Magic on the Hunt (8 page)

“No, you don’t—” But he was already out of the car and striding over to Kevin. He said something to Shame, who looked over at me, then back at Zay, and nodded.

Zay and Kevin walked off toward Kevin’s car, which was parked across the parkade from us.

“Good lord, Jones,” I muttered. “If you shake down every person in this town I don’t trust, you’ll be at it for years.” I got out of the car and strolled over to Shame, who stood a few feet away. “Really? Is he going to be that twitchy about what I say?”

“Dunno. What’d you say?”

“I wondered if Kevin was trustworthy.”

“Huh. Looks like we’re going to find out.” He nodded toward Zay.

Zay had a knife in his hand. He cut Kevin’s finger and his own. I smelled the sweet cherry scent of Blood magic. Truth spell.

It took a half minute. I couldn’t hear what they said through the Mute Zay cast. At the end of the conversation they shook hands.

Zay broke the Truth spell, and both he and Kevin walked back to us.

“Don’t trust me?” Kevin said.

“Should I?”

“Ask your man.” He smiled and dropped the key to the condo in my palm. “See you around, Flynn. Say hello to your mother for me.”

“You ought to come by and tell her yourself, you lazy codger. She’ll put you to work.”

“Why do you think I haven’t been by?” He walked off. “Be careful. All of you.”

“I owe you a beer, Cooper,” Zay said.

Kevin paused before getting into his car and gave Zay a grin. He looked good when he smiled. A lot less like someone who could disappear in a crowd of three. “Maybe after the storm passes.” Then he shut the door and drove away.

“Is that some kind of code?” I asked.

“What?”

“You and Kevin.”

He shrugged. “Yes. It’s code for I owe him a beer. Has anyone told you how suspicious you are?”

“Yes. What did you ask him? The Truth spell?”

“If he was betraying the Authority rules in any way.”

Shame whistled low. “Good thing you’re friends, Z.”

“Is he?” I asked.

“No.”

“I also asked him if he had Violet’s health and well-being in mind. He said yes to that too.”

“Blood don’t lie,” Shame said.

And that was true. It was impossible to lie blood-to-blood under a Truth spell. “Good.” It made me feel a hell of a lot better knowing Kevin really was looking after Violet. “Thank you.”

Zay started walking toward the elevator. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Interrogating people?”

“Yes, but I like to think of it as keeping people safe.”

“You should have gone into law enforcement,” I teased.

“Thought about it.”

Shame, behind me, scoffed. “Thought about it—he enrolled. Was going to be a cop. Had the classes lined up, put the money aside for it. Had interdepartmental character references. Everything.”

“So why didn’t you do it?” I asked.

“I had other responsibilities.”

“The Authority?”

“Keeping the city safe in a way the police can’t.”

So, yeah, the Authority. I wondered if they’d made him choose between becoming a police officer and keeping his memories of the Authority. Or maybe between that and becoming the guardian of the gate.

I slid the key into the elevator lock, and Zayvion pressed the button. The door opened wide. “You ready for this?” he asked.

“We could take the stairs,” I hedged.

“There are no stairs.” He waited, watching me.

Me, I just stood there and broke out in a sweat. I’d been in a lot of elevators lately. I’d done a hell of a lot of things to confront my claustrophobia. But nothing made it better. Every time an elevator door opened, I just wanted to run for the hills.

“I don’t think . . . I don’t think I can.” I took a step. Go, me.

Well, except it was a step backward. Oops.

Zay stood in front of me, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me.

No matter how long we had been together, his touch sent electricity riding my nerves. Heat washed over my skin in luscious waves, and the world melted away.

He opened my mouth with his tongue, and I shivered as he explored me. He tasted of whiskey and coffee. I scraped my teeth over his bottom lip, catching hold for a sweet moment, before I slid my tongue slowly back into his mouth, savoring the texture and taste of him. A second wave of heat uncoiled beneath my skin as his pleasure rolled through me, through us.

He stepped backward and, like a dancer, I followed, thinking of nothing more than keeping my body with his, moving with him, touching him, having him in every pleasurable way I could imagine.

Then there was a wall at his back, which was fine by me. It meant he couldn’t move away any more, and I could press against him and use my one free hand to pull that beanie of his off his head so I could rub my fingertips over the tight, silky curls of his hair.

The arm sling was uncomfortable and in my way. I leaned back a little so maybe I could ditch the thing, but his hands on my hips pulled me closer and held me against his hips, and I did not care about the sling anymore. He sank down a little, bracing against the wall so I could lean against him without having to use my injured arm for support, while he drew his palm up my butt, my back, and the back of my head, holding me as close as two people can get. With their clothes on anyway.

“Enough with the snogging,” Shame said. “We’re there. And me without a camera.”

I lifted my mouth from Zay’s, looked into his eyes. I had completely forgotten Shame was with us.

“Mmm,” he said with a slight smile. He’d forgotten Shame was there too.

“Out already,” Shame said. “Or at least wait to get naked until I make sure the security camera is rolling.”

Security camera? I pulled back a little more and realized we were in the elevator.

“Um,” I said. “Right.”

Zay tucked my hair behind my right ear, that soft, sweet gesture I was falling in love with, his lips curved in a sly smile. “So there’s that,” he said.

Neither of us was thinking about security cameras or what we’d come here for. That man undid me. And from the look in his eyes, I did him some damage too.

“Soon?”

“Better be.” He straightened. Caught up my hand and walked me out of the elevator.

“Enjoy the ride?” Shame’s eyes were twinkling.

“I did until you interrupted us,” I said. “So. Did Kevin say how to deactivate the security system?”

“Not to me,” Shame said. “Zay?”

He nodded, took about three steps down the hallway, then cast a spell with both hands. It was a Cancel, simple, but hinging on both hands completing the spell correctly.

“Is Violet going to have to use magic to undo the wards every time she walks in?” I asked.

“No.” Zay stalked off to the living room, Shame and me following. “She can pass through without triggering it. So can Kevin. The rest of us”—he glanced back at me—“especially those of us who use magic on a regular basis, have to work the wards.”

“So he’s basically blocking members of the Authority?”

“Hounds use magic every day,” he said. “Police use magic every day. Doctors, teachers.”

“Point taken. Good to know she’s safe from evil magic-using teachers.”

The hallway opened up into the living room, and I inhaled deeply. The room was huge, one entire wall a bank of windows that looked out over the city and Mount Hood in the distance. I missed that view.

“Where’s the device?” Shame wandered over to the mantle and dragged one finger along it as he walked the length. There were priceless collector’s pieces there, and I knew he knew it. He paused to pick up the most valuable pieces and tipped them to the light before replacing them carefully.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Zay squeezed my hand. “Ask your dad.”

I so didn’t want to do it. But that’s what we were here for.

Dad
, I thought,
where is the device that can track the cage Jingo used on Sedra?

He stirred. I knew he didn’t want to speak to me either, but whatever magical binding Victor and Shame had worked on him was still in place.

My office
, he said.

“It’s in his office.” I walked back out to the hall and down a few steps to the next half level of the house, where Dad’s office was. I opened the door to his office, and the fragrance of half-caught memories surrounded me.

It was smaller than the living room, but not by much; two of the four walls were floor to vaulted ceiling with books. A stair toward the back led to a reading loft above. I used to love to sneak up there and read while he worked. That all changed when Mom left. After Mom left, his door was always locked, and if I so much as got within three feet of it, he told me to do my homework.

Zay glided in from behind me, doing a once-through the room that made him look like he cased joints for a living. Shame was noisier.

“Holy crap. It’s like a museum in here. He had a thing for antiquities, didn’t he?”

“I guess.” It looked the same as I remembered it, but I had very few and very distant memories about the place. Leather, walnut, mahogany. Brass, crystal, glass. Odds and ends from his early prototypes of the storm rods. No plants. No natural light. No art other than patent plaques on the walls.

Where is it?
I asked Dad.
What is it?

Look in the safe.

I don’t know where the safe is.
He didn’t say anything. Sweet hells. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
Show me the safe.

He stretched out enough that it felt like there was a hand in my head pointing.
Behind the false wall in the loft.

“He said it’s in the loft.” I started up the stairs, my feet making no noise on the plush carpet. I flicked the light on, and a bank of lights hidden in the ceiling burned brightly.

I smiled. I had always liked it up there. The loft had changed. I remembered it being only half full of boxes and short bookshelves, a really comfy chair shoved against one wall out of sight from anyone below and situated so that the light was perfect for reading.

That chair, my chair, was gone. Boxes filled the space in neat, orderly rows, printed labels on each side. It smelled of old paper and dust.

It smelled of stale air and disuse. The graveyard of my childhood.

“So this is where old inventions go to die,” Shame said as he walked around a stack of boxes.

Which wall?

Dad pointed again, toward the wall on my right, and I made my way between boxes. The wall was smooth white paint. I didn’t see any latches or buttons or hinges.

“The safe is behind this wall,” I said.

“Tell him to open it,” Shame said.

I did not like the idea of him using my body, but it would go a lot faster if I let him. And then we could leave this place.

“Fine, but you two make sure he doesn’t do something stupid, like throw me down the stairs.”

“If he’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now,” Shame said.

“We’ll watch,” Zay said.

Open the safe
, I said.

Dad stepped forward in my mind. He was still broody but resigned. I knew if he could turn the tables to his advantage, he would. But I could also tell he didn’t know how to make this situation fall in his favor.

That was a first.

He drew a spell with my right hand. An Unlocking. Nothing fancy. Well, except it was done in his signature.

A signature-based spell was worked so that only you, or a damn good forger, could open it. They carried a password in the glyph. And since there was no telling what word Dad worked into the glyph, after a few trials and errors, the ward would lock down and not respond to magic at all.

Clean and about as safe as magic could make it.

He finished the spell and pulled magic from somewhere within the wall itself. Very nice.

The wall didn’t look any different. But Dad ran my fingers along a seam I could not see. I felt a microbump, like a word in braille beneath my fingertip. Dad placed four fingers over the pattern of bumps and pressed.

The wall released, swinging silently open. It revealed the inside of a safe large enough that I could have walked into it if I’d wanted to.

I very much did not want to.

“Which item?” Zay said from right behind me. I hadn’t even heard him move.

But all I had to do was nudge Dad, and he reached in and pulled what looked like a cell phone off of one of the shelves.

“I guess this,” I said.

“Is there anything else in there we might want to take with us?” Shame asked, peering around from behind. “How about I give it a look-see?”

“Let’s not add petty theft to your rap sheet,” I said. But I took a second to look at what Dad had thought valuable enough to lock away. Some papers that were probably his original patent designs and a boxful of files. A couple small jewelry cases, books, and a glass tray with three keys in it. There were a dozen document tubes, but before I got a good look at what else was in there, I noticed a wooden box. About the size of a shoe box, it was made of lightly varnished pine. I knew that box.

I picked it up, pulled it off the shelf. In my dad’s blocky handwriting were the words
ALLISON ANGEL BECKSTROM’S BOX OF DREAMS.
There was a little golden latch with a keyhole that I don’t remember being on it before. I brushed my fingers over the lettering and tugged on the lid. It held. Locked tight.

“This is mine,” I said.

“What’s in it?” Shame asked.

“I don’t remember.” An image of colored papers and origami cranes filled my mind. “Kid stuff, I think.”

Zay looked away from the safe.

I felt strange holding the box my dad had made for me. I reached over to put it back.

“It’s yours,” Zay said. “Keep it.”

He was right. There was no reason to leave it behind. Violet probably didn’t even know about this safe, and if she did, she had even less right to have my box. I didn’t know why Dad had kept it for so long. Locked away with things he valued.

“Is that it?” Shame asked. “We aren’t going to take any of the goodies? That leather case looks nice.”

“No,” Zay said.

“You never let me have nice things,” Shame groused.