Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) (2 page)

Thank you and good night.

“He's up to something,” I said to myself, glad for a little bit of time to think without being stared at. “A bigger fish than little ol' half-feral me. But what?”

Nothing came to mind. Cole was clever, I knew that much about him, even if I knew little else. Once I discovered what he was doing, then what? Find a way to foil it without entering the limelight, that's what. The last of the cloth-bound books nestled in place, making a satisfyingly pleasing arrangement on the shelf.

I stood, stretched my stiff back, and caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Was someone here, despite the way the doors were locked? Casually, I fell into a defensive position with my ring held in front of me to face the intruder.

It was a woman. She held herself upright against the glass display case which glittered with jewelery at a flash of lightning, blindingly bright light filling the shop. My ears stung immediately afterward with the clap of thunder directly overhead. The rain pounded harder. When I next could see, the woman hadn't moved, but she had doubled over, and her cry of pain echoed with the next burst of lightning and thunder.

She spoke. I couldn't hear what she said. Brown hair askew, she took shuddering gasps and tried over and over to tell me something. She looked pregnant and in distress, but her sudden appearance had me wary. I approached her and leaned my ear in closer and closer, until I could make out her words.

“Are you Feraline Swift?”

She looked up, now certain I'd heard her.

How she knew my name, I could only guess, but I saw no reason to deny it. “I am. Who are you?”

“Josephina.” Wild-eyed, she grasped me by my shirt and dug talon-like nails into it. “Gregor Cole...was dead.”

I wetted my lips. “The papers say he just went missing for a time.”

“He was with Death and we both know it! He was snatched out of purgatory and placed back on the earth. And they want to do worse. Didn't say what.”

I hadn't felt so exposed since I'd had a classmate confront me about cheating on a college algebra pop quiz. I wanted to deny all she said but could not. I ignored what she said about Death.

Josephina had the black, shining eyes of a bird of prey, one which fear had touched and driven to wit's end. She begged, “Don't let me fall into his hands. Promise it. Swear it! On a blood oath, swear to me you won't let me into his hands.”

Though I tried to step away from her, my feet were rooted in place. I explained, “Josephina, I can't. I don't know anything about what's happened to you. Let me fetch someone who can help you.”

“You can help me. If you want to help me, swear.”

“I don't know you.”

“Inimicus inimico amicus
, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Now, swear—” A scream of agony broke off the last word, curdling my blood. Her face went red and white with pain and her free hand clasped my arm and her fingers sank into my forearm.

Lingering half-way between staying beside her and running off, I felt my pulse quicken, knowing I was wasting time but not knowing what I should do.

“Sit down, I'll get Mordon.”

“No time.” She threw back her head and forced her body to relax a fraction. “It'll be here in minutes. You know Cole. You know what he intends. He wants me.”

“Josephina...”

“He's not my enemy, he's the lapdog. The real enemy, the real one—” She stifled a scream. “Immortal. Is the Immortal. Will you let him have me?”

I stared at her, suddenly my mind was blank yet filled with questions. How did she know about the Immortal? About purgatory and Death? How did she believe in actual manifestations of the things people thought of as myth?

The wind thrashed against the ceiling, finding crevices to enter the shop through, making the papers shift and shake. Any dismissal I'd had for her earlier was gone; I couldn't tear my eyes from her. A vital part of Cole's mysterious plan was right here before my very eyes.

I couldn't draw myself away from her.

I stood there, gazing into eyes wide and black with exhaustion from too many portals and too little sleep, understanding the depth of her concern the longer I looked at her. By the time she had settled into breathing shallow little puffs of air, it was as if a piece of her soul had left her and entwined with mine.

Damp clothes hugged her body, her wrists and ankles livid with angry red welts. Images of ropes burned into my head. No bruises, no beatings. They didn't want her information.

But they had wanted her.

Our eyes met again, my expression saying that I knew what I saw written on her body. The dip of her head and wet strands of hair falling before her face communicating that she'd been afraid I'd bar the door from her.

By the time the sweat dried on my own skin, the wind tickled goosebumps up and down my arms with the expanse and collapse of her chest. Not too long ago, I'd come to this shop seeking help, too. With the memory of my own desperate hope—and the realization that this may have been how Mordon felt upon first seeing me—my last inkling of wariness was disappearing.

“No. He won't have you.”

Crazy as it all might be, insane as I might be, terrified as I was of this woman and her condition and of whatever she might ask of me, I knew that for certain there was no way I was going to back down from her needs. No matter how frightened it made me feel.

Josephina breathed quick, panting breaths which I felt tug on my magic, seeking to draw in my power as well as the air itself. I hesitated, then let her take from my own strength. It seemed to help, she regained color and a measure of sanity returned to her eyes.

It was this sanity which alarmed me, made me wonder what it was I had just done.

But I was here now, and while I could backtrack and say I wasn't going to help her anymore, I knew that I couldn't do that. I wouldn't do it. Beneath the swaying biplane and storm on the glass, within the thrumming confines of this shop, I knew this was right. And I was going to go through things I'd never ever imagined before.

Her gaze met mine and she blew out a huff, trying to be businesslike despite the contractions doubling her over. “Give me your oath.”

Kneeling next to her, I took her hand and noticed that the very rims of her eyes were a rich rosewood hue. “I give you my oath, I will keep you safe from Gregor Cole. And the Immortal.”

“And deliver me to Julius Septimus.”

Who he was, I hadn't an idea. Never heard of him before, and I had a decent enough memory for placing names and facts.

What I could tell was that he didn't sound like he'd been born in the States. Unless he had a family dedicated to keeping the old-fashioned names alive. He also didn't sound very ''creature'', unlike Mordon or Enaid or Feraline or anything else. This meant he wasn't drake, wasn't fey, and I had a good feeling he wasn't sphinx or gryphon. Had to be a man, it was a man's name. Couldn't be that many Greeks around, could there?

Her nails stung as they ripped down my arm when I hesitated, dedicating his name to memory. “And I'll deliver you to Julius Septimus. As soon as I can.”

A part of me wondered how I would find him, and reasoned that she could tell me. It'd be the best solution. I started to ask her, but the color faded from her cheeks.

She half-closed her eyes and gave a final push, whispering, “Catch me.”

I grasped her shoulders, but she wasn't tipping over.

Her child.

“Oh, no, don't you dare push.”

Too late.

A streak of panic tore through me as I realized she'd crowned her child.

Then it happened.

The calm happened. It'd taken over my actions before on a few occasions, a blessed intervention, yet a thing which I could not properly explain no matter how often I felt it.

It was as if all the things I could think, I did think, all at once, before they were peacefully discarded or put into constructive use. It was as if I'd done this a hundred times before, so often that it was a routine procedure invoking little emotion within me.

Once I'd thought of it like a puppeteer was moving me. That I was his marionette.

This time was a little different. This time I was the puppeteer and I was manipulating my own body, without residing within it.

It had been frightening to feel in the past, but not now. Now it was a tool, a thing which I could use to do what needed to be done. It could have been fast, it could have been slow. Time ceased to matter, nothing mattered except for the next contraction.

With her leaning against the counter, I took the infant from her body as it slipped into the world, still and unbreathing and faintly blue. Air wasn't being tugged in and out of its mouth, I knew without having to look at it. No one had ever told me how slick these newborns were; I nearly dropped it, jarring the child and causing it to spit up goop. Almost instinctively, I swirled my probably too dirty finger around its mouth and cleared the passage. Could this final stage of labor happen within minutes, or had I been so involved that I hadn't noticed the minutes going by?

It started up a weak wail. What I knew of childbirth had come to me through first responder classes, and I felt woefully under-prepared as I scrounged around for something to tie off the umbilical chord with, then cut it.

Mordon had everything in that old fashioned medical kit, thankfully in its place behind the counter beneath the register. He even had a sterilized cloth in a sealed bag, which I rolled up around the child. It had been a dry birth, she must have done most of her laboring somewhere else, which meant she'd been desperate to seek me out.

I turned to face Josephina. “Look, here she is. A little girl.”

A little girl who had bugged-out eyes and bright red skin, a baby who didn't look too happy to have joined the world of the living, and looked even less happy when her lids flitted open and she saw me. Despite the lack of appreciation on behalf of the newborn, I felt my muscles slowly unknot.

Around me wasn't as much of a mess as it might have been. The medical kit lay open, scissors and strings out of their usual place, rags helter skelter where they'd fallen while I'd dug through them for a clean one. None of it mattered, because Josephina wasn't excessively bleeding—in my undereducated opinion—and both mother and babe were alive.

Josephina watched as I tried to tidy things up a little, refusing to touch the infant which I half-held out for her to take.

Holding the child as awkwardly as one can, I wasn't sure if I should put the baby in her arms or cradle the little thing close.

“Good thing neither one of you died, coming to me instead of a doctor,” I said, failing to transform it from a joke into an actual question. Josephina reached a pale, shaking hand out to the child and just skimmed over her cheek.

A faint smile touched Josephina's lips. She murmured, “Treat me well,” and slumped to the floor.

I didn't understand. Josephina wasn't bleeding out. So far as I could tell, she hadn't been physically beaten nor was she choking. Yet I knew, sure as I knew my own name, that the life was draining away from her.

What I didn't know was why.

The otherworldly, calm feeling didn't return. My mouth went dry and I felt frantic panic course through every fiber of my existence, wondering what had gone wrong and how I could have stopped it, yet knowing that nothing had gone wrong. Nothing. This shouldn't be happening. Yet it was.

Right before my eyes, she was dying.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

The baby cried stronger now, as if it knew what was happening. I knelt beside Josephina, shaking her with one hand. “Hey, you, I'm getting Mordon. Hang in there. You hear me?”

Heavens knew what he'd do.

Bloody, mucusy newborn cradled in the crook of one arm, I strode for the door disguised as wainscoting which would take me to where Mordon was cooking dinner. My hand trembled too much to seize the handle the first time, and while I was forcing my hand to work, I heard a
whoosh
like gasoline touching a match.