Magic Burns Read online

  “You have a secretary?”

  He laughed. “No, it’s just Mila. She screens the calls. What can I do for you?”

  “I have the packet.”

  “Awesome!” He checked himself and continued in a more even tone. “When can I pick it up?”

  “I’ll drop it by tomorrow.”

  “Did you beat the shit out of him?”

  Ha! Derek was still in there, under the Mr. Cool Pack Wolf veneer. “Sort of. You’re right, he disappears. He also regenerates while he’s gone.”

  Julie came back into the apartment. She was wearing a small monisto: a necklace of coins and tiny metal charms. She paused in the hallway, testing the waters, decided I wasn’t going to explode, slid back into her chair, and checked the bowl for more boil. Only potatoes were left. She took a handful and ate them, licking her fingers.

  “I have a favor to ask.” I moved the butter and salt closer to her.

  “Anything I can do,” Derek said.

  Julie was watching me covertly, probably trying to gauge if any fussing was forthcoming.

  “I need an audience with his furry Highness.” I can’t believe I’m saying this.

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this, after all the bitc—yelling you did when I called you for the Spring Meet. I distinctly remember ‘never see that arrogant asshole again’ and ‘over my dead body.’”

  “Spring Meet was optional.” After working with the Pack to dispatch the Red Point Stalker, I was granted the Friend of the Pack status, which apparently came with such benefits as being invited to ceremonies. Hell, if I transgressed in their territory, the shapeshifters might hesitate a couple of seconds before they shredded me into Kate sushi.

  “Myong?” Derek’s voice gained a slightly disapproving edge.

  “Derek, yes or no?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said smoothly. “I’ll let you know the time and place.”

  We made parting noises and I hung up.

  “Who was that?” Julie asked.

  “My teenage werewolf sidekick. We’re going to see him tomorrow.”

  “You know people in the Pack?”

  “Yep. There is a spare toothbrush in the vanity…”

  “What’s the vanity?”

  “Vanity is taking too much pride in your appearance. It’s also the cabinet in the bathroom which has a sink and a drawer. Where the toothbrush is.”

  Her face grew long. “Do I have to?”

  “You bet.”

  CHAPTER 9

  I PACKED JULIE INTO MY BED, GAVE HER MY BLANKET, and unrolled an old army sleeping bag on the floor. The magic had reclaimed the city. I had dimmed the feylanterns already, and the only light in the apartment came from the outside, a silvery glow from the light of the new moon mixing with the weak radiance of the bars affected by the magic of the defensive spell.

  Somewhere far away, a wolf howled. I could always tell a wolf from a stray dog—the lupine howl sent shivers down my spine. I thought of Curran. The scary thing was, I was kind of curious about seeing him tomorrow.

  What was wrong with me? It had to be hormones. A purely biological problem. I had an overload of hormones that clouded my normally rational thinking, causing me to have fanciful notions about gray-eyed homicidal maniacs…

  “I can sleep on the floor,” Julie offered in a sleep-tangled voice.

  I shrugged. “Thanks, but I’m used to it. When I was a kid, my dad made me sleep on the floor. He was afraid I’d have back problems like my mom.” I unzipped the bag and laid it as flat as I could. The wards and bars made my apartment into a little fortress, but you never knew. Somebody could teleport in and fill me full of bolts while I untangled my legs from the sleeping bag.

  “Is she nice?”

  “Who?”

  “Your mom?”

  I stopped, an afghan in my hands. Like a little knife, twisted into my chest. “I don’t know. She died when I was very young. My dad loved her so she must’ve been nice.”

  “So both your mom and your dad are gone? You have no family left?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Kind of like me,” she said in a small voice.

  Poor kid. I came over and sat on the corner of the bed. “I know my mom’s dead, because my dad saw her die, and I know my dad’s dead because I was there when we buried him on a hill behind my house. I visit his grave all the time. But we don’t really know anything about your mom. I didn’t see her body anywhere. Did you see her body?”

  She shook her head and stuck her face into the pillow.

  “Well, there you go. No body, no proof she died. Maybe she somehow got teleported to a strange part of the city by that Bran idiot and now she’s walking home. Maybe she’s there right now. We’ll just have to keep looking.”

  Julie made a sad kittenlike noise.

  What do I do now?

  I scooped her up, blanket, pillow, and all, and scooted her close to me. She sniffled. “The People probably turned her into a vampire.”

  I petted her hair. “No, Julie. The People don’t just grab women off the street and make them into vampires. That’s illegal. If they started doing that, the cops and military would exterminate them in a blink. They have to account for each vampire and they only want specific people for it. Don’t worry, your mom isn’t a vampire.”

  “What if she is?”

  Then I’ll walk into the Casino and there will be hell to pay. “She isn’t. If you want, I’ll call the People tomorrow and check on it.”

  “What if they lie to you?”

  Boy, this kid had a major hang-up on vampires. “Look, you have to remember that vampires are mindless, like cockroaches. They are just vehicles for the Masters of the Dead. If you see a bloodsucker and it’s not ripping everyone to shreds, there’s an actual human being riding that vamp’s mind. That human being has a family, probably has kids, cute little Master of the Dead babies.”

  She swiped a tear and tried a weak smile.

  “The People have dozens of vampires. The People don’t need to kidnap anyone. They have an applicant list a mile long.”

  “Why would anybody want to be a vampire?”

  “Money. Let’s say you have an incurable disease. Vampirism is caused by a bacterial infection, which transforms the victim’s body so much that a lot of those diseases become irrelevant to the final vampiric organism. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you have colon cancer—your colon is going to shrink into twine after a month of undeath anyway. So you apply to become a vampire. If you’re selected, you’ll be offered a contract that authorizes the People to infect you with the Vampirus Immortuus. Basically, you let the People kill you and use your body after death. And in exchange, the People will pay your beneficiaries a fee. A lot of poor people think that it’s a good way to leave their families with a little bit of money after they are gone. It takes a week and a stack of paperwork to make a vampire, and the whole thing is reported to the State Undeath Commission. Making a vamp against a person’s will is illegal, and they won’t do something that would land them in prison for just one vamp. Listen, why don’t you tell me about your mom? It might make it easier for me to find her.”

  Julie hugged the pillow. “She’s nice. She reads books to me sometimes. Just the booze makes her tired and I leave her alone. Go outside or something. She’s not like an alcoholic or anything. She just misses my dad. She only drinks on weekends, when she doesn’t have to work.”

  “Where does she work?”

  “Carpenter Guild. She used to be a cook, but the place got closed down. She’s a journeyman now. She says once she makes carpenter, we’ll see real money. She said that about the coven too and now she’s gone. She always worries about money. We’ve been poor for a long time now. Ever since Dad died.”

  She drew a little circle on the pillow with her hand—the circle of life. Something the shamans did when they mentioned the deceased. Picking up Red’s habits.

  “When Dad was alive, he used to take us to the coast. To Hilton H
ead. It’s nice there. We went swimming and the water was really warm. My dad was a carpenter, too. A piece of the overpass fell on him. Just squished him. There was nothing left.”

  Sometimes life just kept punching you in the teeth, no matter how many times you got up. “The pain gets better with time,” I told her. “It always hurts, but it gets better.”

  “People keep saying that.” Julie did not look at me. “I must be unlucky or something.”

  One of the worst things for a child is to lose a parent. When my father died, it was as if my world had ripped open. Like a god dying. Part of me refused to believe it. I so desperately wanted to put things back the way they had been. I would’ve given anything for another day with my dad. And I was so mad at Greg for not being able to wave his hand and make it right somehow. Then little by little, it set in: my dad was gone. Forever. No turning back. No amount of magic would fix it. And just when I thought the pain had dulled, my mind would betray me and bring Dad back to life in my dreams. Sometimes I didn’t realize that he was dead until I awoke and then it was like a punch in the stomach. And sometimes I knew in my dream that I was dreaming, and I woke up crying.

  But back then, I still had Greg. Greg, who dedicated his life to making sure I would be fine. Greg, who took me in. I didn’t have to live on the street. I didn’t have to worry about money.

  Julie and her mother didn’t have that luxury. Qualified carpenters were paid well, because woodwork was magic-proof. The death of Julie’s father must have destroyed their lives. It knocked them down and they just kept sliding lower and lower. It would’ve been easy to keep rolling until they hit rock bottom. I hugged Julie to me. Her mother must’ve loved her a great deal, because she picked herself up and she started climbing. She had fought her way into the Carpenter Guild, which couldn’t have been easy with all the competition out there. She became a journeyman, which was a hard step up from apprentice. She was trying to keep her daughter off the street.

  “You never told me your mother’s name.”

  “Jessica,” Julie said. “Her name’s Jessica Olsen.”

  Hold on, Jessica. I’ll find you. And I’ll keep your baby safe. Nothing will happen to Julie.

  As if sensing what I was thinking, Julie squirmed closer to me and we sat quietly, cloaked in the warm night.

  “Tell me about the coven. Was your mom in long?”

  “Not long. Couple of months. She said they were worshipping a great goddess and we’d all be rich soon.”

  I sighed. When we found Esmeralda, she and I would have a nice long talk. “You don’t really get rich from worshipping. Especially not Morrigan.”

  “What kind of a goddess is she?”

  “Celtic kind. Old Irish. There are a few versions of her, so I’ll tell you what I think might be close to the truth. Morrigan is three goddesses rolled into one. She changes depending on what she wants to do. Kind of like putting on different outfits. It’s called having divine aspects. Sometimes she is the goddess of fertility and prosperity and her name is Annan. I’m guessing that’s the aspect your mom worshipped. Annan also guides dead people to their resting place in the Otherworld. That’s the place where the Celtic dead live. The second aspect is Macha. She oversees kingship, governance, and horses. The third aspect is Badb, the great battle crow.” I paused. In light of Julie’s missing mom, mentioning that the Badb drank the blood of the fallen and reveled in the slaughter was not a good idea.

  “I’ve forgotten what the first one is called.” Julie’s voice gained a slight sleepy thickness. Excellent. She needed sleep and so did I.

  “It doesn’t really matter. They’re all Morrigan.”

  “Who did she battle?”

  “Fomorians. That’s the thing to remember about gods: they always have someone to fight. Greek gods fought Titans, Viking gods fought Frost Giants, and Irish gods fought Fomorians, the sea-demons. Morrigan kicked a lot of butt, and finally the Fomorians were driven into the sea.” My Celtic mythology was a bit rusty. I’d have to brush up the first chance I got. Nobody could hope to remember all of the mythological heavyweights, so the trick wasn’t to know everything. The trick was to know enough to figure out where to find the rest.

  “So why can’t you get rich worshipping her?” Julie yawned.

  “Because Morrigan doesn’t grant wishes. She makes deals. That means she always wants something in return.” Only fools made bargains with deities.

  She closed her eyes. Good. Sleep, Julie.

  “Kate?”

  “Mmm?”

  “How did your mom die?”

  I opened my mouth to lie. The response was automatic: I hid my blood, I hid my magic, and I hid the truth of where I came from. But for some odd reason, the lie didn’t come out. I wanted to tell her the real story. Or at least a part of it. I never spoke of it and now the words itched my tongue.

  What’s the harm? She was only a child. It would be like a twisted good-night story. She would forget it by morning.

  “I was only a few weeks old. My father and mother were running away. A man was chasing them. He was very powerful and evil. My mother knew that of the two of them my dad was the stronger one. She was slowing him down.”

  My voice shook a little. I didn’t expect the words to be so hard.

  “So my mother gave me to my dad and told him to run. She would delay the evil man as long as she could. He didn’t want to go but he realized it was the only way to save me. The evil man caught my mom and they fought. She stabbed him in the eye, but he was very powerful, and she couldn’t kill him. And that’s how my mother died.”

  I tucked the blanket around her.

  “That’s a sad story.”

  “It is.” It’s not finished, either. Not by a long shot.

  She patted the afghan still on my lap. “Did you make this?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s nice. Can I use it?”

  I put it on her. She kicked the blanket off and wrapped herself in the afghan, like a little mouse nesting. “It’s soft,” she said and fell asleep.

  A VOICE SPREAD THROUGH THE APARTMENT, PURE like a crystal bell, sweet like honey, soft like velvet. “Girl…Want girl.”

  I opened my eyes. The magic was up, setting the bars on the windows aglow with ethereal bluish light. I saw Julie slip into the hallway, a ghostly, silent shape in the darkness of the night-drenched apartment.

  “Girl…” It was coming from the outside.

  My fingers found Slayer’s textured hilt. I took it, rose, and followed her.

  “Need girl…Girl…Want girl…”

  Outside the kitchen window, a pale shade floated an inch from the glass and my ward. Female, with a delicate, almost elven face and a heartbreaking body, she looked into my house with lavender eyes. Her skin glowed with a faint silver radiance. Improbably thick, long hair streamed from her head, coiling like tentacles. “Giiiirl,” the creature sang, stretching her arms to the window. “Neeed…where, where?”

  Hi. And what kind of screwed-up beastie would you be?

  On my kitchen table, crouched atop a crumpled curtain, sat Julie. She had worked the window latch open and was trying to pry the mechanism securing the iron grate.

  I put Slayer down and took Julie by her waist. She clutched at the bars.

  The creature hissed. Her jaws unhinged with reptilian flexibility, baring rows of anglerfish teeth in a black mouth. A strand of her hair whipped at the window, aiming for the kid. The ward reacted with a pulse of angry carmine. The creature jerked in pain.

  I pulled on Julie. “Julie. Let go.”

  Julie snarled something wordless and charged with fury. I dug my heels in and pulled harder, throwing all of my strength and weight into it. Julie’s fingers slipped and I almost crashed to the floor. She kicked, struggling like a pissed-off cat. I dragged her off into the bathroom, dumped her into the tub, and slammed the door shut behind us. With a howl, Julie launched herself at me. Her nails raked my arm. I grasped her by the back of the neck, forcing her down
into the tub, and opened the cold water tap. She writhed under my hand, spitting and biting. I dunked her under the stream and held her there.

  Gradually her convulsions subsided. She whimpered and went limp.

  I shut off the water to a trickle. Julie drew a long shuddering breath and sobbed. Slowly tension leaked from her muscles. “I’m okay,” she gasped. “I’m okay.”

  I pulled her from the bathtub and put a towel on her head. She trembled and hugged herself.

  I opened the door and glanced out. The lavender-eyed thing hovered by the kitchen window, her eyes fixed on the door. She saw me and hissed again.

  “Girl…Come…Want…”

  Julie sank to the tile, squeezing into the narrow space between the toilet and the bathtub, chopstick legs sticking out. “She was in my head. She’s trying to get back in right now.”

  “Try to shut her out. We’re safe behind the wards.”

  “What if the magic falls?” Julie’s eyes widened in pure panic.

  “Then I’ll cut her head off.” Easier said than done. That hair would grab me like a noose. It’s hard to cut hair unless it’s held taut.

  “Girl?”

  “Shut the hell up!”

  Why Julie? Why now? Was that thing her mother, turned into something by the coven’s magic?

  “Julie, does that thing look like your mother?”

  She shook her head, locked her arms over her knees and began to rock. She could only move an inch or two squeezed into that narrow space. “Gray. Muddy, sliding, shifting, nasty purple gray.”

  “What?”

  “Gray like the skeleton. Nasty…”

  “Julie, what’s gray?”

  She looked at me with haunted eyes. “Her magic. Her magic’s gray.”

  Oh God. “What color is a werewolf’s magic?”

  “Green.”

  A sensate. A living m-scanner, who could see the magic, very rare, very valued. I had her with me the whole time. I knew there was something magic about her, but between metal dogs and infected boyfriends, I never got a chance to ask. “That thing, she’s gray and purple? Did you say purple? Like a vampire?”