Smoke and Mirrors (13 page)

“I mean it!”

“I know, I’m sorry! I’ll get it tonight! Go to work, you’re gonna be late!”

Minutes later, Kimberly was following her mother out the door, sprinting down the hall and taking the stairwell instead of the ancient, rickety elevator. Bursting out into the street, she took off full-tilt for school, huffing like a bellows as she clutched her backpack straps tight.

She was glad it was still cool out in the mornings. It made her straining lungs not ache quite so much as she ran two and a half miles through the city streets. The buildings around her gradually—and in a few places, not so gradually—shifted from old brick and granite, some with boarded up windows, to shining marble and gleaming chrome.

It didn’t take as long as she had feared it would to get to the Museum of Natural History. She still had almost half an hour before her first class started. Breathing deep, she started circling the block to walk off the stitch in her side.

When she rounded the corner on Central Park West, Xander was on the other side of the street waiting at the crosswalk. She returned his wave and paused when he shouted for her to wait up. She leaned against the short stone pillar holding up the museum’s fencing at the corner. She surreptitiously weaved a bit of magic to hide just how sweaty she was, then reached up to tie her hair in a ponytail to get it off her neck.

Moments later, Xander trotted up to her side. He nudged up his sunglasses with his thumb, giving her a cheerful smile. “Hey, you’re here early. Want to grab a coffee before class?”

“Nah, but I’ll go with you if you want one.”

They headed to a Starbucks only a half a block away. It was packed with people in suits and a few early bird tourists, but the service was quick, and Xander was soon sipping a caffè americano.

“I don’t know how you can drink that bog water,” Kimberly teased.

“Hey, it’s expensive, so it must be good,” he replied, grinning.

They headed to the deep shadows under one of the trees in front of the museum. Just as Kimberly was about to step into the hidden Gate disguised as a natural alcove in a tree that would take her directly to one of school common rooms, a leather-clad arm shot out to block her way.

She jerked back, looking up into eyes an unnatural yellow hue, arrestingly luminous in an otherwise unremarkable face. Aside from his height and strangely colored eyes, there was nothing obviously out of the ordinary about him. He grinned down at her, his teeth gleaming white and sharp.

“So this is the fierce and ferocious dragon hunter. You’re shorter than I expected.”

Xander stepped closer, his gaze flitting back and forth between the two. “Kimberly, what’s going on?”

The strange man cut Kimberly off before she could stammer out an answer. “Get out of here, boy. This doesn’t concern you.”

Kimberly skittered back, and the man straightened, never taking his eyes off her. She held up her hands to ward him off before he could take another step closer. Nearby pedestrians were giving them a wide berth. One of the security guards by a driveway in front of the museum was muttering into a walkie-talkie, his eyes glued to the three.

This went against everything the two magi had been taught. The first rule of being Other was, above all else, blend with humanity to survive. The obfuscation spell on the Gate was limited; it only worked if you weren’t doing anything to call notice to yourself. Anyone making a point to stare at the spot, like that security guard, would see the people disappearing into thin air as they stepped into a patch of shadow beside a particular tree. Even if they got rid of this newcomer, Kimberly, Xander, and any other Blackhollow students who were planning on using the Gate on 77th and Columbus would have to find an alternate route inside this morning thanks to the attention they had drawn.

“Look, I don’t know what you want, but I’ve got to get to class.”

“Not today, you don’t. I’ve got a proposition for you. Come with me and we’ll talk about it.”

Xander stepped between them. To anyone without a drop of spark in their blood, the power gathering around his upraised palm would be invisible. The passerby might assume he was doing an impression of The Supremes, telling the stranger to stop in the name of love, or something very much like it. Whereas to Kimberly and the Other who had accosted her, to their Sight, the threads of red and white energy were building a formidable fire-based shield that shimmered into life between them.

The Other finally broke his unblinking stare, switching that cold, calculating gaze to Xander. The mage held his stance, unflinching.

A slow, wicked smile revealed too many fangs behind the Other’s lips. “Your white knight can’t keep you safe forever. Watch your back, dragon hunter.”

A hand appeared on his shoulder, spinning him around. As Cormac leaned in, the stranger scrambled back and out of his reach. Neither Kimberly nor Xander had seen Cormac approach; it was like he’d appeared out of nowhere.

“You watch yours, Viper. Slither back to your hole and don’t let me catch you anywhere near the girl again.”

The man he’d called Viper snarled something Kimberly didn’t catch, then turned on his heel and fled. He melted into the pedestrian traffic so rapidly that both magi quickly lost sight of him.

Xander lowered his hand, clenching his fist around the glittering threads of energy he’d summoned. The (mostly) invisible shield winked out of existence, giving an audible pop that made a few people walking nearby jump in surprise and look around for the source. He took a sip of his americano, looking around with mild curiosity as if he, too, were searching for the source of the sound.

Cormac didn’t look at either of them or make any attempt to blend with the crowd, his gaze focused in the direction Viper had disappeared. When he spoke, his voice was a low, husky growl that sent shivers up Kimberly’s spine.

“Use the entrance off of 81st. Use the Gate to Grand Central when school lets out and I’ll escort you to work.”

“Are you serious? I’ll be late for work. If I’m late again, I’ll lose my job!”

“I wasn’t counting on someone like Viper taking an interest in you. I’d rather you be safe than risk another encounter with him.”

“Hey, would one of you like to clue me in on what’s happening here?” Xander asked. “What did I just step into?”

Cormac turned, eyeing Xander with a decided lack of enthusiasm. “He wasn’t after you. Thank you for your attempt at heroics. I’ll be taking it from here.”

Kimberly frowned at Cormac before answering Xander. “Thanks for your help. Let’s get moving, class is starting soon. I’ll fill you in on the details at lunch.” She started walking backwards, waving at Cormac. “And thank you, too! But I can’t go to Grand Central, that’ll take me way too long to get to work. Meet me on 81st?”

He nodded, so she gave him a thumbs up. Xander followed a bit more slowly, his mystified expression deepening as Cormac disappeared in the foot traffic behind them.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The two magi didn’t have any classes together for the first half of the day. Kimberly did her best to keep away from Xander during the lunch hour, but she couldn’t avoid him when they continued their lab project in Professor Cohen’s Advanced Circles class. Xander waited until they both had their heads bent over the paper spread out on the table between them to start whispering his questions.

“What the heck was that about this morning? Who were those guys? What are they?”

The tip of Kimberly’s charcoal snapped off. Her gaze flicked up at him, then back down to focus on filling in the thick lines of the rune she was working on.

“You know as much as I do about Viper. Cormac is a friend, I think. Professor Reed has him helping me with some stuff after school.”

“Dragon hunting?”

Either some people were listening in, or he’d spoken louder than intended. Kimberly was positive half the eyes of the classroom were now focused on them. Her own whispered reply came out harsher than she intended.

“No.” She paused. “Okay, yes, sort of. It’s a long story.”

Xander’s palpable excitement was drawing the eye of Professor Cohen again. He was eyeing them over the horned rims of his glasses and leaning in their direction. Kimberly spoke up a little louder.

“What page had the picture of the transference rune again?”

Xander didn’t miss a beat. He used the back of his thumb to turn the pages of his copy so he wouldn’t smudge charcoal all over his textbook. “58. See, I knew that angle should have been like this.”

The professor lost interest, moving on to check on the progress of some other students. Kimberly let out the breath she’d been holding and pretended to be busy reading the fine print under the picture in the book.

“If you want to help me,” she muttered under her breath, “maybe you can do some research and see if you can figure out what Cormac is. He’s something magical, I just can’t figure out what. And I’m pretty sure he has ties to dragons.”

“That is so cool. Have you seen any yet?”

“No. Just some elves, a minotaur, and a couple other things last night.”

Xander’s jaw dropped, his eyes going wide as saucers. Then he realized he was drawing attention to himself again and quickly got back to etching one of the major elements into its place around the larger protection rune Kimberly was filling in.

The project they were working on was practice for their final exams. It was the basic binding pattern for the inner workings of the summoning circle they were supposed to use to call their familiars. This was their last practice run doing the pattern on paper. Next, they would etch it in spelling chalk on the specially built platforms in what was dubbed the summoning room; a chamber built specifically to keep out any outside interference and allow the student magi to safely summon their first familiars. The room was designed to keep any planar escapees trapped should the summoning circle or binding spell fail.

When the time came, Kimberly would need to use something similar, sans the calling symbols and items like clay and water for a planar creature to form a body to use. Whatever manner of familiar she convinced to step into her circle, it would be earthbound. She lacked the ability to call anything ephemeral to do her bidding. No, she would be convincing a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood elemental monster to step into her circle of its own free will—and to put that will in her hands.

One thing was certain. If she couldn’t find a dragon, Cormac was some flavor of earthbound Other. She wasn’t sure what, but he knew what kind of trouble she’d be in if she couldn’t find and convince a dragon in time. He was willing to help her search, and said he would protect her, so if things got down to the wire, maybe he’d be okay with becoming her familiar for a few days. Obviously he was something powerful, and that was all she needed to prove to the mage community that she was capable of protecting herself.

Even if she couldn’t find a dragon, as long as she had some kind of familiar, she could walk away with a diploma and maybe get her foot in the door of a decent coven with an internship if there were any openings. It wouldn’t be the same as walking into her dream job, of course. There was a chance she might have to suck it up and work for Don longer than she’d planned just to make ends meet until she met the requirements for a better position somewhere. She might even have to settle for a place in a smaller coven, or one out of state that needed someone with her skills. That would still be better than failing out of the academy at the end of the school year and seeing all her hopes and dreams slip through her fingers.

She only had one shot. There were no do overs when it came to final exams. You either passed, earning the diploma you needed in order to qualify for a license, or you didn’t, earning nothing but enough of an education to know better than to attempt to cast or sell your services as a mage without the proper licensing and paperwork. Her original plans to use illusion on her tests had all gone out the window, making it frightfully easy to fall into panic mode every time she thought about how little time she had left to meet the one major requirement she had no workaround for—finding a suitable familiar to bind.

Xander flicked a small hunk of charcoal at her hand, drawing her out of her momentary funk.

“You okay? Where’d you go just now?”

She gave him a thin smile. “Thinking about the future. We better get this right.”

They concentrated on their sketches. Near the end of the period, the professor swung by their table and checked their work.

“Good job. Looks like you’re almost done. You can both get started on your circles in the summoning room on Monday.”

“Thanks, professor,” Xander said.

“Have a good weekend, you two. Stay out of trouble.”

They managed to finish the drawing just in time, putting their charcoal down just as the bell rang.

Xander helped Kimberly put away her materials and hefted up her backpack for her, walking with her out of the classroom. “We still on for our study date tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Things are a little up in the air with this hunt.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it. What’s your cell number? I’ll call tonight, we can figure something out.”

That prompted a grimace. Things like cell phones and computers were luxuries she couldn’t afford. They didn’t even have a phone at the apartment. If she needed to do mundane research or type reports, she did it on the computers at the library.