Magic at the Gate

  It was an Illusion.

  I set another headache Disbursement and cast Sight, ready to cast a lot more.

  Shamus-burning-bright still had the man in his grip, his right hand over the man’s throat, staring straight into the guy’s horrified eyes as he drank down every last scrap of magic inside him. The man convulsed, but Shame’s hand squeezed his throat and kept him standing. Shame tipped his face up, his mouth open, and moaned as the man faded and faded. He was no longer solid. I could see the traffic through him, the buildings through him; then he was nothing but a green fog that fell to the ground like a waterfall. And was gone.

  Shame didn’t move, even after the man was gone. His face was both fierce and serene. Ecstasy. Finally, he licked his lips, and looked back down from the sky.

  I dropped Sight. The Illusion of the man was still standing in front of Shame. He laughed, said good-bye. Shame, or the Illusion of him, did the same. The man walked away down the sidewalk. Shame turned to watch him take the corner into the alley, then dropped the Illusion.

  Holy crap. I’d never seen someone use Illusion while they killed someone in broad daylight in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Mostly Death magic with a dash of Blood.” He gave me a lazy smile, and his eyes were far too black. He looked a little drunk. “Come on, now. You walked through death. You must have seen lots worse than that.” He started down the street toward the back of the building where his car was parked.

  “The things in death were dead. They had every right to be scary,” I said.

  “You aren’t scared of little ol’ me are you?”

  “Did you just kill that guy?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I did indeed.” He fished in his pocket, but kept walking. “ ’Course, he was already dead. Still, that kind of performance deserves a smoke, don’t you think? Hold this for me.”

  He dropped something into my hand.

  Not something. A disk. It was flat, and cast-iron gray. Not a spark of magic left within it, but it was clearly one of the disks my father and Violet had made.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Out of that Veiled’s throat.” He lit up, sucked down a lungful. “That, Beckstrom, is something we can both be afraid of.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Who the hell is giving Veiled disks? And bodies?” I asked.

  “I have a feeling we’re going to be real busy finding out,” Shame said. “Let’s see if Victor has any ideas. So tell me about Truance.”

  I switched the disk to my left hand, where it made my palm hurt, so I unzipped my duffel and dropped it in there.

  Shame’s car was in sight. A man stood next to it.

  Sid Westerling, one of the Hounds, leaned against the front bumper, hands stuck in his jacket pockets. He wore business casual and a Windbreaker, his glasses catching a spark of light as he turned to watch our approach.

  “Sid,” I said.

  “Good to see you, Allie.” He pushed away from the car. “Shamus, isn’t it? Flynn?”

  “It is.”

  Sid didn’t offer to shake hands and neither did Shame. Hounds don’t like leaving their scent or picking up someone else’s scent unless necessary. I used to be that careful. Now being tracked by my scent was the least of my worries. My, how things change.

  “Are you looking for me?” I asked.

  “Some business you should know about. The Pack.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “It’s Davy.”

  “I’ll be in the car,” Shame said. “Give you two a minute to talk.”

  I waited until Shame shut the door. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s at the warehouse. He won’t talk. Except to say he wants to talk to you. And you’ve been a hard person to find.” He pressed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Very hard. Almost like you dropped off the face of the earth.” His gaze searched my eyes, looking for a reaction there.

  “Maybe I did.”

  “I’d love to know your hidey-hole.”

  “Wouldn’t be a hidey-hole if I told you where it was. I can’t see Davy right now, Sid. I have too many things on my plate.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “Heard that your boyfriend was hurt. How exactly did that happen?”

  “Oh, give me a break. If you don’t know, then it’s none of your damn business,” I said. “We work together, Sid. We’re not married.”

  That got a quick smile out of him. “Good thing. You’d be a shock to the wife.”

  He was married? When was I going to get that personnel questionnaire worked up for the Hounds? It would be nice to know this stuff.

  “Can you take care of Davy for a couple more days?”

  “Already been doing it for a couple weeks. Think it might be your turn now.”

  “Weeks?”

  Sid stepped up into my personal space. With his hands still in his pockets, he leaned close. “Davy’s hurting. He’s asking for you. Maybe when you’re done running around doing . . . whatever sorts of things you’re doing, you can give the poor kid five minutes of your time. Isn’t that what this Pack is supposed to be all about? Looking out for each other even when it’s inconvenient?”

  He stepped away. Waited.

  Hells.

  “I’ll come by now. Let me tell Shame.” I opened the passenger’s-side door, and held my breath for a second while the smoke escaped the car. “I need to go see Davy.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’ll come by after I get this straightened out.” I tossed my duffel into the backseat. “See you there.”

  “I can’t believe I have to tell you this again.” He pointed at his chest. “Me.” He made walking motions with two fingers. “Follow.” He pointed at me. “You. Get in.”

  I made a face at him, then straightened and leaned on the top of the door. Sid had heard all that. He was a Hound—good hearing came with the job.

  “I’ll meet you there,” I said, not lying because Sid would smell it on me. A good nose was another sign of a Hound. “Shamus here has an awkward sense of loyalty, but at least it means I don’t have to walk.”

  “You should get a car.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, but paying for parking sucks.” I gave him a smile. “See you.”

  Sid moved out of the way. He didn’t go immediately toward his car, just stood there and watched us, waiting to see if we turned in the direction of the warehouse. Suspicious. Hound. Most of the time those two things were synonymous.

  “Are we really going to check in on the kid?” Shame asked.

  “I am. You can stay in the car if you want.”

  He shook his head, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number with his thumb. “Mum? Listen, we’ve run into a bit of a problem. Allie needs to check on one of her puppies.”

  I slapped his arm.

  “Ow. We’ll be maybe an hour or so. Also, we ran into an undead Veiled with a disk. It made him solid and capable of using magic. Took care of him, have the empty disk with us.” He paused. “Nothing. Looks just like anyone else, except he was acting a little strange. I wouldn’t have thought twice. Allie. I dunno.” He glanced over at me. “How did you know he was a Veiled?”

  “When I cast Sight, he looked like green fog. Truance looked like that too.”

  “Before Sight. What tipped you off?”

  “The mark in my left hand got really cold.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You catch that?” She hadn’t, so he repeated it. “She just told me about Truance. Yes, I’ll get it out of her. About an hour, I think. As if you wouldn’t. Bye.” He hung up. “Truance. Let’s have it.”

  “She was in the chocolate shop, staring at people like she was surprised they could see her. When she saw me, she ran to the back. I followed her to the restroom.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Allie. We were right down the block, and you went into that alone?”

  “Deal with it.” I was tired of being told I couldn??
?t take care of myself.

  He got the hint and pushed his bangs out of his eyes. “Go on.”

  “I smelled the disk on her. Since Jingo Jingo is the only person I know who has disks—other than the ones locked up at your mom’s inn—I thought I might be able to put a Tracking spell on her. But when I looked in, she had no reflection in the mirror. I cast Sight and saw the green glow. My dad spoke to me—in my head—and she answered him.

  “She said Mikhail’s time is over and Dad’s disks will give her immortality. When he told her she wouldn’t be able to recharge the disk, she tried to suck him out of my brain. That’s when I got control of my body again and hit her with whatever spell Dad had been casting. Plus, my hand was covered in black flame. I threw that at her too.”

  “Hold up. Is your da still in your noggin?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the black flame?”

  “Left hand. That mark of magic in my palm—that’s the only thing I can think it might be from.” I hoped that was the reason I had suddenly gone pyrotechnic. “I don’t know how to control it, and it makes my arm goes numb pretty fast.”

  Shame tugged his hair back again, nervous. “Not to spook you or anything, but I don’t think your hand catching on fire is a good thing. We’ll have Victor and Mum check you when we get back. Think you could flame on demand if you had to?”

  “I could try.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “No. She disappeared. She said a word and set off a magical explosion. The only thing left was a black circle of ash on the floor.”

  “Lovely. Bloody fucking lovely. There could be dozens of things like her on the street.”

  “Solid Veiled with disks?”

  “If Jingo Jingo is making them—though I don’t know what kind of good comes out of raising dead magic users—yes.”

  “How many of the disks did Jingo take? What happened after the storm?”

  “I wasn’t entirely conscious,” he said. “I saw you step through the gate.” He paused. Took a long time before he started talking again. “Don’t ever do that again. It about killed me to see you throw yourself into that hell.”

  “I did it for Zayvion.”

  “Who would kick your ass if he saw you do something that stupid. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Maybe even more than he did. He was right. Zay had been really angry at me for walking into death to save him. I’d lost my small magic. I hadn’t gotten rid of my dad. Zay hadn’t woken from his coma. Right now, it really did seem like a stupid thing that hadn’t done much good for anyone.

  But I am nothing if not stubborn. “I couldn’t let him die.”

  Shame didn’t say anything.

  “You would have done the same thing.”

  “No, I would have done it better.”

  “And I would have gone in after you.”

  “I tried. Terric—”

  “Terric saved your life. You were already too close to being dead, Shame. Coming back from death would have been impossible. Death wouldn’t have let you go.”

  “You know Victor tried to keep the gate open,” he said. “I think he was going to go in after you.” He glanced at me. “Did you really use Influence on him?”

  “Um . . . yes?”

  Shame hooted. “He was furious about that. I’m surprised the only thing he did to you when you pulled that little blood promise yesterday was put you to sleep. Anyway, when the gate collapsed, we had about five minutes to gather our wounded, pick up our dead, and grab all the disks that were left before the MERCs showed up.”

  “Stotts was there?”

  “We were gone before then.”

  “And you took all of the disks?”

  “All that were left. Most went with Jingo, we think, and some burned into slag from channeling the wild-magic storm. We took those with us too. It’s possible some of the other magic users grabbed them before they ran.”

  “We had at least a hundred disks there. We recovered most of them, right?”

  “No.”

  “How many do we have?”

  “Maybe a quarter of them.”

  “And the rest are in the hands of our enemies?”

  “We think so. I’m sure we’ll go over all this tonight, especially with the new development in your duffel bag. And Truance. And your flaming hand trick.” I stuck my hand in my pocket, feeling self-conscious about it. I mean, really? Did I need another strange thing about me? Wasn’t I strange enough?

  “So you do think Jingo Jingo is making the Veiled solid? He knows how to do that kind of thing?”

  “Maybe. If it’s done the same way Greyson was made half-dead, then it’s a mix of Life magic, Death magic, and light and dark. Lots of forbidden stuff all stirred together. Living people don’t survive that combination. Maybe the dead tolerate it fine and dandy. It’s a brilliant idea to try it on the dead. Twisted, but brilliant. Still, the old necromancy spells have been locked away and forbidden for hundreds of years.”

  “Looks like somebody found them.”

  “Or experimented until they fell on the right combination of magic and disks to make it work,” he said.

  We had made it to the broken part of town where Get Mugged stood strong on the corner. The old warehouse next to it, owned by the coffee shop’s owner, Grant, wasn’t looking too bad either. In front of the warehouse was the paranormal investigator’s van—they rented the bottom floor. I leased the top two floors. One was empty, one was the sanctuary and landing place for Hounds, the gathering place that Pike, one of the best Hounds in the city, had hoped he could make happen. But Pike had died and left the Hounds in my care. Not too fancy, not too noticeable, I liked to think Pike would have been happy with the den we’d made.

  Shame found a place to park about a block away. We got out and headed down the street. I kept my eyes open, looking for anyone who set off my creepy radar, or made my hand cold, but the few people who walked past were creepless, at least in a magical sort of way.

  We passed Get Mugged and I didn’t even glance in. I hadn’t been by for more than a week, and I knew if Grant caught sight of me walking by without stopping in for a cuppa and a chat, he’d have a fit.

  Luckily, Grant didn’t see me, and we opened the warehouse’s heavy wood and glass door and walked through the carpeted lobby to the staircase beyond.

  “Elevator, right?” Shame asked.

  “Stairs.” I didn’t say any more. The Hound floor was only one story up, an easy walk for me, though I was a little more out of breath than usual by the time we reached the top. Dying had eaten away at my resources, and even though I’d felt really good this morning, the run-in with Truance and everything else made me wish I’d taken a nap back in my apartment with Shame.

  The entire floor was one big open space. I’d managed to set up an office area on the side nearest Get Mugged, and put in a couple bunks, sets of couches, and TVs on the other side, where there was also a small, open kitchen and a couple of bathrooms that had four solid walls built around them. There was a meeting table that doubled as a dining room table and a scattering of chairs.

  The advantage to the open floor space was I could see everything and everyone, pretty much at once. Necessary when dealing with Hounds.

  “Doesn’t anyone have a job to do?” I didn’t raise my voice. Didn’t have to. They all probably heard me coming up the stairs.

  The only Hounds in the rec room were Jack and Bea, sitting on the couch, watching TV. Bea looked a lot better than when I’d last seen her after she’d been hit in the park and taken to the hospital. Jack looked the same, tough as leather and functionally drunk.

  Jamar, who usually handled jobs for the police in neighborhoods dealing with gang crime, was cooking something that had a lot of garlic in it—he waved as I walked in. And then there was Davy.

  Davy, who paced in front of the windows and didn’t even look up. He had his gaze on his feet, or occasionally glanced out the window before going back to looking at his shoes. Hands tu
cked up under his armpits, he looked like he was cold or hurting.

  Heat wasn’t broken. Which meant he was in pain.

  “People, this is Shamus Flynn. He’s my friend, and not a Hound.”

  Jack lifted a couple fingers in salute, and Bea said it was nice to meet him. Then they all watched me, watched for what I was going to do about Davy.

  I crossed the room, stood just out of arm’s reach, at midpoint of his pacing route. “Sid said you wanted to talk to me,” I said. “What’s up?”

  He walked past me without looking, walked back, almost passed me again.

  “Davy. What’s wrong?”

  He stopped. “In private.”

  “All right.” I thought about it. Where could I take him that a bunch of hypersensitive ears wouldn’t be able to hear us? “Where do you want to go?”

  He looked around, and I swear it was the first time he realized how many people were in the room. Something was seriously wrong with the kid. He was a good Hound, maybe on his way to being really good. Details didn’t get past him. He should know how many people were in the room by counting the exhales.

  “Come on.” I turned and walked toward the doors. Davy followed behind me, and so did Shame.

  “I said private,” Davy said to Shame.

  “He’s cool, Davy. I trust him to hear any kind of thing you’re dealing with. Plus, I think you and I could take him.”

  “Hey, now,” Shame said. “That stings.”

  Davy didn’t fight me on it. Also not like him.

  “Do you need a doctor?” I asked as I opened the door to the stairs.

  “No.”

  I started up the stairs, Davy behind me, Shame behind him.

  “Is it Tomi?”

  “No. I don’t think so. No.”

  And that was all we said until we made it to the next level.

  The floor plan was identical to the floor downstairs, only this didn’t have a scrap of furniture in it unless you counted the mattress I’d put in the corner. I wasn’t kidding when I said I didn’t know what I was going to do with it yet. I mean, I didn’t want to live here—not this close to the Hounds—but I loved the idea of having all this space to myself. It was like my latent rich-girl tendencies had taken over when Grant had offered me the killer deal if I’d lease out both floors.