Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) (12 page)

Steve hated the helplessness that came with magic-related missions involving Fay. Without Fay, he simply trusted in his were immunity to magic, acted with caution, but acted. However, when Fay was involved, he had to stand by, about as much help as a mewling cub, and let her do her thing.

He kept his gaze on Barbara.

The wolf-were ruffled his fur. Her passivity was unnatural, and worse, when he looked into her eyes, he could swear he saw a flickering expression of the desperate resignation of a trapped wolf. He had to force away images of his own mom or sister trapped this way. So he put up no resistance to Fay de-spelling the woman. Whatever warning that gave the rogue mage, so be it. He couldn’t stomach the thought of Barbara hurting this way any longer.

Fay leant into him fractionally, her arm against his. “I need you to cast for a scent or other sense of the rogue mage. I think he used something of himself to ground this mess of a spell. If he did, breaking the spell may destroy that trace, but it just might flare stronger in the instant before it vanishes.”

He nodded.

She raised her voice, although Barbara would have heard all of their discussion. Wolf hearing. Gordon was undoubtedly listening from the car. “Barbara, you’re wrapped in magic and I need to peel it away from you. Can you hold still? Don’t move, no matter what you feel.”

“There is no magic,” Barbara said.

“Yes, there is,” Fay contradicted calmly. “And when this is over, I’m going to ward your home so that it can’t return. Honestly.” Impatience crept into her tone. “Avoiding magic because it doesn’t affect weres is all very well, but it’s not just other weres that you need to worry about. You should ward your homes. I’ll do yours when we return, Steve.”

But even as she spoke, she was obviously concentrating on her magic, and he got the tingling sensation of power rising. He split his concentration: Fay wanted him to try and sense the rogue mage’s identity; and, he needed to be sure Barbara wouldn’t attack her.

The wolf-were dropped to the ground.

“Good, that’s good,” Fay said. “Let your home hold you.”

Barbara’s fingernails shifted to claws and plunged into the ground. She dragged them through it.

Steve smelled the wolf scent of her. The fresh dirt from her weeding gained a new clarity. Wind whirled in a tight spiral, the garden bending and whipping with it.

“Now, Steve,” Fay said, and clapped her hands together.

The wind vanished. Barbara collapsed onto the dirt, claws re-forming into dirty, torn fingernails.

Fay strode forward. “Steve?”

“I’ve got it.” He growled. “Or should I say, them?”

“Two?” Fay stared at him, retracting the hand she’d extended towards Barbara. “I only sensed a single mage.”

“One mage.” On the ground, Barbara retreated at his harsh tone, her bare toes scuffing the ground to get away from him. He softened his voice. “I smelled a woman. She must be your mage. But I also smelled a were.” He crouched. “You’re safe, Barbara.”

“Who are you?”

He smiled. The woman’s voice had been monotone. Now, even if her intonation held fear, she was alert and alive; responsive. “I’m Steve Jekyll and this is my mate, Fay Olwen. Gordon Forde brought us here.”

Barbara looked across the road, focusing on the vehicle. “He…I…” Her gaze swung to Fay. “What did you do to me? Why do I feel like this?”

“How do you feel?” Fay crouched as Barbara pushed herself up.

The wolf-were knelt back on her heels, one hand steadying herself on the ground. “Like I’ve had the flu for a year.” Her gaze brushed Steve and returned to Fay. “I feel weak.”

“That will pass,” Fay promised. “May I touch you?”

A brief nod gave her permission.

Fay pushed back the hair covering Barbara’s left ear.

A silver circle surrounded a hole in her earlobe, just large enough for a twist of two hairs to thread through it; one black and the other red.

“Two.” Fay pulled the hairs out and held them in her left palm for Barbara to see. “Someone managed a rare trick. They ensorcelled you, a were. Do you remember placing these through your ear? A stranger who did so?”

Barbara shook her head. “I don’t…I don’t remember.” She was shaky, her world rocked; probably at the new reality of her vulnerability. Wolf-weres, and especially the loners, were tough.

Steve turned his head and called, “Gordon.” The wolf alpha was out of the car and beside them in seconds. “Help Barbara inside. We need to talk.”

Fay liked the inside of Barbara’s home as much as she liked the outside. A narrow hallway opened up to a bright kitchen and living area with large windows overlooking the vegetable garden and orchard with a sensational view of the mountains beyond as a bonus.

When they reached the kitchen, Barbara shrugged out of Gordon’s supportive hold. He gave her a narrow-eyed look before letting her get on with making coffee and fussing around her kitchen. It visibly steadied her.

The other three sat at the wide pine table that matched the cupboards. The room was old-fashioned. A pottery fruit bowl containing a single apple anchored the center of a blue and white checked tablecloth.

Barbara brought a packet of chocolate cookies to the table with her, along with four mismatched mugs.

Briefly, Fay explained the situation, aware that the wolf-were needed to know what had attacked her. Ignorance slowed healing and planted the seeds of ongoing fear and debility.

Steve, though, prefaced Fay’s explanation with a reminder to keep the information confidential. “A panic won’t help anyone.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to discuss this.” Barbara rubbed her bare arms. She’d scrub her nails clean, but the torn skin around them was mute evidence of her struggle with enslavement. At the end of the story, she looked at Steve. “I didn’t recognize you as the Suzerain’s heir.” She looked from him to Fay and a small smile curved her mouth. “A mage partner.”

“That’ll send some folks into a tailspin,” Gordon said.

“You?” Steve challenged, but not as if it mattered. He lounged on a chair beside Fay, facing the two wolves.

“After seeing what she did here? No.” But Gordon’s glance at Fay held reservations.

Fay leaned forward. “What did you see or sense?”

The wolf alpha’s gaze landed on Barbara. “I didn’t see your magic. I felt the tension and then the release as whatever held Barb let her go. You forced it to.”

“Will it return?” Barbara asked.

“No,” Fay said. “If you give me permission, I’ll ward your homestead. No magic user will be able to cross it.”

“And away from home?” Barbara pursued.

Steve looked at Gordon. “I imagine your protective neighboring alpha will arrange to keep an eye on you till the rogue mage is caught, which won’t be long.”

“You can be damn sure,” Gordon said. “I’ll be calling Saul. He’ll come home and stay with you.”

“He’s on a job,” Barbara protested.

“And you’re more important.”

Barbara slumped in her chair, accepting, and perhaps even reassured by, her defeat.

Fay ventured cautiously onto the tricky part of the conversation, the bit where she had to get the wolf-were’s cooperation. “About the earplug the mage inserted in your lobe…”

“I’d forgotten.” Barbara tugged at it. “Gordon?”

The wolf alpha pulled a knife out of an ankle sheathe.

Fay had dealt with medical emergencies on her Collegium missions, but here they were in a clean and tidy house. “That’s not sterile.”

Steve chuckled a low laugh in his chest.

“I could use my claws,” Gordon said.

Barbara laughed, a shaky but real effort. “You’re right, Fay. I wasn’t thinking. Wolves don’t tend to get blood poisoning, but why risk it? That’d be all I need.” She got up and found a clean knife in a drawer.

Two minutes later, she and Gordon returned from the bathroom. She held gauze to her ear and he held out a small metal circle to Fay. The earplug.

“Thanks.” She accepted it without precautions. Whatever enchantment the metal had held had shattered in breaking Barbara’s enslavement. “Can you have it analyzed?” She passed it to Steve. “It’s not silver and I’m curious if it’s an alloy.”

He pocketed it.

Gordon followed the movement. “Aren’t you going to use it to track the rogue mage? To do a finding spell or something?”

“Not from it. The rogue mage’s spell was messy. It…for lack of a better word…combusted when I broke it. Using the remnants of it, like the earplug, would give unreliable results. They’re tainted.”

“So you’re no further forward,” he growled.

Fay shook her head, grateful for Steve’s quiet, watchful presence beside her. The wolves wouldn’t like what she was about to suggest. “We have Barbara. Her dream essence channeled to the rogue mage. She’s not tainted. She’s strong, vital and alive. If I act now, I can rebuild and follow the track her dream essence took.”
I think
, she added silently.

“No.” Barbara pushed back violently from the table. “No, I won’t be connected to that bastard. Not again. No. I
lost
myself.”

“You never lost yourself,” Fay said steadily. “You did really well. You stayed together, stayed a coherent personality.”

Gordon’s scowl worsened, as he evidently understood that this could have been far uglier.

“I can’t,” Barbara said. “I know you helped me and I owe you. But not this. I
can’t
.”

“They won’t make you,” Gordon promised. He exuded menace, a man and an alpha protecting his own, even if he didn’t move from the table.

Under the table, Steve’s foot nudged hers. She didn’t take it as a warning or a sign that he was preparing to meet an attack. She’d sensed the difference in him, felt it in her bones, since they’d freed Barbara.

They’d begun this pursuit of the rogue mage out of duty and to meet the djinn’s insistence on “testing” Steve. But meeting Barbara, seeing her emptiness and then the return of her personality, that changed everything.

Now, it was personal.

Fay knew she wasn’t the most empathetic person. That was a healer’s way. She walked a warrior’s path. However, the violation of Barbara’s spirit demanded respect and gentleness, as well as vengeance.

“Maybe we can come at this a different way,” Fay said. “Barbara, your home seems to have sustained you during your ensorcelment.” Enslavement sounded too harsh. “It fed your sense of self. Maybe I can use it to rebuild the path your dream essence took.”

“How?” Gordon demanded. “Land isn’t the same as spirit.”

“But this is Barbara’s
territory
.” She laid a light stress on the word and glanced at Steve. “It’s a part of her.”

Steve nodded. “Is there a place within it that’s particularly important to you, Barbara? A place where you feel most secure?”

“The rose garden.” Which explained why she’d been hiding in it. “My grandparents’ ashes are buried there.” Her voice thinned and wavered.

“Their souls are gone.” Steve picked up her spike of fear and dampened it. “The rogue mage didn’t touch them. Nor will Fay’s magic.”

“May I enter your rose garden?” Fay asked.

Barbara swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried again. “All right.”

Evening was creeping into the garden. Fay zipped up her jacket against the cold, but shed her boots and socks. She wanted contact with the earth. She’d never tried to follow a spell from a territory to a mage. While the others stood on the porch, watching, she stood among the rose bushes and framed a discreet, low-key spell.

The experience thrummed weirdly through her veins. Instead of shaping her magic into a demand as the Collegium taught, she asked Barbara’s homestead to show her the path its energy had trickled along, ensnared within and sustaining Barbara’s dream essence.

Territory was a difficult concept for Fay’s non-were mind. It helped to remember Steve’s insistence on sharing his house in Cyprus with her. She hadn’t had the experience to realize it was far more fundamental and powerful than walking her through his home. He’d been opening his territory to her, sharing it with her.

She pulled on the memories of how that had felt, the sense of belonging, and pushed that feeling into the spell.

The magic latched onto the dirt under her feet. Like a bolt of lightning, visible only to her mage sight, it lit and claimed the whole homestead, circled around Barbara and returned to Fay. “Show me,” she murmured.

Mage sight struck. A line of light, the path Barbara’s dream essence had travelled, split in two. One went towards a man. He had to be the were. Fay knew better than to fight the spell to see him more clearly. He was hidden. She needed to find the rogue mage, and that meant following the thinner of the two threads, but the one that seemed, somehow, more durable.

The first thread, the one leading to the were, pulsed and bloated with energy, but it shuddered and fought, as if under strain.

The second thread was narrow, reluctant almost, but vivid. Fay’s mage sight hurtled along that thread. For an instant, she looked out of the other mage’s eyes and knew where the woman was—or rather, intended to be.

The rogue mage had another victim lined up, a Siberian tiger-were.

Fay slammed back into her physical body. Around her, the rose bushes surged and shed their petals, forming the outline of a large heart on the ground. Fay shuddered. To the uninformed, the heart possibly looked comforting, a promise of love and shelter. Fay knew better. It was a warning. This was the rogue mage’s motivation. She was enslaving weres’ dream essences for some perverted notion of love.

The territory’s energy retreated. It wasn’t Fay’s. She released it with a gentle request that it protect Barbara. The energy flowed back to its accustomed rhythms. Fay stepped out of the rose garden.

“What was that thing, a wolf?” Gordon demanded, one arm around Barbara as she leaned against the porch railing.

Fay had no idea what he meant. She looked to Steve, who jumped down from the porch and held out his phone. He’d snapped a photo. She squinted at the screen, putting out a hand to adjust the angle of it, so she could see more clearly.

It was her, onscreen, but around her the rose bushes had writhed not just to shed their petals, but before that to form a green four-legged creature. “Not a wolf.” She looked up at Gordon and Barbara, then at Steve. “A jackal. A jackal-were. The second strand of hair. He’s working with the mage.” Fay was tired, but a little beat of magic wasn’t hard. She slipped a bubble of silence around her and Steve, a tiny blurring of privacy. “The rogue mage thinks she loves this man. She’s sending as much of the dream essences as she can to him.”

“Where is he?” Steve growled.

“I don’t know. I think I’ve found her, but all I know of him is that he’s a jackal-were and linked to, controlling, the mage.” She lifted the privacy spell and looked at Barbara. “I’ll ward your home, now?”

The wolf-were nodded her permission.

Having channeled the homestead’s energy, Fay didn’t need to walk the boundary. She set the ward at the edges of Barbara’s territory, sinking the protections into the energy of the site.

The predator showed in Gordon’s eyes as he left Barbara on the porch and walked down the steps. “Are you saying a were is working with a rogue mage by choice?”

“We didn’t know that till now,” Steve said.

Despite her magic, Gordon ignored Fay. He confronted Steve. “Will you send the marshals after this jackal?”

“No.” Steve put his phone in a pocket. The tone of his voice was deadly, way beyond arguing with. “This one is mine.”