Magic on the Storm (23 page)

“It could have been an accident in the lab.”
Huh. He was right. It could have been. But one look at the empty drawers told
me it was not.
Stotts knew that too.
“Well, that looks like a robbery to me,” I said, pointing at the wall of boxes.
“Anything you want me to do?” he asked.
Since there was no magic, Stotts couldn’t even cast Sight to watch what I was
doing.
“Nope, I’ll do this old-style. I’ll repeat everything I see. If you want to
take notes, that might be good.”
He pulled something out of his pocket. A tape recorder. He held it up, then
thumbed the button down.
Good idea.
I calmed my mind, sang my jingle, set a headache Disbursement, then traced a
glyph for Sight and Smell. “Sight and Smell. I don’t know how much magic I’ll
have at my disposal, so I don’t know how strong the spells will be.”
Then I very carefully closed my hand around the crystal and urged the magic out
of it and into the glyphs that hovered, invisible, in the air in front of me.
Magic didn’t so much flow as uncoil out of the stone and then stretch out into
the spell. A tendril of magic stayed hooked in the stone, like a root set deep.
I shook the crystal a little. The tendril, the root, did not let loose. Okay.
Strange. But then, I’d never used magic by pulling it out of something like
this. Maybe it was supposed to stay attached.
My dad didn’t have anything to say about it, and I didn’t have any time to
waste.
“Using Sight and Smell,” I said again. “There was at least one caster here. A
man, I think. Give me a minute.” I took a couple steps toward the wall of
boxes. “There’s a spell here, maybe more than one. But they’re really tight.
Tangled. Like they collided or were crushed. Hold on.”
I leaned in closer to one of the spells that clung like a spit hair ball the
size of my head, near the middle of the boxes. “Okay, there’s a big spell here.
Not Illusion. Something with force. Impact? Oh.” It came to me in a rush.
“Unlock. Nice. It’s masterfully cast,” I continued. “Even wadded up and kind of
tangled, I can tell someone knew exactly how to throw this spell.”
“Blood magic?” Stotts asked.
“I’ll check.” I took a deep breath, through my mouth and nose to get the taste
and scent of the spell at once. And it was not the sweet smell of cherries that
I caught. It was the heavy mineral stink of old vitamins.
I knew that smell.
When? Where?
“No Blood magic,” I said to give myself time to think. “But I have smelled the
scent of this spell before. Have smelled it on someone.”
My father brushed the back of my mind. Gently. Like he was thumbing through
paper again. It was odd and made my teeth itch.
And then the memory came forward. A memory of my old apartment torn apart, my
furniture and belongings broken, trashed. This was the same scent that was left
behind. Whoever had broken into my apartment had also broken in here.
“The spell’s hard to parse. The casting is really tight. I don’t even know how
someone could cast magic with the network down,” I muttered.
“The disks?” Stotts suggested.
“Maybe.” I walked to one side to get a different view on the scene. And that
was when I could tell. I knew who cast the glyph because I had seen him
recently.
Sedra’s bodyguard, Dane Lannister.
Which meant the Authority had broken in here.
Which meant the Authority had broken into my house.
There was another, more frightening, sickening memory attached to that smell,
but I could not pull it to the front of my mind.
Dad?
I asked.
He did not respond. If he knew where that memory was, he didn’t seem willing to
kick it forward.
“Uh, I still think it’s a man’s signature,” I said.
“Who?” asked Stotts, the magical police detective who did not know about the
Authority, who should not know about the Authority, and whom I should not tell
the Authority even existed, much less that its members broke in and stole the
disks.
And even that didn’t make sense. My father had been a part of the Authority.
Kevin currently was a part of the Authority. Violet had a passing knowledge of
the Authority.
So why would the Authority break into the lab if they could, as far as I could
tell, just ask Violet for the disks, or, at the very worst, tell Kevin to steal
them from her?
Maybe he had.
Maybe this spell had only been cast to act like it was cast by Dane.
Which left me one hundred percent confused about what I should tell the nice
detective.
So I went into default mode: the truth.
“I think a man named Dane Lannister might have been involved. But the spell is
tangled, collapsed. It could be someone trying to make it look like Dane
Lannister is involved.”
“Anything else?”
“I’d say get another Hound in here to double-check my findings, but since that
isn’t going to happen, let me do a little more footwork.” I checked the spell
again. Yep. Still looked like Dane’s. “Still seems to be Lannister’s
signature,” I said. I checked the boxes. “None of the glyphwork has been
broken.” Which meant he had taken the time to Unlock each box instead of just
blowing the thing apart.
“The disks were in here. I’d say one per drawer.” What else? What was I
missing? I looked around the room, and caught the angry red slash of a spell
hovering about midway across the room.
That was not Unlock, or Hold, or any of the kinder spells. That was Impact and
I could tell the target had been Kevin.
Dane attacked Kevin?
I looked the opposite direction to see if a spell from Kevin was there.
“Allie?”
“Just checking a few other spells. Cast in about the same time period as the
Unlock,” I said. “Similar decay rate.”
Beyond the desk, where maybe Violet had been sitting, was the tattered remnants
of a Shield spell.
Kevin had tried to keep Violet from getting hit with magic.
Dane had been here to kill Violet?
“Uh, one of the spells is aggressive. Not sure what kind, but in the category
of Impact. Not one I recognize. That’s midroom. There’s another spell over
here, a Shield. Tattered, like it withstood a blow or flux of magic.
“Is this where they found Violet?”
“Yes.”
Okay, so my theory about attackers seemed to be holding up.
I walked to the opposite side of the room and looked for anything Kevin might
have cast.
Holy crap. Kevin had cast at least a half dozen spells. Hold, Freeze, Impact,
something that involved blood and pain, and more. And they had all fallen—no,
they had all been drawn—to this side of the room, and smashed together into one
big tangled, useless spell.
Kevin had hauled on a hell of a lot of magic—recently, like after the magic had
turned off—and it had all been batted aside and crushed like empty beer cans.
The smell of minerals and old vitamins was stronger here.
Okay. I didn’t know why Dane and Kevin were fighting. Sedra’s bodyguard
fighting Violet’s bodyguard, but they had both accessed a hell of a lot of
magic with the grids down.
Maybe they had disks to drain, but I didn’t see any discarded empty disks on
the floor.
“Allie?”
“More spells over here. There was a fight. All these spells are collapsed in on
themselves and tangled together.” I shook my head. “It’s a mess, but they still
bear Kevin Cooper’s signature.”
The crystal in my hand was feeling heavy and cold. “Is there anything else you
want me to look at, because I think my battery’s going dead.”
“This is where they found Kevin.” He pointed to a place near the door of the
room. Like Kevin had been trying to get out and leave Violet behind. Strange.
I walked over to the door without losing my hold or concentration on Sight and
Smell.
Death magic. I couldn’t smell it, but it cast just enough of a shadow that I
knew it had been mixed with dark magic. The only people I’d ever seen wield
dark magic were Frank Gordon, who tried to raise my dad’s soul from the dead,
Zayvion, who used it as well as he used every other discipline of magic, and
Greyson, who used it mixed with Blood magic to control Tomi. Since Frank was
dead and Zayvion was comatose, that left Greyson.
I inhaled, trying to catch his scent—death and blood and burnt blackberry—but
all I came up with was the slight tang from Death and dark magic, and the scent
of old vitamins. Beneath that, I caught the notes of Kevin’s cologne, a mix of
spices, and blood—his blood.
“There’s nothing here I can testify to,” I started. “Magic was used, but I
don’t know these spells.” I didn’t want to tell Stotts it was dark magic. As
far as I knew, he didn’t know about dark magic. The entire event in the
warehouse with Frank and my dad’s corpse had been chalked up to some kind of
mutated Blood magic. That was not what it had been, but that was what the
Authority had wanted people to think it was.
And so that was what the lab tests came back with, that was the official police
report, and that was what the causes of death on the four kidnapped girls’
death certificates read.
I glanced out in the hall to see if there was anything else beyond the room.
Nothing, or at least no spells, that I could see.
The crystal suddenly went so cold it hurt.
“Ow!” The pain in my hand broke my concentration, and the glyphs for Sight and
Smell faded.
I almost dropped the crystal, but instead tossed it to my other hand, and then
back and forth like a hot potato.
“That it?” Stotts strolled over. He didn’t look at all concerned that I’d gone all
Hacky Sack crazy.
“Really cold.” I tossed the crystal at him, and he caught it.
“Huh.” He held it with the fingertips of one hand, and traded off when he
couldn’t stand the cold any longer, studying it and holding it up to the light.
Then he placed it on a clear space on the counter.
I swear I heard the crackling of ice. I looked at the crystal.
Yep. Froze the countertop out in a foot circle.
“Is this something new Beckstrom Enterprises is developing?” Stotts asked.
“It’s something we’ve looked into. I haven’t gotten reports of its viability in
terms of development, manufacturing, or marketing yet.” See, I could lie in
business-speak when I had to.
Stotts gave me a funny look. “You have a crystal that acts like a battery for
magic, and you’re trying to decide if it’s a good idea to market?”
“It’s the paperwork I hate.”
The ice seemed to be melting some, and I thought the crystal looked a little
less white and a little more pink.
Will it recharge?
I asked my father.
Yes.
Again with the hesitance.
That was good enough for me.
“I’m going to take this,” I said.
Stotts raised one eyebrow. “Why?”
“It is legally my property,” I said.
“True. Property you didn’t know was here until a few minutes ago.”
“Let me put it this way—I’m not leaving it here. I don’t want anyone to break
in and take it, and since it wasn’t involved in the crime, I don’t see any
reason why the police would have claims to it.”
“And you’re keeping it because?”
“I want it?” He didn’t believe me, and I didn’t care. “Listen, I used all the
magic in it. I don’t know how to recharge it with magic, don’t even know if it
can be recharged. But I want to keep it. If it’s Violet’s, I’ll return it to
her.”
Stotts sniffed and looked down at his shoe. Man had a mess of problems to deal
with right now and me pitching a fit over a pretty rock did not rank up there
on his list of traumas he had to plow through. Not with magic out. Not with the
backups about to go down.
“Do you know why someone would want to take the disks?” he asked.
“They were filled with magic,” I said. “All of them.”
“And anyone can access that magic?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me and I looked at him. In a city suddenly empty of magic, both of
us were probably coming up with a thousand horrific things someone would want
to do with a hundred disks full of power.
“I still think a storm, a wild-magic storm, is going to hit,” I said. “Maybe it
will kick-start magic again.”
Stotts grunted and shoved both his hands in his coat pockets, shifting his
shoulders as if carrying a new ache. “Interesting theory.”
“Do you need me for anything else?” I asked before he came up with questions I
didn’t want to answer.
Stotts shook his head. “If I do, I’ll call.” He walked me to the door of the
room. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything more.”
I pocketed the crystal and started down the hall.
“Allie?”
I slowed and glanced over my shoulder at him.
“Whatever it is that you’re thinking of doing. Don’t. We’ll handle it.”
I wondered what he saw in me. Was it my anger? My fear? Or did I just have a
bad reputation for doing stupid things when magic was screwing with the people
I loved?
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. Stotts and I were enough alike, we both knew
that when people I cared about were hurt, there was no way in hell I was going
to just stand aside and let other people handle the problem.

I
t was
colder now and darker outside the lab, but at least it wasn’t raining.
“Want a lift?” Shame stood on one side of the police tape. Even though he had
no magic, he still managed to blend in and look like he was just another
citizen out ogling the police and pony show.
I strode down the walk toward him and didn’t stop. “Where’d you park?”
“Up a block. What’s the hurry?”
I had to press my lips together to keep from yelling. I shook my head.
He got the hint and paced me, then unlocked the car so I could get in. Shame
got in the driver’s side, which was fine with me. Even though Shame still
looked like death on a low simmer, I was angry. And I didn’t want to kill us on
the highway.
As soon as Shame started the car, a coo called out from the backseat.
I knew that coo.
“Stone!” I unbuckled so I could sit up on my knees and reach back for him.
“Where’d you find him?”
“He found me,” Shame said.
Stone filled the entire backseat; his head rested on his outstretched arms like
he was really tired. But at the sound of my voice, his ears pricked up into
sharp triangles and his wings shifted against his muscled back. He tipped his
head enough he could look at me and gave me a toothy smile.
“I missed you, boy.” I reached back and petted his head.
Three things sank in: one, Stone was cool, not cold, but not his usual cozy
temperature. Two, he wasn’t moving as fluidly as he should, his motions
catching like he was full of gears that had rusted up. Three, his eyes were
different. Usually his eyes shone with a sweet kind of intelligence. Right now
they were dull, like someone had taken a sandblaster to them and left behind
clouds.
“Hey, boy,” I said more gently. “Who’s my good boy? Who’s my big hunter
gargoyle? That’s right, that’s you. You’re a good boy.” I rubbed his head and
scratched behind his ears. He angled his head for a better scratching, but did
it slowly. His coo and his happy marble sound were too soft, like all he had
left in him was a whisper.
“Stay there, boy, okay? Sleep time.”
He gave me a rock-garbled reply and dropped his head back down to rest on his
forearms.
“He’s not moving very well.” I don’t know why I said it. It was obvious. Shame
knew it. I knew it.
“I’m amazed he’s still moving at all,” Shame said. “Maybe he has his own backup
spell battery in that belly of his.”
“Is there anything we can do to help him?” I asked.
“Besides getting magic up and running again?”
“What happens if he runs out before then?” I asked.
Shame just shrugged. “You tell me. No one’s been able to pull off an Animate
this big for years.”
I rubbed at my forehead. I had no idea what would happen. I didn’t want to
think about it.
“At least we know where he is,” Shame said.
True. I could probably get him up into my apartment if I had to. And if he ran
out of magic there, at least I’d know someone wasn’t breaking him up into
gravel or turning him into a table or something.
“You want to tell me where I’m driving?” Shame asked.
“Legacy Emanuel. Someone broke in and stole all the disks.”
“All?”
“Hundreds. Charged with magic.”
Shame’s eyebrows shot up. Yeah, it freaked me out too.
Then he started laughing. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Now? Really? Hundreds of disks
on the loose with a goddamn storm bearing down on the city? Perfect. Just
perfect.”
“Do you know what the disks will do when the storm breaks?”
“Not a damn clue. Might be nothing. Might be a lot. If we see a mushroom cloud
suddenly blow out half the damn city, we’ll know for sure. Fuck it all. Did you
Hound for Stotts?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Shame slanted me a look that was pure appreciation. “I’d be interested to know
how you pulled that off.”
I tugged the crystal out of my pocket and held it up for him to see. It was
still cool, but not frostbite cold. “Ever see this before?”
Shame glanced at it. “God’s balls, woman. Where did you get that?”
“In there.”
Shame made a quick right turn and nearly hit a car that honked as it went past
us. He stopped in a lot behind an office building and twisted in his seat.
“Give.”
Yes, I was hesitant to give it to him. But whom else was I going to trust with
this? Whom else could I even ask about it? Maybe Violet. If she were conscious.
I handed it to him. Shame held it like it was made of gold and unbroken dreams.
“It’s natural,” he said. “Who—no, how can this even exist?”
“It carried magic. Enough I could Hound the room.”
“Still does. It’s weak, thin, but it is refilling, slowly . . . like the
heartbeat of the world.” Shame licked his lips and swallowed hard. Then he
slowly pressed it against his mouth. He closed his eyes and a shudder shook
him.
“Shame?”
With visible effort, he lifted the stone away from his lips and held it out to
me, without looking at me, without looking at the stone.
“Take it. I’d drink it dry.”
I hesitated. Shame wasn’t looking good, but the stone seemed to have brought a
little color into his lips. Maybe letting him use the magic in the stone would
help. “Maybe you—,” I started.
“No.” He looked away, looked out the window at the dark city. “You don’t want
me to have that. It will only make me want more.” I saw the reflection of his
smile in the glass, and it was pure hunger and need, coupled with a willpower I
didn’t know he had.
I shoved the stone in my pocket and Shame rubbed his hand on his thigh, as if
trying to rub off the sensation it had left behind. He pulled a cigarette out
of his pocket and held it between his fingers, but didn’t light it. He went
back to driving like nothing had happened.
Except I could tell his hands were shaking, and he was sweating. Not pain.
Hunger.
“What did you see when you Hounded?” he asked as if we were talking about the
weather.
This was the weird part. Shame had been raised in the Authority. He knew more
political backstabbings and payoffs among the people in the Authority than I’d
ever get the inside skinny on. His mother was a voice in the Authority,
essentially speaking for every user who trained under Blood magic. He had more
connections than Velcro.
If I told him the Authority was behind the break-in, whom would he tell? Did he
already know someone in the Authority wanted the disks enough to attack my
pregnant stepmother?
There is a reason I am not a spy. I do not do the cloak-and-dagger bit worth a
shit. I prefer to lay my cards on the table, and then draw a gun to clear up
any misunderstandings.
That meant it was default mode again—the truth.
“Someone from the Authority broke in. Fought with Kevin. Hurt him. Hurt Violet.
With magic.”
Shame was silent. I watched his body language. Something like curiosity or like
he was trying to figure out where that information fit in with other
information.
“Could you tell who it was?” Flat, even. He knew how to keep his emotions in
check when he wanted to. Wasn’t that a surprise?
“Dane Lannister.”
Shame frowned. “Seriously?”
I nodded.
“Huh.”
“Do you know why he would do that? Couldn’t he have told Kevin he wanted the
disks?”
Shame took a deep breath, let it out. “I don’t know. There are always things
going on in the Authority that I don’t know about. I haven’t heard . . . No, I
haven’t heard that Sedra wanted the disks.”
He stopped at a light, tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Could be a last-minute
thing. Don’t know why they wouldn’t have clued Kevin in. But Violet. Yeah, they
might not have wanted her to know. Still, force is usually a last resort.”
I snorted. “You people are always throwing magic around. What do you mean,
force is a last resort?”
“Us people? You’re a part of us too. And it is. A last resort. They used magic?”
“The spells were . . . collapsed. Tangled. Crushed.”
Shame pressed his head back into the seat of the car, straight-arming the
wheel. “I am so going to ask for a raise. This job blows balls. You want me to
take us to Mum’s place instead? We can get some answers. Find out what the cool
kids are doing.”
We were just a couple blocks from the hospital.
“No. I want to see Violet.” And if she was awake, I planned to ask her a few
questions. Like if she had been making a move on the Authority, trying to
strong-arm them into something and holding the disks as collateral. She was
smart and she was strong. It would not surprise me to find out the business
associates who were angry with her over releasing the data on the disks were
actually members of the Authority, maybe even Sedra herself.
And the way Kevin felt for Violet, the love he would not admit to, might just
be enough to make him take her side. Might be enough to make him fight Sedra’s
bodyguard for her.
Love did strange things to people. Left them weak, made them stronger than ever
before, or destroyed them.
Shame drove into the parking structure and wound his way up the concrete ramps
until he found an open space.
“You coming in with me?” I asked.
He lit the cigarette and sucked down the smoke. “I’m not letting you go in
alone.”
I stopped, my hand on the door handle. “Why?”
“That’s the way it is.”
“Talk, Flynn.” I wanted to know whom he was working for, or spying for. His
mother? Jingo Jingo?
“I owe Zay. For letting you down. For letting him down. I should have known.
Seen it coming. Chase is such a bitch.” He opened the door and blew the smoke
out in a thin stream.
Oh.
“Yeah, well, we all could have done something differently. But we didn’t. Now
we go forward,” I said, “ ’ cause looking back won’t fix anything. Stay here—it
won’t take me long to check on Violet.”
“Wrong. Chase and Greyson are still loose. Still on the hunt. Still looking for
you.”
“They got Zay. They don’t want me.” But as soon as the words were out of my
mouth, I knew it was not true. Greyson wanted my dad, the rest of him that was
still inside me. What they did to Zay just got him out of the way so they could
do what they really wanted.
“Holy shit,” I said. “They attacked Zay because they want to get to me.”
“I swear, you are denser than lead,” Shame muttered. “Of course they wanted him
out of the way to get to you. And they wanted him out of the way because he is
the guardian of the gates. The one and only magic user who can use light and
dark magic to break the barrier between life and death. Knocking him out means
that when the gates blow open—and I’d bet my left ball they’re going to—he
won’t be able to close them.”
“There are other Closers,” I said. “Terric, Victor, Nikolai, and Romero, more
of the Seattle crew.”
“None of them use magic like Zayvion Jones. No one does. Not even Victor. Or
Terric.”
An image, a flash of Chase and Greyson casting magic together, using magic in
ways I had never seen, making it go against its own laws, rolled through my
mind.
“Soul Complements,” I whispered.
“What about it?”
“Chase and Greyson. That’s why they could use magic like that. That was the
only thing that could hurt Zayvion.”
“Part right. Soul Complements let them screw with the laws of magic. But they
threw around light and dark magic. And they could do that because Greyson is a
Necromorph—half alive, half dead. Whatever he did to Chase so she could do it
too—his own Soul Complement . . .” He blew out smoke again. “It makes me wonder
how much that bloodsucker would burn in sunlight. He’s using a hell of a lot of
dark magic.”
“No. Greyson didn’t use magic. He had to use Tomi to cast Blood magic for him.”
“And now he has Chase to act as his hands. Happily ever after, evil-style, in
their evil little hovel with the evil little picket fence around the evil
little garden of poisonous weeds and dead bugs. Evil cookies, evil nooky—not
that I have anything against those last two.” He got out of the car and I did
too.
“Don’t you take anything seriously?”
“No,” he lied. “It makes me interesting.” He started off toward the elevator
that would take us to ground level.
Elevator. Great.
But before I closed the door, I leaned back in the car. “You be a good boy,
Stone,” I said. “Sleep. Okay?”
Stone cooed but didn’t move one granite muscle.
I shut the door. And strode across the parking structure of gray, gray, gray,
my boots cuffing a loud rhythm against the concrete ceiling.
Shame waited by the elevator, hood up, his shoulders hunched, his hands in his
pockets, the discarded cigarette sending up a tendril of smoke at his feet. He
didn’t face the elevator doors. He faced me. Good to know he was keeping an eye
out for trouble.
Just as I stopped next to him, the doors opened with a horror-sweet ding.
“After you,” he said.
Okay, I could do this. I’d done it plenty times before. “Are there stairs?”
“Fuck stairs,” he said. “Too slow. And too damn much work.”
I gritted my teeth. Couldn’t get my feet to move.
“Need a push?” he asked.
“No.”
A hand slammed into my shoulder and a body followed it. I stumbled into the
elevator. “What the hell?”
“Your phobia was saying no, no, but your feet were saying yes.”
He stabbed the button and stood in the corner nearest the doors, facing me.
“If you ever listen to my feet again, I will end you, Flynn.”
He glanced at me, grinned. “Ooh. You’re kinda hot when you’re angry. I suddenly
see why Jones likes to make you mad and then tumble you on the mats.”
“Don’t. Just don’t. Or they’ll have to scrape you up off this floor with a
dustpan.”
He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and instead stood there and
whistled.
Whistled. Using up all the air in the tiny, tiny room, filling it up with sound
so that there wasn’t even room for me to hear my own thoughts. There wasn’t
enough room for me to breathe. I closed my eyes and tried to picture open
fields, blue skies, oceans, deserts. Big horizons, big space, big air.
A hand grabbed my upper arm and tugged, hard, propelling me toward the open
doors.
I didn’t stumble this time. We were at the street level on a sidewalk covered
by the overhang of the parking structure.
Shame made a
tsk
sound. “And you were going to do this alone.”
“Alone I would have taken the stairs. You are seriously pissing me off.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
He started off toward the doors. “Good thing about anger. It keeps you going
when nothing else will.”
He’d done it on purpose. Shoved me when I didn’t even want to be touched,
irritated me. My heartbeat was up, but other than that, I was thinking clearly.
And not at all freaked-out from the elevator ride, though I should be. Usually
it took me a couple minutes to shake off the panic from the phobia.