Magic on the Storm (13 page)

The wind was stronger here, funneled by the buildings, and cold enough I was
glad I’d worn my heavier coat. I pulled up my hood and made quick work of the
sidewalk. Stotts stood at the end of the block, looking my way.
“Hey,” I said when I got close enough. “Show me where you need me.”
Stotts was a good-looking man. Latino heritage gave him soft eyes, heavy lashes
and eyebrows, and an easy smile that had caught my friend Nola’s heart and not
let go.
So far, their long-distance relationship was working. But she lived three
hundred miles away on a farm, and he was a detective. Stotts had gone out and
visited her for a week, but other than that, it was all about the phone.
Well, that and the computer. Nola had finally given in and had a computer with
Internet access installed in her old farmhouse. Love. It finds a way to make a
person want to change.
Tonight Stotts was wearing what I usually saw him in—a trench and scarf,
slacks, nice shoes. No hat.
Even before he said anything, I knew something bad had happened here. Something
wrong. Really wrong. I’d felt this before. But I couldn’t remember where.
“Over here.” He started down one of the paths beneath the old elm and gingko
trees. “That Davy Silvers with you?”
“Yes. He followed me to a business meeting. When I got your call, I made him
let me use his car.”
“Hmm. Any other Hounds out here?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even know Davy was following me. And Bea didn’t say
she was going to be here tonight. Are you sure she was Hounding?”
“Someone was throwing magic around.”
He didn’t have to point to where Bea had been hurt. I could feel it, taste it
on the air.
Stotts didn’t give me any more information. And he wouldn’t. Police never
wanted to influence a Hound’s initial response and reaction to a magical-crime
site. So I didn’t waste my time asking him any more questions.
I cleared my mind, mentally singing my little “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack” song
to settle my racing thoughts. Magic pressed in on my head, a heaviness, like
the air was thickening for the storm. It wasn’t my dad, and didn’t seem to be
coming from the void stone.
Weird.
I set a Disbursement, my latest favorite—muscle aches—and then traced the
glyphs for Sight, Smell, Taste.
Magic within me stuttered, like a smooth stone rubbing across my skin. It
didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t comfortable either. I inhaled, exhaled, and urged
magic up through my bones, my muscles, my blood. Magic stretched out slowly,
thick, heavy. I traced the glyphs again, more to keep my concentration while I
waited for magic to respond than out of need to redraw the spell. The heaviness
in my head, in the magic, suddenly lifted and magic flooded through me. Too
fast. Too much. Too hot.
The glyphs caught fire, wild jeweled colors of raw, deadly magic, licking down
my arms, into my fingertips searing the glyphs into the night air.
Magic is fast. Too fast to see. But I wasn’t the only one who saw it.
Stotts lifted his hand and traced a dampening spell—I think Smother or maybe
Cancel.
“Wait,” I said. But it was too late. He threw his spell at my spell.
There is a reason why people don’t walk around throwing spells at each other,
or getting into wizards’ duels like you see in the movies. Every user casts
magic differently from other users. Like handwriting, magic follows the form
each user casts for it. When two forms clash, you never know if they will blend,
extinguish, or go up like a barrel of gunpowder in a bonfire.
Right now, I was betting on the gunpowder thing. I didn’t have control of the
magic pouring out of me. I was a leaky powder keg, and Stotts’s spell was a
tossed match.
I clapped my hands, breaking the flow of magic. Yes, it stung. No, it didn’t
knock me unconscious. Thank you, training sessions.
Stotts’s spell slammed into mine.
There was a terrific flash—a blast of green lightning—but no sound. Magic
clashed and sucked all sound out of the air, leaving behind painful silence.
I inhaled, exhaled.
And then the night was just the night again. No thickness in the air from the
encroaching storm, no strangely heavy magic. The night filled with sounds of
traffic and, somewhere farther off, a train. I could smell the damp pavement
and trees again.
“Allie?” Stotts said. “You’re burned.”
Wrong. I was angry.
“What the hell?” I wiped at the sweat running down the edge of my temple. I was
suddenly very, very hot, and very, very cold. “Never get in the way when I cast
magic. If you want me to Hound for you, you stay the hell out of my way and let
me get the job done. You could have contaminated the entire scene.” Or blown up
the block. Or killed us.
I was yelling, or at least I thought I was. The other sounds, things like city
traffic and air noise, still seemed rather distant now that I thought about it,
like someone had shoved cotton in my ears.
Apparently angry, screaming women weren’t something that fazed Detective
Stotts.
“You were burning,” he said calmly. He looked over my shoulder. “Call an
ambulance.” Stotts sounded a lot farther away than he should. Didn’t matter. I
was good at reading lips. The person behind me whom he was talking to, probably
a cop, might have responded. I couldn’t tell.
“I’m fine.”
Stotts gave me a look that could melt the hinges off the doors to hell. “You
are burned. And bleeding.”
“I’m Hounding.”
“No. You’re not.”
I took a step and Stotts grabbed my arm. Strong. He was a police officer, after
all.
“You are dismissed from this case.” He made sure to stand in front of me so I
could see his lips moving. He was not a happy man. “I’ll find another Hound to
take the job.”
Someone stepped into my range of vision. I hadn’t heard Davy coming—ears—but he
was close enough I heard him say, “I’ll do it.”
I scowled. Hounding for Stotts wasn’t always a hard job. But Davy wasn’t
kidding when he said the man was cursed. A lot—too damn many—Hounds had died
working cases for the detective.
“You’re injured,” I said to Davy.
He raised his eyebrows. “I had a headache a while ago. I’m good now.”
Liar.
“No,” I said.
Stotts let go of my arm. “That would be fine. Allie, step back.”
I didn’t step back, but I didn’t move forward. Davy followed Stotts closer to
the center of the park, stopped, traced a glyph in the air, and then pulled
magic up from the network of conduits and lines that ran beneath the streets.
Easy. Like he’d been doing this all his life. Magic answered him, did exactly
as it should—followed the lines of the glyph and gave him Sight and Taste and
Smell. He paced a large circuit around a couple benches and trees, the wide
half circle of brick steps just south of us. Nothing else in the park except
the ashes of the old spell that I could only guess still lingered there.
My hands itched and stung, like I’d slapped them against stone. I wanted to
cast magic so badly, it hurt.
Instead I wiped the thin line of sweat off my forehead again. Not sweat. Blood.
Great. Stotts wasn’t kidding I was hurt. Weird that I didn’t feel it.
I gently ran my fingertips through my hair, searching for a cut. Found one just
inside my hairline on the left. A scratch, but deep enough to bleed.
And finding that scratch made me realize how tight and sunburned the left side
of my face felt. Which meant Stotts was right about that too. I was burned. But
not so badly I couldn’t have finished Hounding for him. Even my hearing was
clearing up.
Fine, if I wasn’t Hounding, I was backup. Which meant I needed to keep an eye
on Davy. I paced over to Stotts, still angry enough to ignore the pain of the
burn and the cut. “You watching?” I asked, meaning, of course if he was
watching with magic.
Stotts had his thumb and middle finger pinched together, his hand held out in
front of him. I knew he was holding another glyph there, probably something
like what he threw at me.
“Not yet,” he said. “I want to make sure he doesn’t go up in flame. Once in a
night is my limit.”
I calmed my mind, set a Disbursement again, and traced the spell for Sight.
Nothing fancy, nothing difficult. Magic lifted through me like morning fog,
soft and easy, and filled the glyph.
It was like someone had turned on the sun. The park broke open into sharp
colors and deep shadows. No watercolor people in sight. That was the one benefit
of having my dad in my head. Somehow, his presence blocked my awareness of the
Veiled—the imprints of dead magic users on the flow of magic—and better yet, he
blocked their awareness of me.
I didn’t think he did it on purpose. Knowing him, he’d rather not help me like
that.
Davy finished pacing the circle. I’d never watched him work before. He was a
good Hound, knew when to let go of a spell that wasn’t giving him the
information he wanted. Knew how to cast replacement spells quickly and quietly.
The whole thing took all of two minutes tops. And in those two minutes, Davy
should have gotten a full picture of what had happened magically, and who cast
the magic that hurt Bea.
But even from this distance, I could recognize that spell.
A gate. Someone had opened a gate here, and closed it just as quickly. Fast
enough the Closers back at Maeve’s hadn’t noticed. Unless it was a Closer back
at Maeve’s who had opened it. Could they open gates long-distance?
If they could, I didn’t think they would be sloppy enough to hurt someone and
leave a trace of the gate behind.
When Davy turned and looked over at us, I saw it again—the red flash in his
eyes. The red eye flash had been happening ever since Tomi knocked him out and
used his blood to open the gate in St. Johns that let the Hungers through. I
kept hoping it was just an aftereffect of his blood being used to crack open
the doors between life and death. I kept hoping it would wear off, and fade
away. Didn’t look like it was getting better, and it had been months since he
was hurt.
Davy strode over, hands tucked in his armpits as if he was dodging a hard
chill.
I let go of Sight, and Stotts released whatever protective spell he held at the
ready.
“Bea didn’t cast magic,” he said. “It’s not her signature here. But I can’t
tell whose signature it is.” He shivered, looking a little tired again, and a
lot cold. Why didn’t he have on a warm coat?
“No idea at all?” Stotts asked.
Davy answered him, but looked at me. “I’ve never seen magic cast like that. The
glyph is crushed in on itself. It shouldn’t have worked at all, but magic
followed it.”
“Could you tell what kind of spell it was?” Stotts asked. “Or what it did?”
He shook his head. “It might have been a ward of some type. A lock? It doesn’t
make sense. Whatever it was, it’s too tangled and fading fast, like someone
crushed their own spell to get rid of it. Really fucking weird.”
Stotts turned and stared at the area, as if he could see the magic with his
bare eyes.
“Was there other magic involved, a mix of spells?”
He shook his head. “Don’t think so. I can’t tell. . . .” He glanced back over
his shoulder. “It’s gotta be a fluke. Magic doesn’t work like that.”
“Hmm,” Stotts said. “I’ll check into the conduits in the area, make sure none
of the lines have been tampered with.”
We all looked back over at the spot where Bea had been found. Her blood was
still on the ground. But without Sight, there didn’t appear to be any magic in
the park at all.
“You saw no signs of attack?” he asked.
“No. There’s traces of a few day-old spells, cheap Illusion, and maybe Mute,
but that crushed spell is less than an hour old. And it’s almost gone. It’s
like she got in the way of someone else casting. Was caught off guard and the
magic hit her. How bad is she?”
“They want to look her over at the hospital. Hit her head, possible concussion.
Backlash from magic is what they’re most worried about. She was found
unconscious. Disoriented. Couldn’t remember what happened to her.”
Davy nodded and nodded.
I worked hard not to give in to the panic that had me by the throat. Why would
the Authority do this? Who in the Authority would do this? Why didn’t they stop
to help Bea?
“I’ll make sure you’re paid for your time,” Stotts said. “And I’ll need a sworn
statement. Come by the station tomorrow. I’ll be there.”
“Right,” Davy said.
“Allie,” Stotts said, “I want you to get checked by a doctor. Do I need to make
those arrangements?”
Yes, Stotts was my boss, but it was more of a contract-by-contract basis. He
didn’t have any real right to tell me what to do. Normally I would have
reminded him of the boundaries of him sticking his nose up my business. But he
was also my best friend’s boyfriend. And I think it was more that relationship
than our working relationship that was prompting his concern.
“Afraid Nola will read you the riot act?” I asked, faking calm and collected
and getting damn close.
A soft smile curved his lips. “It came to mind. Plus, you are singed and a
little bloody. A trip to the emergency room makes sense.”
“I’m going to go by the hospital to check in on Bea anyway. Which hospital did
they take her to?”
“OHSU. Need someone to drive you there?”
“I got it.”
“Good.” Stotts started toward the taped-off area again.
“What else aren’t you telling me, Davy?” I asked once Stotts was out of hearing
range.
I could smell the fear on him. “Nothing,” he lied.
“Want another go at that?”
He licked his lips, looked at Stotts, who was talking to a police officer—no
one I recognized—who stood nearby.
“I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try words. If that doesn’t work, we’ll move on to interpretive dance.”
Not even a faint smile out of him. “That spell was really strange. Like it was
an Unlock or opening or something. Bothers me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, because there was nothing I could say to
that. Nothing he could know without having to be Closed. And I refused to let
that happen to him.
Davy had gotten a lot paler and was shivering harder. It was time to get him
back to the car, and probably to the hospital to have him checked out too.
I glanced back at Stotts, who was going through the procedures to reestablish
the park for the public. Since there was no sign of magical crime, other than
Bea being hurt, this would be treated a lot like a fender bender. Just an
accident where the driver used poor judgment and got in the way of someone
else’s oncoming spell.