Magic in the Blood

  Nothing but the stink of the city and the sour bite of my own sweat and fear.

  I walked the rest of the way to the wall, smelling, tasting the air. The wall looked like an old brick wall of an old brick warehouse.

  Nothing, the world around me seemed to be saying, had happened.

  But I knew better.

  I stopped close enough that I could touch the wall if I wanted to. I didn’t want to. Not yet.

  Then I did something I do not love doing: I cast magic in public. Now that I carry magic in me, it takes a lot of concentration not to let it get out of hand. And I hate the idea of someone sneaking up on me while I’m in the middle of a spell. What if I lost control and hurt them? Casting magic also points me out to every other Hound in the city. To a Hound, cast magic is as clear as if the user ran around with a paintbrush and wrote: Allie Beckstrom was here at seven o’clock in the morning, freezing cold and freaked out, so she decided to cast a Sight spell.

  Of course there was the whole angry ex-con thing that made me a little hesitant to put all my attention and concentration into casting a spell too.

  But for this, to Hound my father’s signature, it was worth the risk. I whispered a mantra, just a little childhood jingle to settle my mind—Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black—and set a Disbursement for the price of using magic. A head cold—maybe a headache—would hit me in a couple hours. I was starting small, with a little spell to pull a little magic into my sight, so I could see glyphs my father had drawn on the wall, or see the jerk who thought throwing an Illusion in my face would be funny.

  I traced the glyph of Sight in the air with the fingers of my right hand. A few months ago, I would have been very conscious of tapping into the stream of magic that pooled naturally beneath the city, or the stored magic held in the special network of heavily glyphed lead and glass conduits that ran beneath the sidewalks and in and over the buildings.

  But now I had all the magic I needed inside me, constantly replenished from the stores beneath the city. I was a sponge and magic filled me.

  Handy, that.

  Magic flowed warm and thick down my neck, pouring like heated oil over the curve of my breast and down the length of my right arm to settle hot against my palm. I traced the final lines on the glyph for Sight and pushed magic out of my fingertips into the spell.

  Like pulling a blindfold from my eyes, the world was suddenly too bright and too clear.

  Vivid lines of color shot through the air, draped like lace shrouds over buildings, flickering at the corners of streets, clinging to people who moved in the distance. Magic was everywhere in the city. From spells for bad breath to intricate and subtle Influences luring consumers into shops, glyphs of individual spells lingered in the air, crouched on the soil, and stuck to the glass, steel, and stone of the city.

  This was what I imagined it would be like to see on a more microscopic level—to see the germs that lingered long after a hand had touched a surface, long after a kiss, an exhale.

  I scanned the empty lot, looking for a spell big enough to pull off the graffiti trick. A few faint, old spells lay on the ground, mostly protections to let the owner know if someone was messing with the chain-link fence. All of those were used up, and useless as tissue paper in the rain.

  There was no sign of foolery. That worried me.

  I looked at the brick wall, where magic had just a moment ago dripped in pale, chalky warnings. Warnings of death. Brick, just brick. There was no sign of magic being cast—no sign of my father’s signature.

  I leaned closer and inhaled, scenting rain, cold and clean, and the sharp counterpoint of dirt and mold. I could taste gasoline, the soap from the dry cleaners down the street, and the bitter hint of coffee that had roasted hours ago.

  I traced a glyph for Smell and poured magic into it. I leaned in closer to the wall, close enough that I could press my palm against it without straightening my arm. Close enough my lips almost brushed the rough brick. Closed my eyes and inhaled again.

  Just the faintest sour scent of leather flavored my tongue, but it was there—the smell of leather and wintergreen. My father’s scents.

  I opened my eyes and backed the hells away from the wall. I was breathing heavily, sweating despite the rain. And as I stood there with Sight still covering my eyes, I realized everything—the wall, the street, the city—had fallen beneath a fog of pale watercolors.

  Ghostly images of people, who I knew had not been standing on the street a second ago, appeared.

  Holy shit. This was not a good time to be hallucinating.

  None of the watercolor people seemed particularly aware of me or of the traffic that moved by. Some seemed more solid than others, and they were interacting—talking, strolling, holding objects in their hands I couldn’t quite make out. Some were only the faintest blur of movement at the corner of my eye. Others moved so near me, I could count the buttons on their shirts.

  And all of them smelled like death—rank, fetid flesh.

  Okay, this was scaring me now.

  I blinked hard, but the watercolor people did not go away. Clarity. I could cast a spell of Clarity to strip the street of illusions.

  I muttered a Diversion and pulled on magic.

  All the watercolor people stopped. All the watercolor people looked at me with black, soulless, hungry eyes. All the watercolor people could see me. Then they started toward me slowly, as if they were moving underwater.

  Oh, hells, oh, hells. Magic leaped readily to me—too quickly, too much, a flare of heat burning up my arm. I suddenly found myself working hard not to use magic, lest I burn up.

  Calm, calm. I am a river. It wasn’t working, because, hey, magic won’t do what you want it to do if you’re freaking out. Magic flushed through me, too hot up my right side, too damn cold down my left. Still, the watercolor people drew near.

  I looked for my father among them—hells, I expected him to be leading the march. But I did not see him, did not recognize any of these people/ghosts/ illusions/whatever they were.

  And then it wasn’t a march anymore. As if broken from a chain, the watercolor people sped forward, fast, faster than anything human, a blur of transparent colors anchored by bright, hollow eyes that were too far away and suddenly way too damn close.

  I tried to yell, but they were on me. Hands grabbed and stroked, dug into my skin, and pulled misty tendrils of magic out of me. They stuffed fistfuls of magic into their mouths, moaned, and slapped at me for more.

  Everywhere they touched, magic rose and broke through my skin, like blood gushing free into their hands. I swayed, dizzy from the loss of magic, and pushed at their hands while I stumbled backward.

  I yelled. The watercolor people followed me back until I was flat against the chain-link fence. Ghostly hands dug deeper for magic, burning down to my bones.

  Then I did what I usually do in tight situations. I got angry.

  No more Mr. Nice Girl. I had magic—magic they were pulling out of me, magic they were feeding on—and I was not about to be anyone’s all-you-can-eat buffet.

  I let go of the magic bolstering my sight and smell, ending that flow of magic so I could recast something to protect myself. I needed to pull magic into a new spell, something that could kick watercolor ass—what the hells could kick watercolor ass? A mop? A hose? But as soon as I let go of magic, before I even started to trace a new glyph, the world snapped back into place.

  The real world was the real world again. The watercolor people were gone.

  “Allie?”

  I traced a Hold glyph so fast, it was cocked and ready to fire before my heart had a chance to slam one more beat against my chest.

  I didn’t pour magic into it.

  Good thing too. Grant, the owner of Get Mugged, stood outside the door of the coffee shop in a T-shirt and flannel shirt, cowboy boots, and dark jeans tight enough to show he had bragging rights.

  The only thing he was doing was getting rained on and looking worried.
br />   I didn’t blame him. I’d be worried if a wild-eyed woman were pointing a Hold spell big enough to stop a rhino in midcharge at me too.

  He slowly raised his hands to about chest high, while I stood there breathing hard, and blinking harder, and trying to think straighter.

  “Easy, now. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  What I had seen—the glyphs and the watercolor people—was not here. Or at least they were not here anymore. I sniffed and couldn’t smell death. Couldn’t smell the leather and wintergreen of my dad, couldn’t smell anything except the city, coffee, and Grant’s cologne that hinted at vanilla and something deeper, like bourbon and sex.

  Grant didn’t do anything else, didn’t move any closer.

  I pushed off the chain-link fence and was happy that my legs held me. I ached in my joints, ached where Trager had stuck a needle in my thigh, and my skin felt tight and sunburned.

  “You’re shaking,” he said. “How about a cup of coffee to warm you up? Come on inside. It will be okay.”

  I lowered my hand, breaking the Hold glyph as I did so. Magic seemed a little dimmer in me, a little smaller. And my heart was still pumping too hard, like I’d been running or had just come out of a fight.

  No surprise there.

  But other than that, everything was fine. Normal. Fine. I was fine. Normal. Fine.

  Oh, who was I kidding?

  “I’ve had a really bad morning,” I said, my voice catching at the end.

  Grant nodded, like maybe he already had that figured out. He strolled over to me, all sweet and brotherly—if I had a brother who was a hot-looking cowboy coffee roaster—and put one large, warm, coffee-scented hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get you inside. You can tell me all about it.”

  When all I did was stand there and shake, he slid over next to me and rested his arm across my shoulders. Then he gently propelled me forward toward the doors of Get Mugged.

  Chapter Six

  The smell of hot coffee and baked scones wrapped around me like a hug as we walked into Get Mugged. Grant’s employee, Jula, was behind the counter, moving scones out of the oven and into the glass case below the counter.

  There were about a dozen people seated at the mismatched wood tables and chairs, reading papers, their laptops, phones, handhelds. Get Mugged was bigger than it looked from the outside, and open up to the second-floor ceiling, with an overlooking loft at the back half of the shop. Ceiling-to-floor windows and strings of track lighting on the pipes across the rafters lit up the place, while the brick and wood walls made that light feel warm.

  “Hey, Jula,” Grant called out. “Get me a Shot in the Dark, would ya? And a towel?”

  She looked up, the piercing in her eyebrow flashing blue and then pink as she looked from Grant to me. “Oh. Sure.” She put down the tray of scones and reached for a big mug from the shelf behind her.

  Grant, his arm still over my shoulder, steered me farther into the shop, back to a table nestled against a narrow window on the other side of the counter. It was far away from the door and out of sight from most of the people in the shop but close enough to the counter that Grant or Jula could keep an eye on whoever sat there.

  I had the distinct impression Grant didn’t think I was doing so hot.

  “Here now,” he said. “Best seat in the house.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m okay.” The heat of the place was working wonders for me, easing some of the ache. Even the intense sunburn sting from the watercolor people touching me was fading some. I was soaked through my coat, but still cold enough that I didn’t want to take it off. Once I got home I really would have to wring out my underwear.

  I tugged my hat off and ran my gloved fingers through my hair. Another good thing about short hair is it handles the wet pretty well. I tucked it back behind my left ear, but kept it loose on the right so it would swing forward and cover the whorls of colors that licked beneath my jaw and up to the corner of my right eye. I was feeling a little touchy about the whole marked-by-magic thing at the moment.

  Grant sat across the small table from me.

  “Rough morning, huh?” he asked.

  “I’ve had better,” I said.

  Jula stopped by the table. “Here you go.” She placed a mug of coffee and a plate with a hot scone in front of me. “The towel?” she asked.

  Grant pointed to me.

  She handed me the towel. “Anything else I can get you?”

  “No,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She looked over at Grant again. He was leaning back in his chair, his own short hair wet enough that it looked as black as mine instead of the light brown I knew it was. Drips of rain caught on the edge of his spiky bangs and ran a wet line down his temple and jaw. Grant had dark, dark blue eyes and that sort of rough and ready look that always made me imagine him in a cowboy hat.

  Even though all I wanted to do was dive into that cup of coffee, I took the towel, pulled off my gloves, and inspected my hands. Black bands on all my left knuckles, whorls of metallic colors over every inch of my right hand. The black bands looked a little swollen, like they were bruising beneath, and the whorls of colors were darker than normal, dull, like someone had sanded the metallic shine off of them.

  Or several someones.

  I dried my hands carefully, though they weren’t really hurting. The ache and sunburn had faded fast, leaving me cold. Just cold. And wet. I wiped my face. The towel was white, soft, and smelled of lemon dish soap.

  “Thanks,” I said again, lifting the towel a little before handing it to Grant. He rubbed it over his face, wadded it up, and put it on the table.

  “You had me worried.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Oh, I so did not. I didn’t like telling people I was going crazy.

  “That’s really nice. But trust me, you don’t want to get involved in my troubles.”

  “I don’t know. Everyone needs a little trouble now and then. Keeps things spicy.”

  “Running the coffee shop isn’t spicy enough?”

  He shrugged. “Business is business. But I want my friends to know I’ll do what I can to help. Be there if they need me.”

  I shook my head but smiled despite myself. I’d been coming to Get Mugged for years, and I didn’t know Grant considered our casual morning talks the basis for a friendship.

  “Friends?” I asked.

  “Anyone who gives me tickets to the Schnitz for my birthday two years in a row is officially my friend.”

  “I did that?”

  Grant gave me a funny look. I knew that look—it happened when I had forgotten something in my past but the person I was with had not. Fantastic. I’d not only forgotten I was friends with Grant, but had also forgotten I’d given him tickets to the opera.

  “You sure you’re feeling okay?” he asked.

  I rubbed at my eyes. “Sorry, Grant. Things . . . The coma did weird things to my memory. I have a lot more holes. I think I lost your birthday.” And damned if that didn’t make me feel like a heel.

  “Hey, that’s okay. I’ll remind you. The Phantom of the Opera’s coming to town, and I do like me some Phantom.” He patted the edge of the table and it suddenly felt like we’d just sealed a deal. We were officially still friends.

  “So, tell all, girl. What’s going on?”

  I am not the kind of gal who falls for every nice smile she sees. But Grant’s smile was like the shop— warm, friendly, comfortable. I smiled back, and for the first time in what must be years regretted not putting on at least a little mascara.

  Not that it would matter with Grant. Women weren’t his thing.

  “I just, well, I took a new job—”

  “Hounding?”

  “Right, for the police, and I guess my mind’s on that.”

  “So, you’re not hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Not in trouble—No, let me rephrase that. Don’t need me to call the police for you?”

  “No.” br />
  “And you’re feeling a little better now that we got you out of the rain and wind?”

  “Uh-huh,” I agreed. I took a drink of coffee and closed my eyes as it rolled hot all the way down to my belly. Hot, dark, rich. Heaven.

  “Trust me,” I said. “After a cup of this, I’ll be perfect.” I took a bite of scone. “Wait,” I said around a mouthful of pumpkin spice goodness. “I’ll be perfect after the coffee and the scone.”