The flutter quieted. So maybe he was paying attention to what I was thinking. Good.
And bad. My thoughts quickly turned to Violet, to her being pregnant with my dad’s child, my one and only sibling. I pushed that thought away and la-la-la’d like crazy. I didn’t want to tear Violet’s world apart. And destroying Beckstrom Enterprises would do just that. I’d never make a good day-to-day sort of manager of my father’s empire, not because I couldn’t do the work, but because I hated the company.
Almost as much as I hated him.
Okay, and yeah, I hated the paperwork and boardroom bullshit too. There was a reason I chose Hounding for a career.
Stotts stopped next to the curb, a park behind hedges and trees to my right.
“Is this it?” I asked.
“This is it.”
It looked innocent enough. Winter in Oregon meant the sky was stacked in layers of gray, sunlight filtered to a dim bluish cast that wouldn’t change much until May. It also meant the park next to us was soggy, the grass still green even in the grip of winter, Douglas fir and cedar trees dark needled and heavy with rain.
I got out of the car, inhaled the clean scent of rain and growing things. And the boiled-vinegar stink of used magic.
I turned my face into the wind, inhaled again. I took a few steps across the sidewalk and into the park itself, following the scent of magic. Stotts paced me, his hands in his pockets. He didn’t tell me what he wanted me to Hound. He didn’t have to.
I set a Disbursement, deciding sore muscles for a day should do the trick, then drew a glyph for Sight, pulled magic up through my body and out into the spell. The world sharpened under the cast of Sight, colors brightened, shadows deepened, as if the sun had broken through the clouds.
Sight showed me a trail of magic like ashes in the air, gray and green, snaking toward a gazebo, where the spell hung like a bloody handprint.
I made my way along a trail to the gazebo. At the corners of my vision, ghostly people swayed. I glanced over at one of them, a woman made of pastel watercolors, eyes black, hollow, hungry, as she shuffled my way.
Great. Ever since my dad’s ghost had smacked me in the head, every time I used magic I could see the Veiled—the ghostly remainders of dead magic users who wandered the world. Worse, they could see me.
Well, except for in the alley. The Veiled hadn’t shown up then. But maybe that had something to do with the spells Zayvion was throwing around, or the fact that I had used magic for only a second or two.
I picked up my pace. I needed to get to the spell, Hound it, and release the magic I was using before the Veiled swarmed me and added to my collection of fingertip burn marks.
The flutter behind my eyes started up again, my dad pushing at me. Exactly what I didn’t need right now.
Shut up
, I thought. And to myself:
Focus.
I recited my favorite jingle under my breath:
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black . . .
I was almost up to the
buttons, buttons, buttons
part when I finally reached the gazebo and spell.
Sure, I knew the watercolor people, a half dozen of them, were headed my way. Sure, I felt the flutter of my father’s awareness like a second pulse behind my eyes. Sure, I felt Stotts stop behind me, far enough to be out of my way; close enough I could smell his anger and his fear.
But it was the spell, hovering in the air inside the gazebo, that held me fixed, like a hot palm against my throat.
It wasn’t a spell I knew the name of; didn’t look quite like anything I’d Hounded before. Blood magic was involved; the sweet cherry stink of that particular magic was undeniable. But this spell seemed to be more of a sealing off or a trading off of something.
Transmutation.
My father’s voice was so clear in my mind, I jerked back as if he had been standing next to me. Along with that word came his knowledge of what the spell was.
A complex knot work that links the caster and the victim through dark magic. A bastardization of death magic, wherein the soul and spirit are bled from the living to the dying, or the dying to the living. A spell that can be molded to the will of the caster to break the rules of life and death. A dangerous way to make magic break its natural laws.
Deadly to the caster. Forbidden.
Holy crap. I didn’t want to touch it. If it had been created by magic jumping its tracks, dark magic messing with life and death, I was not about to poke it with a stick. And I was doubly freaked out because all of a sudden my father was working hard to make sure I got the information behind this spell. I didn’t know if that meant he was trying to help me or screw me up.
The Veiled were coming, still walking slowly. I knew any minute they’d rush supernaturally fast. If I didn’t do this quickly, they’d be on me, pulling magic out of me, and shoving it in their mouths like taffy. Then I wouldn’t be good for any kind of magic use.
I decided to take my father’s information as a freak accident of helpfulness. It was good to know what the spell was, but what I was really here for was to find out who had cast it and why. And why the police would want to know about it.
I leaned in, the fingertips of my right hand spread out toward the green and gray scaled center of the spell.
Magic still burned in the spell. It licked against my fingertips with a disturbing sentience, tasting me.
It’s not alive
, my father’s voice answered my unspoken question.
It is . . . aware of the power you carry within you. Much like the Veiled.
“Who did this?” Oops. I said that out loud.
“What?” Stotts asked.
I shook my head and inhaled, my mouth open, trying to taste the signature on the spell. Only the faintest taste of something sweet and burnt, like berries scorched on the vine. I had smelled that before. Outside my apartment with Zayvion. Last night.
But other than that, the signature was not familiar to me. I did not know who cast this spell or what it was really for.
Transmutation
, my father said again, frustrated at me being so dense.
It changes one thing, one energy, into another, suspends the state of one thing into another.
That was the spell Zayvion said the man-dog thing in the alley was using.
Do you know who was using it?
I asked my dad.
Do you know why?
Nothing.
I blinked, realized my fist was stuck straight in the middle of the spell. I did not remember putting it there. I was not only tampering with evidence, I was also pretty much destroying it.
Dad?
I asked.
He did not respond. Or if he did, I did not hear him. Because the Veiled chose that moment to snap out of their slow motion and race at me faster than any living thing.
I threw my hands up to protect my face from their clawing fingers. My hand in the spell tore up through it and magic within me sparked, like steel to flint. My magic caught the spell, ashes and all, on fire, and burned hot, clean, fast.
Just as Veiled fingers should have hit me, stabbed into me, dug under my skin, a spell rose around me, pouring like cool oil from my head to the soles of my feet, covering my skin, cloaking me. I could no longer see the Veiled. Could not feel them, smell them, or sense them in any way.
And I was pretty damn sure they could not see me.
Holy shit.
Dad?
I thought again.
Did you do that?
Yes. You cast too loudly when you Hound, Allison. Learn some control and maybe the Veiled won’t be able to track you so easily.
Yeah, that, or maybe if I got the dead guy out of my head, they wouldn’t notice me so much.
“That was impressive,” Stotts said, walking up beside me. “Destructive. But impressive.”
I turned to look at the spell that only moments ago had hovered in the air. Even though I still carried Sight, the spell, ashes and all, was gone.
“You have some answers for me?” he asked.
“What was the question?”
“How about we start with what kind of spell that was.” Huh. He didn’t know. Just like I hadn’t known. So this had to be either a secret thing or a very secret thing.
I wasn’t sure what I should tell him. If I suddenly started spouting off the properties of a spell neither of us had ever seen before, I was pretty sure he would question where I’d gotten that information.
“That’s odd,” Stotts said. He walked away from me, making a wide circle around the center of the gazebo.
I looked down at what held his attention.
A perfect circle of black ash, glossy as crow feathers, lay against the floor. And yes, that’s weird, because magic doesn’t usually leave something quite so physical behind. Especially when the spell is gone.
I’d seen that kind of circle before. I knew I had. I dug around in my head, searching for the memory.
Stotts knelt on the other side of the circle and stuck his fingers out toward the ash.
“Wait!” I warned at the same time my father’s voice echoed in my mind,
Don’t touch it.
Stotts’ eyebrows lifted. He pulled his hand back and rested both elbows across his knees. “What is it?”
“I’ve seen it. I know I have. Give me a sec.” I took a deep breath and stared off into the mist and the green, clearing my mind before I pulled out my journal. It was starting to rain, just an intermittent tapping like distant drumming.
I’d been taking notes of my life for long enough I had a pretty good coding system worked out. Anything dealing with spells was marked in the upper right corner of the page and underlined in text. I flipped through the pages. Even though I’d had this notebook for almost a year, and had noted several Hounding jobs and other spells, I didn’t see anything in it about circles of burned-out magic.
So what is it?
I asked my dad. Just because I didn’t have the memory didn’t mean I couldn’t get the information out of him.
I sensed his hesitance. I could tell he was weighing something. Probably his options and whether or not telling me would work to his advantage. For just a second I wished I were dreaming because at least then I could tell exactly what he was thinking. Of course, he could tell what I was thinking too, so it wasn’t all good.
The disks
, he said, his voice stronger and clearer, just as if I were wearing an earbud and he was a tune. Yes, it worried me that I could already hear him clearer than I could just a day ago, and that he was interacting with me easier too. I tried not to think about how if he kept getting stronger, more comfortable, more active, maybe he would just keep going until he took me over completely.
Heck, why panic about that when I could panic about this illegal, possibly unknown, certainly forbidden spell that I had completely destroyed?
What about the disks?
Oh. That was it. I remembered, or, hell, maybe Dad gave that info a nudge toward my consciousness. There was no trail left behind from magic used through the disks. When the disks were used, all that was left behind of the spell was a burned black circle of ash.
Holy shit.
“I think we need to talk to Violet,” I finally said.
“Beckstrom?” Stotts asked.
I nodded. “I think that circle is the residue of a spell cast using the disks that were stolen from her lab.”
Stotts looked back down at the ashes, then shook his head. “Is that why you destroyed the spell?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, needing an easy out right now in the worst way. “Can I use your cell phone? We need Violet to confirm this.”
He exhaled and brushed his hands over his thighs before standing. He dug his cell out of his pocket. “I’ll get it,” he said. He pushed one button and waited for the person on the other line to pick up. Violet Beckstrom was on the magic cop’s speed dial. Wasn’t that an interesting thing?
While Stotts asked her to come on out to the park, I walked around the circle of ash, trying to get a scent off it. Just a slight greasy tang. I remembered that too, though the familiar smell did not bring any more of my memory back to me.
Dad was no help in that area either.
I tried to decide what I should tell Stotts. Just because the spell was gone didn’t mean I hadn’t seen exactly what it was. There was no trail to be traced back to a user. I could honestly tell him that I had no idea who cast it. But should I tell him that it was Transmutation?
I walked down the gazebo steps while Stotts talked to Kevin, Violet’s bodyguard, on the phone. My sneakers and cuffs of my jeans got soaked while I made a slow circle around the structure. I set a Disbursement—those sore muscles were going to last for more than a few hours—and cast Enhancement to my sense of smell. The world broke open in a bouquet of odors, rich loamy grass, wet pine sap, musky hints of small animals who had been through the park recently, rotting wood and molds.