Cast Into Darkness (17 page)

She opened the binder Grayson had given her. He’d assigned her the tracings of Fire, Light, Lightning, Cloak, and Counterspell. Hmm…Grayson hadn’t assigned her any books that covered the First Era—the era of the stone. They might have been helpful. But it wasn’t like she didn’t have enough to study.

She sighed. Light seemed the easiest, so she started with that. When she thought she had Light’s square symbol down, she went on to Fire, but she kept seeing the image of her father tumbling back into the hallway, his chest burning. Shaking, she slammed the binder shut.

Footsteps sounded outside her open door. Hayley walked by.

“Hey. Got a minute?” Kate said.

Hayley stopped, her face darkening. “Not really. I—”

“What’s up?”

Hayley came inside and shut the door. “Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.” Her face had blotches of red across her cheeks, as if she’d been crying.

“Brian? I understand that.” She forced back the tears that welled up at the thought of him.

“Yeah. It’s Brian. We were going to hold a wake for him, a little memorial tomorrow, just his friends. Nothing official. But now I can’t go because Victor’s got his panties in a twist about your safety.”

Another caster get-together, this one to mourn. Another part of Brian’s world she’d never been invited into. She barely knew his friends’ names. And they knew so little of her that they hadn’t even bothered to invite her to her own brother’s wake.

She bit her lip until the anger cooled. “Yeah, sorry about Victor’s temper tantrum. I—”

“Save it. What do you want?”

Kate hesitated, then plunged on. “Any tips you can give me on memorizing these spells? I’m kind of…”

“Lost? Well, yeah. You have a lot of catching up to do.”

“That’s not exactly my fault.”

Hayley huffed out a breath, then sat on Kate’s bed. “I guess not.” She picked up the spellbook and flipped through it. Then put it down and gave Kate a sideways glance. “So…there’s a trick to memorizing spells. Mnemonics.”

“You can use mnemonics for spells?”

Hayley rolled her eyes. “My dad would get around to telling you this after you thrashed around on your own for a day or two. You know how he teaches. But this is how it works. For each spell there’s a rhyme that helps you memorize the symbol or the chant. You know, like how the Fire spell has four points, one at the each of the cardinal directions, north, east, south, and west, but you have to tap the east point again before you go to the west? So all you have to remember is No Easy Spell Ever Works.”

And Grayson had left her to struggle with them on her own. The anger she’d pushed down a moment ago raged back to redden her face.

“I’ll dig up my old notes and bring them by later tonight. Got nothing else to do.” Hayley got up and headed to the door.

An idea popped into Kate’s head. Maybe she and Hayley could help each other.

“Wait. What if there was a way you could go to that…get-together of yours?”

Hayley turned around. “How?”

Kate took a deep breath. “Invite me.” Before Hayley said anything, Kate rushed on, “I won’t stay and cramp your style. I promise. But I think I can convince my dad to let us both go.” After all, he’d told her to get to know more casters.

Hayley crossed her arms and gave a little snort. “No one knows you’re a caster. They don’t even know you. How do you think—”

“I told you, I’m not staying.”
The last thing I want is to stand in the corner all alone, listening to you and your friends weep over your good times with Brian.
“I have someplace else to be. I need you to cover for me. You do that, and I’ll get you permission to go to the memorial.”

“What’s so damned important that you’re willing to break Victor’s security lockdown to get it?”

Kris. The solidity of his chest as she lay her head on it, the feel of his fingers as they pushed her hair back from her face, the way he listened to her pour out her tears. She’d mourn for Brian in her own way. Dad didn’t have to know about it. “Not your problem. Do you want to go, or not?”

Hayley gave her a long look. “I’ll cover for you. But this better not come back to haunt me.”

“It won’t. My lips are sealed. And so are yours, right?”

Hayley nodded and slipped out the door.

Kate wore a
little black skirt, white silk shirt, and pearls and stood, mojito in hand, in the corner of a Georgetown apartment belonging to one of Brian’s friend’s.
So much for not really staying at Brian’s wake. It’s not like Victor gave me a choice—hovering over Hayley and me until she teleported us. I’m out of here the minute I can tear Hayley away.

Laughter and the tinkle of glasses echoed across the leather-upholstered living room. Music pounded over the stereo—something fast and European that Kate didn’t recognize.

A jar of silver talismans sat on the bar, half empty.

The partiers lounged across the plush furniture, their skin covered with reptilian scales, exotic furs, and the long, multi-colored feathers of birds Kate had only seen in the Washington Zoo, their eyes slitted and gleaming with a thousand jewel-like colors. Illusion spells. Their animal guises melded seamlessly with the elegant, inhuman design of the floating silk and tight leather garments they wore.

They dressed like this for a
wake
?

Hayley leaned against the wall sipping a margarita. A talisman gleamed from her blue leather corset. Her eyes angled up, like a cat’s, green with a single vertical slit. Black-and-white fur, like a snow leopard’s, flowed across her body, looking so soft and smooth that Kate wanted to reach out and pet it. Hayley’s tufted ear twitched.

One of Brian’s friends waxed on about some pointless fight Brian had been in a few months back with a Tanaka family girl on top of a skyscraper in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district.

“And then Bri yanked her levitation talisman and tossed her off the building. He let her fall for a few floors before he dove after her. When he hauled her up, she was shaking so hard she spilled everything: the location of the dead drop, their plans to discredit the Secretary of Defense. Before he let her leave he even got her phone number.”

Raucous laughter filled the room.

Brian would never… He just wouldn’t do something like that. Not the brother I know.

She turned to Hayley. “Brian never acted like that—” Kate swept her arm across the room “—at home.”

“We’re not at home.”

The host rushed up. His foxlike eyes lit up with interest, paired with a total lack of recognition as he scanned her. He pressed a talisman and a small bag into Kate’s hand, his imaginary claws feeling real as they scraped her palm.

“Here’s a little something to get things rolling. This may be a wake, but it’s still a party. You know what they say: live fast, die crazy.”

The sharp edges of the talisman bit into her hands. It looked cheap—probably made on the fly in someone’s garage. Nothing like the combat-grade talismans her uncle’s people crafted.

She handed the talisman back to the boy, along with the bag. A caster drug, she assumed, something black market like Chill or Smooth. Nothing she wanted to mess with. Ever.

“Thanks, but I can’t exactly use these. I’m Brian’s sister. Kate.” Might as well make sure someone knew she was here. Wasn’t that the point of an alibi?

The interest in his eyes died like the last light going out in an abandoned tunnel. “Oh.” His eyes shifted to Hayley. “Your cousin bring you?”

“Yes.”

“Well. Have a good time. There’s beer in the fridge.” He cleared his throat, then, “I’m very sorry for your loss.” He turned and walked back into the crowd.

“That went better than expected.” She glanced across the room, caught sight of Missy and Gordon, their skin covered in golden fur, all decked out like a pair of lions that had just rolled in a rich woman’s attic.
Better avoid them.
“Can you get me where I need to go?”

“Wait,” Hayley said. “You know Victor. He’s probably tracking you with something. What’s in your purse?”

Kate upended her small white bag on the end table next to her. Three pens, a tube of lipstick, spare change, her wallet, breath mints, her phone, keys, and her sunglasses.

“Anything you don’t recognize?” Hayley asked.

“Just one of the pens.” She relaxed her focus and engaged her magesight. “It’s glowing.”

“Leave it here,” Hayley said. “Victor can track it all he wants. We’ll pick it up on the way back.”

Kate looked at everything else with her magesight. Nothing else glowed. Did Victor really think playing nanny was going to work now that she could catch him at it?

No. He wouldn’t. So what else had he done?

She reached up to tug on her ears. Grayson had given her two silver earrings this afternoon. From the front they’d looked like silver beads set on simple posts, but from the back a subtle glow of amber had peeked out when she’d examined them in his office.

Grayson said they were talismans, like the one he’d used to heal her father, or the giant silver-and-topaz ball that told Victor she wasn’t still possessed. The earrings would conceal her caster aura from anyone with magesight, Grayson had said. He’d been stern with her: they would only work if she wore them. So she had to wear them all the time, even while she slept.

Seems like overkill, but whatever.

Now, it made her wonder. There were two earrings, and therefore, potentially two talismans. She wouldn’t put it past Grayson to weave another little spell in them, difficult as it might be. One to let Victor track her, or at least find her in an emergency.

A couple of days as a caster and already I’m as paranoid as a combat mage.

Hayley took her arm and guided her to the bathroom. As good a place for a secret teleport as any. “I’ll pick you up in two hours. Same place I leave you,” Hayley said.

A minute later, Hayley dropped her off in front of the Montauk Oceanview Inn. The blue, two-story motel loomed quietly against the ocean, only the soft glow of the old lamps illuminating its peeling paint in the growing darkness. The room whose number Kris had texted her earlier in the day was on the second floor, overlooking the ocean.

She walked past the little office and pushed the “up” button on the elevator. Kris had scored a prime room at the start of the summer tourist season—she had no idea how. The sea breeze wafted by, bringing the smell of salty air and old fish and a blast of coolness. She shivered. Given the situation, maybe going off by herself to meet someone, even her boyfriend, wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. She should’ve listened to Victor’s warnings. Gone home and stayed there. She stared up at the light shining from the second story when the elevator dinged its arrival.

Kristof poured himself
another glass of the pinot noir and checked his watch. Quarter past ten. Where was she? He couldn’t risk another text—either she’d be here or she wouldn’t. And if she didn’t come, then he’d need another plan. A much more dangerous one.

He scrutinized his illusion spell in the room’s long mirror. Every element of his Kris Stevens cover was set—the boy-next-door look had replaced the hard-edged operative.

The differences were subtle—first a change in hair color and length from his natural, wavy, light brown to a darker brown with a preppier cut. Then a softening of his sharp features, a lightening of his olive skin and deep-blue eyes. He added a slight rise to the bass pitch of his voice and a perfect native-Floridian accent. Most important, he created a total transformation in how he carried himself. Lightened his step. Relaxed his manner.

Kris Stevens had never had to fight for his life against opponents determined to kill him. He had never been tortured, beaten, stabbed in the back by his family, never sat huddled in a closet, convinced everyone around him was poisoning his food, and had never been left to die in some godforsaken armpit of a city by someone he’d thought he could trust.

Kris Stevens wasn’t a caster.

Kris Stevens’s biggest problems were getting a passing grade in Organic Chemistry, deciding where to apply for grad school, and worrying that his vintage Camaro wasn’t going to make it another month. The worst injury he’d ever suffered—a dog bite that caused the crescent-shaped scar on his hand. His only concern at the moment was keeping his girlfriend, Kate, from breaking up with him because of her controlling father.

No matter how much Kristof enjoyed being with Kate, he needed to remember one thing: he wasn’t Kris Stevens.

Kristof sank back in the armchair that formed a little seating group with its not-so-matching sofa in the room he’d rented and gazed out at the ocean. Getting into his cover identity was all very fine. It had served him well for getting Kate in a position of trust. She gave him whatever he needed now—information, cooperation. Well, almost everything. Not the stone.

He toyed with the keys he used as Kris that sat on a coffee table that had seen better days. His Florida conch shell was attached to his key ring by a short loop of leather. He’d retrieved it from Melina—modified to his specs. When he activated it remotely, it would punch a hole in the Hamiltons’ security net so that he could teleport in, get the stone, and teleport out. It would block their spells from reactivating until he’d left. But it would have to be inside the Hamiltons’ security grid to work. That’s where Kate came in.

He’d once told her the shell was his lucky charm.

Someone knocked on the door. Kate? He set down his wineglass and checked to make sure.
Yes.

She rushed into his arms as he pulled her inside and shut the door.

“I’m so sorry I’m late. I had to go to someplace else first to make it seem like I wasn’t coming here and—”

“Shh.” He held a finger gently against her lips, then let it trail around her pearls and down her neck. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”

He bent down and kissed her, and her mouth felt warm and tasted like lime and mint. It had only been a few days since they had last been together but he’d missed being with her, and he kissed her again, as if testing that strange idea. Her hair held its familiar rose scent and he buried his face in her neck, inhaling the subtle fragrance of her skin.