Shifty Magic (23 page)

"I am. You won't shoot me will you?" He bent
his head toward me, moving with slow deliberation.

"I might," I answered, mesmerized by the dip
and curve of his lips and their velvet texture.

"We'll see," he murmured and his lips
brushed across mine.

They felt soft and firm, just like I
remembered. He hesitated, barely touching me, as if waiting to see
if he was in for a fight. I held still, breathing him in as a place
deep inside of me quivered with fear and longing.

Stepping closer, Cooper kissed me again,
lingering over it like he was tasting the first strawberry of the
season. My knees went to butter and a sigh caught in my throat. I
grabbed his shoulders to keep from falling, and he wrapped his arms
around me, securing me snugly against his chest.

An eternity later we pulled apart,
breathless. My heart pounded and my body sang with something that
might have been happiness. I felt my cheeks heating as he gazed
down at me, triumph and wanting bright on his face.

"Think about it," he said, his voice
husky.

I watched him let himself out of my
apartment and knew I'd have a hard time thinking about anything
else.

* * *

Later that morning, I sat at one of the outside tables of the
bakery across from Falcon's shop, watching and waiting.
Magical Bits
, as I liked
to think of it when I was desperate for entertainment, opened at
ten. Falcon planned to arrive an hour early to meet with me. I
hoped he came sooner because I wasn't enjoying having nothing
better to do than watch the street for Bellmonte's thugs and
struggle with my feelings for Cooper.

His statement about caring for me kept
rolling around in my head like a music loop. I liked him; that was
easy to admit. I was definitely attracted to him, which I didn't
mind acknowledging either. I mean, come on, the guy was gorgeous.
I'd have to be blind not to notice.

The more-than-liking part I was almost able
to come to grips with, at least in a marginal kind of scientific
way. He was a good match for me as far as having a working partner
went. When I was in the mood to be honest with myself, I could
almost accept that I enjoyed how he stood up to me, and that he
didn't seem to mind that I wasn't all about rainbows and unicorns
and happy endings.

If I was
really
feeling truthful,
I might even concede that I'd enjoyed dancing with him and that his
kiss had taken me out of myself and into a world of sensations like
I'd never felt before, not even at Christmas. Thanks to the Cupid
Spell, that one night with Cooper was more of a blur than an
experience. In all the ways that mattered, it was as if it had
never happened and we were starting from zero.

But did I want to start at all?

I shook my head and crumpled my empty paper
coffee cup in my fist. Who was I fooling? I already had. I'd let
him kiss me, really kiss me. Now I had to deal.

Stupidity was so annoyingly
inconvenient.

Standing up, I tossed my cup into the
trashcan and headed across the street. I stayed alert as I passed
the shop and continued along the sidewalk past several more stores.
It wouldn't help anything to lead Bellmonte's goons straight to
Falcon. The kid didn't deserve that, and they didn't deserve to
know that resources like him existed.

Snobbery was one of the more useful vamp
traits, and I never hesitated to use it to my advantage. They were
so full of themselves they never saw humans as anything but tools
or food. The existence of a genius like Falcon would never even
occur to them.

After a block, I ducked
down a side street and doubled back, arriving at the loading
entrance of
Magical Gadgets and
Bits.
Falcon was just getting his keys
out.

"I hope you know that you owe me for this,"
he said. There were dark circles under his light gray eyes and his
rust-colored hair was a spiky mess except for the left side where
it was flat. But despite his obvious lack of sleep, his eyes
sparkled with excitement.

"You found something?" I asked.

"Not just about those questions you sent
me." He unlocked the door and we stepped into the cluttered storage
area.

I noticed that he carefully secured the door
behind us. "You expecting trouble?"

"After what I've found out, I don't know
what to expect."

He flipped on the light switch and took down
a circular, gold-colored amulet hanging from a leather cord on a
shelf by the door. Strange lettering and engravings covered both
sides and they seemed to writhe and shift as the amulet spun,
catching the light of the overhead bulb.

He hung the leather cord over a hook above
the door and the amulet clanked against the thick metal as it
settled itself. I moved closer to get a better look.

"Don't touch it, you won't like the results.
Stops the heart of anyone it's not tuned to."

I raised an eyebrow. "Looks like nothing but
a pretty necklace to me."

"Uncle Mark brought it back from Mexico.
Said it was an Aztec protection something-or-other."

"If you say so." I turned away from the
amulet and followed him into the main part of the store. "What do
you have for me?"

"First of all, those records you asked me to
track down? Not easy." He went behind the counter and pulled out
his laptop. "The New York registry was messed up after the attacks.
Didn't really get organized again until fairly recently."

"But that didn't stop you."

"Nope." His fingers flew over the keyboard,
and he turned the computer around to face me. "Recognize
anyone?"

An ID picture of Marla was on one side and
Kathy on the other, but the names didn't go with the face. "This
isn't right. Marla's African-American and is nineteen. Kathy's
white and twenty-four." Understanding hit me. "They switched
identities?"

Falcon grinned at me. "Brilliant isn't
it?"

"Why would they want to do that? As Marla,
the real Kathy would be a minor and lose her job in the sex
solicitation zones."

Falcon leaned on the counter and touched the
screen with his finger, bringing up another report. "She wanted to
go back to school."

"Don't tell me.
Professor Tasson's International School of
Magic.
"

"Nope. High School."

"Seriously?" I asked, surprised.

"She'd never graduated. I guess that bugged
her. As a supposed teenager, she could transfer and finish her
senior year. Meanwhile," Falcon touched another tab, bringing up a
third report, "As Kathy, at that time seventeen-year-old Marla
applied to the bogus magic school. But only after being turned down
by the Brooklyn coven run by...." He angled the computer so he
could read the screen. "Someone named Laiyla Billings."

My stomach went cold. "Where does the
bartender and the boyfriend fit into all this?"

"No idea. What bartender and boyfriend?"

I turned the computer back around and
studied the reports, switching between them, trying to take it all
in. Younger versions of both women stared back at me.

Marla—that is—Kathy, had kept her dark hair
in long, micro braids when she was twenty-one, but otherwise her
exotic features and coffee-and-cream skin looked the same and young
enough to pass for sixteen.

Kathy—that is Marla—used to have curly
blonde hair instead of brown and was probably about twenty pounds
lighter when she was younger. Studying her blue eyes, I remembered
all the pouting and bravado and wondered how I'd ever thought she
was twenty-four.

My head started aching. "This is
incredible."

"I know!" Falcon said, glowing with
triumph.

"I wish I understood what it meant."

"It gets better." He minimized the reports,
clicked on a folder and keyed in a password. "Check this out."

The screen filled with an article from some
obscure archeology college in Budapest. "These are some of the
symbols left at the murder scenes," I said, pointing to one of the
pictures in the article.

"Apparently in the 1920s," Falcon said, "a
group of archeologists discovered some kind of ancient cult temple
in Indonesia. The mythology shown in the drawings and inscriptions,
which they couldn't directly translate, suggested that on the
Summer Solstice in the year of the eight-headed bull, their god
would be born into the world to remake it in his own image."

"Today's the Summer Solstice. But what's an
eight-headed bull?"

Falcon shrugged. "Other than this being the
year of the Ox, I have no clue. But according to the artwork found
at the site,..." he started reading from the website again, "'it
was determined that to manifest the god, three ancient races must
die within five and appease the sacred king'." He glanced at me.
"As far as they could figure out, there were five ancient
kings."

"It's also been five days since the first
killing," I said, thinking about Danny's body and everything that
had happened since.

"There's more." He scrolled through the
article. "'With the final sacrifice, the doors to between shall
weaken'—whatever that means. But dig this—'when the final offering
of devotion is made'—bam!"

I flinched and then narrowed my eyes at him.
"Is that necessary?"

"Oh, yeah. And then bam! The doors to
between open and this god dude comes through. Check out the symbol
for his name."

He zoomed in on a picture of a cracked wall
with odd markings all over it. My heart nearly stopped. There was
the sun with the fancy Z over top of it. I also recognized some of
the other scribblings from the circles we'd found at each murder
site.

"The science guys were hoping to prove
they'd found the original pagan belief system of the region, but
they met with a lot of resistance and eventually the dig was shut
down." Falcon smiled benignly at me.

"Someone believes in it."

"Beats me."

"The question is, who?"

His eyes went suddenly wide and I tensed.
"How did you—"

"Guess," a woman said behind me as I spun
around, my hand on my Browning as I turned.

She moved as fast as a vamp, just a blur of
color as she sprang from the doorway to the storage room and jabbed
a hypodermic needle into the side of my neck. I tried to draw my
gun to get off a shot, but it was too late. My body had already
stopped listening.

Kathy, or actually the real Marla's face
swam in front of me as my vision blurred. I stumbled, knocking over
a display of good luck charms by the counter as an explosion of
pleasure rocked through my body. "What?..." I gasped, fighting to
stay conscious under the assault.

Marla smiled and took out another syringe.
"Fantastic, isn't it?" She stalked toward Falcon, who stood rooted
to the spot, shock and horror on his pale face.

He held up his hands. "Don't do this, man.
Please."

"That's what they all said," the real Marla
purred.

Falcon grabbed a small carved dragon off the
counter, threw it at her and missed. Smiling, she darted at him in
a blur of movement and jabbed the needle into his upper arm.

Darkness edged my vision as a warm,
luxurious numbness crept over me. My legs buckled.

The last thing I saw was Falcon sinking down
behind the counter.

CHAPTER NINE

When I came to, I was laying on my back on rough stone,
gazing at the roof of a cave. Shadows danced and sparred among the
cracks and crevices in the low, soft light of dozens of candles. I
pulled in a chest full of musty, earthy air and slowly sat
up.

My weapons, shirt, jeans and boots were
gone. I wore a long, white robe which looked like something an
angel in a Christmas pageant might wear. Fabulous. Nothing like
being turned into a sacrificial cliché to make a girl's day. At
least I still had my underwear on.

I tried to get to my feet, but the candles
on the floor and ledges spun around me like a merry-go-round.
Nausea rolled up into my throat worse than it had after I was
attacked at Morrocroft.

A cold sweat broke out across my skin. I
clenched my teeth to stop from getting sick and concentrated on
keeping my breathing steady. After a moment, the feeling receded
and I dared to open my eyes again.

Around me an eight foot circle of symbols
like the ones at all the murder sites had been drawn onto the stone
using what was probably blood. Outside that and off to the side was
a ring of white powder, slightly larger than the others had
been.

On the back of the cave to my left, a
two-foot high sunburst and the cursive Z symbol of the ancient
Indonesian god had also been painted in blood. The vamp tooth,
practitioner star and half moon Were symbols were presented around
it at even intervals. What we'd suspected at the community center
now looked to be true. The shapes represented the kills so far.

Three ancient races must
die within five,
wasn't that what Falcon
had uncovered? A chill ran over me, and I wondered exactly how I
fit into that formula.

A rustle of sound like velvet on stone came
from the front of the cave. Without thinking, I rolled into a
crouch, ready to defend myself. The dizziness from the after
affects of the drug slammed into me and I toppled over, nausea
immobilizing me for a moment.

"Not used to the finer things, I see," a
woman's voice said from a few yards away. "Don't worry. The VR will
finish metabolizing in the next few minutes. You'll regain your
usual tenacity just in time to participate in the end of your
life."