Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) (5 page)

The child quieted and looked at me thoughtfully, an expression far too old for her four-year-old face. She resembled a koala, actually, what with her large brown eyes and wide, flattish face. A nasty, vicious marsupial clinging to the damaged wards of my bakery. Yeah, I was pissed, but I was still attempting to be reasonable. Even after all the destruction she’d waged in the last few seconds, she was still just a kid with a load of screwed-up magic running through her and scrambling her brain. A kid who hadn’t even known who her mother was three months ago.

“I came for you, alchemist,” she finally said. “And your tasty magic.” Her refined English accent was completely at odds with her appearance. She smacked her lips, as she’d done on the altar in the Bahamas after biting me.

“For help?” I asked. “Do you want me to take you to the nexus? Busting through my wards isn’t a terribly nice way of asking for help.”

The rabid koala grinned that creepy grin that would have haunted my nightmares — you know, if I hadn’t already seen much, much worse things.

“I came for you,” the kid repeated. “For your tasty magic.”

“Listen, that’s just creepy —”

Then the child interrupted me in the middle of the etiquette lesson by reaching out and shredding the remaining bakery wards.

Pain ripped through my head, and I lost control of my limbs as my connection to the magic was severed. Even Scarlett cried out from the backlash.

I stumbled, falling to my knees in the broken glass and splintered wood of the door. But I still managed to get my knife between me and the kid.

Except she didn’t go for me.

She ran straight for Scarlett and Gran, with her shadow leeches flooding into the bakery after her.

My mother’s strawberry magic rolled through the bakery. She erected a barrier between herself and the dragon kid just seconds before the girl slammed against it.

The child shrieked, punching her tiny fists into the blue magic that now whirled around Gran and Scarlett. The reverberation of her frustrated blows brought my mother to her knees as I gained my feet.

I batted away the shadow leeches, who were darting in and around me as well as tasting the magic of my mother’s barrier. From this vantage point, I couldn’t tell if Gran was breathing or not as Scarlett pulled her mother across her lap, then somehow tucked the barrier she’d thrown up even closer around them, concentrating its magic. I’d never seen my mother look so fierce.

Despite the child and all her smoky, spiced dragon magic filling the bakery, my senses were flooded with strawberry.

“She held that barrier against a greater demon, kid,” I said as I stalked toward the child. “Your magic is no match for her.”

The girl spun to face me, her hands clenched into tiny fists at her sides. “My shadows will take care of it for me.”

She wasn’t lying. My mother’s shield shifted underneath the shadow leeches attempting to latch onto it. Though she didn’t speak or take her eyes off the kid, I could see the effort it took for Scarlett to hold the leeches off. They’d eventually strip my mother’s magic, just as they’d stripped all the magic from the fortress where they’d been created.

Maybe even created by the rabid koala standing before me. A crazed baby dragon who barely came up to my waist, and yet had gotten by me and two powerful witches in a matter of moments.

I shuddered at the thought that a dragon could be capable of such terrible blood magic, though it was obvious now that she was in league with the leeches — or even controlling them.

“Well, then,” I said. “I guess I’ll just have to give you a spanking and vanquish your pets one by one.”

I backed this threat up by thrusting my knife into the nearest shadow leech and sending a pulse of my magic into it. The shadow thinned, stretching in all directions away from the blade, then disappeared with a brief, high-pitched whine.

The preschooler barreled into me like a tiny freight train … a tiny train driven by a crazy koala, and capable of hauling thousands of pounds of concrete.

She hit me midwaist. I stood against her assault — but at the last second, I just couldn’t bring myself to gut her.

Her momentum spun us back through the tables and stools. We missed crashing through the glass cupcake display case by mere inches.

The kid reached up and latched onto my necklace with both hands. I couldn’t get her pinned or contained. She was tiny but crazy strong, and moved as if she had more than four limbs. Completely like a rabid koala. My choice of nickname was becoming even more appropriate — which was unfortunate for me, because I only dubbed her with it to make myself feel in control of the situation.
 

It also didn’t help that the shadow leeches rolled over and around us, so I had to keep them off me at the same time I was wrestling her.

I had no freaking idea how to subdue a freaking dragon.

“Jade!” Scarlett cried out. Then the shield she’d been holding between her, Gran, and the shadow leeches flickered and dimmed.

“Hold on, Mom!” I brought my elbow down on the evil toddler’s head. Something nasty snapped in my arm, but the kid’s head lolled sideways.

I’d stunned her, though she still clung to my necklace like a tentacled barnacle.

I lunged, carrying the kid with me as I slashed and sliced the shadows around Scarlett’s faltering shield. The leeches backed away, pressing up into the corners and edges of the bakery.

Scarlett’s shield fell.

“All right, Mom?” I was trying to untangle the crazed koala’s fingers from the wedding rings of my necklace, while keeping my knife raised against the shadows at the same time.

The kid began muttering and mumbling. If she was speaking English, I didn’t understand the words.

“Mom, can you put the shield back up? I need to cross through the portal and dump this kid on the guardians. But I don’t think the shadow leeches will be able to follow. I’m worried —”

The child’s head reared up. Her eyes blazed with gold. Then somehow, she began pulling the magic from my necklace like she’d ripped the wards off the front door.

“Mine. Mine. Mine,” she cackled.

“Not yours!” I reached out for the magic she was drawing away and tried to anchor it back into the necklace.

I dropped to my knees in an attempt to force the kid to stand on her own two feet. I needed to alleviate some of the weight she was exerting on my neck, which was starting to feel like it might snap in two.

She wrapped her legs around me tighter. For each finger I got unhooked from a wedding ring, she managed to grab onto another.

A gauzy rainbow of magic — pulled from my necklace in our tug of war — wrapped itself around and between our heads and necks. It tasted of … everything. Everything I’d ever collected, every spell I’d defended myself from, every Adept I’d ever known …

I was going to need to hurt her to get her off me.

I called my knife into my right hand.

“Jade,” Scarlett whispered. Her voice was soft and sorrowful.

“Jade,” the child repeated, as if just figuring out my name. Then she loosed her hand from my necklace and pressed it against my cheek. “You will help me.”

She pushed to turn my head toward Scarlett and Gran, who were once again surrounded by shadow leeches. Every inch of the bakery around and above both of them seethed with waiting, eager darkness.

“You will help me,” the child repeated. “Or my shadows will take every last drop from your witches.”

“I’ve already vanquished at least three,” I said. “I can take the rest … and you.”

The leeches pressed closer to Scarlett. She was sitting back on her heels but still upright. Gran was in her lap, and I could see her chest slowly rising and falling with breath.

“Can you?” the kid asked, sounding interested in the possibility. “Can you guarantee their survival?”

My mother locked her gaze to mine, but I couldn’t read anything but defiance from her.

“I’ve been trying to help you.” I ground the words out through my burning anger. She was just a kid. Or, at least, she was trapped in a child’s body, her magic dampened and contained. That was enough to make anyone crazy. I didn’t go around picking on crazy people … well, not on people who’d gone crazy through no immediately apparent fault of their own. I had to keep reminding myself of that fact.

“I want the magic of the necklace … and the knife.”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

The shadow leeches squeezed against Scarlett and Gran. My mother moaned quietly. I could see the leeches tasting her magic, pulling it from her.

I couldn’t just stand around, torn between gutting and perhaps killing a messed-up dragon or watching my family be stripped of their magic and possibly killed in the process.

I reached up for my necklace.

The child cackled and disengaged herself from me.

I lifted the necklace from my head. All the magic surrounding me pressed against my dowser senses as I slung the necklace across the child’s outstretched palms. Her hands were so tiny that she couldn’t close them around the thick gold chain.

“I can’t give you the knife,” I said, lying through my clenched teeth. “It’s spelled only to me.”

“No matter,” the lippy koala purred in her uppity, overly posh accent. “When I’m reborn, I will simply take it.” Intent on the necklace, she took a step back from me. The magic I’d spent years collecting in the chain and its wedding rings danced around her head, stretching between us as if it were still tied to me.

“Call off your shadows,” I said. I flicked my right wrist, which I still held at my side, to call her attention to my jade knife.

The child lifted her gaze to me, then nodded. The leeches moved a few feet away from Scarlett and Gran, lining themselves along the French-paned windows and blocking out the lights from the busy street beyond.

The child continued to pull the magic from the necklace. I could see it settling on the skin of her face, neck, shoulders, and arms. Years and years of residual, wild, and even malicious magic collected by me and placed in the necklace to create a personal shield. A shield reinforced by my own alchemist powers.

What did a dragon need with alchemist magic?

As the child drained the necklace’s reserves, I slowly inched closer to Gran and Scarlett, still on my knees. I could feel Scarlett’s magic gathering behind me.

I felt the instant Gran woke.

The preschooler slowly pivoted, continuing to face me as I moved. But she didn’t pause in draining the magic from the necklace until she had every last drop of it wrapped around her in a multicolored gossamer bodysuit. She raised her arms, holding the necklace aloft.

“Now!” she commanded.

I raised my knife, ready for the shadow leeches to attack.

They didn’t.

“Now! Now!” the rabid koala repeated, locking her once more fevered eyes to me.

“Now what?” I snapped.

“Now make the magic mine, alchemist.”

“Make it yours? You’re a person, not a freaking necklace.”

“Now!” the child demanded with a stamp of her foot. The shadow leeches rustled around us.

“Fine,” I muttered. “You asked for it.”

I reached out with my alchemist powers to pinpoint her dragon magic. Then, pressing against all the magic from the necklace that she’d dressed herself in, I shoved and mashed the two power sources together. God, I hoped she choked on it. No one could take that much magic into themselves without passing out — and maybe never waking up. She was a mortal being, not a car battery.

Let her pass out. Then I’d drag her ass into the nexus and let the guardians deal with the magically induced coma that was the fallout.

Except she didn’t falter. Somehow, with my help, she sucked the layer of gossamer magic into herself. Her skin briefly glowed with the golden light I attributed to the portals. Then the lingering taste of the witch and sorcerer and dragon magic that I’d collected in the necklace was gone, nullified by her dragon spiciness.

I could feel Gran crafting some spell behind me, the grass-and-lilac taste of it overriding all the other magic in the bakery.

I readied myself to lunge forward to follow whatever Gran was going to throw. Dragons were naturally resistant to offensive witch magic, but Gran was no ordinary witch.

The child was changing. It was subtle at first, but as she absorbed the magic she siphoned from the necklace, she began to grow. To mature.

As I knelt waiting on Gran, the four-year-old before me transformed into an eight-year-old, then a twelve-year-old. Then, shaking and sweating gold-infused drops of magic with the effort, a sixteen-year-old.

The sundress she was wearing stretched and shortened to more than risqué proportions. A slight sweetness that I couldn’t identify began to temper the sootiness of her dragon magic. Her magic was evolving along with her form. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure that more strength and power would come along with that evolution.

The newly transformed teenager dropped her hands to examine her outstretched arms. The necklace fell to the wood-slat floor.

She frowned. “Not enough,” she muttered, kicking the necklace away as if it was a piece of trash. She glared at me. “I’ll take the knife now.”

“Come and take it from me,” I said, slowly rising to my feet. I felt Gran and Scarlett do the same behind me.

The teen’s eyes flicked to take in all three of us. Then she turned, scanning the room, and for a brief moment I thought she was just going to walk away. Then with a nasty smile, she stepped to the side, reached down, and stirred her hand among broken stools, tables, and glass to retrieve the dragonskin map.

Ah, dammit. It must have fallen out of my satchel.

With a snap of her wrist she unrolled the map and gazed at it. I held my breath, worrying that she was going to tear it to pieces.

“Ah, I thought I recognized you,” she murmured, speaking to the map as if it were an actual person. Then she tilted her head toward me. “Let’s trade.”

“Let’s not.”

The shadow leeches rippled around us again, which made me realize they were responding to the teen’s anger. It was as if they were connected on an emotional level. That was creepy, with an extra serving of creepy on the side.