I drew a rough circle with a piece of natural chalk.

“Casting a spell?” Alma answered, her voice pitching up at the end into a question.

“She’s figuring out if she can do magic, so that I can maybe find a way for us to see invisible shit,” I said. I was proud of myself. I’d only sounded annoyed, not homicidal.

“Could be useful,” Kira said, grudgingly. She ruined it by adding, “If you can actually do it.”

“Stand back,” I said, glaring at the peanut gallery. Odds were the worst that could happen was nothing at all, but if I had to deal with an audience, they could at least not be crowding me.

I finished the circle and got the four red candles, placing them at compass points. The spell didn’t specify if the points had to be actual compass points, so I just tried to make them equidistant. I lit the candles with a strike-anywhere match after stepping into the circle. In the middle of the circle were a gourd and three bowls of herbs and spices. Cinnamon, clove, and dried basil.

“She casting a spell or making pie?” Kira muttered.

I continued ignoring her and picked up the wooden Athame, a ceremonial kind of knife that had a thin maple blade and ebony handle. Then I sat cross-legged in the center and started murmuring the incantation. Going clockwise, or sunward as the spell called it, I sprinkled the dull blade with cinnamon, then clove, then basil. Uttering the words of the spell, focusing all my will and not just a little desperate hope into it, I plunged the knife into the gourd. I lifted the blade out in a smooth motion and gripped it in my left hand, saying the final word of the spell.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the candles extinguished themselves and my fingers uncurled of their own volition. I dropped the knife, holding my left hand aloft. In my palm, floating over my skin, was a small ball of white light.

The difference between this magic and what I was used to was impossible to explain. Like the difference between
being
cold and holding an icecube. There was no rush of power in me, no euphoria like I felt when working my own magic. Just a weightless ball of light and a grim satisfaction that I’d made something work.

“Cantrip, achieved,” I said, risking a look at my audience. I was afraid to move. The light wouldn’t last outside of the circle anyway, if my interpretation of the spell was correct.

Alma and Cora clapped. Jaq and Salazar were smiling. Noah stood in shadow near the door, his face unreadable from this distance. Kira gave me a slight nod, like a fencing opponent acknowledging a touch point.

Not so useless after all. Feeling better than I had in days, I got slowly to my feet and closed my hand, extinguishing the ball of light.

“Can I come back to the big table now?” I asked.

“Hey,” I said to Jaq, since we were bringing up the rear of the group heading back to the war room.

He turned and looked at me, his bland face expectant.

“Uh, so, do you have a preferred pronoun?” I asked. Yeah, that had sounded more polite and way less awkward in my head.

He chuckled. “He and him is fine. I find it easier to be male in this world, most of the time,” Jaq said. “But thank you for asking. Most people just assign whichever they are more comfortable with.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. At least that was out of the way. He’d smoothed it over and made me feel less like an ass. I appreciated that.

Breakfast dishes had been cleared away, but there was fresh coffee at one end of the table. I grabbed a mug, adding milk and sugar to make it palatable.

“Want a little coffee with your sugar?” Cora asked. She and her twin giggled.

“All right,” Kira said, calling the meeting to a semblance of order before I could respond. “So, Jade, you can make us see the invisible fence? What about the mines or traps or whatever?”

“I probably can,” I said as I took my seat by Jaq. While I wanted to be useful and look competent, overselling my new wizard powers could get us all killed. Pride cometh before the fall and all that jazz.

“If I can see the fence,” Jaq said, “I can nullify the magic.”

I gave him an appraising look, wondering not for the first time what exactly this mild guy was. I’d asked enough awkward questions for one day, however, and in the end it was probably none of my business.

“Can you do that to the mines, if this spell lets us see them?” Alma asked.

“I assume touching them would set them off?” Jaq looked at Salazar, who nodded. “Then no. We could try, but likely they would trigger before I was able to destroy the magic.”

“If we can see them, we can walk around them,” Kira said.

“What about guards and cameras and stuff?” I asked.

Kira sighed and the twins giggled. From their looks, I guessed this stuff had been covered. Too freaking bad. I hadn’t been here.

“No cameras,” Salazar said. He smiled at me and gave a slight nod, as if to reinforce that he didn’t mind going over it again and was on my side. “The government would have to pay someone to watch them. With the magic and the nature of this place, nobody is that worried about people coming in. Which works to our advantage, fortunately. There are external guards, but they are on stationed at the main entrance tunnel and garage, which is here.” He tapped his drawing a short distance away from the twist in the building. “If you’re careful, no one will be looking this way, and the building creates a hill, so there isn’t line of sight from the main entrance.”

“Speaking of magic,” I said, trying to order my thoughts. “Who put these protections in place? Is there a coven or resident magic user we need to worry about?” For all I knew, they had a sorcerer on staff. That would make things even more dangerous.

“No, nobody in the building,” Salazar said. He shifted his weight in his seat and met my gaze with an uncomfortable grimace. “It was done by a sorcerer, on contract.”

“Samir,” I said. I recalled what Salazar had said at the scene of Peggy’s murder a few days before. Had it only been days? A week, maybe. It felt like a lifetime. I started to wonder if the order to cover up the supernatural nature of the crime and get out of town had been because of whom Samir was friends with. “He’s got friends in high places, I suppose,” I added.

“I wouldn’t call them friends, but he’s greased a lot of palms over the years.” Salazar picked up his coffee mug and swirled it around, his lips pressed into a tight line.

“At least he’s otherwise occupied,” I said.
With trying to kill me and my friends
. I left that part unsaid.

“Best to go in near dusk, though,” Salazar said after a moment of silence.

“The spell won’t last past dark,” I said.

“It’s not that far from where we can set up to the hatch,” Cora said. “If we can see where to go, even at a very slow walk, we should be able to get inside within twenty to thirty minutes, at most.”

“If she can see the mines and the fence, Jade could walk herself in, maybe?” Alma said.

“No.” Kira looked at me, then at Jaq. “She needs Jaq to nullify the fence, or fences. There might be more than one, remember? And since neither of them can fight, at the least I’m going with them as contingency.”

“No plan survives engagement with the enemy,” Alma said. “We’re going, too.”

“You are?” I pictured them wheeling across a minefield before remembering they were shifters. I had the grace to blush. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Cora said, smiling.

“We might look like two wheelchair-bound, joined-at-the-literal-hip cripples, but with our powers combined, we kick serious ass.” Alma grinned and high-fived her twin.

“You two kick virtual ass also,” Kira said. Her whole expression softened when she looked at them, making her appear almost human. It was hard to dislike someone who clearly cared so much about her people, but I kept right on trying.

“By day, we’re white-hat hacking mavens,” Alma said.

“But by night, we become a Mayan jaguar goddess!” Cora laughed.

“You’re Mayan?” Salazar asked, eyebrows raised.

“Well, a couple generations back. We were raised in Las Vegas,” Alma said.

“Mayan sounds cooler than kids from Nevada,” Cora said.

“So we have a rough plan, then,” Kira said. “How long will the spell take to cast?”

I took a sip of my coffee and thought about which spell to use. The scroll one was elegant and fairly simple, though the ingredient list was longer. The one in the book was more complex verbally, but with a shorter list of things. I wasn’t sure about either or even which I wanted to try yet, so I gave it my best guess.

“Not long, I don’t think. Ten minutes at most?”

“Can you cast it here first?” she asked.

“No,” I said. I’d thought about this already. “There are two spells that might work, but both have time limits on them that aren’t clear. Sunset is pretty clear, but there’s stuff about the length of time it takes a candle to burn down, and one spell only works outside, I think. To be safe, I should do the magic as close to the time we’ll need it as possible.”

“All right.” She sat back, wheels clearly spinning in her mind behind her icy eyes. “Here’s the plan. We’ll drive up behind the prison. Salazar said there is an old logging access road that can get us within a mile. We’ll hike closer, do the spell there, and then head in. Salazar will meet us at the hatch. Once there, the alarms go off, yes?” She looked at Salazar.

“Yes, alarms, guards, the works. The place is guarded by a few NOS agents, but mostly contracted shifters.” Salazar added that last part looking at me, so I assumed he’d been over that and was saying it for my benefit.

“Jade heads to her father, we head toward the entrance, hopefully drawing attention with us. After that, we leave, and Jade, you’re on your own.” Kira gave me a look that spoke volumes about her opinion on my chances of success.