Magic on the Storm

Chapter Two

The River Grill was on the Oregon side of the Columbia, and should have been swank if the real estate surrounding it had any sway. Instead, it looked pretty much the same as it did back in the day when the lumberyards were still going strong-a squat, wide building with plenty of windows facing the water, mostly clean tables, and food that was hot, filling, and cheap.

It was three o’clock, a little late for lunch, and a little early for dinner, so the place was mostly empty.

Zay and I took a table by the window and Shamus strolled in behind us. He plucked a menu off the stack by the cash register, and read it while walking over to the table.

“Think it’s the burger today.” He sat in the remaining chair and folded the menu.

“Big surprise,” Zayvion said over the top of his glass of water.

Shame held up one hand, and caught the waitress’s attention.

She was over in a jiffy, took our orders-burgers and sodas all around-and then was off.

Shame cracked his knuckles. “So, how did sparring go today?”

“She’s improving,” Zayvion said.

“She won,” I said, clearly.

Zay just smiled. I really was getting better. Good enough I knew I could hold my own in a fight. Good enough I was doing more than just knife training-we’d moved on to the machetes Zay and his crew use to hunt down magical nasties. Zay had let me work with the katana, a beautiful blade, heavy with the weight of old magic. Training, being aware of every muscle in my body working in concert to my command of magic, made me feel powerful. And I liked it. A lot.

“Very nice, Beckstrom,” Shame said. “Zay’s a hard man to take down. Not that he’s much of a challenge for me, of course. I could take him with one spell tied behind my back. And now that he’s all soft from his time off, he’d go down in a hot second.”

“Are you done?” Zay asked.

“Done?” Shame said.

“Not talking about Terric.”

Shame glared at Zayvion. Zay sipped his water, patient as time. Shame finally gave up, and rubbed his mouth across the palm of his fingerless glove. With his other hand, he cast a very subtle Mute spell. The people around us, not that there were many, wouldn’t be able to hear our conversation. Handy, that.

“Mum said Sedra’s calling. . them. . down. Said it’s about the storm, but I think there’s more going on.”

Zay folded his fingers and propped his elbows on the table. He stared at Shamus, waiting for him to talk.

“I think there’s something wrong with the wells,” Shame said.

Zayvion’s eyebrows rose. End of reaction. “All of them?”

Shame took a drink of water. “Like I know? I don’t have access to all of them. But the one beneath Mum’s place. .” He shook his head.

Zayvion did not look pleased. Then he pulled on the somber mask of Zen, of calm, of duty, and simply looked emotionless.

Well, that was helpful.

“Want to tell the new girl what can go wrong with the wells?” I wasn’t a complete idiot. In the time I’d been taking classes from Victor, Liddy, Maeve, and Jingo Jingo, I’d realized that Portland has four natural wells of magic beneath the ground. That was unusual. Other cities had wells-usually one. Sometimes two. Rarely three. But the Portland area had four wells, one of which was beneath the Flynns’ inn, which Shame’s mother ran, just on the Vancouver side of the river, and all of which were a hard-guarded secret.

The waitress hurried over, three plates balanced across her arm. She placed everything on our table, plunked down a carrier of condiments, and left us to our meal.

“So?” I asked. “What can go wrong with the wells?”

Shame took a huge bite of burger, pointed at his mouth, and gave me a shut-up-and-let-me-eat look while he chewed.

Closers such as Zayvion, Chase, and, apparently, Terric could take away the memories of any people they judged were a harm to themselves or others when using magic. Judge, jury, and executioners, Closers had the final say about what people remembered about magic. It made me uncomfortable. Shame told me once that Closers take away Hound memories if Hounds stumble across magic they shouldn’t know about.

I’d asked him and Zayvion if I’d ever been Closed. It would explain a lot. It would explain why I randomly lost my memories when I used magic.

They’d both said no. Shame told me he didn’t think anyone in the Authority was really interested in me before my dad’s death. And while Zayvion hadn’t exactly agreed with that, he said he had never seen or heard of anyone being ordered to take my memories.

I wasn’t sure if I was glad about that. If my memories were taken by a person, there was still a chance I could get them back. If they were taken by magic, I could kiss those parts of my life good-bye.

Still, I didn’t know what could go wrong with the wells that the Closers couldn’t handle. They could just erase any memories about them if someone outside the Authority found something out.

I looked at Zay. “Well?”

“If Sedra is calling in more Closers, it might have something to do with the gates, not the wells,” he said.

“They’re closed, right? No openings in the last two months? Since my. . test?” What I didn’t say was since there had been a huge fight, and Cody Miller’s spirit had sacrificed himself to close the gateways between life and death.

“Wild storms can blow the gates open,” Zayvion said.

“Neat. So you Closers have some work ahead of you, but it’s not a big problem, right?”

“It is very, very difficult to close a gate during a storm,” Zay said. “Magic doesn’t work right in wild storms. It can be hard to access, or come too quickly and foul or mutate spells. And if the wells are also affected by the storm. .” He shrugged.

“Can enough Closers contain it?” The Authority was tight-lipped about membership. I wasn’t even sure how many people were a part of the Authority in Portland, much less other cities, or the world. And I had no idea how many of those members were Closers.

Shame shoved french fries in his mouth, mumbled, “Lunch,” and gave a nod toward my plate. “Save the world on a full stomach.”

Fine. If they didn’t want to talk about it, I’d find out when I went to see Maeve later. I took a bite of my burger. Juicy, hot, nothing fancy, but as soon as I got a bite of it, I discovered I was starving.

The door opened, letting in the brisk wind and a man and woman.

The man was at least six feet tall and wide as a football field, his long, shiny black hair pulled back at the base of his neck. He wore cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a black and red Blazer jacket, even though it was February and cold, and moved with that island-warmth vibe of his birthplace. Detective Mackanie Love.

With him was a blade of a woman. Thin, unsmiling, dark and cool as a rainy midnight, she was wrapped in a gray coat and gray scarf that did nothing to soften her angular but pretty features. Detective Lia Payne.

I used to run all my Hounding jobs that dealt with illegal use of magic past them before Detective Stotts and the MERC, a secret branch of the law that dealt with magical crime, came into my life. We were maybe not fast friends, but friends just the same.

Just as I spotted them, they spotted me.

I smiled and waved.

“Tell me you did not just wave down the cops,” Shamus whispered.

“Tita!” Mackanie strolled over, a smile on his face. He took in my company, with what seemed to be friendly interest.

Zayvion Jones looked Love in the eyes, but had slouched into his slacker-drifter bit he did so well, and Shame motioned under the table, breaking the Mute spell before Mackanie got too close.

“Food any good today?” He stopped between Zay’s and Shamus’s chairs.

“Good enough that it’s almost gone,” I said. “Have you met Zayvion Jones and Shamus Flynn?”

“Jones and I have met.” He nodded at Zay.

“Detective Love,” Zayvion said.

“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, Mr. Flynn.” He held his hand out to Shame. They shook.

“Pleased to meet you,” Shame said with very little tone inflection. He’d fallen into his sullen goth-boy act pretty fast. What was it with these two and the cops?

Oh yeah. Most of what they did would probably be considered illegal if the world ever knew magic could do what they could make it do.

“So, you talked to Stotts today?” Love asked me.

“Should I?”

“He knows how to find you, yah?”

“He has my number. There a case he wants me on?”

“Not sure. He’s got your number, you got no worries. But that warehouse of yours. There’s a worry. I hear they’re gonna condemn it.”

I grinned. That warehouse of mine was the building next to Get Mugged. Grant had decided to buy it, and agreed to let me lease two of the floors for an office, a meeting space, a couple bunks, a kitchen, and a workout room for the Hounds. To say it had been a learning experience was a serious understatement. I’d never repaired or renovated anything in my life. Yes, I hired a contractor to do the big fixes, but then I dragged as many Hounds into manual labor as I could.

Not one of my brighter plans. Hounds are loners. Working together was so far out of their natural tendencies, it was laughable.

And with how much I’d spent doing it, I think it would have been cheaper to just knock the place down and build from scratch. But Grant loved the “vintage” feel of it, and so did the ghost hunters who were renting out the bottom floor. Therefore, the old building remained as it was, standing proudly. Well, leaning proudly, anyway.

Plus the location-right next door to my favorite coffee shop-was pretty hard to beat.

“Too late to condemn it,” I said. “Paint’s dry by the end of the week, and the landline’s being hooked up tomorrow.”

“So you got emergency response plugged in, in case of trouble?”

“No drug use allowed on the premises. No guns. No brawls. No troubles.”

He just stared at me. Yeah, we all knew that things went to hell when too many Hounds got together for too long.

“Fine,” I said. “Yes, I’ve set things up.”

“Good, then, good,” he said. “You Hound, Flynn?” he asked Shame.

“Wash dishes at my mum’s restaurant, Feile San Fhomher.”

“Maybe that’s where I’ve seen you, yah?”

He shrugged. “Unless you worked juvie a few years back.”

I turned and stared at Shame. He had a record? “You have a record?” I asked. See how tactful I could be?

“Did some tagging when I was fourteen.”

How come I figured it was a lot more than that?

“Gang?” Love asked.

“Just art and anger.”

“You get that out of your system?” he asked.

“Let’s just say I’m not fourteen anymore.”

Love grinned. “Yah, live and learn. I got some eating to do, though this place’s got nothing on your mom’s blackberry cobbler.”

Maeve’s inn was a working restaurant. Which meant a lot of people went there, including cops who had no idea she was one of the voices in the Authority and her entire inn and restaurant was built over a secret, hidden well of magic.

This kind of stuff gave me a headache. There were layers and layers of who knew what in this city. Zayvion said he had a spreadsheet to keep track of what secrets were spoken where. I had yet to see it.

Every time I thought these things out, I was more impressed that the Authority hadn’t been discovered yet. Of course, they had one ace in the hole no one else in this city had. Closers, who could get in your head, make you forget anything they wanted you to forget-like a secret you shouldn’t have heard or maybe how to use magic. They could Close away your desire to stay in the city. Take away your life, and give you a new one if they decided the situation warranted it.

Kill you, if you got in their way.

I glanced at Zay. He was drinking his Coke and trying hard not to look over at Love’s partner, Payne, who sat in the booth across the room. She was staring at him.

She caught my gaze and gave me a considering look, her mouth pressed together in a thin line. I wondered how, exactly, she and Zayvion knew each other. I remember Mackanie Love being there when Frank Gordon had dug up my father’s body and tried to kill me. Zay had been there too. So it was possible that their only connection was Zay being a witness to that crime. But if I remembered right, Love and Payne had been looking for Zay prior to that.

Interesting.

I stretched my foot under the table and rested it against the side of Zay’s tennis shoe.

The contact let me concentrate on his emotional state: tense, which was not at all what I’d have guessed from his body language, with a side order of worry and dread.

He must have sensed my curiosity because he gave me a sideways look and sat up, pulling his foot away from mine.

Like that would stop me from finding out why he was all worked up over Payne.

Even though it had taken only a couple seconds, I’d sort of lost track of the conversation Love and Shame were having. I had a hard time listening in to Zayvion’s emotions and listening to the real world at the same time.

I tuned back in just in time to hear Love say, “. . lunch. Later, Tita.”

“Bye,” I said, wondering if I’d just made a lunch date with him.

Love rambled over to Payne. She stopped staring at Zayvion and stared at her menu instead.

“You don’t like the police, do you?” I asked Shame.

Shame flicked up a couple fingers in a dismissive motion. “They do good work. I just like them better when that work has nothing to do with me.”

“Juvie?” I asked.

“It happens.”

“Would have thought your mom had some pull to keep you out of there.”

“She did,” Zayvion said. “So did his dad.”

Shame looked up at me. He didn’t grin, but there was a sparkle in his eye. “They let me sweat it out for a week. Said it’d help me rethink my priorities.”

“Did it?”

“Yes. I decided my first priority was not getting caught.”

“You are a man of questionable morals, Shamus Flynn,” I said.

“You have no idea. Well, then.” He stood, stuck one hand in his jean pockets, and brushed hair out of his eyes with the other. “Thanks for lunch. I have to run. See you soon.”

I had a mouthful of fries. Zay was finishing his too. I held up my hand to tell Shame to stop, but he spun and was across the room, weaving between a noisy crowd of college kids pouring into the place. He was out the door before I could call his name.

The waitress saw my hand and came over with our ticket. Zay reached for it, but I got it before him. “You cover next time.”

“How about we just make Shame pay for a month?” he said.

“Does he ever pay for anything?”

Zay finished off his Coke. “Nope. That’s one of his special talents.”

I pulled out the cash, left it and the ticket propped next to the condiment basket. I stood. “Ready?”

For a second, just the briefest of moments, a wave of dizziness hit me. The entire building felt like it shuddered, like a liquid earthquake rumbled far beneath my feet, and echoed up my body and rolled through my head.

“Allie?”

I rubbed at my temple and the sudden headache. “Headache.” But it couldn’t be from magic use.

The last time I’d used magic was two weeks ago. A Hounding job that had nothing to do with the police or Detective Stotts. I had tracked back a spell for a lady in my building to make sure no one was putting Attraction on her car. Turned out no one was. The parking tickets and the speeding and seat belt violations were all nonmagical and all her.

Maybe this was just a regular headache? Regular people did get regular headaches. I was regular people too.

Zay put his hand on my arm and I walked with him out the door. The headache hung on despite the cool air. By the time we were halfway across the parking lot, the pain was less, and I felt stable on my feet. Normal.

Zay’s hand was still on my arm. I didn’t have to concentrate to feel his concern.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Just a little dizzy. It’s gone.”

He didn’t let go of me until we were next to his car, which he unlocked. “Maybe you should stop wearing the void stone.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “Can it make me dizzy? Give me headaches?”

He shrugged. “No one holds magic in their body like you do. It’s hard to know what the long-term effects are.” He paused, looked at me over the top of the car. Probably saw my panic as I scrambled to get the necklace off.

“It won’t bite,” he said.

“Right.” Visions of the stone sucking magic out of me like a leech filled my mind. “Nothing about you secret magic users or your secret magic toys is dangerous.”

I tugged the length of leather off over my head and held it out in front of me like I had a snake by the head. The void stone swung in the breeze, a dark heart wrapped in copper and silver wire like fire and moonlight, glass beads flashing like stars.

Zay grinned. “Want me to tie it in a knot or kill it and put it in the trunk?”

“Shut up.” I ducked into the car and plunked the thing down into the empty cup holder.

Magic stirred in me, a tingling warmth that grew hot, flushing across my skin, then sinking back down, warming my bones and filling me. It moved within me with promise, with desire. I closed my eyes, wanting to lose myself to it. Wanting to use magic in every way I could.

But that would be bad. I had enough magic inside me, I could burn down a city.

And I didn’t want to do that. I liked the city.

I took a deep breath and worked on letting the magic move through me without me touching it. I am a river and magic is the water. It pours through me, but it does not change me. I closed my eyes and repeated that litany until the magic backed off and settled like a layer of lead over my bones.

Several minutes had passed. Zay had already started the engine and was heading toward Maeve’s through traffic that was starting to thicken up for pre-rush hour. It was still light out, and a misty rain ticked against the windshield and roof. Other than the rub of the windshield wipers and the hum of the engine, it was quiet in the car.

I knew Zay could Ground me to help me keep the magic at controllable levels and could ease the pain I carried from using magic. But ever since we’d stepped into each other’s minds, we’d tried not to use magic together.

Grounding was extremely difficult and carried twice the pain for the user-in this case, Zay-as other spells did. It was one of the spells I’d never been good at.

No, let me be blunt: I sucked at Grounding. Always had, and it looked like I always would.

Zay could Ground like he was strolling through daisies.

It would be easy to ask him to Ground me, but I had to do this, learn to quiet the magic inside me on my own.

“Hint?” I finally asked.

“You learned it with Victor.”

Okay, Victor was Zay’s boss. Head of the Closers, who followed the magic discipline of Faith. Tall, elegant older man. Cultured, intelligent, and ruthless. He had a sort of calm and deliberation about him that I liked. It was a little like Zayvion’s Zen mode, and I wondered if Zay picked up that particular habit from him.

I may not fully trust Victor-issues; I have them-but other than Maeve, who taught Blood magic, he was my next-favorite teacher despite the fact that he taught Faith magic.

Faith magic was the same magic Dr. Frank Gordon had used to dig up my dad and try to kill me. Well, Frank had used a lot of disciplines, Faith, Life, Death, Blood. He’d probably used everything he could to try to open the gates between life and death. Wanted to control dark magic. Sacrificed a few innocent girls to do it.

I did not regret that he was dead.

“Allie.”

Oh, right. I was supposed to be dealing with the magic that was trying to burn its way out of me.

Victor. What had he taught me? That magic was a river, a constant flow. But it could be thought of as shape and form too. As glyphs. And every glyph had a beginning and an end. Every glyph had break points, corners, places where you could block and stop magic.

So what I needed to do was think of the magic in me as a glyph, find a corner, a break point where it flowed through me, and block it.

Good thing using magic was so easy.

Not.

I imagined myself as a river. Magic flowed up through my feet, filled the pool I held inside me-the small magic I was born with that was now a raging sea-and then magic poured out, too slowly, through my fingertip and into the ground again.

Where was there a break in that?

“Another hint?” I asked.

Zayvion placed his hand high up on my thigh, his long fingers curving downward. I sighed as cool mint washed along all the rivulets and pathways magic had torched through me. Swallowed and tasted mint on the back of my throat, and breathed deep to make room for Zayvion to tap into the magic I carried. I wanted to close my eyes and savor the feel of him within me. I licked my lips, shifted in my seat a little, and drew my fingertips up the back of his hand.

“Hey,” I said all breathy-like.

“Hey. Are you going to pay attention to what I’m doing?” he asked.

Spoilsport.

I rolled my head to one side and looked at him. I didn’t draw Sight. Using magic right now was sort of the opposite of what I was trying to do.

Still, there was that whole soul-to-soul thing between Zayvion and me. When we touched, I could sense him. I concentrated on that, felt what he was doing.

Sweet hells, the man put the multi in multitasking.

He held himself in a very disciplined, meditative frame of mind. He had sort of opened himself up, a lot like how I breathe deeply to let magic move through me.

But instead of just making space for magic inside him, he had made a channel.

He had drawn a glyph, mentally. The glyph of Grounding wrapped through him like cold steel cables. He concentrated on feeding magic into it. I’d never seen this spell worked on a purely mental level.

Probably because I’d never seen any spell worked on a purely mental level.

Zayvion Jones kicked magical ass. I wondered if even my father, who was one of the most powerful magic users I’d ever known, was as strong as Zay.

“Wow,” I breathed.

That got a small smile out of him. His eyes squinted, laugh lines edging the corners.

“Thank you. Can you see how it’s channeled?”

“Other than magnificently?”

We stopped at a red light. He looked over at me. “Other than that, yes.”

I stared into his eyes, at the gold burning hot and deep there. All that did was make me want to touch him, kiss him, pour so much magic into him he’d be begging me for mercy.

Magic rolled in me, deep in my stomach, and I worked hard not to moan with the need to have him.

“You are not winning,” he noted.

“No kidding,” I gasped. Right. The idea here was to not give in to magic. Or, apparently, my need for Zay.

I pressed my fingers against my eyes. My right fingers were hot, and my left were cold, positive and negative from the magic pouring through me. I took a second to breathe in again and clear my mind.

When I looked again at Zayvion, he was paying attention to the road, taking us across the bridge, calm, unconcerned. And he was Grounding like mad on the inside.

All I had to do was find a way to slow magic pouring into me. That meant a glyph that would track back and forth at the beginning, loop and loop so that magic had a long way to travel before it could add to the pool I already carried. I could do that.

I thought.

“Victor said I could use any of the spells that slow magic, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” I didn’t care how good Zayvion was-I was absolutely certain I could not just mentally draw a glyph and expect it would work. I used my right hand and traced a liquid, curvy glyph for Linger in front of me. These kinds of spells were used inside stores, restaurants, and salons. They gave off a comfortable, relaxed feeling. If they were particularly well drawn, they made shoulders drop, smiles come out, and people spend way more money and time in their vicinity.

I pinched the glyph between thumbs and two fingers of both my right and left hands. Instead of pouring magic into it, I was going to push the spell into me, so the magic in me would be forced to follow it.

I had no frickin’ clue how to do that.

“Uh,” I started.

“You can do it.”

“A little help?”

“I’m watching.”

“I wanted help, not an audience.”

He just gave me a look.

Okay, fine. I recited my go-to mantra, the “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack” jingle, to clear my mind. Then I pulled the glyph into me, toward my chest, concentrating on it wrapping around the flow of magic, the speed of magic, the pressure of magic.

My heart stuttered. Whoa. Not good. I concentrated harder on the spell. Magic, not heart. Find the magic. Just the magic. I released the spell. It sank like a rock toward my feet, then settled beneath my feet and pressed against my arches and heels. It rested there like a layer of sand and stone and soil, soaking up the magic, filtering it, and giving it a place to stretch out before it trickled up into me at a much slower pace.

My head cleared. I broke out in a sweat.

“Holy crap. Good?” I asked Zay.

He nodded. “Not how I would have done it, but effective. So yes. Good. You have control?”

Oh, right. That was the other half of this deal. I cleared my mind again, calmed my thoughts, and pressed back on the magic rolling within me. Magic fluttered, pressed once again, tempting me to use it, to fall to its siren call.

Nope. La, la, la. Not listening.

Magic quieted.

“Very nice,” Zayvion murmured. “I’m impressed.” He drew his fingers slowly up my thigh, then away, leaving the lingering cool warmth of mint and his touch behind.

“Are you still dizzy?” he asked.

“No. I feel pretty good.”

Oh, screw it. I felt powerful. Proud. That had been a fine little piece of magic using I’d just done. Yes, I’d probably pay for it with a walloping headache, but right now, I didn’t care. “I’d feel even better with a hell-of-a-job kiss.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be? One elementary-level spell and you get naked?”

“First, that was not elementary level. High school at the very least. Second, tell me you don’t like the idea of me being naked.”

“How about I tell you I don’t like the idea of driving off the road. Which means your clothes stay on you.” He stopped at a light, then added, “For now.”

“Chicken.”

He grinned. Zay had a good profile, a strong, wide nose, high cheekbones, and a slant to his eyes that I thought was incredibly sexy, and that spoke to his mixed heritage. Under that ratty coat and jeans was a very fine, very fit body.

But he was also a man full of secrets. Even though we’d been officially dating for a couple months now, I still hadn’t gotten much about his past out of him.

I didn’t even know where he’d grown up.

“Did you do time with Shame in juvie?” I asked.

“That’s what you were thinking about when magic was trying to burn you up?”

“No, it’s what I’m thinking about now.”

“Shame?”

“Your past.”

“Hmm.”

We were on the other side of the bridge and making our way southeast along the Washington side of the Columbia River. The sun pushed through cumulus clouds on their way to the Cascade Range, where rain would cover the mountains in snow and keep the skiers happy.

“Well?”

“I never got in trouble with the law when I was young.”

“So why was Detective Payne staring at you?”

He glanced over at me, then back out at the road.

He drove for a while, silent. I’d learned to give him his space. I didn’t know if it was life or if it was just second nature to him, but he was the most private person I’d ever met. I didn’t even know if he had a middle name.

“She helped me out once.”

I waited. I didn’t want to, but I did it. Go, me.

“I was twelve. Fostered to a family that. .” He closed his mouth, inhaled through his nose. “She caught me digging in Dumpsters for food. Made me give her my foster parents’ names and address. Things got better after that.”

“Is she part of the Authority?”

“No.” He paused again. “The past is the past, Allie,” he said. “I’d rather not go over it.”

I just shook my head, but didn’t push him. Strange. There was so much of my past that I’d lost-memories magic had taken away from me-moments I wished I could have back. It was odd to hear someone choose not to remember. Maybe I’d been that way once too. It was hard to say. Magic had done a lot of damage to my life. Maybe it had done a lot of repair to Zayvion’s.

We made it to Maeve’s and pulled into the gravel parking lot between the inn and the scrap-metal collection site beside it. Both buildings were tucked off the main road, and close enough to the Columbia that I could smell the algae and green off the river as I stepped out of the car.

The inn used to be an old train-station boardinghouse and restaurant. The track didn’t run past here anymore, but the building remained much as it was when it had been built. Fresh white paint, and glittering rows of uniform windows, gave the Feile San Fhomher a welcoming, homey feel.

Zay stood on the other side of the car, silent. I knew why. Something was wrong here.

There was an immense sense of emptiness, as if something huge, solid, and familiar had been removed.

It took me a second; then I finally placed what was missing: the well. I couldn’t even catch a scent of the magic I knew roiled beneath the ground.

“Do you not feel that?” I asked.

Zayvion nodded, then walked silently across the gravel to me. He looked calm, but when I touched his wrist, I could feel the heightened awareness of his senses. He was calm. He was also ready for a fight.

I took a second to check our surroundings. The parking lot was about half full and the rush of cars over the bridge and freeway hummed in the distance. The river on the other side of a thin line of trees gave off that clean, rich green scent, and far off, I heard either a boat horn or a factory whistle.

It seemed like a normal evening.

And it most certainly was not.

“The well,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily.

He placed one hand on the side of my face, the other on my hip, and pulled me close. I pressed against him, wrapped one arm around his back, the other up around his neck.

His mind was obviously not on the well. Neither was mine.

He tipped my face up, and bent to me. His lips were soft, catching at my lower lip, pressing, then opening, inviting. His tongue dipped sweetly at the corner of my mouth, then drew into the heat of my mouth. Electric tingles warmed me, and made my toes curl. I pressed tighter against him and kissed him back, taking my time, sharing a long, lingering kiss that made me want more.

He finally pulled away, reluctant, then rested his lips against my ear. “Hell of a job,” he murmured.

I leaned into him, my cheek against his chest, and smiled. I loved a man with good follow-up.

We pulled apart. Holding hands, we crossed the parking lot and walked up the steps to the covered porch that wrapped the building. Zay pulled the door open and we stepped inside.

The delicious sweet, buttery smell of pies baking, and something savory, maybe sausage, greeted us. Even though I’d just had lunch, my mouth watered, and that had nothing to do with magic. Maeve knew how to cook.

Light poured down from the high-vaulted ceilings, making the large dining room feel even bigger than it was. The tables to the left were filled with the early dinner crowd. I knew the arched doorway beyond them led to private rooms, and the well-warded study where Maeve tutored me.

Upstairs were bedrooms, and down in the basement, a grand ballroom with the well pulsing just beneath its marble floors.

Here on the main floor, the girls behind the lunch counter to the right of the room were brewing coffee and plating pies.

“Coffee?” Zayvion asked.

“Sure.” I didn’t know if we had time, but I wasn’t one to go into any situation undercaffeinated.

He strolled off toward the lunch counter and I unzipped my hoodie, scanning the room for Shame or Maeve.

Maeve strode through the arched door to the left. Her red hair was pulled up in a loose bun, ringlets touched with gray falling around her face. She wore a dark green blouse, a tan skirt, and a pair of riding boots, all of which gave her the look of a woman who knew how to use a whip. Which, coincidentally, she did.

She carried a stack of menus in her arms, and gave me a smile and a nod as she walked my way.

“Allie. It’s good to see you. Tea?”

“Coffee, thanks. Zay’s getting it. How are you?”

“Busy. Beautiful weather, today. Walk with me a minute?”

“Sure.” I matched her stride and crossed the room to the lunch counter, where she handed the menus to one of the girls there.

“I have a job you might be interested in,” she said. “Hello, Zayvion.”

“Mrs. Flynn.” He handed me a cup of coffee. No, more than coffee. A latte, which the girls had poured to leave the image of a four-leaf clover in the foam.

Very nice.

“Why don’t you come along, Zayvion?”

It wasn’t really a request. We both knew that. Still, to any outsider, it sounded like chitchat between her son’s best friend and his girlfriend, who Hounded for a living.

We strolled along and Maeve took the time to say hello to a few people at tables and ask them if they were enjoying their meals. I knew those people weren’t a part of the Authority. Despite being involved with supersecret magic users, Maeve was also a successful restaurateur.

She led us through the arched doorway, down the hallway a bit, and into the first sitting room. It was decorated in velvets, wood, and brass, love seats and chairs huddled to make comfortable conversation nooks, heavy curtains on the windows giving the room a deep sense of privacy.

She held the door open as we walked through, and then locked it behind us. With one quick wave of her hand, she cast a ward and activated the Mute spell worked into the wallpaper.

“Thank you both for coming.” She gestured to the seats, and we sat. “Shamus did talk to you?”

“He didn’t tell us much,” I said. “There’s a storm coming, Sedra has called other people from Seattle, and there’s something wrong with the wells.”

She brushed a tendril of hair back up toward the bun, even though it just fell back down to her face. “There will be a meeting tonight among the members of the Authority. To exchange information. To plan for the storm.”

Zay, lounging on a love seat, took a drink of his coffee. I could feel every muscle in his body ratchet tighter and tighter as Maeve spoke.

She walked over to an empty chair and sat. She looked tired. Worried.

“The storm is still a day or two off. At least we think so.”

I opened my mouth and she held up one finger to tell me to shut up. I didn’t know what it was with her and her fingers. She had that motherly no-bullshit way of using her hands as a second communication device and I always fell for it.

I drank my coffee and made a note to ignore her fingers.

“We can’t track them like weather fronts,” she said. “Wild storms are sorely underresearched. One theory is that wild-magic storms are a combination of how the magic in the earth is being accessed and released into the world, and how magic, all disciplines, dark and light, is being used. When things swing too far out of neutral, magic can rise and gather into a storm front-and ride upon a real weather front.

“The other theory is that the magic is wild to begin with, a mix of dark and light that causes nothing but chaos and destruction when it is used.

“You can imagine it has been difficult to test either theory on a large scale in secret. In any case, we do believe a wild storm is coming our way.”

“The gate Mikhail opened?” Zay asked quietly.

“That could be it. There are more things happening in the world that could have accumulated or triggered to set it off.”

“Wait,” I said. “So magic is a ticking time bomb and as soon as someone shakes the nitrogen a little too hard, or mixes in the wrong elements, we get explosions?”

She frowned. “No. It’s a combination of factors. Magic on its own is a part of the natural world. No more destructive than wind, rain, and fire.”

Which was like saying no more destructive than hurricane, flood, and inferno. Spiffy.

“We’ll go over how to handle the storm at the meeting tonight,” she continued. “I want you both there. And Zayvion, if you see Shame, make sure he comes.”

Zay nodded. “I’ll get him there.”

She brushed her hair back again. “Now, what I most needed to talk to you about, Allie, is the well. I want you to look at it. To tell me what you see in the magic there.”

“You want me to Hound the well? Really? For illegal magic use? You people don’t even recognize the law on magic use, so I’m sure you’re not using it illegally.”

She gave me a steely gaze and I wiped the innocent look off my face.

Note to self. Do not be a wiseass when your Blood magic teacher is stressed-out.

“Right. I can Hound the well,” I said. “Not a problem.”

“Zayvion, I’d like you to be there too, please,” she said.

He rubbed his palms across his jeans and stood.

I finished off my coffee and left the empty cup on the table.

Maeve led us down a long hallway to a set of stairs that jagged down and down.

I’d been in the lower level of the inn just once before. When I’d had to stand in front of members of the Authority and fight for my life. I hadn’t expected to get out of it with my memories or magic intact.

I wanted to take Zay’s hand and hold on like a little girl as we descended the stairs, but I refused to. There was nothing down here I couldn’t handle on my own. I’d already proved that.

The last flight of stairs spilled out into a room that looked like it should be the receiving room of a castle, a ballroom, a grand theater for a grand ceremony, instead of the basement of a railroad boardinghouse.

The floor was tiled with marble that washed from the purest white through grays, then sank into the deepest black. The ceiling rose up two stories, huge pillars spreading out at the ceiling into wings that arched up to meet in the center. Glyphs shaped and carved the pillars, the arch of wings, the ceiling, and the walls. Magic drawn in lead, glass, iron-a powerful network of holding spells, warding spells, most I still didn’t know-surrounded the room and the well that pulsed like the earth’s heart beneath the marble floor, deep underground.

There was one thing out of place since I’d last been here. A cage stood in one corner of the room. Built of steel, four-sided, it looked mobile and was placed over the purest white marble tiles.

In that cage was a beast of a man, a nightmare creature caught between life and death. Greyson.

Chills rolled up my spine and I could not take my eyes off the cage, nor the man who was still too much beast within it. Covered by a blanket, he hunched in the corner of the cage, his too-long arms crossed over bent knees, his mouth resting against his forearms so that only his eyes, animal yellow, glowed from within the shadow of the blanket.

I smelled his magic, twisted, dark, burnt-blackberry stench, mixed with the old wax and polish perfume of wood that had been cleaned for centuries. And I smelled blood.

Greyson had a good nose too. He turned his head, just enough to show a flash of fang digging into his arm and leaving a trickle of blood behind.

Something in my head flickered, rattled, and scratched behind my eyes.

I knew the feel of that. Even though I hadn’t felt it for two months. It was my dad. Then my father’s voice, clear as if he were standing next to Greyson’s cage instead of in my head, whispered, Come to me.