Ancient Magic: a New Adult Urban Fantasy (Dragon's Gift: The Huntress Book 1) (6 page)

Annoyance seethed through me. I’d told him to meet me at The Flying Wizard for this exact freaking reason. And I couldn’t even storm in there and yell at him, because that might make him suspicious.
 

Inside, Nix laughed at something Aidan said. Connor laughed too, a goofy smile on his face. My friends liked him. The five of us—Nix, Del, Connor, Claire, and I—were all pretty close. My friends weren’t dumb. If they were giving him the stamp of approval, I had to take that into account.

I sighed and pushed into P & P. The smell of buttery pastry and savory meat from the oven enveloped me, and my stomach grumbled. The kitchen at P & P was small—it was really more of a bar and coffee house than a restaurant. Claire and Connor were from Cornwall, home of the Cornish Pasty, a good thing to sell out of a small space. I was pretty much addicted to them.

“Hey,” I said when I reached their table, trying to stifle the sound of annoyance in my voice. “This isn’t The Flying Wizard.”

Aidan turned his too-handsome face toward me. I repressed a scowl at the desire that streaked through me.
 

“They didn’t have food,” he said. “I thought you’d be hungry after your raid.”

Nix shot me a how-the-heck-do-you-know-this-guy look.
 

Later,
I tried to say without words.

“I ordered you two steak and stiltons,” he said.

At his words, Claire came out of the back with a plate carrying two golden brown pasties. My stomach grumbled as the divine scent wrapped around me. I tried to ignore how cool it was that he’d thought of feeding me. If there was one thing I was into, it was guys getting me food. Anyone getting me food, really.

“Thanks.” I dragged a chair over to their table and sat down between him and Nix. The table was small enough that our knees almost touched. I scooted away and looked at Claire instead of him.
 

Her brown hair fell in waves around her face, and she was dressed for the kitchen in an apron that covered her t-shirt and jeans, though I hadn’t seen her in here the last couple of days. “How’d your last job go?”

“Good. Caught the bloke as he was leaving the bank.”

“That’s convenient.” Claire was a Fire Mage with a dash of Hearth Witch, hence the coffee shop. By day, she was a mercenary. Magical organizations hired her to handle problems. She kicked ass but had an unquenchable desire to make excellent coffee and pastries. Connor hadn’t inherited any of his mother’s Fire Mage powers and was all Hearth Witch, so he ran their shop most of the time. He was wickedly good at potions, which lent itself to preparing the enchanted coffees they offered.

“Yeah, it was an easy job. You want the usual?” Claire asked, her dark eyes alight with the same who-is-this-dude look that the others had sent my way.
 

Everyone thought it was weird as hell that I was hanging out with one of the wealthiest, most powerful guys in the world. I agreed.

“Uh, no thanks. A latte?” PBR was my drink of choice in the evenings, even though everyone made fun of me for drinking the beer of hipsters and hillbillies. I didn’t drink a lot, but I was picky about it when I did. But if I was going to be chatting with Aidan about the scroll—or anything really—I needed to be on my game.

“Sure thing,” Claire said.

“How’d it go today?” Connor asked from behind the counter as he crafted my latte. He had the same dark hair as Claire and also favored her P & P uniform of jeans and a t-shirt topped with an apron.

“Ah, good,” I said, glancing awkwardly at Aidan. Connor liked to hear about the enchantments and demons in each tomb or temple that I raided, but now wasn’t the time for a play-by-play. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Cool.” He brought my coffee over.

“Thanks.” I dug into the pasties.

“I’m headed out,” Nix said. “Good to meet you, Aidan.”
 

“See you later,” I said, grateful she was getting away from Aidan. She and the others might have approved of him, but he was still too much of an unknown for me to be comfortable trusting him around the people I loved.

I turned to Aidan and really looked at him for the first time since entering P & P. I’d never seen a guy make a gray t-shirt look so good. It was a dark gray, the same color as his eyes. I’d thought they were brown.
 

“Have you eaten?” I asked, trying to distract myself from his eyes. He had a pint of some kind of dark beer in front of him.

“Yes. The pasties were excellent.”

“So, tell me more about this scroll,” I said between bites. “But quietly, I don’t want to drag Connor or Claire into this.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What else is written in it? I’ve never heard of it before, but it sounds pretty valuable.”

“It is. It contains information about all the most powerful species of supernaturals. Strengths and weaknesses. I don’t have many weaknesses, but I don’t want anyone knowing them.”

“Don’t blame you.” I popped the last bite of pasty into my mouth.

“And according to a reference I just found in an old text, it’s a prophetic scroll. It contains a list of the names and descriptions of individuals who belong to all the most powerful species. Past and present.”

I choked on my pasty. Names and descriptions? Past and present?

That meant me.

CHAPTER FOUR

Aidan passed me a glass of water as I coughed, trying to clear the pasty from my throat.
 

Okay, this had suddenly gotten a hell of a lot worse. My mind raced like a hamster in a wheel. The scroll might not actually exist. Or it might not have the information he said it had.

But if it did, it would include my name under the heading FireSoul, subheading To Be Killed On Sight. Or, alternate, To Be Imprisoned For Life.

Oh, this was bad.

“Are you all right?” Aidan asked, concern in his dark eyes.

“Fine, totally fine. Just swallowed wrong.” I nodded, trying to look normal and knowing I’d failed. Was there any way I could do this job without him? Steal it and destroy it before he saw it?
 

Unless he told me some really key details about the scroll, no. I didn’t have enough to go on. For my tracking ability to work, I needed a couple things. First, somebody needed to really want whatever I was looking for. My dragon sense was based on covetousness. That was no problem. I wanted that scroll. Bad.

But I also needed to know at least one or two intimate details about the object or person I sought. More was better. Images were the best, but knowledge of who made it or something like that would help. Just enough for my magic to latch on and take me there.
 

He’d have to give me that information. Then I’d get it and have Nix make a copy that omitted our information.

“So, this scroll sounds pretty interesting,” I said. “I’ll take the job. Half price because I broke into your tomb.” I’d do it for free, but I didn’t want him thinking I was too eager.

“Excellent. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

What the heck? That wasn’t part of my plan. “We? I work alone.”

“I’ll help you. It could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous is my day job,” I said. I winced, realizing I sounded like a jacked-up meathead from an action movie. But for magic’s sake, I walked around with daggers strapped to my thighs. You’d think it’d be obvious that I could handle myself. “I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to worry.”

“I know you can take care of yourself,” he said, his dark eyes serious. “But I want this scroll. Badly. And I don’t trust anyone else with it. I’ll come along.”

Damn. I waffled, but he looked determined. “All right. Tomorrow. Can you tell me a little more about the scroll?” Maybe if he told me enough, I could find it tonight.

He nodded and leaned back in his chair, long and lean muscles stretching out. I sagged a bit, grateful he didn’t suspect me.

“The scroll was written over a thousand years ago by monks who lived on an island off the coast of Ireland,” he said.

Nerves prickled along my skin. That was the third time today that Ireland had come up. First I raided a tomb there, then Aidan, who owned an estate there, showed up, and now these monks. I didn’t like it. I worked all over the world. Today was my first job in Ireland in years. And it had come complete with a demon who knew I was a FireSoul and a handsome, dangerous stranger who wanted me to find a scroll that could spell my death.

Yeah, it was weird.

“The monks are still the only ones who live on the island,” Aidan said. “They’re supernaturals, but they choose to rely on study and contemplation rather than magic. They’re called the Holy Order of Knowledge. Their entire purpose is to record every bit of knowledge about the supernatural world that they can. The Scroll of Truth was created by their greatest seer before his death. He used his power to write about the future, which is why my name is probably in it even though it was written long before my birth. But it was stolen.”
 

“By whom?”
 

“I don’t know.”

“If it’s been missing for so long, how do you even know about it?”

“I keep a seer on retainer. She scries for threats to me and my enterprises every year. This year, she sensed a threat in the form of the scroll. She thinks someone else is trying to find it. But all she could see was the name of the scroll and that the Order of Holy Knowledge created it. I want to find it before the other person does.”

Oh hell. This had just gotten worse. Someone else was after it? Seers couldn’t see every aspect of the future, but they were infallible about what they could see. “Do you know anything about who is hunting it?”

“No. Just that someone is.”

“Know anything else about it?”

“That’s it.”

“It might be enough.” I’d gone on way less in the past. I had its name—the Scroll of Truth—who’d made it and what it was made of. I’d found the Chalice of Youth with just a name and the knowledge that it was made of gold. But then, it was really, really easy for me to find gold.
 

I closed my eyes and tried to envision the scroll. I focused on the names—Scroll of Truth and the Order of Holy Knowledge. My mind reached out, seeking the thread that would tie about my middle, but pain slammed into me.

I gasped and slumped forward in my chair, my head pounding. I reached up and cupped my forehead. This had never happened before. Why did this scroll make me feel this way? First in the stairwell and now here.

Was it because it contained information about my past? It made me even more determined to find it. No question, it involved me. Any time I tried to think about something important from my past, the pain came.

“Are you all right?” Aidan asked.

“Fine, it’s just been a really long day. Trying to find things with my mind is really draining,” I lied. “Can we visit the monks? I need a bit more information.”

“Yes. We’ll take my plane.”

His plane? He had a freaking plane? I didn’t want to get on his plane. I wanted to use a transportation charm and get there now, but I’d used my last one in the temple earlier today.

 
If the monks lived in Ireland, his plane was my best bet. I could catch a commercial flight, but then I’d have to ask where exactly they lived, and by the time I got there, he would most likely be there already.

It looked like I wouldn’t be sneaking off on my own after all. We’d do this together, and I’d figure out the rest later. And I didn’t hate the idea of hanging out with him, even though I knew it was a bad idea.
 

“All right. When can we leave?” I asked.

“Tonight. There’s a bed on the plane.”

“A bed?” He had a plane with bedrooms? I quirked a brow at him, suspicious.
 
“For?”

He grinned. “Sleeping. Just sleeping. You’ve got to be beat after destroying the temple in Murreagh.”

“Good. Don’t get any ideas.”

He put up his hands. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I want that date first.”

The look he gave me was pretty obvious. He liked what he saw. I blushed. I really wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee with him under different circumstances, even though it was a really dumb idea. If I hung out with him too long and got into a situation where I had to use my power, he was strong enough to suspect what I was.
 

I stood. “Business only, pal. But let’s get started. Ireland’s far away.”

Aidan paid our bill, which I had no problem with. I was on the clock now. It wasn’t a date. He met me by the door, dwarfing me with his size.

“I’m going to grab a bag, okay? Wait here.”

He looked like he wanted to offer to come up to my place, but no way was that happening. I ran out before he could say anything.

The scent of rain was on the air as I raced down the sidewalk and let myself into my building. Nix burst out of her apartment door as I ran by.

“What’s the deal with Aidan Merrick?” She followed me up the steps. “You suddenly start dating one of the richest, most powerful hybrids in the world and don’t tell me?”

“We’re not dating,” I said as I let myself into my apartment. She slipped in behind me, and I locked the door. “He showed up with a job about a scroll.”