Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (5 page)

Kandy, inches from opening the front door, turned back to grin at me as the cab pulled away. The green of her shapeshifter magic rolled across her eyes as she accessed some of her power — probably her sense of smell. Then she ducked inside the store with a husky laugh of anticipation.

Right. It was Kandy’s birthday, not my pity party. I was damn lucky to have her as a friend, especially with all we’d been through in the last year. I would have abandoned my trouble-enticing ass ten months ago … well, that was a lie. I was loyal to a fault. But then, so was Kandy.

I knew the green-haired werewolf was still nursing the arm she’d injured ten months ago in Tofino — and then had injured again, by Audrey’s hand, back in January. Werewolves healed quickly, so the lingering nature of the injury spoke volumes about its severity. The fact that Kandy remained in Vancouver with me — potentially unable to fully access the healing magic of the pack — meant the world to me. I could count my true friends on one hand.

No matter how many new cupcakes I created, how much chocolate I consumed, or how full I packed my days with treasure collecting and running a business, I just couldn’t shake this feeling of being out of sync with my life. My normal life. Or rather, the new normal. I just wasn’t quite sure what that was anymore.

Kandy poked her head out from the entrance and hissed, “We’re late.”

The only time the werewolf cared about being prompt was when food or lives were on the line.

I grinned and followed her as she ducked back inside. A double-masted sailboat made entirely out of chocolate occupied the window display by the front door. Even the life-rings, ropes, and pulleys were chocolate. The milk chocolate waves were capped with white chocolate.

Oh, yes. It was going to be a great evening.

CHAPTER THREE

After way too much chocolate — and not a lot of actual learning — at Chocolate Arts, I seriously hoped that the chocolatier didn’t regret not doubling the price of our tickets. Not bothering with a cab this time, Kandy and I headed up a block and crossed over to Fable Kitchen, which had opened two years ago a few blocks east of the bakery. I hadn’t had a chance to check it out yet, but I really liked its ‘from farm to table’ mandate, and Kandy liked anywhere that cooked a great steak.

We shared mussels to start, and yes, we ‘added’ fries as the menu helpfully suggested. I had the halibut while Kandy got her red meat fix. But the shining glory of the meal was the s’mores for dessert. Yes, freaking s’mores. I tried to not look too closely at the bill when it came, reminding myself that the bakery was doing well and Kandy’s birthday only came once a year. Belated or otherwise. Plus, it wasn’t like I actually needed new shoes … or groceries next week.

We wandered home giggling and joking, cutting down to the alley behind West Fourth Avenue at Yew Street. I always preferred to use the back entrance of the bakery to come and go from my apartment, probably because I adored my kitchen, my haven, so much. Even just passing through it on the way to bed kept me grounded. The sun had set, but reds, pinks, and oranges still streaked the steadily deepening blue sky above the harbor. The colors even kissed the edges of the dark North Shore Mountains.

“You promised me dancing,” Kandy said, then dissolved into a fit of giggles over something she only thought she’d said out loud. Giggling wasn’t the werewolf’s thing. She was more buzzed than I’d ever seen her, and I guessed that mixing drinks eventually had its way with werewolf metabolism as well.

“Tomorrow night. I have to bake in the morning,” I said. “I also have mani-pedis booked at two.”

“And Sunday? Brunch?”

“Only the best for my green-haired friend.”
 

Kandy’s snort dissolved into another round of giggles, and she threw her arm around my neck.

I laughed, feeling delightfully warm — inside and out — myself.

Then, steps from the bakery’s back door, the shadow of the adjacent wine store’s industrial-sized garbage can tried to grab me.

Seriously, it reached out as if it had actual fingers and tried to latch onto my left arm.
 

I shrieked, jumped sideways to free myself, and knocked Kandy flying across the alley. I willed my jade knife into my right hand, slashed at the shadow, and met absolutely no resistance.
 

I stood there, knife in hand, staring at nothing except the deepening shadows of the evening. The echoes of my scream rebounded off the buildings to either side, their presence making me feel suddenly claustrophobic.

“What the hell?” Kandy muttered.
 

I spared her a glance. She was sprawled on her ass on the asphalt, rubbing her arm. Her bad arm. Shit.

“The shadow … Jesus, I’m sorry. I thought the garbage can shadow just tried to … latch onto me.”

The green of her magic rolled across her eyes as Kandy silently rose up and onto the balls of her feet without placing her hands down on the ground. She stared into the shadows behind the garbage can, then shifted her gaze to look behind the recycling bin. Every hint of the giggles was gone from her demeanor now.

“I don’t smell anything,” she whispered, her voice low and intense. “Magic?”

I shook my head but didn’t sheath my knife. I couldn’t taste any magic nearby other than Kandy’s.

Great. Now I was hallucinating terrors out of thin air. Sure, it was shadowy air, but I’d ruined our buzz over nothing. “I’m sorry —”

Thunder cracked and a bolt of lightning split the air about twenty feet in front of us. The alley flooded with mind-numbing magic that somehow tasted of metal and electricity, along with the underlying spiciness that I always associated with dragons.

Kandy was growling beside me, leaning into the press of the magic as if fighting for her footing.

A dark figure of a man appeared — legs astride and arms akimbo — at the core of the light.

I felt Kandy’s magic shift, two-inch claws appearing where her fingernails should be as she slashed at the magic still buffeting us. I stepped one pace ahead and shifted to place her just behind my right shoulder, shielding her from the bulk of the magic’s force with my body.

The electric white magic — some sort of transportation spell, at best guess — disappeared with a snap.

The man was dressed in dragon leathers and easily over six feet tall. He was dark blond, broad shouldered, and unarmed as far as I could see. But with the amount of magic he wielded — especially if the transportation spell was of his own making — I knew that visible weapons meant very little.
 

“Dragon,” I whispered for Kandy’s benefit. “I … think.”

“You think?” she asked, her wolf growl infusing her tone.

The possibly-a-dragon-or-possibly-some-hybrid-I’d-never-met opened his eyes. With the dim light in the alley paired with the near dark of the night, I couldn’t distinguish their color.

“Sie! Frau!” he shouted.

Immediately after the foreign words left his mouth, he threw back his head, arched his body forward, and screamed in agony. Then he collapsed onto the asphalt before us.

“That can’t be good,” I said.

Kandy had slammed her still-clawed hands over her ears at his scream, but she dropped them as we cautiously stepped forward. She prodded the possible-dragon with her foot, then looked at me.
 

I shrugged. “His magic is dim.”

“Does your knife cut dragon flesh?”

“Haven’t had a reason or a chance to try it yet.”

Kandy raised an eyebrow at me. Yeah, dragons were pretty quick on their feet, even in training.

“Okay,” Kandy continued. “Well, if he tries to kill me …”

“I’ll skewer him. Dragon or no.”

Kandy grabbed his shoulder and rolled him over with a grunt. “Heavy.”

“Dragons usually are.”

We stared down at the black leather-swathed dragon at our feet. He was out cold. Everything about him was definitely broad — as in shoulders, chest, nose, cheekbones, and jaw.

“At least he’s damn cute,” Kandy said. “You know, if he’s here to eviscerate us.”

Kandy and I had very different opinions on what qualified as ‘cute.’ The man at my feet was dangerous. I could tell that by his magic alone.

Still, he was a dragon … I thought.

I sighed.

“We’re going to have to bring him inside.”

“Yep, that scream was crazy. I’m surprised the neighbors aren’t swamping us yet.”

“Friday night. Most of the nearest neighbors are still at work.” Kitsilano was a pretty upscale neighborhood, but the bakery was backed by apartment buildings typically rented out to people who worked in the area. I was fairly certain we’d been served by a few of my neighbors at the restaurant tonight. Even Todd, my espresso wizard, lived a couple of blocks from here. His rent wasn’t fantastic but he was only blocks from work and the beach, and what more did an early twenty-something want?

I grabbed the guy’s wrists, thankful that he wore leather gauntlets so I didn’t need to touch him skin to skin. Kandy grabbed his booted ankles and we dragged him to the bakery alley door. Yeah, dragged. He was too heavy to lift in heels.

We got him through the back door and situated on the tile floor between my stainless steel workstation and the oven. Oddly, getting him through the bakery wards took some extra thought and magic exertion on my part. The invitation to enter was usually made between two conscious parties. I hadn’t known that made a difference until tonight. I thought about trying to lift him up onto the counter, just to be polite, but decided his weight might crush it.

“Should we tie him up?” Kandy asked.

“He is a dragon …”

“But not one you know.”

“Yeah, but all dragons are supposed to be, you know, peacekeepers.”

Kandy snorted. “Right. Your dad, the peacekeeper.”

“I say we leave him here to sleep it off … I’m assuming the transportation spell drained him. And you stay with me tonight, behind the wards of the apartment.”

“And when he wakes and we aren’t here?”

“I’ll feel him from upstairs,” I muttered. “He packs a lot of magic.”

“Seems risky.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, but I couldn’t figure out what else to do. “I could take him to the nexus, if I could manage to pull him through the portal with me, but … I’m wary of dragging beings I don’t know into the nexus.” Yeah, I’d been there and done that … with a demon, the very first time I’d met my dad, actually. I was still on Suanmi’s black list — and quite possibly the black lists of other guardians as well — because of it. Well, that was one of the reasons Suanmi hated me anyway.

“Sensible.”

“Yeah.”

I glanced at the digital clock on the oven. It was just after midnight. “I’ll check on him on the hour. If he’s not awake before I need to bake, I’m going to have to move him anyway.”

∞

Halfway up the back stairs to the apartment, I remembered I had the dragonskin tattoo map in my satchel. Kandy insisted on coming down and keeping watch on the sleeping dragon while I slipped into the back office.

I’d bought a small fire safe when I opened the bakery, but I’d only ever used it to hold deposits that I couldn’t immediately walk the block to the bank, as well as the cash float. After Tofino, I’d moved that safe underneath the front counter in the bakery and replaced the one in my office with a crazy expensive, bolted-into-the-floor model.

The installer thought I was crazy when he found out I was putting it in the back of a bakery and not in some six-thousand-square-foot Shaughnessy mansion, where I was probably planning on filling it with diamonds. It took up about a quarter of my office. In addition to the wards already on the bakery, I layered the safe with the same protection spells I’d placed on my apartment. Then I asked Scarlett and Gran to add their own protections. All the spells were keyed to me, and I was the only person who knew the combination. I didn’t even write it down.

Yeah, it wasn’t overkill.

Because after Tofino, I found myself in possession of two magical items that … well, that scared me silly to possess them.
 

One was Blackwell’s original leather-bound
Book of Demon History on Earth.
This wasn’t actually a spellbook, but had enough information in it that my sister had managed to use it to raise two separate sets of demons — one in London and one in Tofino. The book itself wasn’t powerful, but obviously the information contained in it could be dangerous.

The second item was of my own making. And it was far, far more terrifying. I’d taken a sacrificial knife that had previously been wielded by my sister to kill a teenaged werewolf in order to summon a demon. Then, using magic stolen from a sorcerer who my sister had also killed, I turned that knife into a weapon that could cut through any magic. Well, any magic I’d seen it tested against. A knife sharpened by blood magic and forged with my alchemist powers. A knife that had almost killed an ancient vampire, who I’d previously thought immortal.
 

Actually, I was pretty sure that the knife had killed Kett, and that only the intervention of his maker and an uber-powerful elder vampire had brought him back.

So, yeah. I didn’t want either item in the hands of anyone. Not even me. But they were my responsibility now, and I wasn’t going to shirk the duty even if it scared me silly.

I placed Pulou’s map in the safe, two shelves down from the knife and the book. I didn’t think the blood magic would leech out or anything. I just really, really didn’t want to accidentally brush the cursed knife. I had tried to figure out what I’d created — and how to undo it — months ago, but the magic was tangled, fused. I could probably separate it from the knife, but into what? I didn’t want to inadvertently create something even more terrible.
 

Sigh.

Pulou had called the knife a trifle when I tried to give it to him. The demon history book was so insignificant to him that he barely spared it a shake of his head when I tried to donate it to the nexus library. I needed to keep reminding myself of that. Of course, none of the nine guardians saw Blackwell as a threat either, but I knew better. Didn’t I?

Anyway. With the map locked in the safe, I needed to get some sleep before I had to bake in four hours. I had a new recipe I wanted to test, a variation of Kandy’s blackberry birthday cupcakes. The dragon was still out cold on the kitchen floor as we headed back up to the apartment and rolled into bed. Kandy took the couch. Scarlett wasn’t home, so I sent her a text message as my head hit the pillow.