Bladed Magic (6 page)

“How did you get involved?” I asked.

“The witches. One of them knew me. They asked me if I’d help.” He moved closer to the board and lifted a hand, touched the face of one child. The girl had red hair, falling in soft waves to her shoulders. Her eyes were a softer green than Justin’s and she had a smile so sweet and gentle, it hurt my heart to look at her. “They offered me what they could afford, then they told me about White.”

He turned to look at me. “I’m not taking their money. I don’t need it. I make a decent living at this, but if you help me, I’ll give you a cut of what they offered.”

“I…” I stopped, unsure of what I was going to say. Finally, I shook my head. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“You do. You found Mandy. Colleen told me what happened. Her gut told her to call you and you went out, alone, and came back with her. Not even a year ago. And you’re what…twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

Twenty
. Jerking a shoulder in a shrug, I asked, “What does it matter?”

“It matters a lot. A kid with next to no training does exactly the right thing—that’s not luck. That’s magic.
Your
kind of magic.”

A chill raced down my spine as I turned my head to look at him. Was he guessing? Or did he know? “My kind of magic? What, stumbling into a nest of rats that could have killed me?”

He laughed. “You didn’t stumble. You hunted. You had a bow and you methodically weeded them out. Yes, you were outnumbered and you didn’t think the plan through, but considering how it
could
have turned out?” Eyes locked on mine, he came closer.

I felt frozen in place.

“Come on, Kitty-kitty,” he murmured and his voice all but hypnotized me. “You’re dying to do this. You know you are and so do I.”

“Yeah?” I had to fight myself from jerking away as he reached up and tugged on a lock of my hair. “How do you know that?”
Arrogant jack-ass.

“It’s all but written on your skin. And it’s in your eyes. This sort of thing is in your blood. It’s a need, just like it is for me.” He dipped his head and my heart lurched, then started to race as he murmured in my ear, “You can’t tell me you’re not going crazy standing behind that bar day after day after day. You need to do more. And you know it.”

The
more
Justin expected of me wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

Granted, I didn’t know
what
I expected, but this wasn’t it.

We stood in front of a place that made my skin crawl. It also made me want to puke.

This
was how he expected me to help?

The house smelled of blood, of death, of painful sex and evil.

I’d been exposed to this before and I’d spent the past nine months trying to forget about it. The months since I’d gone looking for Mandy down in the tunnels below East Orlando might as well not have happened, though, because it was all just as clear, just as vivid.

Except this was worse. Somehow. This was worse.

Mandy had willingly gone to the rats. She’d been sixteen and stupid and sick and desperate for a chance at life. She hadn’t realized that the only thing the bite would do would hasten her death along. She’d still gone willingly.

What I smelled here was fear. So cloying and thick, I didn’t think I’d ever get the stink of it off my skin. And under it all, innocence.

Children.

They’d just been children.

“He brought them here, didn’t he?” I asked. My voice was scratchy, a bare whisper of what it should be.

When Justin didn’t answer me, I turned my head and looked at him.

He wasn’t looking at the house. He was staring at me, so intently, it left me unsettled. The green of his eyes glowed. Spinning on my heel, I closed the distance between us. He stood a good eight inches taller than me. I was all of five feet two. Plenty of people towered over me and under most circumstances, it left me feeling intimidated. Just then, I didn’t care. Reaching out, I snagged the collar of his jacket and jerked him down. His eyes widened. Snarling into his face, I demanded, “Did he bring them here?”

He closed his hand over my wrist. But he didn’t pry me away. I felt the warm pulse of magic against my skin. It was a startling sensation. Startling, but not unpleasant, exactly. Just…odd.

Then, the weirdness of the moment increased and he murmured, “There you are. I knew you were in there.”

I blinked, the words strange enough that they threw me off-guard and blasted a hole through the anger I felt. My hand uncurled from his shirt and I backed up a step. “What?”

“I knew you were in there somewhere.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” I stared at him, uneasiness creeping through me. My hand started to heat. In the back of my mind, I heard a soothing murmur. My sword, whispering to me. 
All is well, child…all is well. I am here…

A weird refrain for her. I was more used to the words…
Call me, I am here
. She came to my call when I needed her, something I’d learned when I’d been trapped in the dirt, gasping for air and begging for an escape that I knew didn’t exist.

Except it had.

But she didn’t seem to think I needed her.

Maybe I didn’t. This peacock was annoying, but I didn’t think he was dangerous. Not to me at least.

A queer smile lit his eyes and he just continued to watch me. “I knew something was under all those nerves you wear like a second skin. You ready to come out and play or not?”

Play?

“You think this is a game?” I curled a hand into a fist. Surprise ricocheted through me as I realized something—I wanted to punch him. Arrogant, cocky piece of work.

“No. It’s not a game—it’s a hunt and you want in on it as much as I do.”

He was right. I knew it. Not that I’d tell
him
but he was right. And I still wanted to punch him.

Something of that must have shown on my face because he laughed. Quick as a wish, he reached out and cupped my chin. Something hot shivered through my veins as his thumb pressed against my lips. “Keep that thought, Kitty-kitty. You and I can go a round after we catch this son of a bitch.”

I curled my lip at him, jerking out of his reach. “I’m starting to think I’d rather not mess with you. Maybe I should try to do it all by myself.”

“Oh, really?” He cocked his head, green eyes all but laughing at me. “You think you can? You’ve never done anything but hunt down a couple of rats and you knew where they’d go to ground. This is a different beast entirely.”

“Then maybe you should tell me about him instead of baiting me.” I looked back at the house and asked again, “Did he bring them here?”

There was a brief hesitation and then Justin said quietly, “Yes.”

“How many?” I had to force the question through stiff lips. Some part of my mind demanded,
What does it matter?
  But the rest of me already knew why it mattered. A hunter needed to know her prey. Maybe my family had never taught me about what I was. But I’d still learned, bits and pieces.

“I’m still trying to figure it out, but I think he probably had a good ten victims over the years. Only six of them have figured it out.”

Ten
…

It hurt my heart, twisted my gut, turned my vision red.

“Tell me more.”

The house was clean, almost disturbingly so.

I caught the scent of magic and it had me pausing to look at Justin as we stood in the doorway.

“What am I smelling?” I asked softly. Sometimes I hated that TJ was right so often. Like now. If I’d listened to what she’d been telling me, maybe I could have figured this out on my own.

He glanced at me and shrugged. “I had to do some clean up in case people came by. It’s just an echo.”

“An echo.”

“Yeah.” Justin frowned. “Man, you really aren’t around magic much, are you?”

He didn’t bother waiting for me to answer, or maybe it didn’t matter. He headed on into the house and stopped at an angle, staring into a room I couldn’t yet see. “I killed the wolf. It got messy. I had to clean up so you’re picking up on the echo of the magic I used. If you’re sensitive to it, magic has a scent, a feel, all its own and each different form of magic is different.”

“So I’m basically smelling your version of spring cleaning.”

He shot me that wide grin again. “In a sense.”

Moving to stand at his side, I studied the wide open space. I guessed it would be the living room. I’d never had a house. Until I’d moved to TJ’s, I’d never had my own space, period. The space I had now consisted of a room. But Colleen had a house—a wide-open one, bright and cheery.

It felt nothing like this place.

Her home felt of life and laughter. Even with Mandy gone, I could feel the
hope
there.

Despair clung to this place like a cloak of cobwebs, all but sticking to me as I moved in a slow circle around the room. Brilliant light shone in through the wide windows, across the golden planks of the floor. The wolf hadn’t hurt for money, that much was obvious.

Money didn’t change the fact that evil lived here.

Or had.

It had
thrived
here.

My neck itched.

Look…look…look
…

It was a low mutter in the back of my mind and without even thinking about it, I just let myself go.

Moments later, without understanding how I’d come to be there, I found myself in the garage. It looked like a man’s paradise—if the man was into tools and cars and building things. Nothing in there looked familiar to me.

“Our boy wouldn’t know what to do with this,” Justin said from behind me.

Looking back at him, I asked, “How do you know?”

“I’ve got a read on him.” Justin came deeper into the room, lifted a hand and let it hover over what looked to be one sleek, sexy car. Her paint gleamed midnight blue, chrome glittering in the light streaming down from overhead. “It was the wolf who worked in here. He all but got a hard-on playing with the car. I can…”

His lids drooped and I tensed as I felt a spark of magic ripple out of him.

“I feel it. This was his place, his territory. He might as well have pissed on the floor, the way he marked it.”

His lids flicked back up and he grimaced as he looked at me. “Sorry.”

“I’ve heard much stronger language than
piss
.” I rolled my eyes and moved around him, bypassing the car. Something…something…

“Levett has an office. If you think you can pick up on something I couldn’t, then it will be…what are you doing?”

The clattering on the tools practically drowned out his voice. I didn’t bother to answer him.

There was something here.

I knew it.

I don’t know
how
.

I just knew.

That certainty screamed inside me and I brushed aside micro wrenches, batted away what might have been a mini laser torch. Screws, bolts, an automated screwdriver. Nothing. I upended the next drawer.

Nothing.

The next—

It wasn’t in the drawer.

“There….” I whispered, my heart thudding against my ribs like a fist. Taped to the bottom of the drawer I still held in my hands, I could see it.

You found it. You found it
.

That voice continued to hum in the back of my mind, no longer a driving pulse. It settled into a reassuring croon as I reached up and peeled back the tape. It was a small, yellow envelope and when I spilled the contents into my hand, I was even more confused.

A micro-chipped key.

Looking up at Justin, I just stared.

“Well, well, well…” he murmured. He reached out and plucked it from my hand, eying it for a second before shifting his gaze to me. “Just how did you know this was here?”

“I don’t know.”

Finding the key had been relatively easy.

This part wasn’t going to be.

Oh, Justin knew what it was, and what it was for. If only he’d just let me leave him to it, I’d have been just as happy as a clam. Whatever that meant. But no. He wanted me along.

I still didn’t know why.

But there I was, huddling over a table in a diner across from a building that filled me with terror.

My gut hurt just to look at it.

It was one of the exchange centers—the formal name was Center for the Assembly Exchange. Basically, it was a bank for our kind. You didn’t have to be a member of the assembly to use the standard services, but the rates were higher if you weren’t. I kept my money elsewhere, because I wasn’t paying a thirty-percent upcharge. Since I hadn’t presented myself to the Assembly yet, that upcharge wasn’t negotiable.

Never let it be said that non-humans didn’t understand the power of the almighty dollar.

I heard a soft brush, far, far over my head and I pressed myself to the side of the building. Shooting Justin a venomous look, I tried to decide just how I’d let myself get talked into this.

He wanted to walk in there, in broad daylight, and use that chip.

Broad daylight is the only way, sugar. We can’t go at night—Assembly security is all but impossible to crack
.

“You think you can flirt your way into distracting a guard if we made it to the back hall?” Justin studied me from over the rim of a cup of coffee, long fingers bracketing it. His nails were painted black. I frowned when I noticed it. I hadn’t noticed it before. Why was I even noticing it now?

“Well?”

“Well what?” I asked. Then I remembered. “Oh. Flirt…you want
me
to flirt with a guard? In
there
?” I gaped at him. I wouldn’t know how to flirt if my life depended on it. I could poke sharp things at people and I could run like hell when I needed. Sneak around, sure. But flirt?

He sighed and put the cup down, leaning toward me. “We need a distraction. If I pull magic in there, they’ll pick up on it. Active magic draws attention. Now I’m good at sneaking around, but I need a distraction. As it is, I’m still going to have my hands full.”

I blinked, and then looked down.