Bloody Acquisitions (Fred Book 3) (15 page)

“It’s a smart system,” I said, handing her back the stack of pages. “Though a bit inconvenient for his kids. Did he really think they were going to snatch everything up before it could be divided?”

“From the way Ainsley and Zane describe it, I get the feeling it was more concern about external threats,” Asha replied. “In case the house didn’t give it away, the Clovers are worth a lot of money. Keeping everything locked up until it has a rightful owner was Herbram’s way of making sure nothing got lost, or taken, in the handover. You can add magic and vampires, but good old corporate espionage is still the same all over.”

“Well, the old clients didn’t challenge for blood when they got robbed,” I pointed out.

“See, that statement is how I know you were in the office too much. If you’d been out schmoozing, you’d know just how many blood oaths people were swearing.” Asha tucked the will back under her file of financial records and pulled a ledger forward. “I’ve actually been surprised by how mundane a lot of my work is. Aside from almost every parahuman species having their own treaties, laws, and exceptions, there’s really no difference from working with humans.”

“Except for the occasional outburst of chaos and danger,” I said.

“Do you get a lot of that? My closest call was in Charlotte Manor, and once when I mixed up my dates for a meeting with a weretiger. She thought I was a trespasser, until she noticed the briefcase.”

“Give it time; soon, you’ll build up quite the stock of stories. Seems to come with the territory,” I told her.

Asha’s mouth was open to reply, but her words were lost as the sound of a thunderclap tore through the room, shaking everything around us like a three-second earthquake. It was so loud that it woke Bubba, who tried to sit up, got confused, and tumbled to the floor. Even Amy seemed to shake off her lingering stupor, turning her vacant gaze from the ceiling to a nearby window. I followed her eyes, looking out to see a red glow flickering through the glass.

Moving carefully, lest another blast shake the room, I carefully peered out to see what was causing the light show. I thought maybe one of the drunken guests had found a propane tank to set off, creating the explosion and setting the yard on fire. What met my eyes was not panicking guests and a blazing yard, however. The red glow was actually coming from the sky, which seemed too close for comfort, slicing down and parting the driveway less than a quarter of the way out, forming an opaque red wall that carried on in every visible direction.

What was more worrying was that everyone seemed to have vanished. No wait staff, no partygoers, no valets. Just empty buffet tables and glasses of fizzing champagne slowly going flat. Bubba, Asha, and Amy crowded around me as we took in the scene, trying to figure out exactly what had happened. From a few inches away, I heard Asha mutter darkly under her breath.

“You just had to go and tempt fate, didn’t you, Fred?”

4.

Amy pulled out a small bottle with several symbols etched on the side, popped the top, and took a long gulp. When she finished, the shapeless blobs around her eyes dissolved, although she had grown a small set of horns just below her hairline. I honestly couldn’t have cared less about the new forehead accessories; all that mattered to me was that our resident alchemist was visibly more focused than before. As the only one of us who even remotely understood magic, we were all waiting for her to shed some light on what had just happened.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Amy said, after looking at the scene with fresh focus. “I have no idea what the hell that is.”

“I thought you were a mage.” Asha’s tone was strained; she was understandably a bit on edge given the circumstances.

“I’m an alchemist. That’s like asking a dermatologist to fill in for an advanced brain surgeon. Sure, they’re both doctors, but they’ve got specialties that the other wouldn’t be as educated in, and this is some of high-level enchanter shit.” Amy pointed to the red wall, as if we weren’t already staring at it. “Best guess, this thing is a giant bubble that split us off into a pocket dimension.”

“Seems like a big ass pocket,” Bubba rumbled, having finally wiped the last of the sleep from his eyes.

“Just a phrase. It means we’re not quite in the real world at the moment, sort of compacted into a magical space that’s adjacent to it. I can explain if you really want me to, but the basic theory takes five heavy books and half a day to cover,” Amy offered.

“We’ll take your word for it.” I scanned the area outside, still searching for any signs of life. “The bigger questions are: how did we get here, where is everyone, and what do we do to get home?”

“Look!” Asha grabbed my arm and pulled me a few inches over, shifting my perspective so that I caught sight of a suit-wearing figure just barely visible from our vantage point. Whoever they were, I could see them making broad gestures with their hands, either talking in an animated manner or perhaps casting a spell.

“Seems like we’ve got someone to question,” Bubba said.

There was no discussion of the issue. He was right, and there was no getting around that. We needed to figure out what was happening, and there was at least a chance that the person down there might know. Amy fiddled with the lock, flinging the doors open to reveal an empty hallway. No guards, no sounds of guests from downstairs; just a whole lot more nothing, exactly like the lawn. Moving swiftly, but with our eyes peeled for any potential danger, we made our way down the stairs.

“Holy crap.” Asha’s voice was a whisper as she veered away from the group. We’d just hit the bottom floor, and while the rest of us were occupied with getting outside, something else had caught the lawyer’s eye. It didn’t take long to notice what, either. Directly before her, hovering in mid-air, was a glass filled halfway with scotch. A few feet away was a dish piled high with large shrimp, right next to a floating glass of wine.

All around us, bits of dishware and cutlery hung about, supported by some invisible force. Bubba stuck a finger in a flute of champagne and gave it a quick swirl, watching the bubbles fizz in reaction to his touch. Then he took hold of the glass and tried to move it. Not so much as even a budge, and I knew well that Bubba’s strength was nothing to turn a nose up at.

“Are these what the guests were holding?” Asha asked, picking up a shrimp and turning it around in her hand before dropping it to the floor. The crustacean tumbled unimpeded, hitting the fine marble below us with a moist squish.

“Must be,” I agreed. “But why just the glasses and dishes? If it’s what they were holding, there was bound to be other stuff.”

“These are part of the mansion.” Amy’s head was tilted backward, staring up at the underside of a plate. “They all bear the Clover crest. Whatever happened, it kept the mansion, and every piece of property inside, intact.”

“Somehow, I think that’s even creepier.” Asha shuddered and walked back over to us. With the mystery of the floating dishware solved, or as solved as it was likely to be, we continued on, heading down the long hallway and out into the night air.

The four of us stepped into an argument, but it took me several seconds to realize that a fight was even happening, I was so distracted by the feeling of the air around me. It was completely still, unnaturally so, and a part of my more primal mind reeled at the incongruity. Outside was meant to be alive, the air always moving, slight currents bringing in new smells and feelings. None of that was here, though. This air was flat. Empty.

Dead.

“Oh, fuck you, it’s my fault! Was I supposed to just let you hex me?” The voice snapped me out of my fixation with the air, turning my attention to the pair of people bickering nearby. One I knew right away—the large staff and green robes made Ainsley unmistakable, even if her back was turned to us. The other person was the one wearing the suit that I’d seen from the window. Without introduction, I instantly knew that this would be Zane, the other Clover sibling. He and Ainsley were nearly identical, only a few small facial differences between them, despite being of different genders. If that weren’t enough, though, I likely could have pieced it together from the foot-long wooden wand glowing a soft blue in his hand, runes just like the ones in Ainsley’s staff scrawled across it.

“If you were half-decent, you’d have taken the spell. Stars know you deserve worse. Do you have any idea what I walked in on your
guests
doing in the restroom?” Ainsley yelled, waving her staff around as though she were debating taking it to her brother’s head, which actually seemed quite in the realm of possibility from how heated things were.

“No, and I don’t care. It’s a party! That’s why I pay people to clean up when these things are over.”

“This is our home, you bastard, the Clover estate. Do you have no regard for the generations of our family that spent their lives in this mansion? What I am even asking, we both know the answer is no,” Ainsley spat.

“Kiss my ass with the Clover estate shit. It’s just a house! Quit trying to memorialize everything like it’s so damned precious. Dad’s gone; turning the home into a shrine won’t bring him back!” Zane threw his hands about as he talked, which explained the erratic gestures I’d noticed from the window.

Ainsley opened and closed her mouth several times, but no words were coming out. I did notice that her grip on the staff had grown tighter, though, and suddenly, the inadvertent silence seemed like a good place to announce ourselves, before there was only one conscious mage to talk to.

“Excuse us, but I’m hoping you two have some idea of what’s going on?” I tried to keep my voice calm and easygoing, but both of the Clover siblings easily jumped half a foot off the ground at the sound of my words. They spun around, staff and wand leveled at our group, before Ainsley finally seemed to recognize us.

“What . . . Fred? How did you four get here?” She threw a look to Zane, who merely shrugged, their feud momentarily forgotten amidst the mystery of our appearance.

“Sort of what we were hoping you could tell us,” Asha replied. “We were up in the study, working on the will, when there was a loud boom and suddenly, this red bubble is everywhere and we’re in some sort of purse dimension.”

“Pocket dimension,” Amy, Zane, and Ainsley all corrected simultaneously.

“
Whatever
,” Asha snapped. “Point is, we’re here, there are plates and glasses floating around, and it’s not a great work environment. Can you fix this?”

While I didn’t know much about the history between Ainsley and Zane, or their personalities, I easily recognized the sheepish, guilty look that flashed between them at Asha’s question. We weren’t going to like the answer, and they were probably going to be embarrassed by it.

“Here’s the issue,” Zane said, taking over the conversation with a smooth delicacy that I immediately envied. “This whole thing was our doing, sort of, but in a much bigger way, it’s the work of our father. Raising a pair of mages in the city can be troublesome, especially twins, since, like all kids, we would quarrel. And since he was the one who enchanted our staff and wand respectively, he added a little something extra. Every time spells from our tools clashed, the magical implements would trigger a spell that stuck us in our own pocket dimension. He did it partly to make sure we couldn’t go around using our magic in front of humans before we understood the consequences, but also as a punishment. This is the equivalent of our time-out room, and my dear sister activated it when she came storming downstairs in a tizzy and tried to launch a hex at me.”

“That ain’t much of an explanation on why we got dragged along,” Bubba said.

“Yeah, that I don’t know about,” Zane admitted. “Usually, the only things that come with us are our tools and possessions. Dad could walk in and out, since he created it, but he was the only one.”

“I’ve got a theory.” Ainsley stepped forward, though I noticed she kept several feet between herself and Zane at all times. “They were locked in the study when you callously blocked a spell you deserved and trapped us here. Father placed more than a tome’s worth of enchantments and wards on that room, so it’s possible that one of those spells tethered everything in it to our location, people included.”

“It’s as good a bet as any,” Zane agreed. “Dad loved to test new spells around the house. I wouldn’t put it past him to have thrown a pointless one on the study and forget about it.”

“He did
not
cast pointless spells.” Ainsley whirled around on Zane, a new head of steam already building for a fresh fight. But it was Amy, thankfully, who stepped forward and retook control of the situation.

“Look, we get that you two have shit to work out, and that’s great, but maybe we could focus on how to get out of your time-out space? I’m pretty sure the party guests have noticed that all their plates vanished, and eventually, someone will realize that the homeowner is gone, too.”

“No, Dad made this place to keep us from exposing our magic,” Zane said. “Just like space, the time is compressed. We’d have to spend months here before any measurable time slipped by on the outside.”

“He’d leave us in the bubble for weeks sometimes,” Ainsley added. “Bringing by food and water if needed, but otherwise, we’d be on our own.”

“Wow, and I thought my dad was strict,” Asha muttered.

“To the old man’s credit, we could get out anytime we wanted to.” Zane tilted his head toward Ainsley and rolled his eyes. “All we ever had to do was apologize to each other. Since we always went in here for fighting, he didn’t let us out until we made up. But someone never learned to lie well enough to sell him on the fake ones, so it took much longer than needed.”