Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies (6 page)

“It’s kind of scary to hear
you
say that, honestly.” I rolled my shoulders, thinking of how the woman had looked at me.

“Remember how I thought you were killing shifters? How I listened to you and let you prove you weren’t involved?” He rose from the bleachers and paced a little ways down the side of the pool.

“That’s sort of how it went, I guess,” I said.

Alek turned back to me, his gaze fierce. “If the Council had given Eva that same vision, had sent her, she would have killed you first, asked questions never.” The shadows were back in his eyes, worry putting fine lines in his pale skin and turning down the corners of his mouth. His expression sent a shiver down my spine as I sensed that somehow his worry was as much for me as about Eva Phillips. I didn’t understand why. More secrets, I guessed. Awesomesauce.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I said. I pulled my socks on and then strapped on the knife I’d taken from Not Afraid in its ankle sheath before tugging on my shoes. “I guess you should work quickly then, if you can. Question the wolves in town. Want to drop me back at my store?” Part of me wanted to go with him, ask my own questions, see their faces for myself. But Alek was a Justice; they’d talk more readily to him than to him and some random woman who smelled non-human but not shifter. I’d be better later, if someone needed fireballing or protecting or finding. Part of me hoped fireball was the option.

“Great job, Cerberus,” I told Ezee as we emerged from the pool.

He gave me a shrug that said it all as he tucked away his Kindle and stood up from where he’d been sitting beside the doors. “You need a ride back?” he said, looking between Alek and I.

“Nah, Alek will drop me off.”

“Good,” he said, putting emphasis into the word. With an exaggerated wink he brushed off his trousers, picked up his bag, and scrammed like the coward he was. I glared after him, unable to really be mad. A little warning would have been nice, but eh. Friends. What can you do.

Alek held the door for me like a gentleman. I started to walk through, doing the automatic check for keys even though I hadn’t driven, and realized that my phone was missing from my jeans pocket. Probably fell out near the pool. I swear that phone was possessed, never around when I needed it. Maybe it knew my rough history with phones. I stopped and turned back.

Which meant that the bullet that should have turned my head into fine pink mist instead cleaved off part of my braid before chunking into the wall and pinning my hair there in an explosion of concrete dust.

Sniper
. First thought that went through my head. Watched too many war movies, I suppose. But I wasn’t wrong.

I dropped flat as Alek sprang over me. He turned into a tiger in mid-leap and charged the upper parking lot, where the shot likely came from. I blinked dust out of my eyes and squirmed backward into the doorway.

“Alek,” I yelled. A car engine roared to life and I heard squeals as it peeled out. Risking a look, I raised my head and crawled forward again, just enough to see up into the lot. The sun was in my eyes but I made out a giant tiger charging after a small SUV. The SUV floored it out of the lot, which fed into the main artery of the school and out onto the highway running away from town. Even Alek couldn’t keep up.

He stopped and shook himself, as though only now realizing that he was a twelve-foot-long white tiger standing in an Idaho college parking lot in broad daylight. Then he looked around and turned back to a man in a blink.

I pushed what was left of my hair, which was most of it, thank the universe, out of my face and gathered magic into a shield around me, hardening it to turn away bullets, just in case that car had been a distraction from the real shooter. Then I made myself get to my feet, fighting down the panic. A bullet in the head wouldn’t kill me, but I had no idea how long I would take to regenerate from it, and I really, truly didn’t want to ever find out. Getting shot hurts like a motherfucker.

I made my way toward the upper lot as Ezee came running back down the hill.

“Was that a gunshot?” he called out.

“Yeah,” I said, my ears still buzzing. “I think someone just tried to kill me.”

He looked wildly around, sniffing the air.

“They took off in a car,” I added. “I think we’re okay now.”

For now, but how much longer?
Pushing that fun thought away, I walked to meet up with Alek, who was standing over something where the car had been parked.

“He left a note,” Alek said, crouching down and breathing deeply, mouth half open as though he could taste the air.

A piece of parchment paper lay curled on the asphalt, a single bullet holding it down. There was something written on the paper, brush strokes that looked like Kanji, but I couldn’t see enough to make out the word. An odd tingle, a bitter taste of foreign magic like the afterburn of gunpowder on my tongue, warned me just before Alek touched the note.

“Wait,” I yelled as I threw my shield bubble around the note, locking it down with as much power as I could pour into it in the fractions of a second before the paper ignited and then exploded.

The blast, even contained within my shield, rocked all three of us off our feet. I fell on my ass, concentrating only on holding all that horrible force inside my magic. Alek and Ezee twisted and rolled, each regaining his feet quickly and gracefully. Damn shifters.

The blast force had nowhere to go but down. The asphalt buckled and split, tar melting and concrete turning to powder. The bullet fired as the force and heat ignited it, shards fragmenting and smashing into my shield, pinpricks of additional force that stung as I wrestled with the blast, holding it down. Inside my body my power waged war against the forces as my bones vibrated and an out-of-tune hum rang in my ears.

Then it was over and the air stilled as though the world held its breath. All I heard was my own coughing breath, my pulse racing. Sweat dripped between my breasts. The jangling feel of my magic stilled in my bones. Slowly I let the shield down. A wave of heat, like standing too close to a bonfire, swept over me, then was gone.

“Fuck,” Ezee said. “That was amazing.”

“Yeah, that was a hell of an explosion spell,” I muttered. I shoved away my bitter memories as they rose—unbidden and unwanted. My second family had died in an explosion. I was not a fan of them.

“No, you,” he said, grinning at me with a wild look in his eye. “That would have killed us.”

“Not me,” I said before I realized how that sounded. I didn’t want to think about the fact that my friends, that the man I might be in love with, were a lot less durable than I was. I preferred to think of them as indestructible. I knew in my heart that they weren’t. Even I could be killed. But not by a bomb. Or a bullet.

“That shot was at you,” Alek said. “Ezekiel left first; it would have been simple to shoot him. Instead, assassin waited until you emerged into light. If you hadn’t reversed course like that, poof. No head.” His blue eyes were dark with rage. Lucky for the assassin that Alek hadn’t caught him. It was cute how protective he looked, how afraid for me he was. Scary, but cute.

“That wouldn’t have killed me. Not forever. I’d have grown a new head or something.” I waved my hands around to indicate big magic would have happened. I wasn’t clear on exactly how much damage I could survive, only that supposedly the single way to kill a true sorcerer is to have another sorcerer eat their heart.

“Then why bother? Unless the killer doesn’t know that, I guess,” Ezee said.

I shook my head. As the adrenaline left my system, exhaustion set in. I’d slammed a lot of power into that shield and done it quickly. Six months ago we would have all been blown to bits. It was good I’d been training, and a little scary to me how quickly I’d gotten more powerful. Maybe more powerful than I had been when I was with Samir. Sadly, still not powerful enough.

Samir
. This had him written all over it. I took a deep breath and struggled to my feet, shaking off Alek’s extended hand as he tried to help me.

“I think the idea isn’t to kill me, just incapacitate me while he harvests my heart and gives it to Samir.” Unless, of course, Samir was here somewhere. Watching. Waiting. I looked around, trying to pierce the dim treeline, trying to pick out a watcher if there was one. Total paranoia. I wished that thought hadn’t occurred to me.

“Could Samir be involved in the other murders?” Alek said softly in Russian, knowing that Ezee wouldn’t understand him.

I shook my head, ignoring Ezee’s questioning look. “Think we can dig out some of those bullet fragments? Maybe I can get a trace on the assassin.”

“He another sorcerer?” Ezee asked as Alek pulled out a folding knife and bent down over the still warm asphalt.

“Maybe,” I said. “This was definitely magic. Like something out of an anime, right? Exploding paper. Whatever was written on it looked like Japanese.”

“Should we be standing in the open like this then?” Ezee glanced around again, fidgeting with the strap on his messenger bag.

“Go to your office,” I said. “I think Alek the giant tiger freaked the assassin out for now. Hopefully no one saw that,” I added.

Alek lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “I sensed no one else around. Just the person driving that car. He seemed alone.”

“Eh, it’s Wylde,” Ezee added with a tentative smile. “Besides, almost nobody is on campus and the dorms are on the other side of the hill. I doubt anyone will even report a gunshot.”

He took off up the hill after I assured him that yes, we would be fine. Alek carefully handed me pieces of the bullet, the metal warm in my palm.

“It was a .308,” he said, as though that would mean anything to me.

I tugged on my magic, wincing at the headache starting to form. I pictured the metal, the hand that must have last touched it, the environment it would have been in, maybe touching all its little bullet buddies. I fed my magic into that, pressing my will into the spell, telling it to trace its friends, trace its owner.

And I got zip, nilch, nada back. It was as though the bullet had come into being seconds before it got melted in the explosion. Fire is a good cleansing agent, but I should have been able to pick up something, even if it were uselessly vague.

“It’s clean,” I said, dropping the fragments in disgust. “Like, magically it has no signature at all. Like it never touched anyone.” A chill went through me. This assassin knew what he or she was doing. I would have been willing to stake my game store on the guess that this assassin had hunted and killed magic users and supernaturals before.

The exploding note and the fact that they’d been willing to shoot at me in broad daylight, with friends around, was more disturbing. It meant that collateral damage wasn’t really a concern for the killer.

Once again, just being me was putting everyone around me in danger. F-M-fucking-L.

“Jade,” Alek said softly, stepping up to me. He wrapped his arms around me and I didn’t resist. “We will find and destroy this assassin and send Samir his head.”

“I love it when you go all Conan on me,” I said, resisting the urge to rub my nose on his chest. “Then we will listen to the lamentations of his women, right?”

I pushed away from him and sighed. “At least now I know someone is trying to kill me. I’ll be more ready for it next time. I hope.” All I wanted was a ten-year nap, but I had a store to run. I couldn’t leave Harper there forever. She’d just come kick my ass again. “Take me home,” I said.

I took a quick shower and changed. Alek hadn’t wanted to leave me, but I pointed out he had work to do that was more important than babysitting someone who could take care of herself. I promised to be careful with windows and walking out doors, as ridiculous as that sounded. I knew he had a point.

I made it down to the shop just in time to stop a fistfight. Harper looked about ready to kill one of my regulars. Trevor came by and hung out on Friday and Saturday afternoons, painting minis that we sold on eBay in trade for me keeping him supplied with comics.

“You cannot be serious,” she was shrieking at him. She had a stack of comics in her hands, where she’d been setting out the new releases on the wide display rack I kept for them, but she was now brandishing them like they were going to be weapon number one if fisticuffs happened.