Magic on the Hunt

“And neither is Shame,” Zay said. He rolled down the window.

  Shame stormed over to us, his hands in fists.

  “What’d Victor say?” Zay asked calmly.

  “Not to go out to the prison, not to take you out there, or Allie. To stay out of it, to let him take care of it. To sit here on my fucking thumbs and do fucking nothing.”

  “Are you that hot to get your hands on Leander?” Zay asked.

  “I smell a clean shot at the jugular of this problem. I saw how he touched Cody. He’s working magic, and working it dark. He’s digging for information and didn’t find it in Cody. I have a gut feeling if we get our hands on him, we’ll be one step ahead instead of one step behind whatever it is Mikhail, Leander, Dane, Jingo Jingo, and who-the-fuck-knows else have been doing.”

  “We let Victor take care of it,” Zay said.

  Shame took a few steps away, looking down the road. Then paced back.

  He leaned his elbows on Zay’s open window. “We’ve already been letting Victor take care of it. Ever since the magic storm, Mum’s been letting him call the shots. I think it’s time we do what needs to be done. Let’s go to the prison, see if Leander’s trying to possess Greyson, lock Greyson down so tight Leander would need a pry bar to get in his head. Then find out what the hell Leander wants with him, and maybe, just fucking maybe, where Sedra is, and how Dane and Jingo Jingo and Mikhail are mixed up in this.”

  Zay just stared out the window. He did not look convinced.

  “It has to go together somehow, Z,” Shame pressed. “All this happening at the same time? There has to be something or someone that strings it together. Maybe it’s Greyson. Maybe it’s the disk in his neck.”

  “To break with Victor’s orders … ,” Zay started.

  “Bartholomew Wray is coming,” Shame said.

  Zay closed his eyes and shook his head. “Now?”

  Shame nodded. “Victor said he’s on his way from Seattle. Should hit the airport in an hour. An hour after that, he’ll call a reckoning with Victor and Mum. And when he gets the laundry list of all the fuckups we’ve been dealing with, he is going to find someone to blame.

  “We need a solution. Now. I think Greyson is part of our solution—otherwise, Leander wouldn’t have been so interested in him, enough that he clearly left the impression of him in Cody’s mind. Let Victor follow the rules. Let Bartholomew go through the procedures. And let us take care of the problem. It’s our city. If they can’t take care of it, we will.”

  Zay sighed. “If things go to hell, you and I will be out of this for good.”

  “Then we won’t let things go to hell,” Shame said.

  “You understand what we’re doing?” Zay asked me.

  “Our job?” I said.

  “Not our sanctioned job, no.”

  “Zay,” I said, “I’ve barely been on the right side of the law for most of my life. If we can lock down Leander and find out what the hell is going on, I’m in.”

  “Where am I headed, Flynn?” he asked.

  Shame hit the buttons on his keychain and locked his car, then ducked into the backseat behind Zay.

  “Crown Point.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Zay maneuvered the car into traffic. It was a half hour drive east along the Columbia Gorge. Looked like Zay was going to do it in under twenty minutes.

  Ten minutes into our drive, Zay’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, looked at the screen, and thumbed it off before setting it in his cup holder.

  “Who was it?”

  “Victor.”

  The phone started ringing again. Zay glanced at it, looked away.

  “You think he won’t know you’re ignoring him?” I asked.

  “He knows. He also probably knows exactly what we’re planning to do. But if I don’t answer, he can’t be held culpable.”

  His phone stopped ringing. There was a pause; then my phone rang. Victor.

  I stared at it for a minute, wondering if I should just let him know that we weren’t going to do anything stupid. But since that was a lie, I just put my phone in the other cup holder and let it ring.

  “If he knows, there’s nothing that would keep him from coming out after us or sending people to stop us,” I said.

  “Which is why we do this faster than they can catch us at it,” Shame said. “It isn’t about finesse; it’s about speed.”

  Okay. So we were breaking one of the Authority’s rules—do not act against the consent of your superiors. We were also going to the prison we were not supposed to know about, and about to confront a man who had betrayed the Authority and tried to kill us all—Greyson. Not to mention we were hunting down a dead and very powerful magic user who almost blew open the well and destroyed us all.

  So, yes, I could see where this could be considered moderate-stupidity-to-high-risk-insanity on the howsafe-is-this-job scale.

  “Do we have a plan?” I asked.

  “Z?” Shame asked.

  “You can get us in?” Zay asked.

  “I think so,” Shame said. “I know where they’re holding Greyson.”

  “Is there anyone guarding the place?”

  “One guard. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Zay’s phone rang again. I glanced at the screen. Terric.

  Zay looked at it too. “It’s Terric.”

  Shame stuck his hand between our seats. “Let me.”

  Zay dropped the phone in Shame’s palm. Shame sat back, thumbed it on speaker, and answered. “Hello? Terric. Good to hear from you, buddy; what’s up?”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Terric asked.

  “I’m hanging out with Z and Allie. What the hell do you think I’m doing?”

  “Do not confront Leander.”

  “Not planning on it.”

  “Shame, you can’t lie to me. I know you’re headed out to the prison. I know you think Leander is going to possess Greyson.”

  “Really? And how do you ‘know’ I’m doing those things?”

  “Because you are an idiot. I don’t know how you talked Zayvion into doing this—he usually has more sense in his head—but for God’s sake, do not take this step, Shame. If you’re set on getting your own brain wiped, fine. But don’t drag Zayvion and Allie into your bullshit too.”

  “Terric, I’m not going to confront Leander.”

  That was a flat-out lie. And it didn’t sound a bit like a fib.

  “Good,” Terric said. “Then I won’t see you in a few minutes.”

  “What?”

  “Victor sent me and Hayden out to make sure you aren’t going to the prison, and aren’t going to see Greyson, and aren’t going to confront Leander. If you’re telling me the truth, you won’t be there when we pull up.”

  “Of course I’m telling you the truth,” he lied.

  “You are such a problem, Shamus Hugh Flynn,” he said. “But I’d hate to see you kicked out of the Authority for good.”

  “Don’t drag my father’s name into this. Good-bye, Terric.”

  He hung up and was uncharacteristically quiet for a minute or two. “So Victor’s sent Terric and Hayden on our tail. Nice of Terric to let us know.”

  Zayvion just nodded. “How far behind us?”

  “I couldn’t tell. If they were at Victor’s place, we have maybe a fifteen-, twenty-minute lead.”

  “That will do.” Zay cast a spell with his left hand, muttered something, and flicked it at the windshield. I don’t know what it was supposed to do, but once it settled over the car, Zay put his foot down and sped east down the twists and turns of Highway 30.

  “Plan?” I repeated.

  “I get us in,” Shame said. “I take us to Greyson. Z holds him while I do a nice, friendly little rummage through his brain.”

  “That sounds too easy.”

  “I find it’s always best to start with easy,” Shame said. “That way the complications are more of a surprise.”

  We flew down the highway, twisting along the river
, with only a flash of cars at our left, the hillsides on the other side of the river rising green and rocky, the river a wide expanse of blue.

  I caught a glimpse of the bluff ahead and on the right where the Vista House rose. The gray sandstone observatory with green tiled roof was built about a hundred years ago, arches ringing the two-story, round, dome-topped structure in the best German art nouveau of the time.

  It was perched on the flattened edge of a basalt cliff about seven hundred feet above the Columbia, and most people stopped by to get a panoramic view of the Columbia River.

  Zay took the exit and didn’t slow as he maneuvered the car up the road, which wound into the evergreen-and vine-maple-covered hills. Two narrow lanes hooked hairpin corners that were tacked into the mountain with white wooden guardrails and hand-stacked stone fences put there by the job corps more than eighty years ago.

  My heart raced, but Zay seemed to know this road, know his car, and know exactly what he needed to do to get us there in one piece. He was focused, spread out to feel the area, like he had been when we were looking for Dane, as if this road, these mountains and hills, river and highway, were mapped on his skin. As if he knew every curve and bank because they were a part of him.

  And then we were there, nearly at the top of the hill, the road now lined by Gothic lampposts, and the Vista House like a crown jewel glinting on the edge of the world.

  Zay rolled across the empty parking lot and parked in front of the building.

  “Where’s the prison?” I asked, scanning the steep forested rise behind us. If we were going to have to navigate the forest, we were going to need more than fifteen minutes.

  “You’re looking at it.” Shame got out of the car.

  I got out too. Met Zay and him at the trunk, where they were pulling out weapons. Shame strapped on every knife in his reach, Zay took his katana and left me with another katana. I pulled it briefly from the sheath, held it, feeling the weight and heft. A little lighter than Zay’s sword, it too had glyphs worked along the blade, but there were no dark magic spells carved into it.

  Which was fine with me. Zay’s sword was geared for both dark and light magic. Working dark magic while trying to swing that much steel made me feel like a whipped pup.

  I retrieved Zay’s Blood dagger and draped a chain that wasn’t so much a weapon as an enhancement for magic use over my neck.

  “Cuffs?” I asked.

  “We’ll be in eyesight.” Zay shut the trunk, didn’t bother casting an Illusion. If Terric was behind us, he’d know to look for Zay’s signature anyway. He pressed a button on his watch.

  “Let’s do it in fifteen,” he said behind Shame.

  My left hand tingled, cold radiating out from my palm. My right hand burned hot and felt almost swollen. I had magic at my fingertips—literally. I walked beside Zay.

  Shame stood at the door. He pressed his palms together in front of his chest, bent his head as if in prayer. Then he whispered a mantra and pulled his hands apart, until his arms stretched out to each side, palms pressing outward against a force I could not see.

  Zay didn’t break pace; he walked right past Shame through the opening Shame had made in the spell that surrounded the prison.

  I hurried behind Zay, Shame whispering and breathing hard. He wasn’t breaking the spell, but this did not seem to be the intended front door either.

  As soon as I passed Shame, he turned on his heel, facing the car, and pushed his hands back together, thumb to thumb, fingers spread, then closed.

  The wall, the spell, closed back in on itself and fell around us so hard, I could feel the weight of the impact in the stones beneath my feet.

  “One,” Shame exhaled. “No time to stand and stare, Beckstrom. Go.”

  I turned and caught up with Zayvion. He finished casting Cleave, which left the scent of cut grass in the air, and pushed open the door.

  The interior of the observatory was cool, marble and deep polished wood interrupted only by the staircase leading up at one side and down on the other. I knew the downward stairs led to a gift shop, art gallery, and coffee shop.

  Typical Oregon. If there was a stop on the highway with a view, there’d be coffee nearby.

  I scanned the circumference of the room. Had no idea how they fit a prison in here. The entire thing was only about forty feet across, with arched windows reaching up two stories and evenly spaced along all sides, columns below. A staircase wound upward to those windows, where I thought there was an exterior observation deck.

  There was no guard.

  “Where’s the guard?” I whispered.

  “Don’t know,” Shame said. “Maybe downstairs.”

  A stairwell hooked up—not down—on the far side of the room. And that’s where Zayvion and Shame were headed.

  I jogged up the stairs after them to the second level, which did indeed empty out onto an observation deck that ringed the building. The deck gave a dizzying view of the Columbia River, snaking flat cobalt water through the deep evergreen- and sage-colored hills of the gorge.

  The breeze picked up, and I wondered if maybe Zay and Shame had taken a wrong turn. They had stopped and turned toward the building, their backs to the river, the upper-story stained-glass windows in front of them.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Shh … ,” Shame said.

  Zayvion cast a very delicate spell, spoke a word, and then hooked his pinky, as if catching a part of the spell. He continued to whisper that word, then walked to the next window and cast another spell, saying another similar word, hooking his pinky, and then walking to the next window.

  Shame walked behind him. I took a step to follow, but Shame held his hand up, telling me to stay. It took only a minute or two for Zay to complete the counterclockwise circumnavigation of the building. Then he was beside me and said one final word, spreading his hands wide.

  A doorway opened in front of him where the stained-glass windows had just been. Zay and Shame stepped through, and so did I.

  The room should not exist. For one thing, I’d just been on the bottom floor and looked up at all the empty space above and hadn’t sensed any magical Illusions. But whatever spell Zay had used revealed this separate, hidden room. The walls were still marble, but there were no stained-glass windows, even though I knew very well the windows were there.

  Or maybe the windows were the Illusion and this was the reality of the structure. But it wasn’t just the walls that caught my attention. The floor was made of dark glass, and glyphs in gold and green glowed beneath the glass. Zay and Shame both cast separate spells, and the glyphs bent to the motion of their hands like a wheat field rolls beneath the wind.

  Vertigo hit me, and it felt like everything rotated a degree to the left. And then the room was not just a room anymore.

  I hadn’t moved. Hadn’t taken a single step. But the room was now twice as wide and twice as tall. There were several heavy lead and glass doors that radiated magic along the wall. Illusions within Illusions. No wonder no one could break out of this place.

  Shame walked to the door on the west side and stopped in front of it.

  “I could break it, but I’ll make a mess of it,” he said.

  Zay looked at it. “Who worked it when you came before?”

  “Victor. It’s old stuff. Archaic.”

  “You didn’t want to tell us you didn’t have the spell to get through the door?” I asked.

  Shame bit down on a grin. “I just told you I can do it. It’s just that it will be noticeable.”

  “How noticeable?”

  “Someone-in-Troutdale-will-probably-call-911 noticeable,” he said. “Zay might have a softer touch. Z?”

  He shook his head. “I see how it’s cast. And I can see the obvious ways to break it. And all of those end up in an explosion.”

  I wondered if Dad knew how. He was pretty good with archaic. Dad? Do you know how to open it?

  Yes.

  I was a little surprised he answered me after being quiet fo
r so long.

  Then open it.

  “Dad can do it,” I said. They both looked at me.

  Shame narrowed his eyes. “Think he’ll screw us?”

  “I don’t think we have time enough to care,” I said.

  “That’s a sure way to get killed,” Shame said. “Brainless, reckless.” He turned to Zay. “I like her.”

  “Allie—,” Zay began.

  “We need fast, and Dad can do fast.” Can you? I asked.

  Yes.

  Just to make sure we were on the same page, I told him exactly what I was allowing him to do. Open the door; don’t set off any alarms or cause an explosion. You’re helping us all get through this door safely.

  This is tedious, Allison. I know what you want. Free me from this binding and we can work together.

  Just do as I said.

  He shouldered forward in my mind, and I walked over to the door. It was weird having someone else move your body, move your hands. But I’d rather be present and aware of what he was doing than be shoved back in a little dark corner of my mind where I couldn’t tell what was going on.

  Dad pulled magic up through the natural lines that flowed deep beneath the mountain, veins running through the stones, as smooth and confident as if he had done this before.

  I have, he said.

  And then he traced a glyph in the air. Instead of sending it to attach to the door, he caught it in my right hand and then laid my hand, palm flat, against the door.

  Fantastic. Now my fingerprints were left behind at the scene of the crime.

  I had about a half second to think about that before my hand grew warm. The door literally moved under my palm. Lead and glass flowed like tiny oiled gears were set in place, rolling through the lead and shifting like a glass stream around the stones of lead and wood.

  And then the door opened.

  Dad pulled back into that gauzy wrap Victor and Shame had come up with. Not a word, not a touch. He was simply gone, as if he weren’t even in my mind.

  Hidden.

  I wondered who, or what, he was hiding from.

  A cold chill, a breeze from the long corridor that ended in steps leading down, sent goose bumps down my back.

  There was something dangerous down that hall. Someone dangerous. Many someones.