Natural Mage (Magical Mayhem Book 2) Read online

  Emery shifted, putting a little more space between himself and the goblin. The spell he’d spun unraveled because of the time lapse, and Emery started it again, intending to be ready at a moment’s notice in case this was a trap.

  Though he doubted the Guild would use a goblin to carry out their bidding. They wouldn’t want to be connected with such a vile, mischievous little creature, but he had a notion of someone who wouldn’t particularly mind…

  “Your master is Durant, then?” Emery asked.

  The goblin hissed. “One does not use names in places where little ears are known to hide just out of sight.”

  “You used my nickname.”

  “You are not my great master.”

  “Fabulous.” Emery glanced at the fuzzy line separating the worlds. He’d known it would be dicey entering so close to New Orleans if the Guild was already set up there, but without a car, proper ID, or any of the other items required to purchase travel in the Brink, he hadn’t had much choice. Until now, he’d been hoping in and out of the Realm.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. The logic checked out on what the creature was saying. If he did land somewhere else, Darius would definitely collect him. The vampire liked to keep tabs on all of his assets, and after asking him for a favor, Emery was definitely in his pocket.

  If only that was the least of his problems.

  “Fine.” Emery stepped away. “Get word to your master that I will oblige.”

  “Of course, master.”

  Emery barely kept from swearing as he headed back to the fast-track magical path. The Mages’ Guild had attacked him, the last black mist vision had implied they’d also attacked Penny—or were toying with the idea—and now they were covering the crossings. They were already organized and their plans were well underway. Time was winding down, and he’d just increased his travel time by days. And that was if Darius was quick to send a jet.

  If Penny was in danger and on her own, days could make the difference between her freedom and magical enslavement.

  20

  Reagan stopped near the archway leading into the kitchen, dressed in a new set of leathers. She pointed at me. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  I wasn’t sure where she thought I would go. I didn’t have a car, was mostly afraid of the extremely rough neighborhood in which she lived, and was utterly exhausted from the intensive spell work and physical training (a.k.a. getting beaten up) we’d just finished.

  It had been this way for the last three days. We made spells, discussed the feelings of the spells, talked about when it would be best to use the spells, and then engaged in physical combat, after which I limped to the couch and collapsed in exhaustion.

  Oh yeah, and there were daily, or sometimes twice-daily, calls from Callie, who kept checking in to make sure I was still alive. That was what she said, anyway. Since each call devolved into a rant about my being stripped from her house without any notice, I had a feeling she was just venting.

  Regardless of her anger, she never asked for me to come back. Instead, she asked to be passed on to Reagan to get a rundown of what we’d done that day. She was monitoring me from afar.

  I could read the writing on the wall: she agreed with the others. No matter how much she blustered and blew about it, she thought I was better off with Reagan. Whether that was because of the training, my safety, or the giant mess that had unfolded at Darius’s house, I couldn’t say, but she was worried about the magical climate to trust the vampire’s decree.

  For better or worse, I was stuck with Reagan.

  And actually, despite the pounding I got every day, it was working out surprisingly well. She never told me something was right or wrong. She didn’t even point out how someone else might have done it.

  In spell work and fighting, I was really coming along. In just three days, I had progressed much further than in all that time with Callie and Dizzy. But that was in terms of reading spells and duplicating them. When it came to making them up on the fly—in a controlled, precise manner—or pairing a spell with a situation, I was still freezing up.

  At this rate, when the Guild came calling, I didn’t have any faith I’d be able to beat them back.

  I sighed heavily and fell into the couch, immediately regretting it. My butt hurt from the multiples times I’d fallen on it in the last hour. “Where are you going again?”

  “I have a friend who knows a guy who said the Magical Law Enforcement office might need some help bringing in a banshee. With Darius preoccupied, it’s the perfect time for me to do a little contract work.” She waved her hand nonchalantly, a gesture she often used to make light of doing something very wrong. “It’ll be a super-easy case. Nothing to worry about. I’ll just help out real quick and that’s it. No reason to mention it at all.” She paused and lowered her voice. “Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  “That you’ll beat me bloody if I go telling anyone, yeah.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s two in the morning. Who is working now? Not that I’m complaining about my practice session being over.”

  “The magical community keeps different hours. Don’t worry; you’ll get used to it. But this isn’t the actual job, just a little information gathering. I want to know exactly what’s going on before I make the captain hire me. There’s no way I want Darius on my case about doing something stupid. And that’s the problem with boyfriends—they’re always on your ass about jeopardizing your future and committing yourself to an eternity of servitude.”

  “Uh-huh.” Now that I was temporarily living with her, I’d decided it was in my best interest to ignore her crazy life. I rubbed my eyes. “Well, he can’t really talk, can he? What with the ongoing Ja situation and all.”

  Ja was going to live, though we didn’t yet know if that was good or bad. Darius had started hitting the books really hard to determine how badly he’d messed up by making me entice her back into vampire politics (I totally blamed him for the whole debacle). Until he knew more, we were in the dark.

  Not that it mattered. Reagan assured me that it was a vampire problem, and it was best to let them duke it out themselves. With Ja thinking rationally again, I was in no danger.

  Or so they said. I planned to stay as far away from her as possible, just in case.

  Reagan put up a fist. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

  Before I could bail myself out of that sinking ship, she was striding through the front door.

  “Right.” I stared after her in the sudden silence.

  I was alone, really alone, for the first time in what was probably a very long time.

  Wasn’t that something? I hadn’t been alone much in my life. My mother had always been hanging around, peering over my shoulder. After moving, Callie and Dizzy had always been home, not peering over my shoulder so much as wanting my company. And Veronica—

  Veronica!

  I’d talked to her as much as Callie since the night at Darius’s house, but I hadn’t been able to see her. It was starting to wear on me. And truth be told, I was a little worried about her. The last time I’d moved locations in order to hide from the Guild, she’d been taken hostage. I didn’t want something like that to happen again.

  After painfully hefting myself off the couch, I waddled my sore butt to my room and grabbed my phone. One missed call from Callie. No 9-1-1 text, though, so she probably just wanted another crack at the day’s rant.

  “Hello?” Veronica answered in a sleepy voice.

  “Oh my—I am so sorry, Ronnie! I completely forgot normal people are asleep right now. Forget I called. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “No, it’s fine.” I heard her shifting. “What’s up? What are you doing?”

  “Are you sure? It’s nothing important.”

  “No, it’s fine. What are you up to? Did you do your training and everything?”

  I told her about a breakthrough on a recent spell, and also about how much my punch was improving. I could even, almost, occasionally deflect Reagan’s punch or kick. Someti
mes.

  “That’s great. But how are you supposed to fight when you’re using your hands to do magic?”

  “Right. I’ve asked that so many times it isn’t funny. But Reagan is convinced that knowing my body, and feeling less physically helpless, will improve my confidence.”

  “Oh. Well that’s true enough.”

  “Yeah,” I said miserably, finding the couch again. “That’s the conclusion I came to, too. Unfortunately.”

  “So now what are you doing?”

  “Sitting on the couch. Reagan went out for something. I’ve got the rest of the night off.”

  “She…went out?” Alarm crept into Veronica’s voice. “Where did she go? Did she go far?”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  More shifting, and the rest of the tiredness seeped out of Veronica’s voice. “Callie and Dizzy are a bit on edge these last couple days. First they were pissed that you weren’t headed back to their house, especially after what went down at Darius’s, but yesterday John was hanging around, asking about you. We all know he’s smitten, right?”

  “He just wants a powerful dual-mage partner.”

  “Well, right. For him, that counts as smitten. He’s a douche. Anyway, he was hanging around, and then Mary Bell came over out of the blue. She wondered where you were, too, and spent the rest of the time giving John the side-eye.”

  Tingles crawled up my spine. “Dizzy told me Mary Bell has had a somewhat foggy past.”

  “I know,” Veronica said in a heavy voice. “Callie filled me in. She was doing human sacrifices at one point!”

  I curled up and hugged my knees to my chest. I had liked the old mage’s approach to magic…theoretically…but murder was categorically wrong.

  “They wanted to try and sacrifice a vampire, so her and her dual-mage guy tried to capture one. Well, her dual-mage guy got killed. That was when she changed her ways. Callie said it was the heartbreak that did it, not a return to morality.”

  “Goodness,” I breathed out. “And yet Callie has this chick hanging around?”

  “She’s powerful. Callie is keeping an eye on her, or so she says. I really think they all like to keep tabs on one another. I wouldn’t say they’re friends.”

  “Well with a past like that…”

  “Right. And then…” She let her words trail away, and I knew she was conflicted about telling me something.

  “What?” I prodded.

  “Well…Dizzy says it was nothing, but you know how he is? Everything is nothing until he’s knee deep in blood.”

  “That’s not…” I blinked, trying to match up our different takes on his personality. Maybe I’d just spent too much time around blood lately.

  “But I don’t know. Lately there’s been more people around this neighborhood than normal. And, I mean, no, they don’t seem particularly suspicious, but I get the feeling they are watching me. Like, when I go around fixing the grammar on signs, I always feel eyes on me, you know?”

  I nodded, forgetting we weren’t speaking face to face and she couldn’t see my silent cues.

  “And then last night,” she went on, “I glanced out my window because I thought I heard something bang, and I could swear a person slipped into Dizzy’s shed. I could swear it, Penny. Dizzy says he has a good warden or something on it, and that the warden or whatever was fine in the morning, but…” She sighed forcefully. “I don’t know. Maybe magically it doesn’t make sense, but I know what I saw.”

  “I could probably take down a ward, then put the same ward back up.” I chewed my lip. “But there aren’t a lot of people with enough power to do that to one of the dual-mages’ spells, I don’t think.”

  “Right. That’s what he said. But…”

  “Well, keep your eyes out. If you saw one, you’ll probably see more. Information can be just as important as spell work.” Reagan had said that to me once, and it seemed to fit my life pretty well lately.

  “Yeah,” Veronica said, letting go of the thread of the conversation. “Well, anyway, Callie and Dizzy are certain you’re in the safest place. Especially because they said you put some sort of warning or something on Reagan’s house.”

  “Ward. The same thing Dizzy had on the shed.”

  “Ah.”

  “I have to physically bring people into Reagan’s house, or they can give a blood offering.”

  “Gross. Really? Isn’t that dark magic stuff?”

  “It’s like giving a DNA offering, basically. A way of getting foolproof ID.”

  “Oh. Okay, then. So yeah, you should stay there.”

  “Does anyone know where I am?”

  “No. Callie and Dizzy won’t say—she gets hostile about people asking—and I try to make myself scarce when they come around. Which has been more frequently lately. They were impressed by the warehouse thing. Word has spread that you are a bona fide natural.”

  “The failed practice session, you mean?”

  She started laughing. “The ones with all the power know you can do better, and the ones without it think you’re fabulous. I don’t know heads or tails about magic, but I’m getting a pretty good idea about the mage social structure at this point. Because here I am, stuck in the middle, breaking the magical rules because I’m a normal human who is privy to this stuff.”

  “So Dizzy and Callie have been filling you in?”

  “Yeah. I think I am actually getting your lessons. They really did want to teach someone. You know what’s funny?” She shifted again. “I’m editing this paranormal book right now that is depicting vampires completely inaccurately. I want to do up notes about each point that’s incorrect, but the author thinks she’s writing fiction. So I can’t say anything. She’d think I was crazy.” She paused and then mumbled, probably to herself, “I think I have to stop editing that genre. It’ll drive me bonkers.”

  A knock sounded at the door.

  I hopped up, then regretted it the moment my body screamed in protest. “Oh, that’s the nightly maid crew. I gotta go.”

  “You are so lucky,” she said before we said our farewells.

  I was so lucky, that was true. Somewhere along the line, Darius had paid people to “plague” Reagan, as she called it. They looked after her place, stocked her fridge, cooked food, and cleaned up. Now that I was living here, I got the same benefits.

  She was worried about an intrusion of privacy. I thought she was crazy. Having people look after us was awesome. As far as I was concerned, if they wanted to do my chores, they could snoop as much as they wanted.

  “Come in,” I called, staying where I was for the moment.

  The door swung open and a head slowly came into view. His eyes darted around the house, probably looking for Reagan, who would try to torment him in some way, before landing on me. And there they stayed, wary.

  His body slowly followed his head. Hair styled just so and a face beautiful enough to make angels sing, the maid was surely a vampire. His graceful movements only confirmed it. And based on his nervousness, he’d clearly heard about the other night.

  “You’re good.” I threw up my hands in surrender, and his eyes blink-flinched. Had I thrown magic, I totally would’ve had him. “Oh, sorry. I just meant that I won’t do any magic. You can come in. Worry-free.”

  And this was what working with Reagan had done to me—think about every situation as a possible life-ending event. Yesterday’s vamp had been greeted by my bug zapper. What would happen when someone went to hug me? Would I sucker-punch them?

  The vampire nodded and scooted to the kitchen with his bag of groceries. He didn’t even want to be in the same room as me.

  There went my hope of having vampire friends. If I’d ever had one.

  I thought about texting my mother, just to check in, but I’d probably wake her up. That would guarantee me a call and a serious tongue lashing. Best to wait until tomorrow and claim forgetfulness for not doing it today.

  I stopped near the edge of the living room, deciding which way to go. My room wa
s obviously the no-brainer choice, but if I did that, I’d end up falling asleep. As good as that sounded, I’d wake up early (by Reagan’s standards), and tomorrow would be a long day.

  So it was either sit in the backyard with the dummy I’d tried to kill on multiple occasions, or on a porch chair looking over a sea of remembered loss.

  The vampire glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes tight and body language nervous. It occurred to me that I was standing in the middle of open space, staring off in the distance—in his direction. He probably thought I was staring directly at him, with crazy eyes and an unhinged personality. The poor guy was clearly wondering if he would make it out of the house un-dead.

  “Thanks for ironing, by the way,” I said to lighten things up. “I mean…if you were the one who did it.”

  “Of course.” His formal bow turned into another wary stare. When I didn’t say anything further, he scooted into the pantry, where I couldn’t see him.

  Grimacing, because that hadn’t gone well, I let myself out the front door and took one of the chairs facing the cemetery across the street. I glanced up at the light, considering whether I should flick it on. It would look creepy sitting here in the dark. I was still within the bounds of the ward, which covered the whole house and backyard, so I was safe even in the light.

  Then again, I was looking over a cemetery. Creepy fit in.

  The moist chill covered me like a blanket, the neighborhood quiet and subdued, which made sense, given the late hour.